Hidden Empire (Empire 2)

"Is that what I am?" she said. "I always thought of myself as the Catholic Left."

That got her a few chuckles around the table, but not from Torrent. "You actually talk to these people, I need to hear from you."

"'These people,'" murmured Cecily.

"Unfortunate choice of words," said Torrent impatiently.

"No, no, it's a very good choice of words. It's very us-and-them. Only I'm in the wrong meeting."

"What do you mean?"

"I have a thirteen-year-old son who is demanding that if I really believe any of the things I taught him about religion as he was growing up, I'll take him to Nigeria myself so we can help nurse the sick."

There was dead silence around the table. Most of them were probably imagining what it would be like if one of their children got such an absurd notion. Some of them were no doubt thankful to the God they didn't believe in that they hadn't polluted their children's minds with any religious nonsense.

But Torrent was focusing on her, his face expressionless but relentless.

"I told him no," said Cecily. "I told him no so many times in the past few days that he's stopped asking me, though I know he's making plans to do it anyway. He feels it like a calling. The way some people feel the call to be a minister, or to be a scientist, or an artist, or a soldier, or President of the United States."

Still silence, still the President watching her, waiting.

"So I think of all those people out there demonstrating as my children. They're not afraid of death for themselves. They don't want to die, but they've found a cause worth dying for." She looked around the table. "Those people aren't crazy and they aren't grandstanding and they aren't secretly hoping you don't let them go. They actually think they could do some good in Africa, especially if you let them take supplies and get resupplied the way you're doing with our troops over there."

Torrent's gaze turned cold. "It's not the same thing."

"The landings and offloadings are. Charity groups could send food and medicine."

"We're already shipping plenty of medicine and food," an adviser pointed out.

"And letting the corrupt remnants of the government turn them into black market fortunes," said Cecily. "These groups would send supplies to their own absolutely trustworthy people there on the ground in Nigeria and the other countries where the epidemic is spreading. Far more of it would get where it was needed. So my question is, Why not? They want to go, let them go. Donate the use of the planes to take them there."

"It's a one-way ticket," said another adviser angrily. "Don't they get that?"

"They get that," said Cecily. "My son said he figures that you'll only let back into the States people who caught the virus and lived through it. Immune people. He says that Africa will produce a group of American nicto survivors who can come home and treat the victims of the epidemic when it gets to our shores."

"It will never get to our shores!" roared the adviser who thought he was closest to the President.

"Calmly," murmured Torrent.

"Never," the man repeated, but more softly.

"That is a foolish thing to say," said Cecily. "We all know that this virus is going to become endemic, like measles and smallpox and the common cold and cholera and malaria and sleeping sickness, killing steadily at a low level. Even if you can prevent it from seeping out of Africa now, or for ten years, or twenty, someday this antiseptic curtain will fail, and it will reach us. President Torrent is a historian. He knows this."

"I know what I know," said Torrent softly. "This meeting is about what you know."

"I know that the map of Africa is going to be redrawn at the end of this crisis," said Cecily. "The language groups, the nations, the tribes, to use the old politically incorrect but perfectly accurate term, they'll reassert themselves and it will be a new continent. They'll come out of this stronger than ever. If you don't let these charitable groups go to Africa and help, then what will Africa believe about America, about the whole world outside their continent? 'You were content to let us die,' that's what they'll believe. These people demonstrating out on the Mall are offering us a chance to redeem America in their eyes."

"All very nice," said another adviser, about to begin a refutation, but Torrent raised a hand.

"There are millions of people in Africa," said Torrent. "What are the odds that any of them will actually be nursed by these few do-gooders?"

"The odds are very good that those who are cared for by the 'do-gooders' will survive at a markedly higher rate than those who are left without help. However few or many they are, there will be more of them

in relation to the general population than the raw numbers would indicate."

"You've really thought this through," said Torrent quietly.

"Yes," said Cecily.