Executive

by Piers Anthony

  “But how does changing the currency eliminate tax havens?”

  He smiled. “The new currency will be coded, so that its origin and location can be traced. When large amounts collect in one place and the tax for the transaction is not paid, our agents will, ah, pounce. I worked this out at Ms. Phist’s suggestion—”

  “Roulette,” I said. “Rue to her friends. She’s a remarkable woman.”

  “A remarkable woman,” he agreed. I was not certain whether he was thinking of her physical or her intellectual endowments. “Her interest is in tracking the illicit sums involved in drugs and gambling, but we realized that this would also track other types of activity. I suspect that, for perhaps the first time in the history of Jupiter as a nation, the appropriate tax will be paid on virtually all earned income. On that basis the flat twenty-percent rate should bring in substantially more revenue than the prior graduated tax system did, though that went up to a fifty per cent rate. This, coupled with the five percent VAT—”

  “The five per cent what?”

  “VAT. Value Added Tax. It has been used successfully for centuries on Uranus but not here on Jupiter. It is essentially a planetary sales tax, collected at every stage in segments, so that—”

  “So between the two, it will, be a twenty-five per cent tax rate,” I said.

  “Not precisely, because income and sales are not identical. The dynamics—”

  “And this will eliminate the deficit and balance the budget?”

  “Well, not at first. As with any venture, there are initial costs and qualifications. But once the system is in place, this is the objective.”

  I wasn’t satisfied. “I told you I wanted the budget balanced! What’s this about initial costs and qualifications?”

  “Full employment is not achieved in a day. Not via the private sector. Admiral Phist estimates that it will take at least two years before the industrial base expands enough to accommodate the entire labor force. Until that time the government must be the Employer of Last Resort, and that means—”

  “One hell of an expense for the unemployed,” I finished. “Faith is really making you pay for that mortgage deduction!”

  “Initially, yes. But the long-term trend is definitely healthy.”

  I nodded. He knew what he was doing; my passion for the instant fix was misplaced. “How does the gold standard relate?”

  “Nothing permanent can be accomplished without a stable currency. We expect to eliminate automatic raises, because we expect to eliminate inflation. The only sure way to do that is to back all of our currency with value, and that means metals and goods. A value-backed currency does not erode. With that certainty we can perhaps work marvels.”

  I smiled. “You’re enjoying this, Senator!”

  “I’m afraid I am, Tyrant,” he confessed. “I have always wanted to see what could be accomplished with a genuinely competent administration.”

  “Me too.” So far, it looked good.

  • • •

  “Sir.” Shelia had a call for me. “Tocsin.”

  Now it started. “On,” I said shortly.

  Tocsin’s homely face appeared on the main screen.

  “Tyrant, what the hell is this nonsense about cutting the allotments? Those were set up by Congress; they can’t be touched!”

  “I abolished Congress,” I reminded him. “I am a dictator; I am bound by no prior governmental commitments.”

  “Listen, we made a deal. You pardoned me. You can’t start going after me now!”

  “I’m not. These reductions apply to all civil service and military retirees at all levels. No one is exempted; there is now a single standard of retirement. Your predecessor has the same limit.”

  “Kenson? He’s getting no more than I do?” he asked, brightening.

  “Slightly more, because he was in office longer. But no more than a retiree of similar level in the civilian sector.”

  He became crafty. “What happens when you retire, Hubris?”

  “There is no provision for my retirement. I don’t expect to collect any benefits.”

  “You mean you plan to stay in power forever?” he demanded.

  “No. I expect to be assassinated in due course.”

  He started to laugh, then cut it off, staring at me, realizing that I was serious. He faded out.

  • • •

  Shelia caught my eye. She held up a chip.

  “What?” I asked, perplexed.

  “Remember your anonymous girlfriend? The veiled woman?”

  “Oh,” I said, feeling inane. It had been a month or more— again, my memory is imprecise, for at that time I did not realize the significance of this correspondence, and the matter had faded from my awareness. Now memory brought another concern.

  “This—something like this could be used to embarrass me. Maybe I shouldn’t—”

  She shook her head. “This one can be trusted, sir.” If Shelia said so, it was so. I put aside my concern. I took the chip, and later, when I had a suitable break, I donned the helmet and turned on the scene.

  I was back in the blurry chamber, watching the glowing me-figure. Though feelies like this are generated in the mind, they generally do show scenes from an anonymous third-party view, as if a camera were there. I think this derives from conventional holo technique, which portrays a person as being alone, though obviously someone is tracking him with a camera; we learn to suspend our logic for the sake of the story, and we imitate that technique in our fancy. It isn’t necessary, just convenient.

  The me-man spied the her-woman, strode across, and took her in his arms. That was where I had left it; this replay refreshed my memory completely. What was her response?

  The me-man bent his head to kiss her, and she tilted up her head to receive it, but the heavy veil was in the way. She drew back a little, raised her hand, and drew aside the veil so as to bare her face.

  The me-man looked—and now the picture jumped, holo-style, to a close-up of her head.

  Her face was blank. It was nothing more than a pink-white curvature of flesh without eyes, nose, or mouth. It resembled a dressmaker’s dummy, the head a mere shape, because one did not, after all, measure a dress on a person’s face.

  There the scene ended. Jolted, I considered. Was this person trying to tease me? Somehow I doubted it; nothing in the sequence suggested humor. This is one thing about amateur scenes: they lack the cleverness of professional efforts so are more believable. Also, I was able to use my talent to read the woman a little. This may seem odd, but it is true. I read the minute physical reactions of people, normally unnoticed and uncontrolled, a constant signaling of their state of mind. Because they originate in the mind, these signals are transmitted to imaginary figures, and the body of this woman had them. Not lucidly but still suggestive of a most serious intent. She had, it seemed, a genuine passion for me. She was amateur, but she was not jesting.

  Why, then, was her face blank? Not as a joke. It was more like an appeal. A blank to be filled in.

  There it was. In life she might be a homely woman; certainly passion is not limited to the beautiful. She was afraid that her true face would turn me off, but she had no other. But in a feelie a person can be anything, and they generally do prefer to take advantage of that. Making a scene, as it is termed, is a dream-fulfilling business, where people can portray themselves as they would like to be, to the extent their imagination permits.

  She wanted to be beautiful, obviously—but not in just any way. She wanted to be the way I wanted her to be. Her dream was to be the realization of my dream.

  This was a game I could play, except for one thing. There were only two faces I really desired. One was Megan’s, which I would not tolerate on any other woman; the other was Helse’s.

  Well, Helse had assumed the bodies of other women on occasion, to please me, as she could no longer do so with her own body. She could certainly assume this body.

  Would it be right to do this? This was no purely personal vision of
mine when my reality changed; this was an interactive vision, shared with an anonymous admirer. Well, if I were willing, and Helse were willing, and the woman wanted it, why not? It was, after all, limited to the helmet. It was only a kind of game.

  Or was it?

  I nudged that caution aside, intrigued by the possibilities. To have a living woman playing my lost love in the privacy of the helmet. What might come of that?

  I gazed at the blank face and let my longing manifest. The face blurred and changed, and there was Helse’s face. Helse, as she was at sixteen, when I had known her in life and loved her. As I still loved her.

  Then I moved to kiss those precious lips. But I stopped just before the contact, for I wanted her to do it, to kiss me actively. Kissing a construct of imagination is like masturbation; it is better if there is truly another person, even if her appearance has been changed.

  • • •

  Roulette, for a change, was in an outfit that showed no cleavage. She wore a light green sweater and plaid skirt, like a college girl, and even had a green ribbon in her red hair. I discovered to my chagrin that she was every bit as sexy that way as she had been with the cleavage.

  “The place to start,” she said briskly, “is to legalize everything possible. There’s no point in wasting effort suppressing victimless crimes.”

  “Like what?” I asked, trying not to look as she crossed her legs so that the skirt slid across her thighs.

  “Gambling, drugs, sex, pornography.”

  Indeed, such concepts came readily to my mind as I fought to bring my errant gaze under control. Those thighs! “Porno is Thorley’s problem; he’s in charge of censorship.”

  She laughed. That sweater! “He’s a rock-ribbed conservative! He hates porno almost as bad as he hates censorship. I’d like to watch him reviewing sex.”

  “He’ll simply ignore it,” I said. Would that I could do the same! “But about the others—I know you have no case against gambling, but what of the casinos run by organized crime, which fleeces the clients and pays off the authorities?”

  “Organized crime I mean to abolish. When it takes over gambling, then there’s trouble, but the evil is in the crime, not the gambling. Keep it honest, it’ll be all right.”

  “But the compulsive gamblers who can’t stop, who run themselves into monstrous debts—”

  “Strictly cash,” she said. “No credit, no IOUs. That keeps them to what they can afford. The truly sick ones can put up segments of their lives for rehabilitative treatment; they lose, they go in. Truly compulsive gambling is a disease; it can be treated, but the client has to be willing.”

  She seemed to have her answers. But, of course, she was the daughter of a professional (and honest) gambler; this was her home turf. “Drugs, then,” I said. “Some of them devastate the human system. If we legalize them—”

  “Make the drugs legal, the abuse illegal,” she said firmly. “Most drugs are good and necessary for human health. A lot of the harm in drugs is because they are illegal. Drug addiction is the single greatest cause of chronic crime against property: addicts have to steal to get money for their habit. With government clinics like those you had in Sunshine when you were governor, the money motive is gone and the crime stops. The rest is education: teach the people the truth about drugs, all drugs, what they do and what their abuse costs in health and independence. Most people will stay clear or at least stick to the relatively harmless ones. But any dangerous or addictive drug has to be given at the clinic; nobody doses himself or anyone else. There’ll be some new addictions, sure, but there’ll also be some who learn better at the clinic and never get addicted, when they would have otherwise. Because they’ll see the true addicts, coming in for theirs, and that will open eyes.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Everyone knows the perils of alcohol addiction, but it progresses, anyway.”

  “Because they have unlimited access. They get soused, drive their bubblecars, crack up, kill people—” Her face hardened. “We’re going to get those drunk drivers out of the channels. Man kills another man, I don’t care if he’s drunk or crazy, I want him gone. Get all killers out of circulation, same as the hardened criminals.”

  “We’d have to spend billions on new prisons,” I protested.

  She frowned. “Somehow I just knew you weren’t going to want to put ‘em out the space lock suitless,” she said. “All right, you don’t have to. Just guarantee that no killer will ever be free in the society again and I’ll be satisfied; I don’t care how you do it.”

  “But—”

  “Ask Gerald; he can work anything out. Just so long as we eliminate the repeat criminals of any type.”

  I sighed, partly for the situation and partly for those supremely fleshed legs. “I expected you to solve my problems, not complicate them!”

  “After more than twenty years you retain that delusion?’ she inquired sweetly, spreading her legs. Damn her! She knew what she was doing to me.

  “Which reminds me,” I said doggedly. “Sex. It may be natural, but not when it’s forced. You don’t propose to legalize rape, do you?”

  She laughed enthusiastically, causing her sweater to ripple. “He remembers that day! And I thought he’d forgotten! Who says romance is dead?”

  I had walked into that one. I had for the moment lost awareness of the fact that I had raped her according to the pirate ritual. I found myself blushing.

  She shook her head. “You’re hopeless, Hope. God, I’d like to reenact that occasion!” She made as if to remove the sweater, and suddenly I knew that she wore no undergarment. No wonder it rippled! “But I do know what you mean. Your typical humdrum civilized Jupiter woman doesn’t care to get raped. For her I’d say voluntary sex is fine, but involuntary is a violation of her civil rights, and those who violate the civil rights of others should be taken promptly out of circulation.”

  “More prisons!” I moaned. “But you sound as though you think any voluntary sex is all right. What about children?”

  She considered. “Yes, there had better be an age of consent. But you know, some children like it. They—”

  “No!” I snapped.

  She sighed. “You conservatives! Well, let’s establish a realistic age of consent, say twelve or thirteen, that can be modified by a magistrate when warranted. When a girl grows woman’s equipment, she’s at the age of consent; that’s easy enough to verify. Below that, there has to be legal approval.”

  “And I thought I was a liberal,” I muttered.

  “You’re a bleeding heart,” she said. “There’s a difference.”

  “Live and learn.”

  “But you miss the point on rape,” she continued. “You debate whether it is a crime of sex or a crime of violence, when, in fact, it is a crime of opportunity. If you jailed every man who would rape if he had a safe opportunity, and every woman who would do the same if she had opportunity and ability, seventy percent of the men and thirty percent of the women would wind up behind bars. The only way to eliminate it is to restrict opportunity.”

  “But we can’t segregate all the men from all the women,” I protested.

  “You assume that rape is strictly heterosexual. No, you can’t eliminate it entirely, but you can liberalize society’s attitude. After all, what is rape but a difference of opinion? The same act, consenting, is victimless; non-consenting, it is rape. If we make more women consenting, we’ll have less rape.”

  “That’s preposterous!”

  “That’s practical,” she corrected me. “Do you really want to solve the problems of Jupiter society or merely impose your moralism on it?” She drew up her sweater, showing her bare right breast. What a wonder! She was correct: if I were not constrained by social awareness, I would fling myself at her and rape her, as I had more than two decades before, knowing that she would welcome it. She was deliberately taunting me with her body, and it would be her victory if I succumbed.

  I shook my head, bemused, my gaze locked exactly where she wanted i
t. “Work out your program, but consult with me before you implement it.”

  She rose, inhaling. “Any time, Tyrant.”

  • • •

  There was another swell of outrage as the crime reforms were announced. Newsfaxes editorialized, condemning me roundly for encouraging promiscuity, child abuse, and drug addiction. One planetarily syndicated cartoon showed me naked, with erection and a hypodermic, pursuing a child. That stung, but I had to smile; the Tyrancy had legalized pornography, so such pictures were now quite legal.

  The last laugh, though, was mine, for the statistics on crime showed a sharp drop. Part of this was, as my critics claimed, because many acts had been decriminalized, so no longer counted as crimes. But more of it was because we were systematically getting the habitual criminals out of society, and the drug addicts had no further incentive to commit crimes. We were, indeed, making the halls safe for the common folk.

  • • •

  It was only two weeks before the chip came back, and this time I remembered it immediately. Shelia held it lip with a wry expression; naturally she had played it through, as it was her job to do, insuring that nothing directly harmful to me was in it. It was, of course, quite clear to her where the progression was leading, but she was understanding and tolerant, knowing that she herself had gone farther with me than this anonymous woman was ever likely to.

  This time the initial scene had been modified slightly. The me-figure glow had been diminished, in accordance with my prior tailoring of it, and my appearance was closer to the reality. The veiled woman was also more sharply drawn, as if she had more confidence now that she had a face. When she parted the veil, Helse’s face was clear and animated.

  My face came down, and our lips touched. But hers were not properly responsive. They were there but quite inexperienced. It was as though she had never kissed before.