Chapter 19 — WIVES

I woke in a hospital in Ybor. It seemed I had suffered more during my captivity than I had realized. By the time my body threw off the sedation they had loaded me with, the election was over and I was the president-elect. But I remained disoriented, and Spirit decided that I should spend a month or so in private recuperation. I was glad to do so; for one thing, it gave me leisure to write this narrative of my political experiences.

In fact, this has been a vital occupation. My system does develop immunity to drugs of all types, but it cannot act retroactively to cancel all the damage they may have done. I could no longer be memory-washed, but that first wash really had obliterated many years of memories for a time, and I was concerned that some parts would never return unless I made a special effort to recover them now. My life through my Navy experience has been covered in my prior diaries, but not the past twenty years, so it was important that I get on this before the distractions of the presidency overwhelmed my attention. I don't know how others feel, but to me, memory is almost as important as the present or the future; I value all my life and want no part of it lost, not even the painful portions.

Just as the key words I had planted for myself in the slop-cell had triggered major segments of my missing memory, so now my effort to record that experience amplified those segments of my memory. I cannot honestly say that I relived those parts of my life in the manner I have described; my memory returned in complex flashes rather than in an orderly, narrative, holo-type format suitably edited for relevance. Still, those flashes did the job; they made me aware of what I needed to know in order to restore my perspective and enable me to foil the plot against my candidacy. But it was the writing of the manuscript that made my life real again. In a sense, my life formed as I recorded it; the effort of searching out the details and feelings I had, had made them substantial. It took me a month to write them out, but when that job was done, I was satisfied that I knew where I had been and what I had been doing.

In that month exterior events did not cease, of course. There were some matters that couldn't wait on my literary convenience. In a manner my life consisted only of these scenes and my manuscript memories.

There was the evening I was home with Megan and Hopie. My daughter flung herself into my arms and sobbed; she had feared I was dead, and now at last she could relax. She was close to fifteen years old now, but at this moment resembled a tiny, frightened child. Spirit had explained to me, on the way from somewhere to somewhere, that she had put out word that I had retired from active campaigning for a time to organize coming responsibilities such as researching the best appointments and preparing a major address. She had, in effect, covered for Tocsin's crime, knowing that my life would be forfeit if she did not. We had taken an enormous chance—to reap an enormous gain. She had carried on in my stead, giving my speeches and in general showing that she was indeed competent to stand in lieu of me, never showing her natural concern for me. So my campaign had proceeded without visible falter, and at the time of my reappearance the odds remained fifty-fifty. My concluding address had been critical indeed.

"If Tocsin had been smarter," I told her, "he would have kidnapped you instead of me!" It was not really a joke; Spirit was competent at all the necessary details I ignored. She had been running my campaign throughout, based on Megan's strategy, and this had not changed during my absence. The campaign had survived my absence; it could not have survived her absence.

Then I was alone with Megan, and it was difficult. "About Dorian Gray—" I began.

"I understand," she said quietly.

"No, I mean—"

"You were memory-washed," she said firmly. "Your system fights off drugs, but it takes time to develop specific antibodies, and so at first you remembered nothing, not even your marriage. They put you with a comely young woman—"

"I remembered you," I said. Another person might have found it expedient to deceive her on this point, but there was no way I would lie to Megan. "But—"

"But you realized that if your captors realized that, they would have killed you," she said. "So you had to do what they wanted. Hope, it isn't as though you have never had a relationship with another woman. You had four wives before me."

Four wives. She was counting Helse, who had died on the verge of our marriage, and Juana, my first Navy roommate, and my two formal term-wives. It was true I had had enduring and loving relationships with those four, and sexual liaisons in the Navy fashion with many others. "You are very understanding," I said.

"Hope, I love you," she said, as if making a point.

I took her in my arms and kissed her, and she was all my desire. I was just shy of fifty years old, and she was in her mid-fifties, but what I felt for her would have been completely comprehensible to folk in their twenties. Or their teens. But when I thought to go further, she demurred.

I let her go immediately, knowing that despite her intellectual understanding, she had been hurt emotionally. I could not step lightly from the arms of one woman to the arms of another. Not when the other was Megan. In a way I found that reassuring; I loved Megan in part because her love was no casual thing. If her condemnation did not come readily, neither did her forgiveness. Our relationship had suffered two major blows during the campaign: the horror of the siege of our train, which had exposed her to a level of violence that gave her post-traumatic nightmares; and now the horror of my separation from her, including a relationship with another woman. Yes, I understood.

But then she turned back to me, and her face was washed in tears. "Oh, Hope!" she cried, and fell back into my embrace. She gave me everything, then, forgiveness and all, with a kind of desperation reminiscent of that of our daughter, though on a distinctly different plane. Her love had overwhelmed her reserve.

Still, I knew those two strikes remained, and I knew I could not afford a third one. I loved Megan and she loved me, and because it was no casual relation we had, any damage to it was not casual, either. Forgiveness and forgetting may come most readily to those whose real feelings are only lightly committed.

I swept to victory on election day; it was evident before the polls closed that I had a planetslide. I was tuned out at the time, of course, but it interested me when I learned of it later. Analysis indicated that I had ninety-seven percent of the Hispanic vote, with a record turnout; ninety-two percent of the Black vote; seventy percent of the Saxon female vote; and thirty percent of the Saxon male vote. Overall it came to fifty-five percent, a very comfortable margin.

But Tocsin refused to concede defeat. In fact, he acted as if he had won. The arrogance of the man was amazing.

Then I found out that the campaign was not yet over. The United States of Jupiter, almost alone among contemporary republics, retains what is termed the Electoral College. Over the past six centuries or so, one variant after another had been tried, but the dynamics of politics generally interfered with the simple ratio of one citizen, one vote. At present each state was allocated a block of electoral votes in proportion to its population, and that entire block went to whatever candidate had a plurality in that state. This tended to leverage the voting, giving the large states a disproportionate weight in the Electoral College. Indeed, it was possible for a candidate to win the national popular vote and lose the electoral vote. In addition, in a number of states, the electors aren't technically committed to the candidate who won the state. They were expected to vote as the ordinary voters had, and normally they did, but they didn't actually have to. Now it became apparent that special pressure was being brought to bear on some electors to break ranks and vote for the wrong candidate: Tocsin. His campaign had a staggering amount of money available, and it seemed that bribes were being proffered that were quite substantial, as well as promises of political patronage.

In addition, the results were being challenged in several key states. A sophisticated kind of gerrymandering was systematically excluding Hispanics and Blacks from important aspects of the recounts, so that the results were bound to shift to my disfavor. Somehow my strong supporters were being shunted to regions that were already solidly in my camp, leaving the borderline regions to tilt marginally the other way. A margin was as good as a mile for this purpose; I could lose whole states, and all their electoral votes. This process was illegal, of course, but private money does talk, and evidently it was talking persuasively. We really had to scramble to keep abreast of it, challenging the challenges, and forcing re-recounts, lest we forfeit states we had actually won. Had Tocsin had his way unchallenged, he would have shifted enough electoral votes to achieve a scant majority in the College. As it was, he did abscond with some but not enough. Our dyke held, and I was confirmed. I felt as if I had won a second election, and in a way I had.

Then a bill appeared in Congress, concerning something routine—in my scramble to plug the leaks in the dyke (though really Spirit was doing it, and my staff; I was merely watching nervously) I never really ascertained what—bearing an obscure amendment relating to the political process. The bill passed shortly before the turn of the year, and the nature of the amendment became belatedly clear. It was a "clarification" of the requirement for holding major office in Jupiter. Above a certain level it was now illegal for any foreign-born citizen to hold office. Spirit and I were foreign-born, technically, as we had come from the independent satellite of Callisto and had been naturalized as full Jupiter citizens when we left the Navy. Suddenly we were barred from taking the offices to which we had just been elected.

Naturally we challenged this bit of skullduggery on several grounds. We pressed for a rehearing and revote in Congress but were stonewalled; by the time we got through that, the day of taking office would be past. So we sued and got an expedited hearing before the Supreme Court itself, a week before the deadline of January 20, 2650. This was highly unusual, but the entire situation was extraordinary. Only direct access to the highest court could settle this in time.

The technical question was whether Congress had the right to pass ex post facto legislation affecting a candidate already elected. We argued that this was inequitable at best, and a mockery of the entire election process at worst. The opposition argued that this was not properly considered as new legislation but was merely a clarification of existing policy and therefore was valid. They succeeded in obfuscating the real issue—that of who was to be president—to the point that it became a question of my fitness for the office. I actually was required to summon character references on my behalf. Naturally Tocsin summoned character-assassination witnesses.

So while the twelve Supreme Court Justices listened in seeming passivity, Spirit and I suffered through the ordeal of being publicly judged as persons. All manner of innuendo was brought out in an evident effort to make us lose our tempers. We survived that—our Naval combat experience helped—but we were almost torpedoed by our friends. My first Navy roommate, Juana, now a master sergeant, testified to my excellent character and confessed that she and I had met in the tail—i.e., Navy institution of sex, the complement to the head—and had subsequently lived together as de facto man and wife for two years before moving on to other assignments. Cross-examination established other partners in sex that I had had. It was, of course, the Navy way, neither right nor wrong, but it was a way that was not generally understood in civilian life. Emerald gave similar evidence, except that she had actually married me, until it became expedient for her to go to another officer in order to obtain his expertise for the benefit of our unit. Again it was the Navy way; again it was damaging in the present context, as was the fact that Emerald had obvious Black ancestry. The Navy strove to extirpate racism from its midst by civilian directive, and mixed marriages were accepted without question, as were interracial liaisons in the Tail. But the civilian sector had not applied similar discipline as strenuously to itself; interracial marriages, though legal, were socially problematical. Twelve old Saxon men were listening; were they free of the taint of covert racism themselves? I had to pray that it was so, but I doubted it. Three of them had been appointed by Tocsin himself, and they were recognized as ideological rather than quality selections; no hope that they would rule against him. Three others had been appointed by his predecessor Kenson, who were of superior merit. The six remaining were similarly divided, so that there was an even conservative/liberal split and no great certainty that merit would be the deciding aspect of any particular case.

Then we came to the last of my Navy liaisons. Admiral Phist (Retired) and his wife Roulette, Ambassador from the Belt, were brought to Jupiter, to the court in the bubble of New Wash. They were cross-examined like criminals by the lawyer from the other side. "And isn't it true that you are a pirate wench?" the lawyer demanded of Roulette.

Roulette was now a striking woman of thirty-nine, retaining fiery hair and a figure that caused even the venerable heads of the Supreme Court Justices to turn. She had been in her youth the most beautiful woman, physically, I had known, the veritable incarnation of man's desire. She had also been the daughter of a prominent pirate. I had married her, in the pirate fashion, and we had loved each other in our private fashion. This detracts in no way from my love of Megan. Roulette had been an extraordinarily fetching passing fancy; Megan was the true love of my life. Yet I cannot deny that my pulse accelerated somewhat when I saw her here in person, hourglass figure intact.

"Objection!" our attorney protested, but Roulette waved him away.

"I can answer for myself," she said. She turned disdainfully to the interrogator and fixed him with a gaze that actually made him step back. "Yes, I was a pirate wench—until Captain Hubris made a woman of me."

"And how did he do that?"

"He beat me and raped me," she said with pride.

The attorney straightened up with overdramatic shock. Obviously he had been fishing for exactly this response. "He what?"

Some character witness! The twelve Justices seemed somewhat less sleepy now. But Roulette was not about to let this drop. "Same thing you'd like to do, if you had the chance," she informed the man, shifting the angle of her sculptured bosom.

The attorney was speechless for a moment; evidently she had scored. But he quickly recovered himself. "And did you press charges?"

"For what?" she inquired archly.

"For abuse!" he said with relish. "For... rape."

She laughed. "That gentle man? He never abused me!"

"But you said—"

"Of course. But he didn't really want to rape me. We made him do it."

The lawyer knew he was losing the thread. "We?"

"My father and I."

"Your father—and you—made Hope Hubris rape you?"

"And his staff. We really worked on him. And finally he did it. I had a knife. I stabbed him in the shoulder. But he—"

"You love him yet!" the lawyer accused her.

"I have always loved him, ever since he mastered me. I always will."

The lawyer pounced. "And what does your husband make of this?"

Admiral Phist smiled. "I understand completely."

"Your wife loves Hope Hubris, and you understand?"

"Of course. I love Spirit Hubris." He made a nod in my sister's direction, and Spirit smiled.

The Justices sat stonily. How was this affecting them?

The lawyer's gaze cast about the chamber as if he were looking for something to hang on to. They fixed on Hopie. Suddenly they widened in wild surmise. "A Saxon woman," he said. "Still in love with her former husband, free to travel where she wishes, without objection by her present husband—" He whirled on Roulette. "Where were you, Roulette Phist, fifteen years ago?"

Roulette straightened. She glanced at Hopie. "Why, I don't remember. But—"

"Will you submit to a maternity blood-typing test?"

Roulette frowned. "You'll have none of my blood, mate!"

"Do you deny that you are the mother of that child?" And he pointed dramatically at Hopie, who seemed equally startled.

Roulette considered. "Where was I, that year, dear?" she asked her husband, her lovely brow furrowing in seeming concentration.

Admiral Phist grinned. "You have certainly traveled widely, Rue."

"This is no laughing matter!" the attorney snapped. "As you, Admiral, should be the first to recognize!"

Roulette studied Hopie openly. "She certainly is a pretty one," she said, turning once more to her husband. "She does favor Hope. Do you think I could have...?"

Phist had been looking at Spirit. Slowly he nodded, as if coming to a conclusion. "It does seem possible," he agreed.

"But if I claim her she would have to leave Jupiter—"

"True," he agreed soberly. "It had better remain secret."

The lawyer was flushing, aware that he was being mocked. One of the Justices was quirking half a smile. "Madam, your blood type is surely on record. We can verify—"

"Lots of luck, shithead," she said sweetly. "I'm not a Jupe citizen. I came here only for the chance to see the man I love."

There was a muffled chortle from another Justice; I couldn't tell which one. Evidently he understood about lovely women coming to see powerful men. But I knew that none of this was doing my case much good. The executive and legislative branches of the government were already against me; where would the judicial be when its limited mirth abated?

There was a brief recess following this interview. Admiral Phist and Roulette approached the section where I sat with Megan, Spirit, and Shelia. "Maybe we?" Roulette asked Megan.

Megan smiled with a certain gentle resignation, then swung her chair around so as to face away. Spirit and I stood up, and Admiral Phist took Spirit into his arms and kissed her, and Roulette did the same to me. Hopie's eyes widened, as did those of a number of the other folk present. Then we separated. "You are still a creature to madden a man's mind," I murmured to Roulette. "Your thyme has not yet been stolen."

"I know it," she agreed. "But you would not need to steal it, Hope. It has always been yours for the asking." They departed. Megan turned around again, ending her symbolic ignorance. "She's beautiful," she said. "She does still love you."

"I gave her up for you," I reminded her.

"I can't think why." But she was nevertheless flattered.

Next day the news arrived: the decision of the Supreme Court, by a vote of six to five, with one abstention, was in favor of the legislation. The interpretation stood, and Spirit and I were barred from assuming the offices we had been elected to. All three branches of the government were against us, and we had lost.

 

But it wasn't over. We might have lost, but Tocsin hadn't won. He had not been reelected. There would have to be a special election, and in the period from January 20 to the emplacement of the winner of that election, the speaker of the house would serve as president. The speaker was of my party and had supported my candidacy; it was entirely possible that he would use his leverage to reverse the legislation that had cut me out. Tocsin was scrambling to get a ruling that would permit him to remain in office for the interim, but he lacked the leverage to secure that. Meanwhile, more ships of the Jupiter Navy were converging on the planet; what did this portend?

Spirit, oddly, seemed unworried. "The game has not yet been played out," she said. "Tocsin has been concentrating on controlling the branches of the government; we have been concentrating on the will of the people. Ultimately that will must prevail."

"What do you mean?" I asked. But she only smiled and went about her business. Evidently she had not limited her endeavors to the normal campaign during my absence. There was certainly a reaction from the people! Demonstrations erupted in all the major cities, from Nyork to Langels, so fervent that they overwhelmed the police, who, it seemed, were not unduly committed to their suppression. The Brotherhood of Policemen had supported my candidacy from the outset. All across the land the chant sounded: "Hubris! Hubris!" I had been elected, and the popular mandate was being thwarted by a technicality, and even some pretty solid conservatives, such as Thorley, questioned the basis of that technicality. The common man was angry. In state after state martial law was declared, but it did little good, for the National Guard was sympathetic to my candidacy, too. The migrant workers of the agricultural orbit rioted, doing no damage to the crops but hardly bothering to conceal the threat—in the event I did not take office. They regarded me as one of their own, with some reason. Likewise, women of every walk of life made a more subtle demonstration, as even some opposing legislators confessed ruefully; and those men who sought relief at establishments of ill repute discovered that the girls there were boycotting any man who did not support my candidacy. Something very like a revolution was building.

A spot popularity poll showed that my general support had increased to sixty-six percent, evidently augmented by sympathy. Mail was pouring in, much of it from those who had become my supporters only after the election had been set aside. Outrage was the emotion of the hour.

The great ships of the Navy moved closer yet, and I realized that Tocsin had anticipated trouble like this. If he declared a national emergency he would assume extraordinary powers—and would not use them to benefit me.

"I think you had better pacify the animals," Megan told me grimly. "Don't give Tocsin a pretext to go on a war footing."

So I pacified the animals. I sought and got planetary video time; Tocsin did not interfere with this, because if I tried to foment revolution openly, he could use that as a pretext to have me arrested and could put the entire nation under military control. If he succeeded in that maneuver it might be a long time before he relinquished his office, if ever.

I addressed my supporters, in their separate categories, pleading with the Hispanics to keep the peace so as not to reflect unfavorably on their kind, which included myself and my sisters and my daughter; I assured the Blacks that I was doing everything in my power to see that justice would be done; I begged the women to wait a few days more, for something good might come of our various appeals on technical grounds, or from the upcoming special election.

"I did not come to Jupiter to generate strife, " I concluded. "I believe in law and peace. Be patient; show the people of the Solar System that you support the same goals I do."

It worked. The tide of violence receded, and life returned to an approximation of normal. But it did not recede far; everyone knew that phenomenal activity could break out almost instantly if triggered. The Navy ships orbited very close, ready and ominous.

There was unusual silence from the other planets of the System. Even Saturn made no comment. But North Jupiter was the object of the cynosure of all mankind, at the moment. It was as if some critical sporting event was now in the closing stage of an extremely tight contest for the championship, and every breath was held while the outcome remained in doubt.

Naturally Thorley commented. He pointed out something few people had noticed: There was one of the perennial movements afoot for a constitutional convention to balance the budget. Now the constitutional convention, he explained, was a truly venerable device; it rose directly from the people, by way of the several state legislatures, and once it passed certain hurdles, it could not be denied. This one was now only two states shy of the necessary two-thirds majority of state approvals to become viable, and once it became established, it could not be dissolved by any power other than itself. Our present system of government, he reminded us, had been instituted by the first constitutional convention, close to nine hundred years ago, and could conceivably be overturned by another. Such a convention might be brought into being for a specific purpose, but it was under no binding directive to stick to that purpose. "You may suppose this is a simple matter of balancing the chronically unbalanced planetary budget," he concluded, "but it could conceivably be the route to tyranny. A fire, once started, may spread beyond the original site."

The measure was currently up for consideration in five states, and two of them were Golden and Sunshine. Spirit had been shuttling her attention back and forth between them, and suddenly I realized why. She was working to get them to vote to establish the constitutional convention!

And it happened. We had strong support in both states, for one was where Megan had been a representative, and the other was my own political base. On January 18 Sunshine ratified the bill, and on the nineteenth Golden followed suit. I strongly suspected they could have done it earlier, but Spirit had arranged for the delay in order to keep this from being a public issue before it had to be. Timing was vital—and now was the time.

On the twentieth, the day the presidency was supposed to change, the constitutional convention convened. Now it was evident how carefully Spirit had orchestrated this, for a clear majority of the delegates were my supporters. The whole time I had been captive, Spirit had been touring the planet in my stead, giving public speeches and privately seeing to the selection of the delegates for this convention, so that there would be no confusion or delay at the critical moment. The skids had been greased, and the whole thing came into being with amazing ease, fully formed. Tocsin's forces, supposing they had victory in hand as long as they held me captive, had not been aware of this. They had been blinded by their own connivance, not recognizing Spirit for what she was: the mistress of their undoing.

Now the constitutional convention, governed by our majority, acted with extraordinary dispatch. First it declared that the budget should be balanced. Then it declared that, inasmuch as neither executive, legislative, nor judicial branches of the government had proved able or willing to do this in the past century, all were to be disbanded forthwith. Then its spokesman addressed me publicly:

"Hope Hubris, do you pledge to balance the budget without delay or compromise, if granted the power to do so?"

"I do," I replied. It really was not a difficult answer.

"Then this convention hereby declares Hope Hubris, the evident preference of the people of the United States of Jupiter, to be the new government of this nation, effective immediately."

Ex-President Tocsin acted instantly. He renounced the validity of the constitutional convention, declared planetary martial law, and postponed the date of the changeover of the office of the presidency, to preserve, as he put it, "the present constitutional system of Jupiter." In the name of this preservation he directed the Jupiter Navy to enforce his edicts. He was, in fact, assuming dictatorial powers himself, as Thorley recognized.

"We are hoist between Scylla and Charybdis," Thorley said when the news service was scrambling for precedents and comment. "Faced with a choice between a tyrant of the left or of the right."

"But which side is correct?" the interviewer persisted.

Thorley grimaced. "Appalling as I find the situation, I have to say that technically the constitutional convention is correct. This is a horrendous abuse of its office, but it does have the power to void our entire system of government."

"But the Navy—"

"Ah, yes, the Navy," he agreed. "If the Navy answers to President Tocsin, then perhaps might will make right. We are in an unprecedented pass—"

The interview was interrupted for more pressing action. Tocsin was on again. "I declare Hope Hubris to be a traitor to Jupiter, and I order his immediate arrest. I am directing the Navy to dispatch a ship for this purpose."

The picture shifted to the representative of the Navy. Emerald's dusky face came on. At that moment I knew I had won, for there was no way Emerald would arrest me. "The Jupiter Navy recognizes the authority of the legally constituted government of the United States of Jupiter," she said. "This authority, as we understand it, now lies with the constitutional convention. The convention has appointed Hope Hubris. Accordingly, the Navy answers to Hope Hubris." She paused, her gaze seeking me out—and quickly the news cameras shifted to me. "What is your will, sir?" There was a certain relish in the way she accented that last word. She was in effect challenging me to accept.

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

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

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

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

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

She seemed to shrink, turning away from a horrible reality. Then she firmed. "It is true. You told me that at the outset. Things have gone too far; the republic has already been overthrown, and a tyrant will rule." She swallowed. "It is a choice between evils, and the lesser evil must be chosen. Do what you must, Hope; I shall not deny you your destiny."

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

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

"Megan, I'll turn it down."

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

"Not without you!"

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

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

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