Politician (5 page)

I could see that there were real advantages to handling baggage in free-fall; one little shove and it floated right across to its hamper. As it got to the edge of the chamber it seemed to curve. That was our perspective, of course; we were already at the edge, benefiting from the trace gee there, and thought of ourselves as fixed in place. Actually we were moving with the city's rotation while the baggage was going straight. I had seen the effect aboard ships, but here the scale was larger, making it seem like a novelty.

Then it was our turn for the elevator. We got in the cage, and it slid down the gradual curve of the bubble-shell. The cage was suspended by the top, so that as it moved outward from the pole region, it oriented to the increasing gee. The velocity was slow, but we knew why: If we were simply allowed to drop we would have fallen in an apparent spiral and crashed into something. Descent within a rotating frame is actually a matter of lateral acceleration, and it can be disastrous when uncontrolled.

After five or six minutes we stopped at a landing. We were now at full gee. We stepped out into the processing center. Most of the passengers were regular Nyork city residents with badges that let them pass without hindrance, but Spirit and I were first-time arrivals to this city and to this planet. We had to run the bureaucratic gantlet. We had to show our new citizenship papers and official releases from the Jupiter Navy and certificates of inoculation against sundry contagious maladies. It seemed that the planetary environment was not considered to be as sanitary as that of space.

“Where will you be establishing residence?” the official inquired.

I didn't know; for fifteen years in the Navy I had always gone where assigned. But Spirit was more practical about such details. “Ybor,” she said. “In Sunshine.”

“Ybor, Sunshine,” he repeated, entering it in the proper sequence. “Nice country down there.” He completed the entries and got a printout, which he handed to me. “This will clear things when you board that bubble. Now I suggest you freshen up for the ceremony.”

“Ceremony?” I asked blankly.

He only smiled, perhaps assuming I was being coy.

We cleaned up and were conducted to another elevator that took us up to the top of the residential band. The general design of Nyork was standard; the apartments of the residents—one thousand cubic feet of space allotted per person, or a chamber ten feet on each side—were arranged in a cylinder within the bubble. The width of that residential band was four thousand feet, and the length of it about twenty-four thousand feet, theoretically providing space for 960,000 apartments per floor. Actually a lot of space was used for other purposes, such as hallways, public sanitary facilities, business and entertainment structures, storage, and the like, so that perhaps only four to five hundred thousand residential cells were there. Since there were twenty such floors on the strip, this put the total city capacity at eight to ten million people. Of course there could be more; in the slum sections large families crowded into cells meant for small ones, and some people had no established address. I knew this only from my childhood study of geography but was sure it remained true. At any rate, the rated capacity of the city was in the range of ten million, and there were a number of adjacent cities that swelled the metropolitan population to several times that figure. There were many people on Jupiter, as there were on Saturn, Uranus, and the lesser planets, such as Earth itself.

When we emerged at the top of the band, Spirit and I paused with renewed wonder. The entire center of the bubble, a space about a mile and a half across, was open, except for the mock-sun sphere in the center. By shielding our eyes from the concentrated brightness of that sun—for Earth-orbit radiation is twenty-seven times as intense as Jupiter-orbit radiation—we could look right across to the far side.

There were a few fleecy clouds in the null-gee center, which made it appear as if we were peering down from above. Again I had seen similar effects before but never on this grand a scale. I simply stared, and so did Spirit.

“This way, please, Captain Hubris,” someone said. Bemusedly I went where directed and found myself sitting in a strange, four-wheeled, open vehicle with a uniformed chauffeur in front.

“A car!” Spirit exclaimed beside me. “A genuine antique automobile!”

Now I recognized it. This was a replica of the kind of vehicle once used on old Earth for transportation.

Of course this one lacked the pollutive combustion motor, but in other respects it seemed authentic.

A well-dressed man took the front seat. He turned momentarily to face us. “Welcome to Nyork, Captain Hubris and Commander Hubris,” he said to us. “I am Mayor Jones.” He reached back a chubby hand, and each of us took it in turn. “I hope you enjoy the parade.”

“Parade?”

“We have to give you your hero's welcome to the city—and to Jupiter, Captain,” he explained. “Just smile and wave every so often; it's a necessary event.”

“But—”

“You are the bold officer who cleaned up the Belt, so long a blemish on the fair face of the System,” he explained. “We of Jupiter want to demonstrate that we really appreciate that.”

I shrugged, knowing that he gave me too much credit. I had been with a fine organization at the Belt, and even so, it had been a chancy thing, with necessary compromises and consequences. “That's over now.”

The car started moving. “Well, Captain, we folk of Empire State just want you to know we're proud of you. Nyork has a sizable Hispanic element, in case you should want to settle here. The way you handled the refugee-robbing pirates of the Juclip did not go unnoticed! We're really glad to see a genuine Hispanic hero!”

A Hispanic hero. That was evidently what made me novel in this Saxon culture. Somehow I was not completely pleased. I knew without looking at her that Spirit shared my reserve.

“Why, you could run for President right now,” the mayor continued exuberantly. “You'd pick up all the hero votes and the minorities votes, too, and that's a potent political base!”

I laughed as if this were humor, but Spirit gave me a significant nudge. An entry into politics had already been urged on me by a party whose knowledge of the situation was thorough. That was why I planned to settle in Sunshine; it had been targeted as the best locale for the rise of a Hispanic politician.

The car moved into a parklike region where deciduous trees lined the drive, and there were extended reaches of green lawn. Indeed, it would have been easy to believe that this was Earth itself, had it not been for the concave curve of the terrain. There was evidently an abiding longing in man for the things of Earth, evinced in the emulations of that planet that showed whenever feasible. Some of it was practical, such as the day-night cycle and standard gee, for the tides of man's chemistry could not be changed in mere centuries; but much of it was simple nostalgia for the old planet. I could not deride this; I felt it myself.

Then we came to the parade area. Crowds of people lined the road, waving and cheering as we came among them. Confetti flew up as they threw handfuls toward us.

“Wave, sir, wave!” the mayor muttered tersely.

I raised my right arm somewhat awkwardly and essayed a motion, not sure it was really me the crowd watched.

The noise jumped in magnitude. The crowd became frenzied. Then a chant began: "Hubris! Hubris!

Hubris!"

I felt an odd surge in my chest, as if falling suddenly in love. They really were cheering me! I waved more vigorously, and the noise increased as if I were orchestrating it.

We continued along the winding road, passing a golf course and a small lake and a series of statues, and everywhere the people were crowded close and cheering. To my amazement the throng seemed to be getting thicker. But I realized that this probably represented a change of pace for the average citizen, a chance to go to the park and relax; I was merely the pretext. Any other man in my position would have received the same reception; it was really an impersonal thing.

Yet it certainly didn't seem impersonal! As I looked I could see men smiling at me, and women blowing kisses. All the time the beat of “Hubris, Hubris!” continued: It was intoxicating.

The mayor turned to speak to us again, his voice barely audible above the noise of the crowd. “Hang on to your hat, Captain! We're coming to the Hispanic district.”

Sure enough, the complexion of the crowd changed, the paleness of Saxon visages giving way to the more swarthy Hispanics. The mass of people was thicker yet; now a cordon of helmeted policemen held it back, and even so it surged close to the car. The chant became monstrous. “ Hubris! Hubris! ” The car was pelted by flowers. I was impressed; decorative plants were expensive, even if they were imitation.

Spirit picked up several that fell inside the car and made a bouquet that she set in her hair, and there was a deafening roar of approval. She made another, her nine fingers nimble enough, and put it in my hair, and the response was a storm tide that swept the policemen back until they collided with the car itself. Hands reached through the cordon, trying to touch the car or us. The mayor was beaming, but he looked nervous. I could appreciate why; it would be easy for people to be crushed by the moving car.

There was a siren. More police were coming, reinforcements. But the throng was so thick that the new police could not get through. Slowly we forged on—as it were, alone—plowing through a mass of humanity as if it were indeed a viscous pool.

A body hurtled over the cordon and fell onto the car. It was a woman, a girl—a teenage Hispanic maiden in a pretty summer dress. I tried to help her get upright, taking hold of her shoulders, fearing she had been injured, but she rolled right into me. “Hubris, I love you,” she cried in Spanish, and flung her arms about me.

A Saxon policeman climbed onto the car, and it shifted with his weight. “Shit,” he exclaimed, grabbing at the maid. “Get out of there, girl!” He hauled at her sleeve, but it tore, leaving her arm and part of her torso bare. He repeated his expletive, which happens to be a Saxon term for excrement, and grabbed again, tearing away more.

“Why don't you take it all, gringo!” the girl cried, and began snatching off her clothing and throwing it at him. I think she was wearing one of those paper garments that are intended for single use before disposal.

Spirit interceded. “Let her stay, officer,” she urged the policeman. “She will be no trouble, I'm sure.” She put her arms around the girl protectively.

Sweating, the mayor grunted acquiescence, and the policeman got off the car, disgruntled. The girl took her seat between Spirit and me, smiling.

An observation saucer floated low above us, its holo lens orienting. I realized that a picture of our carful would make the day's news: two visiting heroes, one half-naked girl, one red-faced mayor. I had to smile to myself.

The crowd pulled back a little, as if satisfied with this intrusion, and our forward progress resumed at moderate speed. “This is getting out of hand,” the mayor yelled over the continuous chanting. “Got to cut it short before somebody gets hurt.”

But there was no way to cut it short, for the crowd blocked all potential exits. Every time the chauffeur tried to turn the car, the people surged in to block it off. We had to continue forward.

“I don't like this,” the mayor muttered. “They're too hyper! Could be trouble in the blue-collar district.”

“Oh, go jump out a lock!” the girl snapped in Spanish.

The mayor's neck reddened. Obviously he did not understand the language, but he understood the tone.

“You do not like the mayor?” I asked the girl in Spanish.

“He's a Saxon pig,” she exclaimed. “Always poor services for our slums, graft for the rich white politicos.” Then, realizing she had my attention, she snuggled closer to me. “Hero Hubris, why don't you stay here in Nyork and become mayor, and I will be your mistress!”

I was so surprised that I choked. The girl was obviously under the age of consent by a year or two, though her anatomy was fully formed. It had never occurred to me that such a person would proposition me in this fashion. But Spirit had better control. “My brother had already arranged to settle in Ybor, in Sunshine. He will get married.”

“Married!” the girl cried, clutching me.

“He is not for you,” Spirit said. “You would be too much woman for him. He is thirty years old.”

“Thirty,” the girl repeated, shocked that anyone could be such an age. Then she reconsidered. “Still, a married man needs a mistress, too, and May-December liaisons can work out. Sometimes an older man can be very considerate and not too demanding—”

“And he has been long in space,” Spirit continued, keeping her face straight. “The radiation—”

“The radiation!” The girl glanced down at my crotch as if expecting to see crawling gangrene. It was a superstition that mysterious rays of space made men impotent or worse. She released her grip on me, her ardor chilled. “Poor man!”

Now we came to the blue-collar district, and the crowd changed complexion again. The chanting finally faded, and the spectators stood relatively quiet.

“Damn,” the mayor said. “Looks like trouble.”

The car accelerated, but that only seemed to trigger the response of the crowd. Now it was definitely ugly. “You spics—you take our jobs!” a man bellowed.

The girl let loose a torrent of Spanish expletives at him. She was evidently a fishwife of the old school.

Now the crowd started a new chant: “Jobs! Jobs! Jobs! Jobs!”

I had known there was an employment problem in the civilian sector, for some of my associates in the Navy had joined in order to obtain better work and job security. But this put a new and more personal face on it. The Hispanics blamed the Saxon management for poor services, and the Saxons blamed the Hispanics for taking employment away from them. I doubted this was true, but it was evident that the belief was widespread here.

Something flew through the air and crashed into the car. It was a brick.

“Damn!” the mayor swore. "They've been at the monuments again. Those are glazed decorative bricks.