Executive (18 page)

“Precisely. Now the actual mechanism for broadening the tax base includes a flat twenty-percent rate on earned income, interest income excluded—”

“But didn't you just say that interest would be taxed?”

“If it is taxed when paid, it would be unfair to tax it again when received,” he explained. “We propose to encourage savings and investment by eliminating all tax on interest earned. This will, of course, reduce one source of income for the government, but the resulting incentive to business—”

“Aren't you taking it from the poor and giving it to the rich?” I demanded.

He smiled with a trace of misgiving. “Your sister also broached that question. In that sense, in that particular case, it might be possible to interpret it that way, as it is true that the rich do have more money to invest than do the poor. However, the importance of encouraging investment, in the interest of expanding business and generating jobs for everyone—”

“Faith doesn't mind if the rich get richer, so long as the poor get richer too,” I agreed.

"Actually the rich are not benefiting that much. We are implementing a currency change to eliminate the underground economy, and that will bring an enormous new segment of the economy into the tax base.

Since many of the sheltered income and tax havens relate, this will result in considerably increased costs to the wealthy. I suspect the earliest protests we have will be from that quarter."

“But how does changing the currency eliminate tax havens?”

He smiled. “The new currency will be coded, so that its origin and location can be traced. When large amounts collect in one place and the tax for the transaction is not paid, our agents will, ah, pounce. I worked this out at Ms. Phist's suggestion—”

“Roulette,” I said. “Rue to her friends. She's a remarkable woman.”

“A remarkable woman,” he agreed. I was not certain whether he was thinking of her physical or her intellectual endowments. “Her interest is in tracking the illicit sums involved in drugs and gambling, but we realized that this would also track other types of activity. I suspect that, for perhaps the first time in the history of Jupiter as a nation, the appropriate tax will be paid on virtually all earned income. On that basis the flat twenty-percent rate should bring in substantially more revenue than the prior graduated tax system did, though that went up to a fifty-percent rate. This, coupled with the five-percent VAT—”

“The five-percent what?”

"VAT. Value Added Tax. It has been used successfully for centuries on Uranus but not here on Jupiter.

It is essentially a planetary sales tax, collected at every stage in segments, so that—"

“So, between the two, it will be a twenty-five-percent tax rate,” I said.

“Not precisely, because income and sales are not identical. The dynamics—”

“And this will eliminate the deficit and balance the budget?”

“Well, not at first. As with any venture, there are initial costs and qualifications. But once the system is in place, this is the objective.”

I wasn't satisfied. “I told you I wanted the budget balanced! What's this about initial costs and qualifications?”

"Full employment is not achieved in a day. Not via the private sector. Admiral Phist estimates that it will take at least two years before the industrial base expands enough to accommodate the entire labor force.

Until that time the government must be the Employer of Last Resort, and that means—"

“One hell of an expense for the unemployed,” I finished. “Faith is really making you pay for that mortgage deduction!”

“Initially, yes. But the long-term trend is definitely healthy.”

I nodded. He knew what he was doing; my passion for the instant fix was misplaced. “How does the gold standard relate?”

“Nothing permanent can be accomplished without a stable currency. We expect to eliminate automatic raises, because we expect to eliminate inflation. The only sure way to do that is to back all of our currency with value, and that means metals and goods. A value-backed currency does not erode. With that certainty we can perhaps work marvels.”

I smiled. “You're enjoying this, Senator!”

“I'm afraid I am, Tyrant,” he confessed. “I have always wanted to see what could be accomplished with a genuinely competent administration.”

“Me too.” So far, it looked good.

“Sir.” Shelia had a call for me. “Tocsin.”

Now it started. “On,” I said shortly.

Tocsin's homely face appeared on the main screen. “Tyrant, what the hell is this nonsense about cutting the allotments? Those were set up by Congress; they can't be touched!”

“I abolished Congress,” I reminded him. “I am a dictator; I am bound by no prior governmental commitments.”

“Listen, we made a deal. You pardoned me. You can't start going after me now!”

“I'm not. These reductions apply to all civil service and military retirees at all levels. No one is exempted; there is now a single standard of retirement. Your predecessor has the same limit.”

“Kenson? He's getting no more than I do?” he asked, brightening.

“Slightly more, because he was in office longer. But no more than a retiree of similar level in the civilian sector.”

He became crafty. “What happens when you retire, Hubris?”

“There is no provision for my retirement. I don't expect to collect any benefits.”

“You mean you plan to stay in power forever?” he demanded.

“No. I expect to be assassinated in due course.”

He started to laugh, then cut it off, staring at me, realizing that I was serious. He faded out.

Shelia caught my eye. She held up a chip.

“What?” I asked, perplexed.

“Remember your anonymous girlfriend? The veiled woman?”

“Oh,” I said, feeling inane. It had been a month or more—again, my memory is imprecise, for at that time I did not realize the significance of this correspondence, and the matter had faded from my awareness.

Now memory brought another concern. "This—something like this could be used to embarrass me.

Maybe I shouldn't—"

She shook her head. “This one can be trusted, sir.”

If Shelia said so, it was so. I put aside my concern.

I took the chip, and later, when I had a suitable break, I donned the helmet and turned on the scene.

I was back in the blurry chamber, watching the glowing me-figure. Though feelies like this are generated in the mind, they generally do show scenes from an anonymous third-party view, as if a camera were there. I think this derives from conventional holo technique, which portrays a person as being alone, though obviously someone is tracking him with a camera; we learn to suspend our logic for the sake of the story, and we imitate that technique in our fancy. It isn't necessary, just convenient.

The me-man spied the her-woman, strode across, and took her in his arms. That was where I had left it; this replay refreshed my memory completely. What was her response?

The me-man bent his head to kiss her, and she tilted up her head to receive it, but the heavy veil was in the way. She drew back a little, raised her hand, and drew aside the veil so as to bare her face.

The me-man looked—and now the picture jumped, holo-style, to a close-up of her head.

Her face was blank. It was nothing more than a pink-white curvature of flesh without eyes, nose, or mouth. It resembled a dressmaker's dummy, the head a mere shape, because one did not, after all, measure a dress on a person's face.

There the scene ended. Jolted, I considered. Was this person trying to tease me? Somehow I doubted it; nothing in the sequence suggested humor. This is one thing about amateur scenes: they lack the cleverness of professional efforts so are more believable. Also, I was able to use my talent to read the woman a little. This may seem odd, but it is true. I read the minute physical reactions of people, normally unnoticed and uncontrolled, a constant signaling of their state of mind. Because they originate in the mind, these signals are transmitted to imaginary figures, and the body of this woman had them. Not lucidly but still suggestive of a most serious intent. She had, it seemed, a genuine passion for me. She was amateur, but she was not jesting.

Why, then, was her face blank? Not as a joke. It was more like an appeal. A blank to be filled in.

There it was. In life she might be a homely woman; certainly passion is not limited to the beautiful. She was afraid that her true face would turn me off, but she had no other. But in a feelie a person can be anything, and they generally do prefer to take advantage of that. Making a scene, as it is termed, is a dream-fulfilling business, where people can portray themselves as they would like to be, to the extent their imagination permits.

She wanted to be beautiful, obviously—but not in just any way. She wanted to be the way I wanted her to be. Her dream was to be the realization of my dream.

This was a game I could play, except for one thing. There were only two faces I really desired. One was Megan's, which I would not tolerate on any other woman; the other was Helse's.

Well, Helse had assumed the bodies of other women on occasion, to please me, as she could no longer do so with her own body. She could certainly assume this body.

Would it be right to do this? This was no purely personal vision of mine when my reality changed; this was an interactive vision, shared with an anonymous admirer. Well, if I were willing, and Helse were willing, and the woman wanted it, why not? It was, after all, limited to the helmet. It was only a kind of game.

Or was it?

I nudged that caution aside, intrigued by the possibilities. To have a living woman playing my lost love in the privacy of the helmet. What might come of that?

I gazed at the blank face and let my longing manifest. The face blurred and changed, and there was Helse's face. Helse, as she was at sixteen, when I had known her in life and loved her. As I still loved her.

Then I moved to kiss those precious lips. But I stopped just before the contact, for I wanted her to do it, to kiss me actively. Kissing a construct of imagination is like masturbation; it is better if there is truly another person, even if her appearance has been changed.

Roulette, for a change, was in an outfit that showed no cleavage. She wore a light green sweater and plaid skirt, like a college girl, and even had a green ribbon in her red hair. I discovered to my chagrin that she was every bit as sexy that way as she had been with the cleavage.

“The place to start,” she said briskly, “is to legalize everything possible. There's no point in wasting effort suppressing victimless crimes.”

“Like what?” I asked, trying not to look as she crossed her legs so that the skirt slid across her thighs.

“Gambling, drugs, sex, pornography.”

Indeed, such concepts came readily to my mind as I fought to bring my errant gaze under control. Those thighs! “Porno is Thorley's problem; he's in charge of censorship.”

She laughed. That sweater! “He's a rock-ribbed conservative! He hates porno almost as bad as he hates censorship. I'd like to watch him reviewing sex.”

“He'll simply ignore it,” I said. Would that I could do the same! “But about the others—I know you have no case against gambling, but what of the casinos run by organized crime, which fleeces the clients and pays off the authorities?”

“Organized crime I mean to abolish. When it takes over gambling, then there's trouble, but the evil is in the crime, not the gambling. Keep it honest, it'll be all right.”

“But the compulsive gamblers who can't stop, who run themselves into monstrous debts—”

“Strictly cash,” she said. “No credit, no IOUs. That keeps them to what they can afford. The truly sick ones can put up segments of their lives for rehabilitative treatment; they lose, they go in. Truly compulsive gambling is a disease; it can be treated, but the client has to be willing.”

She seemed to have her answers! But, of course, she was the daughter of a professional (and honest) gambler; this was her home turf. “Drugs, then,” I said. “Some of them devastate the human system. If we legalize them—”

“Make the drugs legal, the abuse illegal,” she said firmly. "Most drugs are good and necessary for human health. A lot of the harm in drugs is because they are illegal. Drug addiction is the single greatest cause of chronic crime against property: addicts have to steal to get money for their habit. With government clinics like those you had in Sunshine when you were governor, the money motive is gone and the crime stops.

The rest is education: teach the people the truth about drugs, all drugs, what they do and what their abuse costs in health and independence. Most people will stay clear or at least stick to the relatively harmless ones. But any dangerous or addictive drug has to be given at the clinic; nobody doses himself or anyone else. There'll be some new addictions, sure, but there'll also be some who learn better at the clinic and never get addicted, when they would have otherwise. Because they'll see the true addicts, coming in for theirs, and that will open eyes."

“I don't know,” I said. “Everyone knows the perils of alcohol addiction, but it progresses, anyway.”

“Because they have unlimited access. They get soused, drive their bubble-cars, crack up, kill people—”

Her face hardened. “We're going to get those drunk drivers out of the channels! Man kills another man, I don't care if he's drunk or crazy, I want him gone. Get all killers out of circulation, same as the hardened criminals.”

“We'd have to spend billions on new prisons!” I protested.

She frowned. “Somehow I just knew you weren't going to want to put 'em out the space lock suitless,”

she said. “All right, you don't have to. Just guarantee that no killer will ever be free in the society again and I'll be satisfied; I don't care how you do it.”

“But—”

“Ask Gerald; he can work anything out. Just so long as we eliminate the repeat criminals of any type.”

I sighed, partly for the situation and partly for those supremely fleshed legs. “I expected you to solve my problems, not complicate them!”

“After more than twenty years you retain that delusion?” she inquired sweetly, spreading her legs. Damn her! She knew what she was doing to me!