• • •
Faith was now fifty-four, but her recent years of service to the community had revitalized her, and she was indeed a beautiful woman again.
“Full employment is easier said than done,” she said earnestly. “Many who are called unemployed are actually migrant laborers.”
“We want to take proper care of them,” I said firmly. “I spent a year as one myself; I know their lot.”
“Fair wages and fair working conditions will do them the most good. Another group of the poor is the homeless; people who used to exist comfortably enough until rising rents forced them into the halls to become drifters, shopping-bag ladies, and such. Give them decent housing and they can become productive again.”
“Housing for all,” I agreed.
“And the women with children;” she continued. “They can’t work because they have to stay home with the children, but they want to work, and would work, if they had proper day care for those children.”
“Day care, definitely,” I agreed.
“And the ill—physically and mentally. If the handicapped are hired for suitable positions, they can be self-supporting, and the mental cases can be gotten out of the passages.”
I thought of Shelia. Certainly the handicapped could be effective workers. “Why aren’t the mentally ill in institutions?” I asked.
“They were, but it was too expensive to maintain them, so as an act of generosity, they were returned to society. That means they wander the halls, panhandling, and they sleep in the crannies of storage chambers. Most are harmless, but shopkeepers don’t like them because of the thefts.”
“But they can work productively?”
“If the right jobs are provided. Many are of low intelligence, but for them, routine jobs that would bore normal people to distraction could be fine. Some would need to work in confinement, but they could still operate computers. Some of them have minds that resemble computers, actually.”
“Like Amber,” I murmured.
“The child who translates for you? Yes. If we make a diligent effort, we can put many of these people to useful work, and they will be better off for it.” She glanced at her notes. “We’ll have to do something about racism.”
“Racism causes poverty?”
“Indirectly. It tends to isolate minorities and reduce their employment opportunities. Blacks and Hispanics can become ghettoized, and their rates of unemployment—”
“Deal with racism,” I agreed. “But I’m not quite sure how.”
“Education,” she said firmly.
“Hopie’s department,” I said. “I hope that doesn’t overwhelm her.”
“She’s a bright girl; she’ll think of something. Now another class of poverty is the prostitutes.”
“The what?”
“Most of them are only in for economic reasons; if they had any better way to earn a living, they’d take it.” She smiled. “I happen to know the route. Roulette agrees. She means to decriminalize sex. Provide decent jobs for those women, so they don’t have to look for money that way. The minority who really do like that sort of work can get jobs at what she calls the civilian Tail. No more hallwalking.”
“That should do it,” I agreed. “But I don’t know how we can stop some from hallwalking if they decide to pick up some extra income.”
“No need. They can do what they want. But they won’t be forced to for economic reasons, and the men will know that they can get it at a set price in the Tail, so there won’t be much demand. No hundred-dollars-a-night stuff, unless the girl is something special. Now we come to the problem—”
“The problem,” I repeated, dreading what it might be.
“The major problem of poverty is health. Either health care is so expensive that it impoverishes ordinary people, or the poor are dying because they can’t afford it. Now, we could provide free health care for all ...”
“The Senator has already braced me on that,” I said. “Health care now costs ten percent of the gross planetary product, and it is rising toward fifteen percent.”
“And it’s not really helping,” she agreed. “Free care is not making folks healthier; they continue with their unhealthy habits and let the state pick up the tab for the consequence. Stonebridge tells me that half of all the medical costs of the average person’s life occur in the final year. Now, if we could just cut off that year—”
“How can we know when a person’s final year is starting?”
“I hashed this out with Stonebridge,” she said. “We agreed that some people are better risks than others. If we consider age, general health, and lifestyle, we can get a pretty good notion when expenses are going to mount. Or we could simply set a cap: When any person uses up the allowance for free care, that’s it, and he’s on his own. That seems fair.”
“That seems callous,” I said. “I expected you to argue the other side.”
“I did argue the other side, but Stonebridge showed me that we could do a lot more good for many more poor people if we put a cap on calamitous medical expense and used the money to help those who could benefit most by small amounts. If we use Ebony’s euthanasia pills for the terminal cases—” She shrugged. “I must confess, things do look different when you’re trying to solve the whole problem instead of pushing one particular view. The greatest good for the greatest number—it does make sense.”
“If we have a set limit,” I pointed out, “some bright young man might have an accident and go over, and have to die, when just a little more money would have paid to make him fit for forty more years of productive service, while an idle old man who has been lucky might be saved.”
“A limit to state care,” she said. “If an employer wanted to pay for extra care for a good employee, that would be satisfactory.”
“Could be,” I agreed, not entirely satisfied. We were coming to difficult decisions.
• • •
The helmet affair continued thereafter with increasing sophistication. Every few days the chip would arrive, and it always meant a new position or a new variation, wonderfully detailed. My anonymous woman had become a very fine lover, always eager to please me and herself. She learned to use her hands to excellent advantage, and her mouth, and to accommodate my hands and mouth in phenomenal ways.
We mastered all the positions I could think of, and many variations. Sometimes we did it fast, sometimes slow; we filled up a second chip, and a third, saving all the versions. That’s another thing about a feelie: Long after the initial episode, you can play it again and again. After a while the familiarity dulls it, but still, it is much better than nothing. I understand that some men—and women—have saved their early feelie recordings for decades and played them back in sequence when old and unable to perform similarly. Via the feelie, a luscious young wife can remain that way forever. Naturally all this was available on the porno market, but there is a special quality to the scene of your own loved one, and of one you have actually experienced.
I tried to talk with her on occasion. “You have never given me a name,” I complained. She only smiled, preferring to retain anonymity. She would not talk politics or anything of substance; she merely expressed her love of, and joy in, me. She thought I was a wonderful person and a wonderful lover. I found this easy enough to take; I was now in my fifties and knew she was young, perhaps twenty, and her continuing interest was very flattering.
“But you must go to your real life,” I cautioned her. “You have now mastered sex and are ready for marriage or whatever relationship you choose.”
“I am satisfied with you,” she responded. “I want only you.” Actually this did not occur all in one sequence; it developed over the course of several episodes, just as our sexual events did. But it would be tedious to render it in fragmented form.
“You know I am married,” I said. “I am separated, so I can and do indulge privately with other women, but I cannot marry any of them. Even if I were not the Tyrant, I could not take up another formal relationship.”
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“There is only one thing that would bring me greater joy than the helmet has with you,” she said.
“And what is that?” I asked, for she seldom volunteered information; she had to be asked. By that token I knew she was not any of the women I knew. Even had Coral or Ebony or one of my old Navy mistresses chosen to communicate with me in this manner, they would not have had the diffident mannerisms of this anonymous woman. I rather liked this quality in her. She was not pushy; apart from her devotion to me, she made no demands.
“To be with you physically,” she said.
I smiled. “That would ruin your anonymity,” I pointed out. “I think that I would be interested in being with you physically, though I know you would not look the way you do here, for you have accommodated my tastes as well as any woman has. But it would be both awkward and dangerous for you, for I am a target for assassins. I would not care to expose you to that.”
“I would gladly die for you,” she said.
“But I would not gladly have you die for me!” I responded. “If there were some way we could be together, without generating danger for you, I would do it. But there is not.”
“There is,” she said.
“Oh? How?”
But that she would not answer. When I pressed her, she would say only that I would have to fathom it for myself.
“But I don’t even know who you are!” I protested. “How can I find a way to be with you physically when I have no knowledge of you physically?”
“If you knew me physically, you might not like me,” she said. “I would rather keep you with the helmet.”
“Are you physically ugly?” I asked. “Are you afraid I would be revolted by your appearance?”
“I am very much as you see me here,” she said, spreading her hands. At this moment she was standing naked before me, and her proportions were modest; she had gradually diminished them as she discovered that I did not mind. In fact, she was now virtually nascent in development; her breasts were developed but not full, and her hips were almost boyishly slender. No, it truly didn’t matter; I had loved slender women as well as voluptuous ones, and this one had mastered the techniques that made actual flesh superfluous. When a man is in a woman, the flesh on her outside matters less. Flesh is mostly an attractant, bearing much the same relation to her performance as smell does to taste. Not to be ignored, but not the full story either.
“I can accept that,” I said, going to her and taking her in my arms and kissing her.
“But if you knew me physically, you might not,” she demurred.
“How can I convince you that you are wrong?” I asked.
“When you find me, you will know,” she said. “Then—” She shrugged, and I saw that she was genuinely afraid.
• • •
Hopie was getting her program shaped up. “No required courses, no exams,” she said. “No mandatory attendance, but anyone who isn’t in school beyond a certain age must enter the work force. If he doesn’t know what he needs, he’ll soon get fired. The kids’ll get serious quick enough. Absolutely no hazing—anyone practicing it to be summarily dismissed. Freedom from fear—most kids miss at least one day a month, just because they’re afraid they’ll get beat up in school. That S-blank-blank-T will come to a screeching halt. No more robberies or attacks.”
“But how do you propose to prevent them?” I asked.
“Hall monitors, replays of tapes, undercover agents—we’ll catch the perpetrators and get rid of them. Pretty soon it’ll be safe enough. Any student who sees anything had better report it, or he’s in trouble.”
I shook my head. “Hopie, these are police-state methods!”
“So?”
I sighed. “You’ve been talking to Roulette.”
“Well, she’s right. What we’ve got now is a school system largely run by thugs. Better a police state than that! At least until we get the thugs out. You know that most of the crime is committed by kids aged fourteen to twenty-one. Catch ‘em then, a lot of your crime problem is solved.”
“Perhaps so,” I agreed, again with reluctance. How readily people accepted tyrannical methods! “What of the quality of education itself?”
“Oh, sure. Thorley’s right. The school system’s problems are like those of the Navy: low pay, low standards, irrelevant requirements. Double the pay, so as to attract better people. Train them so they really know how to teach. Revamp the organization, so that things are run efficiently instead of having teachers spend all their time taking attendance and collecting slips of paper. With voluntary attendance that stuff won’t be necessary. Make the courses relevant to real life. Give the teachers a real sense of mission, so they know what they’re accomplishing and feel good about it. TROMP.”
“What?”
“TROMP,” she repeated. “Training-Relevance-Organization-Mission-Pay. The formula for fixing education.”
“So education has been reduced to a formula?”
She bridled. “Daddy, you’re making fun of me!”
“I wouldn’t dare,” I said hastily. “Do it your way. But how do you expect to handle racism?”
She glanced at me cannily. “Think you got me, don’t you! But that’s one of the relevant classes. To cover exactly what racism is, and why it’s wrong. They’ll learn.”
“But if you don’t require tests, or even attendance, the racists won’t take that course,” I pointed out. “And without school records the kids can sign up for school, then go out into the halls for mischief, since they won’t be in the labor force.”
She frowned. “Um. I’ll think about that.” She moved away.
• • •
My helmet love was not wasted on Shelia, who monitored every episode, each way. She did not conceal it from me. “Sir ...” she would say, and not continue.
I knew it was unfair to subject her to this without recompense. She loved me, as all my women did, and deserved better. “Get us private,” I would mutter.
She would, and we would make love. There were ways in which Shelia was similar to the helmet woman, in that she could not initiate the act. After that first occasion her legs had never moved, if indeed they had then. She was Shelia, not Helse, and that left her paralyzed. But apart from that they were good legs, and I gave them proper attention and brought her to her joy.
“I was never jealous of any woman before,” she confessed. “I never thought I would be jealous of this one. But those scenes—”
I snapped my fingers with realization. “Shelia, we can do it with the helmet! You can have the same scenes and not be—”
She shook her head. “No, Hope. That is her territory. I must not intrude.”
This might seem a strange ethic, but I understood it. All that my helmet woman had was the feelie sequences, while Shelia had my physical body. They were indeed separate territories, and Shelia honored that the way she honored and protected my personal privacy and my liaisons with Coral and Ebony. The truth was, these had largely abated by this time, but the principle remained.
“You know who she is,” I said.
“Of course.”
“You know whether she is correct about my not wanting her if I learn her identity.”
“She is wrong about that.”
“But you won’t tell me her identity.”
“I promised not to.”
That was that; Shelia would not break her given word, and I would not ask her to. “But will you talk to her?”
“Sir, this is a thing you must do for yourself.”
“I remember when my Navy women used to manage my affairs, for my own good,” I grumbled.
“Yes,” she agreed.
But it was not to be long thereafter before my ignorance was abated, with serious consequence.
CHAPTER 9
HELL TO PAY
There was a problem at the zoo. There was a white elephant at the New Wash facility, and it cost a fantastic amount to maintain it, for elephants are not native to space. A lively public debate had
developed: keep the elephant or abolish it? Spirit had decided to let the issue be settled by a referendum, for this was exactly the type of nonpolitical matter that could arouse and divert public attention from the problems of the Tyrancy. We tried to keep the population as contented as possible, giving it small bonuses to distract it from the more serious issues. That may seem cynical, and surely it is, but it helps keep the peace. The ordinary citizen is equipped by neither education nor temperament to decide affairs of state, but he thinks he is, so it is best to divert him. That is one reason why politicians, historically, have had very little substance in their campaigns.
However, I wanted to make sure of the situation, because the vote promised to be divisively close, and that would force me to make the final decision. I wanted to get out of the White Dome for a while, anyway. So I arranged to take the girls to the zoo. Of course my security force would be along, but this would be anonymous. I had to put on common-man clothes and a little holo-camera, and Hopie and Amber donned girlish jumpers so as to look like innocent teenagers. We would go see the elephant.
The excursion was fun. We followed a circuitous route, changing bubbles several times, making sure no one realized our origin. There was no sign of the security men; of course, they had infiltrated the crowd before I arrived. Coral acted as a cabbie, taking us through the city in a cab rented for the purpose. The girls chattered merrily in Spanish; there was no point in setting Amber to English and having her mute. Certainly we could all three pass for Hispanic tourists, and there were a fair number of those here too.
The zoo was impressive. It was set up in a cluster of small bubbles in the New Wash vicinity. We didn’t bother with the others; we headed straight for the elephantarium. We had agreed that after we saw the elephant, and if our anonymity remained intact, I would go home, but the girls could stay and enjoy the rest of the zoo.
We entered at the null-gee lock at the bubble’s admission pole and proceeded to the central orientation chamber. The animal, of course, had the favored equatorial rim of the whirling bubble; the spectators could make do with low-gee for their temporary visits.