Operation ares, p.24
Operation Ares, page 24
Boyde smiled. “At least that’s more original than trying to save the country, which is what the other negotiator you people sent me is always talking about. You’re a friend of Miss Trees, aren’t you? She’s forever mentioning you.”
“Yes, I know her.”
“I can see you do. You jumped perceptibly when I mentioned her name.’’
“I wasn’t aware that she was in your hands.”
Boyde nodded complacently. #‘She came to us several weeks ago, and I thought it might be convenient to have a possible go-between uniting Huggins and myself. She gave me her word that she would not attempt to communicate with any of you without my permission, and I am glad to see that she kept it. Would you like to talk to her?” His tone was polite, but there was a note of dismissal in the question.
“Very much,” John said.
“I'll have someone take you up then.”
The headquarters of the Pro Tem Government were in a building sometimes said to be modeled on the Washington Monument. The thousands of windows were narrow vertical slits like those provided for archers in the Middle Ages, and there were so many of these narrow and closely spaced apertures that they seemed not interruptions but a texturing of this towering limestone shaft that dominated the west bank of the Potomac.
Inside all the grace and grandeur vanished. Offices were stacked upon offices, all reached by narrow, low-ceilinged halls, cramped and slightly dirty stairs of concrete, emptily echoing, and self-service elevators no bigger than closets. The page gill told John that three times during the past year employees working late—one of them an executive of fairly high rank—had been assaulted in the corridors by “people from across the river; you know, all those slums over in old Washington. How can anyone do a thing like that, anyway?”
John did not feel in the mood for an argument, but he found himself saying, “How can they do anything else? For years the people who work in this building have been telling all of us we’re entitled to a high standard of Living—which we don’t have, although the people here do. So they come here to take some of it.”
“Oh,” the girl said, “I forgot you’re one of them" She was quite pretty in her page’s blouse and navy blue skirt, and for a moment John wondered what politician had wrangled her appointment for her, pulling her away from some wheat town in the Middle West.
“For a while I was a sort of involuntary social worker,” he told her, and let it go at that.
Anna’s door was locked, but it was not a jail door, and the apartment into which John was ushered might have been in any of the better buildings catering to stenographers and the immaculate young women who tend computers. She welcomed him with her eyes and then with her mouth, and he never heard the page girl close the door as she left.
When they parted, a little breathless, Anna looked at him as though he were a jinn who had suddenly materialized from the carpet at her feet. “What are you doing here? I mean . .. oh darling, it’s wonderful that you’re here; but I heard you were a prisoner, then you weren’t, that they bad to let you go or something ...”
“I’m here under a flag of truce, so to speak. Fundamentally for the same reason you are."
Her Ups began to form a question, but he cut it off with a significant look and gesture which took in the room. Aloud he said, “President Boyde paroled you to my custody. We can go out and walk around the city if we’re back here before dark.”
When they were well away from the building, he asked, “Did they give you anything? A pencil or a compact, for instance?”
Anna shook her head. “Nothing I’ve got on now, I suppose you're right though, my room is probably monitored. I knew it, of course, but I was so glad to see you I forgot. You think it’s safe here?”
“As long as we keep walking. If you see anyone who seems to want to get in too close, tell me.”
“They’ve had to go back, haven’t they? Back to the satellite bases. That's what I was told.” She looked at him anxiously.
“That wasn't your fault.” He sensed her mood. “Don’t think that way.”
“I hope not. How is my brother? Is he all right?”
“He was when I left the caves."
“But there’s been a lot of fighting since then, hasn’t there? How long is it since you left?”
“This is the fifteenth day.”
“They said something about your coming here on a ship, but I thought they were trying to trick me in some way.”
“On the Houston” He smiled suddenly. “I never thought I’d so much as see a real surface warship in this day and age, much less be protected by one. It was built during the seventies as an antiaircraft heavy frigate, but it's got eight-inch guns; I suppose it's nearly the only thing the navy has afloat these days.” He paused.
“John, go on! They told me they’d captured you and a whole lot of Martian gold; and then the next thing I heard was that you were on this ship, but somehow you weren’t supposed to be a prisoner any more.”
“I’m afraid it's complicated. You see we—Lothrop and I—set out to make everyone think that the Pro Tern Government had just gotten a thousand kilograms of gold bullion. Unfortunately they got wind of the shipment, I suspect from the other end, which was India, and turned our make-believe seizure into the real thing. We might have been able to get it back, but Lothrop decided it would be smarter just to let them have it,”
“He wanted them to have it?”
“Remember when you used to play chess with me? There are times when a queen sacrifice will win the game.”
Anna looked perplexed.
“Do you know that the Chinese are going to try to give us three million men? Whether we want them or not?”
“I’d heard a rumor. It’s because of that kind of thing that President Huggins and I feel there must be peace soon.”
“And the Russians are—or at least have been—ready to match whatever the Chinese put up; in quality if not in quantity.”
“But they aren’t now?”
"I very much doubt it. When Dr. Lothrop agreed to transport three million Chinese here, he stipulated that the pickup point was to be Sinkiang Province.”
Anna shook her head. “I don't understand.”
“Sinkiang is the logical jumping-off point for a Chinese invasion of Russia, and the Chinese fought a border war with India nearly fifty years ago to improve their communications with it. A force moving north from there could cut off all the Asiatic Soviet Union. It’s difficult to remember that it's not much farther from Moscow than Paris is, but I imagine the Russians are keeping it in mind.”
“I sec.”
They walked on in silence for a time until they reached the section of the city which had been destroyed by the strafing LBV’s when Force B had tried to take the capital. Looking at the rubble, Anna asked suddenly, “Will the Russians really be alarmed enough? And even if they are, won’t the Chinese still want to come here?”
“As soon as the Russians get wind of the Chinese troop movement they’ll move part of their own army to the border to oppose them—at least that’s the theory. And when they do the Chinese will push in still more men of their own. Also, there’s the business with the gold. That depends on a sort of ace in the hole we’ve acquired: a diplomat in the Pro Tem embassy in London who’s come over to us secretly.”
Anna looked up at him, her dark eyes serious. “What can he do?”
“Go to the British and pretend he’s authorized to hire shipping to transport Russian troops. If things are going according to schedule he’s already done it, and since Great Britain is one of China’s principal listening posts, they probably got the news the same day.”
“That more Russians are coming here? I don’t see how that will help us.”
“That more Russians aren’t coming. Russia has the largest merchant navy in the world. The Chinese—and the British too, for that matter—will think the Pro Tem Government is desperate for more help and that the Russians are alleging lack of transport as an excuse for not sending it. Of course the obvious reason for not sending it will be that the troops are needed in the east for an invasion of China. By this time the Chinese ought to be convinced that their troops in Sinkiang are going to be needed right there."
Fitzpatric Boyde's office seemed less cluttered the next time John saw it, perhaps because there was no fire and the narrow windows were open to let in the fresh spring breeze. He sat in the same chair he had used on his first visit, but he had sensed something new in Boyde's attitude toward him. The President Pro Tern's face was set in an expression of aggressive confidence John somehow felt certain was spurious.
When the pleasantries had been completed Boyde picked up a bronze paperweight from his desk and balanced it on the tips of three fingers. It was a statuette of a snarling bear. “To begin with, Secretary Castle,” he said, “I want you to know that l took your advice and asked our Soviet allies about the possibility of obtaining more aid. They are eager to give us everything we require.*'
John inclined his head an eighth of an inch.
“However," Boyde continued, “in the hope of sparing the nation we both love I want to propose a peace plan for your consideration and for Dr. Lothrop’s."
“Go ahead."
“Well, first,” Boyde set the bear down, “as regards the social planning of this country. I understand your people want certain changes. What would satisfy you? Aside from Constitutionalism?"
John ticked off the points on his fingers. “We want an end to the harassment of scientific and technical people, and the immediate release of everyone imprisoned for scientist or on similar charges.”
Boyde nodded. “We've already had to do pretty much that to get their help with our war effort. What else?"
“We want the right to possess arms restored to everyone except minors and those with a record of narcotics addiction or criminal activity."
“I’m afraid forming the militia the way we did has already taken care of that," Boyde said. He smiled with a trace of bitterness. “I believe the old Bill of Rights says something to the effect that since a militia is necessary to defense, the people have a right to go armed. It ought to add that if you need the militia you can’t stop them. In the six months it’s been in existence the militia has already lost or had stolen as many guns as it has right now, and those missing ones are ail floating around somewhere.”
“We want a complete end to the system of welfare payments. We feel that the chief reason this country has been sliding downhill for the past half-century has been the practice of bribing the people—you call them ’the poor'—not to work.”
The President Pro Tern, who had been sitting erect behind his desk, suddenly slumped. “You can’t do that.”
“We think we can,” John said. “Why not?”
“Humanity in the first place,” Boyde told him, kiand in the second, politics. A great many of those people you say are being bribed not to work simply can’t. If they don’t get the money from us they’ll have to become criminals or beggars. I’ve read your record. Secretary Castle, and I know you were a PRESTman in New York for a few weeks ”
John nodded.
“Well, I was a caseworker there and in Chicago for over ten years before the Constitution was set aside. I could tell you a hundred—hell, a thousand—sob stories about widows with health problems and four or five or more little kids dependent on them, but I won’t. Let’s take another kind of case: say, a twenty-three-year-old man with no particular health problem except drug addiction. There are probably a hundred thousand boys in this country who fit that description.”
"I know it.”
“Sure, we offer free treatment, but it’s terrifically expensive and it only helps those who want to be helped. This boy I’m speaking of doesn’t, and his behavior is so erratic he can’t hold a job. If you cut off his welfare he’s either going to steal or starve; the only thing we can do is to try and run the system as economically as we can.” Boyde paused for breath. "I said the other reason was political. You’re too young to remember when the Constitution went out, but do you think that happened just because everyone got tired of the old game and wanted something new? We’d had major riots in every city every summer since the Los Angeles riot of 1965, but that was the year they pulled out all the stops. There were cars and buses burning in the streets all across the country. What do you think is going to happen now”—he leaned forward, pointing a finger at John—“if we take everything they’ve got away? Why do you think we disarmed our police originally and changed the name?”
John said nothing.
“We did it to protect them. There were hundreds of neighborhoods where a policeman who went in with a gun on his hip had no chance at all of coming out alive. And believe me, those areas are still there.”
“I know they are. You’ve had them for twenty years—set aside the Constitution, and bankrupted the nation, but they are still there.”
“I had hoped this would be a friendly meeting.”
“I think it still can be. We have an alternative to propose” Boyde looked at him.
“I said before that you bribed people not to work. I could have added that you bribe women to desert their husbands and fathers to desert their children. And you’ve taken everyone who in desperation has accepted a handout of your yellow money and hung a tag around their necks that made them The Poor—someone to be experimented with by your sociologists and bossed and spied on by anyone who can read and write and is willing to take that dirty job.”
“All right, who are you going to replace those people with?”
“No one. We’d rather see people doing something useful. We intend instead to set up—by constitutional amendment, as a right—an irrevocable income for every citizen. The people whose income taxes exceed that amount will simply take it off their tax. The rest will get the money in the form of a weekly check in the mail, and it will be their money to do whatever they think best with. No one looking over their shoulder to take it away if they get a job.”
Boyde pursed his lips. “Half of them will just use it to kill themselves one way or another.”
“We know that; but we also know that the ones who don’t will have an aid they can depend on and don’t have to be ashamed of. Something they can use to pull themselves out of the mud.”
Silent, Boyde sat staring at his desk top and the statuette of the snarling bear. A gust of wind entering through the narrow windows stirred the striped flag behind him.
“Perhaps you’re wondering how we are going to finance this.”
Boyde looked up. “I know how you’re going to try. You’re going to do the same thing my administration has done on several occasions: print the stuff as fast as you can and hope you can keep ahead of the inflation long enough for the program to catch hold. It isn’t going to work. Your money will be blowing in the streets like garbage before the thing gets off the ground.”
“We plan to do this with hard currency. Money that will hold its value.”
Boyde was suddenly alert. “You’ve got gold on Mars?”
“No, and even if we did, it wouldn’t be economically feasible to bring it here. Only concepts are really valuable enough to ship across space, and our money will have to come from much closer.”
“Where?”
“From Russia and China. In the form of foreign aid.” John leaned forward. “Don’t you sense the desperate rivalry that is building up there? If we—you and I—can hammer out a peace that leaves both sides intact* both Russia and China will feel they still have a chance of gaining a position of paramount influence. And with the Martian technology and a bat-tie-trained army, America will be potentially able to tilt the balance of power between them. They’ll bid against each other, and with a little diplomacy we should be able to keep the bidding running for years.”
Boyde remained silent for nearly a half-minute this time, and watching him, John felt he could almost hear the swift thoughts coursing through his mind.
“All right,” he said at last, “I think we can live with that.*' John felt himself relax. “That leaves the Constitution itself the only issue between us, then. I think you know that we can’t make any compromise there.”
“I told you when you came in that I had a peace plan.” “Yes.”
“First let me say that it includes restoration of the Constitution.”
“Go on."
“But before that occurs we will admit fifty new states. These new states—all of them—will be on Mars. To put it another way, we will introduce one hundred new Senators, all Martians, into the Senate; we will also amend the rules to allow them to vote and to enter the debates without leaving their constituencies. Television can make that possible and I feel it is the only practical way." Boyde was watching John intently as he spoke.
"So far you’re giving everything away. What do you want in return?"
"I realize,*' Boyde continued slowly, “that Huggins is accepted as a leader in your organization. But the Constitution—the same one you people are swearing up and down you want to defend—limits him to eight years in office. Two four-year terms. That time is almost up; this is his last year."
John looked a question.
“I intend to run for the Presidency myself, as soon as the Constitution goes back into effect. I want solemn commitments from all of you that you won’t run your own candidate against me; and that I will have your active support." Boyde leaned back in his swivel chair. "Well?"
John said nothing, trying to sort out his thoughts.
“Well, will you buy it? Will Lothrop?”
He looked at Boyde’s square, florid face. It was a face as superficially trustworthy as a certain type of actor’s, yet he knew Boyde could not be trusted. Unbidden, the thought entered his mind that Boyde was watching him in just the same way, and that to him or to the General he himself must seem the same sort of man: a wily enemy, tenacious of advantage.
Boyde was saying, "You want to take a while to think it over?"
