Politician (39 page)

Megan was with me now. “Hope, you can't take power by force!” she protested.

“I can't take power any other way,” I pointed out. “Tocsin has refused to abide by the decision of the constitutional convention and has tried to have the Navy overturn it by force.”

“But he is evil!” she said. “You are not! You can't do things his way!”

I pondered that while the planet waited. My relationship with her was the most important thing in my life.

“What would you have me do, Megan? If I do not assume command, Tocsin will.”

She seemed to shrink, turning away from a horrible reality. Then she firmed. “It is true. You told me that at the outset. Things have gone too far; the republic has already been overthrown, and a tyrant will rule.”

She swallowed. “It is a choice between evils, and the lesser evil must be chosen. Do what you must, Hope; I shall not deny you your destiny.”

She was giving me leave, but I would have known even without my talent that there was a dreadful price to pay. I reached for her and brought her to me while the planet beyond the camera watched. “Megan, I must have you with me!”

Her eyes were bright with tears. “No, Hope. I cannot go there. You must go alone.”

“Megan, I'll turn it down.”

“You cannot, Hope. You must do what you must do, or all the planet will suffer worse. You—must be—the Tyrant.”

“Not without you!”

“No!” she flared, jerking away from me. “Do it, Hope! Do it!”

Do it! Suddenly I saw Helse, my first love, lying in her wedding dress, entangled on the deck of the space-bubble, crying out those words to me, knowing they would destroy her. The love of my life, sacrificing herself for the good of our group. Megan, in my heart, was the reincarnation of that girl, and in this respect she was the same. Do it!

With the tears standing on my own cheeks, I turned to the camera to give my first order to the Jupiter Navy. I had indeed assumed the mantle of a tyrant, by taking power outside the framework of the prior government, but I feared I had lost as much as I had gained. This was the third and final strike against my relationship with Megan.

The separation of my parents when I was fifteen was the traumatic event of my early life. It took me a long time to understand it or the necessity for it. Megan simply could not associate with the Tyrant, however necessary she knew his office to be. She was a creature of the old system, dedicated to its preservation. But she recognized that the society of Jupiter had come to such a pass that the old system could no longer function, as it had thousands of years before with Rome. She knew that Hope Hubris, like Julius Caesar, represented the only hope for the restoration of order. Hope was of the people, and the people would follow him. The alternative was anarchy and disaster. She compromised by leaving him, though she loved him, even as his prior wives had. In so doing, she freed him from the restraint exercised by her association, permitting him to exercise his power completely. There was no divorce, but the separation was permanent.

I was not required to choose between them; I had complete freedom to be with either or neither. Thus I became the most tangible link between them, and every time I went from one to the other I experienced a resurgence of that private tragedy. But I learned to live with it because I had no choice. After all, my father had suffered the brutal loss of all his family at this same age; how little my loss seemed in comparison! Neither Hope nor Megan ever spoke ill of the other to me; in fact, the first concern of each was for the welfare of the other. He always had to be reassured that she was well cared for and had

enough money, and she would fret that he was too busy to take proper care of himself. It was as if they were apart only temporarily, and indeed, they longed to be together. But we all knew it was over.

I found considerable solace with Aunt Spirit, who seemed to have extraordinary empathy. She, of course, hardly left her brother's side, and devoted her life to him; I honestly believe that the one separation he could not have survived would have been from her. If she was Sancho, he was Don Quixote—with a dream become treacherously real. Spirit had a will of CT iron; any who opposed it were destroyed, and she was the true strength of the Tyrancy. But she was not a cold woman, despite her reputation; she was always gentle and loving to me. Perhaps she remembered her own separation from her husband in the Navy, Admiral Phist, though as it turned out, that separation was temporary. I just don't know. But that, by a chain of association, reminds me of my father's interaction with Admiral Phist's wife, Roulette. Could she indeed have been my natural mother? I cannot imagine Hope Hubris being untrue to Megan during their years together, yet Roulette loved him and, even in middle age, was the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. If she had come to him in those early years, before he was intimate with Megan, and pleaded for some token—no, of course not! Definitely not! I just can't accept the notion that he would do such a thing or that Megan would knowingly accept the situation—and, of course, he would not have deceived her.

But for weeks I dreamed of being a pirate lass, living in a ship in the Belt, earning my livelihood in some nefarious manner. It was romantic nonsense but fun at the time. Remember, I was fifteen. It ended about the time I remembered the way pirate women married: by getting brutally raped, if they did not manage to kill their suitors. Roulette had killed two before being overcome by my father in one of the legendary encounters of the Belt. No, I did not care to marry that way! But still I wondered, Where had Roulette been that year? The next few years would see me age at an extraordinary rate, for there were deep shocks coming, but then I had romantic notions. My father never commented, either to confirm or deny; he could be quite aggravating that way.

Meanwhile, Jupiter was perforce embarked on the period of the Tyrancy, as it was popularly known. It was probably the most significant decade in the history of the planet and had no parallels to the politics of prior ages. The Hispanic refugee had finally achieved ultimate power, and he used it. Oh, did he use it!

We have seen the signals of his increasing cynicism about politics and the use of power, in such episodes as the Pardon; we should not have been surprised or dismayed by its fruition. He set out to cure every ailment of the society—simultaneously. Such an attempt could only have been made by an absolute dictator or a total fool or the Tyrant of Space.

But to me he was just my father, with the virtues and frailties of the office, and I loved him dearly. That made my own course as difficult in its way as his. But I must let him speak for himself, in the following manuscript.

Hopie Megan Hubris

May 28, 2671