Part 4 (1/2)
Torrey looked up at him this time, almost in defiance.
”Yes.” Grant sat again. ”Well, Sharon, as long as you're home for the evening, I wish you'd speak to Hapwood about Prince Bismark. I do not think the animal is prop- erly fed.”
”You mean right now?” she asked. She tightened her small mouth into a pout.
”Really, Daddy, this is Victorian! Sending me out of the room while you talk to my fiancee!”
”Yes, it is, isn't it?” Grant said nothing else, and finally she turned away.
Then: ”Don't let him frighten you, Allan. He's about as dangerous as that-as that moosehead in the trophy room!” She fled before there could be any reply.
IV
They sat awkwardly. Grant left his desk to sit near the fire with Torrey. Drinks, offer of a smoke, all the usual amenities-he did them all; but finally Hapwood had brought their refreshments and the door was closed.
”All right, Allan,” John Grant began. ”Let us be trite and get it over with. How do you intend to support her?”
Torrey looked straight at him this time. His eyes danced with what Grant was certain was concealed amus.e.m.e.nt. ”I expect to be appointed to a good post in the Department of the Interior. I'm a trained engineer.”
”Interior?” Grant thought for a second. The answer surprised him-he hadn't thought the boy was another office seeker. ”I suppose it can be arranged.”
Torrey grinned. It was an infectious grin, and Grant liked it. ”Well, sir, it's already arranged. I wasn't asking for a job.”
”Oh?” Grant shrugged. ”I hadn't heard.”
”Deputy a.s.sistant Secretary for Natural Resources. I took a master's in ecology.”
”That's interesting, but I would have thought I'd have heard of your coming appointment.”
”It won't be official yet, sir. Not until Mr. Bertram is elected President. For the moment I'm on his staff.” The grin was still there, and it was friendly, not hostile. The boy thought politics was a game. He wanted to win, but it was only a game.
And he's seen real polls, Grant thought. ”Just what do you do for Mr. Bertram, then?”
Allan shrugged. ”Write speeches, carry the mail, run the Xerox-you've been in campaign headquarters. I'm the guy who gets the jobs no one else wants.”
Grant laughed. ”I did start as a gopher, but I soon hired my own out of what I once contributed to the Party. They did not try that trick again with me. I don't suppose that course is open to you.”
”No, sir. My father's a taxpayer, but paying taxes is pretty tough just now-”
”Yes.” Well, at least he wasn't from a Citizen family. Grant would learn the details from Ackridge tomorrow, for now the important thing was to get to know the boy.
It was difficult. Allan was frank and relaxed, and Grant was pleased to see that he refused a third drink, but there was little to talk about. Torrey had no conception of the realities of politics. He was one of Bertram's child crusaders, and he was out to save the United States from people like John Grant, although he was too polite to say so.
And I was once that young, Grant thought. I wanted to save the world, but it was so different then. No one wanted to end the CoDominium when I was young. We were too happy to have the Second Cold War over with. What happened to the great sense of relief when we could stop worrying about atomic wars? When I was young that was all we thought of, that we would be the last generation. Now they take it for granted that we'll have peace forever. Is peace such a little thing?
”There's so much to do,” Torrey was saying. ”The Baja Project, thermal pollution of the Sea of Cortez. They're killing off a whole ecology just to create estates for the taxpayers.
”I know it isn't your department, sir, you probably don't even know what they're doing. But Lips...o...b..has been in office too long! Corruption, special interests, it's time we had a genuine two-party system again instead of things going back and forth between the wings of Unity. It's time for a change, and Mr. Bertram's the right man, I know he is.”
Grant's smile was thin, but he managed it. ”You'll hardly expect me to agree with you,” Grant said.
”No, sir.”
Grant sighed. ”But perhaps you're right at that. I must say I wouldn't mind retiring, so that I could live in this house instead of merely visiting it on weekends.”
What was the point? Grant wondered. He'd never convince this boy, and Sharon wanted him. Torrey would drop Bertram after the scandals broke.
And what explanations were there anyway? The Baja Project was developed to aid a syndicate of taxpayers in the six states of the old former Republic of Mexico. The Government needed them, and they didn't care about whales and fish. Short-sighted, yes, and Grant had tried to argue them into changing the project, but they wouldn't, and politics is the art of the possible.
Finally, painfully, the interview, ended. Sharon came in, grinning sheepishly because she was engaged to one of Bertram's people, but she understood that no better than Allan Torrey. It was only a game. Bertram would win and Grant would retire, and no one would be hurt.
How could he tell them that it didn't work that way any longer? Unity wasn't the cleanest party in the world, but at least it had no fanatics-and all over the world the causes were rising again. The Friends of the People were on the move, and it had all happened before, it was all told time and again in those aseptically clean books on the shelves above him.
BERTRAM AIDES ARRESTED BY INTERCONTINENTAL BUREAU OF.
INVESTIGATION!! IBI RAIDS SECRET WEAPONS CACHE IN BERTRAM.
HEADQUARTERS. NUCLEAR WEAPONS HINTED!!!.
Chicago, May 15, (UPI)-IBI agents here have arrested five top aides to Senator Harvey Bertram in what government officials call one of the most despicable plots ever discovered....
Grant read the transcript on his desk screen without satisfaction. It had all gone according to plan, and there was nothing left to do, but he hated it.
At least it was clean. The evidence was there. Bertram's people could have their trial, challenge jurors, challenge judges. The Government would waive its rights under the Thirty-first Amendment and let the case be tried under the old adversary rules. It wouldn't matter.
Then he read the small type below. ”Arrested were Grigory Kalamintor, nineteen, press secretary to Bertram; Timothy Giordano, twenty-two, secretary; Allan Torrey, twenty-two, executive a.s.sistant-” The page blurred, and Grant dropped his face into his hands.
”My G.o.d, what have we done?”
He hadn't moved when Miss, Ackridge buzzed. ”Your daughter on four, sir. She seems upset.”
”Yes.” Grant punched savagely at the b.u.t.ton. Sharon's face swam into view. Her makeup was ruined by long streaks of tears. She looked older, much like her mother during one of their- ”Daddy! They've arrested Allan! And I know it isn't true, he wouldn't have anything to do with nuclear weapons! A lot of Mr. Bertram's people said there would never be an honest election in this country. They said John Grant would see to that! I told him they were wrong, but they weren't, were they? You've done this to stop the election, haven't you?”
There was nothing to say because she was right. But who might be listening? ”I don't know what you're talking about. I've only seen the Tri-V casts about Allan's arrest, nothing more. Come home, kitten, and we'll talk about it.”
”Oh no! You're not getting me where Dr. Pollard can give me a nice friendly little shot and make me forget about Allan! No! I'm staying with my friends, and I won't be home, Daddy. And when I go to the newspapers, I think they'll listen to me. I don't know what to tell them yet, but I'm sure Mr. Bertram's people will think of something.
How do you like that, Mr. G.o.d?”
”Anything you tell the press will be lies, Sharon. You know nothing.” One of his a.s.sistants had come in and now left the office.
”Lies? Where did I learn to lie?” The screen went blank.
And is it that thin? he wondered. All the trust and love, could it vanish that fast, was it that thin?
”Sir?” It was Hartman, his a.s.sistant.