Politician by Piers Anthony
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 seemed only 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. Cost the city a fortune!” He seemed more indignant at the vandalism than concerned about personal safety. “Damned agitators from outside, stirring up trouble!”
More bricks flew, denting the car. Now it looked serious. The people were surging closer, shaking their fists, cursing. For the first time I was aware of personal danger. These men were angry, and I had become the focus of their rage. There was no more justice in this than in the adulation of the Hispanics; I was merely a symbol. But they might very well kill me if they could. The police cordon had disappeared, overrun by the crowd.
The mayor nudged the chauffeur. “Call the riot police,” he snapped. “Tell them to lob a gas grenade here!”
But as the chauffeur started to make the call, a brick smashed down the antenna. Suddenly we were unable to call out.
“Try to bull through them,” the mayor cried in desperation. “They’re really out for blood this time!”
“This time?” Spirit asked. “You have’ had similar riots?”
“It’s the recession. Lot of local unemployment. Hard feelings. We rounded up the known troublemakers, but we must’ve missed some.”
So things were not entirely rosy on Jupiter. Indeed, the man who had started this aggression was now barring the progress of the car with his bo
“Crowd control procedure,” I said. “Cover me, Spirit.” She reached into her blouse and brought out a pencil-laser pistol. “Covered.”
“Hey, you aren’t supposed to be armed,” the mayor protested. “Weapons are banned in—”
Spirit pointed the laser at his nose and he stopped talking. I jumped out of the car and ran ahead. For a moment no one realized what I was doing; then a worker pointed at me and shouted.
But by that time I had reached the leader. I caught him by the right arm, spun him around, and applied a submission lock. “Walk quietly with me,” I told him.
“Hey, what the—” he started, then cut off as I abruptly tightened the lock, putting him in pain. He was a big, muscular man, much larger than I, but he had never had combat training and was helpless in my grip.
“You can’t do that!” another man cried, reaching for me. From the car, a beam from Spirit’s laser burned a hole in his shirt and stung his chest. It was only a momentary flash, just enough to make him jump. Jump he did, falling back, staring at the car.
“We’re from the Navy, remember? We know how to shoot,” I told him. “That was just a warning. Stand clear.”
The others stood clear, realizing that we did indeed know how to conduct ourselves in a fighting situation, and that the presence of the weapon made us far from helpless. Most folk, even those in an enraged mob, are rendered uncertain when abruptly faced with superior will and power. We were exploiting that uncertainty, not giving them time to regroup.
A kind of hush descended on the crowd as I marched the labor leader to the car. Spirit’s gaze remained on the crowd, not on me, and she fired again, stinging the hand of a man who was getting ready to throw another brick. She had acute reflexes and perfect marksmanship; with that confidence I was able to concentrate on my own job. I got the leader into the car.
“Sit there,” I told him, indicating the seat I had vacated. “Put your arm around the young lady.”
“That spic?” he demanded angrily. “I wouldn’t touch her with—”
Spirit’s laser tube swung around to bear on his nose.
“Uh, yeah, sure,” he said, disgruntled. He took the seat and moved his left arm.
“Keep your filthy Saxon hands to yourself!” the girl snapped in Spanish.
“Suffer yourself to be touched by this man,” I told her in the same language. “We want to show the crowd how tolerant their leader is.”
Her eyes widened as she caught on. She smiled sweetly. “Come here, you Saxon tub of sewage,” she said in dulcet Spanish tones. “Put your big fat stinking white paw on me, snotface.” I have of course cleaned up her actual terminology somewhat.
Like the mayor, the leader couldn’t understand the words but knew he was being mocked. “Listen, slut, I’d as soon hang that meat of yours up with the other pigs,” he muttered, his gaze flicking across her bared breast.
I perched on the side of the car. “Say what you will, both of you, but keep smiling.” I smiled, too, and waved to the crowd, and so did Spirit, but she did not conceal her laser weapon, still pointed at the leader’s head.
The mayor forced a smile of his own. “Very good,” he muttered fatalistically.
The car moved on, and the crowd reluctantly parted. We had taken a hostage and deprived the opposition of its leader; the riot was fizzling out.
The mayor nodded. “By damn, it’s working,” he said. Then he stood up, faced the crowd, and gestured expansively. “Hubris! Hubris!” he cried. “Hubris! Hubris! Hubris!”
After a moment some in the crowd picked up the cadence. “Hubris! Hubris!” Soon all were chanting. We continued to smile and wave, and the labor leader continued to embrace the Latin girl. The parade had resumed.
“Because you have been kind enough to join us,” I said to the labor leader while I continued to watch the crowd, “and to help pacify the throng by your generous gesture of tolerance, I believe you should be rewarded.” Spirit was watching the crowd on the other side, knowing I would alert her if anything needed her attention on my side. We both knew that we could not relax until we were beyond this section of the city.
“You mean I can let go of this Spanish sass?”
“Not yet,” I said.
“God, my wife’s going to kill me!”
“Tell your wife the truth: There was a laser at your head. It was duress.”
“Yeah,” he agreed, glancing again at the breast. It was a well-formed one, young and perky. “I’d never touch anything like that if there weren’t a weapon on me.
Another camera-saucer floated near. “But there is a weapon on you, isn’t there, you Saxon slob,” the girl said in English, delighted. And, as the saucer-lens took it all in, she twisted about, plastered her anatomy against him, grabbed his head in both her hands, and kissed him wetly on the mouth.
“Gross,” he muttered, but he did not seem totally displeased.
“What is it you desire most?” I asked.
He had to crack an honest smile. “You had to ask that right now, didn’t you?”
“I mean you collectively—the workers in the street.”
“No secret there, Navy boy. We want jobs.”
I turned to the mayor, who was still woodenly beaming for crowd and camera. “Why don’t you have jobs?”
“The recession,” the mayor said. “Nyork’s been hit bad. Twenty-five percent of our industrial capacity’s dormant. Companies closed down, moved out. We passed preferential tax measures, allocated choice real estate, upgraded our educational program, and still can’t get enough new business in to stop the slide. So it just gets worse, and the unemployment and welfare rolls are murdering us.”
“We don’t want welfare, we want jobs!” the leader exclaimed.
“So do we,” the girl said.
“You? You’ve got our jobs!”
“Dishwashing? Maid work? Street cleaning?” she asked derisively. “My brother’s a competent mechanic, and he’s out of work, too. We don’t like welfare any better than you do.”
“Nobody likes welfare,” the mayor said. “Especially the taxpayer who has to pay for it. But the jobs just aren’t there.”
“Where are the jobs?” I asked. I have a talent for reading people and knew that these people—labor leader, girl, and mayor—were speaking honestly now.
“Mostly down south, where you’re going, and west. The companies get this will-o’-the-wisp gleam in their corporate eyes and take off for greener pastures. By the time they learn it’s illusion, they’re stuck. They’d be better off right here in Nyork, if they only knew it.”
“Then someone should tell them,” I said.
“We’ve been trying. We run ads, we make reports—it just doesn’t register.”
“Ads and reports are impersonal,” I said. “Suppose two people like this man and this woman’s brother—trained, competent workers who really do want to work—suppose they went to prospective companies and laid it on the line? Would that influence them to return?”
The mayor shrugged. “It couldn’t do worse than we’ve done.”
“Why not try it, then? Appoint a select committee of workers—Saxon, Black, Hispanic—and pay them to go out and brace those companies. Arm them with the best information you’ve got, so they can really make their case. You can be sure they’ll put their hearts into it, because they really do want those jobs. If there’s any way to get through, to make those company execs appreciate the excellent company climate you have here, they’ll do it. All you need is to get their attention, get them to take you seriously; then wonderful things might follow.”
The mayor frowned. “That’s not standard procedure.”
“To hell with standard procedure!” the girl exclaimed. “My
brother needs a job! He’s got a silver tongue when he’s hungry!” “Don’t we all,” the labor leader agreed. “You’d do it?” she asked him. “You’d go with my brother,
“Remember that laser,” she said, and kissed him again, more lingeringly than before. She was young, but she had evidently had some practice.
I looked at the mayor. “Will you do it?” He spread his hands. “I may be a fool, but it won’t be the first time. I’ll set up the committee and give it a year. If it produces—” “It’ll produce!” the leader and girl said together. “Know something, Captain?” the mayor said to me. “You’re a born politician.” “It’s a necessary skill for a Hispanic officer,” I said. The parade continued, and it seemed happier now.
CHAPTER 3
YBOR
We took an airplane from the state of Empire to the state of Sunshine. We had never been in one of these before, so we were fascinated all over again. The shuttle ship had not been the same, though it had planed down into the atmosphere. This vehicle had huge projecting wings on either side that planed much more emphatically against the Jupiter atmosphere as the craft jetted forward at relatively high velocity. That, and an assist from the gee-shield, enabled this heavier-than-gas vehicle to fly. We got clear of the city, rising above the water-cloud layer, then looped around and accelerated roughly southward at gee for ten minutes. That got us up to about twenty-eight thousand miles per hour velocity, at which point we coasted. The lift provided by the wings was so great at this speed that the pilot turned down the gee-shield to forty percent, so that we experienced approximately normal Earth-gee as a fraction of Jupiter’s own greater gravity. Thus we did not have to suffer through a meal in free-fall, which was a blessing.
The meal was somewhat casually served, plunked down on small trays before us, but the stewardesses were shapely, so I was satisfied. Spirit seemed less satisfied but put up with it. As with the shuttle descent, the other passengers were plainly bored with the ride; obviously the meal was mostly to give them something to do. Some snoozed after eating, some read magazines, and some watched the little flat-screen video images set into the backs of the seats before them. Curious, I turned ours on and discovered a news report in progress, showing my own parade of the day before. “Welcome, hero,” Spirit murmured, nudging me.