The Harvest

Colonel Tyler had no response except a haggard exhalation of breath.

The pigeons didn’t like this sound and they rose up in a cloud, to settle some distance away by the Reflecting Pool, where the image of the sky was pleasant in the cool wind-rippled water.

Over the past week, traffic inside the Beltway had been light. Official Washington had begun to close up shop, in a mutual consensus that required no debate. Capitol Hill had become a ghost town—just yesterday, William had stood in the Rotunda and listened to his footsteps echo in the dome above his head. But there were still tourists in the city, if you could call them tourists—people who had come for a last look at the governing apparatus of a nation.

Some of these people passed quietly along the Mall. William did not feel misplaced among them, though they seemed to make Colonel Tyler nervous.

“I want to ask you a question,” Tyler said.

“I’m a politician, Colonel. We’re notorious for dodging the hard ones.”

“I think you ought to take this more seriously, Mr. President.” Tyler touched the bulge of the pistol almost absently. His eyes were unfocused. And William reminded himself that the Colonel’s madness might not be new; it might be an old madness that Contact had simply aroused and let loose. It was as if Tyler generated a kind of heat. The heat was danger, and the temperature might rise at any provocation.

“I’m sorry if I seemed flippant. Go on.”

“What happens next? According to your scenario, I mean.”

William pondered the question. “Colonel, don’t you have anyone else to ask? A wife, a girlfriend? Some member of your family? I have no official standing—my information is no better than anyone else’s.”

“I’m not married,” Tyler said. “I have no living family.”

And here was another piece of the John Tyler puzzle: a grievous, ancient loneliness. Tyler was a solitary man for whom Contact must have seemed like a final exclusion from the human race.

It was a bleak and terrible thought.

“In all seriousness, Colonel, it’s a difficult question. You don’t need me to tell you everything is changing. People have new needs, and they’ve abandoned some old ones—and we’re all still coming to terms with that. I think… in time, these cumbersome bodies will have to go. But not for a while yet.” It was an honest answer.

Tyler fixed him with a terrible look—equal parts fear, outrage, and contempt. “And after that?”

“I don’t know. It needs a decision—a collective decision. But I have an inkling. I think our battered planet deserves a renewal. I think, very soon, it might get one.”

They had made a circle; they stood now outside the gates of the White House, and the day had grown warm as it edged toward noon.

Despite the threat, William was tired of dueling with John Tyler. He felt like a schoolboy waiting for some long detention to grind to an end. “Well, Colonel?” He looked Tyler in the eye. “Have you decided to shoot me?”

“I would if I thought it would help. If I thought it would win back even an inch of this country—dear God, I’d kill you without blinking.” Tyler reached beneath his suitcoat and scratched himself. “But you’re not much of a threat. As quislings go, you’re merely pathetic.”

William concealed his relief. Immortal I may be, he thought. But I’m not finished with this incarnation.

Besides, how would he have explained his death to Elizabeth? She would accuse him of clumsiness—perhaps rightly so.

“You think this conflict is over,” Tyler said. “I don’t grant that. Some of us are still willing to fight for our country.”

But why fight, William thought. The country is yours! Colonel Tyler—take it!

But he kept these thoughts to himself.

“I only hope,” Tyler said as he turned away, “the rest of the geldings are as docile as you.”

William watched the Colonel walk away.

Tyler was a man on a terrible brink, William thought. He was alone and vastly outnumbered and carrying some ghastly cargo of old sin. The world he lived in was receding beyond the limits of his comprehension.

And it need not have been that way. Maybe that was the worst part. You could have said yes, Colonel. And you know that, whether you choose to admit it or not.

William experienced this sadness for Colonel Tyler, then folded it into memory the way he had folded his silk tie into his pocket.

He might not have seen the last of Colonel Tyler—but that was tomorrow’s worry.

Today was still pretty and fresh. He had fifteen minutes to spare before lunch. And no one had killed him.

He considered the White House lawn. Scene of countless Easter egg hunts, diplomatic photo opportunities, presentations of awards. Had he ever really looked at it? The groundskeepers did excellent work. The grass was verdant and still sparkling with morning dew.

He wondered how it would feel to unlace his shoes and peel off his socks and walk barefoot over that green and gentle surface.

He decided it was time to find out.

Chapter 11

Kindle

The dream, in Tom Kindle s opinion, was just what it appeared to be: an invitation to submerge himself in a cozy, communal immortality. And while Kindle found the idea repulsive, he harbored no illusions about the attraction it would hold for his fellow men.

Therefore, in the two weeks and some days since that peculiar night, Kindle had stayed out of town. He wasn’t sure what Buchanan would look like when he saw it again. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

He had hoped to postpone any journey into town as long as possible, but that desire became academic when he slipped on a muddy hiking trail and came to rest twenty vertical feet down the west slope of Mt. Buchanan, his left leg broken at the hip.

Maybe he shouldn’t have been on the trail at all. Nothing had forced him out here. His cabin was well-stocked and he had plenty to read. Currently he was working his way through Gibbon’s History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. The book was not much more entertaining than yesterday’s dishwater, but Kindle had bought it as part of a five-foot shelf of the Classics of Western Literature, and he was determined to get his money’s worth.

Nor had claustrophobia driven him out. The cabin was spacious enough. He had bought this little property—some miles from Buchanan up an old logging road—in 1990. The cabin itself was a kit-built project he had put up with the help of a few friends, one a building contractor with access to quality tools. Since then, every pe

He paid for town water, since the municipality had run a public works line up here during the real-estate rush of the eighties. But his only electric power came from a gasoline generator in a shed out back. Winters were sometimes snowy, but Kindle had insulated the building and installed a woodstove to keep himself warm. No need for that this time of year, not just yet.

It was a cabin—not quite big enough to be called a house—but it was a comfortable cabin, and he wasn’t suffering from cabin fever. The impulse to take a long walk up these back trails had been only that, an impulse, obviously a stupid one. The dry spell had broken last week; rain had fallen for three consecutive days and the trails were wet. The trails were also, in places, steep.