Executive (14 page)

“What is your family? Your home city?”

She didn't know. Perhaps she had been mem-washed, so that only her knowledge of her planet and nation of origin remained, stripped of detail. Possibly that information would return, as the effect of the wash diminished with time. It was hard to be sure with children; sometimes they threw off the effect rapidly, and sometimes their loss of memory was permanent. I feared that the latter was the case here.

“The gem,” I asked. “The amber in the ring—that enables you to change modes? From English to Spanish and back again?” She nodded.

“So you were locked into English, a language you understand but do not speak, until I told you to change to Spanish?” I wanted to be sure I had this aspect right; I did not want to lock her in any wrong mode.

Again she agreed.

“But you remember what happened when you were in English?” She nodded, and I continued: “You remember about me and Hopie and Robertico and how you came to Jupiter?”

As usual, the nod. She could speak now but lacked the habit.

“Do you know why Admiral Khukov gave you to me?”

Negative nod.

“Would you prefer to return to Saturn?” Now she showed some emotion, shaking her head vigorously no.

“You are satisfied to be here?” She smiled, and in that expression I found a familiarity I could not define.

Déjà vu—but I could not place its origin.

“Then we shall keep you here,” I reassured her. “We want you to be happy. You may have a room of your own if you wish—”

No, she did not want that. She liked it as it was. “We shall have to see to your education. Can you read in Spanish?”

She spread her hands; she did not know. I went to the blackboard Hopie had set up for Robertico. The old mechanisms are often the best, for teaching. I wrote AMBER. “Can you read that?”

She concentrated. Then she smiled again. “It is my name!”

I soon verified that she could read but not well. “We shall work with you, and soon you will read well enough, in Spanish,” I said. “Hopie will teach you. She has an interest in practical education.”

“Hopie... is unhappy,” she volunteered.

That got my attention. “My daughter, unhappy? Why?”

“She said, in English—I cannot translate well, but I remember—she talks to me when she is tired.”

“We all get tired,” I said carefully. “It is natural to talk to a friend.”

“She said her parents separated, and it hurts her because she cannot put them back together. She worries that it is her fault.”

“It's not her fault!” I exclaimed, disturbed. I had not realized that my daughter felt this way, yet it was immediately obvious. She had said nothing to me, of course.

“She says you sleep with other women and they are good women, but—”

I shook my head. “Men may be of an inferior species to women. I am guilty of all she says.” How could I not have realized?

“I do not understand.”

Of course, she didn't, just as my daughter didn't. Children are relatively innocent creatures, until corrupted by adults. But I could not leave it at that. “What is it that confuses you, Amber?”

“What is wrong with sleeping?”

Oh. “To sleep as you do, a period of unconsciousness—that is a good and necessary thing. All people do it. But to sleep with a person of the opposite sex—that has a different connotation. It means that they are engaging in sexual relations.”

She gazed at me, uncomprehending. I realized that another major aspect of her education had been neglected or washed away. I was tempted to let it go at that but realized that she would have to know about this sort of thing, too, and that now was the time for her to learn, and that it was best that I tell her.

“A man and a woman can develop a close acquaintance,” I said. "Sometimes this becomes love.

Sometimes they give their bodies to each other, experiencing a deep intimacy and pleasure. Sometimes they are intimate without love. Normally this is restricted to married couples, but in some institutions, such as the military, they are unmarried. Whatever the situation, such a union should not be made without careful consideration. Hopie feels that although I have separated from her mother, I should not be intimate with any other woman. She may be correct. But men have different perceptions about these things, and so I act in a manner my daughter does not approve. I am deeply sorry to have hurt her in this way."

She just gazed at me, unspeaking, and I was uncertain of how much she understood. Well, I had tried to make a fair presentation; that was all I could do.

“I must return to my business now, Amber,” I said. “But I will talk with you again. I am very glad to know that you are able to talk and to read. There is nothing wrong with Spanish; it is an interplanetary language, as is English.”

Still she did not react. Discomfited, I left her.

I continued with the hectic business of setting up a government, consulting with experts, interviewing prospects, checking my facts.

I talked with Gerald Phist, who was in charge of industry, and his wife, Roulette. We had been close in the Navy, with Phist my second in command (after Spirit), and Roulette my wife. As I had explained to Amber, the Navy was a special situation. When I left the Navy, Rue had married Phist at my behest, but she still loved me, and he still loved my sister, who had been his wife. I think he was disappointed that Spirit was not present; she had had to go to another bubble to organize a chain of command. Spirit, as I have said, was always the true strength of the Tyrancy; she constantly welded the necessary connections, keeping the structure tight. It had been that way in the Navy, too, when she was my executive officer.

Phist was aging gracefully, being about fifteen years my senior, and Rue remained stunning, being about ten years my junior. My eyes tended to stray to aspects of her form, and when they did, she would wiggle that aspect, and Phist would laugh. Both of them understood perfectly my situation with women, which was one of the things that made them comfortable to be with. My amorous relationship with Rue was long over, but it had not been ended by my choice or by hers, and we all knew it.

“Hope, I propose two major solutions to the problem of crime,” she said briskly. “Legalization and elimination. Legalize everything possible and eliminate the rest.”

“Um, yes,” I said, apprehensive about what she contemplated. “But you know I have a problem with costs.” My gaze drifted to her décolletage.

“No cost,” she said, giving her cleavage a little quiver, so that my eyes snapped away. “Expenses should be the same or less than they are at present, and the programs may become self-supporting.”

“That sounds too good to be true!” I said.

“She tends to seem that way,” Phist remarked.

“The problem with drugs is the market,” she said. “Jupiter has been going to phenomenal effort and expense to stop them from being imported, but the suppliers override that effort because of the enormous profit to be made. The same is true of gambling. The solution is to expand on the program you had in Sunshine: Legalize everything. Then there will be no premium for illicit things; the marketplace will determine their value.”

I remembered the program I had instituted, with her help, when I was governor of the State of Sunshine.

We had provided drugs to addicts at nominal cost, undercutting the criminal suppliers. Since a sizable proportion of the crime in the state had been related to such drugs, crime had plummeted. We had obtained our own supply of drugs by confiscation from illegal sources and refined them so that they were as safe as such things could be. A number of other states had emulated our program, but the majority had not, and the old types of crime remained. As for gambling—Roulette had been named for an aspect of her father's business—she saw no harm in it. With certain reservations I agreed. Compulsive gamblers were a problem to themselves and society, but most people were not compulsive. Prostitution was merely another business, the consequence of the civilian restrictions on sex.

“Legalize those vices that do not harm other citizens,” I agreed. “But what of lasers, projectile weapons, theft, violence, embezzlement, child abuse, and so on? We can't afford to legalize everything .”

“Elimination,” she said. "Lasers and other weapons hurt other people and often their owners. A laser-pistol in amateur hands is six times as likely to injure or kill a friend or family member as a criminal.

Ban them all, unless the person is with the police or military or has a special permit."

“But there must be twice as many weapons in the hands of private citizens as there are citizens!” I protested somewhat rhetorically, for I knew her rebuttal. During my years as a politician I had more than once locked horns with the nefarious PLA, the Planetary Laser Association, whose guiding principle was that every citizen should have completely free access to laser weapons. "LASERS DON'T KILL

PEOPLE, PEOPLE DO,“ they proclaimed. ”We can't even find them all, let alone take them away from citizens who believe they need them for protection. The best we could achieve would be the disarming of the law-abiding; only the criminals would still have weapons."

“Not if you eliminate the criminals,” she said. “Then the law-abiding citizens will have no need of weapons for private defense. Outlaw the weapons. Anyone possessing one will be a lawbreaker by definition. No criminal will give himself away by carrying a weapon that clearly identifies his nature.”

“And how do we eliminate the criminals? I don't like the death penalty.”

“I have discussed that with Gerald,” she said, glancing at her husband. “He advises me that there are a number of inclement positions in space—jobs that few people volunteer to perform despite increasingly high pay scales. One-man isolated planetoid stations, missions on Io, outposts on Charon, ice-scavenging in deep space—that sort of thing. Those jobs could be done by criminals.”

“But some of those jobs are important!” I said. “We don't want some criminal messing them up.”

“Any criminal that messes up in space dies,” she said. “This is not execution; it is the law of space. Space does not forgive a little error in judgment. One tiny hole in a suit, unpatched—poof!” She spread her hands expressively, and her bosom bounced, my eyeballs with it. "That's why people don't like space.

But if a criminal were sentenced to three years of that, his term to be extended if he did not perform adequately, he would make very sure he would perform. It's not a judgment call; in space either you survive and accomplish the job or you don't."

I turned the notion over in my mind, liking the configuration of it. How well I remembered the rigors of space! As for the station on Charon—that was the satellite of Pluto, farthest conventional planet from the sun—at that distance the sun seemed to be no more than a bright star, and the cold of space seemed to infuse the domes. Physically it was reasonably comfortable; emotionally it was devastating. There was a high attrition due to personality breakdown. And Io—that was the true hell of the System, on the face toward Jupiter. My mother had died there, as well as most of the women of our refugee party, destroyed by the savage volcanic activity. It was true: that was a fitting punishment for even the worst of criminals—and the study missions there were scientifically productive.

“I like it,” I said. “Set it up and consult with me when ready to implement.”

She smiled and approached me for a kiss. I accepted, feeling awkward not because of the presence of her husband but because of my recent discussion with Amber. My daughter Hopie did not like my intimate associations with women other than Megan; she understood intellectually but not emotionally.

“You can do better than that, Captain!” Rue snapped, shaking me by the shoulders.

“I—my daughter is disturbed by—” I faltered.

“The one they think is my daughter,” she said. “You had better show me some respect!”

I had to laugh. I took her and kissed her again with greater vigor, and she was still man's desire. I loved Megan, my true wife, but that did not subtract from what Rue had been.

Even so, her mouth quirked when we broke. “Someone's been at you,” she said. “Someone with real experience.”

I felt myself blushing, remembering the devastating experience with Reba in the dark. How had Rue known? Somehow my women always knew my secrets!

Now it was Phist's turn. I had put him in charge of industry, knowing that his experience as a military equipment procurer and whistle-blower made him supremely qualified. I suspected that he had the most difficult task of all those that the Tyrancy would be coming to grips with, for the relation of the Jupiter military-industrial complex to the government most resembled that of a multiheaded hydra to its prey. Our task was to tame that monster without killing it, for its disciplined survival was crucial to the welfare of the planet.

But as he opened his mouth we were interrupted. Hopie hurried in. She had free access to me always; Shelia never stopped her. “Daddy, something's wrong with Amber!” she exclaimed. Then she paused, noting my company. “Oh!”

“You know Admiral Phist and his wife Roulette,” I said. I turned to them. “My daughter, Hopie.”

Roulette smiled. “Well, I ought to!” she exclaimed.

Hopie flushed. “Are you really my—”

Roulette sighed. “I wish I could answer you, Hopie.”

“Talk to Amber in Spanish,” I said quickly.

“I don't care what other people think!” Hopie said, flustered. “I just want to know who—”

“Amber talks in Spanish,” I said. “Not in English. I discovered that today.”

Roulette shook her head sadly. “It isn't right to mislead you, Hopie. I am not your mother. I would like to have been, but that privilege was not destined to be mine.”

“Then who—”

“If you will just say something to her in—” I started.

“Butt out, Daddy,” Hopie snapped. “If not you, Roulette, then who is it? I believe I have a right to know.”

“It is not my place to answer that, dear,” Roulette said. “But does it really matter? You have a life that others would envy, and a family—”

“ Half a family!” the girl retorted. “And a philanderer for a father.”