Politician (9 page)

I and my Annabel Lee

That time at the scientific station on Io—a kingdom by the sea. Helse and I, children, with love that was more than love. How aptly it fitted! Megan did understand, and I had to have her.

“It is also true that I need your expertise in politics,” I said. “So there is a practical foundation. Marry me and it will make sense.”

Megan dabbed again. “Captain, this is not the way!” she protested. “This is not your Navy! This is civilian life! You have to consider the needs and feelings of others. You can't just toss aside wives as they become inconvenient.”

“Here marriage is permanent,” I agreed.

“And not entered into capriciously.”

“This is not caprice,” I said. “You are the perfect diamond I have finally found. The last fifteen years of my life have developed toward this union.”

“Well, the last fifteen years of my life have not,” she said with some asperity. She was a trifle angry now, and this, too, became her.

I understood her increasingly well, but understanding is not always the same as management. Megan was no creature of casual influence. I was at a loss about how to approach her.

So I turned it over to Spirit again. “Convince her,” I told my sister.

Spirit smiled as if she had expected this, which was true. She focused on Megan and took a breath.

“Surely you—his sister—are not going to play John Alden in his presence!” Megan exclaimed indignantly.

I had to reach far back into the recesses of my memory to place that reference. Megan's literary background, so readily applicable, was another delight. John Alden was the name of a man who was required to plead for the favor of a young woman, in the name of another man who lacked the social courage to propose to her himself. Unfortunately John Alden was enamored of the woman himself, as she understood. She at length interrupted him with the inquiry, “Why don't you speak for yourself, John?” I hesitate to conjecture the implications of that reference in this present situation.

At any rate Spirit took it in stride. “Megan—may I call you that?—I must argue that your life has indeed developed toward this union. You are a fine person, an outstanding political figure, and a lovely woman, though my brother would have come for you had you been otherwise. You deserve better than what the maelstrom of Jupiter politics has given you. You deserve to wield power, for you do know how to use it, and you have a social conscience unrivaled in the contemporary scene. You did not lose your last campaign because you were inadequate but because you were superior. You refused to stoop to the tactics your opponent used. As with money, the bad drove out the good, and you lost your place in the public eye, while your opponent flourishes like a weed. But whatever the politics, the bad remains bad and the good remains good, and this my brother understands.”

Megan spread her hands. “He seems to be not the only one who understands. You certainly know how to make a person listen.” I could tell she was alert for the kicker; she was sure that Spirit was flattering her for a purpose. As indeed she was.

“As a practical result, that man Tocsin now holds the office that should have been yours,” Spirit continued. “He will use it merely as a steppingstone to higher office. You would have served your constituency loyally and well; his only real interest is himself. You cannot view his victory as merely a loss for you; it is a loss for the State of Golden and very likely for the United States of Jupiter as well. When you lost, you retired to a comfortable private life; those whom you should have served cannot do the same. They must endure the machinations of the callous and perhaps evil man who played upon their ignorance and baser motives. You owe it to those people to return to the political arena and defend the causes you know are—”

“No!” Megan cried, wincing as if in physical pain. “I will never again expose myself to that—”

“There is another avenue,” Spirit said. “Naturally you do not wish to become another target for completely unscrupulous opportunists. But you need not be the target; you have only to advise him who is ready to be the target, to guide him so that—”

“I would not foist on another person the contumely I would not bear myself!”

“He can be properly prepared to counter it,” Spirit continued. “My brother is not a delicate flower; he has survived the most brutal situation any person can experience.”

“As have you,” Megan put in.

“He is a cutting knife. Had he run against Tocsin, knowing what you know now, he would have found a way to impale that ugly man on his own spit. As an officer in the Navy my brother demonstrated his capacity to—”

“ You were his chief of staff,” Megan put in.

“—prevail in difficult situations. He has courage and ability; all he needs is competent guidance and advice. He has always accepted the best advice. This is what you can provide.”

“If I ran my last campaign over, knowing what I now know, I still would not be able to handle the scurrilous slanders that man hurled at me!” Megan exclaimed. "I don't see how any ethical person could.

How could an inexperienced—"

“My brother is excellent at delegating tasks and yielding to necessity,” Spirit said. “If he does not know the proper course he will consult with someone who does, and consider the alternatives with an open mind. This is how he won battles in the Navy, both physical and diplomatic.”

Megan nodded. “Do you mean to say it was not Hope Hubris who devised that farm-bubble compromise that so benefited the workers?”

“He presented it, but he did not devise it alone. His staff worked it out. Because he had the most competent personnel it was feasible to assemble, and he implemented their program...”

Megan nodded again, seeing the confirmation of her conjecture. She did have a good grasp of the realities of organization. "I really wasn't good at selecting a staff. I can appreciate that better in retrospect.

Oh, they were fine people, individually, but the dynamics—"

“My brother is matchless at this,” Spirit said with conviction.

Megan shook herself, as if fighting free of a morass she was unwittingly stepping into. “Still, it is presumptuous—a preposterous leap to assume that if Captain Hubris needs my advice I must marry him!”

Spirit smiled. “You are no common staff member, Megan. A staff member may be hired and fired at the whim of the employer. An independent consultant may be ignored. But a spouse is permanent. Marry him and you have power over him—not only legally, but also because he will listen to you first, last, and always. That is important for the realization of your programs. Through him you can implement them all.”

“You tempt me most foolishly,” Megan said. “You offer me a reward for a service to be rendered, as you would a biscuit to a performing dog. This is not the manner in which I bargain. I will sell myself neither for money nor for a program; that is prostitution.”

“It is not selling so much as coming to terms with the situation,” Spirit said. “It is the political way. One must deal for what one wants, and compromise, and indulge in the quid pro quo. There is no stigma in this; it is true in more subtle fashion for all of life. An honest compromise can benefit all parties, like a good contract.”

“True,” Megan agreed. I could tell she was intrigued by this discussion; she had been reclusive for two years and had had enough isolation. “But one does not bargain with marriage.”

“Oh, but one does!” Spirit said. “Historically that was standard. Kingdoms formed alliances by intermarriage. It fostered cooperation and helped prevent wars between them. If one marriage prevented one war, surely it was worthwhile.”

“Are you suggesting that we are at war?” Megan inquired with a wry flash of humor.

Spirit smiled. “Not exactly. But the importance of a liaison remains. It is better to have direct input into a force than to allow it to proceed randomly. A spaceship would not be useful without a pilot. My brother is going into politics, and he will be a considerable force because he has, as you pointed out, the ideal attributes for this business. He will seek advice where he can find it. The question you must ask yourself is whether you will exert your considerable influence on him as he rises, insuring that your ethics govern his campaigning and his actions in office, or whether you will turn him loose to seek other influences and go another course.”

“Well, I hardly think that my input would make any significant difference! The planet is large, and no single person affects more than a tiny bit of it.”

“So thought the pirates of the Belt,” Spirit replied.

“Touché!” Megan agreed. “I confess I cheered with the majority when their power was destroyed, though I oppose war on principle. I do have, as it were, some weakness of the flesh. But politics is not a matter of sending a fleet of ships to—”

Spirit stared her in the eye. “When my brother becomes President of the United States of Jupiter, where will you be?”

Again Megan's jaw dropped. “President! You can't possibly be serious!”

“I am serious,” I said. “I have things to do that can only be done from the top. I hope to do them with your help and guidance, but I will do them any way I can. I think I can be a much more effective force for good on this planet if you are with me, but if I cannot have you with me I will still do what I can.”

Megan just looked at me, amazed. “You—you could become another Tocsin, or worse!”

“Not if you are with me.”

“As the saying goes,” Spirit murmured, “if you can't beat them join them.”

“A literal political marriage!” Megan exclaimed. “Just like that!”

“But I will love you,” I reminded her. “And I hope you will love me.”

She looked at me as if considering how to set me straight without hurting my feelings too seriously. But she was flattered, too. The insidious worm of political desire was gnawing at her, after being quiescent for two years. No person gets into politics indifferently; the lure of power is always there, and it never truly abates. She had been badly hurt, but she could not truly stay away. I offered her a place in what we hoped would be the most spectacular campaign of the times: the rise of a Hispanic refugee to the top position of the planet. I knew she would struggle against it, thrashing like a fish on the hook, but she could not in the end decline. Spirit had found the correct approach for me to win Megan.

And so it was. It took several months, and in that time Megan's nemesis, Tocsin, was elected vice-president of the U.S. of J. Perhaps that fact affected her as much as any. She knew that a creature like Tocsin could not be allowed to have his way completely unopposed. Probably she did not see me as the ideal opposing candidate, and certainly she did not think in terms of vengeance; she was too nice a person for that. But she did perceive the need and did feel responsible, for she had provided the springboard for Tocsin's leap to prominence. She had to reenter the fray, however painful it might be on the personal level, and I proffered the vehicle. She accepted me, perhaps, as a necessary evil, as she might have accepted an aggressive attack dog as a companion when walking through a dangerous neighborhood. She hardly approved of all I stood for but recognized my place in the larger scheme and accepted what had to be. She did it with that certain grace and even éclat that so endeared her to me; though the decision was difficult for her, in no way did she suggest that there was anything offensive about me personally. Megan had style.

We worked it out very like a contract. She would marry me but would neither live with me nor be intimate with me. She would be my political consultant and would have veto power over any appointment to my staff. We might have disagreements, but neither of us would express these publicly. She would introduce me to her political contacts and teach me and/or Spirit all she could about the fundamentals and strategies of politics.

We were married in a civil ceremony in the State of Golden. Megan permitted me to kiss her once, chastely. Then Spirit and I caught a flight back to Sunshine. It was not an auspicious beginning, but I was well satisfied. Megan was mine—legally—and I was sure she would in due course be mine in reality.

They brought me into the painful light again and cleaned me up for another interview. “Do you remember any more?” the interrogator inquired.

Did I remember more? Most of my first year on the planet of Jupiter had suddenly been revealed to me.

Now I knew that it was the arena of politics I had entered after my departure from the Navy. It had all been triggered by the key word MEGAN. Somehow I had prepared myself to respond in that manner to that key word, when I understood that it was a key, much as a computer will respond to the touch on a particular button only when programmed to do so. But this new memory I surely had to conceal from my captors, for it was well within the range they believed they had erased.

“Some more,” I said guardedly, glancing at the pain-box.

“Your military service.”

Oh. I concentrated on that. “Yes, I went through basic training. There was a girl, Juana—I shared quarters with her. She was a Hispanic refugee, like me. A very nice, very pretty young woman. But I had to leave her, when...” I found that the tremendous volume of experience triggered by the word Megan was an isolated thing; my military experience remained at the prior pace of recovery. Except that, as if it were a glimpse into the future, I knew I had married more than once and left the service with the rank of captain. I just had no memory of how I had achieved it. Perhaps there was a key term to evoke that experience. But it seemed that my prior self had not wished me to have that information at this stage, and I had to trust the judgment of that self. Thus my Navy memories were returning at the normal crawl permitted by recovery from the mem-wash; it would probably take months to cover the fifteen years or so I had evidently spent there.

“You like women?” Scar asked.

I was somewhat taken aback by this seeming camaraderie, “Yes,” I answered.

“How do you feel?”

I considered that. “Low,” I concluded.

“Nauseous?”

“No. Just low.” The malaise had developed slowly, so that only now did I realize I had it.

“Try this,” he said, bringing me another cup of the beverage he had given me before.

I drank it without protest. I knew he would torture me with the pain-box if I did not, but also I welcomed this distraction from the subject of my returning memories. In a moment I began to feel better, physically. “Yes, good,” i said. “What is it?”

He shrugged. “Merely an upper. You will have all you want, if you cooperate with us.”

“But I don't know what you want of me,” I said plaintively.

“Merely your cooperation,” he said. “A positive attitude. With that, all else is possible.”

Just as I had endeavored to gain the positive attitude of Megan. This man evidently wanted a lot more of me than I would ordinarily give. But this was not the time to arouse his suspicion. “Anything you want,” I agreed.

“First, a lesson-session,” he said.

He brought me simple gray clothing—shirt, trousers, slippers—and I donned it, relieved that the pain-box had not been invoked. I felt much better now; clothing has a strong psychological effect. But, of course, the drug contributed considerably, though the high did not seem to be as strong as it had been before. Maybe they had given me a weaker dose. I didn't like getting drugged, but I still didn't see any point in resisting. They would do with my body as they wished. And there was something from my Megan memory—a reference to my supposed immunity to addiction. Could that be true?

We entered a separate chamber where there was a tiny library of books and two easy chairs. I was told to sit down. It was a luxury to inhabit such a chair after the hard and filthy floor of my dark cell.

“Do you remember how the present political order came about?” the man asked me, taking the other chair. It was easy to imagine that we were merely two acquaintances indulging in a postprandial conversation. But I had not forgotten the dark cell or the pain-box—nor was I intended to. This was a technique I recognized: the carrot and the stick.

I focused on the question. “The—the nations of Earth laid claim to the properties of the Solar System, in accordance with their representations on the mother planet,” I said, as my early education came back to me. “When the gee-shield made System colonization feasible, there was an agreement in the old United Nations, now called the United Planets. They tried to do it very fairly, so there would be no war in space.” I paused to smile, and Scar smiled with me. We both knew that there were as many wars in space as there had been on Earth, so that this aspect of the compromise had been a foolish dream. Man had exported his nature with his technology. "The nations of old Europe took the planet Uranus, with its moons and rings, and set up governments like those they had on Earth, along with their individual languages and cultures. The Asian nations took over Saturn, with its more spectacular moons and rings, and the American nations got the big prize, Jupiter. The Africans got the hot planets; Mercury and Venus.

Of course, the pattern isn't perfect, but in a general way it is true that the contemporary political Solar System resembles the planet of prediaspora Earth, but on a larger scale. The languages, the cultures, even the histories conform to a remarkable extent. The two Solar wars—"

“Do you approve of war as an instrument of political policy?”

That brought me up short. “I don't really know,” I confessed. "I suppose it depends on the situation.

Certainly there have been unjust or foolish wars, and war is certainly one of the most dangerous and costly ways to settle differences. But when the Deutsch Reich of Uranus set out to conquer that planet and Saturn, too, what was there to do but make war to stop it?"

“You believe in the existing order, then?”

“Well, I'm not sure about that. As long as the existing order tolerates piracy in space—”

“The pirates are gone,” he said. “You had a hand in that, Hubris.”

“I did?” Almost, I remembered it directly, instead of as the memory of a statement made in the time of my introduction to life on Jupiter. Hero of the Belt ! “I'm glad. They had to be extirpated.”

“By lawful means,” he said.

“Certainly.” What was he getting at? Did this have something to do with my confinement here? Could I have broken the law and required rather special rehabilitation? No, that did not seem likely.

“The existing government of Jupiter is working to solve the problems of the day,” he said. “Do you believe that?”

I shrugged. “I don't know. I don't remember the current government. That is, which party is in power, or who is President now. When I was a refugee in space, the government seemed to have no interest in dealing with the problems of refugees or the eradication of piracy. But that was... I think it must have been some time ago. Maybe it's better now. Certainly the Jupiter system of government is a good one, perhaps the best in a flawed Solar System. But—”

“That's enough,” he said, and terminated the interview.

I was not returned to my dark and stinking cell. Instead I was conducted to a larger, brighter one, with a conventional hammock and a lavatory facility. What an improvement! Evidently I had pleased my captors, and this was my reward.

What had I said to please them? I had only described the contemporary Solar System, which was familiar to all school children, and expressed my support for the type of government Jupiter possessed, with my reservations for specific practices. Why should that deserve reward?

Had I become a revolutionist, trying to overthrow the system? If so, I could hardly protest my fate. But this treatment seemed overly harsh and secretive—and why should anyone bother to rehabilitate a revolutionary? At any rate, I did appreciate my improved quarters and would try to continue pleasing my captors. Clean, clothed, comfortable—what more could I ask?

Freedom, I answered myself mentally. But I knew that wish was useless.

Apart from that, I lacked entertainment. There were no books, no holo units, not even any old-fashioned board games. And no one with whom to play them.

Ah, there was the crux! Companionship! It was hard to be continually alone.

Still, I knew when I was relatively well off. I lay on the hammock and contemplated the patterns in the paint on the ceiling of the chamber and slept.

I dreamed of Annabel Lee, who had lived in a kingdom by the sea: And this maiden she lived with no other thought

Than to love and be loved by me.

My memory of Helse, of course. Every so often she visited me, though she was long dead, and I always appreciated it.

In due course a meal was brought. This time it was on a tray, and there was variety: some sort of juice, mashed protein mix, and a pastry. Royal treatment indeed—all because I had expressed support for the present order?

I finished, used the lavatory, and sat on the hammock. Now that my lot had improved, I was bored. My feeling of malaise was returning. Why should this be?

I thought about it, and the answer came: The drug they had given me to drink was wearing off. I was suffering withdrawal. So much for being immune!

Restlessly I paced the cell, trying to abate the discomfort. It wasn't actually extreme, but something prompted me to make a show. They were trying to addict me, to make me malleable; suppose they realized that the effect was uncomfortable but not truly compulsive? If my immunity was working partially, it was better to persuade them otherwise.

Soon Scar appeared. “What is your problem, Hubris?”

“That drink,” I said. “Could I have another—now?”

He smiled. “Indeed.” He departed and returned in a moment with the drink. I took it and gulped it down eagerly. Point made.

I was left alone again. The euphoria of the drug took me, more mildly than before, so that instead of enjoying it I remained bored. Apparently my immunity was a slowly developing thing, cutting down the highs and lows with greater facility as time went on. Good enough; I had caught the hint in time to conceal the nature of my resistance to the drug.

I explored my cell. It was about eight feet by twelve feet, with a ceiling of eight feet. That was palatial, for a sub. The hammock was at one end, the lavatory section at the other, the door in the middle. The walls were featureless, and I didn't dare scratch them, knowing that my marks would immediately be apparent. No secret codes here.

There was a glassy window in the door, really a narrow slit that sufficed only to allow the captor to observe the captive. All I could see from inside the cell was a segment of the access passage, and the door to the opposite cell, with its own vision slit. Not much to entertain me there.

Yet I looked. In fact, I stared, having nothing to do. I oriented on that opposite portal as if it were my gateway to escape.

I don't know how long I remained there, staring. Certainly my vision fogged, and perhaps I slept. But abruptly I spied an eye in the opposite slit. There was another prisoner there.

This transformed my awareness. I had company. Oh, I couldn't talk with him or shake his hand or even see him clearly; the window allowed little more than one eye and a vertical slice of face to show through.

But he was a fellow captive, and that made up for the inadequacy of appearance.

He saw me, too, for his eye locked gazes with mine, and then he winked. I winked back. We had established communication. Oh, no words, no written message, but communication nonetheless. It was enormously gratifying to have a companion in isolation, as it were, even without words.

Then a guard came, and we had to get away from the window slits. But the guard only turned out the lights—for night—and departed. We were alone again.

I returned to my hammock, as there was nothing to be seen in the dark. But the lingering effect of the drug kept me hyped up. Now that I knew I had company I could not be satisfied with ignorance. I had to know more about him. Why was he here? Had he been memory-washed, confined in filth, and tortured?

Did he know anything about our captors or our prospects for release? It didn't matter what the answers were; I simply had to know.

I considered the door. My prior cell had had a sliding panel that bolted tightly in place; no hope for escape. But this one had a regular door catch, the kind that was slanted on one side and slid into place because of a spring. Child's play to force that open. Why the superior mechanisms of recent centuries had not been employed was a mystery; I conjectured that this vessel had begun its career as a yacht, with deliberately archaic furnishings and mechanisms as a signal of status, and later converted into a sub. At any rate, this was a major break for me, as my military training had schooled me in lock-picking, among other things. All I needed was a bit of wire or metal.

Well, I had left my rivet in the other cell—and, anyway, I wasn't sure that was suitable for this. It was too small. What else offered?

I checked my new clothing. It was soft, without buttons or stays. I might have used an eating utensil, but that was gone with the meal tray.

I got up to find the sanitary unit in the darkness—what a blessing that was, in contrast to my prior circumstance!—and as I used it I realized that this could be the answer. The unit was standard for spacecraft: a tube leading away into a central processing apparatus, a moderate suction conveying solids and liquids there. In free-fall it tended to be more complicated, and primitive ships required separate facilities for solid and liquid wastes. But evidently this ship maintained centrifugal gee steadily enough to warrant more conventional facilities. The toilet was sealed by an airtight panel; the unit was flushed when a lever was operated to slide the panel momentarily aside, allowing the gee and suction to draw the refuse down.

Sure enough, I was able to unscrew part of the connecting rod and detach it. I had my instrument!

I paused. Was I under observation, here in the cell? Well, I might be, but if I was, why did my captors need to lock me in? Probably they could monitor me but didn't bother unless there seemed to be immediate reason. There might be a continuing holo-tape of activity within this cell, but it would be a boring job reviewing that tape. After a while the clerk in charge would get slack and leave it to the computer. The behavior patterns of human beings were so strange as to defy computer analysis, however, so probably this action of mine would not be called out as either an attempt to escape or an attempt to commit suicide.