It was a beautiful and scary thing, with its Luftwaffe ’46 lines guided by twenty-first-century electrorobotics. Visitor from a different tomorrow. She’d seen it on the big screens for the last inaugural, when it flew in from Camp David, but seeing it in person was a whole different deal. Pure wonder. Like some cross between a royal yacht, an experimental supercar, and a unicorn.

Piloted by God.

“Dark Apollo has landed,” joked Odile, barely audible through the noise.

Tania had been close enough to see him once before—two years earlier, on the day they swore him in for his third term, wearing his medals. Tania had watched the parade, just down the road, on an office balcony with Odile and a bunch of other silk suits cheering on their sugar daddy in chief. Tania remembered the snowflakes melting on the military robots as they rumbled down the street. The big land drones with their black beret Engineer escorts walking alongside. The double-wide floats with their maudlin pageants of the martyrs of Tehran, Seoul, Panama City. She’d seen a guy in the crowd throw a snowball at the Vice President’s limo, then watched the silver helmets swarm him.

“Which one’s your boyfriend?” she teased Odile now, as they watched the soldiers mark out a landing pad with their regimented bodies, so close Tania could almost reach them through the fence.

They felt the thrust as the turbine turned down, like a hot hard wind. The craft dropped fast, then slowed just above the flickering turf, gently moving through the final phase into a soft landing.

There were no tourists on this side of the checkpoint, but everyone around turned to watch. The President, even just the idea of his imminent presence, compelled your gaze.

The Secret Service detail assembled around the rear of the aircraft, waiting for the door to drop. The sanctioned cameras were right behind them.

Tania’s view was occluded, but she could see the colored light leak out from inside when they opened the hatch.

The personal guard emerged first. A detail of three. All tall, handpicked from the best corporate security firms. One of them, a blond woman with a white scarf instead of a necktie, looked right at Tania, through lenses that clearly read her face.

“Don’t forget to smile,” said Odile.

“You’re the one she should be checking out,” said Tania.

“Look,” said Odile. “The dogs!”

Sure enough, the presidential pets trotted out on cue. The wolfhound, then the ridgeback. Everyone knew their names. Ulysses and Lee.

The man who followed looked like the President, but wasn’t.

Odile squealed.

“Newton!” she yelled.

Others joined in with shouts and whistles. Tania gasped.