Politician (37 page)

“I am innocent, therefore I recommend it. Let the UP trace the serial numbers of those weapons and see where they lead.” He grinned, as if knowing the lead would not be to Ganymede.

“Thank you, Premier,” I said. “I'm sure the United Planets will pursue this matter vigorously, being concerned only with the truth. If the charge against you turns out to be false, I may be in a position to restore diplomatic relations.”

We broke the connection. “As I said, I prefer to have the facts before I commit myself,” I reminded my audience. “I regret that the election will be past before the facts are in, but I have my suspicion.” The tally on the monitor indicated that my audience had been expanding geometrically as my address continued, and was now being carried planet-wide and broadcast system-wide, despite the time delays for the more distant planets. I now had one of the largest audiences ever, for a mere political candidate, and I was making it count.

Tocsin had set me up to destroy my candidacy, but I did not intend to cooperate. I had just defused another potential disaster and perhaps turned it to my advantage. Now it was time to take the offense.

I addressed the camera. “You may have wondered where I have been these past two months,” I said grimly. "I'm sure my campaign staff made excuses for my absence, but it has been a mystery, hasn't it?

Well, I was in space—held aboard a sub. Let's see whether we can raise that sub now."

There was another ripple of surprise. If my enemy had suspected I was free of control before, now he had confirmation, but it was too late for him to cut me off. I had control and a monstrous audience. My immunity to drugs had enabled me to turn the tables, and I intended to make the most of the opportunity.

“Please get me Admiral Mondy,” I said, and the technicians hastened to comply. The original Admiral Mondy had retired five years before, as the Navy disapproved of officers beyond the age of sixty. The present Admiral Mondy was his younger wife.

Indeed, her face came on. “Hello, President Hubris.”

“Not yet, Emerald,” I said. “There is a formality tomorrow that—”

“Sure enough, Hope,” she said, her white smile flashing in her dark face. She knew that this was being widely broadcast, and she enjoyed the exposure. She had always been a feisty woman, and power had not changed her. “Are they still giving you a hard time about your daughter? They never asked me if I was the mother.”

I laughed, and so did several of the reporters. They knew that Emerald had once been my wife, Navy-fashion, but not at the time of Hopie's birth, and, of course, Emerald was not Saxon. Racism still existed on Jupiter, and Emerald loved to bait it. “Sorry they neglected you,” I said. “Emerald, there's a sub near Jupiter that—”

“We've got it spotted,” she said. “We did that automatically when we moved in close to Jupiter. It's not on our registry.”

“Oh? Does the Jupiter Navy tolerate alien subs in Jupe space?”

“Not by a damn sight!” she snapped. “But when we set out to challenge this one, we got a leave-alone signal down the chain of command. So we kept a quiet fix on it—”

“A leave-alone order from above?” I asked. “How high?”

“Hope, I can't speak for the civilian sector!”

But the implication was plain enough: This sub was being protected by someone very close to the White Dome. I saw the reporters nodding. Another arrow was pointing toward Tocsin.

“Please establish communication with that sub,” I said. “I want to speak directly with its skipper.”

“I'll just bet you do,” she agreed, flashing her teeth again. “We're raising it now, but it's not acknowledging.”

“You know how to deal with that, don't you, Admiral?”

“Sure do! But without orders—”

“Admiral, that's an unidentified sub that has not been specifically cleared with you. It is your duty to identify it. I believe Navy protocol is quite clear on that sort of thing. So, unless you receive a specific and identified order to desist...”

She paused a moment in thought, catching the tip of her tongue between her teeth, then decided to go with me. “We'll bracket her with lasers, and if she still won't open up—”

“Don't blast her yet,” I said. “I want her captured and brought into port.”

“We're working on it,” she said.

I addressed my audience again. “You see, I was abducted and held aboard that sub, where they attempted to brainwash me. As you can see, they did not succeed, but I am most interested in ascertaining exactly who hired that sub. I can, offhand, think of only one party who would benefit by the elimination of Hope Hubris as a candidate on the eve of the election, but I hesitate to make an accusation without proof.” Again the reporters nodded, and I saw the audience tally nudge up further. This little mystery was playing to an enormous house!

“Got the sub,” Emerald announced.

“Ah, the laser-bracketing must have made them see the light,” I said. A ship that was bracketed could be destroyed; only the boldest or most desperate captain would ignore it long. “Have them put Dorian Gray on.” To my audience I explained, “That is another captive; I fear she will come to harm unless we watch her.”

“Not available,” Emerald reported.

“So?” I inquired challengingly. “Tell the sub you will blast it out of space unless she is put on screen within sixty seconds.”

A pause. Then: “Message conveyed. No response.”

“Then put me on that line,” I said grimly.

In a moment I was looking into the sub, and so was my planetary audience. My interrogator, Scar, sat there, not speaking. “Listen, señor ,” I said. “Your reprogramming did not work. I remember everything and am addicted to nothing. I am giving my own speech, not yours. Dorian Gray helped me, and now I will help her. Admiral Mondy answers to me now, and will act on my directive unless directly countermanded by the Commander-in-Chief, President Tocsin. Do you suppose he will tip his hand to protect you?” I paused. The man still bluffed it out, not responding. “Emerald, hit him with a laser, just enough to make him feel it.”

The screen split to show the interior on the left, and the sub in space on the right. Its black-hole effect made it fuzzy, but now the Navy had a pinpoint fix on it, making it visible by electronic enhancement.

Suddenly it glowed, and simultaneously the man on the left jumped; he had felt the strike of the laser. Still he did not speak.

“Give them a harder jolt,” I said.

Again the ship glowed, and suddenly the fuzziness dissipated and it came into sharp focus. The defensive circuit had been overloaded, and the sub was now fully visible.

“Your employer has deserted you, and the Navy hierarchy is afraid to interfere without his order,” I told him. "I have no legal power here, but I am about to destroy you while the whole Solar System watches.

Only Dorian Gray can save you—if she intercedes with me. Now I'm giving you that one minute to put her on screen. If you do not I will conclude that she is dead and that there is nothing worth saving on your vessel, and I will destroy it. I have more nerve than your employer does, and I have no love for you, brainwasher."

He cracked, as I had known he would. I had screwed up the pressure to his threshold. In a moment Dorian Gray appeared. She did not appear to be in discomfort.

“I have come for you, Dorian,” I told her. “Did you heed my message?”

“Hope, they found the bomb,” she said. “But they can not disarm it.”

That was bad news! It meant they were still hostage to the bomb. It surely could be detonated by remote control.

But would it? That would be the open murder of one's own hirelings and no good sign for others who did the bidding of this party. Would Tocsin sacrifice the sub and such goodwill as his hirelings had, merely to protect his secret?

“Ask them to whom they answer,” I said to Dorian. “Who hired the sub?”

She asked but got no answer. “It is anonymous,” she reported. “They do not know.”

That, too, was to be expected. No direct connection to identify the criminal with his crime. “Then provide us the channel through which the orders come, so that we can trace it to its source. In return we shall see that you are granted immunity from prosecution.”

“ You guarantee this, Hope?” she asked.

“ I guarantee this,” I agreed. I now had the leverage to ensure this; the Jupiter court system would not renege, knowing that I would soon be coming to presidential power. In fact, the case probably would not come to court before I assumed the office.

“Then he will tell,” she said after consultation.

And the screen went blank. The view shifted, showing the sub from space, and it was a fragmenting fireball.

The bomb had been detonated, destroying the sub and killing all aboard.

It seemed that Tocsin would indeed sacrifice his associates in order to save his own skin a little longer.

Suddenly the most tangible evidence of his complicity was gone; we had no direct lead to him. But for the moment I was aware of only one thing: Dorian Gray was dead. She, who had helped me escape, had paid for it with her life. How could I keep my commitment to her now?

I knew how. “Get me the premier of Ganymede again,” I said.

In a moment the premier was back on screen. “Unfortunate you lost your evidence, señor,” he said.

“The woman,” I said. “She has a baby boy, taken to Ganymede by the father to spite her. I promised to recover that boy for her.”

“I do not think she wants that baby anymore,” the premier said wryly.

“Yet I promised. Will you fetch that baby and deliver him to me? You surely can ascertain the one I mean.”

He nodded. “You will have him, señor. I do not know what he will cost you.” He faded out.

I returned to my audience. “The woman helped me recover my memory, after they mem-washed me. I owe her more than ever, now that my act has cost her her life.” I paused, trying to fend off the tears that threatened to overwhelm me, and succeeded partially.

Then I got down to political business. “We know who is responsible for this outrage,” I said savagely.

“Only one person plainly profits from my failure as a candidate. He would have been revealed, had those on the sub survived to give their information. So he destroyed them. But we know! We know he is completely unscrupulous, that he will stop at nothing, not even kidnapping and murder, to secure his reelection. Is this the man you wish to preserve in office?”

It was, of course, a rhetorical question, and my true audience could not respond directly. But even some of the reporters, shaken by the destruction of the sub, reacted. “No!” one murmured.

“It is time that this sort of criminal corruption was rooted out from the government of Jupiter!” I proclaimed. “This great planet must restore its reputation in the System for truth, justice, and equality!”

And the reporters were nodding affirmatively.

“The government of Jupiter has turned away from the needs of the citizens,” I continued. “Children go hungry, education declines, and there is a rising tide of crime, so that today no citizen is safe—not even a candidate for president!” And someone among the journalists forgot himself so far as to murmur “Amen!”

“It is time to put an end to all this,” I repeated. “It is time for the great planet of Jupiter to return to the greatness it has known. It is time for the restoration of decency, honor, and joy!” Pure rhetoric, but my cynical local audience was swept up in it, and I knew that at this point even the citizens of Saturn would have voted for me. My magic had taken hold.

“Tomorrow is the election!” I thundered. “You now know how to vote!” And in pure rhetorical style I worked my audience up to a righteous fever, ready to march to the polling places. There would be very few against me at this moment. In the hours before the election sanity would return to a great many, but still I should have a clear advantage.

As I finished, the technicians played back a news item showing the reaction in the great cities of Jupiter.

Massive crowds were gathered in the parks, chanting, “Hubris! Hubris!” They were not just Hispanics.

The trap Tocsin had so carefully laid for me had been reversed because of my special talents, because Dorian Gray had helped me regain my memory, because Thorley had helped me regain my freedom, because my friends on Ganymede and in the Navy had supported me, and because I had seized the moment. Now at last I could relax.

I took a deep breath—and fainted.

I woke in a hospital in Ybor. It seemed I had suffered more during my captivity than I had realized. By the time my body threw off the sedation they had loaded me with, the election was over and I was the president-elect. But I remained disoriented, and Spirit decided that I should spend a month or so in private recuperation. I was glad to do so; for one thing, it gave me leisure to write this narrative of my political experiences.

In fact, this has been a vital occupation. My system does develop immunity to drugs of all types, but it cannot act retroactively to cancel all the damage they may have done. I could no longer be memory-washed, but that first wash really had obliterated many years of memories for a time, and I was concerned that some parts would never return unless I made a special effort to recover them now. My life through my Navy experience has been covered in my prior diaries, but not the past twenty years, so it was important that I get on this before the distractions of the presidency overwhelmed my attention. I don't know how others feel, but to me, memory is almost as important as the present or the future; I value all my life and want no part of it lost, not even the painful portions.

Just as the key words I had planted for myself in the slop-cell had triggered major segments of my missing memory, so now my effort to record that experience amplified those segments of my memory. I cannot honestly say that I relived those parts of my life in the manner I have described; my memory returned in complex flashes rather than in an orderly, narrative, holo-type format suitably edited for relevance. Still, those flashes did the job; they made me aware of what I needed to know in order to restore my perspective and enable me to foil the plot against my candidacy. But it was the writing of the manuscript that made my life real again. In a sense, my life formed as I recorded it; the effort of searching out the details and feelings I had, had made them substantial. It took me a month to write them out, but when that job was done, I was satisfied that I knew where I had been and what I had been doing.

In that month exterior events did not cease, of course. There were some matters that couldn't wait on my literary convenience. In a manner my life consisted only of these scenes and my manuscript memories.

There was the evening I was home with Megan and Hopie. My daughter flung herself into my arms and sobbed; she had feared I was dead, and now at last she could relax. She was close to fifteen years old now, but at this moment resembled a tiny, frightened child. Spirit had explained to me, on the way from somewhere to somewhere, that she had put out word that I had retired from active campaigning for a time to organize coming responsibilities such as researching the best appointments and preparing a major address. She had, in effect, covered for Tocsin's crime, knowing that my life would be forfeit if she did not. We had taken an enormous chance—to reap an enormous gain. She had carried on in my stead, giving my speeches and in general showing that she was indeed competent to stand in lieu of me, never showing her natural concern for me. So my campaign had proceeded without visible falter, and at the time of my reappearance the odds remained fifty-fifty. My concluding address had been critical indeed.

“If Tocsin had been smarter,” I told her, “he would have kidnapped you instead of me!” It was not really a joke; Spirit was competent at all the necessary details I ignored. She had been running my campaign throughout, based on Megan's strategy, and this had not changed during my absence. The campaign had survived my absence; it could not have survived her absence.

Then I was alone with Megan, and it was difficult. “About Dorian Gray—” I began.

“I understand,” she said quietly.

“No, I mean—”

“You were memory-washed,” she said firmly. “Your system fights off drugs, but it takes time to develop specific antibodies, and so at first you remembered nothing, not even your marriage. They put you with a comely young woman—”

“I remembered you,” I said. Another person might have found it expedient to deceive her on this point, but there was no way I would lie to Megan. “But—”

“But you realized that if your captors realized that, they would have killed you,” she said. "So you had to do what they wanted. Hope, it isn't as though you have never had a relationship with another woman.

You had four wives before me."

Four wives. She was counting Helse, who had died on the verge of our marriage, and Juana, my first Navy roommate, and my two formal term-wives. It was true I had had enduring and loving relationships with those four, and sexual liaisons in the Navy fashion with many others. “You are very understanding,” I said.

“Hope, I love you,” she said, as if making a point.

I took her in my arms and kissed her, and she was all my desire. I was just shy of fifty years old, and she was in her mid-fifties, but what I felt for her would have been completely comprehensible to folk in their twenties. Or their teens. But when I thought to go further, she demurred.

I let her go immediately, knowing that despite her intellectual understanding, she had been hurt emotionally. I could not step lightly from the arms of one woman to the arms of another. Not when the other was Megan. In a way I found that reassuring; I loved Megan in part because her love was no casual thing. If her condemnation did not come readily, neither did her forgiveness. Our relationship had suffered two major blows during the campaign: the horror of the siege of our train, which had exposed her to a level of violence that gave her post-traumatic nightmares; and now the horror of my separation from her, including a relationship with another woman. Yes, I understood.

But then she turned back to me, and her face was washed in tears. “Oh, Hope!” she cried, and fell back into my embrace. She gave me everything, then, forgiveness and all, with a kind of desperation reminiscent of that of our daughter, though on a distinctly different plane. Her love had overwhelmed her reserve.

Still, I knew those two strikes remained, and I knew I could not afford a third one. I loved Megan and she loved me, and because it was no casual relation we had, any damage to it was not casual, either.

Forgiveness and forgetting may come most readily to those whose real feelings are only lightly committed.

I swept to victory on election day; it was evident before the polls closed that I had a planetslide. I was tuned out at the time, of course, but it interested me when I learned of it later. Analysis indicated that I had ninety-seven percent of the Hispanic vote, with a record turnout; ninety-two percent of the Black vote; seventy percent of the Saxon female vote; and thirty percent of the Saxon male vote. Overall it came to fifty-five percent, a very comfortable margin.

But Tocsin refused to concede defeat. In fact, he acted as if he had won. The arrogance of the man was amazing.

Then I found out that the campaign was not yet over. The United States of Jupiter, almost alone among contemporary republics, retains what is termed the Electoral College. Over the past six centuries or so, one variant after another had been tried, but the dynamics of politics generally interfered with the simple ratio of one citizen, one vote. At present each state was allocated a block of electoral votes in proportion to its population, and that entire block went to whatever candidate had a plurality in that state. This tended to leverage the voting, giving the large states a disproportionate weight in the Electoral College.

Indeed, it was possible for a candidate to win the national popular vote and lose the electoral vote. In addition, in a number of states, the electors aren't technically committed to the candidate who won the state. They were expected to vote as the ordinary voters had, and normally they did, but they didn't actually have to. Now it became apparent that special pressure was being brought to bear on some electors to break ranks and vote for the wrong candidate: Tocsin. His campaign had a staggering amount of money available, and it seemed that bribes were being proffered that were quite substantial, as well as promises of political patronage.

In addition, the results were being challenged in several key states. A sophisticated kind of gerrymandering was systematically excluding Hispanics and Blacks from important aspects of the recounts, so that the results were bound to shift to my disfavor. Somehow my strong supporters were being shunted to regions that were already solidly in my camp, leaving the borderline regions to tilt marginally the other way. A margin was as good as a mile for this purpose; I could lose whole states, and all their electoral votes. This process was illegal, of course, but private money does talk, and evidently it was talking persuasively. We really had to scramble to keep abreast of it, challenging the challenges, and forcing re-recounts, lest we forfeit states we had actually won. Had Tocsin had his way unchallenged, he would have shifted enough electoral votes to achieve a scant majority in the College. As it was, he did abscond with some but not enough. Our dyke held, and I was confirmed. I felt as if I had won a second election, and in a way I had.

Then a bill appeared in Congress, concerning something routine—in my scramble to plug the leaks in the dyke (though really Spirit was doing it, and my staff; I was merely watching nervously) I never really ascertained what—bearing an obscure amendment relating to the political process. The bill passed shortly before the turn of the year, and the nature of the amendment became belatedly clear. It was a

“clarification” of the requirement for holding major office in Jupiter. Above a certain level it was now illegal for any foreign-born citizen to hold office. Spirit and I were foreign-born, technically, as we had come from the independent satellite of Callisto and had been naturalized as full Jupiter citizens when we left the Navy. Suddenly we were barred from taking the offices to which we had just been elected.

Naturally we challenged this bit of skullduggery on several grounds. We pressed for a rehearing and revote in Congress but were stonewalled; by the time we got through that, the day of taking office would be past. So we sued and got an expedited hearing before the Supreme Court itself, a week before the deadline of January 20, 2650. This was highly unusual, but the entire situation was extraordinary. Only direct access to the highest court could settle this in time.

The technical question was whether Congress had the right to pass ex post facto legislation affecting a candidate already elected. We argued that this was inequitable at best, and a mockery of the entire election process at worst. The opposition argued that this was not properly considered as new legislation but was merely a clarification of existing policy and therefore was valid. They succeeded in obfuscating the real issue—that of who was to be president—to the point that it became a question of my fitness for the office. I actually was required to summon character references on my behalf. Naturally Tocsin summoned character-assassination witnesses.

So while the twelve Supreme Court Justices listened in seeming passivity, Spirit and I suffered through the ordeal of being publicly judged as persons. All manner of innuendo was brought out in an evident effort to make us lose our tempers. We survived that—our Naval combat experience helped—but we were almost torpedoed by our friends. My first Navy roommate, Juana, now a master sergeant, testified to my excellent character and confessed that she and I had met in the tail—i.e., Navy institution of sex, the complement to the head—and had subsequently lived together as de facto man and wife for two years before moving on to other assignments. Cross-examination established other partners in sex that I had had. It was, of course, the Navy way, neither right nor wrong, but it was a way that was not generally understood in civilian life. Emerald gave similar evidence, except that she had actually married me, until it became expedient for her to go to another officer in order to obtain his expertise for the benefit of our unit. Again it was the Navy way; again it was damaging in the present context, as was the fact that Emerald had obvious Black ancestry. The Navy strove to extirpate racism from its midst by civilian directive, and mixed marriages were accepted without question, as were interracial liaisons in the Tail. But the civilian sector had not applied similar discipline as strenuously to itself; interracial marriages, though legal, were socially problematical. Twelve old Saxon men were listening; were they free of the taint of covert racism themselves? I had to pray that it was so, but I doubted it. Three of them had been appointed by Tocsin himself, and they were recognized as ideological rather than quality selections; no hope that they would rule against him. Three others had been appointed by his predecessor Kenson, who were of superior merit. The six remaining were similarly divided, so that there was an even conservative/liberal split and no great certainty that merit would be the deciding aspect of any particular case.

Then we came to the last of my Navy liaisons. Admiral Phist (Retired) and his wife Roulette, Ambassador from the Belt, were brought to Jupiter, to the court in the bubble of New Wash. They were cross-examined like criminals by the lawyer from the other side. “And isn't it true that you are a pirate wench?” the lawyer demanded of Roulette.

Roulette was now a striking woman of thirty-nine, retaining fiery hair and a figure that caused even the venerable heads of the Supreme Court Justices to turn. She had been in her youth the most beautiful woman, physically, I had known, the veritable incarnation of man's desire. She had also been the daughter of a prominent pirate. I had married her, in the pirate fashion, and we had loved each other in our private fashion. This detracts in no way from my love of Megan. Roulette had been an extraordinarily fetching passing fancy; Megan was the true love of my life. Yet I cannot deny that my pulse accelerated somewhat when I saw her here in person, hourglass figure intact.

“Objection!” our attorney protested, but Roulette waved him away.

“I can answer for myself,” she said. She turned disdainfully to the interrogator and fixed him with a gaze that actually made him step back. “Yes, I was a pirate wench—until Captain Hubris made a woman of me.”