Chapter 6 — THORLEY

I quickly learned how naïve I had been about politics. I had thought I would simply pick an office, run for it, and win it. Megan disabused me: rarely could a newcomer to politics pluck the office of his choice from the electorate. The great majority came up through the grass roots, building their constituencies before emerging as serious contenders for the favor of the voters.

What were these grass roots? She sent me into the turf to find out. The process reminded me of Basic Training in the Navy, though the education was not physical.

I had to join a citizen's activity organization and do my homework. This was the Good Government Group, better known as GGG, or Triple-Gee, or 3-G, whose stated purpose was to accelerate the existing government into conformity with the needs of the citizens. The present government, GGG said, was seriously out of phase, and hardly represented its constituency at any level. The result was corruption, inefficiency, and despoliation. A monthly national publication, Gee Whiz, pinpointed specifics on the planetary scene, and a state publication, Sun-Gee, covered the local issues. Everything was covered: the nefarious influence of special interests; the ongoing weapons development race; sloppy accounting practices by the government; the Saturn hot line that was supposed to keep interplanetary communications open in times of crisis; the perennial Balanced Budget Amendment; controversial subsidies for agricultural interests; wasteful use of chauffeured autobubbles by bureaucrats; tax reform; the campaign for the G-l Space Bomber that threatened to bankrupt the planet before it was produced; the question of monopolistic mail service; an attempt to enable Congress to overturn Supreme Court decisions; protection of the atmospheric environment; the Equal Opportunity drive; pros and cons of subsidized bubble-housing; the revised Planetary Voting Rights Act; another routine administration scandal; the problem of continuing monetary inflation; unemployment; neglect of the elderly; restrictive construction codes; prison reform; retirement reform; the activities of the Jupiter Medical Association; the Jupiter Weapons Association; the ethics of drafting citizens into the Navy; athletes making commercials; huge cost overruns on military contracts; a bill to subsidize private schools; the problem of organized crime; a survey on the ages of members of Congress; research for new applications of contra-terrene matter; an antidrug campaign; city-bubble pollution; ways to prevent interplanetary war, or at least postpone it. There seemed to be an endless array of issues, and Megan assured me that most of them had been around for centuries in one form or another without any real resolutions. "But how can I make sense of all this?" I asked plaintively. "We were never faced with such matters in the Navy."

"You have led a sheltered life," she replied grimly. I found that statement ironic, but, of course, I knew what she meant. I had been exposed to the problems of survival in space but not to the problems of planetary political interaction. "This is the cesspool of civilian life. Keep reading and thinking, and it will start to fall into place. You must acquire a sensible grasp of every significant issue, for the one you do not master will become your Achilles' heel. It has happened many times to politicians before you. A single ignorant statement can finish you."

"Like a pinhole leak in a space suit," I murmured.

"Meanwhile, focus on one particular issue, the one you feel is most important, and learn what you can about that. Become active in that one area, become expert if you can—and when you are satisfied that your position is correct, you will be ready to tackle the next issue."

"But there are hundreds of important issues," I protested. "I'll never have time to master them all!"

"Now you perhaps appreciate why public officials occasionally make ignorant statements or do foolish things," she said. "The perfect candidate knows everything about everything."

"But in the Navy my staff—"

"True. And you will have a political staff, too, and use it similarly. But first you must grasp the basics yourself."

I delved back into the myriad issues, and so did Spirit, as if we were two students in school, seeking the one I could deem most important. It was a headache, for they were all important in one devious way or another.

Meanwhile, our limited activity had not gone unnoticed. The political columnist for a local newspaper was a man who signed himself simply "Thorley." Between elections he was evidently short of material, so minor things warranted comment.

"Guess who's coming to town," Thorley wrote conversationally, showing by this signal that this was not a subject to be taken too seriously. "Remember the darling of the bleeding-heart set in Golden, Megan? It seems she married the gallant of the Jupiter Navy, Captain Hubris, a man some years her junior. Rumor has it that one of them has political pretensions."

"That's insulting," I said angrily. "What right does he have to—"

"We are, or were, public figures," she said. "Our names are in the common domain, his to play with at will. He tosses them about as a canine tosses a rag doll, entertaining himself. You will have to get used to this sort of thing if you wish to survive in politics. Words become as heated and effective as lasers. Perhaps you can better appreciate, now, why I was not eager to return to the arena myself."

I took her hand, which was as much of a gesture as I felt free to make at this stage of our marriage. She was exactly the woman I needed her to be. "I confess that the political knives are more devious than the military ones, but I will master them."

"I rather fear you will," she agreed. "Just remember that any publicity is generally good news."

"Bleeding-heart set?" Spirit grumbled, unappeased.

"Those who favor liberal social legislation to alleviate the ills of society," Megan explained. "Conservatives generally hold such ideals in contempt. I certainly qualify as a bleeding heart. I'm not sure about you."

"Social reform," I said. "I've already seen enough to know that there is an immense mountain of reform required. If that makes me a bleeding-heart... well, I may arrange to make some other hearts bleed before I'm through."

"There speaks the military mind," she said, smiling. She was, of course, against militarism, but she was coming to understand me, so she smiled to signal that she was not condemning me personally. She was very diplomatic in little ways like that, and I appreciated it. If I had not been programmed to love her, I would have found myself falling in love with her now. Helse had been my ideal love, in that kingdom by the sea, but now I understood that Megan was to Helse as a nova is to a star. "Just keep in mind that though Thorley is at the opposite end of the political spectrum, he is a competent journalist and an honest man."

"You would find good in the devil himself," I charged her, also smiling.

"That might be a slight exaggeration. But Thorley is no devil. His beliefs may be wrong-headed by my definitions, but he is no demagogue. He will not compromise his principles, and that is to be respected."

"I see no principle here!" I snapped, staring at the item. But I knew it was useless to talk back to a piece of paper.

Gradually the underlying currents came clear. Politicians as a class were not noted for their integrity, but they ran true to form in certain ways. All of them were interested in money, because they required huge amounts of it to publicize themselves, and publicity was the lifeblood of politics. All had to solicit money from their constituents, but none ever had enough. This was not greed, it was the breath of political life. The politician who spent the most to promote himself usually prevailed, when the contest was in other respects even. Of course, it was seldom even; the incumbent always had an enormous advantage, because he was already known to the electorate, and his office generated natural publicity. To unseat an incumbent, a challenger needed to spend much more money, but the incumbent had much readier access to the sources of money.

"How can any challenger ever prevail?" I asked as I contemplated the statistics.

"Now you can see why some campaigns get dirty," Megan responded.

Of course. Dirt was relatively cheap. A little money could purchase a lot of dirt and muddy the waters so that the dirt-slinger might have a better chance. Obviously this was a strategy that Megan's nemesis Tocsin had mastered. I liked Tocsin less as I got to know his ways, but my understanding was growing. It was like guerrilla fighting on backworld settlements; the government had overwhelming resources, so the opposition had to resort to stealth and terrorism. It wasn't nice, but it evened the odds somewhat. Politics followed similar rules, but the evidences were more subtle. Tocsin had not fired a laser into Megan's back during their campaign in Golden; he had circulated a bogus description of her positions on issues, the paper tinted a delicate pink. This was, for complex and irrelevant reasons the color associated with the Saturnists. Thus he had implied that she was a traitor to Jupiter. A laser in the back would have been cleaner.

The main supplier of money was the community of special interests. This amounted to institutionalized bribery. The small-arm laser manufacturers contributed to candidates who promised to prevent any legislation restricting the manufacture or distribution or sale or use of hand-lasers. The agricultural interests contributed to those who believed in higher price supports for vegetable bubbles. The military-industrial complex contributed to those who argued for a strong planetary defense. Special interests abounded, and the aggregate of their contributions to politicians was huge. Evidently it was cost-effective, for by means of contributions of thousands of dollars, they could reap legislation that returned them millions. Out of those millions in profits came the contributions to subsequent campaigns, and those contributions were tax-deductible. The common taxpayer always ended up paying for it.

Some politicians tried to be honest: they turned down special-interest money. They generally lost their elections. Thus victory went to the ones who were most freely for sale. It was open, legally sanctioned corruption, causing the entire government to be corrupt, because it was hard to get really clean government from those who became members of it only by committing themselves to minority interests for money.

I concluded that this must be the fundamental evil of the system: the pervasive influence of special-interest money on the governmental process. Stop that flow of money, and much of the inherent corruption would lose its motivation. Some campaigns had solved the problem by providing for public funding; the campaign for the highest office, the Presidency, was that way. But those for Congress were privately funded, and the purchase of elective offices was chronic.

Campaign finance reform—there was my special project. That was the starting place, for the government and for me. I familiarized myself with it. I commented on it in Triple-Gee meetings. I made contact with and developed associations with those who had a similar concern. I became known as a campaign finance reform activist. There were tax-reform activists and racial-integration activists and defense-freeze activists and education-upgrade activists; in this I was one of the crowd. But I was learning about the political system.

That system was worth learning about, from the grassroots vantage. Structurally, the States of North Jupiter were collections of floating bubbles in the currents of the mighty atmosphere, linked by systems of physical travel and networks of communications. It was a mighty and amazing system of colonization, impressive in its concept, execution, and technology. But the social politics comprised a similar network, as intricate in its fashion as the physical-one. In fact, it was a seething cauldron of special interests—the fount from which the moneyed interests drew. In the circles I moved in, the people tended to be active and liberal, politically, but—I perceived that there were equivalent circles of opposite persuasion. It was all part of the mix. Jupiter truly was a melting pot of political dissension, which most of us agreed was one of its great strengths.

Columnist Thorley had another comment in print: "Captain Hubris, he who tightened the Belt, has been delving into the arcane lore of Campaign Finance (his caps, not mine). Could he be interested in something of the sort himself? Stranger things have been known to occur in the murky bypaths of the liberal establishment."

I was improving; it took me only five minutes to get my temper back under control. I even managed, after Megan's strenuous urging, to refrain from buzzing out a nasty rejoinder about the murky conservative bypaths of the wealthy.

Time passed. I don't mean to imply that what I have summarized occurred in a day or a week. I was three years in the undercurrents of the social maelstrom. I assumed the chairmanship of a committee to monitor the campaign finances of the elected representatives of our locale. Theoretically all campaign finances were open; in practice we had to struggle to get our hands on some of the records, which were treated like classified material and kept from the ordinary citizen. We managed to get printouts of the lists of all their contributors, and we checked the names and amounts against the requirements of the law. We did not discover any significant violations, but the patterns of contributions emerged.

One office holder was known to favor increased price supports for milk, which was, in space, an inefficient industry. Foliage had to be grown, fed to cows, and thus converted to milk, when the original foliage would have fed many more people than the milk did. The dairy industry contributed strongly to that office holder, and his position became even more favorable to that industry, despite the expense to the government. He preached economy, but he did not practice it in such cases. I saw how a number of employees of a particular farm-bubble gave identical and significant gifts of money, though they were themselves low-paid. How could they afford this? Why didn't they use the money for their families? Megan explained it: "Their employer is making one large gift. Since that amount violates the legal limit for an individual, he splits it up into legal-sized segments and donates them in the names of his employees. The recipient understands and knows whom to thank."

"But why should the employees agree to this?" I asked. "Wouldn't they rather have the money themselves?"

"Would they rather lose their jobs?" she asked in return. Then I understood. I had, after all, once been a migrant laborer; I remembered the problem of earning a living. I saw, now, that the law limiting the size of individual contributions was being circumvented. Still, it was better than nothing.

Tri-Gee decided to make a planetary campaign about the campaign finance issue, coordinated with other civic-minded groups. I got to work on the liaison. I went from group to group, asking them to join with Tri-Gee in sponsoring a public presentation on the subject. This turned out to be another education for me. Some organizations welcomed such a joining of forces; others did not. One example of each will suffice: the Female Electors Membership, whose acronym was, of course, FEM, supported the effort instantly and lent attention, time, and money freely; in fact, they became the mainstay of it. In contrast the Legal Arts Wing—LAW—whose interest was in representing necessary but sometimes unpopular causes that could not otherwise afford to take their cases to court, and who had run full-page newsfax ads condemning the abuses of political payoffs, hardly gave me the time of day, and refused to participate.

"I don't understand," I complained privately to Megan.

"They prefer to do their projects alone," she explained.

"But by joining with others they could make much more progress!"

"And lose control. Some groups are jealous of their prerogatives."

There was the lesson. Even among civic groups, there were rivalries and imperatives. The members of the grass roots had their own turfs to defend. They would do good work alone, but their sense of individual identity and control was more important than their impact on the issues. If this meant that their efforts did not win the day, then so be it. Better to lose the battle alone than to win and have to share the credit.

But in fairness I must admit that once I had been the route and had thrown my effort into the program of promotion for the cause and had seen how the end result differed from what I had envisioned, I was frustrated. My input had been diluted by the consensus of others, and it seemed to me that the resulting program had been less effective than it should have been. But I was no dictator and had had to go along.

In addition, FEM cut me and Tri-Gee dead the moment its interest had been served, and so did some of the other organizations. I had naïvely supposed that all of us were working selflessly for a common cause; I found that each was serving its own cause. I could not protest openly because the job had been done and the other organizations had contributed, but I resolved that next time I would keep it within my own organization, GGG. LAW's somewhat insular attitude now made more sense, though I still did not like it.

Megan only nodded. She understood. "Even the most bleeding of hearts becomes a trifle cynical," she observed.

"You knew I would discover this," I accused her.

"I knew you had to experience it for yourself, as every politician must. As I did. It truly is a jungle."

It truly was. Not good, not evil, just a tangle from which it was difficult to extract anything truly enduring or worthwhile. An anarchy of good intentions and insufficient compromise. I was further disappointed because, although we had put on a good program in the name of a score of civic organizations, I had perceived that the attendance had been composed of members of the sponsoring groups. It had looked fine, with rousing speeches and applause; but, in fact, we had been talking to ourselves. Only those already committed to campaign finance reform had bothered to attend. The larger public remained indifferent. What, then, had we really accomplished?

"Damn it, I have wasted my time!" I exploded.

"By no means," Megan assured me. "You have been learning the grass-roots realities and making valuable contacts. You are now recognized as a concerned citizen; you have a base. Now you are ready to run for office."

For a moment I was taken aback. Of course, I would run for office. That was why I had started all this. My involvement in the campaign finance reform effort had absorbed my attention completely. Certainly I had not tried to curry favor with prospective voters; my only interest had been in the issue.

Megan took my hand and kissed me gently on the cheek. "You may have done better than you know, Hope," she said. "It is time."

I should clarify that our marriage remained one of convenience, and I honored the understanding we had made at the outset. But I loved Megan, as I had always known I would. She was a truly lovely individual, outside and inside, the perfect woman. Now I was thirty-three and she was thirty-nine; we were not children. But it was as if there was a radiance about her, to my eyes. At first she had commuted, in a manner, between Golden and Sunshine, but after a year she had joined me permanently, sharing my apartment while Spirit took another. Megan had not been married before, and acclimatized to it slowly. She never acted precipitously. For a year she had slept in a separate bedroom. Then she had shared mine, in a separate bed. There is a distinction between love and sex, and I had known from the outset that Megan was a creature of the former, not the latter. I had never seen her unclothed, and she had not seen me. It was enough to have her presence.

Oh, we did interact. We went out to entertainment functions together and to restaurants and civic meetings, where I discovered she was much better known than I in these circles. Who was I but a former military hero whose fame had been eclipsed by the following week's sports headline? She had been an office holder. I'm sure our associates assumed that our marriage was more intimate than it was.

At the same time she gravitated steadily toward me, as if her gee-shield were being damped. When she understood that I really was honoring our pact, she became more relaxed. She would kiss me at odd moments, as if doing something naughty. I neither solicited nor extended such intimacies; one might have thought that my interest in her was casual. It was not, and she knew it; all that Spirit had said about my orientation toward Megan was true. We were not children, and this was no kingdom by the sea, but I did indeed love her with a love that was more than love. I knew that if I forced her, however subtly, in any way, I would lose her. She had to come to me. It was as if she were a delicate flower that would wilt if touched by human hand, if plucked before its time. I did not even look at her inappropriately; the look of a man can be an aggressive thing. Those who had known me as a Navy man might have found that hard to believe, but only Spirit had been with me in the Navy and she understood.

Megan and I had been married three years, together two, and sharing the bedroom one. I knew that her respect and fondness for me had been growing. Megan took time to travel her way, but she was not coy. A month before, she had let me see her in her slip, and she remained a fair figure of a woman; I had of course given no overt signal of awareness, but she had known I was aware. I knew that, to her, physical nudity was tantamount to sexual contact, indeed was a form of it. Her gradual onset of familiarity was no striptease but a measured silent statement of her sentiment. So now, when she said, "It is time," I knew it was no casual thing. That statement was fraught with commitment.

"I love you in whatever way you would be loved," I said carefully.

"I know that, Hope." She looked about the room, as if searching for something, but it was nothing physical she sought. "I believe we are entering your area of expertise."

My expertise being, in the symbolism that existed between us, sexual. I had served in the Navy; I had made love and/or sex frequently, and to a number of different women over the years, in accordance with the military mandate. I knew what I was doing, in that respect, far better than I did in politics, despite her tutelage. By the same token I knew that Megan was afraid; she had no experience in the physical aspect of love.

I never wanted to cause her the slightest discomfort of any kind. There are those who ridicule what they call the Madonna complex, the attitude of a man toward a woman he deems to be untouchably perfect. This is not precisely the way I viewed Megan, but there might be a parallel. "There is no need."

She smiled tremulously. "You have been extraordinarily patient, Hope. I thought at first—forgive me—that you would tire of a sterile marriage and take a mistress. It has taken me time to believe that a handsome and talented man like you could actually love an older woman. Yet I see that it is so."

"It is so," I agreed.

Again she looked about, and again found nothing to fix on. "I am not good at this, Hope, but I have been impressed by your—your dedication to the cause that you have chosen. I have come to appreciate the qualities that you have. So let me just say, I am ready to be yours. Do with me what you will."

But she didn't mean it, quite. What she really meant was that she was ready for me to take the initiative in our private relationship. It was a most significant turning point.

I did so—cautiously. For the first time since our ceremony of marriage, I kissed her at my behest, rather than hers. I touched her lips with mine. I held her for a moment, savoring her, and let her go. "Sing for me," I told her.

Surprised but relieved, she went to her piano and played and sang an operatic aria. She was, of course, a very fine singer, a former professional, and I had always been enraptured by her melodies. When she finished, I joined her, singing a folk song. We made a duet, and it was very sweet. And that, for now, was as far as it went. It was as far as it could go without impinging on her nature.

 

The state of Sunshine had a unicameral legislature. In the archaic days on Earth, most states had had divided assemblies, but over the centuries these had given way to the more efficient single-house situations. It was time, Megan decided, for me to run for state senator, in my local district.

"First, you'll need an executive secretary," Megan said. "She must be as competent, intelligent, and loyal as it is possible to obtain in today's inferior market. You can use your talent to select her; it may take a while."

"Just to type letters?" I asked.

"I said executive secretary. She will become your right hand and be empowered to act for you in routine matters."

"But Spirit already—"

"You cannot fire your sister," she said, a trifle firmly.

Oh. Well, I had married Megan to set me straight on the political scene; now she was doing it. We went in search of a secretary.

First we checked the employment agencies, public and private. There were competent women, but they lacked the intelligence Megan required. There were intelligent ones, but they lacked the capacity for loyalty that I required.

"Are you sure I need such a fancy secretary?" I asked.

"I'm sure. She will be with you throughout your career; she must have the potential to rise with you."

"Maybe a male secretary."

"No." Megan was conservative about such things, oddly enough. "We'll check the schools."

We checked the schools. Still nothing perfect. I wondered whether Megan was concerned about my getting a very young, impressionable, pretty girl who was desperate to hold her position and therefore ripe for sexual advantage, but that did not seem to be the case; she knew exactly what we wanted and refused to settle for less.

After the trade schools we tried the colleges and then the high schools. There we discovered Shelia.

"Sheila?" Megan asked.

"Shelia," the girl repeated firmly. "My father never could spell very well, but he made sure I could. By that time it was too late to correct the name."

Megan was looking at the girl's record while I looked at the girl, judging her with my talent. Shelia was coming across with an intensity I had not observed in other interviewees, despite her youth. She was seventeen, in her last year of regular schooling, and she had extraordinary nerve and drive. I could tell by the way Megan was nodding that the school record was excellent. This was the one we wanted—except for one thing.

Shelia was a cripple. She was confined to a wheelchair. It was all in her records: an attempted shakedown of her family, and when her father refused to pay, they had beaten her to cow him, and when she was unconscious, they had beaten him. Contemporary medicine had saved her life to this extent, but not his. The criminals had been caught, but the damage had been done. Shelia would never walk again. Only her indomitable will had carried her through, but even that could not make her employable in any exotic capacity.

Did we want to be saddled with a wheelchair wherever we went? Most employers would not hesitate to say no. Yet we knew Shelia was ideal in the other respects, and both Megan and I had sympathy for those whom life had wronged. Had Shelia not been crippled, she could have obtained a much better job; she was actually overqualified for the position I offered. So we hired her, as of graduation, which was to be a few months hence.

In retrospect I consider this to have been one of the best decisions I have ever made. Shelia, when she came to us, was a very quick study and a dedicated worker. Soon she had a clearer notion of my campaign strategy than I did. I had supposed she would be relatively immobile, but she wheeled about as rapidly as any normal person would have walked. In fact, it took only a few days before I lost any awareness of the distinction; Shelia was normal in my office and soon became indispensable.

I ran for state senator. Immediately I discovered the value of my grass-roots years. I knew, personally, just about every person who was anyone of distinction in the Ybor area. That did not necessarily mean that they all supported me, but it helped considerably. They knew what I stood for: campaign finance reform. Some were curious how I would finance my own campaign. Would I set a good example and lose the election, or would I succumb to the lure of easy money and become a creature of the special interests? Their curiosity encouraged them to welcome me to their various meetings so that I could address them. I was an effective speaker, and the audiences were generally friendly. Oh, yes, Megan had seen to it that I was properly prepared.

I set the good example. I accepted contributions from the public and refused those of the special interests. Consequently I ran a lean campaign. Spirit was my campaign manager, Shelia my secretary/treasurer, and Megan my strategist. Of these, only Shelia was paid, and not enough for the job she was doing. Fortunately Spirit had served in a similar capacity in the Navy and was good at it, and Megan's political experience guided us safely past shoals we might otherwise have foundered on.

I had two potent things going for me in this region: I was a hero; and I was Hispanic. My Navy record has been quiescent but now revived, like a holofilm taken from storage. It gave me instant name-recognition, and my origin brought me firm support from the very sizable Hispanic community.

I had, however, one overwhelming liability: I was running against an incumbent.

I really don't care to dwell on the tedium of campaigning. I went everywhere, talked to any group that invited me, no matter how small—and some were very small!—and challenged my opponent to a debate. Naturally he refused. It was a clean campaign, because I would not stoop to dirty tactics, and my opponent saw no reason to. The polls showed him comfortably ahead from the outset. No matter how hard I struggled, I could not close the ten-percentage-point gap that separated us. The incumbent was no prize; he was a conservative, self-interested man who was beloved of the local special interests and well financed by them. Though I could roundly criticize his record, I could not get enough publicity to give myself credibility in the eyes of the majority of the electorate.

Thorley summarized my situation succinctly. "Hope Hubris constituency: Belt 20. Hispanic 20. Total 35." That is, despite a twenty percent support by the Hispanic community, and twenty percent because of my reputation as a former Navy officer, my total was only thirty-five percent, against the forty-five percent plurality the incumbent enjoyed. Thorley was having fun with the mathematics; there was a five percent overlap between the two groups. This suggested that I had no support at all from the broader Saxon community. It wasn't quite that bad but almost.

"It is usually necessary to lose one election, just to get sufficient name recognition for the next," Megan remarked. No one expected me to win, not even us.

My ire focused again on Thorley. "I'm about ready to do something about that guy," I muttered. "I'd like to debate him before an audience."

"Great idea!" Shelia agreed enthusiastically. Remember, she was barely eighteen.

But Spirit cocked her head. "You know, I wonder—?"

Megan nodded. "That would be truly novel. We really have nothing to lose at this point."

So I made the ludicrous gesture of challenging Thorley to a public debate, since I couldn't get the incumbent to share the stage with me. I expected either to be ignored or to become the target of a scathingly clever column.

But he accepted.

Bemused, we worked it out. "He must find this campaign as dull as I do," I said. "This will at least put us both on the map of oddities."

"True," Megan agreed. "But do not take it lightly. Now we shall find out what you are made of. Debates are treacherous."

"Like single combat," Spirit said.

I was certainly ready to test my verbal mettle against that of the journalist. Would he try to argue against campaign finance reform? That would be foolish.

I prepared carefully but reminded myself that this was not a major office I was running for. State senators were relatively little fish, virtually unranked on the planetary scene. I was running mainly for experience, which I surely needed, and to increase my recognition factor.

The occasion was surprisingly well attended. The hall was filled and not just with Hispanics. It seemed that quite a number of people were curious about this—or perhaps they, too, had nothing better to do at the moment.

Thorley showed up on schedule. He was a handsome man about my own age, a fair Saxon, slightly heavyset, with a magnificently modulated voice. He shook my hand in a cordial manner and settled into the comfortable chair assigned to him as if he had been there all his life.

We chatted in the few minutes before the formal program, and I have to confess I liked him. I had expected a sneering, supercilious snob, despite Megan's assessment; I was disabused. Thorley was remarkably genial and likable, and soon my talent verified that he was indeed absolutely honest. Evidently the jibes he put into print were an affectation for the benefit of his readership. In person he was not like that.

"I feared I would be late," he remarked with a momentary slant of one eyebrow to signal that this was a minor personal crisis. "Thomas was not quite ready to come in."

"Thomas?" Spirit asked. "I thought you were childless."

Thorley grinned infectiously. "Naturally your camp has done its homework on the opposition, but perhaps imperfectly. Thomas is our resident of the feline persuasion."

Spirit had to smile in return, touching her forehead with her four-fingered hand as if jogging loose a short circuit. "Oh, a male cat. We did not have pets in the Navy."

"The Navy remains unforgivably backward in certain social respects," he said. "Cats are admirably independent, but in this instance, with my wife visiting Hidalgo to cover for a discomfited relative, the burden of supervision falls on me. Regulations"—here he made a fleeting grimace to show his disapproval of regulations as a class of human endeavor—"require the confinement of nonhuman associates when the persons concerned are absent from the immediate vicinity." I am rendering this as well as I can; the nuances of facial and vocal expression that he employed made even so small a matter as a stray tomcat seem like a significant experience. The man had phenomenal personal magnetism. I realized that I was in for more of a debate than I had anticipated, for Thorley could move an audience.

"Well, in a couple of hours you'll be back to let him out again," I said.

"I surely had better be," he agreed. "Thomas is inclined to express his ire against the furniture when neglected, as any reasonable person would." That fierce individualism manifested in almost every sentence he uttered, yet now it became charming.

It was time for the debate. There was no holo-news coverage, but I had my recorder and Thorley had his, so that neither could later misquote what might be said here. His newsfax had sent a still-picture photographer, at least. This was such a minor event on the political scale—a debate between a novice about to lose his first election and a columnist for a secondary newsfax—that we had no elaborate trappings. No moderator, no formal rules; it was discussion format. I knew that could be awkward, but it could also be the most natural and effective. We had agreed to alternate in asking each other questions, with verbal interplay increasing after the initial answers. We flipped a coin, and he won the right to pose the first question.

Megan and Spirit moved to either side of the small stage, while Shelia merged her chair with the front row of the audience and took notes. I suspect most people didn't realize that she was my secretary; she resembled a curious visitor.

"I understand that you, Captain Hubris, in accordance with many of the liberal folly, are opposed to capital punishment," Thorley said, his attitude and his language hardening dramatically as he got down to business. I felt as if a laser-cannon were abruptly orienting on me.

"I am," I agreed, knowing what was coming.

"Yet you are, or were, a prominent military man," he continued. "You could have been responsible for the deaths of hundreds of living people—"

"Thousands," I agreed tersely.

"How do you reconcile this with your present stand opposing the execution of criminals?"

Fortunately I was prepared for this one; Megan had anticipated it from the outset of our association. "The two situations are not comparable," I said carefully. I knew I was speaking more for the record than for him; Thorley surely knew what the nature of my answer had to be, and this was merely a warm-up question. "As a military man, I was under orders; when killing was required, I performed my duty. I never enjoyed that aspect of it, but the Navy did not express interest in my personal opinions." I smiled, Thorley smiled with me, and there was a ripple of humor through the audience. Everyone knew how strictly and impersonally discipline was kept in the Navy. "There is also a distinction between the violence of combat and the measured, deliberate destruction of human life that legal execution is. If a man fires his weapon at me and I fire back and kill him, that is one thing; but if that man is strapped to a chair, helpless, that is another. To my mind, the first case is defense; the second is murder."

"Well and fairly spoken," Thorley said smoothly. "But can we be sure there is a true distinction between the cases? The man fires at you, and your return fire kills him; granted, that is necessary defense. But the man who fires at an innocent little child, callously murders her, and is then brought to justice... is your return fire not justified? It is true that return fire is delayed longer, perhaps months instead of a split second, but the only distinction I perceive is that the first criminal failed to kill while the second succeeded. How can you favor the second?"

It was getting rougher! "I don't favor the criminal," I protested. "I oppose premeditated killing—his and mine. I do not believe that a second killing vindicates the first—"

"I did not suggest that it does, Captain. The second killing punishes the first."

"Granted. But in what way does punishment help the victim of the first crime? It may instead be better to rehabilitate the criminal, so that he can try to make up for—"

"My dear Captain, he can not restore the life he took!"

"Yes. But killing him won't restore it, either."

"But it will deter others from doing the same thing, and that may save the lives of many other innocent folk."

"There's no conclusive evidence that executions actually deter others from—"

"You prefer to set a killer free to do it again?"

"No! I want him punished. But that doesn't mean I should kill him."

"You propose to support him indefinitely at taxpayer expense?"

There was a trap. No taxpayer liked the notion of having his money used to benefit a criminal. "No. I want to put him to work to make up, to whatever extent possible, for the wrong he has done."

Thorley cocked his head. "And what type of work is that, pray?"

And there he had me. "I'm sure suitable work can be found...."

He tilted his head farther, in elegant theatrical doubt. "The effort might better be spent finding work instead for the law-abiding unemployed." There was a murmur of agreement from the audience, not excluding the Hispanic contingent. The Hispanic level of unemployment was higher than the Saxon. Thorley had scored against me, with my own people. He could hardly have maneuvered me more neatly into that trap. The irony was that I was sure I had the better case, but my opponent had succeeded in obfuscating it. Had this been a physical trial, I would have been in the position of having a better weapon, but losing because I had not been able to use it effectively.

We moved on to the next question. "I understand that you conservatives oppose big government on principle," I began.

"Indeed," he agreed. "We regard bureaucratic intervention as fundamentally malevolent."

Damn his finesse of expression! He somehow seemed more convincing than I did, even when I was posing my question to him. But I plowed on: "A government is like a person: it has many components, many systems of operation, but it is necessary for the efficient management of society in much the way the brain is necessary for the proper functioning of the person. Without a brain the person soon dies; without government mankind dies. To oppose government is like opposing a person's brain. Do you really prefer anarchy?"

Thorley smiled in the feline way he had. He was enjoying this. "I confess the temptation, especially when I see our headlong progress toward the other extreme. Certainly I would choose anarchy over tyranny. But I do not actually demean government per se. I merely feel that too much government, like a bloated stomach, is inimical to human progress. We do not need Big Brother to tell us how and when to comb our hair or pick our teeth, and certainly we do not need a swollen bureaucracy to process the permissions for same in quintuplicate, charging the inordinate expense to the taxpayers. In short, that government is best which governs least."

"But only the government can alleviate some of the problems of the planet; they are too vast in scale for disorganized individuals to solve."

"That strikes me as a beautiful rationale for tyranny. I believe, in contrast, that only free men can solve the problems caused by ineffective government that meddles in everything and understands nothing."

"I've seen what completely free men do!" I retorted. "They are called pirates, and they prey on helpless refugees!"

The Hispanic contingent applauded, but they were efficiently undercut by Thorley's reply. "I would apply the death penalty to piracy. Would you?"

He was tying me in knots! I glanced about, and saw Megan nodding; she had known I would discover this problem. It was one more thing I was having to learn the hard way. But still I fought. "I would send the government's Navy after them."

That recovered some territory for me, for indeed I had done so. Still, I knew I was getting the worst of this debate.

With the next question, Thorley came at me like a heat-seeking missile. "It has been said that a free press is the best guarantee of honest government. Where do you stand on that?"

This was another difficult one. I supported freedom of the press, but as a military man I appreciated the need for secrecy in certain cases, and I had practiced censorship of the news during my campaign in the Belt. He would surely make much of that. I would have to qualify my answer carefully.

Before I spoke, there was a commotion in the audience. A burly Saxon man was striding forward, brandishing a portable industrial laser unit, the kind used to spot-weld steel beams. I had seen them in use when ship repairs were being made in space; they were dangerous in inexpert hands.

"You spics are stealing our jobs!" the man bawled. "We don't need none of you in office!" He brought his laser to bear on me and pulled the trigger.

I was already flying out of my chair, the recoil sending it toppling backward, my military reflexes operating. Spirit, too, was diving away. But I saw, as if it were in slow motion, that Megan did not understand. She was standing stock-still, gazing at the worker.

The first bolt seared into the floor where my chair had been. I veered around to charge the man from the side, and Spirit moved in from his other side. But it would take us seconds to reach him. Already he was striding up past Thorley.

The Saxon worker's face fastened on Megan. "And we don't need no spic-lovers, neither!" he cried, and swung the laser to bear on her.

"Get out of there, Megan!" I cried, but still she stood. Maybe she didn't believe she could actually be a physical target; it was foreign to all her experience.

The man pulled the trigger just as Thorley launched himself from his chair. The deadly beam sizzled out and was muffled by Thorley's body. Steam spread out, and in a moment the horrible odor of fried flesh developed.

In another moment I reached the scene. As Thorley fell to the floor I got my hands on the worker's arm. I locked it in, neutralizing the laser, and ducked down to haul him over my shoulder in a judo throw, Ippon seoi nage. He rolled over me and landed hard on the floor beyond, the air whooshing out of his body. The laser tool fell free. The man had the fight knocked out of him; he would be no further trouble even if no bones were broken.

I kneeled beside Thorley. He was curled up in agony, trying to grip his left leg. The laser beam had seared into his thigh. I saw at a glance that it was not a lethal wound but was certainly a hellishly painful one. It could cost him his leg if a key nerve had been burned out.

There were more urgent things to do at this moment, as the hall erupted into pandemonium. Thorley needed immediate medical attention, we needed the police to take charge of the murderous worker, and I had to get Megan away from this place before she went into shock. But for the moment all that was closed out, pushed back into the background of my awareness. It was as if only the two of us existed.

"Thorley," I said. "Why did you intercede?"

His pain-glazed eyes focused briefly on me. "I don't believe," he gasped, "in assassination. Not even of liberals."

I had to smile grimly. "How can I repay you?"

"Just... keep the press... free," he whispered, and passed out.

"Always!" I swore to his unconscious body.

Then the planet resumed its motion. Things were happening all around us. I looked up and saw Spirit, who was bringing heavy bandages, knowing that prompt attention to the wound was essential. All officers in the Navy had paramedic training; she knew what to do.

"Spirit," I said. "Take care of this man."

She nodded. She worked efficiently, cutting away his burned trouser leg, applying the bandages to the seared flesh. No cauterization was required; laser wounds are already cauterized. It was only necessary to protect the surrounding flesh.

When the medics came for him with the stretcher, Spirit went with them. "His cat!" I called after her, and she nodded again. Thorley would be in competent hands.

I put my arm around Megan, who was shivering with reaction. She had never seen physical violence like this before; it was a shock that could send her into trauma. I had to take care of her.