“Yessir,” he said. “That is just what I'm going to do.”
“Because acting without a memory, acting like that pilot, I can get everyone killed, is that it?”
Smith nodded. He swallowed.
“Yeah. I suppose that's the right move. They told me when I took over this office you always made the right move. That's what my predecessor said. Well, let me suggest this. You send Chiun after those two, and if I show any signs of being afflicted, you shoot me. Right in the head. Don't let me do to this country what the pilot did to that plane.”
“Can't do that, sir.”
“Why not?”
“Because I couldn't pull the trigger, sir. And since it is all out, let me say that Chiun can kill you in a way no one would know wasn't an accident or even a heart seizure.”
“Okay,” said the President. “You and Chiun stay here. But how do you know when you come in again I won't lie and say I'm feeling fine just so he won't kill me?”
“You'd have to remember for that,” said Smith.
“You certainly do make the right moves, Mr. Smith.”
“Yessir,” said Smith, and disappeared behind a door, only to come out a half-hour later while the President was speaking to several senators about his bill to put greater penalties on frauds in religious cults.
“Absolutely fine,” said the President with a courageous smile.
“Yessir,” said Smith, and shut the door.
“Who was that?” asked a senator.
“Just a new secretary,” said the President.
Chapter 12
It was the largest oil tanker ever built. Her hold could keep a city lighted and warm for a winter. The belly in the
The oil disgorged while cleaning her tanks could tar fifteen miles of modern highway. So dangerous would a spill be that international law prescribed her route, and both American and Russian submarines would break radio silence to identify and chart icebergs that might be in her way.
She was built by an Arab prince at the height of Arab oil power, despite warnings from advisers that so much oil in one place would be a danger to the entire world. In its full belly was more wealth than most Third World nations possessed, and its construction cost more than the gross national product of all but three African nations.
When she was done, only three ports in the world could handle her, and despite the danger of her spills or threats from one nation or another, no one could afford not to use her anymore. Too much money had gone into building her to have her be idle. Dockage cost two million dollars a day. Her insurance premiums were so vast that her government underwrote them.
When she lumbered across the Atlantic, crewmen competed in long-distance runs across her deck. It took her fifteen minutes to build up cruising speed and thirty miles to stop.
Only one pilot was allowed to guide her in, and he was flown out to the ship with his crew ten days before the vast island prepared to dock.
“So you're back. I thought you went down to the Bahamas for some crazy religious convention,” said the harbor pilot as his junior mate climbed aboard the seaplane at their Bayonne dock.
“It's not crazy,” said the junior mate. “It's a way of life. It's a religion. Like any other religion.”
The harbor pilot was in his early sixties, with light gray hair and alert blue eyes. He was in better shape physically than his junior mate, who was in his twenties.
The harbor pilot, Cal Peters, strapped his seat belt and glanced over to the junior mate to do the same to his. Peters knew the lad was a good boy, always a hard worker, but he tended to worry too much. He had often told the boy to “care about what you do, but don't worry about it. Worry won't help you do spit.”
He thought the boy was taking his advice when he seemed to be worrying less. Of course the junior mate also seemed to be without enough money for lunch at the time, and Peters asked him what was wrong. If anyone on his harbor crew had problems he wanted to know about it before they cropped up while guiding some city-size tanker into dock.
He found out then about Poweressence.
“Son,” said Peters, “I don't interfere with any man's religion. How he comes to God is his business. But those people are frauds.”
“They called Jesus a fraud too, in his time,” said the junior mate. His name was Arthur, and he had graduated from the Coast Guard Academy, served his time, and come to work for the harbor commission right after.
“But Jesus didn't have a moneymaking operation.”
“What do you call the Vatican, the poorhouse?”
“But the Catholic Church provides hospitals and schools. Poweressence only seems to be more expensive for every class you go to.”
“They aren't classes. They're levels. If you joined, you would see. Your life would enhance itself. You would be happy all the time,” said Arthur.
“Son,” Peters told Arthur, “the day I am happy all the time is the day I commit myself to a sanitarium.”
“Happiness is what we are supposed to have. The negative forces have convinced you to be this way.”
No matter how Cal Peters tried to reason with the young man, Arthur always seemed to have an answer. And then one day he disappeared, saying he was following his better self, and then just as mysteriously he returned. Cal almost refused to let him back on the harbor crew. Except that Peters liked the boy. And against what he thought at the time was his better judgment, he took him back on.
“Don't go running off again unless you give me plenty of warning. We run a harbor-pilot service here, not some street-corner pencil stand. We have major ships coming in. And the
“That was the last time,” Arthur promised.
It was a small plane, but Cal Peters liked small planes. It gave him a better sense of the wind and the sea as they flew out to the
“What did they have to do down there in the Bahamas anyway? I hear there's trouble down there. A rebellion, sort of.”
“It's always called trouble when people want to be free,” said Arthur. “When people are tired of taking it anymore. When people are ready to fight to preserve what is holy and good.”
“So you're a revolutionary now, is that it?” asked Peters.
“The only revolution I want is within myself.”
“Just what did you do down there?”
“I learned to love what was good and hate what was bad.”
“And who was doing the deciding what was good and what was bad?”
“It was obvious,” said Arthur. He kept his eyes fixed ahead of him, into the clouds. In the small plane they could see right over the pilot's shoulder at the front windshield. They could feel the vibrations of the engines in their seats.
“Well then, you're one step up on me, son, because the older I get, the less obvious things seem.”
“If you get rid of your negative impulses, everything will be obvious.”
“What a damned dull world that would be,” said Peters. The aircraft pilot laughed. The rest of the crew laughed. Only when the great
