Chapter XXVIII:
Drilling the President

WE SPENT FOUR days, Malory and I, whipping her flying dragon from city to city across the length and breadth of the land of the free, stopping at intervals to descend from the clouds and visit the not-so-free, who were shackled invisibly but inevitably by the limitations imposed by their abject poverty. The President made a brave go, offering a kind word here and a sympathetic touch there, but something seemed lacking. In spite of all the careful choreography and orchestration, and Malory’s evident eagerness and sincerity, her actions were doing little to resuscitate her flat-lined approval rating.

New York, Dallas, LA, Seattle, Chicago, New Orleans, Miami: the place mattered not. President Malory would land, be ushered to the pre-selected shelter, soup kitchen, orphanage, or free clinic, spend an hour or two making beds, slopping soup into bowls, dandling children in her lap, or helping nurses administer vaccines—having copious photos and videos taken all the while at each locale—smile, wave, pronounce God’s blessing upon the throng, climb back into the dragon, and whisk her way skyward; and once airborne, she would wonder why she had not made an impact.

Her handlers, I observed for these four days, relentlessly drilled Malory regarding her outward appearance: hair, clothing, accessories, and makeup neat but not extravagant; voice soft and soothing; gait not casual but not brisk; gaze tender; demeanor as humble as humanly possible for the Leader of the Free World.

Therein lay the problem, I realized midway through the fourth day. During a stop scheduled for fueling the dragon on our way back to DC, I took Malory aside and said:

“You have spent four days trying to be someone else. Strike that—as a politician, you have spent your entire career trying to be someone else. Do you even know how to be yourself?”

Panic dominated her countenance. “What are you talking about? My PR staff, through countless hours of study and research, has determined the image I need to project to maximize my popularity, and that is what I have been doing all this time.”

“Have you, now? And how is that working out for you?”

I knew very well the answer to that question, and I had a feeling so did she; I was testing whether she was willing to admit her failing to another.

The droop of her chin was my answer. A moment later, her chin rebounded, and defiance flashed from her gaze. “What would you suggest?”

“Emphasis on appearances is fine as far as it goes, but at its heart, it is not reflective of reality. A given combination of dress and demeanor may fool some—and has, no doubt, for the masses are easily duped by appearances, in my century as well as yours—but you must know that your appearance cannot carry much weight unless it conveys who you truly are. Every king and queen knows this fact without being told, and you, Malory Beckham Hinton, are as much a queen at heart as I am. And a queen always should be perceived as a queen: nothing more, and absolutely nothing less.”

Several moments passed before she said:

“‘This above all, to thine own self be true,’ then.”

I gave her a quizzical look.

“Shakespeare,” she replied. “An English playwright and poet, perhaps the most influential of all time. He lived a thousand years after you and five hundred years before me.”

“He has the right of it. You cannot pretend to be one of the masses if you were not born and trained in their company, any more than a fish can sprout wings and fly. The fish can appear to fly for a span, but before it takes a breath, it must return to its native seas. And when it does, all the true-born birds point their wingtips at it and laugh at its presumption and folly.”

“And that is what you take my efforts for these past several days, presumption and folly?”

It was dangerous terrain; I knew I had to tread with extreme care. “Presumption, most certainly not. I perceive your efforts stem from pure”—if self-serving, though I kept that remark to myself, for everyone who wields power is self-serving to some extent, myself included—“intentions, and so, I believe, do most of your other observers. What your efforts lack is a sense of spontaneity.”

“Why would spontaneity be so important to people?”

I dredged an example from my experience, one I had not thought about in many a year. “At my castle, in my—other life, Sunday was the usual day for giving alms, which I always did with no complaint and a fair measure of generosity. Once, however, on a Thursday as it transpired, I chanced upon a starving waif with no parents or godparents in sight. I was in a mood that day to take him in, feed him, clothe him, shoe him, and shelter him in my royal household. Which act, do you think, made the deeper impression upon my court: the customary or the unexpected?”

Realization dawned between Malory’s upraised eyebrows. After we climbed back inside the dragon, for it had drunk its fill and was ready to resume flight, she bade one of her staff to relinquish his chair in front of his monitor. She sat and switched the image from the SNN broadcast to an aerial representation of Greater Metropolitan Washington, overlaid with text identifying each street and building.

Malory studied the image for several minutes, occasionally clicking through to read the extended description of a selected site or region, zooming in, zooming out, shifting the map this way and that, all without comment, question, or the solicitation of advice from anyone. Finally she pulled out her phone and sent the following message to her pilot:

“Land me in Sanctuary.”

Goodness gracious me, I never had seen such a volatile eruption of protests—even among the Round Table knights when some hardy soul had announced his (utterly foolish and fatal, in all cases save one) intention to assay the Siege Perilous—as I did that moment from every woman and man of President Malory’s staff. One would have thought she had commanded to be dropped into a war zone headfirst and sans chute.

Malory would not hear any arguments regarding her personal safety and security; when set upon a course, she could be as stubborn as a herd of asses, all seated and braced, each one as impossible to move as the last.

Sanctuary districts occupied outlying sectors of most American cities, established several administrations ago to contain their homeless populations. The grand idea had been to get these people off the streets, shelter them, educate them, feed and clothe them, find them jobs, and reintegrate them into productive society. Due to poor planning and inadequate funding, however, the districts degenerated into anarchy, necessitating the construction of castle-like walls to protect the rest of the cities’ residents, workers, and visitors. Being walled out of sight had made a bad problem grow worse. I recalled reports I had heard every now and again of armed police battalions attempting to enter DC’s Sanctuary to establish order; inevitably, they would be forced to either withdraw or impose the peace of the grave.

No one had ever ordered the latter option… up till now.