Anthony, Piers - Tyrant 3 - Politician

by Anthony, Piers

  "Like an execution chair! And look at the floor—see those wire bands that hold the tiles? Perfect ground. Field so strong it flickers even when a nongrounded object approaches. You know what would have happened if you'd used that thing?"

  I worked it out. "High voltage—traveling along the stream—grounding through my body."

  "You'd have been fried from the crotch down," she said. "If you didn't die outright from shock, you'd have wished you had. What a booby trap!"

  "I was about to use that thing!" Casey said, looking faint.

  "You'd only have used it once, sonny," she said. Casey was no youngster; he was in his fifties, but she still had twenty years on him and exploited it.

  Coral touched my elbow. "Only a man would use a urinal, sir," she said. "You're the only male passenger aboard. It was rigged for you."

  My knees felt weak. In the Navy I had been somewhat hardened to the prospect of sudden extinction, but that had been some time ago. "Casey, let's get down to your caboose," I said. "Mrs. Burton will see to this." Indeed she was already using her detector to trace the wiring, preparatory to nullifying and dismantling the system. I knew there would be no further danger, once she was done.

  We traipsed to the caboose. "I don't know how it happened, gov'nor," Casey said, still shaken. "We don't run that sort of train!"

  "Of course, you don't," I agreed. "But has this coach been in your train all along?"

  "No, sir. The old one was in for refurbishing, so we picked this one up in Ybor. We sure thought it was okay."

  "And it was okay," I agreed. "Until someone got in and booby-trapped it."

  "Looks like somebody's out to get you, sir," he said.

  "Looks as if somebody's out to get me," I agreed grimly.

  "Why is that, if you don't mind my asking?"

  "I conjecture that there are parties who fear my campaign to be president will be successful, and they do not want me in that office."

  "So they try to kill you, just for that?" he asked incredulously.

  "It is only a conjecture. I do have enemies from my past."

  "Say, yeah! You're the one who cleaned up the Belt. Those druggies sure must be mad at you!"

  So he was aware of my Naval record but not of my gubernatorial record. This was probably an insight into the way the average man outside the state of Sunshine perceived me. "It is true that I have always worked to eliminate crime, and the drug trade is perhaps the main source of criminal income."

  "Yeah, they're bad customers, all right," he agreed. "I had a friend, got hooked on comet dust; they bled him dry, and when he couldn't pay anymore—" He grimaced. "I never saw a man so torn up. He looked like a damn zombie. He's dead now and better off for it. They say his suit popped a leak when he was working outside, but I know he holed it himself. He was a good engineer, too, before." He shook his head. "Think there's any more traps aboard, sir?"

  "It seems likely," I said. "I regret this matter has put you at risk, too."

  "Hell, man, if you hadn't of been a decent chap, you'd be dead now, and I'd be out of a job. If I hadn't of spit in that—" He broke off, the closeness of his own brush with electrocution catching up with him again. Casey had not been in Navy combat, and so did not have the background experience of violent death that I did. He was severely shaken, and I knew it would take him some time to adjust.

  "Now we are warned," I said. "We'll rout out all the other traps."

  We got on it. Mrs. Burton dismantled the urinal trap and discussed its details with Coral, my bodyguard. They agreed that this was a sophisticated device, requiring special expertise and no mean expense, and that it was surely only one of a number of traps. They would have to check the entire train before any of us could relax. "Meanwhile," Coral told me firmly, "you stay with me, close, Governor. I will taste your food first; I will use your facilities."

  "But the sanitary—"

  "You want privacy at risk of life?"

  I looked helplessly at Megan, but she only nodded agreement. "Coral is only doing her job," she said. She was pale, not from the notion of another woman staying so close to me but because of the immediate threat of death. She had taken a tranquilizer but remained tense, and I could not honestly reassure her. For her sake, as much as my own, I had to abate this menace swiftly.

  "Good luck using the urinal," I murmured to Coral.

  Actually she didn't have to go that far, for Mrs. Burton was on that job. She checked them all out. No other urinals were pied, and no other electrical traps were found, but this did not alleviate our suspicion. "It means the other traps are different," Coral said tersely.

  We elected to retire early. This first leg of the tour was a long one, by design; we had wanted to have several days to become acclimatized to the train, so my tour was starting in the state of Evergreen, with speeches scheduled in Attle and Kane. Thereafter we were scheduled for Ortland in Beaver, and on south to Langel and Cisco in Golden, where Megan's reputation guaranteed good reception. We were not speeding, so we had a good four days' travel. Thereafter we would have stops separated by no more than hours.

  We were traveling above the residential zone of Jupiter, so were not intersecting any bubbles on the way out, but our route was taking us past the states of Dixie, Magnolia, Opportunity, Show Me, Sunflower, Cornhusk, Equality, Treasure, Gem, and perhaps others, their very names evoking marvelous images. Physically, the atmosphere of Jupiter in this band was fairly dull, for we were clear of the great turbulences of the south, but evocatively this was very special. I think every human being, in his deep psyche, really longs for the old planet and finds comfort in its figurative recreation. Our dreams survive our changing reality, and that is no bad thing.

  Coral took the whole bed apart, remade it, then stripped and climbed in herself. "Now, wait..." I began, for I was standing beside it with Megan the whole time.

  Coral smiled. "No seduction, sir," she reassured me. "Maybe chemical on sheets, or radiation; I know if I feel."

  She was right, of course; some powder in the sheets could be toxic, and if I innocently lay in it—

  "But that wouldn't be selective," I pointed out. "Obviously the traps are for me alone, if only because if any woman is taken out, I will be warned. They had no way of anticipating which bed I might be using."

  She climbed out and stood for a moment, nude, considering. I had not before appreciated how well formed she was; her Saturnine skin was silken, her torso slender and extremely well toned, her breasts not large but perfectly shaped, her waist so small that her hips and posterior became pronounced. Coral was every bit as pretty in her fashion as her reptilian namesake, and as lithe, and her face was of matching quality. She certainly had not had to go into this sort of work; any man of any planet would have been glad to marry and support her. But she was her own woman, and I certainly respected that in her.

  "Good point," she said. "Still, I check the rest." She proceeded to do just that, getting in each bed in the sleeping car. All were clean.

  "You have a taste for young flesh?" Megan inquired when we were safely in bed together.

  "Not any more," I mumbled, embarrassed.

  "Your eyes bulged only from fatigue?" she teased me. She knew that I noticed and appreciated all flesh, but also that I touched none but hers. There was no jealousy in her.

  "That must have been it," I agreed, reaching for hers.

  "I cannot offer you the like of that," she continued. "Coral is a plum; I am a prune."

  "I'm an old man; give me some prune juice," I said, and she laughed. She knew, as I did, that youth is only one aspect of sexuality, and a lesser one than love. Megan, as she was at the age of fifty-four, was all that I ever desired. A glimpse at a body like Coral's was, for me, passing fancy; Megan was reality. I kissed her almost savagely and had at her as if we were teenagers who would be forever separated on the morrow. Certainly there was some of that in it, after the death scare. Flattered, she responded in kind, and it was desperately good. Her adaptation to this side
of marriage had been gradual but complete; she was now capable of passion approaching my own, when she knew it would please me. On this occasion it did indeed please me. Next day the quest for traps resumed. Coral stayed so close to me, she often touched, suspicious of everything. But it was not only that. "I am jealous of Megan," she confided when I looked askance.

  She had stayed in the adjacent bed-cell overnight. Her duty required her to be as close to me as possible. She surely had overheard our lovemaking. She was not being coquettish; she was stating a fact we both understood. If I notice flesh so does the flesh also notice me; this is a situation I have lived with all my adult life. In this, Coral was no different from any of the girls of my staff. It was one of the things we all lived with and accepted. Perhaps this is typical of all politicians; I have never inquired.

  Still no traps turned up, and that was bad because we were sure they existed. All of us felt the tension, especially Hopie. "I don't want anything to happen to you, Daddy!" she cried, hugging me tightly.

  "Or to you," I said, kissing her on the forehead. Indeed, she was my only child, and my universe would have darkened without her.

  "Her, too," Coral muttered. That was a corollary aspect: If Megan had my love as wife, Hopie had it as daughter, and the others were excluded. They suffered an amicable jealousy of any such attachment.

  "Actually you're young enough," I reminded Coral, for she was eighteen years my junior and looked younger.

  She quirked a smile. "I suppose I can't keep both jealousies, logically. But I do."

  Jealousy is considered to be an ugly emotion. Somehow it never struck me that way. To me it seems more like a compliment.

  I spent the morning reviewing my campaign material. It was important that I come across lucidly and powerfully from the outset, making no missteps. A single small-seeming error can ruin a year's political groundwork. So I rehearsed with Hopie, my willing audience; she had heard it all before but seemed never to tire of political themes. "Are you going to be Jupiter's first female president?" I asked her teasingly, to which she replied, "Maybe."

  At noon I went to the lavatory to wash my hands. Normally I use the sonic cleaner, but this train was equipped only with the archaic basins, faucets, and wrapped bars of soap, and they intrigued me. I picked up a bar and began to unwrap it.

  "Me first," Coral said, taking it from my hand.

  "Harpy," I muttered. The harpies of mythology were ugly half-birds noted for snatching things from others. She ignored that. She wet her hands and squeezed the bar through them, pausing to smell it.

  Nothing happened. "No poison," she concluded, satisfied.

  "Unless it's just male poison," Hopie put in, laughing. She had followed us in; there was no longer any such thing as privacy for me.

  It was a joke, but Coral stiffened. "Sex-differentiated enzymes—it just could be!" She took the bar and hurried away, leaving me to make do with unadorned water.

  Soon she was back. "It was, sir. I ran it through my chem-kit. Affects only Y chromosome, so no effect on female. But you—if not death in hours, brain damage in days."

  Hopie seemed about to faint. "I thought it was humor," she whispered.

  "That enemy not laughing," Coral said grimly.

  Not funny, indeed! Again I had survived largely by luck. Had Hopie not made her facetious remark...

  Coral sent Ebony to check all the soap on board. Only one type was bad: the fancy-wrapped passenger-intended bars. The kind that a potential president might use, rather than one of the train crew. The differentiation remained; I was the only target.

  "Bound to be something else," Coral muttered. "But this enemy clever, very clever. Not sure I'll catch the next." I did not like the sound of that. I wondered again exactly who my enemy was. Such cunning; the drug moguls were normally not that subtle.

  We discussed it during lunch. We made no effort to conceal what had happened; we were all in this together, with Hopie sharing the risk. We had to make a team effort to win through.

  Mrs. Burton summed it up: "One electric trap, one chemical trap. Third one must be something else. Something only the boss will encounter."

  "Electric, chemical, physical," Coral said. "Maybe physical trap just for him. Spring-loaded knife where only he goes. But where that?" She had learned to speak almost perfect English during her years with me but tended to revert when concentrating on something.

  "I have no plans to go anywhere alone," I said.

  "See that you don't," Mrs. Burton said.

  The porter met us after lunch. "Phone for you, sir."

  It turned out to be an appeal from the city of Phis, in Volunteer. It seemed I had support there, and the mayor was begging me to make at least a whistle-stop in passing.

  Such an appeal is hard for a politician to turn down. We consulted and agreed; we would pause at Phis for half an hour, no more, and I would speak a few words of encouragement from the campaign train. It seemed an excellent way to break in, and it might alleviate the tension of the death threat.

  Casey brought the train about and followed a spur-track to the bubble. They were really eager to see us in Phis; their station was packed with cheering people. This was extremely gratifying but probably a fluke. I would be playing to sparsely filled houses on my regular tour.

  As we passed through the maneuvers for entry to the station, Hopie was at my elbow, trying to tell me something. I'm afraid I was distracted and not paying attention; this really was not the occasion for the indulgence of childish prattle. This was, after all, to be my first campaign speech as a candidate for president of the United States of Jupiter. There were so many issues to develop, and there was so little time, and the manner of my delivery was so vital.

  We were gliding to a halt in the station. "You'll have to let me go now, honey," I told Hopie gently. "I have a campaign address to give."

  "Daddy, you aren't listening!" she exclaimed, and I saw with surprise that she was crying. Suddenly I realized how frustrating it must be for a child to be ignored. What did it matter if I won over the people at Phis if I alienated my own daughter?

  "I'm sorry," I said sincerely. "I'm listening now."

  "Daddy, I had a dream, sort of," she said, her tears abating. Sunshine follows rain very quickly, with teenagers.

  "A dream," I agreed.

  "Sort of. I don't think I was exactly asleep, so—"

  "A vision," I said. "I have them sometimes. Maybe it runs in the family."

  She smiled gratefully. "Maybe." It was a running joke: How could an adoptive child inherit a genetic trait? We maintained, for the sake of companionship, that it was possible. Indeed, Hopie's blood type matched mine, further evidence. "But this was a bad one."

  "Sometimes they are. But often there is truth in them."

  "Daddy, I saw you start to talk to the crowd, and then..."

  "Don't keep me in suspense," I said, smiling.

  "Then it all blew up. Daddy, I'm terrified!"

  "Premonition of disaster? Hardly surprising, after what's happened on the Spirit of Empire. But you know that we detect and analyze all metals in my vicinity; if anyone brings a bomb, we'll know."

  "Are bombs metal?"

  "Well, no. Usually they are cased in metal, though, and have metal detonation wires, that sort of thing. It's hard to avoid metal entirely."

  She seemed reassured. "So no one can bomb you when you speak?"

  "Nothing is impossible, honey. But it does seem unlikely. For one thing I'll be inside the train, talking to them via loudspeaker. This is standard practice for politicians who are whistle-stopping; the train is kept sealed, so there's no foolishness about carrying in any disease or forgetting to close a port before going back out on the track. Fast and neat and sanitary. No one outside can throw anything inside, which is just as well, because some nuts may try to."

  "Okay," she agreed. "I guess I'll let you talk. But if you see anything like a bomb—"

  "I'll back off," I agreed. "This may be news to you, but I'm not
really partial to explosions, up close."

  She laughed, relieved.

  Now I approached the mike. "This thing turned on?" I asked Mrs. Burton.

  "Oops," she said, touching a switch. "Now it's on."

  There was a rippling chuckle in the crowd outside. Her words had just been sent out to them.

  I took the mike, opened my mouth, and paused, remembering Hopie's vision. Of course, it probably had been an animation of apprehension—that would soon be dissipated by reality—but as I had told her there was often truth in visions. I see no supernatural agency in this; a vision may be merely a form of intuition, a conjecture based on a collection of impressions assimilated on a subconscious level. Our brains are marvelous things and often know more than our conscious minds choose to realize. Just as I had not paid attention to Hopie before, so the conscious can ignore the unconscious. When the matter is important, sometimes the unconscious breaks through with a vision. It is an attention-getter of last resort. Or so I conjecture; I'm not expert on the matter.

  Hopie had seen me start to talk to the crowd, and then everything had blown up.

  A booby-trapped mike? But it was already on, and Mrs. Burton had used it. Some things were voice-activated, but obviously this was not.

  Voice-activated? How about voice-coded? I shut my mouth tight and backed away, signaling Mrs. Burton to turn off the mike. Coral started forward, concerned. "Sir, is something—"

  Mrs. Burton switched off the mike. "What's on your mind, Governor? Surely not stage fright!"

  "Let's try a test record," I whispered. "One with my voice."

  "Sure." We had made several recordings of single-issue spot discussions for backup use in case my voice got strained; that's another standard precaution. She put one on and turned on the mike, while the crowd outside looked on curiously. We retreated to another chamber.

  "Hello, friends," my voice said on the loudspeaker. "My name is—"

  The mike console exploded. Metal shrapnel blasted into the wall and cracked the shatterproof pseudoglass window. Hopie screamed.

  In a moment there was silence. The broadcast chamber was a shambles; anybody in it would have been damaged beyond repair.