Politician (25 page)

The boy stepped back, impressed, looking around. The crowd waited and watched, curious to learn what I was up to.

“Now, Pedro,” I said, reassuring him with a smile as I read his willingness to respond. “I will teach you a word in English. It is the word for what you need to survive in the society of Jupiter, to help yourself and your mother. You want to help your mother?”

“ Si,” he agreed.

“The word is power ,” I said, pronouncing it carefully in English. “Pow-er.”

“¿Pow'r?”

“POW-er.”

“Powr,” he mumbled.

“Ah, but you must say it as if you mean it,” I told him. “Loud. Power! ”

“Pow'r,” he said with greater volume, recovering the second syllable.

“Here where they can hear you,” I said, guiding him to the pickup.

“ Pow'r! ” he cried, getting into the feel of it, and this time the speakers roared it back, startling him again.

“Yes, that's your voice,” I told him. “Say it again. Make them answer you.”

“ Pow'r! Pow'r! ” he cried gleefully into the amplification.

I gestured to the crowd. “Power! Power!” they called back, catching on. Many of them may not have understood English, either, but they were onto this one.

Then it became a chant, child and crowd speaking to each other responsively. "Pow'r! Power! Pow'r!

Power! "

“The power of language!” I cried into the pickup, overriding the chant. “ Make them teach you! Keep your own language, your own heritage—it is a fine one, no shame there—but know theirs, too, so you can do what I have done. It's a hard course, but it leads to victory. Power! Power! Power!”

The chant became deafening as they all joined in. After a minute that shook the park I spoke again.

“Remember this woman!” I cried. “My sister, Faith Hubris, flesh of my flesh! She will teach you! She will find more teachers, so all of you can learn! Those of you who are already bilingual, come to her and she will hire you to teach your people. This is the true beginning of power!”

They looked at Faith, who stood somewhat in awe of this cynosure. But she was a fine figure of a woman of that age, and her familial resemblance to me was evident, and these were definite assets.

“If you are unsatisfied, tell her, and she will tell me. She is my sister; I must listen to her!” And they laughed, knowing how it is with sisters. “She will do it the way I would do it. It will be as if I am among you. I am with you in my heart, but you know I must keep my eye on those Saxons in Hassee!”

They cheered. They liked the notion of a Hispanic governor supervising the Saxon legislature. They would accept my sister in lieu of me. They knew how strong the Hispanic family bonds are. I had given them the closest possible representative.

Spirit and I made ready to go. Faith remained, talking with those who spoke Spanish and English, proving that she knew both languages well. Already the bilingual Hispanics were approaching her. She was the center of attention, in a way she had not been since her years of youth and beauty.

As Spirit and I got into our car, waving good-bye to little Pedro, we heard the chant starting up again.

Only this one sounded more like “Hubris! Hubris! Hubris!”

I may misremember, but I don't believe the Hispanic community of Ami ever rioted again while I was governor. Their problems remained, but now they were working on the solution. And Faith had found her mission in life.

Thorley, of course, had a different view:

And so the quixotic Hispanic, fresh into the problems of gubernatorial policy, has absconded with another coup: He has dazzled his folk of South Sunshine into quiescence with the proposition that their problems will somehow evanesce if only they learn to speak another tongue. In the process he has, with the legerdemain of the true politician, installed his sister on the state payroll and made the state like it. The man is certainly a master of his trade. One wonders what sleight of hand he will accomplish next. Without question he is a compelling orator; it has been mooted that the sound of the chant “Hubris! Hubris!”

resounds throughout the Latin quarter of the city of Ami like the erstwhile refrain of “Heil! Heil!” in the Germanic segment of Uranus. If this man Hubris had ambition, he would be dangerous.

I can't say that I appreciate all of Thorley's notions, but I can appreciate his way with words. If I am, as he terms it, a compelling orator, he is a compelling journalist. He always knew what I was up to almost before I did, which surely facilitated his expertise. How prettily he remarked on my ambition!

The matter of Ami did not end here, for Faith led me into an event of greater consequence. She did her job well, and soon there were very few critics of my nepotism, for it was evident to most Saxons that Ami was quiet because the governor's sister was looking out for its minority interests, and not only those of the Hispanics. Faith made reports regularly from the ghotto, as she chose to put it, and it was manifest that the somewhat shallow and self-centered girl I had known as a child had become quite another person in the course of her travails in space. I soon got a composite picture of the true problems of Ami, ranging from petty discrimination to brutal murder. I did what I could to alleviate the problems, but it was only a token; the governor has less impact than the local authorities. But one matter did fall squarely into my bailiwick.

It seemed that during my absence from Jupiter, while I was ambassador to Ganymede, there had been a serious riot in Ami, this one in the Black community, where unemployment was chronically high. Police had charged a demonstration in a club-wielding phalanx; there had been an explosion, and several policemen had died. The due process of law had wended its tedious way, and now four Blacks were on death row, as it was called, their appeals denied, and they were due to be executed within a month. It was the prevailing sentiment of the Black community that the men were innocent or at least were guilty of a lesser crime than murder and that had they been Saxon they would have gotten off with lesser sentences or even have been freed for lack of evidence. There had been sporadic demonstrations; now, Faith assured me privately, if the executions proceeded as scheduled, there would be a blowout such as the city had not seen in a decade. I needed to act.

I investigated. I researched the literature of the case, consulted with legal experts, and went to death row to interview the four men directly. My conclusion was that they had indeed been condemned unfairly.

Whether they were guilty or innocent I could not tell, but that was not the point; I was convinced that, based on the evidence presented at their trial, no one could have established either their guilt or innocence. Since, in a criminal case, it was necessary to establish guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, that meant they should have been acquitted. Why hadn't that happened? Because, apparently, the prosecutor had been savagely effective, a veritable tiger, while the counsel for the defense had been inadequate. The police had needed an example to prove their effectiveness as law enforcers; the state had wanted a demonstration of power to cow future rioters; and the men were Black. The specter of a dual system of justice loomed before me; these men would indeed have been acquitted had they been Saxon. This was clearly a miscarriage of justice.

So I exercised my prerogative as governor and pardoned the four men. Within hours of my decision they were free.

I had suspected that there would be mixed reaction to my act; Megan had warned me. But I had underestimated its ferocity. There was a storm of protest. The Saxon media condemned me with seeming unanimity. They claimed I was setting criminals loose on the street to pillage and kill again with impunity.

None of them seemed to pay any attention to the facts of the case. I was amazed and chagrined; it seemed the Jupiter press really did not care about justice, whatever it might claim.

Furthermore, neither did the people. Regular polls were published; my popularity had been hovering at about seventy percent, but after the pardon it dropped to forty. Were I up for reelection at this point, I would lose.

I was shocked. It had never seriously occurred to me that the majority of the media and people could turn their attention away from the plain facts and policies of Jupiter and condemn a man on ignorance.

Yet, as Spirit reminded me, they had done exactly that in condemning the accused bombers. I really should not have been surprised. But my disillusionment hurt.

“There is always a racist element,” Megan said. “As a Hispanic person in power you are subject to suspicion. They do not like to be openly racist, so they focus on other issues. Had you been Saxon, the reaction would not have been this strong. Had you been Black, it would have been stronger. Now they have a pretext to condemn you, but the well-spring is deeper.” And, of course, Thorley had the last word:

Sometimes I despair for my profession. Governor Hubris has been widely praised in the past for being wrong. Now he is being condemned for being right. I do not for a moment condone the release of murderers, and I do not share the governor's predilection to leniency, and I do suspect that the four accused bombers were guilty as charged, but the case against them was not tight. That provided our liberal governor with the pretext to nullify the conviction. Don't blame him for being what he is; you knew that when you so foolishly elected him. Blame instead the inept authorities who could have made a tight case against the bombers, and should have, yet who carelessly flubbed it. Next time, do it properly.

Don't provide the bleeding hearts with the tiniest crevice to insert their wedges for the overturning of justice.

Then the news of the hour moved on and the furor subsided. Slowly my popularity revived, until it nudged back above fifty percent, but it never recovered its former health. I had learned a cynical political lesson. Like a military commander who first experiences the carnage of battle, I had been blooded.

I stood for the things I stood for, but never again would I believe that the voters did. Their love was superficial. Perhaps they deserved the type of politician they usually got.

I had pardoned the four bombers, but I would not pardon the fickleness of the electorate.

When I was two years along in my governorship, President Kenson's second term expired and his party put up an inadequate candidate for the office. The precession of politics can tilt it into the promotion of imperfection, with the reaction seemingly at right angles to the force applied. The candidate favored by the party regulars is not necessarily the one favored by the majority of the electorate, and neither of these may be best for the actual office. As a result the opposition party won, and their standard-bearer was Tocsin, Megan's nemesis, who had lost to Kenson before. His second try, like mine for governor, had proved successful, and now he was president.

It did not take Jupiter long to feel his nature; the special interests were flourishing, and programs for the disadvantaged were being drastically cut back. Tocsin had railed against the bleeding-heart liberalism of his predecessor, equating it with Saturnism. He had promised to bring monetary discipline to the planet, along with good old-fashioned law and order. The results of these thrusts, which, of course, did not apply to the wealthy or the special interests, were increasing separation between the rich and the poor, erosion of the broad middle class, and various forms of rebellion. Violence had been increasing over the years, as my direct experience had shown; now it magnified. Strikes and demonstrations abounded, and there were more—and more savage—riots. Everywhere except the state of Sunshine. For reasons that remained somehow obscure to the conservative commentators of the planetary scene, the Hispanic and Black neighborhoods of Sunshine were comparatively quiet.

It was not coincidence, of course. We had bypassed irrelevant state requirements and certified more language teachers in the past two years than any state had ever done in a similar period before. We had freed more prisoners. There had been dire predictions of a wave of crime, but no such wave had manifested. We did not coddle true criminals; we just made sure of their nature before we put them away. The state of Sunshine also now had more female appointees than ever before; all we required for any office was competence, and Spirit handled the details. Thus Sunshine was becoming an island of quiet in a nation that was moving the other way.

Elsewhere in the Solar System, things were also intensifying. Tension was rising everywhere, so I realized that it could not be blamed simply on the policies of one government, tempting as that might be.

Assassination was becoming a leading device for political change. Bombs were going off at embassies, and citizens of the southern nations of Jupiter were being “disappeared” at an alarming rate. I liked none of this, but there was little I could do about it. Suddenly a portion of that situation changed. A small interplanetary passenger-ship line that operated between the moons of Jupiter and the moons of Saturn had had a problem: One of its ships that had been headed for Titan had somehow drifted off course and passed through restricted Saturn-space. The Saturnines had tracked it, fired on it, and holed it. All its crew and passengers were dead. It included fifty Jupiter citizens, eight of which were residents of Sunshine, and one of whom was a representative from a Sunshine district. That made it my business. The representative had been conservative, opposing my policies; it didn't matter. As governor I had a responsibility to all residents of Sunshine.

There was a national hullabaloo, of course: cries of outrage, angry denunciations, demands for action.

“The Saturnines aren't like us!” pontificants exclaimed. “This proves it! Those beasts like to hole unarmed passenger ships!” I knew it couldn't be that simple, but I was angry, too. But what could I do? President Tocsin raged against Saturn in a special news conference and promised appropriate action but did nothing.

A message from Faith in Ami heightened my dilemma. “Two Sunshine Hispanics were on that ship. The folk of this community are asking when you will recover their bodies for proper burial.”

Recover the bodies? A fantasy! The ship was in a decaying orbit around Saturn, and only the Saturnines could get at it. Yet my people expected me to act when the president could not.

“You know, Hope—” Spirit murmured thoughtfully.

“But it's crazy!” I protested, though she had not actually voiced the thought.

“Yet, correctly played...”

I knew what she meant. There was a daring opportunity here. “Still, it could mean my life.”

She put her hand on mine. “Our lives.”

I sighed. It was time to be a hero again.

“You're crazy, sir,” Shelia exclaimed when I told her what I wanted arranged. But she got to work on it.

“I cannot go there,” Coral protested. “They would—”

“They would treat you the same way the authorities of Callisto would treat me if I went there,” I agreed.

“Don't worry; you will remain here with my staff, for this.” I understood about the special problems of refugees, being one myself.

We chartered a yacht, a sleek and swift civilian ship with a competent crew. I made sure that her captain knew the nature of my project, so he could turn it down if he chose. He paled but accepted. “It's time someone did something like this, sir,” he said.

I told Megan and Hopie, of course, expecting them to condemn this as idiocy. Indeed, Megan did:

“You're going to Saturn? Hope, this is preposterous!”

“I want to go, too!” Hopie exclaimed, clapping her hands. She was eleven now, and already she reminded me hauntingly of Spirit at that age. Perhaps all little girls are somewhat alike, or maybe it's my foolish fancy.

“You will do nothing of the kind!” Megan exclaimed, horrified. “This thing is suicide!”

Hopie frowned. “You mean Daddy's supposed to go alone?”

Megan turned away, wounded. Children lack the subtlety of adults, and their innocent words can cut like lasers.

“Of course, she should stay with you,” I told Megan quickly.

Megan turned back to face me. “We'll both go,” she said shortly.

Hopie jumped up and down. “Oh, goody! I'll do a school paper on it!”

Megan had decided that if I was determined to risk my death in space, she would accompany me. The stories on the entertainment holo imply that only young love is self-sacrificing; they err. I would give my life for Megan, and she for me. This is not to suggest that we don't have differences on occasion. This trip was an example of both unity and difference.

We wasted no time. We issued no public statement, but naturally Thorley knew. He phoned me.

“Governor, is this an official excursion?” he asked, his familiar face looking supremely relaxed on the screen. I have never been certain just how he manages that atmosphere; certainly he is most dangerous when seeming least attentive.

“It... will be,” I answered guardedly. I didn't want any advance notice in the media but knew that what the governor did was, almost by definition, public business.

“Then you cannot bar the press.”

I nodded grimly. I had not anticipated this. Even an innocent remark in the media, prematurely, could ruin the effort.

“I will be there in two hours,” he said.

“ You? Thorley, this may be dangerous!”

“And the supreme news event of the month,” he said. He had courage; I had never doubted that.

“As you wish. But if that news gets out before we take off—”

“Credit this old conservative with some modicum of discretion, Governor,” he said smoothly, and faded out.

Discretion? That, too, he possessed in considerable measure. He was my perpetual gadfly and annoyance, but he was no yellow journalist.

We set out for Saturn. When we were safely in space, my staff in Hassee issued the press release that announced my intention. I was going to Saturn to recover the bodies of Sunshine citizens, demand an apology, and obtain reparations.

The reaction, as it was relayed to us, was explosive. We had time to catch it all, as we were accelerating initially at 1.5 gee, then easing off to free-fall, spin-ship, and the settling in for a ten-day journey.

First, there was a cheer from the Hispanic community that we almost thought we could hear directly: "

Viva! "

Second, there was a media headline: HUBRIS DOES IT AGAIN! That meant that I was making another ass of myself, tilting at another windmill.

Third, President Tocsin hit the phone.

We received his signal, coded for privacy. “What the hell do you think you're doing, Hubris?” he demanded, his jowls working. In that moment he sounded just like Kenson. Presidents of any party or philosophy cannot stand to have their prerogatives infringed. But what I owed Tocsin was rather different from what I owed Kenson.

“Mr. President, I am doing my duty by my constituents,” I said, pleased to see him so angry. This was an incidental benefit.

“You have no business dabbling in interplanetary matters!” he exclaimed with some justice.

“When those whose business it is, renege on their responsibilities, it becomes necessary for others to take up the slack,” I said smugly.

I had hoped to provoke him. I succeeded beyond my expectations. “You shithead spic,” he swore.

“Turn back or I'll blast your ass out of space!”

He was bluffing. He could indeed order my ship to be downed, but such an act would carry a horrendous political penalty, for the people of Jupiter were overwhelmingly with me on this matter.

Presidents, like governors, are highly attuned to popular reaction. "You do your duty as you see fit, Mr.

President,“ I said calmly. ”I will do mine."

“I'm going to see you hung by the balls for treason, Hubris,” he snarled, his face mottling red as he cut off.

“At least I've got them, Mr. President,” I muttered under my breath to the blank screen, smiling. What a naughty pleasure this was! I had hated Tocsin since I learned of what he had done to Megan.

Megan stepped into the communications chamber. “I wish you hadn't done that, Hope.”

I gazed at her levelly. “That man destroyed you politically. I will destroy him.”

“And become just like him?”

That shook me. It wasn't that I believed it could happen, but I saw that she did. She really disliked hard-nosed politics. “I married you so that you could make sure I never go that route,” I reminded her.

“I only hope I have the power.” But she smiled, forgiving me, and I kissed her. She would never confess it openly, but she had to have felt some illicit satisfaction in my treatment of her nemesis Tocsin. That is about as much as I care to say on that. If I do not go into much detail on my private relations with Megan, it is not because they are unimportant to me. Rather, it is that I have no wish to perhaps demean them by setting them to crude paper. Megan was always a very private person, personally, and I respect that.

“I'll try not to bait Tocsin anymore,” I promised her.

And, of course, Thorley sent his dispatch from the yacht. It was remarkably gentle to me, almost suggesting that the notorious Hubris might for once have done something of which he could approve.

Certainly he would not have complimented me merely because I had permitted him to come on the major news scoop of the month.

Why all the fuss? One would almost suspect that the errant governor of the Great State of Sunshine had pardoned someone. Doesn't it make perfect sense to challenge the Saturnines on their home turf when they have done something slightly more than routinely reprehensible? Somebody has to, as it were, pick up the pieces.

Yet, of course, there was the chance that we would become pieces ourselves, for Saturn was no gentle power. Why was Thorley putting his own life on the line along with that of the governor, whose liberal policies he deplored? I didn't need to ask, for my talent brought me understanding. Thorley had a nose for significance; that was his talent. He liked to get close to the truth, whatever it might be, so that he could shape it into his image. Indeed, in his hands the truth could assume an entirely new aspect. He also knew well the value of publicity; his career could profit handsomely from this exploit.

And there was something else, deeper and more important than any other motivation, that would never be mentioned, that did him credit of a sort. But I think it is not my business to pass judgment on that.

Thorley, like Megan, deserves the privacy of his deepest heart.

We ate and slept and ate again, and set the ship's time for Saturn time, which differed from Jupiter's by several hours. The days passed. No Jupiter ship came after us, and Tocsin made no public statement about my excursion. But he could not prevent the media from doing so, and they had a ball with it. An open planetary raffle was set up, to guess the day that Thorley would be put out the lock without a suit; naturally it was presumed that we were fighting tooth and nail. There were innovative and at times off-color skits broadcast, in which the actors portrayed Critic and Governor and spewed out invective at each other while the ship headed for collision with a planetoid.

But Thorley, as I had learned early, was in person a most engaging companion; he kept his politics out of polite conversation. He joined us for meals and made a fourth for games of old-fashioned cards, teaming with Spirit against Megan and me, and his smooth wit made him a delight. He also taught Hopie to play chess, which he claimed was a game of royalty.

“You seem like such a nice man,” Hopie told him. “Why are you always so mean to my father?”

Thorley laughed, as if this were rare wit. “It is my profession, child. I do to public figures metaphorically what your father does to them politically.”

Megan and Spirit and I, theoretically engaged in our separate pursuits at that moment, paused to listen without interfering. There was more to this than was evident.

“Is it true you saved his life?” she asked with her typical directness.

Thorley smiled. “That might be an exaggeration. It is true there was an incident some time ago.”

“And you got lasered instead of him?”

He shrugged. “It could be put that way. Actually I believe it was your mother the man was aiming at, as a target of opportunity.”

“Back before I was born?”