Steve White.

The Prometheus Project.

PROLOGUE.

"Mr. President! Mr. President!" The White House press corps rose to its collective feet like an attention-

seeking wave.

The President of the United States smiled into the tumult and the TV cameras, and raised his hands for silence. "That's enough questions for now, ladies and gentlemen. Let me just make a few concluding remarks." He waited until something resembling silence had descended on the Press Room, and his expression grew serious. "This has been a . . . vigorous campaign, and feelings have sometimes flared, as they will among people of strongly held beliefs. But that's over now. The electorate has spoken, and the Const.i.tution admits of no doubt as to the outcome. Now it is a time for healing, and for unity. It is for that reason that President-Elect Langston and I called this joint press conference. And now, let me turn the podium over to the President-Elect."

Harvey Langston rose to his feet with a muttered "Thank you, Mr. President." He took his place behind the Presidential seal and smiled at the reporters who, he knew, had never really expected to see him there.

"Ladies and gentlemen, I want to add my voice to the President's. As we know, all sorts of things get said in a campaign . . . by both sides. But now the President and I share a common goal: a smooth transfer of power. My transition team has been in close communication with the President's staff to a.s.sure that my administration can hit the ground running. I intend to act without delay to deliver what the people have demanded by putting me in this house. The people want compa.s.sionate government.

The people-"

"Forty-one percent of them, anyway," someone could be heard to remark, somewhere in the room."-want us to focus on our own domestic problems, and not on foreign adventurism," Langston continued without a break, forcing himself to ignore the dig. Plenty of time later to stick it to that wisea.s.s reporter, he thought, knowing that Sal DiAngelo, his campaign manager, would have spotted the man and noted his name. "The people want us to abandon our weapons of destruction and seek peaceful solutions to the conflicts we ourselves have provoked! The people-"From off to the side, DiAngelo caught his eye and frowned. Stop campaigning, d.a.m.n you! Langston told himself. You don't have to campaign any more. You've won! He still had to periodically remind himself of that fact, as incredible to him as it was to most of the country.

"The people want continuity and the regular exercise of const.i.tutional processes," he finished smoothly.

He prided himself on these seamless recoveries. It was an ability that could be counted on to save his bacon as long as DiAngelo or one of his other handlers was around to shoot him warning looks when the shrillness started to creep back into his voice. "And now, I'll take a few questions."

He got through the questions from the floor, recognizing only those journalists he knew were friendly or, at least, predictable. Then it was over, and the President and his successor were out the doorway of the Press Room together, trailed by a gaggle of staffers and Secret Service men.

As they proceeded down the corridor into the West Wing, a tall, unfamiliar man on the outskirts of the President's entourage caught Langston's eye. He felt certain he would have remembered the man if he'd seen him before, despite his completely nondescript clothes. He looked old, with his thick mane of white

hair, and yet his movements were not those of an old man. His features were bleak and harsh, and

disfigured by a scar slanting across his left cheek. . . .

"Harvey . . . I mean, Mr. President-Elect," muttered DiAngelo, derailing his train of thought, "I still see no reason for this meeting. If there's anything that needs to be settled, the staffs-"

"Oh, it's all right, Sal. The President has asked for a private one-on-one conversation, and I see no reason to object. I'm curious to see what he wants. And besides, we can afford to be obliging."

"Yes, but-"

Before DiAngelo could finish, they pa.s.sed by the Cabinet Room and the office of the President's private secretary, and reached the door that was their destination. Langston glanced around, but the mysterious old man was no longer in sight. The President led the way through the door. Langston followed, with Secret Service men politely but firmly shooing everyone else away. Then the door closed behind him, and he was in the Oval Office.

The President sat down behind the ma.s.sive oak desk in front of the tall French windows of foot-thick

armored gla.s.s that admitted the pale light of late fall afternoon. He motioned to a chair across the desk.Langston was impressed despite himself as he crossed the carpet with the Presidential seal in gold and red against the deep blue. The momentary mood vanished as his eyes fell on the flags of the five armed services in their traditional position to the right of the desk, along the south wall. Must get rid of those, he made a mental note to himself.

Langston sat down and gazed across the desk at the man he would succeed in January. Silence and

mutual loathing settled over the room.

"Mr. President," Langston finally began, "I trust that in the spirit we both articulated at the press conference just now-"

"Oh, cut the c.r.a.p," the President interrupted in a voice as cold as his eyes. "I'm well aware that you have no higher opinion of me than I have of you. So spare me your trademark smarmy hypocrisy. We're alone now-really alone-and we can dispense with the pap we were feeding those hyenas in the Press Room."

"Do you seriously expect me to believe that? You're just trying to trick me into-"

"You can also spare me your paranoia. You know it's true, because otherwise I wouldn't be talking this way. Besides, what would be the point of trying to trap you into anything? It's too late for it to do any good. You've won." The President shook his head slowly, as though to clear it of a stunned disbelief that

still hadn't worn off. "There's no getting around that fact . . . and I'd even go so far as to call it fifty percent just. You didn't deserve to win, but Ortega did deserve to lose."

Vice President Andrew Ortega had been the President's handpicked choice to succeed him, in line with

their party's strategy of reaching out to Hispanics. He'd won the nomination with little opposition save that of isolationist commentator Frank Ferguson, a Holocaust-denial crank who had subsequently bolted the party and launched an independent candidacy with the announced aim of acting as a spoiler for "that spic." Still, Ortega's election had seemed a foregone conclusion. The opposition party, knowing it couldn't win anyway, had thrown a sop to the Old Left hardcases who were its shock troops by nominating one of their own: the patently unelectable Harvey Langston, congressman from a California district for which the term "La-La Land" might well have been coined.

Then the unthinkable had begun to unfold. Ortega's campaign had been a parade of blunders, bloopers, pratfalls and general inept.i.tude without modern precedent. The unfunny comedy show had climaxed the

night of the final debate, when the Vice President-whose handlers had believed his drinking problem to be safely in the past-had managed to not quite fall on his face on prime-time TV. His apology to the nation the next day had made matters even worse than they would have been had he tried to brazen it out.

Voter turnout had been the lowest in the history of presidential elections, with most of Ortega's centrist base of support-not to mention the agonizingly embarra.s.sed Hispanics-staying home in disgust. In spite of everything, he had somehow managed a forty-three percent plurality of the dismally small popular vote. Ferguson had gotten a once-unimaginable fifteen percent. Another one percent had gone to the usual a.s.sortment of minor-party joke candidates. But Langston's forty-one percent had been distributed with mathematical precision to give him exactly two hundred and seventy-one electoral votes.

Now he sat in the office he would soon occupy, filled with his triumph and his hatred of the man across

the desk."Thank you for clearing the air, Mr. President. Yes, I know-or can imagine-what you think of me. And I make no secret of what I think of you." Oddly enough, Langston found himself believing the President's a.s.surance that no one was listening . . . and it felt so good to be able to finally let it all out, without DiAngelo to rein him in. "You're a reactionary, warmongering dinosaur-a tool of the military-industrial complex and the multinational corporations! You've ignored the problems capitalism has inflicted on us-poverty, racism, s.e.xism, suburban sprawl, cigarette smoking, meat eating, SUVs, and all the rest of our real problems. Instead, you've promoted economic growth to please the fat cats of Wall Street, and invented imaginary foreign threats to justify military spending."

The President raised one eyebrow. "As 'imaginary' as the terrorism we've faced ever since the

'imaginary' destruction of the World Trade Center back in 2001?""What you call 'terrorists' are heroic freedom fighters whom our own greed and imperialism have forced to defend themselves against us! We brought the 9/11 attacks on ourselves, by our support for Israeli oppression of the Palestinian people! Besides, the Israelis knew about it in advance and didn't warn us. They let it happen, to inflame public opinion against the peace-loving people of the Arab world. That's been clear all along, at least to those of us who aren't blinded by the propaganda of the international Zionist conspiracy!"

This time both presidential eyebrows rose in arcs of irony. "The Vice President-Elect might not see it

quite that way."

Langston flushed. "Senator Goldman and I have had to agree to disagree about some things. But on matters other than Near Eastern policy, we share a broad philosophical common ground."

The President gave a short, scornful laugh. "Translation: you had him rammed down your throat as your running mate. The grown-ups in your party weren't about to accept a loony tune like you as nominee, even for what was supposed to be a kamikaze run, without a sane moderate to balance the ticket."

Langston rose to his feet, quivering with rage. "If you've asked me here simply to insult me, Mr.

President, I believe I have better uses for my-"

"Insulting you is impossible. Now sit down!"Without recalling having done it, Langston realized he was seated again. His conscious rejection of his country's past could not immunize him from the sheer power that pervaded this room, all of it focused and concentrated in the one man behind the desk.

For now, he added to himself grimly. Until January.

The President drew a breath and released it slowly. "Well, none of that matters now. Thanks to the vagaries of the electoral system and the buffoonery of Andy Ortega, you are-G.o.d help us!-going to be President of the United States. So it's time for me to pa.s.s the burden on to you. That's why we're here now."

Langston was puzzled. "But the inauguration isn't until-"

"Never mind that circus. And never mind everything the presidency is officially about. I'm talking about

the real burden. Something every president for the last six decades has had to live with after learning of it in private from his predecessor.""I have no idea what you mean.""Of course you don't. The little ritual we're here to enact is not generally known. Nor will you find anything about it in the Const.i.tution."

Langston felt a coldness slide along his spine.

"I am," the President continued, "about to impart to you certain information which has been handed

down by each president to his successor ever since Eisenhower took over from Truman. I will not swear you to secrecy, because it would be a meaningless formality. After you've heard what I have to say, you will know that it must be kept in confidence. All your predecessors have understood this-even the ones who looked like they might present problems. I've heard a few stories . . ." The President gave a chuckle of amused reminiscence. "There was one president-elect who had to have it put to him as a religious imperative, on the Sunday school level; it seems he genuinely believed the infantile pietism he spouted. And then there was a later one who turned out to be perfectly happy to go along with anything that didn't interfere with his extraordinarily single-minded pursuit of every pair of panties in sight. In fact, I understand he was tickled pink to know-for once-something his wife didn't know!" The President sobered. "The only break in the chain was before either of those, at the time of the Kennedy a.s.sa.s.sination. Afterwards, Johnson had to be informed by other means. I gather there were complications. But he had no trouble grasping this information's . . . 'sensitivity' is hardly the word. Neither have any of the others."

The thinly veiled slights to a couple of former presidents whom Langston particularly admired helped break the spell. He leaned forward, glaring. "If you think I'm going to unquestioningly accept this vague, unsubstantiated mystification-"

"Of course not. I wouldn't expect you to. On your standards, you're actually being rational. No one should take something like this on blind faith. And we all know that photos and film can be faked. So in order to a.s.sure that you take me seriously . . ." The President reached into a desk drawer and withdrew a foot-square sheet of gray metal. He wordlessly pa.s.sed it to Langston, who handled it gingerly. It was lighter than he'd expected, and unyieldingly rigid.

"Well, what do you think?" asked the President.

Langston handed it back, irritated. "What am I supposed to think? Steel, I suppose, although it's very thin for something that won't bend at all."

"So it is." As Langston watched in dawning amazement, the President took out a block of what looked

like soft wood and placed the square of metal atop it. Then he produced what looked like a metal-punch, placed it in position above the metal, and held up a heavy mallet. "The Secret Service gets upset at people putting bullets through things in here," he explained, and, without warning, brought the mallet down. Langston jumped in his chair as the bit punched through the metal and into the wood.

The President held up the metal sheet, which now had a small round hole with a slight lip on the

underside.As Langston watched, the metal around the hole began to . . . do something. The lip grew even slighter, and then smoothed itself out altogether. And the hole closed, and vanished. The metal was as flawless as it had been before.

"It's an application of nanotechnology known as 'smart matter'," the President explained matter-of-factly.