“It’s doomed to failure, you cloddies! Why do you think I’ve been acting the traitor for these past months? It’s not just Betastan. Don’t you realize that if this war is lost, the whole planet eventually comes under the domination of Number One?”
She raised her eyebrows at him. “The war isn’t lost.”
He gave up.
He looked about the small store in despair. Finally he said, “You know, Till, I’ve sometimes wondered how you manage to transmit the information I’ve been giving you. I’ve known you for five years. For two of these I’ve known you to be connected with Betastan espionage. For the past eight months I’ve been feeding you the innermost secrets of Number One’s private sessions with his deputies and closest coaids.”
She tinkled laughter, but he went on, his forehead wrinkled. “I’ve gone to the trouble of checking out some of the methods our Commissariat of Surety uses to intercept espionage messages, and they’re elaborate far beyond my first conception. Why, Deputy Mark Fielder has more computers devoted to that problem alone than I have in my whole commissariat.”
Tilly Trice wickedly said, “I shouldn’t trust you with this, Rossie, since you’re not very good at keeping secrets. However”—she reached down and picked up a card from her desk—“I just mail a postcard through your post office.”
Chapter II
The Presidor of the Free Democratic Commonwealth of Alphaland—known as Number One throughout the hierarchy—relaxed once he had passed through the doors of his private chambers. Perhaps slumped would have been the better term.
He headed for the moderately large living room which was his true home, and for the bar which sat in the corner there.
“This early in the day?” a voice said gently.
Pater Riggin sat in a leather armchair near the fireplace. He had evidently turned the thermostat down to the point where a fire was desirable. It was, Number One thought wryly, perhaps his lifelong friend’s sole indulgence, sitting before the embers of a primitive blaze.
He spoke from the bar, even as he poured a double shotglass of Metaxa, imported from far Earth. “I sometimes wonder at the advisability of my having given you a key to my rooms. Sooner or later, in one of your typically absentminded moments, you’ll either lose it, or, in one of your more idealistic spells, you’ll decide that the Presidor of Alphaland has at long last become redundant and hand the key over to one of my none too few political opponents.”
The Temple Monk closed the age-flimsy book he had been reading, but held the place with his right forefinger.
He said mildly, “The first is an admitted possibility. But who would know, upon finding it, that the ultra- remote Number One…”
“Don’t call me that, Rig.”
“… excuse me, utilized a device as anachronistic as a lock and key to protect himself? In the second case, I am not a believer in the theory that displacing a dictator ends dictatorship. It merely opens the way to a different dictator, who may well be worse than the one just, eh, liquidated.”
Number One brought his glass back to the fire and slumped into the chair across from his friend. He swallowed a larger amount than was his wont, in a gulp.
“So,” he said, “you think you’d might as well support me.”
The Temple Monk shook his head and sighed, patting his rounded tummy. “Only insofar as I have always supported you, Jim.”
Number One twisted his mouth. “Mark Fielder sent me a report last week which revealed that out in the boonies the common man thinks of you as my alter ego. Sort of a Svengali. When something goes more than ordinarily wrong in Alphaland, that curd of a Temple Monk is behind it.”
Softly, Pater Riggin said, “And what was our good Deputy of Surety’s suggestion?”
“That we shoot you, of course, and satisfy the yokes. They evidently could use a bit of satisfying these days.”
Number One finished his Greek brandy and set the glass on a low table. Instead of immediately sinking back into his chair, he took up a stogie from a humidor. He selected an ancient style match, struck it under the table top, and drew smoke into his mouth and nasal passages.
Pater Riggin had never quite become used to the other’s vice. Somehow, it didn’t seem the thing that one would do, even before one’s closest friend. He looked half away, not noting his companion’s cynical expression.
Even Pater Riggin, Number One suspected, in his secret heart desired the Presidor of the Free Democratic Commonwealth to be a literal, rather than a propaganda, perfect man. He wondered, on occasion, what would happen if at this point in life he took a younger woman in marriage. Would the ultimate reaction lead to his overthrow, in this hypocritical society? He doubted if more than one person in ten among the citizenry realized that he had been married in his early years and that his wife had died on the barricades that accompanied his coming to power. It had been a long time ago, a very long time ago. And now the people thought him a lifelong abstainer from sex, as from every mundane pleasure. Inwardly, he snorted.
“What was decided at the session today, Jim?” the Temple Monk asked.
The other’s eyes narrowed infinitesimally. “How did you know there was a session of the inmost staff, Rig? That’s strictly surety information.”
The slightly older man laughed gently. “I have known you for, let me see, is it fifty years, or fifty-five, Jim? I would warrant that ten minutes ago you were with your closest advisers and that you didn’t like what developed.”
Number One exhaled smoke through his nostrils. Abruptly he said, “Graves gave his final report. The computers say the war would be over in less than three months. We would take about 330,000 casualties, of which some 18,000 would be deaths.”
“I see. And how many would the defenders of Betastan lose?”
“I didn’t ask.”
“You should have,” the Temple Monk said softly.
“Not before such Coaids as Marshal Croft-Gordon and our Surety bloodhound, Mark Fielder. It would be interpreted as an unbelievable weakness in a Presidor.”
Pater Riggin looked at him thoughtfully. “I can anticipate what most of them reported and recommended, Jim. Were any at all in opposition?”
“Ross, perhaps.”
“Franklin’s boy, eh? And what was our Deputy of Propaganda’s position?”
“He thought we were going to have our work cut out selling an aggressive war not only to the neutrals but to our own people. He thinks it all comes too soon after the civil war Max precipitated.”
The Temple Monk shook his head, weariness there. “Would that he were right.”
Number One looked at him, saying nothing.
The Temple Monk opened the book at the page he had been perusing. “Jim, have you ever heard of a writer named Mark Twain?”
“I don’t believe so.”
“Early Earth. Many an unthinking person, seeing only his surface, thought him a humorist. Basically, he wasn’t. He was an idealist and crusader who died a very bitter man. Listen to this.” He read.
“’The loud little handful—as usual—will shout for the war. The pulpit will—warily and cautiously—object—at first; the great, big, dull bulk of the nation will rub its sleepy eyes and try to make out why there should be a war, and will say, earnestly and indignantly,
