Final impact

The old girl seemed completely ingenuous, but O’Brien could tell that her radar had just gone to full power. Almost every table in the restaurant was full. Only a couple with reservation cards perched on the starched linen tablecloths were empty. The crowd was mixed, with quite a few uptimers to break down LA’s white power homogeneity. There were more than one or two WASP holdouts on the far side of the Hollywood Hills-clubs, resorts, hotels, and restaurants that maintained a bar against “undesirable” elements, including the movie industry’s Jewish moguls. But they were dying. The Zone was the new center of the universe in California, and like Roman rule, its power was prescriptive and imperial. Twenty-first-century law stopped dead at the boundaries of the Special Administrative Zone, but twenty-first-century custom was spreading up and down the West Coast like a wildfire. It was money. It was always about money, thought O’Brien. If you wanted to tap into the insane wealth that was being generated in the Valley, then you had to play by the Valley’s rules.

“You see a lot of things that you like out here, don’t you, Eleanor? The way that men and women of all colors and creeds are judged on the basis of their character?”

The first lady nodded, not warily, but with just a hint of reserve. “I’ve often said to Franklin that the first principles of America have found their truest expression out here,” she said. “But why do you ask, dear?”

O’Brien didn’t bother sugarcoating it. “Because we will need your help in preserving all this,” she said, waving a hand around the restaurant but implying much beyond its confines. “This war is going to end soon, and the sunset clause in our enabling legislation will suddenly begin to tick. A year later, everything we’ve built here, all those principles you find so appealing, will be exposed to attack by those who do not agree with them. You know what these people are like, what lengths they will go to. Hoover was one of them. He had you followed. He read your mail. He would have destroyed you, given half a chance. He did the same out here-or he tried, anyway-a thousand times over.”

The first lady acknowledged the point with a dip of her head as a server appeared with a small square plate, in the center of which sat a tangle of roasted pepper shavings and arugula leaves, framing a small roll of daikon, celery, and carrot. O’Brien took the plate and thanked the young woman. Jazz played over the sound system, and the tables were far enough apart that they could speak in low voices without being overheard. O’Brien knew quite a few of the other diners as big-name players from the emerging aerospace and electronics industries. They were doubtlessly hatching their own plots and schemes over the fourteen-course banquet. Some may have even been discussing this very issue. The first lady was not the only person whom she had lobbied on this matter.

“I can understand your anxiety,” said Mrs. Roosevelt. “But what can I do?”

It was O’Brien’s turn to smile shyly, a gesture framed entirely for effect. “Come now, Eleanor. You have the president’s ear, and you speak with many people around him. Plus, you’re a significant figure in your own right. You’ve campaigned very hard to establish many of the things that already exist here in the Valley. All I am asking is that you consider helping us, where you can, when you can, back on the East Coast.”

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s wife nodded. “Of course I will, dear. I would have done so anyway. But I must say it’s a pleasure to find a young woman unafraid to put herself and her case forward in such a forthright manner. It gives me hope for the future.”

“Thank you,” said O’Brien. “That’s very flattering.”

She maintained eye contact with Eleanor Roosevelt while she spoke, but she noted that a waiter was showing guests to an empty table just behind the first lady. “Stiffy” McClintock, the CEO of McClintock Investments, was dining with a couple of guys from Combat Optics and IBM. She would definitely have to arrange a drink with them afterward. They were all on her list of people “to do” over the sunset clause. She topped up her glass of wine, satisfied with her efforts for the evening so far, as she mentally checked Eleanor Roosevelt off the same list.

8

D-DAY+ 12. 15 MAY 1944. 1410 HOURS.

HIJMS YAMATO.

The planning room of the Yamato did not run to flat-panel plasma screens or digital projectors. In fact, it looked very much as it had in the first days of June 1942, before the Emergence.