I leaned against Spirit and cried.
Chapter 17 — REBA
We limped on to Slake in the state of Beehive and made our report. This wasn't on our planned route, but we knew we needed to stop in a city of sufficient size to handle our problems: two wounded, some fifty or so dead, and badly battered equipment. Hereafter we would carry a jamproof broadcast unit on the train, so as to be able to summon the police promptly.
Megan was in a state bordering on shock, and Hopie, despite her good performance under pressure, was not much better off. They had never been exposed to savagery of this intensity and personal nature before. I think a significant portion of their horror was from the fact that Spirit and I had actively participated in the killing. Had we not done so, all of us would have died, and our train might have disappeared without trace, scuttled in the atmosphere: the perfect crime. But the necessities of combat are seldom intelligible to civilians. Shelia and Ebony came through it fairly well, however; it seemed that they each had had prior exposure to savagery.
I had not scheduled a campaign speech in Slake, but my news conference there became very like one. I described what had happened, suitably edited, and concluded that one of my earliest priorities as president would be the restoration of true law and order in Jupiter society. "Especially along the railroad tracks," I concluded with a smile. And do you know, the applause lasted several minutes. The general tide of violence had been rising throughout the nation, because of governmental policies that simply did not address the needs of the people and a rate of monetary inflation and unemployment that was accelerating. There was a deepening unrest, and now I had, almost inadvertently, tapped into it as a campaign issue.
Then some idiot began chanting "Hubris! Hubris!" and the conference dissolved into a rather delightful anarchy. The police launched their investigation, of course, but I knew that our attackers would simply turn out to be hired thugs, paid anonymously. I knew that true professional assassins would have come prepared to do the job properly, and we would have had no chance to resist. A single missile to destroy our power source, which was the engine, and cause implosion; then a suited technician to board and deactivate the gee-shields and send the train to the deeps. No evidence of foul play; it would have been listed as an unfortunate accident.
However, it was now imperative for us to locate our specific enemy. I just did not believe it was the drug moguls, though they would certainly be amenable to my extinction. After the reversal of their bribe ploy in Sunshine they were disorganized, and the police everywhere were monitoring their activities closely; they simply couldn't have arranged this sort of action. I had a very strong suspicion who it was but hesitated to voice it until Megan, emerging from her emotional stasis, voiced it for me.
"Tocsin," she said. "He knows how dangerous you have become to him. You can martial the Hispanic vote, which would otherwise have gone to him, and the female vote, and a fair share of the general vote: enough to destroy him. He will stop at nothing to nullify you as an opponent."
"But we can't accuse him," I said. "There is no proof."
"He never provides proof," she said.
"How well I know!" Yes, Tocsin was a cunning one. But with Megan's confirmation of my suspicion I was ready to proceed to the offense. It was obvious that we could no longer afford to be strictly defensive or to live and let live; the political war had become a physical one.
However, with what irony only he knew, President Tocsin now officially deplored the violence and designated me as a candidate of stature, entitled to government protection. The Secret Service moved in to take over my body-guarding, and this extended to my family. This was just as well, for Coral had been grievously wounded; she would recover but required surgery and a prolonged convalescence before she could return to duty. I made it a point to interview the key Secret Service men assigned to us and found them to be professionals who had no concern for party or personality; they were dedicated to the proposition that no body they protected would be damaged, and they had an excellent record. There was no deception here.
Still, there were occasions when it was not possible to safeguard me perfectly. One such occurred in Firebird, in the state of Canyon, well along on my campaign tour. I had played to increasing audiences; news of my train ordeal had generated an immense groundswell of sympathy that was translating into support as folk thronged to hear me talk. Never would I have gone into that train attack voluntarily or brought my family and staff into such risk; but it had become a considerable asset to my campaign. Instead of being a long-shot candidate, I was now advancing into Serious Candidate status.
Curiosity brought many folk, but once they heard me speak, it became more than that. If there was one thing I could do well, it was move a crowd. It seemed to be an extension of my talent. I treated the crowd as an individual and responded to its signals, using the information to amplify the things that made it respond. It is often said that a man is learning nothing while he is talking, but that is not necessarily true; his speech can be like radar, bouncing off the audience and educating him by the response. There can be a very positive feedback. I suspect that this is the root of the success of every truly effective campaign. What I actually said hardly mattered, and pundits—notably Thorley—roundly panned my positions in print. But the people were becoming mine. Yet I needed more, so had an eye for the spectacular, for something that would tie more directly in to the malaise of the times and enable me to dramatize my position positively.
In this instance a desperate man had taken an employment office hostage; he demanded a job or he would blow up the place. They thought he was bluffing but weren't sure. Police surrounded the region but did not dare enter. This event was typical of the times; there had been a number recently, as the notion spread about the planet, and some bombs had indeed been detonated. Terrorism was becoming more popular in the United States of Jupiter and bringing in its wake a deep disquiet among people who had never known such violence before. I had only to look at Megan to understand how they felt.
"Hubris!" the man exclaimed suddenly to the holo-news pickup. Evidently they had a remote-controlled unit there in the office with his permission. "He's in town, isn't he? Let me talk to him! He's for the common man!"
I glanced at Spirit when that news reached me, then at my secretary, who already had details flashing on her newscreen for me: the man was called Booker, and he had lost his job when an injury made him lame. He was running out of unemployment compensation but had been unable to get any other job despite being declared technically fit by the welfare office. Standards for unfitness had become ludicrous in some instances, as the government tried to cut down on expenses. I saw my opportunity.
"Are you ready for this?" I asked Shelia.
"Anything you say, boss," she said bravely.
"I'll handle it," I told the local authorities.
"Not on your life, sir!" my SS guard protested. "We can't let you march into a bomb-wielding maniac!"
"I'm sure he won't let you into the office," I said. "But this is a thing I must do; I am, after all, a politician, and this is a potentially newsworthy event."
"Sir, you won't need any news if you're dead! We can't let you expose yourself to such hazard."
"Let me explain what I have in mind," I said. And I explained. "Okay with you?" I concluded.
The man was amazed. "Let me clear it with my superior, sir." He did so, and we proceeded to the site of the event.
A huge crowd was forming, cordoned off by the police, and more folk were coming in, attracted as much by my involvement as by the situation. I made my way through and approached the office. It overlooked a street-size mall that was now clear of pedestrians. "Señor Booker," I called, naming him in Hispanic fashion to help identify myself. "I am Hope Hubris." The camera was on me, which was exactly where I wanted it.
"Come in, Governor!" he called.
"I must bring my secretary," I said.
"No way! It's you alone!" I stood my ground.
"Deny her that!" he repeated. "Listen, Hubris, they denied me my job! What do I care for—"
But I had signaled Shelia, and now she rolled down to join me. "Here is my secretary, Señor."
There was a pause as the lame man peered at the crippled woman. It would have been difficult indeed for him to deny her in this circumstance. "Okay," he said, realizing that on this front, at least, he had been outmaneuvered.
We entered the office, Shelia's wheelchair preceding me. Three office workers were seated on the floor, leaning against one wall; Booker stood with his bomb by the opposite wall. Shelia and I came to a halt in the middle. Her eyes were on the miniature viewscreen mounted on her left armrest. She glanced briefly up at me and nodded slightly.
"Señor, let's sit down and work this out," I said heartily. "Why did you ask for me?"
"Because you're the only politician on the planet a regular man can trust," Booker said. "You get things done when they can't be done."
I smiled. "You know the camera is on us; you are helping my campaign."
"I think your campaign's fine, Hubris; I hope you make president. We've got to get somebody in there to clean up this mess. But right now you've got to help me. I need a job."
I frowned. "You know you cannot get a job by blowing up the employment agency. You have committed a crime, and for that they will make you pay. Surely you knew that before you decided to do this."
He nodded. "Guess I wasn't thinking straight. I realized too late. I said to myself, Booker, you've dug yourself a hole. A black hole! But then I thought, Hubris is in town. He can help me if anyone can. So I asked for you; never really thought you'd come."
"My guards tried to stop me," I admitted. "It is their job to see that I don't get myself blown up before election day."
"Yeah. Well, I don't want to blow anybody up, but my wife, she's sick, and my little boy needs surgery, and the money's gone. What's a man to do? If they'd just give me a job!"
Things began to add up. "Your son... when did the need for surgery develop?"
"Last year. He had a medical exam, and this irregularity in his heartbeat showed up on their graph. Said he'd have to have it operated on when he got older; something about a valve not closing right, so the blood didn't always go right. Then I hurt my leg, and—"
"And they had a pretext to fire you," I finished.
"Yeah. Said I couldn't do the work well enough anymore. Hell, Hubris, I could do it okay; I'm no pro track runner, anyway! Then the welfare folk said I wasn't sick enough for them, but I still couldn't get a job."
"That's called falling through the crack," I remarked.
"Yeah. Too sick to work, too fit not to. So what the hell'm I supposed to do—starve and let my family die?"
I resisted the impulse to editorialize on the unfairness of the system; that was self-evident. Meanwhile, I had spied a key that might unlock this situation. "Don't you realize, Mr. Booker, that it wasn't your leg that did it? It was your son."
The bomb wavered in his arms. "What?"
"Your company had comprehensive medical insurance for all employees and their families, didn't it? That would have covered the surgery on your son when it was time for it. But your company gets a rebate if the insurance claims are low; that's standard practice. They knew your son's surgery was coming and that it would be a large claim, so they acted to minimize it. That, too, is standard practice."
"They—they fired me so they wouldn't have to pay on my boy?" he asked, appalled.
"And the other companies declined to hire you for the same reason," I said. "The welfare folk are right; you are fit enough to work. And you are willing. But your son is a serious liability."
"But—"
"Of course, we can't prove that," I cautioned him, just as if this wasn't being picked up by the camera for what would, with luck, be planetary news. "But it does make business sense."
"But my boy'll maybe die without that operation!"
"Señor, that is one problem with the present system of private insurance," I told him, knowing that this was as fine a campaign issue as any. Tocsin had led the crackdown on supposed waste in welfare and medical insurance; now the consequence of applying business ethics to medicine was coming clear. "They seek, naturally enough, to minimize claims. They are interested in saving money. I believe that system should be reformed so that no children have to die for the sake of a company's balance sheet. I can't promise to get that changed right away, but I will certainly work on it."
"All this—these months out of work, my wife taking it so hard that she lost her health—just to get out of paying for my boy?" He was still struggling with the enormity of it.
"Mr. Booker—" I was having trouble sticking to "señor," but it's hard to be letter-perfect in an extemporaneous situation. "You have been wronged, the way a great many workers are wronged. But you are no killer. You don't want to hurt these people here at the employment office who have done you no injury and would have helped you if they could have. They can't make a company assume the burden of your family's medical expenses. But perhaps we can help your son. You need to get legal aid to institute a preceding against your former employer on the grounds that he terminated you wrongfully. Win that case, and not only will they be liable for the expense of your son's surgery, they also may be required to restore your job and pay punitive damages. It is certainly worth a try."
"But—"
"But you have committed a crime. For that you will have to pay the penalty. But perhaps not a prohibitive one. If it were, for example, to turn out that your bomb was not real, then you would be guilty only of the threat of mayhem, not the reality. I believe any reasonable judge would take into consideration the provocation that drove you to an act of desperation. You might have to serve some time in prison, but not long, and meanwhile, your own legal initiative would be working its way through the system—"
Booker grabbed the top of his box with his left hand and lifted it off. "It's just an empty box," he said, showing it to the camera. "I couldn't afford the makings of a real bomb."
I turned to the camera. "The siege is over," I announced. "Please have an attorney come with the police, to represent Mr. Booker. One competent in medical law."
Booker looked at me. "You knew it was a bluff!"
I approached him, bringing Shelia forward with me. "See her screen, señor? Beneath her chair she carries a metal detector with a computerized image alignment. It told her you had no bomb in there. But I didn't come to give away your secret; I came to help you decide what was best for you. I think you will receive justice now, señor." We shook hands.
"I knew I could trust you, Hubris." Needless to say, that incident made a good many more headlines than one of my routine campaign speeches would have. I had gambled and won—again. I cannot claim that there was not a healthy element of luck in this, but this is the nature of winning politics. Unlucky politicians lose.
So it went. There were no more direct attempts on my life, or at least none that could be demonstrated to be the result of organized malevolence, but we knew that Tocsin was not about to let me challenge him for his office with impunity. It was not a purely personal thing with him; he simply worked to see that no serious threats to his power developed. There were other candidates for the nomination, and awkward or embarrassing things happened to them with suspicious frequency, but nothing was ever traceable to the source. I had survived most successfully, partly because I had planned well—Megan remained invaluable for that—and partly because I worked hard and had several formidable assets. Spirit was matchless on supervising the nuts-and-bolts details of the campaign, and my staff was competent and dedicated. I made good progress.
Then we came to the hurdles of the primaries. Over the centuries there had been attempts to reform the confused primary system, but each state fought for its right to have its own, so nothing was ever done. The
first was in the small state of Granite, and it generally had a disproportionate effect on the remaining campaign season. The polls favored me to come in third, but I suspected that I had more support than that, because, though my political base was not great and I lacked the money for much advertising, my voters should be highly motivated. If not, I would be in trouble, so it was nervous business, and I spent as much time in the bubbles of Granite as any candidate.
I did not win it. But I came in second, significantly stronger than predicted. That, in the legerdemain of politics, translated into an apparent win. Suddenly I was a much stronger candidate than I had seemed before, and the media commentators were paying much more attention to me. In their eyes I had become viable. They had much fun with the Hispanic candidate, but my issues were sound, the unrest of the populace continued to grow, and the aspirations of those who were sick of the existing situation focused increasingly on me. I showed up more strongly in the next primary, becoming a rallying point for the disaffected, and the third one I won. Then I was really on my way.
The party hierarchy did not endorse my candidacy, but I came in due course to the nominating convention with significant bloc support, and former President Kenson made a gracious speech on my behalf. The polls of the moment suggested that I had a better chance than the other candidates to unseat President Tocsin, because of my strong appeal to women and minorities, and that was a thing we all wished to accomplish. There was the customary interaction of overlapping interests, but Megan and Spirit and my staff handled that, so I won't go into detail here. The hard-nosed essence was that though the party regulars were not thrilled with me, I had the most solid grass-roots support, and my ability to take the sizable Hispanic vote away from Tocsin without alienating the general populace was decisive. We did not make an issue of my female staff, but every woman was aware of it; I did not have to make promises to women any more than I did to Hispanics or Blacks, because they knew I would do right by them. I also picked up strong union support. As the convention proceeded a powerful groundswell of public sentiment buoyed my candidacy. The handwriting was written rather plainly on the wall: If the party regulars opposed me openly, they were liable to become irregulars, and the nomination would still be mine after a divisive battle. That could cost us all the election. It was to their interest to move graciously with the tide and to accept the first Hispanic nominee.
Anthony, Piers - Tyrant 3 - Politician Page 32
