The Iron Maiden (17 page)

Megan had a considerable history. In her youth she had been an excellent singer; then she had entered politics and run for Congress. She had served as congresswoman, then run for senator--and been sabotaged by a completely unscrupulous opportunist. Megan was a liberal, concerned with human values and the alleviation of poverty and oppression on the planet, and her political record reflected this. Her opponent, an aggressive man named Tocsin, was a creature of the affluent special interests. He promptly denounced her as “soft on Saturnism,” that being the dirtiest political accusation it was possible to make.

Theoretically the government of Saturn represented the comrades of the working class; actually it was a leftist dictatorship that suppressed the working class as ruthlessly as did any other system. Megan certainly had not supported that; she believed in human rights. It was a scurrilous tactic, an open smear campaign--but it worked. Tocsin won the election. Megan had supposed that competence, experience, and goodwill should carry the day; she had been brutally disabused.

“That woman was raped,” Spirit murmured.

Megan was five years Hope's senior, a pedigreed Saxon, but that would not matter when he got close to her. She was beautiful, and as Reba had said, she dwarfed Helse in intelligence and competence, though Spirit did not bring that up. She did indeed seem like an excellent match for him, and not merely because of his fixation stemming from her slight physical resemblance to Helse. Hope needed a woman to take care of him, and Megan could certainly do that. With Megan in his life, Spirit would have greater freedom to focus on other matters, as had been the case when Emerald handled his career.

Megan had probably never heard of Hope Hubris, but he intended to marry her. And Spirit would do her best to make it happen.

Megan lived well around the planet from Sunshine, in the state of Golden. So they traveled there, and went to her residence without an appointment. They asked for her by intercom. And Megan declined to see him.

“She was a singer,” Spirit murmured.

He grasped at that straw. “Tell her Captain Hubris will sing her his song!” he exclaimed. “She need only listen, then I will go. Surely she will grant this much to one who has crossed the planet to meet her.”

The gatekeeper, plainly impatient with this nonsense, nevertheless buzzed her again. “Ma'am, he is insistent. He promises to depart if you will listen to his song.” There was a pause, then he repeated,

“Captain Hubris. He says he has crossed the planet to meet you. There is a woman with him.” He paused again. Then he glanced at Hope. “Sing your song, sir.”

Hope sang his song: Worried Man Blues. “It takes a worried man to sing a worried song... I'm worried now, but I won't be worried long.”

Now Megan spoke directly to Hope. “Who is the woman with you, Captain?”

“My sister, Spirit Hubris.”

“Does she also sing?”

Startled by this unexpected reaction, Spirit sang her song: “I know where I'm going, and I know who's going with me; I know who I love, but the dear knows who I'll marry.”

When she stopped, they heard Megan's voice clearly. “Miss Hubris, you love your brother, don't you?”

“I do,” Spirit agreed, bemused by this interest in her.

Megan agreed to see them.

Megan's beauty of youth had not paled; it had matured. The more recent pictures in the material QYV

had given Hope had suggested it; life confirmed it. “It is not often I am visited by military personnel,” she remarked.

“Retired,” Hope said. “We are civilians now.”

“So you knew Uncle Mason,” she said.

“Only briefly,” Hope said, surprised. Evidently they were not complete strangers to her. Perhaps the scientist had mentioned the episode before he died. “I was with--Helse. She--looked like you.”

“Of course,” Megan said, as if it could have been no other way. She had that certain presence that facilitated this. “But that was some time ago.”

“It's still true,” he said, gazing at her. The sight of Megan was casting a spell over him; Spirit could see it happening.

“You still identify with the working class?”

“I do.”

She nodded. As a politician she had sponsored social legislation; she was a friend of the working class, though she had never been part of it herself. “Yet you achieved a certain notoriety in that connection as an officer in the Navy, I believe.”

“I helped make peace between the migrants and the farmers,” Hope said defensively.

“Indeed you did,” she agreed. “At one stroke you forged a settlement and set a precedent none of the rest of us had been able to arrange in years.”

He was surprised again, and so was Spirit. “You--were watching that?”

She laughed. “My dear Captain, it was the headline of the day! I knew that you would be going far.”

“You were aware of me before then?” Hope asked.

“Uncle Mason had mentioned you. He said it was like seeing me again, as I had been in my youth... that girl with you. I was then in my early twenties”

Spirit made a half-humorous sigh of nostalgia: the notion that a woman in her twenties was beyond her prime. Megan responded with a smile. Spirit found herself liking the woman.

“Then when you showed up at Chiron,” Megan continued, “which I know was a very ticklish situation, I recognized you. Naturally I was curious. But I hardly thought you were aware of me. You caught me quite by surprise, coming here like this. Perhaps I should have realized that a military man normally takes direct action.”

“But if you recognized my name why did you refuse my letter?”

“Did you write? I'm so sorry. I refuse all posts from strangers because of the hate mail.”

“Hate mail?” Spirit asked, surprised. It turned out that Megan still received nasty letters from conservatives.

“Yet you refused to see me,” Hope said.

“Captain Hubris, I have put that life behind me,” she said firmly. “I knew the moment I heard your name that you were here on a political errand. I shall not suffer myself to be dragged into that mire again.” She grimaced in a fetching manner. “Then you sang, and it was a song of the working class...”

“But you were wronged!” Hope protested. “You should not let one bad experience deprive you of your career!”

“Didn't you, Captain?” she asked, scoring.

Soon Hope got down to his real business: he wanted her to guide him in his forthcoming political career.

“My dear man, whatever makes you suppose I would do such a thing?”

“I'm sure you are loyal to your principles and your family. Therefore--”

“But we are not related!”

“Not yet,” Spirit murmured.

“What are you trying to say, Captain?”

“I want to marry you, Megan.”

Her mouth actually dropped open. “Have you any idea what you're saying?”

“You are the only living woman I can love,” he said.

She was stunned but rallied quickly. “Because I once resembled your childhood sweetheart? Surely you know better than that!”

Hope tried to explain, but for once failed to get through. Megan looked at Spirit. “You are his sister, and you love him more than any other. What do you make of this?”

Spirit shook her head. “I'm not sure you would understand.”

“I suspect I had better understand! Describe to me his nature as you appreciate it.”

Spirit dropped her gaze, frowning, but made the effort. “Hope Hubris is a specially talented person. He reads people. He is like a polygraph, a device to record and interpret the physical reactions of people he talks with. He knows when they are tense, when they are easy, when they hurt or are happy, when they are truthful and when lying. He uses his insight to handle them, to cause them to go his way without their realizing this. He--”

“You are describing the consummate politician,” Megan exclaimed.

“So we understand,” Spirit agreed. “But that's not what I'm addressing at the moment. Hope--is loved by others because he understands them so well, in his fashion. The men who work with him are fanatically loyal, and the women love him, though they know he can not truly return their love. But he--his talent perhaps makes him inherently cynical, emotionally, on the deep level. On the surface he is ready to love, but below he knows better, so he can not. Except for his first love, Helse. She initiated him into manhood, and there was no cynicism there. But having given his love to her, he could not then truly give it elsewhere--with one exception. The woman who looked like Helse.”

Megan dabbed at her forehead with a dainty handkerchief, as if becoming faint from overexertion. “But he doesn't even know me.”

“He doesn't need to,” Spirit said. “This has nothing to do with knowledge. It has to do with faith.”

“It is also true that I need your expertise in politics,” Hope said. “So there is a practical foundation. Marry me and it will make sense.”

Megan, naturally enough, resisted the notion. She did not want to return to politics, and was not about to marry a stranger.

“Convince her,” Hope said to his sister.

Spirit made the effort. “Megan--may I call you that?--I must argue that your life has indeed developed toward this union. You are a fine person, an outstanding political figure, and a lovely woman, though my brother still would have come for you had you been otherwise. You deserve better than what the maelstrom of Jupiter politics has given you. You deserve to wield power, for you do know how to use it, and you have a social conscience unrivaled in the contemporary scene. You did not lose your last campaign because you were inadequate but because you were superior. You refused to stoop to the tactics your opponent used. As with money, the bad drove out the good, and you lost your place in the public eye, while your opponent flourishes like a weed. But whatever the politics, the bad remains bad and the good remains good, and this my brother understands.”

Thus Hope's courtship of Megan, the woman of his dreams. She did not acquiesce immediately, but with further acquaintance his power and qualities slowly eroded her resistance, and four months after their first meeting, she did marry him. At first it was a marriage in name only, but in time that too changed. It was not accurate to say she came into his orbit; rather they orbited each other. Hope had won his second love, and it was a fully worthy relationship with no stain on it.

Except, perhaps, for one aspect, which was not the fault of either. It was Spirit's fault.

*

They delved into political issues, under Megan's competent tutelage, trying to learn everything. This was their homework for the coming political effort.

Meanwhile, their limited activity had not gone unnoticed. The political columnist for a local newspaper was a man who signed himself simply “Thorley.” Between elections he was evidently short of material, so minor things warranted comment.

“Guess who's coming to town,” Thorley wrote conversationally, showing by this signal that this was not a subject to be taken too seriously. “Remember the darling of the bleeding-heart set in Golden, Megan? It seems she married the gallant of the Jupiter Navy, Captain Hubris, a man some years her junior. Rumor has it that one of them has political pretensions.”

“That's insulting,” Hope said angrily. “What right does he have to--”

“We are, or were, public figures,” Megan said. "Our names are in the common domain, his to play with at will. He tosses them about as a canine tosses a rag doll, entertaining himself. You will have to get used to this sort of thing if you wish to survive in politics. Words become as heated and effective as lasers.

Perhaps you can better appreciate, now, why I was not eager to return to the arena myself."

Indeed, Spirit was coming to appreciate that. “He's our demon.”

“Just keep in mind that though Thorley is at the opposite end of the political spectrum, a thorough conservative, he is a competent journalist and an honest man.”

“You would find good in the devil himself,” Hope charged her, smiling.

“That might be a slight exaggeration. But Thorley is no devil. His beliefs may be wrong-headed by my definitions, but he is no demagogue. He will not compromise his principles, and that is to be respected.”

Much of the evil of the political system seemed to center on money. Politicians needed a lot of money to campaign effectively, and it soon corrupted them. There needed to be reform of campaign financing.

They oriented on this, and Hope began speaking of it in citizen meetings.

Columnist Thorley had another comment in print: “Captain Hubris, he who tightened the Belt, has been delving into the arcane lore of Campaign Finance (his caps, not mine). Could he be interested in something of the sort himself? Stranger things have been known to occur in the murky by-paths of the liberal establishment.”

They let that pass, with an effort. They continued their research and participation in citizen initiatives.

Three years passed. In that time Hope's marriage to Megan became real, so it was not a dull time for him. But Spirit was restless, though she did not express it. She missed having a man in her private life.

She even missed the Navy Tail. She had thought she could take or leave sex, but after Gerald she appreciated it more.

They hired an executive secretary. Megan selected her, somewhat in the manner the Beautiful Dreamer had selected ideal officers: she located the best who were otherwise barred. Thus Shelia--and that was the spelling--joined their small group. She was a lovely girl, seventeen years old, highly qualified, and confined for life to a wheelchair. But she was a very quick study and a dedicated worker. Soon she had a clearer notion of the campaign strategy than Hope did. Of course she loved Hope, and served him in the best way she could: with absolute loyalty.

Hope ran for state secretary. He told the truth, eschewed special interest money, and refused to dig for any dirt. Consequently he looked like a likely loser, and the polls confirmed it.

Thorley summarized the situation succinctly: “Hope Hubris constituency: Belt 20. Hispanic 20. Total 35.”

Allowing for overlap. Of a likely voting population of millions.

Hope's ire focused on Thorley. “I'm about ready to do something about that guy,” he muttered. “I'd like to debate him before an audience.”