Politician (32 page)

“Good point,” she said. “Still, I check the rest.” She proceeded to do just that, getting in each bed in the sleeping car. All were clean.

“You have a taste for young flesh?” Megan inquired when we were safely in bed together.

“Not any more,” I mumbled, embarrassed.

“Your eyes bulged only from fatigue?” she teased me. She knew that I noticed and appreciated all flesh, but also that I touched none but hers. There was no jealousy in her.

“That must have been it,” I agreed, reaching for hers.

“I cannot offer you the like of that,” she continued. “Coral is a plum; I am a prune.”

“I'm an old man; give me some prune juice,” I said, and she laughed. She knew, as I did, that youth is only one aspect of sexuality, and a lesser one than love. Megan, as she was at the age of fifty-four, was all that I ever desired. A glimpse at a body like Coral's was, for me, passing fancy; Megan was reality. I kissed her almost savagely and had at her as if we were teenagers who would be forever separated on the morrow. Certainly there was some of that in it, after the death scare. Flattered, she responded in kind, and it was desperately good. Her adaptation to this side of marriage had been gradual but complete; she was now capable of passion approaching my own, when she knew it would please me. On this occasion it did indeed please me. Next day the quest for traps resumed. Coral stayed so close to me, she often touched, suspicious of everything. But it was not only that. “I am jealous of Megan,” she confided when I looked askance.

She had stayed in the adjacent bed-cell overnight. Her duty required her to be as close to me as possible. She surely had overheard our lovemaking. She was not being coquettish; she was stating a fact we both understood. If I notice flesh so does the flesh also notice me; this is a situation I have lived with all my adult life. In this, Coral was no different from any of the girls of my staff. It was one of the things we all lived with and accepted. Perhaps this is typical of all politicians; I have never inquired.

Still no traps turned up, and that was bad because we were sure they existed. All of us felt the tension, especially Hopie. “I don't want anything to happen to you, Daddy!” she cried, hugging me tightly.

“Or to you,” I said, kissing her on the forehead. Indeed, she was my only child, and my universe would have darkened without her.

“Her, too,” Coral muttered. That was a corollary aspect: If Megan had my love as wife, Hopie had it as daughter, and the others were excluded. They suffered an amicable jealousy of any such attachment.

“Actually you're young enough,” I reminded Coral, for she was eighteen years my junior and looked younger.

She quirked a smile. “I suppose I can't keep both jealousies, logically. But I do.”

Jealousy is considered to be an ugly emotion. Somehow it never struck me that way. To me it seems more like a compliment.

I spent the morning reviewing my campaign material. It was important that I come across lucidly and powerfully from the outset, making no missteps. A single small-seeming error can ruin a year's political groundwork. So I rehearsed with Hopie, my willing audience; she had heard it all before but seemed never to tire of political themes. “Are you going to be Jupiter's first female president?” I asked her teasingly, to which she replied, “Maybe.”

At noon I went to the lavatory to wash my hands. Normally I use the sonic cleaner, but this train was equipped only with the archaic basins, faucets, and wrapped bars of soap, and they intrigued me. I picked up a bar and began to unwrap it.

“Me first,” Coral said, taking it from my hand.

“Harpy,” I muttered. The harpies of mythology were ugly half-birds noted for snatching things from others. She ignored that. She wet her hands and squeezed the bar through them, pausing to smell it.

Nothing happened. “No poison,” she concluded, satisfied.

“Unless it's just male poison,” Hopie put in, laughing. She had followed us in; there was no longer any such thing as privacy for me.

It was a joke, but Coral stiffened. “Sex-differentiated enzymes—it just could be!” She took the bar and hurried away, leaving me to make do with unadorned water.

Soon she was back. “It was, sir. I ran it through my chem-kit. Affects only Y chromosome, so no effect on female. But you—if not death in hours, brain damage in days.”

Hopie seemed about to faint. “I thought it was humor,” she whispered.

“That enemy not laughing,” Coral said grimly.

Not funny, indeed! Again I had survived largely by luck. Had Hopie not made her facetious remark...

Coral sent Ebony to check all the soap on board. Only one type was bad: the fancy-wrapped passenger-intended bars. The kind that a potential president might use, rather than one of the train crew.

The differentiation remained; I was the only target.

“Bound to be something else,” Coral muttered. “But this enemy clever, very clever. Not sure I'll catch the next.” I did not like the sound of that. I wondered again exactly who my enemy was. Such cunning; the drug moguls were normally not that subtle.

We discussed it during lunch. We made no effort to conceal what had happened; we were all in this together, with Hopie sharing the risk. We had to make a team effort to win through.

Mrs. Burton summed it up: "One electric trap, one chemical trap. Third one must be something else.

Something only the boss will encounter."

“Electric, chemical, physical,” Coral said. “Maybe physical trap just for him. Spring-loaded knife where only he goes. But where that?” She had learned to speak almost perfect English during her years with me but tended to revert when concentrating on something.

“I have no plans to go anywhere alone,” I said.

“See that you don't,” Mrs. Burton said.

The porter met us after lunch. “Phone for you, sir.”

It turned out to be an appeal from the city of Phis, in Volunteer. It seemed I had support there, and the mayor was begging me to make at least a whistle-stop in passing.

Such an appeal is hard for a politician to turn down. We consulted and agreed; we would pause at Phis for half an hour, no more, and I would speak a few words of encouragement from the campaign train. It seemed an excellent way to break in, and it might alleviate the tension of the death threat.

Casey brought the train about and followed a spur-track to the bubble. They were really eager to see us in Phis; their station was packed with cheering people. This was extremely gratifying but probably a fluke.

I would be playing to sparsely filled houses on my regular tour.

As we passed through the maneuvers for entry to the station, Hopie was at my elbow, trying to tell me something. I'm afraid I was distracted and not paying attention; this really was not the occasion for the indulgence of childish prattle. This was, after all, to be my first campaign speech as a candidate for president of the United States of Jupiter. There were so many issues to develop, and there was so little time, and the manner of my delivery was so vital.

We were gliding to a halt in the station. “You'll have to let me go now, honey,” I told Hopie gently. “I have a campaign address to give.”

“Daddy, you aren't listening! ” she exclaimed, and I saw with surprise that she was crying. Suddenly I realized how frustrating it must be for a child to be ignored. What did it matter if I won over the people at Phis if I alienated my own daughter?

“I'm sorry,” I said sincerely. “I'm listening now.”

“Daddy, I had a dream, sort of,” she said, her tears abating. Sunshine follows rain very quickly, with teenagers.

“A dream,” I agreed.

“Sort of. I don't think I was exactly asleep, so—”

“A vision,” I said. “I have them sometimes. Maybe it runs in the family.”

She smiled gratefully. “Maybe.” It was a running joke: How could an adoptive child inherit a genetic trait? We maintained, for the sake of companionship, that it was possible. Indeed, Hopie's blood type matched mine, further evidence. “But this was a bad one.”

“Sometimes they are. But often there is truth in them.”

“Daddy, I saw you start to talk to the crowd, and then...”

“Don't keep me in suspense,” I said, smiling.

“Then it all blew up. Daddy, I'm terrified!”

“Premonition of disaster? Hardly surprising, after what's happened on the Spirit of Empire . But you know that we detect and analyze all metals in my vicinity; if anyone brings a bomb, we'll know.”

“Are bombs metal?”

"Well, no. Usually they are cased in metal, though, and have metal detonation wires, that sort of thing.

It's hard to avoid metal entirely."

She seemed reassured. “So no one can bomb you when you speak?”

“Nothing is impossible, honey. But it does seem unlikely. For one thing I'll be inside the train, talking to them via loudspeaker. This is standard practice for politicians who are whistle-stopping; the train is kept sealed, so there's no foolishness about carrying in any disease or forgetting to close a port before going back out on the track. Fast and neat and sanitary. No one outside can throw anything inside, which is just as well, because some nuts may try to.”

“Okay,” she agreed. “I guess I'll let you talk. But if you see anything like a bomb—”

“I'll back off,” I agreed. “This may be news to you, but I'm not really partial to explosions, up close.”

She laughed, relieved.

Now I approached the mike. “This thing turned on?” I asked Mrs. Burton.

“Oops,” she said, touching a switch. “Now it's on.”

There was a rippling chuckle in the crowd outside. Her words had just been sent out to them.

I took the mike, opened my mouth, and paused, remembering Hopie's vision. Of course, it probably had been an animation of apprehension—that would soon be dissipated by reality—but as I had told her there was often truth in visions. I see no supernatural agency in this; a vision may be merely a form of intuition, a conjecture based on a collection of impressions assimilated on a subconscious level. Our brains are marvelous things and often know more than our conscious minds choose to realize. Just as I had not paid attention to Hopie before, so the conscious can ignore the unconscious. When the matter is important, sometimes the unconscious breaks through with a vision. It is an attention-getter of last resort.

Or so I conjecture; I'm not expert on the matter.

Hopie had seen me start to talk to the crowd, and then everything had blown up.

A booby-trapped mike? But it was already on, and Mrs. Burton had used it. Some things were voice-activated, but obviously this was not.

Voice-activated? How about voice-coded? I shut my mouth tight and backed away, signaling Mrs.

Burton to turn off the mike. Coral started forward, concerned. “Sir, is something—”

Mrs. Burton switched off the mike. “What's on your mind, Governor? Surely not stage fright!”

“Let's try a test record,” I whispered. “One with my voice.”

“Sure.” We had made several recordings of single-issue spot discussions for backup use in case my voice got strained; that's another standard precaution. She put one on and turned on the mike, while the crowd outside looked on curiously. We retreated to another chamber.

“Hello, friends,” my voice said on the loudspeaker. “My name is—”

The mike console exploded. Metal shrapnel blasted into the wall and cracked the shatterproof pseudoglass window. Hopie screamed.

In a moment there was silence. The broadcast chamber was a shambles; anybody in it would have been damaged beyond repair.

Coral nodded ruefully. “Voice-activated bomb, coded to your voice only,” she said. “Sir, I failed you. I did not anticipate that.”

“Fortunately Hopie did,” I said, putting my arm around my daughter's heaving shoulders. I squeezed her.

“I think you saved my life, cutesy.”

“Oh, Daddy,” she said, sobbing and turning into me.

In due course Mrs. Burton rigged another mike, one not booby-trapped, and I gave my address from the shambled chamber. I kept Hopie with me, holding her left hand with my right. “Someone tried to assassinate me,“ I told my audience firmly. ”Don't worry; it wasn't anyone from Phis. My daughter anticipated it and saved my life; but for her I would have had trouble addressing you now. I think she deserves to participate.” And I lifted her hand in a kind of victory gesture.

The crowd cheered so hard that the train vibrated, and Hopie blushed. No one had ever cheered her before.

My first presidential campaign address was a great success.

We moved back out on the track, resuming our scheduled route. Our group was somewhat sobered, for that last trap had been a close thing. No one had thought to check the public address system for bombs; Mrs. Burton had tested it routinely and found it in good working order, so had let it be. I could not blame either her or Coral for the oversight; it had been a fiendishly subtle trap. The explosive had been plastic, not registering on the metal detector, and the current that detonated it had been part of the regular mike system. Only if someone had delved into the console would the explosive have been evident, and since there had been no malfunction, there had been no reason to do that. But both Coral and Mrs. Burton blamed themselves.

Megan, distraught, refused to take any more tranquilizers. “If you are in danger, Hope,” she said nervously, “I don't want to ignore it, when perhaps I could do something—”

Here she broke down, and I could not completely comfort her. I saw that I was inadvertently leading her into a life that was not to her liking. She had retired from the stress of politics and now was back in it—with the added element of personal, physical danger. This campaign had become akin to a military operation; it was too much for her.

“If my campaign hurts you I will give it up,” I told her. Indeed, my love for her was such that this was true. I had started to tune out my daughter in the press of preparations; I did not want to do worse to my wife.

She patted my hand. “No, Hope. You must follow your destiny. You are of sterner stuff than I. It is not my prerogative to interfere.”

That was the way it stood. She was afraid for me, desperately so, and this fear was taking its toll on her, but she would not let me deviate from my chosen course. She was a great woman, and it showed in ways like this.

Coral and Mrs. Burton restricted me to the “safe” sections of the train while they checked out everything else they could think of, armed with electronic detectors and recordings of my voice. I doubted they would find anything; three traps seemed to be enough. But during those long hours we had to have a distraction, as much for Megan's and Hopie's benefit as mine, so we played cards. There were all manner of computerized games available, of course, but none of us had any present taste for these. They had been checked safe, but it was too easy to imagine a unit blowing up when a certain configuration was achieved, such as the code word Hubris . And, despite all the advances in game-craft, the old-fashioned physical cards still represented an excellent all-around repertoire of diversion. We taught Hopie how to play partnership canasta, and she and I tromped Megan and Spirit. But after a few hours the adults tired of this, leaving only Hopie and me. Shelia and Ebony were busy assisting in the booby-trap search, so we could draft no further foursome. We played Old Maid, War, and Concentration, but even these palled in time, perhaps because Hopie, with the wit and luck of the young, kept beating me. In the afternoon we were at the point of staring out into the Jupiter atmosphere, watching the cloud formations just above us, as they were augmented by the drifting column of train smoke. We fancied we saw shapes and pictures there—goblin heads, potatoes, dragons' tails, and such. Imagination is wonderful stuff, and Hopie's was akin to mine.

Then Casey passed through. “Them dames is tearing up the whole damn train,” he grumbled.

“Women are like that,” I agreed, skillfully moving my leg before Hopie could kick it. She identified with women the moment they were criticized. “Happens every spring and sometimes in the fall. Are you off-duty now? Sit down and watch clouds with us.”

“Don't mind if I do,” he agreed, taking a seat. “But why watch clouds when you can see the real scenery going by?”

“Real scenery?” Hopie asked alertly.

“Sure. See, we're passing through Centennial now, near the great Continental Divide. We been rising for hours, having to make the grade, so's to get over the Rockies.”

Hopie exchanged a glance with me. “The rocks?” she asked.

“The Rockies. The Rocky Mountains, greatest range of the west. Got fourteen-thousand-foot peaks hereabouts—quite a change from them flat marshes down in your country. Headwaters of the Rio Grande and the Arkansas and the Colorado Rivers are hereabout, girl; you know the Colorado, don't you? Ever see the Grand Canyon?”

“I...” Hopie said hesitantly. “Uh, not yet.”

“Well, you won't see it this time, neither; we're too far north. But they're sights enough on this track. You like mountains—well, look at 'em! Fir trees thick like a carpet right up to the snowline.”

We looked where he pointed, and as I concentrated on the jagged fringe of a cloud formation, color developed, and the white became snow, the gray was rock, and below was the green line of fir trees.

“You can still see the old molybdenum mine, there by the cattle herd; it's reclaimed land now, converted to pasture.”

“Brown cows,” Hopie said. “With white faces.”

I saw them now, grazing on the slope near the railroad tracks that wound up and up, tracks that were striving to cross the high ridge of the Divide: the place where one drop of water flows forever east, the other west.

“Oh, see the flowers!” Hopie exclaimed. “Pretty yellow—”

“Yeah, they got golden pea here, Indian paintbrush—wild flowers galore, in summer. We'll be passing nigh Enver real soon now; see, we're crossing the South Platte River now; got to follow the river channels to find the best passes.”

Indeed, I saw the river now; the tracks paralleled it for a while, then crossed on a trestle bridge, winding on into the mountain range. I saw the old Earth that Casey described; I had, in fact, slipped into a vision.

“I wish I could get out and splash in that water!” Hopie exclaimed.

“Naw—it's ice-cold, even in summer,” Casey said knowledgeably.

I realized that Hopie was seeing the same scenery I was, guided by Casey's nostalgic description. She was sharing my vision. Did that mean that she truly had the same capacity I did? How gratifying that would be!

Hopie peered ahead. “Those mountains look awful tall,” she said. “Can we really get over them?”

“Don't have to,” Casey said grandly. “Got us a bridge—and a tunnel.”

“A bridge and tunnel?” she asked.

“There's a chasm just before the face of the last peak,” he explained. “Train has to go level, or at least stay within a three percent grade. Can't yo-yo up and down the jagged edges. So the track bridges across the valley and bores right through the peak. You'll see.”

And we did see. The train rounded a turn, and there before us was a phenomenal cleft of a valley, dropping away from the mountain we were on, and the much higher mountain beyond. The tracks were mounted on a bridge that seemed to have no support; it was, in fact, a “hanging bridge” anchored in the rock at either side, and it looked precarious. Beyond it was the mouth of the tunnel through the mountain, seeming too small to hold the train, but, of course, that was just perspective.

We moved out on the bridge. Hopie peered down, made a little moan, and grabbed my hand tightly.

Indeed, as the ground dropped precipitously away from us, it seemed we were flying. We feared the weight of the train would snap the cords of the bridge and send us hurtling to doom below. But the bridge held, and soon we were steaming into the tunnel, which expanded to take us in.

Inside, lights showed not the smooth, rounded walls I had anticipated, but rough-hewn rock—what remained after the tunnel had been irregularly blasted from the layers of the mountain. It was, in fact, a cave—a man-made cave without stalactites, crudely rounded at top and sides, just wide enough for the train. It seemed delightfully interminable, the spaced lights going by in blurs of brilliance. I was fascinated, and so was Hopie, who continued to squeeze my hand tightly. “I hope we don't run out of steam here,”

she whispered.

At last we shot out into the light again, and into a wooden tunnel. The beams rose vertically above the height of the train, then across the top, braced by substantial corner boards set at a forty-five-degree angle. “What—” Hopie asked, startled.

“Protective snowshed,” Casey explained nonchalantly. “Set up where the drifts get bad. Without those, the trains could not move in winter, 'cause the pile-up gets too heavy for the snowplows.”

“Gee...” Hopie said, staring raptly out.

We chugged on across the state line into Equality, seeing the sheep grazing the slopes. “You can still see some of the old ruts where the wagons of the Oregon trail passed,” Casey said. It was evident that he knew every bit of scenery along this track. “Further along we'll see Grant Teton National Park, about as pretty a spot as exists, and then Yellowstone. You ever see a geyser, girl?”

“Daddy, can we stop and see a geyser?” she demanded immediately of me. She was really excited.

I was about to answer when Shelia rolled up. The vision extended only to the exterior view; inside remained mundane. “Train approaching, boss,” she said.

“Passing from the other direction? We've seen those before.”

“Overtaking us from behind,” she said grimly.

“Hey, there's no train scheduled now,” Casey said.

“We know,” she said. “That's why we're suspicious.”

“Notify Coral,” I said. Then, to Casey: “Can this train take evasive action?”

“She can leave the tracks, sure,” he said. “But she's liable to get lost if she does. If that other train means trouble, she can follow us, anyway.”

“Can we outrun her?”

“We're already doing max; the Spirit 's a tourist train, not a racer. That other's got a heavier engine or a lighter load, or she wouldn't be overhauling us. You figure trouble?”

“It's a distinct possibility,” I said. “Our enemy knew he had failed to kill me when the Phis blast missed me. It seems logical that he would try something more direct.”

“I never heard of no train robbery from another train,” he said, scratching his head. “Usually it's horse-mounted men who board and—”

“My enemy didn't happen to have any horses handy in this area,” I said, smiling briefly. "It must have been easier to rent a spare train in Yenne, hustle some thugs aboard with their weapons, and take out after us in this isolated stretch where help will be slow arriving. It may be a jury-rigged effort, but we can be sure they believe they can do the job. Let's assume the worst and plan our defense accordingly.

Suppose we turn up the gee-shields and rise quickly?"

“They can do the same,” he said. “Can't get away that way.”

“Suppose we drop lower?”

He shook his head. “I wouldn't, sir. We're at five bars now; this old train was built to take as high as eight, but I wouldn't trust her beyond seven now, and I'd feel nervous much beyond six. You'd be asking for implosion.”

“So we could escape then but die in the process?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I regret getting you folk of the train crew into this,” I said.

“Just you figure out how to get us out of it!”

I held a quick council of war with Spirit and Coral. Spirit and I had both had battle training and experience in the Navy, and Coral was generally knowledgeable about in-close violence. Together we decided on our strategy for defense. We knew we didn't have much time, but we thought we could manage it.

There was a lot of work for Mrs. Burton to do in a hurry. First she had to go over the nether restaurant of the dining car, borrowing the train's supply of emergency sealant to shore up the car's interior doors, rendering it into a kind of space capsule. Then she rigged a temporary remote control system for the engine; it was crude, but it would enable a person inside the restaurant to trigger an unusual event. Then she went to the engine to set up that event, while the rest of us retreated to the restaurant. The windows were limited here, but we had an in-train video system that enabled us to view the rest of it or to peer out the dome windows of the restaurant above. We were all there, with the remaining personnel of the train, united by the common threat.

Hopie and Casey and I peered back, and now as the track curved we saw the pursuing train, steaming up the grade, definitely closing on us. “We'll pick up speed as we start down the other side of the Divide,” Casey said. “But so will she. The grade don't make no difference for this. She'll catch us, sure.”

“Grade?” Shelia asked.

Hopie glanced at me and winked. “Come here, Shel,” she said. “Look out the window. See the mountains out there? The snow? We're crossing the Great Divide, and it's been an awful climb, but now we're almost at the top, about to start down the other side. We old railroad hands call the slope the grade.”

“Oh,” Shelia said, nonplussed. It was evident that she did not see the mountains or the snow outside.

Casey smiled. “Most folks are mundane,” he murmured. “That's their curse. They don't even know what they're missing. You and your little girl're the first real folk I've met in a long time, Gov'nor.”

“We're very rare species,” I agreed.

"She sure favors you. I'd a known she was your kid right away, even if you hid her in a crowd.

Bloodlines run true."

“That must be so,” I agreed. I decided it would not be politic to inform him that Hopie was adopted.

The enemy train heaved within a train length of us. “Mrs. Burton,” I said into the com, “is it ready yet?”

“Not yet, boss,” she replied, sounding harried. “This monster's safety-cocked every which way, and I don't have the tools for a simple bypass. It'll be chancy.”

“Do what you can. How much time do you need?”

“A good half-hour yet, boss, and then it's not sure.”

“Very well. We'll try to get you that half-hour. Engineer?”

“Sir?” the other engineer responded. His name, naturally, was Jones.

“Start putting out that smoke—all you have left—in the next half-hour.”

“Gotcha, sir,” he agreed. Mrs. Burton had explained the reason to him.

We peered forward and watched the smoke. It started pouring out thickly, the volume seeming much greater than before. Because it was merely a coloring agent it could be intensified at will, but there was only so much color available. Jones was now dumping it in, expending the trip's supply in a short time.