"You forget that we nationalized Planico," I cut in, stung by the reference to the elephant. I had elected to save the one in our zoo despite its enormous consumption of food, and I didn't like this not-too-subtle reference. "That we finally got to the bottom of the iron industry finances. You have been defrauding the public for centuries."
He reddened. "That is purely a matter of interpretation! If you insist on defining a reasonable return on investment as—"
"What you call reason, I'd call piracy," Phist said.
"Only if you do not take into consideration the risk entailed! Prospecting for iron is an expensive matter, and ninety-eight percent of the sites prove barren. Therefore some allowance must be made for—"
"Only sixty percent of Planico's exploratory sites proved barren," Phist retorted. "And I believe that you yourself, sir, have castigated that government company as 'Saturnistically inefficient.' "
"Of course, there is great variance in strikes. The fact that Planico was lucky does not alter the overall—"
He broke off, because something strange was happening. The household garbage disposal unit was trundling in on its wheels, unattended.
These units are mobile, because there are many kinds of refuse, and it is often easier to bring the unit to the garbage than vice versa. But normally ours remained in the kitchen. Though it was self-propelled, it normally did not travel unattended, because the refuse had to be fed to it by hand.
All eyes followed the somewhat lurching progress of the machine. "A late arrival?" Energiron inquired, smiling.
"From the garbage industry!" Jupico responded, and they all laughed. Naturally they found it hilarious that such a foul-up should occur at this moment, as though the Tyrant could not keep his own house in order. I knew that the media would have a field day with this one; naturally they had a camera present.
The disposer rolled slowly around the table, outside the ring of chairs, working its way toward me. I saw Shelia wheeling to intercept it, simultaneously murmuring into her mike. She was summoning the kitchen staff to come and recover their errant equipment, but meanwhile she would deactivate it herself.
Then several things happened in rapid order. A flicker of motion caught my eye; I turned to spy a man backing away from me. But I hadn't seen or heard him come near, which was strange—and he looked exactly like me, which was stranger yet. I glanced down at my own torso as if to verify that I remained me—and was startled to discover that I wasn't me. I was invisible.
And the actual disposer suddenly clanked and lurched at me, its incinerative laser coming into play. "It's remote-controlled!" an exec cried. "Assassination!" another exclaimed.
Coral leapt toward it, her arm moving. "No!" Shelia screamed, jamming her chair right at me. But Coral's grenade was already in the air, bound accurately for the disposer, which had now overlapped my space. I felt no contact, no laser-heat; it was merely a holo image.
And the grenade, which was quite real, was coming at me. Still seated in my chair, I could not get away from it in time.
Shelia's chair crossed before me, crashing into the table. Her right hand reached up and plucked the grenade from the air. She hauled it down to her bosom and hunched over it.
The grenade detonated.
Pieces of Shelia and her chair flew outward. Blood spattered floor, table, chairs, and ceiling—and me. I was half stunned by the concussion, and half blinded by blood, but I was alive. Shelia...
I looked up and saw Coral standing there, totally appalled. Then the madness closed in.
I must clarify, as objectively as I can, what had happened, though the tears of grief and rage well up from my eyes as I write this. It was, of course, an assassination plot—but far more sophisticated than I had deemed at the time. The iron execs had set it up, acting much as had the senators who sought to kill Caesar, but with a fiendishly clever twist.
There had been no runaway garbage disposer, and no remote control. It was only a holo image. The execs had rehearsed their reactions carefully, to contribute to the illusion that the machine was literal. The image was crafted to resemble the White Bubble disposer exactly, and it was possible for that unit to enter the Oval Office; that aided the verisimilitude. So we had had no reason to doubt the obvious: that the machine had gone haywire—or that it had been preempted for a remote-control assassination attempt.
Coral, catching on, had acted in her typical manner, hurling a grenade to destroy the machine before it could reach me. But Shelia had caught on to the truth: that my person had been covered by a holo image of the machine. A holo image of me had been crafted to retreat from my place, while I had been blanked out. A properly manipulated holo can do that, by projecting an image of an empty chair to replace what is actually there. It is tricky and cannot be perfect, but this was only for a moment, while the image of the disposer rolled forward to overlap that same place. Thus, to the observer I was retreating from an assassination-bent machine.
Shelia had penetrated the ruse but too late to stop Coral from throwing the grenade. So Shelia, already moving forward, had goosed her chair and intercepted the grenade, making a spectacular catch. Her legs were paralyzed, but her arms made up for it by being highly coordinated. Knowing that the grenade would go off in a second, she had brought it in toward her body, so that the explosion would be muffled.
Shelia had quite literally given her life to save mine. She had foiled the assassination attempt. It does not surprise me that she did that; she loved me. But it appalled me that she should have had to sacrifice herself like that.
So the iron magnates had plotted to cause my own bodyguard to kill me but had killed my loyal secretary instead.
As I recovered consciousness, being attended by the White Bubble medics, a scene from history was running through my mind. Back in the twentieth century, before Earth had expanded to space, there had been a dictator of Germany, a man named Hitler. There had been a plot to assassinate him, in which a bomb was left in a case beside him, at a meeting. But the case had been inadvertently moved, so that though it exploded, Hitler survived. Even as I had survived.
Hitler had seen to the complete extirpation of the plotters. I intended to do no less.
But first there were matters to attend to. Coral was setting up for seppuku, the Saturnian ritual suicide of the warrior class. I felt that this was not warranted.
She was adamant. "Had I fathomed the plot, I would not have hurled that grenade," she said. "I failed you—and killed my friend."
"It was a most sinister plot, intricately planned," I reminded her. "We could not judge in seconds what was crafted for months. I was deceived too."
"It is not your business to foil plots. It is mine." She gazed at the short sword she had laid out before her. She was kneeling, bare-breasted, on a tarpaulin; she intended to have no blood soil the floor of her room.
"It is your business to safeguard my life. You have not failed."
She turned to me. "Sir, I love you, as she did. Please do me the great honor of acting as my second in this."
That would mean taking the large sword she had, waiting while she used the short sword to disembowel herself, then severing her head with one swing. This was the honorable and less agonizing way to go, once the guts had been spilled.
"But your job is unfinished," I said. "If you do this now, you leave me undefended."
"There are other bodyguards," she reminded me.
"You are the one I require."
"I ask you to release me."
"I refuse."
Again she turned to me. "Sir, do you not see the pain I am in? I failed in my duty and I killed my friend."
I knelt before her, straddling her sword. "Woman, do you not see the pain I am in?" I gazed into her eyes and let my feeling show. It was the north-northwest wind.
Slowly her gaze clarified. "I apologize for my selfishness. What would you have me do?"
"I would have you join me in vengeance."
She nodded. "We shall wash their bodies
."
"We shall wash their bodies," I repeated.
Then I opened my arms to her. She leaned into me, we hugged each other, and I felt in her body the mirror of the agony in mine.
We washed their bodies. All of the top executives of all of the independent iron companies were arrested and interrogated by chemical means, their guilt spilling from them. They were put on trial, found guilty of conspiracy to assassinate the Tyrant, and condemned to death. In a public ceremony the leaders were hanged; that is to say, suspended by the neck by means of ropes, in the ancient style, until dead, and then left hanging for twenty-four hours in public view in New Wash. The lesser conspirators were beheaded, and their heads hurled into deep space to drift forever. Those merely guilty of complicity were permitted to take the euthanasia pill.
Coral supervised it, and I approved it, and we both watched every execution. There were several hundred in all. Then the Tyrancy nationalized their companies. Big Iron was dead.
But it wasn't enough. Shelia, my loyal secretary, my right hand, my friend and my lover, remained dead, and the void of her absence refused to heal in me.
I caused a memorial to be erected in her name, and in her name also I allocated the sum of one billion dollars for the treatment of all who were crippled in the legs. The Shelia Foundation was instituted, dedicated to the study of nerve and limb regeneration, that the crippled of the future might walk again.
Still, it wasn't enough. I ached for the loss of her, and I could find no way to alleviate it. It was not that I loved her, though certainly I had cared for her; it was that she had been close and loyal and reliable, and I had no substitute for her. I needed her, her competence and support, and without her I lacked proper anchorage. Megan had helped me select her when Shelia was still a teen; thus she represented one of my intimate links to Megan.
I strode about my room, alone, trying to abate the void that would not be abated. Then I went to the vision port of the White Bubble and gazed out into the murky atmosphere. "Damn!" I cried, and smote the panel with my fist. "Where are you now, Shelia?"
My fist passed through it. Off-balanced, I fell after it, stumbling through the panel and out into the Jupiter air. I flapped my arms and ascended to the layer of cloud above. There was a stair cut into the cloud bank. I set foot on it and climbed, and the stair wound up in a spiral through the layer until at last it emerged on the cloud surface.
There, parked at the top, was a wheelchair. I got into it and wheeled it forward along the path that showed. This coursed along the mounds and declivities of the bank and to the shining gates of a mighty, walled city.
This was heaven, I knew. I wheeled on into it, and there were people, and all of them were in wheelchairs. One approached me. "For whom are you questing, sir?" he inquired.
"For Shelia," I replied.
"Why, she arrived last month," he said. "She has been lonely."
"She loves me," I explained.
"Of course. I will locate her for you."
I followed his wheelchair though the bypaths of the shining city, and soon we came to a small chamber. I entered, and she was there. "Hope!" she said, brightening.
"I have come to take you back," I said.
"I don't think I can do that."
I took her hand. "You must do it."
"I mean that Helse would not approve."
So I searched for Helse. She was in a wheelchair, too, but it was just a formality, as it was with me. "I want to take Shelia back with me," I said.
"Of course, Hope," she agreed. "You know I want only what is best for you."
"But if she can return," I asked, "why can't you?"
"I am already with you," she said. "I was with you the first time you used her body; don't you remember?"
I remembered. "But that isn't physical!" I protested.
"It is when it needs to be."
Then I understood. I wheeled on out of the city of Heaven, alone, and back along the path. I parked the wheelchair at the head of the stairs and walked down. I swam through the atmosphere at the base and into the White Bubble.
I caused the crippled women of the region to be brought before me, and when I found one that resembled Shelia, I brought her to the White Bubble and to my room, and I lifted her to the bed and undressed her and made love to her. "Shelia!" I whispered in her ear as I climaxed. "Hope!" she responded raptly.
I dressed her and returned her to the wheelchair and brought her out to meet the others. "This is Shelia," I informed them. "Take her home." Then I departed the bubble, returning to my alternate identity as Jose Garcia.
The madness was upon the Tyrant but not on Garcia. Not so that it showed.
In the tenth year of the Tyrancy Jupiter was prospering, but the people were restive. As Garcia I knew the cause: it was the madness of the Tyrant, who was given to odd habits, such as summoning some woman in a wheelchair at random, taking her to the White Bubble, forcing her to commit sex with him, and returning her to her home. The women involved did not seem to object, but other members of the Jupiter society did. "He's loco!" I heard men of the company exclaim "One of these days he's going to go all the way off the deep end!" But there were also women who took to going around in wheelchairs, though they were not crippled. There were even scattered reports of pregnancies in these women, for now the birthrate had been restored, limited to zero population growth, but these were not confirmed. It was known that long service in space could render a man sterile, and the Tyrant had spent fifteen years in space before coming to Jupiter. "But he did sire a daughter," the gossipers would murmur.
Of deeper concern were the continued executions. Early in the Tyrancy no one was executed; all were sent to space. But gradually that changed, first for a few capital cases, then for lesser crimes, like conspiring against the Tyrancy. It was as though the Tyrant had become more callous as he aged. Also, the manner of execution changed, so that now men could be hanged in public, instead of taking the euthanasia pill in private. It seemed that the Tyrant's anger over the assassination attempt that took the life of his secretary had never faded. Yet there had been no such reaction when his sister had died. (I suspect, in retrospect, that there had been that reaction for Faith, but it was hidden. The first blow had weakened my sanity; the second had shattered it.)
As Garcia, I shared the doubts of the common man. I was now high in the councils of the Resistance and knew things about it that most did not. Its leader was a woman—a highly intelligent, educated, experienced older woman who knew the political process inside and out and guided the Resistance unerringly to greater influence. But I did not yet know her identity.
In private, as the Tyrant, I speculated on that. Paranoia surged in me: had Reba, the head of QYV, betrayed me? Did her aspiration for power go beyond her present position? Should I have her liquidated? I was uncertain on all counts, so did not act—and this, too, was perhaps a sign of my madness. I was no longer doing what I knew it was advisable to do.
But as the behavior of the Tyrant became more bizarre, the Resistance gained strength. It was not that Jupiter chafed under the policies of the Tyrancy; it was that Jupiter feared that too many of the successful policies would be eroded or dismantled, in the manner of the criminal code. The Tyrant was becoming a loose cannon: a thing without proper anchorage whose random blunderings were a threat to all around him.
As Jose Garcia, I had to agree. It would be best to depose the Tyrant, before he betrayed the Tyrancy. Jupiter could not afford madness.
But how was that to be accomplished?
The Resistance had an answer. It sponsored a general strike. It had been years since anything like this had been tried before, and it took some courage, because the Tyrant had acted swiftly and effectively in the past to squelch such efforts. But this one was extremely broadly based; in fact, nearly half of all the employed citizens of North Jupiter participated in it, and a quarter of those in the Latin provinces. As Jose Garcia, I led Jupiter Bubble on strike, granting all workers a holiday for the
duration.
This was a significant surprise. The Resistance had developed so quietly and peacefully that few people realized the proportions to which it had grown. Probably not all the strikers were members, but this demonstration was enough to paralyze the vital planetary services and too widespread to be amenable to wholesale discipline. It was peaceful but impressive.
Something had to be done, and because this demonstration was obviously well meant, Spirit concluded that it should be met with appropriate restraint. Violent methods, in this case, would alienate a far greater segment of the population than we could afford. What would be both gentle yet effective?
As Tyrant I made the decision: I would challenge the leader of the Resistance to a contest of some kind, winner take all. If I won, the Resistance would be dismantled; if she won, I would retire from the Tyrancy. Spirit was against this, but I think she was getting tired of governing, so she did not object strenuously. Or perhaps she was wary of my madness and thought in her secret heart that it would be better if I did step down. Maybe I was looking for a pretext to do that. Then I could retire to my life as Garcia, which was more productive. Though even that was not a perfect solution, because Amber was now twenty-three years old, was able to function competently in Spanish, and not needed in other languages. I felt it was time for her to go forward into her own life, but she would not do so as long as I was there. I think eight years of being my mistress had finally abated her fascination with me, but she felt she owed me, so duty kept her with me. We both needed a good excuse to separate amicably.
So the mad Tyrant made the challenge, and the public attention focused on this, for this was indeed the kind of madness he was noted for. Wagers were made: would the Resistance leader answer?
Anthony, Piers - Tyrant 4 - Executive Page 29
