The next day, Captain Douglas came for Andrew again.
He was with Jasmine again, along with the rest of his family for their hour long daily get together. They had been separated and moved into permanent accommodations some days earlier, each of them, including the children, sent to live with a military family whom they'd been told were going to 'adopt' them. They would be either the child or the sibling of the man of the house, depending on their relative ages, and they would be given employment so that they could make a useful contribution to the city in return for their room and board. With the adult women the situation was only temporary until it was decided which of the city's ruling elite they would be married off to, but the Generals seemed to be hoping that the New Londoners would eventually assimilate into New Philadelphia life and lose their desire to leave.
"How are the people you're living with?" he asked David.
"They're okay," the boy said reluctantly. "They seem nice. The father tells me that I have to call him dad, though. They say that my name's David Lancaster now."
"Go along with it," Andrew advised him. "Do whatever they tell you to do. Say whatever they tell you to say, but never forget who your real family is."
David nodded. "The people buried under the ice..."
"No," said Andrew, taking the boy by the shoulders and staring into the eyes. "I mean us. You are my son. You always have been and you always will be. And Susan is your mother and this is your brother and your sister." He turned to James. "That goes for you too. Never forget that you are my son and that I love you." They nodded soberly.
"What are the people you're staying with like?" Susan asked James.
"A bit strange," he replied. "Ike, the father, keeps telling me how lucky I am, that in a couple of years I'm going to be making every woman in the city pregnant. He winks at me a lot and says how much he'd love to be in my place, like it's a joke. He can have my place if he wants it. I don't want it." Then he looked guiltily at his mother. "I should be grateful, I know. What they'll do to me is nothing compared to what they're going to do to you."
"I'll be okay, James," his mother assured him. "I can endure anything so long as I know the rest of you are safe."
"And Jas," said James, his eyes hardening as he turned to look down at his sister, still comatose on the bed. "If any of those bastards lays a finger on her..."
"James..." said Andrew fearfully.
"I'll kill them," the teenager said, is words made stronger by the softness with which he spoke them. "I swear I'll kill them."
"If there's any killing to be done, I'll be the one that does it," said Andrew, putting a hand on his shoulder. "I haven't given up hope of getting away from this place, though, and neither should you. If there's any way out of here I'll find it. I swear."
"They're all mad here," said James, moving closer to his father. Andrew put his arms around him. "The people I'm staying with have a daughter a couple of years older than me. Called Annie. She looks at me all the time and says she can't wait for me to be old enough to begin my work. That's what she calls it. My work. I think she wants to be the first to have my baby." Andrew felt him shudder as the boy huddled close to him. "She makes me feel awkward when I've got no clothes on. I've never felt that way before. I don't think she wants to wait two years."
"The woman who bears your children will be the woman you fall in love with and choose to spend the rest of your life with," Andrew assured him. "Pay no attention to this Annie, but pretend to go along with whatever they say. We've got two years to think of something."
"Mum doesn't have two years," said James miserably. "They might come for her any day."
"Don't worry about me," Susan repeated. "I'll just close my eyes and pretend it's your father. They can only touch my body. Nothing they do to me will affect my love for you."
She reached out to touch David's arm to include him in her words and the four of them held each other close while Jasmine continued to sleep beside them, oblivious to the emotional turmoil being suffered by the rest of her family.
The hour was almost up and Andrew was bracing himself to be ripped from his wife and children again when the Captain appeared in the doorway. "Mister Birch," he said warily, keeping a safe distance as if afraid the New Londoner might attack him. Andrew found himself amused despite their dire situation. Word must have spread of his punching General Wayne on the jaw. "Please come with me. I have to take you back up to Washington."
"I told them everything I knew last time," Andrew protested. "There's no point in them asking me more questions. I've got nothing more to tell."
"They're going to ask you the same questions again and see if your answers are the same as last time," said James sympathetically. "It's a standard interrogation technique."
Andrew thought he was probably right but there was no point in trying to argue himself out of it. The Generals owned them. They could do whatever they wanted with them. "Fine," he said therefore. "Let's just get this over with."
He kissed his wife and hugged James and David, hating the fact that it would be a full day before he saw them again. Until then each of them would be alone and afraid among strangers who saw them only as assets to be exploited. He made the hug last as long as it could, therefore, so that the memory of it would last, then reluctantly allowed the Captain to take him away, out of the hospital and back to the central elevator shafts.
He expected to be taken back to General Wayne's mansion and was bracing himself for a tense reunion as they both remembered their tussle of the day before. Stepping out into Washington, though, the Captain led him away in a different direction, along another of the long caverns that led away from the central chamber. Like the other cavern, this one was filled with neatly tended lawns and gardens and had the facades of mansions along the cavern walls, but the Captain led them past all of them towards the largest and grandest mansion of all at the cavern's end.
Andrew paused in surprise and stared at it. "You're taking me to see the President?" he said. The mansion they were approaching was a replica of the south face of the central residence of the White House, taking up the entire width of the cavern's end wall. Andrew was willing to bet that there was a perfect reproduction of the oval office behind the outward bulging portico, where the diplomatic reception room had been in the real White House, unless there were east and west wings hollowed out of the rock on either side. There was nothing but a wide, grassy lawn in front of it. Nothing to block the view of the building all the way from the elevator shafts where the six long caverns converged.
"All I know is that I was told to bring you here," the Captain replied. "That does seem to be the logical deduction, though."
Andrew's heart surged with hope. He could think of only one reason why the city's ruler would want to see him. Could they all soon be returning to New London after all? He forced the thought out of his head. If he allowed himself to believe it and it turned out to be wrong, he thought it might plunge him into such a depth of despair that he would never emerge from it.
There was a grand entrance on the left of the portico, guarded by a pair of soldiers in dress uniform, but the Captain took him to a smaller and rather less impressive doorway on the right. It was also guarded, but by regular soldiers holding machine guns and they stopped the Captain while they assured themselves that he was who he claimed to be. "The President is expecting me," Captain Douglas told them. "He won't want to be kept waiting." The soldiers scowled at him, but then stood aside to let them through.
There were two more soldiers inside the foyer who searched Andrew for weapons before beckoning for him to proceed further into the building. Captain Douglas made to follow, but one of the soldiers barred his way. "Just him," he said. "You wait here."
The Captain nodded sullenly and sat in the chair, watched closely by one of the guards, while the other escorted Andrew through the next door.
They passed a kitchen full of servants and an open plan office bustling with clerks and secretaries, but then they were in a smarter part of the building with artwork and plush carpets. They came to an office in which an elderly woman was typing something on a computer. She looked up sharply as the two men entered, but then lost interest and returned to her work. The soldier told Andrew to wait while he went through into another room to inform the people inside that he was here. Andrew sat on a padded chairs and stared at a portrait of Ronald Reagan while he waited to be called in.
He was sitting there for an hour, under the stern gaze of the disapproving Secretary, before a man in a smart suit opened the door to invite him in. His heart hammering with nervous anticipation, Andrew went through to find people in military dress uniform sitting around a long table, each with folders and papers scattered on the polished mahogany in front of them. There was an empty chair at the head of the table. Two soldiers with machine guns were standing behind it, staring at Andrew with hard, merciless eyes.
A servant showed Andrew to a vacant chair half way along the table and the New Londoner made his nervous way to stand between it and the table. Everyone else was sitting so he sat as well, but then another door opened and everyone stood as another man came striding in.
Like most of the others he had a neatly trimmed black beard and a high forehead where his slicked back hair was beginning to recede. His military style tunic was buttoned tight around his neck, the collar high under his chin, and his sleeves were buttoned tightly around his wrists. He walked to the empty chair and stood there for a couple of moments while he cast his eyes around the table, and then he sat, followed by everyone else.
"Andrew Birch," said the new arrival. Andrew presumed it had to be the President. "Welcome to New Philadelphia."
Andrew struggled to remember the correct form of address from the old movies he'd seen. "Thank you, Mister President."
"These are my advisors and senior cabinet members," said the President, waving a hand to take in the other men sitting around the table. "They are here to help me decide what decision to make regarding the extraordinary proposition you offered us. First, though, am I to understand that you have no position of authority in New London?"
"That's right, Mister President." Andrew struggled not to show the wash of anxiety he was suddenly feeling. They wouldn't have brought him here just to tell him to his face that they were rejecting his offer, he told himself. If he was here, it meant that they were interested. He forced himself to look confident, therefore, as if the matter were already settled.
"If we were to accept your offer," the President added, "how do we know the authorities of your city will honour it?"
"The authorities of New London will be going to Mars along with the rest of us," replied Andrew. "There will be no-one left to either honour or fail to honour the offer. All you'd have to do is move into an empty city."
"A city that might be booby trapped," said the military men sitting opposite Andrew. "The sentry weapons guarding the city might have been re-activated to keep us out."
"Why would they do that?" asked Andrew. "You would have saved our lives and allowed us to collect the dysprosium they need. They would be grateful to you. It would cost them nothing to let you have the city."
"They might have stripped out some of the essential life support machinery for your spaceships," another man suggested.
"The city has to be habitable right up to the moment we leave," said Andrew. "And if there turns out to be some problem with the spaceships, something that prevents The Return, they'll need to have a viable city to go on living in."
"How do we know that these spaceships even exist?" the first man asked. "We cannot even manufacture fluorescent light tubes but you expect us to believe that you've built a space station and a fleet of spaceships capable of a hundred year space voyage."
"You don't have to take my word for it," said Andrew. "In a couple of weeks, the next time they pass over this part of the world, you'll be able to look up into the sky and see them. A constellation of stars crossing the sky in formation. If you set up a telescope on the surface you'll be able to see them in detail. Until then, you can be allowing us to collect the dysprosium from LaSalle so we can take it back east the moment you're certain that we're telling the truth."
"If we did that, there would be conditions," said the President. "Armed men would go with you to make sure you came back to this city with the dysprosium. We wouldn't want you running back to New London with your plunder."
"Our hab-rovers can only supply life support for so many people," said Andrew hesitantly. "My own rover is already at maximum capacity with the five members of my family. The other rovers could perhaps carry two men each."
"There will be plenty of room," said the President. "If we agree to this, some members of your expedition will be remaining here, as hostages."
"The younger members," added the man directly to the President's right. "Those who would be of the least use in the refining operation anyway."
Andrew's heart leapt with alarm, but one look at the other men sitting around the table was enough to tell him that they absolutely would not move on this point. He nodded with resignation, therefore. "Would I have your word that they'll be returned to us when we return to New London?"
"New London's stockpile of human embryos must be sent to this city first," said the man sitting opposite Andrew. "And our doctors will have to verify that they are indeed viable human embryos before any of you are allowed to return."
"There is a deadline that must be met," said Andrew, though. "The ships have to depart before the Earth moves too far away from the minor planet Malina. If you spend too long arguing over details it'll be too late for The Return to take place and you'll have lost this historic opportunity for ever."
The president's eyes narrowed. "It sounds as if you're trying to hustle us, Mister Birch."
"This whole thing is a hustle!" the man sitting opposite Andrew said. "There are no spaceships. There is no dysprosium. Their real mission is to spy on us and report back to their masters in New London." He leaned forward in his chair to glare accusingly at Andrew. "They are gathering information in preparation for an attack."
"You think I brought my whole family, my children, on a spying mission?" said Andrew in disbelief. "Why would I risk the lives of my own family?"
"To disguise your true intentions. To make us believe you. You deliberately infected yourselves with a dangerous bacterium, then came to our city, thereby leaving us all vulnerable to exposure. If you were willing to risk thirty thousand lives to accomplish your mission, why should we believe you care for your own children, if they are indeed your children?"
"You're mad if you believe that! I'm telling you the truth."
"For which you have not one shred of evidence..."
The President raised his hand and the man fell silent. The President then turned to Andrew. "Even if you're telling the truth and we accept your offer, you still have a saboteur among you. Someone willing to risk their life, willing to kill all of you, to stop your return to the inner solar system."
"With your armed men watching over us, I doubt he'll get the chance to do anything," said Andrew.
"He knows your daughter can identify him if, when she regains consciousness. That may make him desperate."
"We'll be on our guard. If he tries anything we'll stop him."
The President regarded him silently for a few moments, then stood. Everyone else stood as well. "Very well, Mister Birch. We will consider your proposal. Please remain in the waiting room in case we have any more questions for you."
"Thank you, Mister President."
Andrew left his place by the table and made his way to the door, so dizzy with mingled hope and worry that he could barely keep his balance. Behind him, he heard an angry argument breaking out, but then the guard closed the door and the voices were shut out, leaving Andrew able to do nothing but sit in tense anxiety while he waited for them to come to a decision.