But we were surprised. We were not imposing masked free enterprise on a population that rejected it; rather, we were restoring it to a population that had always desired it. The peasants were eager for greater self-determination and for the rewards of their own efforts, and once they understood that my changes were serious, and that the dread secret police had been instructed to ferret out the remnants of the restrictive order and not to bother the enterprising peasants, they got into it with a will. There must have been an appalling level of cheating at all levels, because the first season showed a fifteen percent improvement in the harvest, and the second season jumped another thirty-five percent, with every sign of further improvements to come. We did indeed double the harvest in two years—a feat I really hadn't expected to accomplish. Our real objective, remember, had been to eliminate the nomenklatura; the harvest had been mostly the pretext. Perhaps I should have been less cynical about my own words; the citizens of Kraine evidently took them seriously, and made that aspect of the Dream come true. Kraine was never my homeland, but in retrospect I feel as though it could have been, and I would not mind retiring there.
Dear Daddy,
You have some nerve, asking Megan for a woman! I mean, of course you always have women, everybody knows that, but you don't have to rub Mother's nose in it, do you? Oh, well, you are what you are, and this is just to let you know she's doing it. I told her she should send you a wench from the Navy Tail, someone with about thirty years' experience and warts on her bottom, but she just smiled and said she thought she could do better than that. I thought you had a sexy Saturnine secretary, anyway; don't tell me you don't know what to do with her!
Oh, well, I suppose I'm just out of sorts because Megan stepped down, and the special elections are done, and now we have a representative democracy again and it's so darned dull. Not like all that activity in Saturn! You fired all the bosses in Kraine? It's a wonder you didn't get assassinated on the spot! Oh, that's not funny, I shouldn't joke about it. But do try to stay out of trouble, Daddy; I'd hate it if anything should happen to you, even if you can't keep your hands off all those women.
Robertico sends his love. He says he wants to grow up to be just like you. That shows all the sense he has!
Chapter 5 — SMILO
But we did not remain in Kraine. Once we had set the reforms in motion and assigned the top personnel, we left it to them to follow through. This might seem careless, but the fact is that once I have selected competent and honest personnel, and once Spirit has organized a system for them, very little further attention is required. A competently managed hierarchical system can take care of itself. In fact, even an incompetent bureaucracy can hang on tenaciously, as the nomenklatura showed, or the prior "good-old-boy" network I had rousted from Jupiter. We went on to the industrial sector, which was almost as fouled up as the farm sector. Saturn had raw resources that rivaled those of Jupiter, but squandered them through inefficiency and corruption. Having shown how to realign the farm, we now had to do the same for the shop.
We hit the research tapes again. Theoretically the capacity of the mind does not diminish with age, but I felt my years here as I wrestled with metric equivalents I had not used since my youth. The metric system is superior to the hodgepodge used in Jupiter, but one remains most comfortable with what one is most familiar with. We reviewed the dossiers on the top personnel, looking not so much at the nomenklatura, whom we knew had to be removed, but at the ranking technicians and engineers, who knew their fields but could not make policy. This promised to be a tougher challenge than the farm had been.
We traveled a lot, for key elements of industry were spread across the planet, and a number were in orbit in space. Saturn had an excellent ferrous base, with many iron mines in the turbulent atmosphere of the Ural current, and iron-processing plants in that vicinity. Unlike Jupiter, Saturn was self-sufficient in this vital resource, but managed it so poorly that it was on the verge of becoming a net importer. That caused Khukov to grind his teeth, as I could readily understand. The situation was similar with the nonferrous metals; a great deal of gold was processed, and this was vital for the purchase of supplies such as wheat, but the gold mines were mostly in the inhospitable Siberian bands, where few people settled voluntarily. We would try to motivate these workers as we had the farmers, but our chance of success was smaller.
Actually, this assignment was a compliment. Khukov had said he would handle the scientific matters if I handled the political ones, but with the evident success of Kraine, he decided that the two should not be separated. He concentrated on holding his power, and provided me the maximum support. This might seem like a strange arrangement, but Khukov and I understood each other. I was becoming very like his executive officer—and of course Spirit was mine.
Meanwhile, there were other problems. One of them was Tasha: I still wanted her. My message to Megan had been acknowledged, but action on that would take months, if only because of the travel time between Jupiter and Saturn, and I was not geared to wait that long. As I explained, I have always preferred known women to unknown ones; when I was in the Jupiter Navy I got myself qualified for a female roommate at my earliest opportunity, so as not to be dependent on the anonymous Tail. I maintained continuing relationships with my Navy wives long after our sexual contact had abated. Perhaps it is a function of my talent: I learn to know women well, and I need to know them well. I say it as shouldn't: Women are more than sexual objects.
I worked with Tasha every day, and she was a good secretary and a good woman. She didn't know she was a mole. She continued to flash her anatomy at me in off moments, never realizing that her buried alternate personality made a mockery of such inclination. How I wished I could oblige her, without invoking the assassin! But I knew I could not. Therefore my fascination with her was idiocy—yet it remained.
"What am I to do?" I asked Spirit privately. "I desire that woman, and have no acceptable alternative. I do not want to rape her, yet if I approach her normally..."
Spirit sighed. "Then you will have to get into bondage. Tell her it's a game. Maybe she will go along."
"Bondage," I repeated, exploring the implications. "Maybe it would work."
"Oh, it will work, if you're careful. But you may not enjoy it."
"That is a risk I'll have to take. But I want you on hand, in case—"
"I understand." Indeed she did.
So, when Spirit was nominally out but actually nearby, I approached Tasha again. "I desire you," I told her directly.
"And I desire you, Tyrant," she replied. "I thought you would never notice."
"But my tastes are perhaps not what you would consider normal. I have hesitated, for that reason. I would not want to cause you distress."
"Oh? How would that be?"
"It is a matter of fantasy," I explained. "I have in my days possessed many women, but each is unique to herself. I must be with a given woman the way I see her—and I see you as a ravished captive princess."
"That does not sound bad," she protested.
"But the princess is bound. She is helpless to resist her captor, however much she might wish to."
"But I would not resist you, Tyrant! I think you are still more of a man than those young ones."
I enjoy such flattery, however insincere—but actually she was not insincere. It was part of her job description to try to seduce me, but she had indeed come to appreciate my qualities.
"Then you would not object to—?"
She held out her two hands. "Bind me," she said.
I took her at her word. I put her hands up behind her head and tied them so that she could not free them. Then I stripped her as well as I could—some apparel simply hung up near her head and had to be left—and put her on the bed. I tied her two feet to the posts, so that her legs were apart.
"Can you break free of that?" I inquired.
She struggled briefly. "No. The cord hurts when I try."
"Then the monster shall have at you, wench!" I exclaim
ed, tearing off my own clothing. Indeed, this business had excited me; perhaps I had more of a taste for bondage than I had suspected. But I think it was mostly that she was a lovely young woman whom I did desire, and she was now exposed quite effectively. Any attractive woman, laid out like that, would turn on any normal man; bondage did not have to be an aspect of it. At least, so I prefer to believe.
I got on her and into her—and abruptly her personality changed. I was watching for it this time, fascinated by this as much as by the sex itself. She tried to reach for my neck, but could not, and tried to bring up her knees, but could not. "What's this?" she spat.
"This is known as consenting sex," I replied, thrusting deeply.
"I'm tied!" she exclaimed indignantly. Evidently she had no memory of the activities of her normal self.
"Why, so you are," I agreed, changing my position enough to nuzzle her right breast.
Her torso bucked. The breast slammed into my face, but of course a weapon like that could do no harm. "I'm glad to have you responding so well," I said, licking her nipple.
She made a sound like an attacking pig, an ugly squeal, and wrenched her nether section violently about. This had the effect of hastening my climax. "Thank you!" I gasped amidst it.
She snapped at my face, but, alert for this, I held my head away and completed my enjoyment of her body.
"I'll kill you!" she hissed.
"With kindness, perhaps," I said, pausing to savor her breast one last time. Then I dismounted. "Thank you for a unique experience."
She spat at me, literally, but even that missed.
The irony was that I really had enjoyed it, more than I felt comfortable with. I do not like to think that there is any significant sadistic component to my enjoyment of a woman's body, but perhaps there is. At any rate, I had possessed Tasha again, in the only way I safely could.
I cleaned up and dressed, uncertain when it was safe to untie her. But when she saw me clothed, her nature changed; I could read it immediately. "Aren't you going to do it?" she asked.
I doubted that I was capable of doing it again at this time, to my regret; age had slowed my performance more than my desire. But before I released her, I experimented. I sat beside her on the bed and ran my hands over her body, savoring its charms. I kissed her bosom. She did not change; apparently only penetration itself invoked her demon identity. That was good to know; it should be safe to kiss her in the future, and to indulge myself in other ways with her, so long as I avoided that particular action. I would have to verify that, in due course.
"I think I am older than I believed," I said regretfully. "You are beautiful, but perhaps another day?"
She shrugged as well as she could in her bonds. "I am disappointed, of course. But I understand."
Certainly I hoped that was untrue! I wondered what she would conclude when she cleaned up and discovered that more had occurred than she remembered. Probably that, too, would be blotted out of her consciousness, as it had been before.
"Perhaps if I tied you instead?" she suggested.
"Not while I live!" I said, smiling, as I untied her. For surely I would not survive the experience. Why, then, did that, too, tempt me?
This project entailed a lot of traveling. We rode the Trans-Berian Railroad from Skva to Vostok, stopping at the industrial cities along the way, surveying a situation that was an ongoing disaster. Spirit developed a competent staff of Saturnians I had interviewed and cleared; many of them spoke English, but she labored to learn Russian so as not to have to depend on translators for sensitive or complex arrangements. Tasha was increasingly useful to her, serving as a language teacher, and I was glad we had elected to keep her. I think, in her normal state, Tasha was even developing some enthusiasm for the job we were doing; it was clear that we were instituting reforms whose time was long overdue.
I have described our general approach in the Kraine episode, so will bypass the details of our subsequent campaigns. What stand out in my memory are the personal events. But they do relate to the larger mission, so perhaps they are not irrelevant. As with the programs on Jupiter, they tended to assume lives of their own after we initiated them, and my direct participation became unnecessary.
We had skunked the nomenklatura in Kraine, but the power of that class was by no means broken, or even seriously compromised. The nomens had seen me as a threat and had tried to assassinate me twice: in space as I approached Saturn, and through my secretary Tasha. My action in Kraine had, in a manner, been my counter-strike. Now they understood my power and realized that I was much more of a threat than they had supposed. What had been an incidental effort to eliminate me now became more determined. I was fortunate that they did not control the more effective mechanisms of Saturnian policy, such as the Spetsnaz; otherwise I would have been in far more direct peril.
They still could not be obvious, because any direct opposition to Khukov's directives—which included the whole of my own efforts—could result in their elimination as a subversive element. Thus there were no direct laser-shots taken at me, or bombs planted in my luggage. But the subtle approach turned out to be just about as deadly, and for a time we were in doubt about survival.
The first occurred near the bubble-city of Lovsk, in the heart of the iron region. I had taken a bubble car to drive out to one of the steelworks, with a reliable driver. Spirit was busy with the paperwork; I was really on a spot fact-finding mission for her.
The currents can be rough around the mountains. The Urals are not the fiercest obstructions on Saturn, despite the deep metals churned up there; the ranges near the swift equator are far worse. But they were quite enough for me in the tiny car! I had to fight to avoid becoming motion-sick. My driver, evidently acclimatized to this, navigated the throes of the highway with a certain grim enjoyment, almost as if waiting for me to demonstrate my inferiority by grabbing for the barf bag. Give me a nice, straightforward battle in space, any day!
Then the driver frowned, glancing at his instruments. "Pressure rising," he muttered in Russian.
I felt a claustrophobic chill. "Routine?"
"Nyet."
He hit the Mayday button, and our distress signal was broadcast. The Saturn bubbles were sturdy, for the ambient pressure was over eight bars, or eight times Earth-normal. But that sturdiness went for nothing if there was a leak.
Now I felt the increase, or imagined I did. "Can we make it to shelter in time?"
"Have to," he grunted. But he did not look at all certain.
"Pinhole leak?" I asked.
He nodded a grim affirmative. That was about all it could be, to account for the slow increase. Bubblene was tough stuff, about as tough as existed, but sometimes it was flawed, and a leak could develop. Once started, the leak would inevitably increase. The increase could become explosive—or more properly, implosive. Then we would be crushed by the horrendous external pressure.
"Must plug it," I said.
"Can't hold out eight bars!" he muttered fatalistically.
I suppose he was a typical Saturnine, resigned to the outrages of fortune. I was not. "Can if we spot the leak in time," I said.
I cast about for a mechanism. Here the driver helped. "Got a pipe," he said.
"A what?"
He brought it out. "Bacco. Smoke it sometimes."
Oh—one of the containers of pseudo tobacco. Some folk still used the stuff, igniting it and sucking in the vapors through a tube below the container. This habit had once been quite widespread, but the deleterious effects it had on the human body caused it to be outlawed several centuries ago. Today the only remnant of it was the harmless imitation. But this had one immediate advantage, in this crisis: It generated a minute quantity of smoke.
He filled and lit his pipe, puffed on it, and held it before him. A curl of smoke wafted up from it.
He moved it slowly about, the smoke following. The process was infuriatingly slow, in the fractional gee used to make the car float, but this was all we had.
When he hel
d the pipe low, we got a deviation. "Draft," he said.
"You trace it down; I'll get a tool!" I said. I cast about for something suitable. If this had been space, there would have been a repair kit with hull patches. But this was not space, and no ordinary hull patch could withstand eight bars.
"Toolkit in back," the man said as he oriented on the slight draft.
I scrambled back and found it. It was a shoemaker's outfit, with a hammer and stapler and awl. Evidently the folk here were strong on hand trades, as perhaps they had to be to make up for the interminable delays and inordinate expense of necessary articles. But this car was no shoe!
"Found it," the driver said. He was down on the floor now, and the pipe smoke was swirling violently. There was a leak, all right.
If only I had something to plug it! But shoe cement would never hold, and I couldn't hammer in a staple.
Then I perceived the obvious. The awl! It was a slender rod of metal, almost needle-thin, with a rounded plastic ball on the end. That was exactly what I needed!
I grabbed it and joined the driver on the floor. Now I could hear it: the faint hiss of atmosphere pressuring in. Eight bars outside, one bar inside; it would keep coming until the pressure equalized. But an awl, normally used to punch holes in leather, could put a lot of pressure on a small point. More than eight bars' worth.
I set the point, then pressed it into the tiny hole. If this worked, we would have it plugged; if instead it aggravated the leak, we would be dead that much sooner.
It worked. The leak stopped. I had, as it were, my finger in the dike.
"Drive on," I said, with affected casualness.
He hastened to oblige.
We made it to the steelworks. Then I was able to relax, my hands shaking. It was a little thing I had done, but if it hadn't worked my life would have been forfeit.
The personnel of the steelworks inspected the bubble, using their equipment. The leak appeared to be artificial: a tiny hole drilled to intersect a natural flaw, so that the stress of travel could cause the flaw to give way and amplify the leak. Had I not plugged it, the aggravation of the leak could have eliminated the traces of the tampering. My death would have been judged to be an accident, an act of fate.