The meeting got rather quiet.
“So,” Becky said, “do you agree with his kids that he’d make a good president, Alice?”
“They’re not stuck-up. The boy asked me where I went to school. I told him it was on the net. He gave me his password so I could drop in on some of his classes.” The young woman suddenly got flustered. “I don’t know, maybe I’ll watch them. Not say anything.”
Mary wondered if going to net school here had the same stigma it did where she came from but didn’t ask.
“So,” Mary said, “how do so many kids like Alice end up on the street when their folks die?”
That brought the roar of silence from those around the table. Major Barbara finally answered.
“There are no safety laws for workers. You get hurt a little bit, and the plant infirmary patches you up. You get too sick to work, and you get laid off. Maybe until you get well or maybe permanently. Your family can use the infirmary when it’s not busy with workers.”
“No health care?” Ray said.
“There is, if you can afford it, but most can’t,” Brother Scott said. “There was some talk in the war about expanding the hospitals to support war casualties, but nothing came of it. There was also talk about the number of lost-hour accidents, but again, the war ended before anyone got serious about it. Besides, how do you build a medical infrastructure when you’re fighting a war?”
“How do you build one when you aren’t?” Ruth asked.
No one had an answer.
“Well, we’ll meet back here after you talk to Mr. Eliade,” Becky said, and rose, ending the meeting.
“Did you leave anyone behind to protect the professor from an ‘accident’?” Trouble asked.
“No, it didn’t get covered in the conversation,” Mary admitted. “I figured it would come up later if we decided to back him. By the way, he will need help distributing flyers about his rallies.”
“To people who can hardly read,” Major Barbara said, standing behind them.
“Is it that bad? After all, they’re running major industrial plants,” Mary said.
“They do the same thing, time after time,” Brother Scott put in. “In a more developed economy, they’d all be replaced by robots.”
“They were producing a load of warships and munitions in the war,” Trouble pointed out.
“And they were running three shifts,” Major Barbara said. “It was full employment. Now they’re down to one shift a day, and things are dog-eat-dog in the hiring line again.”
“And what will it be for the poor fellow who gets elected president?” Ray asked, joining the conversation.
“If the people got decent wages,” Major Barbara said, “they could buy the quality of life they deserve. A consumer economy could get this place out of this postwar depression, but the workers need decent pay to be consumers.”
“Mary,” Trouble said, “get Dumont and a couple of your former Marines back over to the professor’s house. Tell them to keep an eye on the place from a distance. Until we ask him, we don’t want to be too obvious, but we also don’t want him firebombed tonight.
“I’ll get right on it, sir,” Mary said, and went to correct her mistake from the afternoon.
FIFTY-NINE
MARY HAD A bit of a problem. Dumont wanted to attend the dinner at Mr. Eliade’s residence. However, he’d spent a lot of time staring around the professor’s house. No doubt his eyes would have bugged right out of his head at the Eliade family mansion. Mary sent him to stake out the professor’s house. As expected, the Eliade place was expensive, and it was huge, with more space than Mary figured a family could ever fill up.
Of course, the man had help.
A butler stood at the door as they drove up the circular driveway. When he saw their difficulty getting Brother Scott out of the rig and into his wheelchair, he summoned two more strapping men to assist them. They made easy progress with the wheelchair. Although it was five steps up to the door, there was a handicapped access ramp to the right of the porch.
One of the junior butlers took over wheeling Brother Scott when Alice had trouble dealing with the incline. The look she gave the help, and her surroundings, said it must be nice to have money like that.
However, with a shrug, the street urchin followed them into the foyer.
The meeting was supposed to be arranged around dinner, but an elegantly dressed Madame Eliade explained that her husband had been delayed at the office and offered aperitifs in the library.
Mary let Major Barbara take the lead, and they soon found themselves seated around a roaring fire, juggling small drinks and even smaller hors d’oeuvre plates in a room large enough to bunk down a battalion, even if you kept in all the bookshelves and cabinets for rare books and art objects.
No youths were in evidence, so Alice ended up tagging along with her elders. She balked at the alcoholic drinks and asked for cold lemonade.
From the look on Alice’s face when she sipped her drink, Mary would have bet good Wardhaven dollars that the kid had never tasted fresh-squeezed lemons.
Madame Eliade proved herself an expert on extending light conversation long after anyone else would have let painful silence reign. Still, it must have been a relief when her husband finally arrived nearly an hour late.
“You must excuse me. I was unavoidably delayed at the office. I was discussing with several of my friends and donors just what we can do about this damnable hold that Whitebred has on the news outlets. We may just have to buy our own channel. There is one that is deep in debt, and we’re looking into buying up its short-term bonds. That might solve its problem and ours.”
“You assume,” Major Barbara said, “that Whitebred does not know of its debt problem and will not get there before you.”
Mr. Eliade, whose butler was helping him shrug out of his coat at that moment, paused, coat half-off. He finished, dismissed his man, then took a chair. His wife offered him a cigar and lit it expertly. He blew several puffs before eyeing them.
“Strange. None of us even considered that a possibility, but now that you mention it, he will, no doubt, drive up the bidding.”
“And the bidding may not only depend on monetary issues,” Brother Scott said, waving a hand at his chair. Not all the bandages were off his face yet.
The industrialist frowned for a long moment. “You don’t honestly think . . . You don’t mean to say that you’re . . .” Again, the thought died unspoken.
Mary expected the two locals to launch into a blunt indictment of the previous administration’s crimes. Instead, they sat quiet.
On second thought, it would be a waste of time to describe color to a blind man.
The silence grew long and began to bend and twist. Before it reached pretzel proportions, the industrialist cleared his throat.
“One hears rumors,” he admitted.
More silence.
Finally, the man mashed out his cigar and leaned forward. “Has it been that bad downtown?”
“I was raped by Milassi,” Alice whispered. “I had a job stripping beds and washing linens in a bordello. Then his girlfriends noticed me, and I found myself as the spice in a game the three of them played.” She swallowed hard.
Mary stood up from her chair and went to sit next to Alice. She held her hand as the girl studied the carpet.
“I got off easy,” Brother Scott said. “They just burned down my hostel for street children and beat me to a pulp. His thugs raped our nuns. Major Barbara, here, got warned just in time to get her street kids out of her homeless shelter. It still got burned down. So, yes, sir. Things have been bad downtown.”
The man relaxed back into his chair and studied each of them, one by one. “And your story,” he said to Mary.
“I’m a Marine, sir. I burned Milassi’s drug farm and got his scientists off planet. Some of my associates blew up a few of his tanks in the process. Infantry like blowing up tanks. I’m just here to keep you alive if you ask for our protection. We’ll also tr
y to keep the professor in one piece.”
“Has he asked for protection?”
“No, sir. At the moment, we are trying to decide if it’s worth our while to keep either of you alive or should we just give the planet over to Milassi’s handpicked successor.”
The wife looked shocked, but the businessman nodded.
“Which of us, me or the professor, will you back to win?”
“I am authorized to say neither,” Mary said. “We will attempt to keep the playing field as level as we can. Who wins is up to the people of Savannah. Isn’t that the way it’s supposed to be in a democracy, sir?”
“I don’t know,” he said with a chuckle. “I’ve never lived in one.” He raised an eyebrow to his wife. “I’d like to live in one, wouldn’t you dear?”
“No, love. Not if it will cost me your life.”
“We went over this before I announced.”
The wife, tears in her eyes, turned to Mary. “Can you protect him? Keep him from what happened to him,” she said, nodding to Brother Scott.
“I will try, ma’am. As I learned in the war, there are no guarantees.”
The wife fled the room in tears.
“Sir,” Major Barbara asked, “are you in the race?”
He paused to think. In the background, Mary found herself listening to a clock tick away the seconds. Finally, the man sucked in a deep breath. “I am in it. This planet needs a chance, and if it’s not me, who will it be?”
“The professor?” Brother Scott said.
“That old dreamer. He’s never met a payroll. He’s full of ideas, but show me one thing he’s ever finished . . . besides a class or a book,” he hastily added.
“He has ideas,” Major Barbara said.
“If I need a minister of navel gazing, he’ll be first on my list,” the industrialist snorted.
And began to lay out his own agenda. He wanted change, just like the professor did, but his was more centered on what he and his friends had obviously been talking about before he came home. Change was needed, but it must be slow. Labor unrest would not be allowed. Order, respect for law, and the sanctity of property must come first.
Of course, democracy was the goal, but for now, voting should be limited to only those who could show a serious commitment to the welfare of this planet. “A man must have twenty thousand dinars’ worth of property or real estate. Forty thousand for a man and wife.”
“And if the husband only has twenty?” Major Barbara asked.
“He votes.”
“And if it was money she brought into the marriage?” Major Barbara shot back.
The industrialist had no snap reply. Instead he sat back and thought for a good five seconds. “That is a good question. I had not thought about the wife being the one who brought wealth into the family.”
“A widow or the only child of her parents might well be the one with the money,” Major Barbara pointed out.
“Clearly, we need to think more on this,” Mr. Eliade allowed.
He mulled that thought for a while, then went on. “Our foreign police will, no doubt, be established from Earth. Fortunately, we owe no debts to Earth banks, so that is not at issue.”
“What about the young?” Alice asked. “Those who have supported the change movement at the risk of their lives?”
That clearly stopped the man in his tracks. “Aren’t children in school?” he finally said. “I know mine are.”
“Where are they now?” Alice asked.
“Doing their homework. They always eat an early supper since I may have to work late. I try to see them for a few minutes each evening, or at least tuck them into bed.”
“Well, some of us kids risked our lives to burn down Milassi’s drug plantation,” Alice said.
The businessman’s eyes grew wide. “So that really was arson, not an accident? I’d heard both.”
“Yesterday, after the shoot-out at the Special Police barracks,” Mary said quickly, not sure how the conversation would go if that arson claim got too much air, “it was kids who brought in the weapons. We paid them a bounty to keep the guns off the street, but they risked going through the headquarters looking for guns.”
Again, the man seemed more poleaxed than informed.
“Some of us thought we heard shooting, but it was over so quickly.”
“We Marines prefer our firefights short and deadly,” Mary said.
After a pause for the industrialist to absorb that, their conversation went on for quite a while longer. Frequently, when he talked of government, he spoke more of management than governing. Mary wondered if she was the only one who spotted that. Doubtless, she was not the only one who found that troubling.
There was no call to dinner. When they rose to leave, the wife and two children, both boys, were lined up in the foyer to shake their hands as they left.
“That was interesting,” Mary said, joining Major Barbara and Brother Scott in the middle SUV.
“Yes. ‘Interesting’ is a good word,” the Salvation Army minister allowed.
“Now we know what the monied interests want and the dreamers think,” Brother Scott said. “May God help us all.”
Mary heard it as a prayer.
SIXTY
THE COLONEL WAS waiting at the embassy door. “How’d it go?”
“We’ll tell you in a moment, sir,” Mary said, and led the way to the basement. They found they’d picked up a better class of bugs, and more of them, but between Becky’s spooks and Lek, they were soon clean and ready to talk.
They let Major Barbara run down the facts from the interview. No surprise, the wealthy industrialist was very concerned about maintaining the present conditions he and his friends enjoyed, and he viewed governance as just a case of good management.
“I don’t think his ‘good management’ has much to do with the health and welfare of most workers or kids,” Alice said.
“So,” Ray said when they were finished, “we’ve got a dreamer and a manager, neither of which have any idea what it’s like to govern a planet.”
“Is that any surprise?” Brother Scott said. “If anyone did look like competition for Milassi, they ended up like me, or worse.”
“And out of this, somehow, this planet is supposed to now govern itself,” Becky said.
“Well, Whitebred is only too willing to take that problem off their hands,” Mary said, giving her sarcasm full run.
“Did you ask Mr. Eliade if he wanted protection?” Trouble asked.
“This time I did,” Mary said. “He has his own security guards and doesn’t see any reason to increase his protection. No doubt, if he does, he’ll buy it.”
“He better be careful who he gets. More than one king has been shot in the back by his own guard,” Ray said.
“So, Eliade is on his own. What about the professor?” the diplomat said.
“He, at least, is talking to a diverse group,” Major Barbara said.
“He’s got a problem getting people to know him,” Alice said, slowly. “We kids could distribute flyers around the factory gates and the lunch wagons. If he’s going to give talks, we could help people know when and where.”
“Mary,” Ray said, “tomorrow, when you check back with the professor about protection, take Alice with you. I think she has a good idea.”
“Will, do, Colonel.”
“Make that General,” Becky said, with a diplomatic smile.
“General?” echoed around the table.
“Since we have three battalions of light infantry coming from Lorna Do and Pitts Hope, it seems that someone at Society of Humanity headquarters thought there ought to be a general to coordinate them all. Despite the freeze on local armed-forces promotions, I now find myself a brigadier general in the Society of Humanity Army. Fancy that.”
“Will there be a wetting-down party, Brigadier General, sir? I’m always willing to swill someone else’s booze,” Mary said through a big grin.
“Maybe after the election. Until then, I wan
t you clear-eyed and sober.”
With that, the meeting broke up.
Next day, things got busy. The leading elements of the 4th Highlanders landed and were barracked in a run-down hotel two blocks from the embassy.
Mary had her little talk with the professor. He wasn’t nearly as shocked that he might be a target of violence as the businessman was. “Some of my students have been worked over by the Special Police. I thought they’d been put out of business?”
“They have, but Milassi had all kind of thugs on his employment roster. We only got the most visible.”
He accepted the protection. He also accepted Alice’s idea and hired her on the spot to be his youth coordinator. He had scheduled his first rally for Friday evening and was wondering how he’d get the word out. The net was still closed to him.
When Mary left, he was deep in conversation with Alice and his campaign manager, a woman who’d been a business manager for a small company until it was closed down in the war. She, and a history student doing his doctoral dissertation on the History of Democratic Elections, seemed very happy to have some legs for their ideas, even if the legs were short and many illiterate.
Since the professor didn’t want to look like the “off-planet candidate,” Mary picked her most-long-haired Explorer Corps types to hang out with the campaign and her stealthiest types to handle night-guard duty around the professor’s house.
For the first week, things were kind of easy.
The handouts and flyers went out on Wednesday, and the kids had them hanging from every wooden lamppost in the industrial part of the city by noon. There were also kids outside the plants at shift change, even the midnight shift.
There were a lot of crude jokes about “thanks for the toilet paper,” but when the professor went on stage at the city outdoor amphitheater, it was standing room only.
That was a nice start, but it didn’t end well. A fight broke out between one group and another, maybe it was right-handers and left-handers, maybe it was an old family feud. There was no way of telling, and no way of figuring out who sparked it, but with a fight raging at the left of the stage, it was impossible for the professor to finish his speech.
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