Hidden Empire (Empire 2)

"The only person in my life with more power over me is God," said Mark. "Dad liked being a good soldier and serving his country. He died doing that, but it didn't mean he didn't love us. And the way he died set an example for us. For me. I learned that my life is only as important as the things I'm willing to die for. Well, I'm not brave or strong, I'll never be a soldier. But I can be a Christian because anybody can. All they have to do is be willing, and I'm willing. How dare—" Then he stopped himself.

"Go ahead," said Cecily, challenging him.

"Did you mean any of the things you taught me about being a Christian?"

"Go upstairs," said Cecily, turning away from him. It hurt too much to look at him. Because she was never going to let him go, and he was going to hate her for it. He was going to believe all his life that she had deprived him of something vital, a chance to do something that mattered. That's what young boys hungered for more than anything—a chance to be men, to do something real, to know in their hearts that they deserved the respect of good men and women. And she was taking it away from him.

But she had attended all the funerals of family members that she intended to. God could not possibly want her to bury one of her sons. Or worse, have him die on some far-off continent and never even know where he was buried.

When she turned back to look at him again, he was gone.

The television was talking now about the new hurricane that was going to pass across Cuba and head for Florida or, possibly, any point on the Gulf Coast. She closed her eyes and tried to breathe without crying for her brokenhearted, too-good-for-his-own-good son.

All the people living in those places were steeling themselves for the possibility of evacuation, devastation, rebuilding.

Cecily saw herself in a hurricane. Rushing with her minivan full of children, trying to get out of town as the storm surge battered against the coast. In the passenger seat, Nick was shouting. Something about a little girl out in the water. Drowning. In her dream, she stopped the car and commanded the children to stay inside. She ran out to the water, but the waves were so high. She was a good swimmer, but was she that good? What was the point of her adding her own death to that of the little girl?

But how could she drive on and leave her to die? So she plunged into the water, walking when she could. The girl was clinging to a piling of an old wharf, mostly gone, just a few poles sticking up above the water. Cecily swam from pole to pole, trying to reach her. And finally she did, and the girl clung to her, and Cecily turned to go back, terrified now of making the swim with this extra weight around her neck.

And there were her children, every one of them, in the water behind her, a human chain from the last pole to her. She was able to swim alongside them; they bolstered her, helped her stay afloat with the added burden, to get her to the next pole. And once she was there, Mark swam out boldly ahead of her to the next pole, the other children clinging to him one after another, remaking the chain. Once again she swam alongside them. In the way of dreams, she kept going and going, and always there were her children beside her, and without them she could not make it, but with them she could.

They got to the shore, to high ground, and she looked over to the road where she had left their van, just as a storm swell reached it, raised it, floated it up, and then sucked it out into the ocean, where it rolled and sank under the waves. And she knew that if the children had obeyed her and stayed with the van, she would have lost them—them and the little girl she was trying to save.

She woke up gasping, surprised to find her clothing dry, the television on, and the day outside the front window sunny and hot-looking. There were tears down her cheeks, and she realized that her fingers had been ticking through an

imaginary rosary during her fretful nap. But she had not been saying any Our-Fathers or Hail-Marys. She had been saying, Thank you for my children.

She pressed her hands to her face. What did this mean? It was just a dream, brought on by her argument with Mark combined with the hurricane story on the news. She imagined death, rescue, it all fit together. It was just a dream.

But it felt like so much more than a dream. It felt like an answer. It felt to her as if she had been given this dream to make things clear to her. But what was clearer now? What was she supposed to see? That she should take the whole family to Africa? Absurd. They didn't even want to go. Leave them, then, and take Mark, and trust in God and Aunt Margaret to take care of the younger kids if she died there?

Or maybe she was supposed to learn from it that the hurricane strikes where it will, and when it will, and to spend your life trying to keep your kids away from the hurricane won't work. The hurricane will find them. They'll plunge right into it. All you can do is prepare them to be brave and good and make the best of whatever comes to them.

No! she silently shouted at herself, or whatever voice it was making her think these things. I am not taking Mark to Africa.

Three days later, the Christians Going to Africa were still on the news, but now they were dominating it, because the demonstrations were bigger each day. And it wasn't just the Baptists and Pentecostals of Christians Going to Africa now. There was a Catholic group calling itself Mother Teresa Alive, and there were black churches and white churches, Methodists and Presbyterians and Mormons and Jews and Muslims of every stripe, with their own signs, their own quotes from scripture.

The polls still said that most Americans thought of these people as lunatics, but approval of the demonstrators was rising—up to thirty percent now and rising. She was not surprised when President Torrent called her in to take part in an emergency meeting of his kitchen cabinet.

"It's beginning to look bad," said the President's favorite poll reader. "Even people who hate do-gooders and/or Christians are saying that you should let them go. So their approval is at thirty-two but support for letting them go is at fifty-five. Even when the question is phrased as negatively as possible, they still think that a quarantine is meant to keep the disease away from America, not keep Americans from going to where the disease is."

Others at the meeting talked on and on, as always, with Torrent listening politely to everybody but shutting down anyone who tried to turn it into an argument.

It's like helmet laws for motorcycles, someone said. People with a death wish need to be protected from themselves.

It's just political, they're trying to make you look bad, they can't attack the quarantine itself but they can make you look like you hate black people or Africans or Christians.

You can't be seen to give in to demonstrators.

You have to talk to them, to show you're sensitive.

Let's get the former presidents to rally around you on this, go talk to these people together.

Ignore them and they'll give up, it's insane and you can't be seen to bow to such madness.

Torrent allowed his advisers to say almost anything. He listened not only to what they said, but also to who was saying it.

Which is why Cecily was unsurprised when he stopped an ongoing discussion and looked at her across the large table. "Cecily," he said, "what's the view from the Christian Right?"