"I thought we had an on-site training program," Kipper said.

Tench nodded. "We do. Hell, there's a community college not more than a mile away with everything you need for a program. Classes were in session when the Wave hit, so we were literally able to pick up the program and restart it in place with new apprentice linemen. Thing is, those folks won't be ready for at least a year. In the meantime, the work is waiting. Can we get any more warm bodies from Seattle City Light?"

"Doubt it," Kipper said. "In fact, they're screaming to get their people back as soon as possible. Got their own repair issues to deal with, and they're shorthanded, too."

Loud metallic squeals and screeches heralded the approach of a train backing into the power plant. Bumping down the tracks past the reinforced checkpoint, the cars were loaded with coal bound for the generating facility. Coal was still the most plentiful means of energy production within the United States, and early in his term Kipper had rammed a bill through Congress providing a fast track to citizenship for any suitably qualified migrant who would work the mines in Wyoming. Watching the three big ATS diesel locomotives slowly hauling the massive line of hoppers into the plant, he recalled the arm-twisting and distasteful outright pork barreling Jed had used to sideline the Greens' bloc vote on that one. They didn't oppose the immigration program per se, of course, but they wanted those immigrants to focus on restoring large swaths of the country to a prehuman state. Forget about power generation or anything resembling a twentieth-century standard of living.

Kipper shook his head. He loved the wilderness as much as any man. More than most, probably. Hell, the first thing he was going to do when he finally escaped from executive office was take himself off into the mountains for a week on his own. Barbara permitting, of course. But to hear the Greens tell of it, he was doing more damage just bringing this one plant back on line than all the firestorms of the post-Wave period.

He sighed. Couldn't they see what a beautiful fucking thing this was? How much better it was going to make life for the people stuck out here in the boonies? And how KC itself was so important to resettling the interior and reaching out to the East? But of course thinking about the East only led to thinking about New York, and for now Kip was determined not to harsh his own mellow, borrowing a phrase his daughter had brought home from school the other day. Seattle and its fucking hippies, he thought.

As Barney burbled on about the logistics of this small corner of his empire-"The maintenance facility down on Front Street is fairly well stocked, and the city's P amp;L did a pretty good job of archiving their work. Only real problem's been figuring out the quirks of Unit Five. Once we get that hashed out, we can probably move on to restore Iatan in Weston, Missouri"-Kipper gently took him by the elbow and steered his reconstruction tsar back toward the catering table. The presidential entourage, about fifty people in all, including his Secret Service detail, all turned and moved with him like a flock of birds in slow motion.

For a change, the heavier armored fighting vehicles of the Secret Service response teams were absent and his own detail was dressed in jeans and denim shirts. Only their sunglasses and earpieces marked them out as bodyguards. Besides the black Suburbans and half a dozen Reconstruction Department pickups, the car park was full of trucks and support vehicles sporting the logo of Cesky Enterprises, one of the rising stars of the post-Wave economy. Pakistani and Filipino migrants worked the catering line, doling out something that was supposed to be Kansas City barbecue among other local treats. Kipper took one discreet whiff of the beef ribs and decided that though they might have been made in the city this morning, it definitely wasn't KC barbecue as he understood it. It smelled like curry. The dark-skinned, bright-eyed young woman wielding the tongs flashed a mouthful of blindingly white teeth at him.

"The barbecue has some extra spice today, Mister President."

"I'm sure it does, ma'am," Kipper said. "But I haven't even had my breakfast doughnut yet. Do you know if Mister Tench has left any for the rest of us?"

She pointed toward the far end of the trestle table, where Kipper could see Jed guarding a precious stash of leftover crullers, muffins, and glazed twists. His chief of staff fixed the recon boss with a forbidding glare.

"I think my wife's been talking to him," Barney stage-whispered to the young serving girl.

"She needed to," said the president, backhanding Tench in the gut. "So how many hours of power a day does the city get?"

Tench took a guilty bite of his glazed doughnut and sucked down a mouthful of rare and precious coffee before answering. The doughnuts, Kip had discovered, came courtesy of a local franchise owner for LaMar's who had been out of the country when the Wave hit. The coffee, he had no idea, but given how difficult it was to get, he'd resolved to limit himself to just one cup so that the plant workers might enjoy the leftovers. Barney wiped a small dollop of jam from his mouth before continuing.

"Right now we get close to eighteen hours a day. More if the trains are consistent. Sometimes that's not the case, though, because you're dealing with train crews from India who are used to doing things their own way. They're efficient and hardworking, but they're, well…"

"They just have their own way," Kipper finished for Barney. "I know. You take the help you can get. And India's been a godsend for us."

"True enough," Tench said. "There is one problem, though, boss. A big one."

Kipper waited as his good mood threatened to curdle and sour.

"No one's been paid for three weeks. Some folks, I just found out, got over four months of back pay on the books. Granted, many of them are refugees who are happy to have three hots and a cot, but it's not sustainable," Tench said.

Kipper sighed. Money. You had to spend money in order to make money. And to spend it, you had to have it or borrow it. He was the first to admit that finances were not his strong suit, but he didn't need a Nobel Prize in economics to understand that the implosion of the world economy, the total collapse of the banking and financial markets, had real-world effects down on the ground, in this very parking lot.

The United States was broke. Living off the stored capital represented by its empty cities and silent infrastructure, it could not pay its debts, had refused to, indeed, for the last three years, in complete contradiction to Alexander Hamilton's advice to the Founding Fathers. An act of treachery according to some of its creditors that could even have led to armed conflict in one case, had China not fallen into civil war. His fine temper of the morning spoiled, Kipper tried to recapture some of the optimism by turning back to the plant and basking in the view again. He tried to convince himself they would get out of this with the same hard work and native ingenuity that the men and women who were reclaiming this city had shown. This wasn't the first time America had been laid low. The nation had been born virtually bankrupt, yet it had managed to climb to the top of the heap in less than two centuries. If they played their hand right, they could recover from this mess as well.

They had to.

"Barney." Kipper put his hand on his friend's meaty shoulder and looked him in the eye. "Your people will get paid. You have my word on it."

But he had no idea how. An hour later the convoy of Secret Service black Chevy Suburbans made its way across the Chouteau Bridge over the Missouri River. A dredge was visible to Kipper's left, docked alongside Harrah's Casino. Construction equipment and workers toiled to restore the Muddy Mo's traffic channel to navigable status. Trains rumbled along the rail line on the north side of the casino complex. Laden with salvage, food, and cattle, they were bound for a central processing point in the river bottoms on the eastern side of North Kansas City, which had ample warehouse and light manufacturing space to accommodate them. A makeshift train station for passenger traffic had been established at the casino to augment the main facility at Union Station on the other side of the Missouri River. New workers, most of them participants in the Federal Homestead and Resettlement Program, had brought their families in search of a fresh start.