I had two potent things going for me in this region: I was a hero, and I was Hispanic. My Navy record had been quiescent but now revived, like a holofilm taken from storage. It gave me instant name-recognition, and my origin brought me firm support from the very sizable Hispanic community.
I had, however, one overwhelming liability: I was running against an incumbent.
I really don’t care to dwell on the tedium of campaigning. I went everywhere, talked to any group that invited me, no matter how small—and some were very small—and challenged my opponent to a debate. Naturally he refused. It was a clean campaign, because I would not stoop to dirty tactics, and my opponent saw no reason to. The polls showed him comfortably ahead from the outset. No matter how hard I struggled, I could not close the ten-percentage-point gap that separated us. The incumbent was no prize; he was a conservative, self-interested man who was beloved of the local special interests and well financed by them. Though I could roundly criticize his record, I could not get enough publicity to give myself credibility in the eyes of the majority of the electorate.
Thorley summarized my situation succinctly: “Hope Hubris constituency: Belt 20. Hispanic 20. Total 35.” That is, despite a twenty percent support by the Hispanic community, and twenty percent because of my reputation as a former Navy officer, my total was only thirty-five percent, against the forty-five percent plurality the incumbent enjoyed. Thorley was having fun with the mathematics; there was a five percent overlap between the two groups. This suggested that I had no support at all from the broader Saxon community. It wasn’t quite that bad, but almost.
“It is usually necessary to lose one election, just to get sufficient name recognition for the next,” Megan remarked. No one expected me to win, not even us.
My ire focused again on Thorley. “I’m about ready to do something about that guy,” I muttered. “I’d like to debate him before an audience.”
“Great idea!” Shelia agreed enthusiastically. Remember, she was barely eighteen.
But Spirit cocked her head. “You know, I wonder—?”
Megan nodded. “That would be truly novel. We really have nothing to lose at this point.”
So I made the ludicrous gesture of challenging Thorley to a public debate, since I couldn’t get the incumbent to share the stage with me. I expected either to be ignored or to become the target of a scathingly clever column.
But he accepted.
Bemused, we worked it out. “He must find this campaign as dull as I do,” I said. “This will at least put us both on the map of oddities.”
“True,” Megan agreed. “But do not take it lightly. Now we shall find out what you are made of. Debates are treacherous.”
“Like single combat,” Spirit said.
I was certainly ready to test my verbal mettle against that of the journalist. Would he try to argue against campaign finance reform? That would be foolish.
I prepared carefully but reminded myself that this was not a major office I was running for. State senators were relatively little fish, virtually unranked on the planetary scene. I was running mainly for experience, which I surely needed, and to increase my recognition factor.
The occasion was surprisingly well attended. The hall was filled and not just with Hispanics. It seemed that quite a number of people were curious about this—or perhaps they, too, had nothing better to do at the moment.
Thorley showed up on schedule. He was a handsome man about my own age, a fair Saxon, slightly heavyset, with a magnificently modulated voice. He shook my hand in a cordial manner and settled into the comfortable chair assigned to him as if he had been there all his life.
We chatted in the few minutes before the formal program, and I have to confess I liked him. I had expected a sneering, supercilious snob, despite Megan’s assessment; I was disabused. Thorley was remarkably genial and likable, and soon my talent verified that he was indeed absolutely honest. Evidently the jibes he put into print were an affectation for the benefit of his readership. In person he was not like that.
“I feared I would be late,” he remarked with a momentary slant of one eyebrow to signal that this was a minor personal crisis. “Thomas was not quite ready to come in.”
“Thomas?” Spirit asked. “I thought you were childless.”
Thorley grinned infectiously. “Naturally your camp has done its homework on the opposition, but perhaps imperfectly. Thomas is our resident of the feline persuasion.”
Spirit had to smile in return, touching her forehead with her four-fingered hand as if jogging loose a short circuit. “Oh, a male cat. We did not have pets in the Navy.”
“The Navy remains unforgivably backward in certain social respects,” he said. “Cats are admirably independent, but in this instance, with my wife visiting Hidalgo to cover for a discomfited relative, the burden of supervision falls on me. Regulations”—here he made a fleeting grimace to show his disapproval of regulations as a class of human endeavor—”require the confinement of nonhuman associates when the persons concerned are absent from the immediate vicinity.” I am rendering this as well as I can; the nuances of facial and vocal expression that he employed made even so small a matter as a stray tomcat seem like a significant experience. The man had phenomenal personal magnetism. I realized that I was in for more of a debate than I had anticipated, for Thorley could move an audience.
“Well, in a couple of hours you’ll be back to let him out again,” I said.
“I surely had better be,” he agreed. “Thomas is inclined to express his ire against the furniture when neglected, as any reasonable person would.” That fierce individualism manifested in almost every sentence he uttered, yet now it became charming.
It was time for the debate. There was no holo-news coverage, but I had my recorder and Thorley had his, so that neither could later misquote what might be said here. His newsfax had sent a still-picture photographer, at least. This was such a minor event on the political scale—a debate between a novice about to lose his first election and a columnist for a secondary newsfax—that we had no elaborate trappings. No moderator, no formal rules; it was discussion format. I knew that could be awkward, but it could also be the most natural and effective. We had agreed to alternate in asking each other questions, with verbal interplay increasing after the initial answers. We flipped a coin, and he won the right to pose the first question.
Megan and Spirit moved to either side of the small stage, while Shelia merged her chair with the front row of the audience and took notes. I suspect most people didn’t realize that she was my secretary; she resembled a curious visitor.
“I understand that you, Captain Hubris, in accordance with many of the liberal folly, are opposed to capital punishment,” Thorley said, his attitude and his language hardening dramatically as he got down to business. I felt as if a laser-cannon were abruptly orienting on me.
“I am,” I agreed, knowing what was coming.
“Yet you are, or were, a prominent military man,” he continued. “You could have been responsible for the deaths of hundreds of living people—”
“Thousands,” I agreed tersely.
“How do you reconcile this with your present stand opposing the execution of criminals?”
Fortunately I was prepared for this one; Megan had anticipated it from the outset of our association. “The two situations are not comparable,” I said carefully. I knew I was speaking more for the record than for him; Thorley surely knew what the nature of my answer had to be, and this was merely a warm-up question. “As a military man, I was under orders; when killing was required, I performed my duty. I never enjoyed that aspect of it, but the Navy did not express interest in my personal opinions.” I smiled, Thorley smiled with me, and there was a ripple of humor through the audience. Everyone knew how strictly and impersonally discipline was kept in the Navy. “There is also a distinction between the violence of combat and the measured, deliberate destruction of human life that legal execution is. If a man fires his weapon at m
e and I fire back and kill him, that is one thing; but if that man is strapped to a chair, helpless, that is another. To my mind, the first case is defense; the second is murder.”
“Well and fairly spoken,” Thorley said smoothly. “But can we be sure there is a true distinction between the cases? The man fires at you, and your return fire kills him; granted, that is necessary defense. But the man who fires at an innocent little child, callously murders her, and is then brought to justice—is your return fire not justified? It is true that return fire is delayed longer, perhaps months instead of a split second, but the only distinction I perceive is that the first criminal failed to kill while the second succeeded. How can you favor the second?”
It was getting rougher. “I don’t favor the criminal,” I protested. “I oppose premeditated killing—his and mine. I do not believe that a second killing vindicates the first—”
“I did not suggest that it does, Captain. The second killing punishes the first.”
“Granted. But in what way does punishment help the victim of the first crime? It may instead be better to rehabilitate the criminal, so that he can try to make up for—”
“My dear Captain, he can not restore the life he took!”
“Yes. But killing him won’t restore it, either.”
“But it will deter others from doing the same thing, and that may save the lives of many other innocent folk.”
“There’s no conclusive evidence that executions actually deter others from—”
“You prefer to set a killer free to do it again?”
“No! I want him punished. But that doesn’t mean I should kill him.”
“You propose to support him indefinitely at taxpayer expense?”
There was a trap. No taxpayer liked the notion of having his money used to benefit a criminal. “No. I want to put him to work to make up, to whatever extent possible, for the wrong he has done.”
Thorley cocked his head. “And what type of work is that, pray?”
And there he had me. “I’m sure suitable work can be found.”
He tilted his head farther, in elegant theatrical doubt. “The effort might better be spent finding work instead for the law-abiding unemployed.” There was a murmur of agreement from the audience, not excluding the Hispanic contingent. The Hispanic level of unemployment was higher than the Saxon. Thorley had scored against me, with my own people. He could hardly have maneuvered me more neatly into that trap. The irony was that I was sure I had the better case, but my opponent had succeeded in obfuscating it. Had this been a physical trial, I would have been in the position of having a better weapon, but losing because I had not been able to use it effectively.
We moved on to the next question. “I understand that you conservatives oppose big government on principle,” I began.
“Indeed,” he agreed. “We regard bureaucratic intervention as fundamentally malevolent.”
Damn his finesse of expression! He somehow seemed more convincing than I did, even when I was posing my question to him. But I plowed on: “A government is like a person: it has many components, many systems of operation, but it is necessary for the efficient management of society in much the way the brain is necessary for the proper functioning of the person. Without a brain the person soon dies; without government mankind dies. To oppose government is like opposing a person’s brain. Do you really prefer anarchy?”
Thorley smiled in the feline way he had. He was enjoying this. “I confess the temptation, especially when I see our headlong progress toward the other extreme. Certainly I would choose anarchy over tyranny. But I do not actually demean government per se. I merely feel that too much government, like a bloated stomach, is inimical to human progress. We do not need Big Brother to tell us how and when to comb our hair or pick our teeth, and certainly we do not need a swollen bureaucracy to process the permissions for same in quintuplicate, charging the inordinate expense to the taxpayers. In short, that government is best which governs least.”
“But only the government can alleviate some of the problems of the planet; they are too vast in scale for disorganized individuals to solve.”
“That strikes me as a beautiful rationale for tyranny. I believe, in contrast, that only free men can solve the problems caused by ineffective government that meddles in everything and understands nothing.”
“I’ve seen what completely free men do!” I retorted. “They are called pirates, and they prey on helpless refugees!”
The Hispanic contingent applauded, but they were efficiently undercut by Thorley’s reply. “I would apply the death penalty to piracy. Would you?”
He was tying me in knots! I glanced about, and saw Megan nodding; she had known I would discover this problem. It was one more thing I was having to learn the hard way. But still I fought. “I would send the government’s Navy after them.”
That recovered some territory for me, for indeed I had done so. Still, I knew I was getting the worst of this debate.
With the next question, Thorley came at me like a heat-seeking missile. “It has been said that a free press is the best guarantee of honest government. Where do you stand on that?”
This was another difficult one. I supported freedom of the press, but as a military man I appreciated the need for secrecy in certain cases, and I had practiced censorship of the news during my campaign in the Belt. He would surely make much of that. I would have to qualify my answer carefully.
Before I spoke, there was a commotion in the audience. A burly Saxon man was striding forward, brandishing a portable industrial laser unit, the kind used to spot-weld steel beams. I had seen them in use when ship repairs were being made in space; they were dangerous in inexpert hands.
“You spics are stealing our jobs!” the man bawled. “We don’t need none of you in office!” He brought his laser to bear on me and pulled the trigger.
I was already flying out of my chair, the recoil sending it toppling backward, my military reflexes operating. Spirit, too, was diving away. But I saw, as if it were in slow motion, that Megan did not understand. She was standing stock-still, gazing at the worker.
The first bolt seared into the floor where my chair had been. I veered around to charge the man from the side, and Spirit moved in from his other side. But it would take us seconds to reach him. Already he was striding up past Thorley.
The Saxon worker’s face fastened on Megan. “And we don’t need no spic-lovers, neither!” he cried, and swung the laser to bear on her.
“Get out of there, Megan!” I cried, but still she stood. Maybe she didn’t believe she could actually be a physical target; it was foreign to all her experience.
The man pulled the trigger just as Thorley launched himself from his chair. The deadly beam sizzled and was muffled by Thorley’s body. Steam spread out, and in a moment the horrible odor of fried flesh developed.
In another moment I reached the scene. As Thorley fell to the floor I got my hands on the worker’s arm. I locked it in, neutralizing the laser, and ducked down to haul him over my shoulder in a judo throw, Ippon seoi nage. He rolled over me and landed hard on the floor beyond, the air whooshing out of his body. The laser tool fell free. The man had the fight knocked out of him; he would be no further trouble even if no bones were broken.
I kneeled beside Thorley. He was curled up in agony, trying to grip his left leg. The laser beam had seared into his thigh. I saw at a glance that it was not a lethal wound but was certainly a hellishly painful one. It could cost him his leg if a key nerve had been burned out.
There were more urgent things to do at this moment, as the hall erupted into pandemonium. Thorley needed immediate medical attention, we needed the police to take charge of the murderous worker, and I had to get Megan away from this place before she went into shock. But for the moment all that was closed out, pushed back into the background of my awareness. It was as if only the two of us existed.
“Thorley,” I said. “Why did you intercede?”
His pain-gla
zed eyes focused briefly on me. “I don’t believe,” he gasped, “in assassination. Not even of liberals.”
I had to smile grimly. “How can I repay you?”
“Just—keep the press—free,” he whispered, and passed out.
“Always!” I swore to his unconscious body.
Then the planet resumed its motion. Things were happening all around us. I looked up and saw Spirit, who was bringing heavy bandages, knowing that prompt attention to the wound was essential. All officers in the Navy had paramedic training; she knew what to do.
“Spirit,” I said. “Take care of this man.”
She nodded. She worked efficiently, cutting away his burned trouser leg, applying the bandages to the seared flesh. No cauterization was required; laser wounds are already cauterized. It was necessary only to protect the surrounding flesh.
When the medics came for him with the stretcher, Spirit went with them. “His cat!” I called after her, and she nodded again. Thorley would be in competent hands.
I put my arm around Megan, who was shivering with reaction. She had never seen physical violence like this before; it was a shock that could send her into trauma. I had to take care of her.
CHAPTER 7
SENATOR
I can’t say that it makes much logical sense, but that was the turning point of the campaign. Photographs appeared on the front page of the newspaper: the angry worker charging out of the audience; Spirit and I jumping out of the way; Megan standing astonished; Thorley intercepting the laser beam; the worker flying over my shoulder; Spirit bandaging Thorley. The photographer, a professional in his own specialty, had gotten it all, in marvelously clear pictures. No written story was even needed. It was obvious that Spirit and I had acted with dispatch, but that Megan and at least one of us would have been caught by that laser if Thorley hadn’t acted.