Anthony, Piers - Tyrant 3 - Politician

by Anthony, Piers

  And so it came to pass. I chose as my running mate my sister Spirit, and there was massive applause from the distaff contingent for this innovation, and stifled apoplexy elsewhere. It was not the first time a woman had been selected for this office, but it was the first for a sibling of the presidential candidate. Oh, I knew the party regulars preferred a ticket balanced geographically and philosophically, but my argument was this: It was pointless to have a vice-presidential candidate whose major recommendation was that he did not match the locale or philosophy of the president. I wanted a running mate who understood and endorsed my positions exactly, so that in the event of my death in office my program would be carried out without deviation.

  No person, male or female, fitted this definition better than did Spirit. There was grumbling in the back rooms, but this was my will, and it would not be denied. Many of the wives of delegates made their will known unmistakably to their spouses; what might seem a liability with male voters was an enormous asset with female voters. We seemed to have, on balance, a stronger ticket than the conventional system would have provided. There was one half-serious complaint: a delegate from Ami muttered that I had chosen the wrong sister. Faith was in attendance, of course; she demurred, blushing, looking prettier than she had in years. The Ami contingent, of coarse, had been absolutely solid for me from the outset of the campaign.

  Now I was the official nominee, going into territory where no Hispanic had gone before. Now I had comprehensive party support, financial and organizational. I addressed monstrous and enthusiastic crowds. But the popularity polls were sobering; though my chances were indeed significantly better than those of any other nominee would have been, I remained six percentage points behind Tocsin. He was, after all, the incumbent, and had a secure base of power, seemingly unlimited funds provided by the special interests, and the name recognition and power over events of a sitting president. These were truly formidable assets. In addition, I knew, there remained sizable conservative and racist elements—the two by no means synonymous, as Thorley had shown me—that did not take to the halls to demonstrate but would never vote for a liberal Hispanic. Six points might not seem like much, out of a hundred, but when it meant that Tocsin was supported by forty-five percent of the responding population, and I by thirty-nine percent, it meant deep trouble. I had to campaign hard enough to make up the difference.

  I did. I continued to use the campaign train; it had become a symbol. Now it had many more cars, for the Secret Service men, the big party supporters, and the media reporters. They all seemed to take pleasure in riding the same train with the candidate, and perhaps, to a degree, they shared the fascination with trains. On occasion Thorley was present, shuttling between my campaign and Tocsin, trenchantly torpedoing me at every turn. But I couldn't help it: I liked the man, and I did owe him for two significant services. When I could discreetly do so, I had him in to the family car for a meal and chat; Megan, Spirit, and Hopie liked him also. He never commented on this in the media, though he now had the leverage to put anything into print he wished. It is possible for people to be personal friends but political adversaries, and very few others realized the full nature of our friendship or adversity. Spirit continued to provide him full information on our campaign, honoring my agreement; we kept no secrets from the press.

  Indeed, this agreement was to prove fundamentally important and open the way for Thorley's third significant service to me. One matter occurred that did have to be secret, and so we had to trust Thorley and even ask his cooperation. I do not claim that this was the proper interaction of politician and journalist, but it was necessary. I owed Thorley for a life and a reputation; now my career itself was to be put into his hands.

  It happened in this manner. In the course of two months my campaign succeeded in drawing me up almost even with Tocsin despite his advantages, forty-two percent to forty-three percent. The election was now rated a dead heat; no one was certain which of us would win. It was my magnetic presence on stage that did it, my talent relating to ever-larger audiences, turning them on. As I gained, Tocsin pulled out all the nether stops, as was his wont when pressed. In addition to a phenomenal barrage of hostile advertising, there were anonymous charges against me, each with just enough substance to give it a semblance of credibility: I was a mass murderer (that is, I had killed a shipful of attacking pirates), I was a notorious womanizer (I had known many women sexually, as was required by Navy policy), I had been charged with mutiny as a Naval officer (but exonerated), and I had adopted a child who resembled me suspiciously. All these were subject to detoxification by clarification of the circumstances; I ignored them except when directly challenged, and then I answered briefly. With one exception: the last. That one I addressed by means of a challenge: "Show me the mother of this child."

  Would you believe it, three different Saxon women came forward, each claiming to have been my paramour fifteen years before and to have conceived by me and to have given up the baby for adoption by me because I had paid her to do so. But none could produce evidence of such payment, and when we had them blood-typed, two were shown to be impossible as parents of Hopie. The third was possible, but a search of her employment record showed that she had not missed a day in the critical period, and an old photograph of her in a bathing suit showed her definitely unpregnant when she would have had to be in the eighth month. Medical records concurred: no baby had been delivered of her in that year. "It is evident," Thorley commented wryly, "that the girl's mother has sufficient discretion to avoid publicity." This was, I believe, the only period he remarked publicly on my family situation, because it had for the moment become legitimate news.

  "But what does it matter?" I asked, bringing fifteen-year-old Hopie to a news conference and putting my arm around her. "She is my daughter now, and I will never deny her." Indeed, the blood tests showed I could have been her natural father, and her resemblance to me in intellect as well as the physical was startling. I was so obviously pleased by this that the effort to smear me by this avenue came to nothing. Perhaps it was that every man has his secrets, and this was the kind that anyone can understand. What really finished it was Thorley's interview with Megan, in which he asked her point-blank why she had agreed to adopt this child, who could not have been her own.

  "I love her; she is mine now," she said, echoing my own response.

  "But surely you have wondered about her origin—"

  "I know her origin. That's why I adopted her."

  "And yet you have no misgivings about your husband?"

  "None. I married him for convenience, but I came to love him absolutely."

  "Yet if—"

  "I love him for what he is," she said firmly. "That has never faltered."

  Thorley shook his head eloquently. "Mrs. Hubris, you are a great human being."

  And that closing compliment, so evidently sincere, coming as it did from my leading political critic, effectively closed the issue. The public seemed to feel that if my wife could so graciously accept the situation, no one else had the authority to condemn me. Certainly I had done right by Hopie.

  So Tocsin's most insidious efforts had been insufficient to blunt my progress; perhaps they had even facilitated it. But we knew that he would not allow me to gain any more without drastic reprisal; there was no way he would voluntarily leave office. It was rumored that he had even commissioned a private survey to ascertain public reaction should the upcoming election be canceled; evidently such action had proven unfeasible, or maybe he had concluded that he could win without such a measure. But we did not know precisely how he would strike. I was now just about assassination-proof; there was no way he could arrange for that without betraying himself. He had to be more subtle, and he was the master of subtle evil. We were all concerned.

  The first signal of trouble was the Navy. A formidable task force approached the planet Jupiter for extensive maneuvers, with battleships and carriers hanging over individual cities as if targeting them. The public was assured that it was
only a routine exercise, but it was a massive and persistent one.

  I talked to my old Navy wife Emerald, who was now in easy communication range because she commanded one of the wings. She was an admiral now, her brilliance as a strategist, proven in my day, having enabled her to rise impressively.

  "What's going on up there, Rising Moon?" I asked forthrightly. This was a private channel, but there really could be no secrets between us now; certainly Tocsin would know. I called her by her nickname, taken from her personal song, "The Rising of the Moon." "As a candidate for the office of commander-in-chief, I believe I should be advised if the Navy has any problems."

  Her dusky face cracked into a smile. She was a Saxon/Black crossbreed, once routinely discriminated against in the Saxon-officered Navy, but that was a thing of the past. I knew that she remembered the details of our term marriage as well as I did. She had always been a sexual delight, not because of any phenomenal body—she had been well constructed but relatively spare—but because of her determination, energy, and enterprise. She had regarded sex as a challenge; to make love to her was to ride a roller coaster around a planteoid. She was older now—forty-nine, like me—and had put on weight, but still I saw in her the seed of our savage romance of a quarter century before. I was otherwise married now, and so was she, but I knew that were things otherwise we could still step into bed together and enjoy it immensely. It did not detract one whit from her subsequent marriage, to an admiral now retired, to know that she still loved me.

  "Hope, you know there's been increasing civil unrest recently," she said. "There is concern that the election itself could be disrupted. So the Navy is on standby alert, ready to keep the planetary peace if that should prove necessary."

  A form answer—with teeth in it. The Navy was under the ultimate command of the civilian president, Tocsin. Was he preparing for a military coup in the event he lost the election? That seemed incredible, but if several civil disturbances were incited, the president could invoke martial law to restore order. How far would such temporary discipline go? Military coups were common in the republics of southern Jupiter but unthinkable in northern Jupiter. So far.

  "It is good to have that reassurance," I said. "We know how important it is to preserve order." Which was another formal statement. "Give my regards to your husband." And there was the hidden one: her husband, Admiral Mondy, was the arch-conspirator of our once tightly knit group within the Navy. He prized out all secrets and fathomed all strategies; he liked to know where everybody was hidden. I was telling her that something was up and to alert Mondy if he was not already aware. He might be retired, but I knew he kept his hand in. That sort of thing was in his blood.

  "Have no fear, sir," she responded, and faded out. That concluding "sir" was significant, too; it meant she was thinking of the time when I had been the commander of our Navy task force that cleared up the Belt. That team still existed in spirit, if not in form; my officers had spread throughout the Navy and now wielded considerable power. I still had friends in the Navy, excellent friends—more so than perhaps Tocsin realized.

  After that call I pondered the implications. Was Tocsin merely setting up a threat, as in a chess game, to intimidate those who might vote for me? Or was he really getting ready to preserve his power militarily? What use would it be to me to win the election, if it was only to be set aside by a military takeover?

  My misgivings were enhanced by a second development. I wrapped up a rousing campaign speech in Delphi, Keystone, and retired to my quarters to discover Spirit there with a visitor: Reba of QYV.

  "Hubris, this is off the record," Reba said immediately.

  "This car is secure," I assured her. "But I have a covenant with the media—"

  "It could mean my position—and your life," she said grimly. "The press must not know."

  This put me on the spot. I knew she was serious; only an extraordinary matter would have caused her to risk her career to visit me personally to confide a secret. But I had made a commitment to Thorley.

  I risked a compromise. "Let me bring one member of the press here, now, while I hear what you have to say. If he agrees to keep it secret—"

  Reba sighed. "Thorley."

  I nodded. "He happens to be aboard now."

  "You always did drive an uncomfortable bargain," she said.

  Spirit left us and we chatted about inconsequentials for a few minutes, until my sister returned with Thorley. Evidently she had explained the situation on the way, for he evinced no confusion. He sat down and waited.

  "I am... an anonymous source," Reba told him.

  "Understood." That was a convention of many centuries' standing. If he published anything he learned from her, it would not be directly attributed.

  "I represent an anonymous organization." Again Thorley agreed; it was obvious that he recognized her, for he had sources of his own, and he knew of my prior association with her.

  "This woman knows me as well as any," I said.

  Thorley raised an eyebrow but made no other comment. There had been a chronic run of conjecture in the media about the other women supposedly in my life, but Thorley knew that this was not one of those. He was surprised that any woman should know me as well as my wife or sister did. He would pay very close attention to what Reba said. I had just given her a potent recommendation.

  "I am in a position to know that a plan is afoot to kidnap Hope Hubris," Reba said carefully. "To mem-wash him and destroy his credibility as a candidate for the presidency.'

  News indeed! Trust QYV to be the first to fathom Tocsin's mischief.

  "This is not a plot to keep secret," Thorley remarked. "I differ with Candidate Hubris on numerous and sundry issues, but I do not endorse foul play."

  "Some secrets must be kept until they can be proven," Reba said. "If this is published now the plot will fold without trace, and an alternate one invoked—one I may not be in a position to fathom in advance."

  "Ah, now I see," Thorley said. "This fish you have hooked but not necessarily others. From this one the candidate may be protected, if the perpetrator does not realize that the subject knows."

  "Exactly," she agreed. "The perpetrator is playing for high stakes and will not stop at murder as a last resort."

  "Yet surely the Secret Service protection—"

  "Could not stop a city-destroying bolt from space."

  Thorley glanced at her shrewdly. He pursed his lips in a soundless whistle. We all knew that only one person on Jupiter had the authority to order such an action—and the will to do it, if pressed. "Certain mischief has been done, and hidden, the details accessible only to the president. Revelation of that mischief could put a number of rather high officials in prison and utterly destroy certain careers."

  "You seem to grasp the situation," Reba agreed.

  "And it seems that the details of that hidden mischief could no longer be concealed, if a new and opposing person assumed the presidential office at this time."

  Reba nodded. "That office will not be yielded gracefully."

  Thorley smiled. "Perhaps you assume that one conservative must necessarily support another. This is not the case. Some support issues, not men, and their private feelings may reflect some seeming inversions. I might even venture to imply that there could be some liberals I would prefer on a personal basis to some conservatives. Strictly off the record, of course." He smiled again, and so did Spirit. Thorley was an honest man, with a sense of humor and a rigorous conscience.

  "Then you will withhold your pen?" Reba asked.

  "In the interest of fairness—and a better eventual story—I am prepared to do more than that. I prefer to see to the excision of iniquity, branch and root, wherever it occurs."

  "Then perhaps you will be interested in one particular detail of the plot," she said grimly. "Candidate Hubris is to receive a message, purportedly from you, advising him that you have urgent news that you must impart to him secretly, in person, without the presence of any other party. When he slips his SS
security net and goes to meet you, he will be captured by the agents of the plotters, taken off-planet, mem-washed, addicted to a potent drug, sexually compromised, reeducated, and returned to his campaign on the eve of the election armed with a speech of such nonsense as to discredit him as a potential president. He will be finished politically."

  Thorley blew out his cheeks as if airing a mouthful of hot pepper. "This abruptly becomes more personal. As it happens, I have no need to summon the candidate to any personal encounter; I have another contact."

  "So you have said," Reba agreed, glancing at Spirit, who smiled. "I know that Hope Hubris would not fall for such a scheme, though it seems that the other party neglected to research that far. Some surprisingly elementary errors have been made. But it occurred to me that, considering the alternative—"

  Now I caught her drift. "That I might choose to!"

  "Choose to!" Thorley exclaimed, horrified.

  Reba looked at me. "Tell him," I said.

  She returned to Thorley. "Hope Hubris is immune to drug addiction," she said. "His system apparently forms antibodies against any mind-affecting agent. This takes time but is effective. We believe that he cannot be permanently affected by the program they propose. His memory will return far more rapidly than is normal, and he soon will throw off the addiction to the drug. Which means—"

  "That the attempt is apt to backfire," Thorley finished.

  "Particularly if the candidate is forewarned and properly prepared," she agreed.