Politician

  I paused again. I wanted to be sure this got through to the average viewer. I had had to get special permission to reveal this information, and I wanted to do it exactly right. “Obviously the base will have to be operated by its present key personnel, regardless of the sovereignty of the facility. I’m sure suitable arrangements can be made. Now let’s suppose that some power like Saturn wishes to change the locks and keys and personnel, for its own purposes. Do you suppose the present personnel will acquiesce? Will they operate the gates to admit and facilitate the equipment and personnel employed to effect their replacement? The lock-changing equipment is bulky; it can be transported only by a sizable vessel, and Ganymede lacks port facilities elsewhere to accommodate such vessels.” Once more I paused. “In short, the little pig is not about to open the door to let in the wolf—or the bear.”

  That was the essence. Saturn could not change those locks covertly. Jupiter personnel would operate the base for the benefit of Ganymede alone, and facilitate its use as a commercial port for the shipment of sugar and such. I believed that my proposal would be approved, disappointing as it might be to Saturn; it was definitely advantageous for Ganymede.

  Khukov came to me and shook my hand. “I rather thought it would be that,” he said in English. “May all our problems admit of such ready solutions.”

  Thereafter he returned to Saturn, his job done, and I made plans for Jupiter and reunion with my family. I could not claim I had enjoyed all of my experience on Gany, but certainly it had provided me more than it cost me, including a planetary spotlight that would enhance my future as a politician. For one thing it had returned to me my long-lost sister—an event more significant for my peace of mind than I had allowed myself to believe before it occurred.

  CHAPTER 10

  CONFESSION

  Now I knew I could help Dorian Gray; a simple personal request to the premier of Ganymede would produce that baby in hours. Dorian must have known this; that was why she had been so ready to enlist my aid. My captors might not choose to honor their promise, but I, Hope Hubris, the former ambassador to Ganymede, would certainly honor my promise. I had become a better bet for Dorian’s purpose than my captors were. Suddenly it all fell into place, and I believed I could trust her. True, she might be covering all bases, ready to collect from my captors if they prevailed, and from me if I prevailed, but she would probably elect to go with me if she could. That was a comfort to me, because I suspected I would have to tell her more of my memories than I had hitherto, if I was to make further progress. And I did have to make progress, for I didn’t know how much time I had or what my captors really wanted of me. I knew only I had to thwart their plans, and I couldn’t do that if I didn’t know enough.

  In due course I was released from the cell, cleaned up, and taken to Scar. “If I may inquire,” I said cautiously, “in what way did I transgress this time? I had not intended to.”

  “You play the innocent with me?” Scar demanded curtly. “Confess your crime and I’ll let it go without further ado.”

  Was he fishing for something? I gave him the minimum, hoping that was what he wanted. “Then you found out how I escaped my cell at night.”

  He nodded. “How long did you think you could fool us about that, Hubris?”

  Of course, he had known about it all along, so this was merely a pretext. But I had to play it through, relieved that my true secrets had not been exposed. There was no evidence that Dorian had betrayed me; certainly they would not have punished me openly if she had, for that would have given her away. Why had Scar chosen this time to brace me with this?

  “I didn’t tell you because I knew you’d stop it,” I said with genuine regret. It was not for the discovery but because now he would surely have to cut off my contact with Dorian, to maintain appearances, and I did indeed value that contact. “My only female companionship. I hoped she wouldn’t turn me in.”

  “She didn’t,” he said.

  “Don’t punish her!” I exclaimed with suitable feeling. “She didn’t start it! I used a plumbing rod to jimmy the door. It was so hard to be alone.”

  “Evidently she felt the same way,” he said grimly. “We put her back in the stink-cell too, but she hasn’t talked.”

  “Let her out!” I pleaded. “I won’t do it anymore. Maybe she didn’t dare say anything for fear I’d get out again and attack her!”

  “You seem quite interested in the slut’s welfare,” he remarked with satisfaction.

  “She’s no slut!” I protested, showing exactly that commitment he wished.

  “You like her so well?”

  I spread my hands as if caught in an awkward admission. “She— gave me comfort.”

  “Considerably more than comfort!” he exclaimed with righteous indignation.

  “Please, just tell me what you want, and I’ll give you no trouble. Only don’t hurt her any more.”

  Scar grimaced, but he was well pleased. I was giving every evidence of the very sort of attachment he had wanted. It seemed that the woman was now an excellent lever on me.

  “I’ll do better than that,” he decided. “I’ll put you in a cell together, as long as you both cooperate completely.”

  I gaped, showing my amazement at his generosity. He had, indeed, surprised me. This was definitely the carrot instead of the stick. I had been careful to maintain the pretense of increasing addiction to the beverage-drug, so now he believed he had another excellent lever on me.

  Dorian Gray was moved into my cell, and the plumbing was fixed so that escape from the cell was no longer possible. Now we had light and saw each other for the first time.

  She was exactly as beautiful as I had judged. Her hair was jet-black and hung in gently curving hanks to her armpits. Her face was elfin, but her body was as finely formed as any could be without requiring an entry to starlet career. Surely she had no need of this sort of employment. But, of course, folk of either sex can be foolish in their teens and get themselves trapped in situations that greater experience would have enabled them to avoid. Dorian, by her own account, had been as foolish as any.

  “They found out,” I said somewhat awkwardly. “So they put us together, but if either of us fail to cooperate with their program completely—”

  “I know,” she agreed. Then she moved to me, and I took her in my arms. “I did not tell on you; I don’t know how they found out.” She raised her lips to kiss me, and her tongue darted through to caress mine, twice. Of course, she knew how they knew; we were being watched right now.

  We undressed and squeezed into my hammock, not turning off the light. Actually we couldn’t; the day/night switching was automatic. That didn’t bother me; it was a treat to handle her body when I could see it.

  “That pit-cell was awful; I hated it in there again,” she told me as she signaled “no.” I understood; she was supposed to be their agent, hiding the truth from me. She would hardly be punished for doing what she was supposed to do. Naturally she had been reporting on our encounters all along—up to a point. Now she was supposed to make me believe she had suffered, to intensify my sympathy and feeling for her.

  I responded as I was supposed to. “I dread the thought of your being put in there because of me! After this, anything they ask you to do, do without question; it’s the only way.”

  “The only way,” she agreed, kissing me again and tonguing me twice.

  As we proceeded toward the love act, discovering it to be a new experience in the light, she informed me by words and signals what had really happened. There had been a sudden visit by an officer not in the know about the program here, so that they had had to scramble to make things appear routine. I had been dumped out of sight, and she had been put in a uniform and set to work again in the galley. After the officer left, things had returned to normal, except that they had had to cobble up a pretext for my apparent punishment. It seemed to have worked out all right. Scar had tricked me into confessing, so that he did not have to reveal his connivance. It had also shown ho
w effectively Dorian had hooked me; Scar was pleased with her.

  “But you know,” she said in un-talk. “You are married, Hope. When your memory catches up—”

  “I know,” I agreed in the same way.

  “You know?”

  I had decided to tell her part of my secret, because I was sure I would need her help to return to the smell-cell, and I wanted to be sure she remained in good repute as a spy. “I discovered a key term that triggered a segment of my lost memory: how I married Megan.”

  “A key term?” She was genuinely surprised. “You knew-before you made love to me?”

  “I knew. I, too, am a professional.”

  She was abruptly angry. “How could you!” I was lucky she hadn’t bitten me instead of tonguing me!

  “I love her. I would do anything to return to her, just as you would do to recover your baby.”

  She considered that, shaken. “I suppose turnabout is fair. But you will help me if you can?”

  “Yes. And now I know I can—if I get free of this captivity.”

  “Then I will do whatever you ask of me.”

  We continued on to the culmination, for such coded discourse took time, and there was only so much seemingly idle dialogue we could indulge in without arousing suspicion. Then we slept.

  I had implied that I had no real feeling for Dorian, but that was not true. I was doing what I was doing with her because I had to, but I did enjoy it on its own level. It was becoming more difficult to reconcile this with my memories.

  Next day I went through the routine indoctrination and performed well. Next night I talked further with Dorian, not making love but spending the night in her embrace. I told her that she would have to betray my secret: my keyed memory.

  I cupped her ear with my hands and whispered directly into that enclosure: nonsense syllables that would seem to the recording mike like not-quite-distinguishable information. I was officially telling her my secret, and my captors, when they reviewed this portion of the record, would be desperate to know what it was. She would tell them and thus prove herself to be even more useful to them. But she had yet to find out exactly where I had seen the key term, though the implication was that it was in this cell.

  In return I needed to know exactly what my captors really wanted of me. She would have to ask them, in the guise of discovering how dangerous my returning memories might be to their objective. If she could get me that information I might have a chance to counter it.

  She made her report—and suddenly I was back in the hole. This time I knew why: They were going over my regular cell with as fine a brush as possible. They were desperate to find and eliminate anything that would cause my memories to return prematurely. That confirmed a suspicion I had. Their mission for me involved something recent, and if I remembered that thing I would probably be able to counter it.

  Why didn’t they simply mem-wash me again? That, too, was

  now clear: they didn’t have time. I needed to have a substantial portion of my memories so that I could function without obvious incapacity—without the key memory that would give me too much information. They were fine-tuning me for their purpose. As much by luck as by planning, I had a tool to counter their program. I had the memory-evoking key terms. I felt under the muck for the scratches, finding my place. I had gotten to the H in WHO before; now I had to resume there. WHO ENTER HERE. The symbol for the O-space was a square, . That was the number 5. Count off five in the mental alphabet, O, P, Q, R, S—the first letter was S. The next symbol was , 12 from the space after O. That took me through the punctuation portion and back to the beginning of the alphabet, A. Then , 16, counting from the E, to T. And , 8 from the N, to U. Then , 36 from the T—simply count back 2, for R. , 10 from the E, or N. And , again, 10 from the R, taking me to the end of the letters, the space, making the end.

  The word was SATURN.

  CHAPTER 11

  PARDON

  I returned to Jupiter a hero, again. This time my campaign for governor brought larger crowds than before. I was better known because of my prior campaign and my Gany success, and, of course, many people remembered my reputation from the Navy. In the interim the current governor had fouled things up in the usual manner, catering too openly to the special interests who had gotten him into office. He was running for reelection, so had the power of incumbency, but he was not otherwise a strong candidate. He saw me draw ahead of him in the polls, so he went the dirty route: smearing me as a Hispanic, a dealer with Saturnists, and a killer of hundreds. All true, of course, but it backfired, because the Sunshine electorate understood the circumstances and objected to the smear attempt. Angry Hispanics started a registration drive and added many thousands of voters; on election day their weight was felt in Ami and especially in Ybor. I won, not by any landslide, but comfortably enough, and I still had not succumbed to the lure of special-interest money.

  As governor I had a lot more power and a lot more responsibility, and things were more complicated than they had been when I had been a senator. From the outset I received threatening letters from anti-Hispanic bigots who called me un-Jupiterian, by what logic I am uncertain. To my way of thinking the bigots are the un-Jupiterian ones. Coral had to keep alert, and she did intercept a letter bomb.

  I started immediately, setting up committees to formulate the reforms I had in mind. But I discovered that I could not simply institute a program and implement it; I had to reckon with the legislature and the bureaucracy. Resistance to any change I initiated was indirect but massive—a political coriolis force that blunted every effort. As an officer in the Navy I had become accustomed to determining policy for my unit, giving the necessary orders, and seeing them carried out. Here, none of it was straightforward. After my first year in office I considered what I had accomplished in the way of monetary reform, improved education, prison reform, and suppression of the burgeoning trade in illicit drugs, and shook my head in frustration. Hardly anything seemed to have changed. The present system simply wasn’t geared for change of any kind; it was like wading through molasses. Certainly I had made thrusts in all these areas and hoped that success would come, but it had not yet manifested.

  As governor I also received a good deal of mail. Most of it Shelia handled, summarizing it efficiently for me, but some required my personal attention. Sometimes seemingly minor things developed into major ones. One example was the missive from Mrs. Burton:

  Dear Governor Hubris:

  I am seventy-four years old, a widow, in pretty good health. My stipend isn’t really enough, and, anyway, I’d rather be a productive citizen. I am a competent stage technician, conversant with most technical equipment currently in use for broadcasts, and my record is good. But no one will hire me because of my age. Governor, I call this age discrimination, and I wish you would do something about it. A lot of us older people are ready, willing, and able to contribute to the economy—if you will let us.

  I pondered for about three seconds. “Shelia, draft up a policy memo for signature: There shall be no discrimination in Sunshine on account of age. Anybody who can pass the tests and perform the job shall be considered on an equal basis, beginning with Mrs. Burton. We’ll make an example of her; if she’s as competent as she says she is I’ll hire her myself.”

  In two days we had Mrs. Burton in my office. She was a large, heavyset woman of grandmotherly aspect; her hair was gray, her skin mottled, and her hands gnarled. But she checked out personally, and she did know her stuff; we used her to set up the stage for any public addresses I made, and my performance did improve as the result of her expertise. Now the sonic pickup was always aimed and tuned correctly, so that my voice sounded authoritative, and the light always brought out my best profile. The lectern was the right height for me and the seat comfortable. I felt quite at home in a setting that she had worked on, and that was worth a lot.

  She became a kind of handywoman on the off days, seeing to the repair of furniture and furnishings. I liked to relax on occasion by reading ol
d-fashioned books, the kind where you turn the pages by hand, but they tended to pile up awkwardly near my chair or desk. Mrs. Burton constructed a little bookcase that solved the problem.

  Hopie took to her right away, adopting her as a grandmother figure. It would be an exaggeration to suggest that I could not have functioned without Mrs. Burton, but certainly she earned her keep and was a worthwhile associate.

  But for every letter that worked out positively, there were a number that did not. I simply was unable to solve the personal and economic problems of every person in the state.

  Rather than detail the tedious minutiae of my frustrated efforts, I’ll concentrate instead on the matters in which I was successful. Perhaps this is my human vanity asserting itself, but success did not necessarily assuage my vanity. Early in my tenure trouble broke out in the Ami area. Here there was a large number of immigrants from Ganymede who had arrived over the course of the past twenty years as the economic situation of Gany worsened. They had formed a fairly cohesive community of their own, which was taking hold and doing well, but in the eyes of the Saxon majority they were shiftless louts. Since the police were mostly Saxons, some law enforcement seemed to have racial undertones.

  On this occasion the precipitant was bilingual education. The sizable Hispanic minority wished to have school classes taught in Spanish as well as English, so that the children who spoke no English would not be at a disadvantage. The school system had refused, once more, and so another riot had broken out. These events made the headlines periodically. The police tended to be heavy-handed. Sometimes there were serious confrontations, with deaths occurring.