Politician (34 page)

“Get under cover!” Coral screamed at them. “Behind the seats!”

Belatedly they obeyed. But now the enemy men had a direct line of fire down the center aisle of the car, making further retreat hazardous.

“Cover your heads,” Coral called. Then she hurled something. It skidded along the floor, then rolled, fetched up at the far end, and exploded. A small grenade. “Now get into the diner—fast!” Coral ordered.

Jones and Mrs. Burton scrambled up, but Casey could not regain his feet. Jones grabbed him by the shoulders and started hauling him along.

Mrs. Burton lifted her spool of line. “It's been severed!” she exclaimed, horrified. “I've got to reconnect it!”

But already more men were piling into the cab and into the front of the diner. I saw that Coral could not hold off both groups simultaneously. “I'm going out there!” I cried. “Otherwise we're lost! Shelia, take over coordination.” Then I wrenched open the lock and dived out. I had no laser, but I was combat-trained, and the old reflexes guided me.

Now I could not see what the others were doing, for the com was a spot-address system, but I knew Shelia would be advising Coral of my approach. Accordingly I did not concern myself about her; I assumed she would cover the far side of the passenger car and leave the near side to me.

I was right. I burst into the lock area between cars and plowed into two men. I clubbed one on the side of the neck hard enough to send him reeling into the wall and dived low at the other. I caught him by the knees and lifted, sending him to the floor. Thank God for gee; that maneuver would not have worked in free-fall.

The first man was not completely stunned. He started to bring his laser about. I grabbed his arm, straightened it against my body, and broke his elbow with a strike of the heel of my left hand. This isn't sanitary fighting, but it is effective. I took the laser from him, set it at his ear, and fired a half-second beam.

Steam boiled out of his ear, and he fell. I beamed the other in the throat, and he ceased operation. The messy throat shot is the one that holes the jugular vein; the neat shot merely cooks the spinal nerve. I had done it neatly. Then I moved on to check the passenger car.

To my surprise our people weren't moving; they were huddled in dialogue. “Get into the diner!” I yelled.

Without turning, Coral answered me. "Her line was severed by my grenade, but we can't restring it.

Enemy's got the engine."

I saw the problem. We had to have that line intact or our retreat was pointless. “Jones, get your friend to cover,” I snapped. “I'll take care of this.”

Without a word Jones heaved Casey up on his shoulders and staggered toward the diner. It wasn't the weight that gave him trouble, for gee was fractional, but the lack of it; he had been braced for a much heavier load.

A pirate face showed above a seat. Coral skated a metal star at it, and it disappeared.

I joined her. “I'll cover you. Toss another grenade.”

She ran on to the cab while I watched, laser poised. When she was beside the lock, I moved up. There were two bodies there, but a laser beam speared out from the cab. I fired back, forcing the man to duck away, and fired again as Coral readied her grenade. Then she hurled it in.

We were shielded from the direct blast, but the concussion rocked me. We jumped into the lock, guarding it from approach from the other train, while Mrs. Burton stepped through.

“No good,” she said as soon as she saw the cab. “My attachment's been broken off. Can't use the line now.”

“Can't set it off?” I asked, dismayed. The enemy force, numerous as it was, was spread throughout the train; four men dead had depleted this region, but I heard more charging forward in the other train. We could close the lock, but they would just open it again. Without that device of hers, we would be finished.

“I'll set it off,” she said. “You scoot back to the diner. I'll give you thirty seconds.”

“But—”

“Better do it, boss,” Shelia said on the com. “They're moving against Spirit; she'll have to retreat in a moment. Another's in the lock behind you; he doesn't know where you are yet, but—”

I had a hard decision to make in a hurry. “You want it this way, Mrs. Burton?”

“I'm old, boss,” she said. “You gave me a good retirement. Now move! ”

“Move,” I echoed, knowing it was the only way. We closed the lock to the other train, which I hoped would delay entry for thirty seconds. Coral preceded me down the length of the passenger car, running fleetly.

A beam speared out from the next lock. Coral returned the fire, but then she stumbled. I knew she had been hit. I vaulted over her body, landed beside the lock, started my beam, and poked my hand around the corner, spraying the entire chamber without looking. I heard the noise of someone falling. Then I jumped back to Coral, heaved her up, and careened on through, stepping over the bodies. Gummy blood adhered to my soles; one of those killings had been messy. Our thirty seconds was up, and we weren't safe yet.

I heard a loud hissing from the cab. I knew what it meant. “Farewell, Mrs. Burton!” I gasped as I launched myself at the door to our chamber. It opened as I reached it; I stumbled in, and it closed behind me. I saw that Hopie was operating it; she had been alert and timed it perfectly.

Now we watched what happened beyond our sanctuary. The screen showed it clearly. A great rush of steam was pouring from the cab, billowing out, funneling through the locks from car to car in both trains, spreading throughout the length of both. We heard the screams of the men being burned. They could not escape; the steam quickly permeated every crevice of both trains, and it was super-hot. It was the steam that normally drove the propulsion propellers; Mrs. Burton had tapped into one of its lines, routing it into the passenger section. This was, of course, an abuse of valuable water, but a necessary device on this occasion.

I checked Coral. She had been burned through the abdomen. She was alive but unconscious. We gave her a sedative to keep her that way; she would live but would only be in pain while conscious, until we got her to a competent medical facility.

“She did her job,” Spirit murmured.

Indeed, she had. Coral had taken the shot that might otherwise have caught me.

After a few minutes the trains were quiet. We waited for the steam to cool; in due course it condensed to water. No more came from the engine; we had exhausted its limited supply.

Spirit and I emerged to find globules of water floating about the cars; naturally we had returned to null-gee when the drive power of the engine was sabotaged by the loss of steam pressure. Such was my distraction, I hadn't even noticed. We could no longer use this engine, but fortunately we had another available, from the other train.

There were dead men everywhere; the steam had suffocated them all. I exchanged a glance with Spirit.

Yes, we remembered the bubble in space! We had been attacked once too often by relentless pirates and had killed them all by depressurizing the ships. Had anything really changed?

Mrs. Burton was dead, too, of course—and that also echoed the past. “Helse,” I murmured. There was no similarity between the young, beautiful girl of my past and the old woman of the present, except this: each had knowingly sacrificed her life in horrible fashion to save mine.

I leaned against Spirit and cried.

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—”