"Preserve and protect the Constitution of the United States," said Cole. "No matter what you think of the President, assassinating him does not preserve and protect anything."
"I think our president is a great man," said the agent. "I've seen them come and go, but he's the first I've ever said that about."
"Great men," said Cole. "They can be hard to take, sometimes, don't you think?"
"Not to me," said the agent.
They pushed the gurney carrying Benny's body out of the carpenters' shop and past where Cole and the agent sat.
"Sic semper," said Cole to Benny as he passed.
"What was that? I thought that was Marine Corps."
"Marine Corps is Semper fi. Semper fidelis. 'Always faithful.'"
"So what's 'sic semper'?"
"What John Wilkes Booth shouted after he shot Lincoln and jumped down onto the stage. 'Sic semper tyrannis.' May this happen to all tyrants. Lincoln was a great president. But to some people, greatness in a president looks like tyranny."
"I'm sorry your friends went bad."
"I don't know," said Cole. "They didn't think they were bad. They thought they were doing the right thing for their country. That's why this stinks. They really thought they were good guys."
"So do terrorists," said the agent.
"Yeah," said Cole.
And so do presidents and the people who help them do their work. You place your bet and see how history plays it out.
What if I watch Torrent and find out that they were right after all, and I was wrong? That sometimes a ruler needs to be killed to save the people? That democracy is more important than peace after all?
Was this what Mark and Reuben died for? To bring this man into power and keep him there? Is that what I should live for? Or am I betraying my country right now, sitting here, knowing that I've killed the only guys who really had a chance of stopping this man?
I upheld the law. I fulfilled my oath. And even though I know he was perfectly willing to kill me if he thought he had to, I also know that when I gave him a reason not to, he took it, and I'm alive. That says something about him. He really does not want to kill. He really does want to have people around him that he can trust.
I guess I just put myself on that list. For now.
We did our best to keep this virus from our shores. The quarantine bought the world a year in which to prepare. Some nations did, some didn't.
We have stockpiles of the medications that help.
We have thousands of volunteers who went to Africa, learned how to care for disease victims to enhance their chances of survival, and now they are home again, immune to the disease and ready to help.
We have used every means at our disposal to teach people all that we can about how to treat the nictovirus.
And even now, our scientists are racing to try to find a vaccine that will reliably prevent the disease without causing it.
Whether they succeed or not, we will weather this together. We will not panic, we will not shut down our economy, we will keep food flowing into our cities and we will buy and sell throughout the world. We will not lock our doors agains
t our neighbors, but we will follow the example of those brave volunteers and help those who need our help.
In the long run, we cannot avoid this disease. But we don't have to let it destroy us. Many will die, and we will grieve for them. But most will live. America will live. And we will remain a beacon of hope and peace, democracy and charity, for the world.
It was full summer again. Chinma finally understood what all those words meant—summer, fall, winter, spring. In Nigeria there had been only rainy and not-rainy.
Now when he climbed the massive oak in the back yard of the Malich house—of his house now, he finally believed—he knew what it had been like without its leaves, slick with snow, completely unclimbable when encased in ice. He shared the trees here with squirrels instead of monkeys, and all the birds were different. But he still liked to climb.
He had walked this whole neighborhood, though no one else did. They ran, dressed in jogging clothes, but they were going nowhere, accomplishing nothing. What a strange land, where people had to invent hard work for their bodies instead of trying to avoid it. But he could eat the food now, and he drank the tap water without distrust, and he was used to the idea that the electricity was on all the time, and not just a few hours a day.