At five-minute intervals the map disappeared and the likris screen sequenced itself through a round of ten-second displays: profiles of industrial capacity destroyed and remaining, curves of casualties, histograms of combat-effectiveness estimates. In the Ops Room next to God Menninger’s command post, more than fifty persons were working on overdrive to correct and update those figures. Menninger hardly glanced at them. His concerns were political and organizational. Rose Weinenstat was on the scrambler to the Combined Chiefs every few minutes, not so much to give information or to get it as to keep them aware, every minute, that the most powerful unofficial figure in government had his eye on them all the time. His three chief civilian liaisons were in touch with state governments and government agencies, and Menninger himself spoke, one after another, with cabinet officers, key senators, and a few governors — when they could be found. It was all US, not Fats; the rest of the Food Bloc was in touch through the filter of the Alliance Room, and when one of them demanded his personal attention it was an intrusion.

“He isn’t satisfied with me,” General Weinenstat reported. “Maybe you should give him a minute, Godfrey.”

“Shit.” Menninger put down his pen at the exact place on a remobilization order where he stopped reading and nodded for her to switch over.

The face on his phone screen was that of Marshal Bressarion of the Red Army, but the voice was his translator’s. “The marshal,” she said, sounding tinny through the scrambler, “does not question that you and the Combined Chiefs are acting under the President’s orders, but he wishes to know just who the President is. We are aware that Washington is no more, and that Strongboxes One and Two have been penetrated.”

“The present President,” said Menninger, patiently restraining his irritation, “is Henry Moncas, who was Speaker of the House of Representatives. The succession is as provided in our basic law, the Constitution of the United States.”

“Yes, of course,” said the translator after Bressarion had listened and then barked something in Russian, “but the marshal has been unable to reach him for confirmation.”

“There have been communications problems,” Menninger agreed. He looked past the phone, where Rose Weinenstat was shaping the words “in transit” with her lips. “Also,” he added, “I am informed the President is in the process of moving to a fully secure location. As the marshal will realize, that requires a communications lid.”

The marshal listened impatiently and then spoke for some seconds in rapid-fire Russian. The translator sounded a good deal more uptight as she said, “We quite understand, but there is some question of lines of authority, and the marshal would appreciate hearing from him directly as soon — hello? Hello?”

His image faded. General Weinenstat said apologetically, “I thought it was a good time to develop transmission difficulties.”

“Good thinking. Where is the son of a bitch, by the way?”

“Henry? Oh, he’s safe and sound, Godfrey. He’s been ordering you to report to him for the last hour or so.”

“Um.” Menninger thought for a moment. “Tell you what. Send out a radiation-safe team to escort him here so I can report. Don’t take no for an answer. Tell him he’ll be safer here than in his own hole.” He picked up the pencil, scratching the pit of his stomach. Which was complaining. He wanted orange juice to build up his blood sugar, a stack of flapjacks to give a foundation for the next cup of coffee, and that cup of coffee. He wanted his breakfast, and he was aware that he was cranky because he was hungry. “Then we’ll see who’s President,” he added, to the air.

On the edge of the Bahia de Campeche the Libyan vice admiral had got his crew together and his submarine up to two hundred meters, running straight and level. None of them were functioning well, with prodromal diarrhea and vomiting often enough so that the whole ship smelled like a latrine, but they could serve. For awhile, at least. They did. Libya’s naval doctrine called for one big missile instead of a few dozen little ones. As this one big one broke the surface of the gulf it was immediately captured by a dozen radars. The scared but as yet untouched tourists on their lanais in Merida saw bright, bad flashes out west, over the water, as a Cuban cruiser locked in and fired ABMs. None of them caught it. It was a cruise missile, not ballistic, easy to identify but hard to predict as it drove itself north-northwest toward the Florida panhandle. A dozen times defensive weapons clawed at it as it crossed the coast, and then it was lost to view. There were plenty of installations along the way charged with the duty of detecting and destroying just such a weapon, but none that were functioning anymore.

The latest picture from Margie showed her with one foot on the shell of a dead Krinpit, looking tired and flushed and happy. It was as good a picture of his daughter as God had had since her bearskin-rug days, and he had it blown into a hard print for his wallet. General Weinenstat looked at it carefully and passed it back to him. “She’s a credit to you, God,” she said.

He looked at it for a moment and put it away. “Yeah. I hope she got her stuff. Can you imagine her mother? I told her Margie wanted some dress patterns, and she wanted me to put in about a thousand meters of fabric.”

“Well, if you’d left her raising to her mother she wouldn’t be getting the kind of efficiency ratings you’ve been showing me.”

“I suppose not.” The latest one had been nothing but praise, or at least up to the psychologist’s report:

Latent hostility toward men due to early marital trauma and mild inverse-Oedipal effect. Well compensated. Does not affect performance of duties.

I really hope that’s so, thought Godfrey Menninger. Rose Weinenstat looked at him carefully. “You’re not worrying about her, are you? Because there’s no need — wait a minute.” General Weinenstat touched the thing in her ear that looked like, but wasn’t, a hearing aid. Her expression turned somber.

“What is it?”

She turned off the communicator. “Henry Moncas. His shelter took a direct hit. They’re trying to find out who’s President now.”

“Shit!” Godfrey Menninger stared at the remains of his breakfast for a moment and saw none of it. “Oh, shit,” he said again. “It looks bad, Rosie. The worst part is we never had a choice!”

General Weinenstat started to speak, then changed her mind.

“What? What were you going to say, Rosie?”

She shrugged. “No good second-guessing, is it?”

He pounced on her words. “About what? Come on, Rosie!”

“Well — maybe moving into Canada—”

“Yeah. That was a mistake, all right. I’ll give you that. But not ours! The Greasies knew we couldn’t let them move troops into Manitoba. That was Tam Gulsmit’s mistake! Same with the Peeps. Once we were engaged we had to take Lop Nor out — quick, clean, minimum casualties. They should’ve accepted it instead of retaliating—”

But he could hear voices within him denying it, speaking in the tones of Tam Gulsmit and Heir-of-Mao. “We were safe moving troops in to protect the tar sands, because we knew you couldn’t afford to invade.”

“You shouldn’t have bombed Lop Nor. You should have known we would have to retaliate.” The voices within God Menninger’s mind were the only voices they would ever have again. Heir-of-Mao lay with eyes bulging and tongue protruding from his lips, dead in the deep shelter under Peking, and the atoms that had once been Gulsmit’s body were falling out from the column of fire over Clydeside.

The Libyan missile had bypassed Atlanta and Asheville and Johnson City, matching their terrains against the profiles imprinted in its memory. The safety interlocks on its thermonuclear charge were falling away one by one as its tiny, paranoid brain began to recognize its nearness to the thing it was unleashed to destroy.