“You regret having been bewitched by my charms?” Dana repeated, an entirely false pout on her face. “I said yes, didn’t I? I knew what I was getting into, didn’t I? I’m a grownup, aren’t I? I’ll bet my boss is downstairs right now in that drizzle-covered crowd in front of the building.”

  ***

  Dana pulled the heavy collar of her coat up, hoping no one would recognize her. She kept her crutches hidden, as much as she could, in its folds. She wasn’t exactly afraid, even after what had happened to her in Denver, and the people here in the hospital parking lot were very clearly on Alex’s side—and therefore, she hoped, on hers, as well.

  In fact, she was stunned at this gathering which, as far as she knew, was completely spontaneous, and she was a bit worried about being mobbed.

  She looked for Alan. There were thousands of people here, maybe even tens of thousands—he would have obtained a count by now. Every sort of person she could imagine was here, too, black, white, brown, and yellow. Men and women, old people, children, and everybody in between. She saw furs and expensive topcoats standing right next to t-shirts and ragged jeans covered with improvised slickers made of green garbage bags.

  Candles hadn’t worked out too well in the Portland winter drizzle. The streaming asphalt was littered with them. Instead, people held up flashlights and cyalumes, filling the otherwise dreary parking lot with a soft, multicolored light that reminded her that Christmas was only a few days away.

  She’d gotten her present, already: Alex was alive and would recover.

  The people stood peaceably, shoulder-to-shoulder, dripping and cold in the light but constant rain. Many of them were praying, some were openly weeping. Somebody in the far corner of the lot began to sing:

  Tell the parasitic bureaucrat, Tell the looting politician, as well, That their days are numbered and about to end, That the fight for liberty has found a friend, And its enemies are headed straight for Hell, Because the friend that it’s found is me! I will be free, I will be free! Free to choose, to win or to lose! I will be free-ee-ee-ee, I will be free! Tell the scum I won’t be satisfied, ‘Til I’ve taken back the city street, ‘Til they’ve stopped creating poverty, And the whole world’s private property, Or their blood is running at my feet, If that’s the way that it’s got to be ... I will be free, I will be free! Free to choose, to win or to lose! I will be free-ee-ee-ee, I will be free! I’ve been silent for 200 years, Since they took the Declaration away. Losing all my freedoms Left and Right, Now they’re gone and now it’s time to fight. The Declaration’s back, today’s the day! The flag’s unfurled, O can you see? I will be free, I will be free! Free to choose, to win or to lose! I will be free-ee-ee-ee, I will be free! I’m an army unto myself, Each friend of Liberty’s an army, too. Blood and fire, I will find rebirth. Lever and fulcrum, I will move the Earth! No tyranny will stand when I am through, No trace remain of the enemy ... I will be free, I will be free! Free to choose, to win or to lose! I will be free-ee-ee-ee, I will be free!

  The singing began to spread until it filled the parking lot, and people inside the hospital came to the windows to see what was going on. The song itself, she’d heard before. It had been written by one of the Austrian Mafia at Albert Gallatin Memorial College—not one of the four she knew, but a friend of theirs. The melody, especially of the chorus, was lovely, but the words were a bit bloodthirsty, she thought, in a manner that reminded her of the French revolutionary anthem “La Marseillais”, which was all about the tyrant’s foul blood running in our furrows, or words to that effect.

  Maybe that was the way a revolutionary anthem had to be. She was willing to bet that Ascher Liebowitz and the Mendelsohn brothers would appprove. The point, however, was that these people apparently loved Alex, and wished him well.

  Almost as much as she did.

  ***

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” Alex said to the camera, “fellow children of the American Revolution ... “

  In the end, it was decided that there wouldn’t be any questions. Not tonight. By the time the arrangements had been made, Alex was very nearly used up. He tried to pretend otherwise, but his daughter, his fiance, and his best friend weren’t fooled. He had to promise to keep it under ten minutes.

  The camera—surprisingly tiny and mounted on a single-legged support—belonged to NetPlanetNews.com, and it was being handled by Dana’s boss, who, at least to Alex, greatly resembled Edward G. Robinson. What he saw through his viewfinder would be shared out to all the traditional Old Media networks, but it would have the NPN logo in the lower right hand corner.

  Alex inhaled. “Please permit me to introduce myself, as I will not assume that you already know me. Fewer than an eighth of the eligible voters in this country cast their votes for me. I am Alexander Hope, of the Free Libertarian Party of America, and I’ve just learned that the Electoral College has named me the winner of the general election of 2008.”

  In a chair at one end of the bed sat Faith-Anne, Alex’s daughter, campaign manager, and, for the time being, at least, chief of staff. In another chair, at the other end of the bed, sat the Presidential Seal—Alex had insisted. On the opposite side of the bed from the camera, behind Alex as he spoke, stood John, Cap, the Austrian Mafia, Linda, and Dana.

  Alex had insisted on that, as well.

  He spoke without notes. “The first thing I want you to know is that nobody could be more astonished than I am to be addressing you this evening as the President Elect—hopefully, in time, your President Elect. Like those of you who consider themselves Republicans or Democrats or Independents, I sincerely wish that Vice President Chesley Chambers had turned out to be a better man than it appears he is. Likewise, I wish that the former First Lady had not been killed, along with more than a dozen others, in that horrible accident in the Rocky Mountains.”

  The nurses had done a fair job hiding the drainage tube from his lung and the intravenous line to his left arm. They’d been persuaded to temporarily remove the wires attached to the sticky snaps on his chest and abdomen. They’d covered him, as requested, with a cheerful southwestern-patterned blanket from his car outside (a plain gray 2008 Durango—he couldn’t let John have his way with everything).

  There was nothing they could do, however, about the eyepatch he was wearing. Ernie and Mick and Rick had been making piratical noises all afternoon, and John had said something to his son about shirt advertisements. Alex just thought about Long John Silver and soldiered—or pirated—on.

  “This is where we stand, however. These are the cards we’ve been dealt. And the second thing I want you to know is that I will take my duties as President of the United States as seriously as—perhaps even more seriously than—if I had been elected overwhelmingly in a landslide.”

  It was as close as he dared come to saying he’d act as if he had a mandate.

  “The third thing I want you to know is what happened day before yesterday. For reasons known best to himself, a young man in whom my staff and I had placed considerable trust chose to betray that trust by attacking me. You can see the result. I am injured, but recovering. My daughter Faith-Anne, of whom I am extremely proud (and to whom I am extremely grateful), put an admirably efficient stop to that attack by shooting my assassin dead, as a consequence of which I promise you that I will take my oath of office, standing on my feet, on January 20th in the nation’s capital.”

  He didn’t say anything that would exclude the use of crutches. He and Dana would make quite a pair, for a while, on their extra aluminum legs.

  “The fourth thing I want you to know is that, on my inauguration, I will immediately begin to keep the one and only campaign promise I ever made. I will energetically and stringently enforce the first ten amendments to the Constitution—commonly known as the Bill of Rights—exactly as if they were exactly what they are: the highest law of the land.”

  He tried not to rearrange his blanket while he let that statement sink in—or at least he hoped it sank in. The socialist media would be howling at the moon tomorrow, for his blood—what he had left. Let them howl.

  “Look them up,” he went on, referring to the Bill of Rights. “You can find them in any encyclopedia or alamanac. I plan to ask that they be printed in the telephone book, as well. See for yourself what the future holds. Don’t rely on television pundits or government lawyers or judges to tell you what your rights are. They’re there for you in black and white. Read them for yourself. The Founding Fathers meant for you to understand what’s possibly the clearest use of language in human history.”

  He paused for a moment, then went on. “To begin my policy, I’ll expect any bill that crosses my desk to include a citation of the Constitution to justify its passage, and an argument that it doesn’t violate the Bill of Rights. Otherwise, I will veto it. Of course it may be passed over my veto but it will take a two-thirds vote of Congress to do that, which is progress in itself: it will bring us that much closer to the unanimous consent this country requires to run decently and justly. Of course the names of those who vote against the Bill of Rights will be posted on the internet and receive the full attention of their irate constituents.

  In the opening week of my administration, I will also require every federal employee and every department head to justify his job and its activities with reference to the Bill of Rights.”

  He was beginning to tire badly, it was difficult to breathe. But he hadn’t gotten to the important part yet, and he was determined to.

  “Nobody who works for a living—no member of the productive class in general—has anything to fear from such a policy. Nor does anyone who can live without initiating force against others or having it initiated for him. Even those who have subsisted, heretofore, at the involuntary expense of others, will find reason to be grateful for the establishment of this policy, because it will set them free, it will enable them to stand up on their own, and to be proud.”

  He took a deep breath, trying desperately to avoid wheezing. “What I mean to do is return ownership and control of your life to you. In the end, each and every one of us will know with certainty where he stands, under the law.”

  This time, he paused for a long while, until one of his nurses started forward from behind the camera, a worried look on her face. He put a hand up to stop her, then turned it into a five-finger count.

  “The fifth and final thing I want you to know is that you can help me to return this country to the rule of law by remembering your 1000-year-old right and duty, when called upon to be a juror, to judge the law, as well as the facts of the case or the instructions of the judge. If it doesn’t match your understanding of the Bill of Rights, the law must be discarded.”

  Finished at last. “I’ll speak of this again. For the time being, thank you, and good night.”

  ***

  The lights and camera were gone, and so was nearly everyone who had crowded this room an hour ago. Only Dana remained, sitting in the chair beside the bed, holding Alex’s hand, and touching his injured face the way he had touched hers what seemed to both of them such a short time ago. Her own sore feet were propped up on the Presidential Seal.

  They had both been silent for most of that hour, listening to Christmas music playing faintly on the hospital’s sound system. “There is something we need to know about each other, Dana,” he told her, suddenly serious. “Something we need to get straight right at the beginning.”

  She looked alarmed. His voice was wearier than she’d ever heard it. “What is it, Alex? Are you absolutely sure it won’t wait until tomorrow morning?” Would it end with his saying they could always be friends?

  He shook his head. “No, it won’t wait. You know this will be our first Christmas together, my love, and there are only seven days left until then. Geez, I never even got any shopping done. But I have to know ... “

  “What, Alex?”

  “Does your family open their gifts Christmas morning or Christmas eve?”

  She laughed and grinned. “Silly, I’m a Buddhist!”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN: THE CHIEF JUSTICE

  Right-wing myth to one side, “republic” and “democracy” mean the same thing, one in Latin, the other in Greek. The thing to remember is that they’re both just another form of collectivism, of socialism, under which your neighbors may vote you into the poorhouse—or the grave—if they want what you have. Those who profess to care about their nation and its place in history must expend every effort to limit this possibility or to eliminate it altogether.—Alexander Hope, Looking Forward

  The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court wore an expression that was appropriate to the occasion, but there was encouraging, conspiratorial light in his eyes. He’d had trouble himself, over the long, rocky course of his career, from those who hated him, not so much for the color of his skin, but for daring to cherish ideals that his enemies had decided—for him—were unsuitable to a man of his color.

  “Place your left hand on the Bible, raise your right hand, and repeat after me” ‘I, Alexander Hope ... ‘”

  Alex tried to exhale evenly. “I, Alexander Hope ... “

  “’Do solemnly swear ... ‘,” the Chief Justice continued.

  Alex repeated, “Do solemnly swear ... “

  “’That I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States ... ‘”

  “That I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States ... “ Alex was relieved; he’d been afraid he fumble that part, under the pressure of the occasion.

  “’And will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States ... ‘”

  “And will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.” That was exactly what he’d come here to do.

  “’So help me God.’”

  “So help me God.”

  Alex wasn’t certain to what degree he believed in God. If there was one, he could use His help. He found it difficult to keep a tremor out of his voice this morning and it was only partly due to his still-healing wounds.

  Taking this oath in public should make anybody nervous, he thought, especially knowing that thousands present here today, friend and foe alike, and perhaps a billion others on the other ends of all those television cameras, would be watching his every move for the least mistake or sign of hesitation.

  How did that old bluegrass song go again, about “The Great Speckled Bird”?

  Add to that the awkwardness of placing his hand on the big black book that George Washington himself and every President after him had sworn the oath on—a hand that stuck out of a sling on his left arm intended to keep him from reopening his chest wound—and raising the other hand, while trying to keep his crutches from slipping out from under him.

  Then there was the damp, bitter, January cold that only the former swamp known as the District of Columbia was capable of producing. He could well believe that another President, William Henry Harrison, had caught pneumonia at this very ceremony and died in office only a few weeks later.

  He turned stiffly on his crutches and put his good hand on the lectern. The platform where he stood, ringed with Secret Service agents and a sprinkling of people John had called in for the occasion, was raised a dozen feet above the street. He glanced across an ocean of faces below, consisting mostly of various VIPs and the press, the latter having been expressly denied places on the platform. Not all of them were friendly. Alex was beginning his term of office at about the same level of popularity, he calculated, according to this morning’s polls, as Richard Nixon when he had resigned.

  Maybe it was the eyepatch. He could see perfectly with that eye now, indoors, but sunlight, even through the overcast, was still painful.

  Seated in one of the front rows where she was easy to see, was Dana, her trim little figure wrapped in a long, quilted coat. Her crutches lay on the ground underfoot, where the camera couldn’t see them. Her cameraman knelt on a chair in the row before her, where he could shoot her with an instrument no bigger than his fist, then turn easily to the ceremony. Alex had wanted her on the platform with him. But she’d insisted that this was the last chance she’d have to be an “infobabe”.

  Alex’s other friends were evenly divided between the President and the First Girlfriend. Cap was watching Dana’s back; Alex was glad to have him there. John was on the platform with him, of course. Just to keep the DC police off his back—they actually required a special permit for a camera tripod—Alex had written John a very slightly postdated note this morning asking him to carry any weapon he wished. John and Agent Smith had come to some agreement. Alex often saw them together, the older man more than likely laughing, the younger trying to learn how.

  Forrey Nadalindov, Alex’s Vice President, and Linda Alvarez, the FLPA’s only representative in Congress were here, too. The Austrian Mafia were in the row behind Dana, trying to resist a temptation to make faces behind her back when the camera was on the “infobabe”.

  Only an instant had passed. Alex cleared his mind to speak.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, fellow children of the American Revolution, Mr. Chief Justice. It is astonishing how much torture and abuse people can become accustomed to, provided it’s done to them gradually. In the darkest of the Dark Ages, there was a law, universally respected throughout the civilized world even by the blackest of villains, that no peasant could be taxed more than ten percent of what he earned by the sweat of his brow.”

  He could hear them buzzing out there. This was beginning like no other inaugural address in memory. But what else could they expect?

  “In 1913, as he was imposing an income tax on this country (after the Supreme Court had declared Abraham Lincoln’s income tax unlawful), Woodrow Wilson promised Americans that it would never go any higher than five percent, and that it would never affect anyone but the very wealthiest two percent of the population. Almost certainly this is where the observation first came from, that you can tell when a politician is lying—because his mouth is moving.”