Scenes from a Preternatural Presidency -- 5. The Proper Use of Thunderbolts (H)
The Vatican was saying nothing but Salt Lake City gave cautious approval, with some Baptist bigwigs. Others were less happy, but there are proverbial reasons to strike while the iron is hot, and though a lot of people seemed to think that meant striking with a hot iron, I knew as well as Zee that the iron was struck, and I’d done so with sharp purpose. The image of Purity and all those four-legged fae standing patiently in God’s house as I spoke ex-cathedra had been an almighty hammer, matching even Thor’s, and if iron was still iron, and very useful in its place, it had been reshaped some and wasn’t cold yet. The hashtags were working it nicely, pointing the astonishments of grace and the hounds as the agents of justice they had legally been, while a really interesting dynamic developed about Old Testamentary grace that, if superseded by Christ’s mission, had perhaps not been quite as effaced as had been thought, nothing of God’s grace ever being truly obsolete or forgotten. Gray Lords to whom I spoke in the Garden of Manannán’s Death were bracingly ironic about it all, if still notably pleased, and Underhill deepened the ironies by who knew how many orders of magnitude but already knew the Kipling poem and was sternly approving of my plans. Severity had its place, as justice and deterrence, and it was all in deep balance she said the elements strongly approved, so that was alright.
The first Sunday I’d missed services, but by the second Skuffles and I were feeling much better, and with Adam, Jesse, Ramona, and a bunch of Freed I cloaked straight to the church. People were surprised but a genuine warmth and relief at seeing us looking better was right there too, without too much renewed wariness. Reverend Jenkins was open in offering congratulations, told me with a wry grin she’d done the congregation’s heartfelt hosannas to the Lord last week, while everyone was still reeling, so I needn’t worry, and gave one of her better sermons by saying she was very happy to play second fiddle to His Grace of Canterbury in endorsing my words before chasing some of his scriptural citations and the Kipling quotation. After the service I alarmed her by saying I’d already written to Canterbury in thanks and invitation, which was sneaky but pleasing, and though by the time we left there were media in numbers I only waved before arching out, knowing images of me and Skuffles walking more easily and back to normal weight and colour would answer the only question they needed to ask.
I did have one much harder conversation with the Director of the Secret Service, who called after seeing those images himself but whose resignation I flatly refused to accept. Although it looked as if Adam had been right about a well-paid cloaking and misdirection spell, the Director felt he’d failed and had a hard time seeing any humour at all in a principal protecting agents, but I told him he knew perfectly well that a president being a magic-user changed the basic calculus, and what else did he think anyone should have done ? No, we couldn’t put Hostile Vehicle Mitigation everywhere, though I’d grant him two sets of rising bollards on 33rd before we next went for pizza, and he was welcome to talk to DARPA and whoever about what anyone could reasonably carry that would laugh at bulletproof windshields without killing anything except whatever it was aimed at. He’d taken himself to task impressively after his misstep with Jesse when I first took the ex-Man Underhill, so I’d come to respect him considerably and rather shocked him by saying so before pointing out that I’d told him straight off that thunderbolts were line-of-sight weapons, so how had he expected me to use one inside a perimeter of agents who were not acceptable collateral damage from friendly fire, whatever their service ethos ? And would he please sort out compensation for the cars the expanding thunderbolt had damaged, that being reasonably a Secret Service rather than personal expense. I left him chewing on it, and set my Special Squad, on duty but at a loose end, to thinking through new protocols sensibly with Adam, Jill, and Brent.
As a side-benefit of the days in the Garden of Manannán’s Death I received let to eat food I brought with me - which I did, resulting in many interesting conversations with hounds, Underhill, and an oddly quiet Edythe about boccadillos, panini, and sandwiches in general while Skuffles, the cloak, Manannán’s Bane, and I soaked up … not power, exactly, but atmosphere, with the sweet scent of roses and the reversed noise of the uphill fountain. Cathexis came up, and if I still couldn’t tell the psychology and theology from the deep magics, I did get things to ponder about how my hi-jacked cathedral and elected office had cohered with the righteousness and purpose of the Hunt. My cloak had of course been a moving agent, magnifying my will and intents, but it had been a synergy of ancient balances that had emerged, mutually reinforcing and elementally boosted. When I felt well enough to do it I took Skuffles and Excalibur in Ceulydd to see the pillar in the Untenanted Duckpond’s sea, and found there was now a recess in its top, exact to the sheathed sword. The sea air was nice, and the place seemed more comforting than the first time I’d been there, but it was more for Excalibur’s benefit. Underhill was interested in the recess, but I wasn’t saying anything to anyone else. Giant nude ice me I mostly ignored, though fae glances tended towards it when they mentioned how very surprising I could be, but after a week I did some talking to Adam, my head pillowed on his chest.
“I said the statue was training, love, and now the triad’s got in on the act. Besides not wanting to disappoint Thor just then, I said OK to displaying the thunderbolt because it deserves the fame and that squishes any call for another statue of me. I’m interested it co-operated with Zee and Irpa in being trolled to its new home, so some magic is still active, which I should check on, and it’s a handy lightning rod for any sacramentalisation because the association with Thor nixes that too. But I do think … I dunno, grace, or providence, or something got involved. I can call it deep old magical synergies, but really, with the cloak and cathedral co-operating the distinction feels thin. And I can tell myself I served a need of things beyond me, and sure, glad to be of use, but I don’t like the cost any more than you or Skuffles, however necessary, and playing Joan of Arc is right out.”
He rumbled a laugh. “Too right, love, and not your style at all. If your God wants anything else saying, He’ll let you know. But this seems like a good time to tell you that nixing sacramentalisation means accepting the secular version.”
I propped myself up, giving him a look. “Which is what ?”
“Nothing I could have stopped, even if I’d wanted to. Your graffiti pals from Cuyahoga Falls have already done a whopper of you thunderbolting the Navigator, with Thor and everyone else cheering you on, and some Marvel artist did another that’s up in Times Square. There will be more, and probably already are, but you don’t have to do anything about them and shouldn’t anyway. But this one you do, because the appropriate committees and Joint Chiefs all agreed that you and Skuffles get Purple Hearts.” I blinked. “C.-in-C. counts as serving, they said, however constitutionally civilian, and defied anyone to say you weren’t both wounded in the line. Having seen the TV in very slow-mo and made a request of the Fae embassy, which Baba Yaga answered promptly with personal testimony, they also made a further decision Congress immediately approved, that you both get Medals of Honor, which has some main-party lawyers yacking but the vote was unanimous in both houses and SCOTUS won’t touch it with a stick, so the ceremony’s next week.”
I was lying down again well before the end of that, and he stroked my hair.
“I don’t see you can truly object, love. Greatness thrust upon is still greatness, you did rise spectacularly to a challenge, and no matter you didn’t expect to be laying your life on the line like that, when you found it was you kept it there.”
“No choice by then.”
“Really, love ? You could have cut loose and opened only the top of the thunderbolt.”
“Uh uh. Thunderbolts … prefer integrity. And I didn’t know if the sides would hold.”
“Nor does Thor, though I gather he’s now thinking about it, with other ways thunderbolts might be used. But any which way, you add a Purple Heart and Medal of Honour to your Presidential Medal of Freedom. Remember that NYT line about a warrior-stateswoman ? Well, you did both bits together, and in our army successful single combat means medals. Besides, one real side-benny is that medal recipients do not make speeches, just nod thanks and leave, and you’ll be able to use the miniatures on your blouson all sorts of ways.”
I roused myself enough to give him a kiss.
“Urk all the same. Being presidential is so much easier than being lauded for it.”
“Hold that thought.”
In the event I got through it without too much blushing and face-ache, despite an inordinate amount of cheering, and genuine pleasure among more than my Independents to see me and Skuffles looking better was a truer warmth. There being nowhere to pin medals on Skuffles she accepted them on ribbons and promptly glamoured her ruff-skulls to have one medal in each eyesocket, mildly freaking everyone, but in a good way. Lined up on my blouson three medals made quite an array, and I did feel proud, but that didn’t make a citation that was a young speech any more bearable and only Adam’s hand in mind stopped me from squirming. The ex-Man was there, purely glad I’d survived if deeply curious about events with the Fae, and I invited him and his wife to a quiet dinner the following week. Gray Lords and Thor were also present, by duly authorised special invitation - Irpa had all the House regs down cold before she took her seat - and their nodded salutes, hands over hearts, seemed genuine enough. And Coyote was there, of course, wearing the version of a Purple Heart I’d given him, and had brought my Mom and sisters, with Curt and Tod, which at least meant the embarrassments could be shared.
By then I’d forced myself to watch the WETA footage, from attack to cathedral, and I could hardly blame people for being croggled when even fae were and I still was myself, often enough. There wasn’t much I could do about possessing an ex-godly power, but heading back to DC via Kennewick I’d asked Reverend Jackson to visit. She arrived anxiously enquiring if there was news about Canterbury, and relaxing when I denied it gave me a shrewd look and told me not to worry so much that the Spirit had moved me, the Lord being very well able to provide. Mark 13:11 came into it, but she also wanted to know what I thought the Holy Ghost had been moving me to say, beyond any necessary demonstration, so I added a little about Fae cathecting to what was public before telling her of my other intentions, which brought her up short.
“Dear Lord. That is … truly severe, but I cannot say unjust. And I don’t think I disapprove, however I am … horrified is too strong, though it’s in there. Stunned.”
“Even the older ones will have plenty of time to repent, Reverend, and will not lack basic care, Overhill or Underhill. And I’m not thinking of me so much, or even Adam and Jesse, as of the true innocents and wider damage. You’ve seen the graphic.”
Uncontained, the bomb would have flattened most of nine blocks and left a crater up to fifty feet deep, and the graphic had been very graphic indeed. Georgetown U.’s data on building materials and specs had allowed real calculations about what would and wouldn’t have survived, and what damage flying masonry and the shock-wave would have done for a long way around. Given the time, residential density, and summer crowds the FBI thought at least 1100 people would have died, probably more, plus incalculable injuries and property damage into the billions.
“Yes, many times by now, and you’re right, of course. It is a terrible image to consider, but so is the vengeance in your clemency. Does the paradox trouble you at all ?”
“Only when I laugh, Reverend. Thor tells me paradoxes are one thing gods do, and I doubt the Lord would demur, so I shall leave it to Him. Doesn’t stop some human and coyote horror at the prospect, but is it worse than executions, which I allow and often enough approve ? And if it is, I can’t see that is anything but righteous, for I do have a rage the deaths of Clements and Wood don’t begin to pay down. Did you gather her father was genuinely astonished she’d suicide ?”
“I did, yes, but it was an idiot lovers’ pact, wasn’t it ? Overgrown teenagers. And she was a very sick woman, God knows. I thought Mr Clements must have been as blind as a bat.”
“They’re not here to answer questions, and I didn’t ask the ghosts, but for my money, yeah, exactly right on all counts, though her father’s blindness is also a sickness of mind. The dead are out of my hands, but they couldn’t have played spearpoint without plenty of willing haft and heft. Even so, am I trespassing on the Lord’s vengeance ?”
She thought about it for a while, but shook her head. “No, I don’t think or feel so, Ms President. You’re making a … theoretical sentence rather more literal, but its unarguably temporal, not spiritual, however providing opportunity for repentance.” She gave a crooked grin. “I’ll have to go there in at least one sermon, but if I question I shan’t disapprove, and I doubt many will. If we say the fullest punishment is deserved, we should mean it, even while we pray for their souls.”
Others agreed, not that I had any intention of changing my mind, and though I gave no hint I did, when Adam and others persuaded me to allow Penny and Caroline a joint interview, make it clear I thought the chosen means a very aggravating factor.
“Some people have been critical of a complete ban on the JLS, but what happened shows just how badly it was festering, and as my brother Charles says, you can’t save rotten meat. Back when I had to attend a Dim Future meeting I was struck by the disconnect - people cosily discussing plans that would involve mass murder and pogroms with no sense whatever of the reality - and those the Hunt found seem similar. They might be able to get me with a car-bomb, so they went for it, and at one level I don’t think the other thousand plus dead or the gross property destruction meant anything at all to them, even if they did the math. But at another level it was, as the Secret Service know, a form of going postal, suiciding with the intent to take as many others with you as you can, often enough at complete random. The JLS fostered and enabled that, using donations as well as personal wealth, and failing to root that out as thoroughly as we can would be derelict.”
“Un huh. That I see entirely, Ms President, though the financial sequestrations raise genuine legal questions.” Penny waggled a hand. “And the figures are surprisingly large.”
“Only because some JLS members seem to have been abusing its former charitable status to hide unreported income, Ms Ligatt, and now want to use that money to fight the IRS charges they face. And as with Heuter, so again - old Anglo money, frustrated at having to share the world, was used with intent to murder innocents. We’re all for private enterprise, but money obtained by or used to fund criminality is forfeit, including old Anglo money.” I shrugged. “I understand that as I am a preternatural, and had excellent reasons to loathe the JLS before all this happened, it can be seen and labelled as preternatural persecution of humans who dislike and fear them. But the Constitutional Amendment protecting preternatural rights is done and dusted, so there is no need to fight those who still oppose it, and they have every legal right to peaceful protest. And I swore to serve citizens, which means looking very unfavourably on anyone who is willing to call a heap of dead ones acceptable collateral damage.”
“You regard the perception of bias as unavoidable but untrue, then ?”
“And itself biased, Ms Taylor, as it chooses to overlook or downplay what was very homegrown American terrorism. I don’t have that option, and it’s crime that’s being punished, not beliefs.”
“Indeed.” Caroline changed tack. “Ms President, are you aware of the speculation there has been about the brief interval between the Lincoln being, ah, engulfed and the explosion ?”
“I am, Ms Taylor, but I have nothing to add to it. I truly do not know what happened inside the thunderbolt, and no-one alive knows how Clements and Wood had the trigger rigged, so there is no saying if detonation was accidental or wilful.”
“You didn’t, ah, sense anything magically about the impact ?”
“I was the impact. What the Lincoln or its occupants felt I have no idea, and can’t say I much care.”
That exchange went viral, and though I declined all requests for licensed images the Fall saw a lot of tees and totes with images of me and ‘I was the impact’. I went back to business as usual, got through the G7 without losing my temper, despite some very silly questions, and waited on the legal process. The courts martial were long done, uniform capital sentences confirmed up the chain but remitted to me for the last word, and the judges hearing expedited parallel cases concerning active participation and accessory before the fact had taken clear lines accepting the legality of my Executive Orders including sequestration of all JLS-related funds regardless of impact on choice of lawyers. Physical evidence had been recovered from houses, including explosive samples and traces, handwritten letters and once-encrypted emails, detailed calculations of speed achievable and depth of penetration, with financial records that were coldly damning, bribery having been a major tool even with Clements kin, where real wealth had been very centrally controlled. Treason for profit turned stomachs and defence explanations that the true scale of what the suicides had planned was never understood by anyone at all didn’t help them deny that my assassination had been intended, the motive vengeance, if draped in spurious patriotic concern for an Amerika of old-moneyed Eastern Anglos, and the means a matter of such indifference that, apparently, no enquiry had ever been made. Nor did an attempt to argue that as the explosion had in fact done no damage all charges were unfounded amuse judges or juries, and two days before Thanksgiving I had seventeen military and federal capital sentences lined up on my desk.
There were other things to deal with in my annual reflection, including the religious U-turn on the Fae and cold iron, the idea of Good Hunting Evil having satisfied many less Christian impulses as well as goosing theologians. I also had things to say about the increasing number of geothermal taps, constellations of five shafts each with five turbines pouring ever so many cheap gigawatts into the grid and enabling ruthlessly rapid closures of remaining fossil-fuel plants, with consequent upheavals, though green-lurch mitigations and protections were in place. There were also fruits of rewriting American history to include non-Anglo perspectives I was happy to plug, but to end I turned to the judicial decision I faced, Skuffles sitting up beside me, and warned the nation to brace itself.
“Having prayed and sought counsel, I think two pointless deaths are enough already, and though I will not pardon the least of these guilty I hereby commute all seventeen capital sentences to imprisonment for terms of nine-hundred-and-ninety-nine years without possibility of parole, and without option of refusal.” I paused to sign the necessary document, and went on deliberately. “And I hereby further mandate that on the first anniversary of the deed for which they pay all seventeen will spend it held under wards of cold iron and strong magic Underhill, who gladly agrees so to host them, ensuring their subjective experiences of that anniversary are of one hundred years, day by day, unaging. A year from now, Overhill time, they will have known penal servitude for every last day of one-hundred-and-one years, and I truly hope will have learned some genuine repentance and humility along the way. I give them all the chance to die repentant and reconciled to God and man alike, as to the preternatural, but clean slates have to be paid for - and if you think I’ve been too harsh, consider that I could have mandated the same for each of the first nine anniversaries of their crime. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone, and please consider just how much we all have to give thanks for, as Adam and I will.”
Not everyone was pleased with me, and many genuinely shocked, but the graphic graphic had left a lot of citizens just as angry as I was about so much military HE in Georgetown, fearing and loathing the spectacle of domestic suicide bombers, so there was also grim satisfaction and fewer people than expected openly denounced my decision. Besides, legendary vengeance is by definition legendary. The thunderbolt held over the reflecting pool in an elegant iron collar became very popular as a tourist selfie venue, and over our Thanksgiving meal in Kennewick Jesse amused everyone with a growing urban myth she was thinking of propagating some more, that the statue of Lincoln could sometimes be seen smiling schadenfreude at the thunderbolt and whatever might be left within of his automotive namesake and its occupants. I did wonder if someone had been playing with glamour, but if they hadn’t I wasn’t going to suggest it, and if they had it was probably Irpa’s business, or maybe Purity’s, and either way I really didn’t care.
The first Sunday I’d missed services, but by the second Skuffles and I were feeling much better, and with Adam, Jesse, Ramona, and a bunch of Freed I cloaked straight to the church. People were surprised but a genuine warmth and relief at seeing us looking better was right there too, without too much renewed wariness. Reverend Jenkins was open in offering congratulations, told me with a wry grin she’d done the congregation’s heartfelt hosannas to the Lord last week, while everyone was still reeling, so I needn’t worry, and gave one of her better sermons by saying she was very happy to play second fiddle to His Grace of Canterbury in endorsing my words before chasing some of his scriptural citations and the Kipling quotation. After the service I alarmed her by saying I’d already written to Canterbury in thanks and invitation, which was sneaky but pleasing, and though by the time we left there were media in numbers I only waved before arching out, knowing images of me and Skuffles walking more easily and back to normal weight and colour would answer the only question they needed to ask.
I did have one much harder conversation with the Director of the Secret Service, who called after seeing those images himself but whose resignation I flatly refused to accept. Although it looked as if Adam had been right about a well-paid cloaking and misdirection spell, the Director felt he’d failed and had a hard time seeing any humour at all in a principal protecting agents, but I told him he knew perfectly well that a president being a magic-user changed the basic calculus, and what else did he think anyone should have done ? No, we couldn’t put Hostile Vehicle Mitigation everywhere, though I’d grant him two sets of rising bollards on 33rd before we next went for pizza, and he was welcome to talk to DARPA and whoever about what anyone could reasonably carry that would laugh at bulletproof windshields without killing anything except whatever it was aimed at. He’d taken himself to task impressively after his misstep with Jesse when I first took the ex-Man Underhill, so I’d come to respect him considerably and rather shocked him by saying so before pointing out that I’d told him straight off that thunderbolts were line-of-sight weapons, so how had he expected me to use one inside a perimeter of agents who were not acceptable collateral damage from friendly fire, whatever their service ethos ? And would he please sort out compensation for the cars the expanding thunderbolt had damaged, that being reasonably a Secret Service rather than personal expense. I left him chewing on it, and set my Special Squad, on duty but at a loose end, to thinking through new protocols sensibly with Adam, Jill, and Brent.
As a side-benefit of the days in the Garden of Manannán’s Death I received let to eat food I brought with me - which I did, resulting in many interesting conversations with hounds, Underhill, and an oddly quiet Edythe about boccadillos, panini, and sandwiches in general while Skuffles, the cloak, Manannán’s Bane, and I soaked up … not power, exactly, but atmosphere, with the sweet scent of roses and the reversed noise of the uphill fountain. Cathexis came up, and if I still couldn’t tell the psychology and theology from the deep magics, I did get things to ponder about how my hi-jacked cathedral and elected office had cohered with the righteousness and purpose of the Hunt. My cloak had of course been a moving agent, magnifying my will and intents, but it had been a synergy of ancient balances that had emerged, mutually reinforcing and elementally boosted. When I felt well enough to do it I took Skuffles and Excalibur in Ceulydd to see the pillar in the Untenanted Duckpond’s sea, and found there was now a recess in its top, exact to the sheathed sword. The sea air was nice, and the place seemed more comforting than the first time I’d been there, but it was more for Excalibur’s benefit. Underhill was interested in the recess, but I wasn’t saying anything to anyone else. Giant nude ice me I mostly ignored, though fae glances tended towards it when they mentioned how very surprising I could be, but after a week I did some talking to Adam, my head pillowed on his chest.
“I said the statue was training, love, and now the triad’s got in on the act. Besides not wanting to disappoint Thor just then, I said OK to displaying the thunderbolt because it deserves the fame and that squishes any call for another statue of me. I’m interested it co-operated with Zee and Irpa in being trolled to its new home, so some magic is still active, which I should check on, and it’s a handy lightning rod for any sacramentalisation because the association with Thor nixes that too. But I do think … I dunno, grace, or providence, or something got involved. I can call it deep old magical synergies, but really, with the cloak and cathedral co-operating the distinction feels thin. And I can tell myself I served a need of things beyond me, and sure, glad to be of use, but I don’t like the cost any more than you or Skuffles, however necessary, and playing Joan of Arc is right out.”
He rumbled a laugh. “Too right, love, and not your style at all. If your God wants anything else saying, He’ll let you know. But this seems like a good time to tell you that nixing sacramentalisation means accepting the secular version.”
I propped myself up, giving him a look. “Which is what ?”
“Nothing I could have stopped, even if I’d wanted to. Your graffiti pals from Cuyahoga Falls have already done a whopper of you thunderbolting the Navigator, with Thor and everyone else cheering you on, and some Marvel artist did another that’s up in Times Square. There will be more, and probably already are, but you don’t have to do anything about them and shouldn’t anyway. But this one you do, because the appropriate committees and Joint Chiefs all agreed that you and Skuffles get Purple Hearts.” I blinked. “C.-in-C. counts as serving, they said, however constitutionally civilian, and defied anyone to say you weren’t both wounded in the line. Having seen the TV in very slow-mo and made a request of the Fae embassy, which Baba Yaga answered promptly with personal testimony, they also made a further decision Congress immediately approved, that you both get Medals of Honor, which has some main-party lawyers yacking but the vote was unanimous in both houses and SCOTUS won’t touch it with a stick, so the ceremony’s next week.”
I was lying down again well before the end of that, and he stroked my hair.
“I don’t see you can truly object, love. Greatness thrust upon is still greatness, you did rise spectacularly to a challenge, and no matter you didn’t expect to be laying your life on the line like that, when you found it was you kept it there.”
“No choice by then.”
“Really, love ? You could have cut loose and opened only the top of the thunderbolt.”
“Uh uh. Thunderbolts … prefer integrity. And I didn’t know if the sides would hold.”
“Nor does Thor, though I gather he’s now thinking about it, with other ways thunderbolts might be used. But any which way, you add a Purple Heart and Medal of Honour to your Presidential Medal of Freedom. Remember that NYT line about a warrior-stateswoman ? Well, you did both bits together, and in our army successful single combat means medals. Besides, one real side-benny is that medal recipients do not make speeches, just nod thanks and leave, and you’ll be able to use the miniatures on your blouson all sorts of ways.”
I roused myself enough to give him a kiss.
“Urk all the same. Being presidential is so much easier than being lauded for it.”
“Hold that thought.”
In the event I got through it without too much blushing and face-ache, despite an inordinate amount of cheering, and genuine pleasure among more than my Independents to see me and Skuffles looking better was a truer warmth. There being nowhere to pin medals on Skuffles she accepted them on ribbons and promptly glamoured her ruff-skulls to have one medal in each eyesocket, mildly freaking everyone, but in a good way. Lined up on my blouson three medals made quite an array, and I did feel proud, but that didn’t make a citation that was a young speech any more bearable and only Adam’s hand in mind stopped me from squirming. The ex-Man was there, purely glad I’d survived if deeply curious about events with the Fae, and I invited him and his wife to a quiet dinner the following week. Gray Lords and Thor were also present, by duly authorised special invitation - Irpa had all the House regs down cold before she took her seat - and their nodded salutes, hands over hearts, seemed genuine enough. And Coyote was there, of course, wearing the version of a Purple Heart I’d given him, and had brought my Mom and sisters, with Curt and Tod, which at least meant the embarrassments could be shared.
By then I’d forced myself to watch the WETA footage, from attack to cathedral, and I could hardly blame people for being croggled when even fae were and I still was myself, often enough. There wasn’t much I could do about possessing an ex-godly power, but heading back to DC via Kennewick I’d asked Reverend Jackson to visit. She arrived anxiously enquiring if there was news about Canterbury, and relaxing when I denied it gave me a shrewd look and told me not to worry so much that the Spirit had moved me, the Lord being very well able to provide. Mark 13:11 came into it, but she also wanted to know what I thought the Holy Ghost had been moving me to say, beyond any necessary demonstration, so I added a little about Fae cathecting to what was public before telling her of my other intentions, which brought her up short.
“Dear Lord. That is … truly severe, but I cannot say unjust. And I don’t think I disapprove, however I am … horrified is too strong, though it’s in there. Stunned.”
“Even the older ones will have plenty of time to repent, Reverend, and will not lack basic care, Overhill or Underhill. And I’m not thinking of me so much, or even Adam and Jesse, as of the true innocents and wider damage. You’ve seen the graphic.”
Uncontained, the bomb would have flattened most of nine blocks and left a crater up to fifty feet deep, and the graphic had been very graphic indeed. Georgetown U.’s data on building materials and specs had allowed real calculations about what would and wouldn’t have survived, and what damage flying masonry and the shock-wave would have done for a long way around. Given the time, residential density, and summer crowds the FBI thought at least 1100 people would have died, probably more, plus incalculable injuries and property damage into the billions.
“Yes, many times by now, and you’re right, of course. It is a terrible image to consider, but so is the vengeance in your clemency. Does the paradox trouble you at all ?”
“Only when I laugh, Reverend. Thor tells me paradoxes are one thing gods do, and I doubt the Lord would demur, so I shall leave it to Him. Doesn’t stop some human and coyote horror at the prospect, but is it worse than executions, which I allow and often enough approve ? And if it is, I can’t see that is anything but righteous, for I do have a rage the deaths of Clements and Wood don’t begin to pay down. Did you gather her father was genuinely astonished she’d suicide ?”
“I did, yes, but it was an idiot lovers’ pact, wasn’t it ? Overgrown teenagers. And she was a very sick woman, God knows. I thought Mr Clements must have been as blind as a bat.”
“They’re not here to answer questions, and I didn’t ask the ghosts, but for my money, yeah, exactly right on all counts, though her father’s blindness is also a sickness of mind. The dead are out of my hands, but they couldn’t have played spearpoint without plenty of willing haft and heft. Even so, am I trespassing on the Lord’s vengeance ?”
She thought about it for a while, but shook her head. “No, I don’t think or feel so, Ms President. You’re making a … theoretical sentence rather more literal, but its unarguably temporal, not spiritual, however providing opportunity for repentance.” She gave a crooked grin. “I’ll have to go there in at least one sermon, but if I question I shan’t disapprove, and I doubt many will. If we say the fullest punishment is deserved, we should mean it, even while we pray for their souls.”
Others agreed, not that I had any intention of changing my mind, and though I gave no hint I did, when Adam and others persuaded me to allow Penny and Caroline a joint interview, make it clear I thought the chosen means a very aggravating factor.
“Some people have been critical of a complete ban on the JLS, but what happened shows just how badly it was festering, and as my brother Charles says, you can’t save rotten meat. Back when I had to attend a Dim Future meeting I was struck by the disconnect - people cosily discussing plans that would involve mass murder and pogroms with no sense whatever of the reality - and those the Hunt found seem similar. They might be able to get me with a car-bomb, so they went for it, and at one level I don’t think the other thousand plus dead or the gross property destruction meant anything at all to them, even if they did the math. But at another level it was, as the Secret Service know, a form of going postal, suiciding with the intent to take as many others with you as you can, often enough at complete random. The JLS fostered and enabled that, using donations as well as personal wealth, and failing to root that out as thoroughly as we can would be derelict.”
“Un huh. That I see entirely, Ms President, though the financial sequestrations raise genuine legal questions.” Penny waggled a hand. “And the figures are surprisingly large.”
“Only because some JLS members seem to have been abusing its former charitable status to hide unreported income, Ms Ligatt, and now want to use that money to fight the IRS charges they face. And as with Heuter, so again - old Anglo money, frustrated at having to share the world, was used with intent to murder innocents. We’re all for private enterprise, but money obtained by or used to fund criminality is forfeit, including old Anglo money.” I shrugged. “I understand that as I am a preternatural, and had excellent reasons to loathe the JLS before all this happened, it can be seen and labelled as preternatural persecution of humans who dislike and fear them. But the Constitutional Amendment protecting preternatural rights is done and dusted, so there is no need to fight those who still oppose it, and they have every legal right to peaceful protest. And I swore to serve citizens, which means looking very unfavourably on anyone who is willing to call a heap of dead ones acceptable collateral damage.”
“You regard the perception of bias as unavoidable but untrue, then ?”
“And itself biased, Ms Taylor, as it chooses to overlook or downplay what was very homegrown American terrorism. I don’t have that option, and it’s crime that’s being punished, not beliefs.”
“Indeed.” Caroline changed tack. “Ms President, are you aware of the speculation there has been about the brief interval between the Lincoln being, ah, engulfed and the explosion ?”
“I am, Ms Taylor, but I have nothing to add to it. I truly do not know what happened inside the thunderbolt, and no-one alive knows how Clements and Wood had the trigger rigged, so there is no saying if detonation was accidental or wilful.”
“You didn’t, ah, sense anything magically about the impact ?”
“I was the impact. What the Lincoln or its occupants felt I have no idea, and can’t say I much care.”
That exchange went viral, and though I declined all requests for licensed images the Fall saw a lot of tees and totes with images of me and ‘I was the impact’. I went back to business as usual, got through the G7 without losing my temper, despite some very silly questions, and waited on the legal process. The courts martial were long done, uniform capital sentences confirmed up the chain but remitted to me for the last word, and the judges hearing expedited parallel cases concerning active participation and accessory before the fact had taken clear lines accepting the legality of my Executive Orders including sequestration of all JLS-related funds regardless of impact on choice of lawyers. Physical evidence had been recovered from houses, including explosive samples and traces, handwritten letters and once-encrypted emails, detailed calculations of speed achievable and depth of penetration, with financial records that were coldly damning, bribery having been a major tool even with Clements kin, where real wealth had been very centrally controlled. Treason for profit turned stomachs and defence explanations that the true scale of what the suicides had planned was never understood by anyone at all didn’t help them deny that my assassination had been intended, the motive vengeance, if draped in spurious patriotic concern for an Amerika of old-moneyed Eastern Anglos, and the means a matter of such indifference that, apparently, no enquiry had ever been made. Nor did an attempt to argue that as the explosion had in fact done no damage all charges were unfounded amuse judges or juries, and two days before Thanksgiving I had seventeen military and federal capital sentences lined up on my desk.
There were other things to deal with in my annual reflection, including the religious U-turn on the Fae and cold iron, the idea of Good Hunting Evil having satisfied many less Christian impulses as well as goosing theologians. I also had things to say about the increasing number of geothermal taps, constellations of five shafts each with five turbines pouring ever so many cheap gigawatts into the grid and enabling ruthlessly rapid closures of remaining fossil-fuel plants, with consequent upheavals, though green-lurch mitigations and protections were in place. There were also fruits of rewriting American history to include non-Anglo perspectives I was happy to plug, but to end I turned to the judicial decision I faced, Skuffles sitting up beside me, and warned the nation to brace itself.
“Having prayed and sought counsel, I think two pointless deaths are enough already, and though I will not pardon the least of these guilty I hereby commute all seventeen capital sentences to imprisonment for terms of nine-hundred-and-ninety-nine years without possibility of parole, and without option of refusal.” I paused to sign the necessary document, and went on deliberately. “And I hereby further mandate that on the first anniversary of the deed for which they pay all seventeen will spend it held under wards of cold iron and strong magic Underhill, who gladly agrees so to host them, ensuring their subjective experiences of that anniversary are of one hundred years, day by day, unaging. A year from now, Overhill time, they will have known penal servitude for every last day of one-hundred-and-one years, and I truly hope will have learned some genuine repentance and humility along the way. I give them all the chance to die repentant and reconciled to God and man alike, as to the preternatural, but clean slates have to be paid for - and if you think I’ve been too harsh, consider that I could have mandated the same for each of the first nine anniversaries of their crime. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone, and please consider just how much we all have to give thanks for, as Adam and I will.”
Not everyone was pleased with me, and many genuinely shocked, but the graphic graphic had left a lot of citizens just as angry as I was about so much military HE in Georgetown, fearing and loathing the spectacle of domestic suicide bombers, so there was also grim satisfaction and fewer people than expected openly denounced my decision. Besides, legendary vengeance is by definition legendary. The thunderbolt held over the reflecting pool in an elegant iron collar became very popular as a tourist selfie venue, and over our Thanksgiving meal in Kennewick Jesse amused everyone with a growing urban myth she was thinking of propagating some more, that the statue of Lincoln could sometimes be seen smiling schadenfreude at the thunderbolt and whatever might be left within of his automotive namesake and its occupants. I did wonder if someone had been playing with glamour, but if they hadn’t I wasn’t going to suggest it, and if they had it was probably Irpa’s business, or maybe Purity’s, and either way I really didn’t care.