Politician (18 page)

Again the six hecklers jumped up, cursing. I cut the current after two seconds, and they quieted. “Thank you,” I repeated. “I'd go to meet your mothers at the zoo, but I'm afraid they wouldn't vote for me.” The audience laughed.

Later in the speech the heckling began again. Once more I paused. “Do any here support my opponent for election?”

“Oh, no!” a heckler cried, just before I activated the mustard. Again they all danced out of their chairs, to the delighted laughter of the audience.

I didn't have much further trouble with heckling, on that day or during the rest of the campaign. Little Hopie amused herself by doing an imitation of a heckler cutting the mustard. The episode made minor planetary news. “Hecklers,” Thorley remarked wryly, “had better not mess with Navy heroes. If only the complex problems of government could be similarly addressed.” Naturally the implication was that my solutions were simplistic.

That was perhaps my high point of the campaign. I lose my taste for remembering the rest of it, so I'll just say that it was not yet the season for Hispanic candidates on the statewide level. I made a good effort, but I lacked the finances for a saturation campaign, while my opponent seemed to have, literally, millions of dollars to spend. The special interests fairly poured money into his coffers. Had significant campaign finance reform been instituted... but perhaps that is sour grapes. I saw that as long as the special interests could put their favored candidates into office, the system would not be reformed.

So I lost the nomination, as Megan had foretold, but it was a creditable loss, a respectable showing. I had gotten my name known to the electorate.

Now, however, I was out of a job, for I had not been able to run for another term as state senator, an office I could readily have retained, otherwise. It was not permitted for candidates to run for two different offices simultaneously, and I don't fault that regulation. It had been put in by reformers, but again I had come to understand the other side of it. When good office holders are required to give up their offices in order to gamble on higher offices, good men are going to be lost.

Megan assured me that my political career was not over, just on hold, and I was sure she was right. She had always been right hitherto. But still it smarted. I could so readily have won, had I only accepted enough special-interest money to finance a broader campaign.

They let me out of my stinking cell the next morning. After I had cleaned and dressed, Scar talked to me again. “Have you had occasion to reconsider your position, Hubris?”

I certainly had, though not in the manner he supposed. I had, in my fashion, just spent six years as a Sunshine state senator and lost my bid to be governor. I now knew my life to age forty. I had learned political finesse. “Yes. I can see now that my position was in error,” I said. “The flat tax would represent an improvement over the present system.”

I could have been lying, but he was satisfied. Evidently he knew that I would not take a position I did not support, and indeed it was true: I now believed in the flat tax. I had seen the abuses of the present system of taxation and knew that the tax code needed to be drastically simplified and the nefarious loopholes eliminated. The flat tax would do that. I did not regard it as ideal, for it did tend to benefit the wealthy and penalize the poor, but it remained a fairer system.

“Actually, I have been reconsidering, too,” Scar said.

That startled me. I looked at him inquiringly.

“What I am wondering now is whether any system of taxation can be fair,” he said. It was as if he were a friend arguing a rhetorical case, figuring out his own position. “What, after all, is the definition of theft?”

“Theft? Taking something of value from a person or institution without his consent.”

“So if I take money from you, without your consent, I am stealing it?”

“Yes,” I agreed, uncertain where this was leading.

“If I point a weapon at you and require that you hand me money—”

“Yes, that's still a form of theft,” I agreed. “Armed robbery.”

“Even though I do it openly and you actually hand me the money?”

“Yes, because it's involuntary. I don't want to give you the money, but I'm afraid you'll hurt me if I don't.”

“Suppose I don't actually point a weapon,” he said. “Suppose I merely suggest that something unpleasant will happen to you if you do not pay?”

“Yes, that's still theft, if the threat is unequivocal.”

“Such as confining you in a dark, noisome cell.”

Again I was startled. “Yes.”

He smiled. “I am not a hypocrite, Hubris. I have robbed you of your freedom, and I am coercing you to part with something you value. I am a thief. But I believe I am acting in a good cause.”

“The ends do not justify the means!” I exclaimed.

“Don't they? Suppose I proved to you that the cause I serve is the worthiest possible cause and benefits the whole planet of Jupiter, while all it costs is the temporary inconvenience of one person. Doesn't that justify it?”

“I hardly believe that your cause can really—”

“But, for the sake of rhetoric assume this is true. Then is theft justified?”

I pondered and could not answer.

He smiled again. “Now back to the taxes. If I have a world of good works to perform with the money, does it justify my taking it from you in the form of involuntary taxes?”

“But that's not the same,” I protested. “Taxes are a requirement of citizenship!”

“And if you don't pay them you may lose your citizenship—and become a refugee or a prisoner.”

I had been a refugee and was now a prisoner. My family had rebelled against an unfair aspect of Callisto society, and it was evident that I had in some way crossed a powerful opponent later in my life. The parallel had power. “I don't know.”

“Obviously I do believe that the ends justify the means,” he said. “Actually it's a matter of proportion. I see the greatest good for the greatest number and am prepared to sacrifice the few for the benefit of the many. You may feel otherwise, and perhaps I would, too, in your situation. But the position is worthy of consideration.”

“Perhaps if I knew what your cause is,” I said.

“All in good time, Hubris. I am not trying to hurt you or humiliate you; all I want is your serious consideration of the points I raise. I did not punish you last night for differing with me but for refusing to hold a meaningful dialogue. Give me your serious attention, even in opposition, and your existence here will be comfortable enough.”

“But you tortured me before ever inquiring about my attitude,” I protested.

“That was necessary to demonstrate my power over you. To prove to you at the outset that I can and will do what I deem necessary to gain your attention. It is not enough merely to speak to you; I had to make you believe absolutely. Just as one learns by hard experience to treat electric current with respect, you learned about me. You do not need to grovel; just deal with me on my terms, as you would a natural force.”

That concluded the session. I had to admit that, given the present situation, what he said made sense.

Other books awaited me in my cell, on the subjects of taxation and law enforcement. I read them; I had nothing else to do at the moment. Obviously I was being reeducated, but even with my extra memories of my political life on Jupiter, I couldn't grasp the thrust of it. Of course, a lot could have happened in the intervening five or ten years. I might not be in politics at all anymore.

That evening I visited Dorian Gray again, knowing it was expected of me. The irony was that though I knew this was part of the larger trap my captors had laid for me, and that I had to seem to fall into it, I felt its power nonetheless. Knowledge is not necessarily a perfect defense. I was alone so much of the time that any human contact was valuable, even the interview with Scar. Dorian also happened to be a woman, which made the appeal that much stranger, and she was a lovely one. Yes, I remembered Megan, and loved her and longed for her, but she was far away, while Dorian was here. I know this seems fickle, a confirmation of the evil women are apt to believe of men, that men love only what is in reach, isn't scratching and biting, and is fair and fully formed, and that men have no lasting commitment beyond sexual gratification. Like many myths, this one has some substance; men are indeed sexual creatures and feel the attraction of nearby women in the manner a body in space feels that of a proximate planet. I was sexually vulnerable now; a part of me wanted to fall into the trap. Thus my pretense was apt to become real. Forgive me, Megan! I prayed in silence again, but I had no assurance that she would.

Dorian did not make it easy. Rather, she made it too easy. She embraced me and kissed me the moment I arrived. “Oh, Hope,” she breathed. “I missed you. When you didn't come last night, I thought...”

A further irony: she meant it. She was an actress playing a part, yet she did care. The best actors do care. Perhaps she used the ancient Stanislavski method, trying truly to experience her role, but it seemed like more than that. With her, too, the role was to a certain extent becoming reality. Yet she had to know her true face, too, as I knew mine.

“I did what I said I would,” I said. “I talked back. So I got dumped back in the smell-cell for a night. I don't think I'll do that again.”

“I was afraid they'd do worse to you,” she said.

“I won't talk back to them soon again,” I said ruefully. “I had forgotten how bad that cell is.” Which was, of course, a lie of sorts, for the benefit of the recorders. Scar must never suspect that I wanted to visit that cell from time to time, so as to catch up on my recent history. The truth was, I had hardly been aware of the smell; I had in effect been transported to Jupiter.

“I did tell you not to do it,” she reminded me, as she held me tight. “Oh, Hope, if anything had happened to you...“ Why was she so eager to get so close, so fast? I enjoyed the feel of her flesh, but I distrusted this. Was there a time limit on my treatment, so that the seduction had to be accomplished early? That could work to my advantage. So I demurred. ”I mustn't take advantage of you,” I said gallantly.

She realized that she was moving too fast and eased off. “Come, sit and talk. It's been so lonely.”

That suited me. My talent was tuning in on her, adapting to the dark. I was used to visual contact, as perhaps my captors knew, but now I was tuning in on her touch.

We sat together in her hammock and talked. The hammock tended to wedge my left hip and her right hip together, and our corresponding shoulders. That suited her because she wanted to seduce me, and in the darkness touch was her main asset. It suited me, too, because I wanted to read her with my talent, and touch was my main asset, too. And it suited us both because we had to keep our heads close together, to whisper, so that we would not be overheard, theoretically. Actually, modern auditory pickup devices are so sensitive that they can monitor a heartbeat from a quarter mile's distance, so that was illusion; if our captors were listening, as they surely were, they were hearing everything. If they were not listening, it was because they trusted Dorian to inform them of anything significant. But human reflexes die hard; we whispered.

I told her what little more I remembered of my experience in the Jupiter Navy, taking advanced training, winning an accelerated promotion to private first class—the enlisted men having army-style rank, while the officers had Navy-style rank, in the merger of the old separate services—and rooming with lovely Juana, who was also Hispanic.

“I'm Hispanic,” Dorian reminded me in Spanish.

“And lovely,” I agreed. “I have never seen you, but I know I would be smitten by your beauty in an instant.”

“Thank you,” she said. Women like to be reminded that they are beautiful.

“But I don't understand why you should have any interest in an older man like me.”

“There is no other man,” she said. This was of course true on the surface, and untrue beneath, and I read both reactions in her. But there was another current of reaction that cut across these like a solar wind. I was looking for some weakness in her, some human aspect I might exploit, and suddenly I had a hint of where to look.

“Surely you have known other men,” I said, holding her hand in mine lightly, so as to pick up any quiver of tension passing through the fingers.

“No,” she said, but her fingers gave her the lie.

“Now I have been candid with you,” I chided her. “I told you of Juana. Won't you tell me of your first love?”

“You didn't love Juana,” she retorted accurately, but again that tension rippled through her hand. Oh, yes, she had loved.

“Perhaps not,” I agreed. “My true love was Helse. But she died....” This time it was my own hand the tremor shook. “And life continued for me. Juana was a good and lovely girl, and what I felt for her was as close to love as I was capable of feeling. I think—I can't quite remember—that there were others, but she was the first in the Navy, and I will always treasure the memory.”

“I—I suppose there could have been, in the period of wash,” she said. “Maybe in due course I'll remember.”

She was lying. She remembered now. This was her point of vulnerability. I regretted having to do it, but I knew I had to. I had to get hold of her vulnerability and turn it to my advantage.

But not openly. If the captors knew what I was doing, they would remove Dorian and mem-wash me back to coordinate zero. I had to do it covertly, and this was a challenge.

Fortunately the scratches in the hell-cell had given me the clue. I needed an open code as a starting base, and a closed one for the real action. Our overt conversation and gradual seduction would serve for the first, and our physical contact could be adapted for the second.

I took her hand more firmly. “I want to understand you, Dorian Gray,” I said. “Maybe if I had understood Helse better, I could have prevented her death. I never want to make the mistake of incomprehension again. I am desperately lonely in my cell, and I do not know when or why I may be tortured or killed, and I would cleave to you in a moment, if I felt I knew you well enough so that you would not dissipate in my arms like mist. You must be real to me; I must know you.” As I emphasized the word I squeezed her hand, not hard enough to show on whatever nightlight scanner was watching us but enough so that Dorian was definitely aware of it.

She was moved; I felt the tremor pass through the whole of her body. “You're not just a—a body, are you?” she asked. “You value the mind, the—”

“The essence,” I agreed, squeezing her hand again. “But do I know your essence, Dorian?” This time I squeezed twice: two quick pulses.

She was startled. Obviously I didn't really know her, and in the common code of one for yes and two for no, I had answered my question.

She fumbled for words, realizing that something special was going on. “I—what can I tell you, that—”

“Only the truth, Dorian,” I said, squeezing once.

Which I knew she could not do. “Why don't we just lie down and relax, Hope,” she suggested after a moment. “Here, close, in the hammock, and I'll try to tell you anything you want to know.”

The seduction ploy again. She hoped to use her body to distract me from this odd approach. She certainly had the body to do it.

“All right,” I agreed. That surprised her; she hadn't expected me to capitulate so readily.

We worked our way around and managed to get into the hammock together, face to face, my arms around her body and hers around mine. The hammock pressed us close, and her thigh, belly, and breast were warm against my body.

My right arm was the upper one. I slid my hand down along her back to her left buttock and cupped it familiarly through her skirt. “What is your name?” I asked.

“Why, Dorian Gray,” she said with a shake of amusement.

I squeezed her buttock twice.

She tensed, realizing that I was denying her answer, rather than being familiar in the physical sense. I suspect it might be a shock to any beautiful woman to discover that a man is more interested in her mind than her body, for whatever reason. “Does my name really matter?”

“Yes,” I said, and squeezed her firm flesh twice.

Again she tensed, but this time only in the buttock. The feel of that was interesting. “What are you up to, Hope?”

“I think I'm seducing you,” I said, and squeezed once.

“Well, two can play at that game.” She moved her left hand to my right buttock and squeezed.