Chapter 17 — REBA

We limped on to Slake in the state of Beehive and made our report. This wasn't on our planned route, but we knew we needed to stop in a city of sufficient size to handle our problems: two wounded, some fifty or so dead, and badly battered equipment. Hereafter we would carry a jamproof broadcast unit on the train, so as to be able to summon the police promptly.

Megan was in a state bordering on shock, and Hopie, despite her good performance under pressure, was not much better off. They had never been exposed to savagery of this intensity and personal nature before. I think a significant portion of their horror was from the fact that Spirit and I had actively participated in the killing. Had we not done so, all of us would have died, and our train might have disappeared without trace, scuttled in the atmosphere: the perfect crime. But the necessities of combat are seldom intelligible to civilians. Shelia and Ebony came through it fairly well, however; it seemed that they each had had prior exposure to savagery.

I had not scheduled a campaign speech in Slake, but my news conference there became very like one. I described what had happened, suitably edited, and concluded that one of my earliest priorities as president would be the restoration of true law and order in Jupiter society. "Especially along the railroad tracks," I concluded with a smile. And do you know, the applause lasted several minutes. The general tide of violence had been rising throughout the nation, because of governmental policies that simply did not address the needs of the people and a rate of monetary inflation and unemployment that was accelerating. There was a deepening unrest, and now I had, almost inadvertently, tapped into it as a campaign issue.

Then some idiot began chanting "Hubris! Hubris!" and the conference dissolved into a rather delightful anarchy. The police launched their investigation, of course, but I knew that our attackers would simply turn out to be hired thugs, paid anonymously. I knew that true professional assassins would have come prepared to do the job properly, and we would have had no chance to resist. A single missile to destroy our power source, which was the engine, and cause implosion; then a suited technician to board and deactivate the gee-shields and send the train to the deeps. No evidence of foul play; it would have been listed as an unfortunate accident.

However, it was now imperative for us to locate our specific enemy. I just did not believe it was the drug moguls, though they would certainly be amenable to my extinction. After the reversal of their bribe ploy in Sunshine they were disorganized, and the police everywhere were monitoring their activities closely; they simply couldn't have arranged this sort of action. I had a very strong suspicion who it was but hesitated to voice it until Megan, emerging from her emotional stasis, voiced it for me.

"Tocsin," she said. "He knows how dangerous you have become to him. You can martial the Hispanic vote, which would otherwise have gone to him, and the female vote, and a fair share of the general vote: enough to destroy him. He will stop at nothing to nullify you as an opponent."

"But we can't accuse him," I said. "There is no proof."

"He never provides proof," she said.

"How well I know!" Yes, Tocsin was a cunning one. But with Megan's confirmation of my suspicion I was ready to proceed to the offense. It was obvious that we could no longer afford to be strictly defensive or to live and let live; the political war had become a physical one.

However, with what irony only he knew, President Tocsin now officially deplored the violence and designated me as a candidate of stature, entitled to government protection. The Secret Service moved in to take over my body-guarding, and this extended to my family. This was just as well, for Coral had been grievously wounded; she would recover but required surgery and a prolonged convalescence before she could return to duty. I made it a point to interview the key Secret Service men assigned to us and found them to be professionals who had no concern for party or personality; they were dedicated to the proposition that no body they protected would be damaged, and they had an excellent record. There was no deception here.

Still, there were occasions when it was not possible to safeguard me perfectly. One such occurred in Firebird, in the state of Canyon, well along on my campaign tour. I had played to increasing audiences; news of my train ordeal had generated an immense groundswell of sympathy that was translating into support as folk thronged to hear me talk. Never would I have gone into that train attack voluntarily or brought my family and staff into such risk; but it had become a considerable asset to my campaign. Instead of being a long-shot candidate, I was now advancing into Serious Candidate status.

Curiosity brought many folk, but once they heard me speak, it became more than that. If there was one thing I could do well, it was move a crowd. It seemed to be an extension of my talent. I treated the crowd as an individual and responded to its signals, using the information to amplify the things that made it respond. It is often said that a man is learning nothing while he is talking, but that is not necessarily true; his speech can be like radar, bouncing off the audience and educating him by the response. There can be a very positive feedback. I suspect that this is the root of the success of every truly effective campaign. What I actually said hardly mattered, and pundits—notably Thorley—roundly panned my positions in print. But the people were becoming mine. Yet I needed more, so had an eye for the spectacular, for something that would tie more directly in to the malaise of the times and enable me to dramatize my position positively.

In this instance a desperate man had taken an employment office hostage; he demanded a job or he would blow up the place. They thought he was bluffing but weren't sure. Police surrounded the region but did not dare enter. This event was typical of the times; there had been a number recently, as the notion spread about the planet, and some bombs had indeed been detonated. Terrorism was becoming more popular in the United States of Jupiter and bringing in its wake a deep disquiet among people who had never known such violence before. I had only to look at Megan to understand how they felt.

"Hubris!" the man exclaimed suddenly to the holo-news pickup. Evidently they had a remote-controlled unit there in the office with his permission. "He's in town, isn't he? Let me talk to him! He's for the common man!"

I glanced at Spirit when that news reached me, then at my secretary, who already had details flashing on her newscreen for me: the man was called Booker, and he had lost his job when an injury made him lame. He was running out of unemployment compensation but had been unable to get any other job despite being declared technically fit by the welfare office. Standards for unfitness had become ludicrous in some instances, as the government tried to cut down on expenses. I saw my opportunity.

"Are you ready for this?" I asked Shelia.

"Anything you say, boss," she said bravely.

"I'll handle it," I told the local authorities.

"Not on your life, sir!" my SS guard protested. "We can't let you march into a bomb-wielding maniac!"

"I'm sure he won't let you into the office," I said. "But this is a thing I must do; I am, after all, a politician, and this is a potentially newsworthy event."

"Sir, you won't need any news if you're dead! We can't let you expose yourself to such hazard."

"Let me explain what I have in mind," I said. And I explained. "Okay with you?" I concluded.

The man was amazed. "Let me clear it with my superior, sir." He did so, and we proceeded to the site of the event.

A huge crowd was forming, cordoned off by the police, and more folk were coming in, attracted as much by my involvement as by the situation. I made my way through and approached the office. It overlooked a street-size mall that was now clear of pedestrians. "Señor Booker," I called, naming him in Hispanic fashion to help identify myself. "I am Hope Hubris." The camera was on me, which was exactly where I wanted it.

"Come in, Governor!" he called.

"I must bring my secretary," I said.

"No way! It's you alone!" I stood my ground.

"It is very important that my secretary be able to do her job," I said. "Surely you would not deny her that."

"Deny her that!" he repeated. "Listen, Hubris, they denied me my job! What do I care for—"

But I had signaled Shelia, and now she rolled down to join me. "Here is my secretary, Señor."

There was a pause as the lame man peered at the crippled woman. It would have been difficult indeed for him to deny her in this circumstance. "Okay," he said, realizing that on this front, at least, he had been outmaneuvered.

We entered the office, Shelia's wheelchair preceding me. Three office workers were seated on the floor, leaning against one wall; Booker stood with his bomb by the opposite wall. Shelia and I came to a halt in the middle. Her eyes were on the miniature viewscreen mounted on her left armrest. She glanced briefly up at me and nodded slightly.

"Señor, let's sit down and work this out," I said heartily. "Why did you ask for me?"

"Because you're the only politician on the planet a regular man can trust," Booker said. "You get things done when they can't be done."

I smiled. "You know the camera is on us; you are helping my campaign."

"I think your campaign's fine, Hubris; I hope you make president. We've got to get somebody in there to clean up this mess. But right now you've got to help me. I need a job."

I frowned. "You know you cannot get a job by blowing up the employment agency. You have committed a crime, and for that they will make you pay. Surely you knew that before you decided to do this."

He nodded. "Guess I wasn't thinking straight. I realized too late. I said to myself, Booker, you've dug yourself a hole. A black hole! But then I thought, Hubris is in town. He can help me if anyone can. So I asked for you; never really thought you'd come."

"My guards tried to stop me," I admitted. "It is their job to see that I don't get myself blown up before election day."

"Yeah. Well, I don't want to blow anybody up, but my wife, she's sick, and my little boy needs surgery, and the money's gone. What's a man to do? If they'd just give me a job!"

Things began to add up. "Your son... when did the need for surgery develop?"

"Last year. He had a medical exam, and this irregularity in his heartbeat showed up on their graph. Said he'd have to have it operated on when he got older; something about a valve not closing right, so the blood didn't always go right. Then I hurt my leg, and—"

"And they had a pretext to fire you," I finished.

"Yeah. Said I couldn't do the work well enough anymore. Hell, Hubris, I could do it okay; I'm no pro track runner, anyway! Then the welfare folk said I wasn't sick enough for them, but I still couldn't get a job."

"That's called falling through the crack," I remarked.

"Yeah. Too sick to work, too fit not to. So what the hell'm I supposed to do—starve and let my family die?"

I resisted the impulse to editorialize on the unfairness of the system; that was self-evident. Meanwhile, I had spied a key that might unlock this situation. "Don't you realize, Mr. Booker, that it wasn't your leg that did it? It was your son."

The bomb wavered in his arms. "What?"

"Your company had comprehensive medical insurance for all employees and their families, didn't it? That would have covered the surgery on your son when it was time for it. But your company gets a rebate if the insurance claims are low; that's standard practice. They knew your son's surgery was coming and that it would be a large claim, so they acted to minimize it. That, too, is standard practice."

"They—they fired me so they wouldn't have to pay on my boy?" he asked, appalled.

"And the other companies declined to hire you for the same reason," I said. "The welfare folk are right; you are fit enough to work. And you are willing. But your son is a serious liability."

"But—"

"Of course, we can't prove that," I cautioned him, just as if this wasn't being picked up by the camera for what would, with luck, be planetary news. "But it does make business sense."

"But my boy'll maybe die without that operation!"

"Señor, that is one problem with the present system of private insurance," I told him, knowing that this was as fine a campaign issue as any. Tocsin had led the crackdown on supposed waste in welfare and medical insurance; now the consequence of applying business ethics to medicine was coming clear. "They seek, naturally enough, to minimize claims. They are interested in saving money. I believe that system should be reformed so that no children have to die for the sake of a company's balance sheet. I can't promise to get that changed right away, but I will certainly work on it."

"All this—these months out of work, my wife taking it so hard that she lost her health—just to get out of paying for my boy?" He was still struggling with the enormity of it.

"Mr. Booker—" I was having trouble sticking to "señor," but it's hard to be letter-perfect in an extemporaneous situation. "You have been wronged, the way a great many workers are wronged. But you are no killer. You don't want to hurt these people here at the employment office who have done you no injury and would have helped you if they could have. They can't make a company assume the burden of your family's medical expenses. But perhaps we can help your son. You need to get legal aid to institute a preceding against your former employer on the grounds that he terminated you wrongfully. Win that case, and not only will they be liable for the expense of your son's surgery, they also may be required to restore your job and pay punitive damages. It is certainly worth a try."

"But—"

"But you have committed a crime. For that you will have to pay the penalty. But perhaps not a prohibitive one. If it were, for example, to turn out that your bomb was not real, then you would be guilty only of the threat of mayhem, not the reality. I believe any reasonable judge would take into consideration the provocation that drove you to an act of desperation. You might have to serve some time in prison, but not long, and meanwhile, your own legal initiative would be working its way through the system—"

Booker grabbed the top of his box with his left hand and lifted it off. "It's just an empty box," he said, showing it to the camera. "I couldn't afford the makings of a real bomb."

I turned to the camera. "The siege is over," I announced. "Please have an attorney come with the police, to represent Mr. Booker. One competent in medical law."

Booker looked at me. "You knew it was a bluff!"

I approached him, bringing Shelia forward with me. "See her screen, señor? Beneath her chair she carries a metal detector with a computerized image alignment. It told her you had no bomb in there. But I didn't come to give away your secret; I came to help you decide what was best for you. I think you will receive justice now, señor." We shook hands.

"I knew I could trust you, Hubris." Needless to say, that incident made a good many more headlines than one of my routine campaign speeches would have. I had gambled and won—again. I cannot claim that there was not a healthy element of luck in this, but this is the nature of winning politics. Unlucky politicians lose.

So it went. There were no more direct attempts on my life, or at least none that could be demonstrated to be the result of organized malevolence, but we knew that Tocsin was not about to let me challenge him for his office with impunity. It was not a purely personal thing with him; he simply worked to see that no serious threats to his power developed. There were other candidates for the nomination, and awkward or embarrassing things happened to them with suspicious frequency, but nothing was ever traceable to the source. I had survived most successfully, partly because I had planned well—Megan remained invaluable for that—and partly because I worked hard and had several formidable assets. Spirit was matchless on supervising the nuts-and-bolts details of the campaign, and my staff was competent and dedicated. I made good progress.

Then we came to the hurdles of the primaries. Over the centuries there had been attempts to reform the confused primary system, but each state fought for its right to have its own, so nothing was ever done. The first was in the small state of Granite, and it generally had a disproportionate effect on the remaining campaign season. The polls favored me to come in third, but I suspected that I had more support than that, because, though my political base was not great and I lacked the money for much advertising, my voters should be highly motivated. If not, I would be in trouble, so it was nervous business, and I spent as much time in the bubbles of Granite as any candidate.

I did not win it. But I came in second, significantly stronger than predicted. That, in the legerdemain of politics, translated into an apparent win. Suddenly I was a much stronger candidate than I had seemed before, and the media commentators were paying much more attention to me. In their eyes I had become viable. They had much fun with the Hispanic candidate, but my issues were sound, the unrest of the populace continued to grow, and the aspirations of those who were sick of the existing situation focused increasingly on me. I showed up more strongly in the next primary, becoming a rallying point for the disaffected, and the third one I won. Then I was really on my way.

The party hierarchy did not endorse my candidacy, but I came in due course to the nominating convention with significant bloc support, and former President Kenson made a gracious speech on my behalf. The polls of the moment suggested that I had a better chance than the other candidates to unseat President Tocsin, because of my strong appeal to women and minorities, and that was a thing we all wished to accomplish. There was the customary interaction of overlapping interests, but Megan and Spirit and my staff handled that, so I won't go into detail here. The hard-nosed essence was that though the party regulars were not thrilled with me, I had the most solid grass-roots support, and my ability to take the sizable Hispanic vote away from Tocsin without alienating the general populace was decisive. We did not make an issue of my female staff, but every woman was aware of it; I did not have to make promises to women any more than I did to Hispanics or Blacks, because they knew I would do right by them. I also picked up strong union support. As the convention proceeded a powerful groundswell of public sentiment buoyed my candidacy. The handwriting was written rather plainly on the wall: If the party regulars opposed me openly, they were liable to become irregulars, and the nomination would still be mine after a divisive battle. That could cost us all the election. It was to their interest to move graciously with the tide and to accept the first Hispanic nominee.

And so it came to pass. I chose as my running mate my sister Spirit, and there was massive applause from the distaff contingent for this innovation, and stifled apoplexy elsewhere. It was not the first time a woman had been selected for this office, but it was the first for a sibling of the presidential candidate. Oh, I knew the party regulars preferred a ticket balanced geographically and philosophically, but my argument was this: It was pointless to have a vice-presidential candidate whose major recommendation was that he did not match the locale or philosophy of the president. I wanted a running mate who understood and endorsed my positions exactly, so that in the event of my death in office my program would be carried out without deviation.

No person, male or female, fitted this definition better than did Spirit. There was grumbling in the back rooms, but this was my will, and it would not be denied. Many of the wives of delegates made their will known unmistakably to their spouses; what might seem a liability with male voters was an enormous asset with female voters. We seemed to have, on balance, a stronger ticket than the conventional system would have provided. There was one half-serious complaint: a delegate from Ami muttered that I had chosen the wrong sister. Faith was in attendance, of course; she demurred, blushing, looking prettier than she had in years. The Ami contingent, of coarse, had been absolutely solid for me from the outset of the campaign.

Now I was the official nominee, going into territory where no Hispanic had gone before. Now I had comprehensive party support, financial and organizational. I addressed monstrous and enthusiastic crowds. But the popularity polls were sobering; though my chances were indeed significantly better than those of any other nominee would have been, I remained six percentage points behind Tocsin. He was, after all, the incumbent, and had a secure base of power, seemingly unlimited funds provided by the special interests, and the name recognition and power over events of a sitting president. These were truly formidable assets. In addition, I knew, there remained sizable conservative and racist elements—the two by no means synonymous, as Thorley had shown me—that did not take to the halls to demonstrate but would never vote for a liberal Hispanic. Six points might not seem like much, out of a hundred, but when it meant that Tocsin was supported by forty-five percent of the responding population, and I by thirty-nine percent, it meant deep trouble. I had to campaign hard enough to make up the difference.

I did. I continued to use the campaign train; it had become a symbol. Now it had many more cars, for the Secret Service men, the big party supporters, and the media reporters. They all seemed to take pleasure in riding the same train with the candidate, and perhaps, to a degree, they shared the fascination with trains. On occasion Thorley was present, shuttling between my campaign and Tocsin, trenchantly torpedoing me at every turn. But I couldn't help it: I liked the man, and I did owe him for two significant services. When I could discreetly do so, I had him in to the family car for a meal and chat; Megan, Spirit, and Hopie liked him also. He never commented on this in the media, though he now had the leverage to put anything into print he wished. It is possible for people to be personal friends but political adversaries, and very few others realized the full nature of our friendship or adversity. Spirit continued to provide him full information on our campaign, honoring my agreement; we kept no secrets from the press.

Indeed, this agreement was to prove fundamentally important and open the way for Thorley's third significant service to me. One matter occurred that did have to be secret, and so we had to trust Thorley and even ask his cooperation. I do not claim that this was the proper interaction of politician and journalist, but it was necessary. I owed Thorley for a life and a reputation; now my career itself was to be put into his hands.

It happened in this manner. In the course of two months my campaign succeeded in drawing me up almost even with Tocsin despite his advantages, forty-two percent to forty-three percent. The election was now rated a dead heat; no one was certain which of us would win. It was my magnetic presence on stage that did it, my talent relating to ever-larger audiences, turning them on. As I gained, Tocsin pulled out all the nether stops, as was his wont when pressed. In addition to a phenomenal barrage of hostile advertising, there were anonymous charges against me, each with just enough substance to give it a semblance of credibility: I was a mass murderer (that is, I had killed a shipful of attacking pirates), I was a notorious womanizer (I had known many women sexually, as was required by Navy policy), I had been charged with mutiny as a Naval officer (but exonerated), and I had adopted a child who resembled me suspiciously. All these were subject to detoxification by clarification of the circumstances; I ignored them except when directly challenged, and then I answered briefly. With one exception: the last. That one I addressed by means of a challenge: "Show me the mother of this child."

Would you believe it, three different Saxon women came forward, each claiming to have been my paramour fifteen years before and to have conceived by me and to have given up the baby for adoption by me because I had paid her to do so. But none could produce evidence of such payment, and when we had them blood-typed, two were shown to be impossible as parents of Hopie. The third was possible, but a search of her employment record showed that she had not missed a day in the critical period, and an old photograph of her in a bathing suit showed her definitely unpregnant when she would have had to be in the eighth month. Medical records concurred: no baby had been delivered of her in that year. "It is evident," Thorley commented wryly, "that the girl's mother has sufficient discretion to avoid publicity." This was, I believe, the only period he remarked publicly on my family situation, because it had for the moment become legitimate news.

"But what does it matter?" I asked, bringing fifteen-year-old Hopie to a news conference and putting my arm around her. "She is my daughter now, and I will never deny her." Indeed, the blood tests showed I could have been her natural father, and her resemblance to me in intellect as well as the physical was startling. I was so obviously pleased by this that the effort to smear me by this avenue came to nothing. Perhaps it was that every man has his secrets, and this was the kind that anyone can understand. What really finished it was Thorley's interview with Megan, in which he asked her point-blank why she had agreed to adopt this child, who could not have been her own.

"I love her; she is mine now," she said, echoing my own response.

"But surely you have wondered about her origin—"

"I know her origin. That's why I adopted her."

"And yet you have no misgivings about your husband?"

"None. I married him for convenience, but I came to love him absolutely."

"Yet if—"

"I love him for what he is," she said firmly. "That has never faltered."

Thorley shook his head eloquently. "Mrs. Hubris, you are a great human being."

And that closing compliment, so evidently sincere, coming as it did from my leading political critic, effectively closed the issue. The public seemed to feel that if my wife could so graciously accept the situation, no one else had the authority to condemn me. Certainly I had done right by Hopie.

So Tocsin's most insidious efforts had been insufficient to blunt my progress; perhaps they had even facilitated it. But we knew that he would not allow me to gain any more without drastic reprisal; there was no way he would voluntarily leave office. It was rumored that he had even commissioned a private survey to ascertain public reaction should the upcoming election be canceled; evidently such action had proven unfeasible, or maybe he had concluded that he could win without such a measure. But we did not know precisely how he would strike. I was now just about assassination-proof; there was no way he could arrange for that without betraying himself. He had to be more subtle, and he was the master of subtle evil. We were all concerned.

The first signal of trouble was the Navy. A formidable task force approached the planet Jupiter for extensive maneuvers, with battleships and carriers hanging over individual cities as if targeting them. The public was assured that it was only a routine exercise, but it was a massive and persistent one.

I talked to my old Navy wife Emerald, who was now in easy communication range because she commanded one of the wings. She was an admiral now, her brilliance as a strategist, proven in my day, having enabled her to rise impressively.

"What's going on up there, Rising Moon?" I asked forthrightly. This was a private channel, but there really could be no secrets between us now; certainly Tocsin would know. I called her by her nickname, taken from her personal song, "The Rising of the Moon." "As a candidate for the office of commander-in-chief, I believe I should be advised if the Navy has any problems."

Her dusky face cracked into a smile. She was a Saxon/Black crossbreed, once routinely discriminated against in the Saxon-officered Navy, but that was a thing of the past. I knew that she remembered the details of our term marriage as well as I did. She had always been a sexual delight, not because of any phenomenal body—she had been well constructed but relatively spare—but because of her determination, energy, and enterprise. She had regarded sex as a challenge; to make love to her was to ride a roller coaster around a planteoid. She was older now—forty-nine, like me—and had put on weight, but still I saw in her the seed of our savage romance of a quarter century before. I was otherwise married now, and so was she, but I knew that were things otherwise we could still step into bed together and enjoy it immensely. It did not detract one whit from her subsequent marriage, to an admiral now retired, to know that she still loved me.

"Hope, you know there's been increasing civil unrest recently," she said. "There is concern that the election itself could be disrupted. So the Navy is on standby alert, ready to keep the planetary peace if that should prove necessary."

A form answer—with teeth in it. The Navy was under the ultimate command of the civilian president, Tocsin. Was he preparing for a military coup in the event he lost the election? That seemed incredible, but if several civil disturbances were incited, the president could invoke martial law to restore order. How far would such temporary discipline go? Military coups were common in the republics of southern Jupiter but unthinkable in northern Jupiter. So far.

"It is good to have that reassurance," I said. "We know how important it is to preserve order." Which was another formal statement. "Give my regards to your husband." And there was the hidden one: her husband, Admiral Mondy, was the arch-conspirator of our once tightly knit group within the Navy. He prized out all secrets and fathomed all strategies; he liked to know where everybody was hidden. I was telling her that something was up and to alert Mondy if he was not already aware. He might be retired, but I knew he kept his hand in. That sort of thing was in his blood.

"Have no fear, sir," she responded, and faded out. That concluding "sir" was significant, too; it meant she was thinking of the time when I had been the commander of our Navy task force that cleared up the Belt. That team still existed in spirit, if not in form; my officers had spread throughout the Navy and now wielded considerable power. I still had friends in the Navy, excellent friends—more so than perhaps Tocsin realized.

After that call I pondered the implications. Was Tocsin merely setting up a threat, as in a chess game, to intimidate those who might vote for me? Or was he really getting ready to preserve his power militarily? What use would it be to me to win the election, if it was only to be set aside by a military takeover?

My misgivings were enhanced by a second development. I wrapped up a rousing campaign speech in Delphi, Keystone, and retired to my quarters to discover Spirit there with a visitor: Reba of QYV.

"Hubris, this is off the record," Reba said immediately.

"This car is secure," I assured her. "But I have a covenant with the media—"

"It could mean my position—and your life," she said grimly. "The press must not know."

This put me on the spot. I knew she was serious; only an extraordinary matter would have caused her to risk her career to visit me personally to confide a secret. But I had made a commitment to Thorley.

I risked a compromise. "Let me bring one member of the press here, now, while I hear what you have to say. If he agrees to keep it secret—"

Reba sighed. "Thorley."

I nodded. "He happens to be aboard now."

"You always did drive an uncomfortable bargain," she said.

Spirit left us and we chatted about inconsequentials for a few minutes, until my sister returned with Thorley. Evidently she had explained the situation on the way, for he evinced no confusion. He sat down and waited.

"I am... an anonymous source," Reba told him.

"Understood." That was a convention of many centuries' standing. If he published anything he learned from her, it would not be directly attributed.

"I represent an anonymous organization." Again Thorley agreed; it was obvious that he recognized her, for he had sources of his own, and he knew of my prior association with her.

"This woman knows me as well as any," I said.

Thorley raised an eyebrow but made no other comment. There had been a chronic run of conjecture in the media about the other women supposedly in my life, but Thorley knew that this was not one of those. He was surprised that any woman should know me as well as my wife or sister did. He would pay very close attention to what Reba said. I had just given her a potent recommendation.

"I am in a position to know that a plan is afoot to kidnap Hope Hubris," Reba said carefully. "To mem-wash him and destroy his credibility as a candidate for the presidency.'

News indeed! Trust QYV to be the first to fathom Tocsin's mischief.

"This is not a plot to keep secret," Thorley remarked. "I differ with Candidate Hubris on numerous and sundry issues, but I do not endorse foul play."

"Some secrets must be kept until they can be proven," Reba said. "If this is published now the plot will fold without trace, and an alternate one invoked—one I may not be in a position to fathom in advance."

"Ah, now I see," Thorley said. "This fish you have hooked but not necessarily others. From this one the candidate may be protected, if the perpetrator does not realize that the subject knows."

"Exactly," she agreed. "The perpetrator is playing for high stakes and will not stop at murder as a last resort."

"Yet surely the Secret Service protection—"

"Could not stop a city-destroying bolt from space."

Thorley glanced at her shrewdly. He pursed his lips in a soundless whistle. We all knew that only one person on Jupiter had the authority to order such an action—and the will to do it, if pressed. "Certain mischief has been done, and hidden, the details accessible only to the president. Revelation of that mischief could put a number of rather high officials in prison and utterly destroy certain careers."

"You seem to grasp the situation," Reba agreed.

"And it seems that the details of that hidden mischief could no longer be concealed, if a new and opposing person assumed the presidential office at this time."

Reba nodded. "That office will not be yielded gracefully."

Thorley smiled. "Perhaps you assume that one conservative must necessarily support another. This is not the case. Some support issues, not men, and their private feelings may reflect some seeming inversions. I might even venture to imply that there could be some liberals I would prefer on a personal basis to some conservatives. Strictly off the record, of course." He smiled again, and so did Spirit. Thorley was an honest man, with a sense of humor and a rigorous conscience.

"Then you will withhold your pen?" Reba asked.

"In the interest of fairness—and a better eventual story—I am prepared to do more than that. I prefer to see to the excision of iniquity, branch and root, wherever it occurs."

"Then perhaps you will be interested in one particular detail of the plot," she said grimly. "Candidate Hubris is to receive a message, purportedly from you, advising him that you have urgent news that you must impart to him secretly, in person, without the presence of any other party. When he slips his SS security net and goes to meet you, he will be captured by the agents of the plotters, taken off-planet, mem-washed, addicted to a potent drug, sexually compromised, reeducated, and returned to his campaign on the eve of the election armed with a speech of such nonsense as to discredit him as a potential president. He will be finished politically."

Thorley blew out his cheeks as if airing a mouthful of hot pepper. "This abruptly becomes more personal. As it happens, I have no need to summon the candidate to any personal encounter; I have another contact."

"So you have said," Reba agreed, glancing at Spirit, who smiled. "I know that Hope Hubris would not fall for such a scheme, though it seems that the other party neglected to research that far. Some surprisingly elementary errors have been made. But it occurred to me that, considering the alternative—"

Now I caught her drift. "That I might choose to!"

"Choose to!" Thorley exclaimed, horrified.

Reba looked at me. "Tell him," I said.

She returned to Thorley. "Hope Hubris is immune to drug addiction," she said. "His system apparently forms antibodies against any mind-affecting agent. This takes time but is effective. We believe that he cannot be permanently affected by the program they propose. His memory will return far more rapidly than is normal, and he soon will throw off the addiction to the drug. Which means—"

"That the attempt is apt to backfire," Thorley finished.

"Particularly if the candidate is forewarned and properly prepared," she agreed.

"And we would finally establish our direct link to the guilty party," I said. "Which would at last put him out of commission. No fifty-fifty gambling on the election; no waiting for a bolt from space. At one stroke, victory!"