The morning of June 17, on the eve of his scheduled press conference to address the issue, Edgar Stone sat behind his desk in the Oval Office, staring blankly at his fourth attempt to draft a reply to General Hayes. Dark circles pulled at his eyes and sinuses; his head felt like a warm stone that wouldn't think. Half an hour earlier, after listening to his top advisers swear at each other with the same arguments they had been postulating for months, he had done something he would not have dreamed of in other circumstances. He had told them all to "Shut up," and unceremoniously shown them the door. For the first time in his presidency he was taking matters into his own hands, with more than a few regrets and second thoughts. He had slept badly or not at all for three nights running, and felt neither brave, nor noble, nor even competent to make such a choice. In his current frame of mind he was incapable of realizing the human or historical significance of the crisis that lay before him, and at the moment this was not what mattered. Unlike Hayes, he didn't give a damn what people thought once he was dead, or even out of office. What mattered now was that his tolerance for bullshit had been long since used up---that he was furious at being put in such a position. And somewhere, very deep inside himself he knew, though he shrank from the knowledge, that something very wrong had happened, that the damage was far from over, and that he was partly to blame. And he knew one more thing, despite the rhetoric that he had spouted for two decades: offensive war, unduly considered, was the basest and most shameful of human endeavors, never justifiable, and rarely, in the end, accomplishing anything. Because for all his faults, and these he possessed in abundance, Edgar Stone was not insane. He bowed very low, crumpling the paper before him in both hands. Shook his head mournfully. He pushed the com-button on his desk and summoned a secretary, to whom he dictated his answer to Hayes. * The press conference was postponed without a future date being set, on the pretext that new information had just come to light, which must be relayed to the Secretary of State before further action could be taken. But even the impassable Bill Miller, Stone's Press Secretary, could not pull off this announcement without incurring a barrage of stupefied questions and dissatisfied remarks. And when news of the postponement spread, along with the undercurrent of confusion and subdued alarm which accompanied it, even the dullest Americans began to sense that something was amiss---that real life had somehow crept onto the peaceful shores of their island. And nearly all were aware of a strange thrill of fear as their President finally stepped before the cameras on July 15, looking not at all like himself. * * *