The Collected Stories of Frank Herbert (78 page)

“You're saying we have to stop killing insects,” Joao said. “You're saying we have to let you take over.”

“We say you must stop killing yourselves,” rumbled the voice. “Already, the Chinese are … I believe you would call it:
reinfesting
their land. Perhaps they will be in time, perhaps not. Here, it is not too late. There … they were fast and thorough … and they may need help.”

“You … give us no proof,” Joao said.

“There will be time for proof, later,” said the voice. “Now, join your woman friend outside; let the sun work on your skin and the chlorophyll in your blood, and when you come back, tell me if the sun is your slave.”

 

COMMITTEE OF THE WHOLE

I

With an increasing sense of unease, Alan Wallace studied his client as they neared the public hearing room on the second floor of the Old Senate Office Building. The guy was too relaxed.

“Bill, I'm worried about this,” Wallace said. “You could damn well lose your grazing rights here in this room today.”

They were almost into the gauntlet of guards, reporters and TV cameramen before Wallace got his answer.

“Who the hell cares?” Custer asked.

Wallace, who prided himself on being the Washington-type lawyer—above contamination by complaints and briefs, immune to all shock—found himself tongue-tied with surprise.

They were into the ruck then and Wallace had to pull on his bold face, smiling at the press, trying to soften the sharpness of that necessary phrase:

“No comment. Sorry.”

“See us after the hearing if you have any questions, gentlemen,” Custer said.

The man's voice was level and confident.

He has himself over-controlled,
Wallace thought.
Maybe he was just joking … a graveyard joke.

The marble-walled hearing room blazed with lights. Camera platforms had been raised above the seats at the rear. Some of the smaller UHF stations had their cameramen standing on the window ledges.

The subdued hubbub of the place eased slightly, Wallace noted, then picked up tempo as William R. Custer—“The Baron of Oregon” they called him—entered with his attorney, passed the press tables and crossed to the seats reserved for them in the witness section.

Ahead and to their right, that one empty chair at the long table stood waiting with its aura of complete exposure.

“Who the hell cares?”

That wasn't a Custer-type joke, Wallace reminded himself. For all his cattle-baron pose, Custer held a doctorate in agriculture and degrees in philosophy, maths and electronics. His western neighbors called him “The Brain.”

It was no accident that the cattlemen had chosen him to represent them here.

Wallace glanced covertly at the man, studying him. The cowboy boots and string tie added to a neat dark business suit would have been affectation on most men. They merely accented Custer's good looks—the sun-burned, windblown outdoorsman. He was a little darker of hair and skin than his father had been, still light enough to be called blonde, but not as ruddy and without the late father's drink-tumescent veins.

But then young Custer wasn't quite thirty.

Custer turned, met the attorney's eyes. He smiled.

*   *   *

“Those were good patent attorneys you recommended, Al,” Custer said. He lifted his briefcase to his lap, patted it. “No mincing around or mealy-mouthed excuses. Already got this thing on the way.” Again, he tapped the briefcase.

He brought that damn' light gadget here with him?
Wallance wondered.
Why?
He glanced at the briefcase.
Didn't know it was that small … but maybe he's just talking about the plan for it.

“Let's keep our minds on this hearing,” Wallace whispered. “This is the only thing that's important.”

Into a sudden lull in the room's high noise level, the voice of someone in the press section carried across them: “greatest political show on earth.”

“I brought this as an exhibit,” Custer said. Again, he tapped the briefcase. It
did
bulge oddly.

Exhibit?
Wallace asked himself.

It was the second time in ten minutes that Custer had shocked him. This was to be a hearing of a subcommittee of the Senate Interior and Insular Affairs Committee. The issue was Taylor grazing lands. What the devil could that …
gadget
have to do with the battle of words and laws to be fought here?

“You're supposed to talk over all strategy with your attorney,” Wallace whispered. “What the devil do you…”

He broke off as the room fell suddenly silent.

Wallace looked up to see the subcommittee chairman, Senator Haycourt Tiborough, stride through the wide double doors followed by his coterie of investigators and attorneys. The senator was a tall man who had once been fat. He had dieted with such savage abruptness that his skin had never recovered. His jowls and the flesh on the back of his hands sagged. The top of his head was shiny bald and ringed by a three-quarter tonsure that had purposely been allowed to grow long and straggly so that it fanned back over his ears.

The senator was followed in close lock step by syndicated columnist Anthony Poxman who was speaking fiercely into Tiborough's left ear. TV cameras tracked the pair.

If Poxman's covering this one himself instead of sending a flunky, it's going to be bad,
Wallace told himself.

Tiborough took his chair at the center of the committee table facing them, glanced left and right to assure himself the other members were present.

Senator Spealance was absent, Wallace noted, but he had party organization difficulties at home, and the Senior Senator for Oregon was, significantly, not present. Illness, it was reported.

A sudden attack of caution, that common Washington malady, no doubt. He knew where his campaign money came from … but he also knew where the votes were.

They had a quorum, though.

Tiborough cleared his throat, said: “The committee will please come to order.”

The senator's voice and manner gave Wallace a cold chill.
We were nuts trying to fight this one in the open,
he thought.
Why'd I let Custer and his friends talk me into this? You can't butt heads with a United States senator who's out to get you. The only way's to fight him on the inside.

And now Custer suddenly turned screwball.

Exhibit!

“Gentlemen,” said Tiborough, “I think we can … that is, today we can dispense with preliminaries … unless my colleagues … if any of them have objections.”

Again, he glanced at the other senators—five of them. Wallace swept his gaze down the line behind that table—Plowers of Nebraska (a horse trader), Johnstone of Ohio (a parliamentarian—devious), Lane of South Carolina (a Republican in Democrat disguise), Emery of Minnesota (new and eager—dangerous because he lacked the old inhibitions) and Meltzer of New York (poker player, fine old family with traditions).

None of them had objections.

They've had a private meeting—both sides of the aisle—and talked over a smooth steamroller procedure,
Wallace thought.

It was another ominous sign.

“This is a subcommittee of the United States Senate Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs,” Tiborough said, his tone formal. “We are charged with obtaining expert opinion on proposed amendments to the Taylor Grazing Act of 1934. Today's hearing will begin with testimony and … ah, questioning of a man whose family has been in the business of raising beef cattle in Oregon for three generations.”

Tiborough smiled at the TV cameras.

The son-of-a-bitch is playing to the galleries,
Wallace thought. He glanced at Custer. The cattleman sat relaxed against the back of his chair, eyes half lidded, staring at the senator.

“We call as our first witness today Mr. William R. Custer of Bend, Oregon,” Tiborough said. “Will the clerk please swear in Mr. Custer.”

Custer moved forward to the “hot seat,” placed his briefcase on the table. Wallace pulled a chair up beside his client, noted how the cameras turned as the clerk stepped forward, put the Bible on the table and administered the oath.

Tiborough ruffled through some papers in front of him, waited for full attention to return to him, said: “This subcommittee … we have before us a bill, this is a United States Senate Bill entitled SB-1024 of the current session, an act amending the Taylor Grazing Act of 1934 and, the intent is, as many have noted, that we would broaden the base of the advisory committees to the Act and include a wider public representation.”

Custer was fiddling with the clasp of his briefcase.

How the hell could that light gadget be an exhibit here?
Wallace asked himself. He glanced at the set of Custer's jaw, noted the nervous working of a muscle. It was the first sign of unease he'd seen in Custer. The sight failed to settle Wallace's own nerves.

“Ah, Mr. Custer,” Tiborough said. “Do you—did you bring a preliminary statement? Your counsel…”

“I have a statement,” Custer said. His big voice rumbled through the room, requiring instant attention and the shift of cameras that had been holding tardily on Tiborough, expecting an addition to the question.

Tiborough smiled, waited, then: “Your attorney—is your statement the one your counsel supplied the committee?”

“With some slight additions of my own,” Custer said.

Wallace felt a sudden qualm. They were too willing to accept Custer's statement. He leaned close to his client's ear, whispered: “They know what your stand is. Skip the preliminaries.”

Custer ignored him, said: “I intend to speak plainly and simply. I oppose the amendment. Broaden the base and wider public representation are phrases of political double talk. The intent is to pack the committees, to put control of them into the hands of people who don't know the first thing about the cattle business and whose private intent is to destroy the Taylor Grazing Act itself.”

“Plain, simple talk,” Tiborough said. “This committee … we welcome such directness. Strong words. A majority of this committee … we have taken the position that the public range lands have been too long subjected to the tender mercies of the stockmen advisers, that the lands … stockmen have exploited them to their own advantage.”

The gloves were off.
Wallace thought.
I hope Custer knows what he's doing. He's sure as hell not accepting advice.

Custer pulled a sheaf of papers from his briefcase and Wallace glimpsed shiny metal in the case before the flap was closed.

Christ! That looked like a gun or something!

Then Wallace recognized the papers—the brief he and his staff had labored over—and the preliminary statement. He noted with alarm the penciled markings and marginal notations. How could Custer have done that much to it in just twenty-four hours?

Again, Wallace whispered in Custer's ear: “Take it easy, Bill. The bastard's out for blood.”

Custer nodded to show he had heard, glanced at the papers, looked up directly at Tiborough.

A hush settled on the room, broken only by the scraping of a chair somewhere in the rear, and the whirr of cameras.

II

“First, the nature of these lands we're talking about,” Custer said. “In my state…” He cleared his throat, a mannerism that would have indicated anger in the old man, his father. There was no break in Custer's expression, though, and his voice remained level. “… in my state, these were mostly Indian lands. This nation took them by brute force, right of conquest. That's about the oldest right in the world, I guess. I don't want to argue with it at this point.”

“Mr. Custer.”

It was Nebraska's Senator Plowers, his amiable farmer's face set in a tight grin. “Mr. Custer, I hope…”

“Is this a point of order?” Tiborough asked.

“Mr. Chairman,” Plowers said, “I merely wished to make sure we weren't going to bring up that old suggestion about giving these lands back to the Indians.”

Laughter shot across the hearing room. Tiborough chuckled as he pounded his gavel for order.

“You may continue, Mr. Custer,” Tiborough said.

Custer looked at Plowers, said: “No, Senator, I don't want to give these lands back to the Indians. When they had these lands, they only got about three hundred pounds of meat a year off eighty acres. We get five hundred pounds of the highest grade proteins—premium beef—from only ten acres.”

“No one doubts the efficiency of your factory-like methods,” Tiborough said. “You can … we know your methods wring the largest amount of meat from a minimum acreage.”

Ugh!
Wallace thought.
That was a low blow—implying Bill's overgrazing and destroying the land value.

“My neighbors, the Warm Springs Indians, use the same methods I do,” Custer said. “They are happy to adopt our methods because we use the land while maintaining it and increasing its value. We don't permit the land to fall prey to natural disasters such as fire and erosion. We don't…”

“No doubt your methods are meticulously correct,” Tiborough said. “But I fail to see where…”

“Has Mr. Custer finished his preliminary statement yet?” Senator Plowers cut in.

Wallace shot a startled look at the Nebraskan. That was help from an unexpected quarter.

“Thank you, Senator,” Custer said. “I'm quite willing to adapt to the Chairman's methods and explain the meticulous correctness of my operation. Our lowliest cowhands are college men, highly paid. We travel ten times as many jeep miles as we do horse miles. Every outlying division of the ranch—every holding pen and grazing supervisor's cabin is linked to the central ranch by radio. We use the…”