XI

"Mallory! Hi." Sam's eyes widened in surprise. The pleasant sort, he rather hoped.

"Hey, Sam. Got a minute?"

He considered the alternatives, which mostly involved going another few rounds with Toby. "Sure, come on in." They went into his office. "I shaved my beard," he added, by way of rather uninspired small talk.

"Oh, that's right," she realised. "You had a beard."

Sam rubbed his chin self-consciously. "Well, this is disheartening." Clearly, it took more than a drastic change in physical appearance for anyone to notice any difference around here.

"It didn't suit you," Mallory told him.

"Thanks for that."

"Oh, it didn't look bad or anything. Just didn't suit you."

He pulled out his chair and sat down. "What's on your mind?"

"It's about my date to the State of the Union."

He blinked. "Okay, you remember I-?"

"Not you, Sam." She rolled her eyes. "Yes, I do know you have a boyfriend now. So do I. Dad doesn't want me to bring him."

"Why not?"

"Because he's a fascist dictator!"

"Your boyfriend?"

"Dad! Just because of one thing Brandon happened to say on his radio show last week-"

"Radio- wait, you're dating Brandon Foxton?" Sam gulped.

"Yes!"

"You can't bring him to the State of the Union!"

"Why the hell not?" she demanded irritably.

"Because you can't be seen with him! He can't come to the State of the Union, it opens us up to the possibility of major embarrassment."

"So you're saying I can't date the guy?" she said darkly.

He sat back and raised a steadying hand. "I'm saying, you can't be seen with him."

"So, what, he should wear a bag over his head? Sam-"

"Mallory, he spoke out against the Vice President!"

"No, he said some things about morality in politics. Which you agree with! You're punishing him because he said things you agree with!"

"On his radio show, in the context of criticising this administration's Vice President. If he's seen with our people at the State of the Union, it looks like we're endorsing his view that Hoynes should step down."

Mallory glowered at him. "That's ridiculous!"

He shrugged. "That's politics."

"Sam-"

"Mallory, your dad's right," he cut her off. "It's not a problem that you're dating the guy, it's not a problem that he disapproves of Hoynes, but you can't bring him along to the State of the Union this soon after critiquing the administration a major political issue. If the press spot him and get any kind of quote that sounds like it's disparaging the president, it's going to be seriously embarrassing."

She looked as if she was going to snarl something more, but ended up just grimacing and throwing up her hands in frustration. "Fine! Fascists!" She stormed out.

"It's nice that we still have these little chats," Sam called after her. He rolled his chair back over to the desk, and got back to his work.

"Hey, CJ." Danny arrived in the doorway and gave her an ingratiating grin. She decided it wasn't worth the effort of inquiring how he'd managed to be let in yet again. She pointed a warning finger at him.

"I'm not discussing the Vice President with you. Or Lubbock County. In fact, nothing from Texas whatsoever. Don't even think about bringing anything Texan into this office."

Danny produced a small container of goldfish food from his pocket, and made a show of inspecting the label. "I think this is from, you know, the pet store."

She narrowed her eyes at him. "You don't trust me to feed my fish?"

"Our fish," he corrected, and shrugged. "I just wanted to buy something nice."

She gave him a look.

"For Gail," he added. He wandered over to shake some flakes into the bowl, and blinked. "Your goldfish bowl has been colonised by the British," he said accusingly.

CJ chuckled. "One of the Prime Minister's guys gave me a flag." The young man had seemed quite taken with both Gail and the tiny podium and American flag that had been decorating her bowl in honour of the upcoming State of the Union. She'd come back the next day to find a miniature Union Jack had mysteriously appeared to join its US counterpart.

Danny looked aghast. "I have goldfish rivals?"

"Gail's attentions are a fickle thing," she warned him gravely.

"Well, I'll just have to be more attentive from now on." He waggled his eyebrows at her.

She couldn't help but smile in response. Annoying as Danny might be, it was good to have him back.

"Mr. President." Leo raised his head in greeting as the military officers all jumped to their feet.

"Easy, boys," Jed said with a brief wave, taking his customary chair. "What's up, Fitz?"

The admiral had notes in front of him, but didn't pause to consult them. "Mr. President, we're getting reports that Libyan fighters have brought down a plane five miles south of the border with Chad."

Jed narrowed his eyes. "Deliberate act of aggression?"

"We don't know. It was definitely a military plane; according to our sources, the pilot ejected, and Chadian ground forces retrieved him."

"Could it conceivably have been some kind of malfunction?"

Fitz shook his head uneasily. "We can't say for sure, sir. The Libyan fighters weren't seen to fire on the plane, although they were definitely chasing it."

"What are we getting through political channels?" Leo asked.

Fitz glanced at him knowingly. "Libyan ADC is denying the plane even exists."

"That's not surprising," Jed jumped in. "So would we."

"Yeah... except Chad is also denying it's there."

Jed gave him a wry look. "Are we sure it is, in fact, there?" he asked sardonically.

"We've got a man on the ground saw it go down, Mr. President. It's no surprise that the Libyans don't want to admit to the incident, but the fact that Chad is trying to cover up to a third party opens the possibility that they're thinking of retaliation."

"And now we've got a ballgame," Jed said. He scraped his chair forward to sit closer to the table.

He tried to ignore the mutterings of disgust from over his shoulder as he read.

-without upheaval, there can be no progress; without bold moves, there can be no successes-

"Gah. Empty."

-without challenges, we can never hope to achieve our full potential. And America is a country of great potential, we are a people of great potential-

"This is middle of the road! Totally bland, and, and-"

Sam sat back in exasperation, forcing Toby to dodge out of the way of his chair. "We've done a lot, Toby," he pointed out.

"And so we should stop now, to give things a chance to average out?"

Despite himself, he couldn't help but be drawn towards Toby's point. "Maybe we could think about strengthening the language a little." He had to admit, they might have gone overboard on being carefully neutral. "If we went after it a little more aggressively..."

This attempt at reaching out only served to make Toby more irritable. "The president could leap down from the podium and bitchslap the majority leader, and it still wouldn't be aggressive without the policy to back it up!"

"It would probably help with the ratings, though," Sam contemplated.

Toby made an unidentifiable noise deep in his throat.

"And help dispel rumours about the president's physical state. Maybe if we could put out some promos, this whole viewer apathy thing-"

"Get out of the way, and let me edit that." Toby wheeled his chair aside impatiently.

"Toby, seriously, you know you're not going to get it by Leo." This was no after dinner speech, it was the State of the Union, and any inflammatory language Toby even thought about putting in there was going to get bogged down in half a dozen checks and balances before the president was allowed to even hear a rumour of it.

Toby knew that, which was probably why he was hitting keys forcefully enough to make Sam cringe for his poor laptop. "Then at least I can get rid of some of this cotton -candy sugar fluff writing! 'A union of hearts, minds and ideals...' What is this? 'It's our differences that reinforce us...' Are we writing a Very Special Episode About Tolerance for pre-schoolers?"

Sam stood back to let him type, and tried to spot an assistant through the door he could surreptitiously signal to bring pie.