CHAPTER FORTY
“We just dropped Sylvia back at her plane,” he said, “when Kelly texted me. Luckily we hadn’t taken off yet. Sylvia had some people to meet while we were here. Now that she’s running for President . . . oh, whatever. So I came back with the helicopter to try to get you out. We’ll go to the plane – it’s at a private field. Then we’ll all fly back to New York and figure out what we’re going to do.” Even Evan seemed a little taken aback by how quickly things had heated up. “Hopefully they’ll back off once you’re gone. Sylvia’s on the phone to her people in DC now. Someone has to get that lunatic in the White House to cool down.”
“And it’s not going to be Sheriff John,” he said scornfully. “Those hotheads want nothing more than a new civil war. If the feds take ‘Lucy,’” he went on, putting air quotes around her name as if she were some kind of avatar instead of a real person, “the other blue states will mobilize, then what? He would have liked nothing better than real shooting in that hallway. Lucky Kelly was there.”
“But Kelly is working for Sheriff John,” Lucy answered, totally confused. “Why did she call you to get me?”
“Are you kidding?” he asked. “Kelly ‘works’ for no one. She’s the shrewdest political operative in the Rescue. She was in Chicago at the governors’ meeting when that idiot shot at you in New Mexico. I’ve been in touch with her for weeks to sign on with Sylvia, but she thought John winning would push Sylvia to the left. And she was correct. Did you hear that speech? Kelly will be in New York by the end of this week. We can win Ohio and Florida if they don’t start messing with the voting laws. That’s the whole ball game. If we win the election, then the red states won’t have the U.S. government on their side. Maybe they’ll see some reason and stop passing these crazy laws and abusing their women. Of course if they see they’re losing, it may make the Reds even crazier. But by then the nukes.” He stopped abruptly. We’re landing. Sylvia will want to talk to you about our options now.”
To Lucy’s relief, no one but Governor Giffords’ security people were on the ground when the chopper door opened, and they hustled her over to the small jet that was waiting on a darkened runway.
Sylvia Giffords was sitting on the plane in a leather seat behind a round oak table. She gestured for Lucy to take the seat opposite.
“You’re safe now,” she said as the engines revved up for takeoff. “This isn’t even a regular private airport. The guy whose plane this is keeps it all to himself. We’ll land at the state airbase in Albany. I have a suite for you. I have the New York National Guard alerted in case we need them to guard you, but I think we’ve got it under control.”
“Are Kelly and Josh OK?” Lucy asked.
“Yes,” Sylvia reassured her. “Boy Wonder doesn’t listen to many people, but Justice Jay went over from the Court and talked some sense into him for the moment. Otherwise they would probably be chasing this plane right now. Nobody really wants war. Still, the Reds do think their wives and daughters are just going to stream out – from Arizona they can go to New Mexico or to California, from Idaho into Washington and Oregon, Indiana girls are in the middle if Ohio swings back to blue, you see how they feel. They’re short of girls, so many businesses left when they made gay sex criminal, they really need the feds propping them up if they’re going to survive. What if I win the election? I’m not going to let them use the federal government as their girl catchers anymore. It’s going to have to stop. We never intended the Agreement to be more than a stopgap to get the Court back up to nine. We never thought the standoff would go on this long. We never thought the Red States would wholesale repeal all the rights in their state constitutions and start pulling the girls out of school.”
Lucy got it. She had never thought it would get so bad so fast either. Even if her father’s half-brother hadn’t turned out to be a monster, she would have had to get out of Virginia or be married to some horrid loser for breeding purposes. With no enforcement of the Bill of Rights, the States shut down the networks and could do anything to their girls. And the gays. And god knows who next.
“Maybe they’ll just secede,” Lucy offered, remembering her lessons with Meck. “This time you could just let them go. Who needs them?”
“This isn’t your old Civil War, Lucy,” Giffords said. “We’re all intertwined. How would you ever draw borders? How would we get from one part of the Blue United States, like Illinois, to California, with a big ribbon of hostile red states in between? The economy would tank! We have to redo the bargain. Anyway they’d never secede. They have the same problem. How would they hold a Red States nation together? What would they do without all the money that comes from us to them – the welfare, the military spending, the old age pensions.
Cannot stand, remember? If I win this election, the full force of the United States will be on the side of the blue states. We can stop this. We haven’t had that chance in going on eight years. And you,” she took Lucy’s hands in hers, “are the lynch pin. That’s why I sent Evan back for you, true fact. He may love you.”
He may what, thought Lucy.
“But I need you.”