Instead he sighed and took in the view, such as it was.

Patches of black ruin from a city with no name stretched across the horizon below Air Force One. Some of the firestorms had expanded out of the cities and into the surrounding burbs and rural areas, chewing up hundreds of square miles of land in spite of the presence of snow back in March 2003. He could see the steel and concrete stumps of what might have been skyscrapers and highways below. Back in Seattle, in Barney Tench's office, there was a map of the United States covered with graphics representing such areas. Dead zones, they were called. Yet Kipper could see plants and trees struggling to take dominion where humanity once had reigned supreme.

He knew that in the unaffected areas of Ohio's flat, glaciated landscape, nature was coming on with a vengeance. The well-defined borders of thousands of farms gone fallow, the extensive road network, it was all disappearing as Mother Nature wiped away the more fragile traces of human settlement. The ruins and the intact smaller farm towns still loomed large on the vast checkerboard of the land below, but they were utterly lifeless, and he wondered sometimes whether they could be reclaimed before brute creation took over again.

"D' you think I made a mistake, letting those diplomats into Texas?" he asked Culver as he stared out the window at the thin sliver of golden light on the western edge of the world.

Jed seemed a little nonplussed at the unexpected tangent, but he waved off Kipper's obvious self-doubts.

"It was a close call, Mister President. Fort Hood is our second biggest population center and Texas is our largest territory in the Wave-affected zone in terms of population. We have a lot of homesteaders down in Texas. And those foreign missions aren't full embassies, just small offices, Charge d' affaires and a couple of honorary consuls-"

Kip cut him off gently.

"You're covering for me, Jed. You didn't want to accredit any of them as I recall. Said it'd be a big mistake. What's different now?"

Culver sized him up, a look Kip had come to recognize. He was about to get a straight shot to the head.

"The difference is, sir, that they are there now. And if we withdrew recognition of those offices, chances are, their governments would just ignore us and keep them open. It would serve as a demonstration of our weakness. It's better that we just leave them there for now, conniving with Mad Jack, and deal with them once we're done with him."

A steward, an air force staff sergeant, appeared at Kip's elbow with a tray of sandwiches and two cups of cocoa.

"Thank you, son," Culver said, scooping up two thick wedges of corned beef on rye. Somehow the food scarcity that had trimmed Kipper's waistline seemed to have missed Jed's. The man still sported the double chin of someone used to expensive dinners and long lunches. Kipper took one sandwich and his drink, talking around mouthfuls of food.

"I don't think Blackstone is really crazy," he said. "Not like everybody says. I think that whole Mad Jack routine of his is just a smoke screen. Distracts people from his real intent."

"And what would his real intent be, Mister President?"

Kipper drank some of his cocoa before answering.

"I think he's just a very old-fashioned guy, Jed. He sees a chance to take the country back to what he thinks of as its roots. And some of that stuff is good, you know. Respect for institutions and authority. Civic duty. The frontier spirit. All that Kennedy stuff about asking what you can do for your country rather than the other way around. It's no different from what we've been talking about since the election."

"But?" Culver prodded.

"But he gets things confused. This business of running off our homesteaders. He's not. He's only running off some of them."

"The ones with the wrong skin color."

"Yes," said Kipper. "Jack Blackstone looks back on an older, simpler America and likes what he sees. He's trying to remake it down there, but he's making a big mistake. He's confusing people with ideas. He looks at a Mexican, someone like… who was that guy… the first one on the list you showed me…"

Culver had to juggle his sandwich, coffee, and laptop computer, along with a manila folder, but he eventually dug out the piece of paper he wanted.

"Uh, Pieraro," he said. "Miguel Pieraro."

"Yeah. He looks at Pieraro, and he sees an alien. A fucking peasant. Someone not of his world because he looks different. He talks different. Hell, yes, he probably thinks differently about some things because of the world he grew up in. But this Pieraro guy, God rest his soul, I didn't know him, but I do know that he went through our homesteading selection process, which means he is not just some wetback peon with an eye to an easy score. We don't let just anybody into that scheme, Jed. You know they have to prove themselves worthy. They have to want it and work for it. Really fucking hard. This guy-" He waved his corned beef on rye at the piece of paper Jed was still holding. "-he had to jump through hoops of fucking fire, backward, singing 'The Star Spangled Banner' just to earn the right to sit the tests that weeded him out from all the losers and pretenders looking to work the program for a free ride. This guy, all of those people we choose for homesteading, they're committed. Their allegiance isn't in question, nor their skills or suitability. But Blackstone won't see that. He confuses the idea of America with an old and seriously out of date image of America. They're two different things. Miguel Pieraro, he died for the idea of America."

Culver began a slow hand clap. "And if you would just stop being so fucking reasonable and get off your ass and out on the stump and give that same fucking speech ten times a day, perhaps people might start seriously questioning what is going on down south, if you'll excuse me, Mister President."

Kipper took Culver's rebuke in good humor. He needed someone like this shifty, misanthropic bastard watching his back.

"I long ago accepted the fact that you are inexcusable, Jed," he said. "But useful because of it. That's why I'm going to leave Mad Jack to you for the moment. I can see this oozing fucking mess in New York is going to be with me night and day. I wasn't looking for a stand-up fight there. You of all people know that's not my way. But we've had one forced on us, and I do not intend to lose. You have Tommy Franks break out his plans for retaking the city-I know he's got them in a bottom drawer somewhere-and have him meet me in KC. No, scratch that. There's no reason to waste his time in transit. Just schedule a vid link to Fort Lewis. I want to go through the options. I also want the latest from that Colonel Kinnymore-"

"Kinninmore," Jed corrected him.

"Yeah, him, on whether this is a coordinated attack by offshore interests, government or private, whether it is some sort of crazy holy war spin-off from France or the Israeli strike, or whether those fucking pirates have just finally gotten their shit together. Whatever the case, I want options for taking that city."

"Well, the options are simple, Mister President," Culver explained in a somber tone. "You can use men or you can use ordnance. The more men you use, the more of them die. But it does less damage to the infrastructure. The more ordnance we drop, bombs and missiles and so on, the more of our own we save, but much less of the city is left standing. You take that logic to its end point, we just pull out and nuke the place from orbit."

"From orbit?" Kip asked, genuinely confused.

Jed smiled, a real smile this time, if tired. "Sorry, classical reference."

Kipper nodded slowly and took a few moments to himself. He wondered idly just how much of New York City he really did need intact. Manhattan, for sure, and the ports. But did he need the entire metropolis? Even with the uptick in immigration and naturalization of refugees from the Indo-Pakistani War and with thousands of Europeans leaving the Old World every month, it would still be years, if not decades, before they could occupy all the infrastructure in just that one city. By then, the ravages of time would require a total rebuild, anyway.