American Science Fiction Five Classic Novels 1956-58

by Gary K. Wolfe

  “I stand corrected,” I said humbly. “Well, what do we do? Have Dak drag his feet so that the Tommie does not reach New Batavia until he is back in shape to do the job?”

  “We can’t stall. We don’t have to boost at more than one gravity; nobody would expect a man Bonforte’s age to place unnecessary strain on his heart. But we can’t delay. When the Emperor sends for you, you come.”

  “Then what?”

  Rog looked at me without answering. I began to get edgy. “Hey, Rog, don’t go getting any wild notions! This hasn’t anything to do with me. I’m through, except for a few casual appearances around the ship. Dirty or not, politics is not my game—just pay me off and ship me home and I’ll guarantee never even to register to vote!”

  “You probably wouldn’t have to do anything. Dr. Capek will almost certainly have him in shape for it. But it isn’t as if it were anything hard—not like that adoption ceremony—just an audience with the Emperor and——”

  “The Emperor!” I almost screamed. Like most Americans, I did not understand royalty, did not really approve of the institution in my heart—and had a sneaking, unadmitted awe of kings. After all, we Americans came in by the back door. When we swapped associate status under treaty for the advantages of a full voice in the affairs of the Empire, it was explicitly agreed that our local institutions, our own constitution, and so forth, would not be affected—and tacitly agreed that no member of the royal family would ever visit America. Maybe that is a bad thing. Maybe if we were used to royalty we would not be so impressed by them. In any case, it is notorious that “democratic” American women are more quiveringly anxious to be presented at court than is anybody else.

  “Now take it easy,” Rog answered. “You probably won’t have to do it at all. We just want to be prepared. What I was trying to tell you is that a ‘caretaker’ government is no problem. It passes no laws, changes no policies. I’ll take care of all the work. All you will have to do—if you have to do anything—is make the formal appearance before King Willem—and possibly show up at a controlled press conference or two, depending on how long it is before he is well again. What you have already done is much harder—and you will be paid whether we need you or not.”

  “Damn it, pay has nothing to do with it! It’s—well, in the words of a famous character in theatrical history, ‘Include me Out.’ ”

  Before Rog could answer, Bill Corpsman came bursting into my cabin without knocking, looked at us, and said sharply to Clifton, “Have you told him?”

  “Yes,” agreed Clifton. “He’s turned down the job.”

  “Huh? Nonsense!”

  “It’s not nonsense,” I answered, “and by the way, Bill, that door you just came through has a nice spot on it to knock. In the profession the custom is to knock and shout, ‘Are you decent?’ I wish you would remember it.”

  “Oh, dirty sheets! We’re in a hurry. What’s this guff about your refusing?”

  “It’s not guff. This is not the job I signed up for.”

  “Garbage! Maybe you are too stupid to realize it, Smythe, but you are in too deep to prattle about backing out. It wouldn’t be healthy.”

  I went to him and grabbed his arm. “Are you threatening me? If you are, let’s go outside and talk it over.”

  He shook my hand off. “In a spaceship? You really are simple, aren’t you? But haven’t you got it through your thick head that you caused this mess yourself?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He means,” Clifton answered, “that he is convinced that the fall of the Quiroga government was the direct result of the speech you made earlier today. It is even possible that he is right. But it is beside the point. Bill, try to be reasonably polite, will you? We get nowhere by bickering.”

  I was so surprised by the suggestion that I had caused Quiroga to resign that I forgot all about my desire to loosen Corpsman’s teeth. Were they serious? Sure, it was one dilly of a fine speech, but was such a result possible?

  Well, if it was, it was certainly fast service.

  I said wonderingly, “Bill, do I understand that you are complaining that the speech I made was too effective to suit you?”

  “Huh? Hell, no! It was a lousy speech.”

  “So? You can’t have it both ways. You’re saying that a lousy speech went over so big that it scared the Humanity Party right out of office. Is that what you meant?”

  Corpsman looked annoyed, started to answer, and caught sight of Clifton suppressing a grin. He scowled, again started to reply—finally shrugged and said, “All right, buster, you proved your point; the speech could not have had anything to do with the fall of the Quiroga government. Nevertheless, we’ve got work to do. So what’s this about you not being willing to carry your share of the load?”

  I looked at him and managed to keep my temper—Bonforte’s influence again; playing the part of a calm-tempered character tends to make one calm inside. “Bill, again you cannot have it two ways. You have made it emphatically clear that you consider me just a hired hand. Therefore I have no obligation beyond my job, which is finished. You can’t hire me for another job unless it suits me. It doesn’t.”

  He started to speak but I cut in. “That’s all. Now get out. You’re not welcome here.”

  He looked astounded. “Who the hell do you think you are to give orders around here?”

  “Nobody. Nobody at all, as you have pointed out. But this is my private room, assigned to me by the Captain. So now get out or be thrown out. I don’t like your manners.”

  Clifton added quietly, “Clear out, Bill. Regardless of anything else, it is his private cabin at the present time. So you had better leave.” Rog hesitated, then added, “I think we both might as well leave; we don’t seem to be getting anywhere. If you will excuse us—Chief?”

  “Certainly.”

  I sat and thought about it for several minutes. I was sorry that I had let Corpsman provoke me even into such a mild exchange; it lacked dignity. But I reviewed it in my mind and assured myself that my personal differences with Corpsman had not affected my decision; my mind had been made up before he appeared.

  A sharp knock came at the door. I called out, “Who is it?”

  “Captain Broadbent.”

  “Come in, Dak.”

  He did so, sat down, and for some minutes seemed interested only in pulling hangnails. Finally he looked up and said, “Would it change your mind if I slapped the blighter in the brig?”

  “Eh? Do you have a brig in the ship?”

  “No. But it would not be hard to jury-rig one.”

  I looked at him sharply, trying to figure what went on inside that bony head. “Would you actually put Bill in the brig if I asked for it?”

  He looked up, cocked a brow, and grinned wryly. “No. A man doesn’t get to be a captain operating on any such basis as that. I would not take that sort of order even from him.” He inclined his head toward the room Bonforte was in. “Certain decisions a man must make himself.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Mmm—I hear you’ve made one of that sort.”

  “That’s right.”

  “So. I’ve come to have a lot of respect for you, old son. First met you, I figured you for a clotheshorse and a facemaker, with nothing inside. I was wrong.”

  “Thank you.”

  “So I won’t plead with you. Just tell me: is it worth our time to discuss the factors? Have you given it plenty of thought?”

  “My mind is made up, Dak. This isn’t my pidgin.”

  “Well, perhaps you’re right. I’m sorry. I guess we’ll just have to hope he pulls out of it in time.” He stood up. “By the way, Penny would like to see you, if you aren’t going to turn in again this minute.”

  I laughed without pleasure. “Just ‘by the way,’ eh? Is this the proper sequence? Isn’t it Dr. Capek’s turn to try to twist my arm?”

  “He skipped his turn; he’s busy with Mr. B. He sent you a message, though.”

  “Eh?”

/>   “He said you could go to hell. Embroidered it a bit, but that was the gist.”

  “He did? Well, tell him I’ll save him a seat by the fire.”

  “Can Penny come in?”

  “Oh, sure! But you can tell her that she is wasting her time; the answer is still ‘No.’ ”

  So I changed my mind. Confound it, why should an argument seem so much more logical when underlined with a whiff of Jungle Lust? Not that Penny used unfair means, she did not even shed tears—not that I laid a finger on her—but I found myself conceding points, and presently there were no more points to concede. There is no getting around it, Penny is the world-saver type and her sincerity is contagious.

  The boning I did on the trip out to Mars was as nothing to the hard study I put in on the trip to New Batavia. I already had the basic character; now it was necessary to fill in the background, prepare myself to be Bonforte under almost any circumstances. While it was the royal audience I was aiming at, once we were at New Batavia I might have to meet any of hundreds or thousands of people. Rog planned to give me a defense in depth of the sort that is routine for any public figure if he is to get work done; nevertheless, I would have to see people—a public figure is a public figure, no way to get around that.

  The tightrope act I was going to have to attempt was made possible only by Bonforte’s Farleyfile, perhaps the best one ever compiled. Farley was a political manager of the twentieth century, of Eisenhower I believe, and the method he invented for handling the personal relations of politics was as revolutionary as the German invention of staff command was to warfare. Yet I had never heard of the device until Penny showed me Bonforte’s.

  It was nothing but a file about people. However, the art of politics is “nothing but” people. This file contained all, or almost all, of the thousands upon thousands of people Bonforte had met in the course of his long public life; each dossier consisted of what he knew about that person from Bonforte’s own personal contact. Anything at all, no matter how trivial—in fact, trivia were always the first entries: names and nicknames of wives, children, and pets, hobbies, tastes in food or drink, prejudices, eccentricities. Following this would be listed date and place and comments for every occasion on which Bonforte had talked to that particular man.

  When available, a photo was included. There might or might not be “below-the-line” data, i.e., information which had been researched rather than learned directly by Bonforte. It depended on the political importance of the person. In some cases the “below-the-line” part was a formal biography running to thousands of words.

  Both Penny and Bonforte himself carried minicorders powered by their body heat. If Bonforte was alone he would dictate into his own when opportunity offered—in rest rooms, while riding, etc.; if Penny went along she would take it down in hers, which was disguised to look like a wrist watch. Penny could not possibly do the transcribing and microfilming; two of Jimmie Washington’s girls did little else.

  When Penny showed me the Farleyfile, showed me the very bulk of it—and it was bulky, even at ten thousand words or more to the spool—and then told me that this represented personal information about Mr. Bonforte’s acquaintances, I scroaned (which is a scream and a groan done together, with intense feeling). “God’s mercy, child! I tried to tell you this job could not be done. How could anyone memorize all that?”

  “Why, you can’t, of course.”

  “You just said that this was what he remembered about his friends and acquaintances.”

  “Not quite. I said that this is what he wanted to remember. But since he can’t, not possibly, this is how he does it. Don’t worry; you don’t have to memorize anything. I just want you to know that it is available. It is my job to see that he has at least a minute or two to study the appropriate Farleyfile before anybody gets in to see him. If the need turns up, I can protect you with the same service.”

  I looked at the typical file she had projected on the desk reader. A Mr. Saunders of Pretoria, South Africa, I believe it was. He had a bulldog named Snuffles Bullyboy, several assorted uninteresting offspring, and he liked a twist of lime in his whisky and splash. “Penny, do you mean to tell me that Mr. B. pretends to remember minutiae like that? It strikes me as rather phony.”

  Instead of getting angry at the slur on her idol Penny nodded soberly. “I thought so once. But you don’t look at it correctly, Chief. Do you ever write down the telephone number of a friend?”

  “Eh? Of course.”

  “Is it dishonest? Do you apologize to your friend for caring so little about him that you can’t simply remember his number?”

  “Eh? All right, I give up. You’ve sold me.”

  “These are things he would like to remember if his memory were perfect. Since it isn’t, it is no more phony to do it this way than it is to use a tickler file in order not to forget a friend’s birthday—that’s what it is: a giant tickler file, to cover anything. But there is more to it. Did you ever meet a really important person?”

  I tried to think. Penny did not mean the greats of the theatrical profession; she hardly knew they existed. “I once met President Warfield. I was a kid of ten or eleven.”

  “Do you remember the details?”

  “Why, certainly. He said, ‘How did you break that arm, son?’ and I said, ‘Riding a bicycle, sir,’ and he said, ‘Did the same thing myself, only it was a collarbone.’”

  “Do you think he would remember it if he were still alive?”

  “Why, no.”

  “He might—he may have had you Farleyfiled. This Farleyfile includes boys of that age, because boys grow up and become men. The point is that top-level men like President Warfield meet many more people than they can remember. Each one of that faceless throng remembers his own meeting with the famous man and remembers it in detail. But the supremely important person in any one’s life is himself—and a politician must never forget that. So it is polite and friendly and warmhearted for the politician to have a way to be able to remember about other people the sort of little things that they are likely to remember about him. It is also essential—in politics.”

  I had Penny display the Farleyfile on King Willem. It was rather short, which dismayed me at first, until I concluded that it meant that Bonforte did not know the Emperor well and had met him only on a few official occasions—Bonforte’s first service as Supreme Minister had been before old Emperor Frederick’s death. There was no biography below the line, but just a notation, “See House of Orange.” I didn’t—there simply wasn’t time to plow through a few million words of Empire and pre-Empire history and, anyhow, I got fair-to-excellent marks in history when I was in school. All I wanted to know about the Emperor was what Bonforte knew about him that other people did not.

  It occurred to me that the Farleyfile must include everybody in the ship since they were (a) people (b) whom Bonforte had met. I asked Penny for them. She seemed a little surprised.

  Soon I was the one surprised. The Tom Paine had in her six Grand Assemblymen. Rog Clifton and Mr. Bonforte, of course —but the first item in Dak’s file read: “Broadbent, Darius K., the Honorable, G. A. for League of Free Travelers, Upper Division.” It also mentioned that he held a Ph.D. in physics, had been reserve champion with the pistol in the Imperial Matches nine years earlier, and had published three volumes of verse under the nom de plume of “Acey Wheelwright.” I resolved never again to take a man at merely his face value.

  There was a notation in Bonforte’s sloppy handwriting: “Almost irresistible to women—and vice versa!”

  Penny and Dr. Capek were also members of the great parliament. Even Jimmie Washington was a member, for a “safe” district, I realized later—he represented the Lapps, including all the reindeer and Santa Claus, no doubt. He was also ordained in the First Bible Truth Church of the Holy Spirit, which I had never heard of, but which accounted for his tightlipped deacon look.

  I especially enjoyed reading about Penny—the Honorable Miss Penelope Taliaferro Russell. She w
as an M.A. in government administration from Georgetown and a B.A. from Wellesley, which somehow did not surprise me. She represented districtless university women, another “safe” constituency I learned, since they are about five to one Expansionist Party members.

  On down below were her glove size, her other measurements, her preferences in colors (I could teach her something about dressing), her preference in scent (Jungle Lust, of course), and many other details, most of them innocuous enough. But there was “comment”:

  “Neurotically honest—arithmetic unreliable—prides herself on her sense of humor, of which she has none—watches her diet but is gluttonous about candied cherries—little-mother-of-allliving complex—unable to resist reading the printed word in any form.”

  Underneath was another of Bonforte’s handwritten addenda: “Ah, Curly Top! Snooping again, I see.”

  As I turned them back to her I asked Penny if she had read her own Farleyfile. She told me snippily to mind my own business!—then turned red and apologized.

  Most of my time was taken up with study but I did take time to review and revise carefully the physical resemblance, checking the Semiperm shading by colorimeter, doing an extremely careful job on the wrinkles, adding two moles, and setting the whole job with electric brush. It was going to mean a skin peel before I could get my own face back but that was a small price to pay for a make-up job that could not be damaged, could not be smeared even with acetone, and was proof against such hazards as napkins. I even added the scar on the “game” leg, using a photograph Capek had kept in Bonforte’s health history. If Bonforte had had wife or mistress, she would have had difficulty in telling the impostor from the real thing simply on physical appearance. It was a lot of trouble but it left my mind free to worry about the really difficult part of the impersonation.

  But the all-out effort during the trip was to steep myself in what Bonforte thought and believed, in short the policies of the Expansionist Party. In a manner of speaking, he himself was the Expansionist Party, not merely its most prominent leader but its political philosopher and greatest statesman. Expansionism had hardly been more than a “Manifest Destiny” movement when the Party was founded, a rabble coalition of groups who had one thing in common: the belief that the frontiers in the sky were the most important issue in the emerging future of the human race. Bonforte had given the Party a rationale and an ethic, the theme that freedom and equal rights must run with the Imperial banner; he kept harping on the notion that the human race must never again make the mistakes that the white subrace had made in Africa and Asia.