The Fires of Orc

I am not yet ready to be Tsar.

I know nothing of the business of ruling.

Nicholas II

Saturday, January 20, 2029 – Inauguration Day. Few things in America’s waning years could shake out the echoes of an earlier time like a presidential inauguration, the muffled stir of goodness swept up in a spray of indifference. All that remained of the America that twice freed the world from tyranny, the country that bled its own soil red to decide freedom’s destiny, the only faint semblance of that great nation resided in its pageantry. Lacking a proper aristocracy and the distinction that comes with noble birth, we had only invented nobility, a chosen set of temporary aristocrats, their station no more guaranteed than the whims of fashion. One day’s lord was the next day’s reprobate. Wealth lasted but not the honor that sometimes accompanied it.

The American pageant still celebrated honor, the fleeting virtue of the temporarily royal. Inaugurations were neither about wealth nor power; they were about honor, as much the honor of the electorate as the elected. An inauguration was the voluntary assent of a ruler to the transfer of rule, in agreement with the common will of the ruled. There was something noble about an American inauguration and certain other of my country’s lingering traditions. We were an ignoble people but we still observed a few noble rites, out of habit, I suppose, as much as appreciation.

That morning, protesters filled the streets of Washington, outnumbering the Markus supporters. The dissenting forces turned out with signs, bullhorns and Markus hung in effigy, all on display. Power would soon transfer to a man chosen by few to govern many.

The morning was bitterly cold, even by the standards of a Washington winter. The thin air tightened the skin and the smoking breath of gathered hordes swirled white and frosted over covered heads. Black was the order of the day – coats and scarves, gloves and boots. The occasional red hat, here and there a shawl in yellow or blue stood out like tiny gems on an expanse of black and winter white.

The president’s motorcade crept along the capital streets, turning eventually onto Pennsylvania Avenue and pushing inexorably on to the Capitol. The cars, horses and outriding motorcycles stopped when the presidential limousine reached Second Street and Markus stepped out, bare-headed, his black overcoat open in front to the punishing cold. He walked two blocks for the sake of the cameras. The only people lining the street for those two blocks were planted there – law enforcement and military personnel in civilian dress. He waved to the fake audience and played his orchestrated part to make him seem like a man unafraid amid his throng of common voters. He might have been unafraid even in the company of real people, but he would never have a chance to prove it. The authorities charged with his protection were very afraid, afraid enough to make sure no civilian got within a quarter-mile of him on his walk among “the people.”

Protected though he was by the mass of security personnel, The Soldier walked a half-pace ahead of Markus, his head on a swivel, hand on pistol butt. Having gotten Markus this far he wasn’t about to step down from his post. He would be Markus’s constant praetorian even amid the Secret Service.

I watched the ceremonies on my tablet from a master suite at the Camino Real in El Paso. I had left my apartment in San Diego shortly after the election, putting everything I owned in storage. By Inauguration Day I had been roaming for more than two months and I was nowhere near ready to stay put. The Camino Real was a stopover on my way to Mexico, where I intended to stay until the wanderlust left me. It seemed more proper, Mexico. Since leaving the campaign I no longer belonged in my own country and if I had to be a man without a country there was no better place to be than Mexico.

So I sat up in bed watching the inauguration. A waitress from the night before wore my shirt while she busied herself in the bathroom. She sang lightly, a trickle of soft sound brightening space around me, an enchanting personal soundtrack to overlay the Washington pomp.

The West Front of the Capitol was festooned in color for the occasion. The expected luminaries sat above the assembled mass that stretched back onto the National Mall as far as the Washington Monument. There was adoration in the crowd as there was around the country despite the loud dissent of millions. Since the day after the election protests had continued, one after another, challenging the legitimacy of a Markus presidency. Brick throwing, tear gas, riot masks and all the familiar fare carried on throughout the season while earnest, venerable souls called for calm and propriety. Two-thirds of Americans felt cheated by a new president who beat the system. I felt only contempt for the two-thirds. If they didn’t want to lose they should have planned better. Failure to prepare is preparing to fail.

The waitress sang sweetly somewhere in the suite as the inaugural ceremonies began. To open there was the customary performance by the Marine Band, a selection of patriotic music, followed by a live performance of Copland standards culminating in Fanfare for the Common Man from the San Diego Symphony. The senior senator from California presided over the day’s ceremonies and delivered a five-minute welcome address before a three-part invocation from the Archbishop of Washington D.C., the Rabbi from New York’s Central Synagogue and the Imam from the Masjid Al-Faatir Mosque in Chicago. No room, I suppose, for the Hindus.

A soprano sang the national anthem, which was followed by a recording of something sappy ad yet more sap by a violinist and then a poet.

The vice president was the first to take the oath of office from an Associate Justice. Following the Marine Band’s playing of “Hail Columbia” the time had come for the big moment. It was five minutes past noon. By law Markus was already the president.

The Chief Justice took his position to administer the presidential oath of office. Markus rose and took his place across from him. The two appeared to exchange light-hearted words and they both laughed a dignified chuckle. The Chief Justice began to read.

“I, Thomas Alexander Markus, do solemnly swear…”

Markus repeated the oath, notably dispensing with the customary “…so help me God.”

Markus shook hands with the Chief Justice and remained at the podium as the crowd cheered. He began his presidency with a single opening remark:

Vice President Brown, Mr. Speaker, Mr. Chief Justice, President Bradley, reverend clergy, fellow citizens, today we observe a victory not of party or of ideology, but of the enduring example of the American system…

…A crack echoed off the Capitol reverberating through the crowd, a single shot that pierced the frigid air and struck the masses motionless.

I screamed. The waitress came running and I waved at her to be silent.

The view from the mounted camera at the Capitol momentarily strayed from the scene but the cameraman quickly swung back, just in time to catch sight of The Soldier thundering down the aisle between attending dignitaries in a mad dash to the spot where, seconds before, Markus spoke to the world. There was no sign of Markus, until the camera tilted a degree or two downward and tightened its focus. There, on the carpeted landing at the West Front of the Capitol lay Tom Markus, his head soaked in red, thick blood pooling in a darkening circle around him.

There were screams and the crush of security forces, sheer pandemonium. Half-a-million people on the mall ran simultaneously into, through and over one another in a pointless dash to nowhere. And while the crowd scattered and careened, men in black suits and sunglasses pushed the officials in attendance in a great wave back into the Capitol. Two Secret Service officers took Markus under the arms while The Soldier took his ankles. They sprinted with his body through a crack in the wall of bodies and vanished.

Reporters bleated like frightened lambs. Views switched from one handheld camera to another, scrambling to find any meaningful image in the chaos.

Three shots rang out in quick succession and the scene shifted to a steady-cam view of a man in military uniform pinned on the ground by a half-dozen Secret Service agents. The man lay motionless. Commentators spoke over the scene, speculating wildly. I watched unblinking for an hour as the story moved slowly, clumsily, reporters flailing, witnesses relating stories that flatly contradicted one another.

At one o’clock. the Mayor of Washington D.C. announced that Tom Markus was transported from the Capitol to George Washington University Hospital where he was declared dead at twelve forty p.m. The Mayor reported that D.C. residents were requested to shelter in place as federal authorities scoured and secured the city to ensure the safety of all civilians and public officials. He added that one suspect so far had been detained but he could not report on the suspect’s identity or his condition, other than to say he had been fired at by Secret Service agents prior to his apprehension.

The Mayor yielded the microphone to the Speaker of the House of Representatives, a twelve-term Democrat from California, who reported that Vice President Christine Brown had taken the oath of office, administered by the Chief Justice at twelve forty-five. Tom Markus, the fiftieth President of the United States, served for forty-five minutes, including twenty minutes as a dead man. The Christine Brown administration began that afternoon.

I don’t know how many days passed. I stayed in the suite at the Camino Real and kept the waitress with me. I sent her out on occasion for food and drinks. News rolled in by the minute at first but as the days dragged on the real news faded and sensationalism overtook fact-telling. In the first few hours after the assassination we learned that a man in military uniform believed to be the shooter was himself shot and killed at the scene. The investigating authorities, including the FBI, Secret Service and Capitol Police, believed he had acted alone but the investigation was still ongoing. The shooter’s name was not released.

Video from many angles, including some shot by witnesses at the scene, showed a white man of average build in a Marine uniform being taken to the ground by security personnel but there was no clear image of the man’s face. From what could be seen, it appeared he was shot as he was being taken to the ground by three Secret Service agents. The agents continued to pin him to the ground for as long as any video could document, but the vicinity was rapidly cleared and secured by police leaving no witnesses to see the shooter’s body being removed.

As of January 23, three days after the inauguration, the assassin’s identity remained a closely guarded government secret. I stayed holed up several more days but I abandoned my round-the-clock news monitoring. It must have been a week or more before I decided to leave for Mexico. I thought of taking the waitress with me. The poor dear had abandoned her job to stay with me, a kept woman for a brief time. In the end I gave her a few hundred dollars and told her I had to go but would be back in a week. I had a taxi take her home. I did not come back.

“The world must have been an interesting place,” he says. “Did you travel all over?”

“Yes I did,” I say, wistfully. “I’ve been everywhere.”

“Across the ocean?” he asks.

“Across both oceans,” I answer.

“Both? How many oceans are there?”

Fifty years since the fires and I still forget that virtually none of these people have any concept of the old world.

“There are many oceans,” I say, “and seas and deserts and frozen lands of brilliant white where a day lasts a month. There are jungles, deep and vast, where the air smells of decay and new growth, the balance of death and life under canopies of green. There are more lands and more people than most wanderers have even imagined, lands of rock and ice, of sand and sea foam, of spreading gold and quiet prairie wind. I’ve seen them. I know them in my mind, though I have no idea what has become of them.”

”And what about the people?’ he asks. “Were they like the knights and wizards in the old stories? Did they ride dragons and eat their dinners in castles? Was there music and dancing? What did they look like, the people across the ocean? How did they talk? Could you understand them?”

Three years I wandered, across Europe and the Americas, plus six months in Asia. How can I tell him of those times and those places?

“There were people,” I say, “of all colors, from all places, with all manner of custom and dress. There were people with skin as black as night and some almost white, their eyes clear blue like the summer sky. There were khans and sultans and chieftans and kings in robes of gold and deep purple. There were hunters and scavengers. There were nomads and farmers and fishermen. The people of the mountains and those of the desert floor all had their music, their fashion, their myths and stories.”

“Wow,” he says, “and what did they tell you?”

“For the most part they told me nothing. In those days I already knew the world. What could I learn from mystics and wild-eyed savages that would have made a difference in that world? In the glass cities of the old world power spoke English and wore a grey suit. But I listened to the little people of the old world all the same. I listened just to hear their voices. Some spoke like the rumbling of tribal drums and others chattered clear and light like birdsong. They all told the same stories and they’re all gone.”

“I think you should have listened more carefully,” he says.

I ask, “Why is that?”

“Maybe they knew something the powerful people in their grey suits didn’t know.”

“You think so?” I ask.

“I don’t know,” he admits, “but with everything your people knew, you managed to kill the world.”

***

Three-and-a-half years on the move, people of all colors and cultures, and I could have met all of them even if I had never left America. Before the fires there was no language not spoken in my country. There were communities in all big cities where immigrants from the most remote corners of the world spoke their own languages, wore their own native costumes and prayed to their own gods. America was, by then, a world continent. There was no majority culture or ethnicity, no unifying faith or common custom. We Americans were a microcosm of humanity in its bewildering variety.

But staying put was out of the question. I had to move, and stay on the move. It wasn’t that I felt hemmed in, on the contrary; I felt lost in a space too big for me to fill. That’s the irony. Often enough a man doesn’t roam to make the world bigger; he roams to make it smaller. By shrinking the world he closes his own mind, and sometimes a man’s mind needs closing.

What a damnable space is the lonesome mind. Don’t venture there, and if you do, don’t linger. It’s not the noise inside, but rather, it’s the silence – the vacuity of nothing, an expanding and consuming nothing, the loneliness at the end, the sickening, hollow aloneness that shrinks a man to a cricket in the cavern of the mind. One moves about to shrink space, to make the limitless measurable, to bind infinity, to constrain the mind from the endlessness of its own engulfing, echoing space. One can run from oneself and one’s deeds. But when the path leads its way back to solitude, a man is present to himself alone and his lonely, terrifying mind is far too big. So I went on the road.

I ranged all over the fifty states and spent a month north of the border. I returned to Mexico every month or so. I bought a home in Tequisquiapan, three hours north of Mexico City on the high plateau, amid low rolling hills and shallow valleys. The centuries-old cobblestone streets and colonial architecture were nearly consumed in those days by the weekend homes of wealthy Mexicans and American ex-patriots. Tequis, as the locals called it, was a semi-secret retreat, connected to the wide world through modern telecom but separated by distance and attitude. In Tequis one was at the forefront of post-quantum culture. It was a place linked to the world and yet completely removed from it. The business of the day passed in tranquility and night came, cool in the thin air, without the intrusion of global capitalism. In those days everything was just seconds away via the web but still very little intruded on Tequis. The vulgar, hurried, crowded life of the world and its cities were hed at a respectable distance.

And so I roamed, two weeks here, a weekend there, a month-long junket overseas, a stop in California or Texas and always back to Tequis. I had a detached one-bedroom house on my lot where lived Miguel and Paola, a middle-aged couple who maintained the place in my absence and did small favors in my presence. It was perfectly serene but it was not home. I could relax in Tequis but I didn’t really belong there. It was a way-station where I could recover between journeys. The people accepted me and that was comforting from time to time. But the urge to move rolled up on me no sooner than I set down my travel bag, so I would give Miguel a few hundred dollars and be gone.

I could have stopped so many times…

In the dry hills of Los Angeles, where an angel in a kobold’s guise painted crude figures on sheets of tin;

Or in the scramble of Chicago, where the din of evening thrummed to plucked blue cords and black night came on a cornet’s thin wail;

Or in Boston, where the school girls tossed their hair and waited on covered bus stop benches, smoking, their dreams bounded by the slow Charles;

Or on the knife edge of Shanghai, where dwelt a dragon whose grumble stirred the timeless sky, calling down the clouds in sheets of hot rain to slow the multitudes in summer’s steaming age,

Or under old Mexican nights, where old gods hid themselves behind black cloaks and still gather today where there is space and earth and quiet and the flash of serpent eyes to spark the smothering dark;

Or down in green Mississippi, where Earth was mother and South was father and women loved the father but only men knew him, and common men said what gentlemen thought and the old was new, forever boasting;

Or yet on the sheltering prairie, where Canada, oh Canada, stretched larger than the sky, bending with the wheat, lulling the American mind to quiet sleep;

Or in Vienna, where everything was older;

Or on the Aegean, the golden grass weak in the sun, the water blue and churning with the ghosts of eons;

Or best perhaps in red-gray Oklahoma, where a man could marry… Elizabeth, red hair, her eyes ablaze in spring… but the heart would not see.

All those times are buried, lost in the void I’ve become. They aren’t even worth telling.