“I thought you were for them last night.”
“I’m not for them or against them. I don’t give one ice-cube in hell about them or their lousy island. All I care about is the Governor’s future.”
A girl from the secretariat brought them two copies of the Xeroxed statement.
As Tash read, she herself was now surprised to see how her Barloventan researches that had taken her so many hours of tedious work were now reduced to a few brisk sentences without losing anything essential.
Job looked up from the text. “Well?”
Tash spoke cautiously. “I think it’s quite good.”
“Good? It’s terrific! The delivery time is right, too. It takes Jerry about two minutes to read a page of twenty-five lines aloud, so twelve pages will take him about twenty-four minutes.”
“Is he going to read this?”
“Yes, but the television audience won’t know it. He’ll have the script on the desk in front of him, below the camera, where the audience can’t see it, but he can glance down at it whenever he wants to. He’s practised that until it looks as if he wasn’t reading at all.”
“Do you think this will change opinion in the legislature?”
“Probably not. A good speech will change a politician’s mind, but not his vote. We’re aiming to change voters’ opinions. Then the legislators will have to follow suit, or lose votes.” Job looked at his watch. “Nearly seven. Want to go up to the Octagonal Room or shall we watch here?”
“Wouldn’t we just be in the way up there?”
“Probably.”
“Then let’s watch it here.”
Men and women from research and secretariat were drifting into the mess hall to hear the speech. Job went to the TV set and turned knobs until there was a flash of the state flag on screen and a voice from off screen intoned:
“His Excellency, the Governor of—”
Burst of static.
Job swore and fiddled with the volume button. Tash remembered that only two other states in the Union—Massachusetts and New Hampshire—still used a form of address inherited from colonial governors: Your Excellency.
Jeremy’s face came on screen. He looked tired, but there was still the irrepressible glint in his eyes that seemed to say: I refuse to take anything in this cockeyed world seriously.
He was upstairs in the Octagonal Room sitting at his own desk, which someone had stripped of its usual clutter.
Tash felt like a split personality as she listened to her own words in this other voice, clear, strong, masculine. Every time the small audience laughed or clapped she felt a surge of pride.
Job seemed to have the same feeling. “No last minute changes so far,” he whispered. “You and I did a good job.” He looked at his wristwatch. “Twenty-two and a half minutes gone and half a page to go. Right on the nose.”
He touched his finger to his own nose in the immemorial radio-television gesture, and then gasped: “Oops! What’s up?”
The camera had not shifted, but Carlos had stepped into its view on screen. He stood behind Jeremy’s chair, a little to Jeremy’s right. He looked the ideal aide-de-camp, deferential but self-respecting, as he leaned forward to slide a piece of paper into Jeremy’s right hand.
Carlos stepped back. Once more Jeremy was alone on screen. He glanced down at the paper, then lifted his eyes with a smile.
It was not a political smile, muscular and self-conscious. It was a spontaneous, almost boyish grin which made it hard to realize he was smiling at an audience he could not see. There was real joy in his voice as he ignored the last page of his script and improvised his final words.
“And now I must ask you to excuse me. I have important things to do. The strike has been settled.”
Another flash of the state flag on screen blotted out his face and there was a burst of martial music. No one paid any attention to the music or to the news commentator’s voice that followed it. Everyone in the room was clapping and crowding around Job, the only member of the state government present.
As soon as he could get away, he and Tash hurried upstairs.
“Jeremy has a sense of the dramatic,” she said.
“You’re a dead duck if you don’t,” retorted Job. “Of course that dirty rag, the Morning Globe, will try to make it sound as if Jeremy knew all about this settlement before he went on the air and arranged for Carlos to pass him that note to make the announcement dramatic, but you and I know that isn’t true. Jeremy doesn’t plan things. They just happen to him because he has luck, and then, naturally, he always rises to the occasion.”
By the time they got up to the Octagonal Room, Jeremy had left with Carlos for a final meeting with the Barloventan exiles, who were now accusing him of “betraying” them by settling the strike.
Hilary took them down to the Florida Room to wait for Jeremy.
“I want to tell him that Vivian was delighted with the speech,” she said.
“Isn’t she sitting up for him?” asked Job.
“No. She must get to sleep early. Doctor’s orders.”
It was after ten when Jeremy and Carlos arrived. Then there were drinks and cold meats and salads, congratulations and post-mortems and projections of the future.
It isn’t a party, thought Tash. It’s the celebration of a clan victory.
For the first time she realized that the people to whom you become attached in life are not those with whom you share pleasure, but those with whom you share work and pain, risk and responsibility.
At midnight Jeremy said: “I think it’s time we broke this up. Hilary, thank you for all you’ve done.” He kissed her lightly and sexlessly on one cheek. “And thank you, too, Tash.” He kissed her cheek just as lightly, just as sexlessly. “Good night. Sogni d’oro!”
Upstairs, Tash and Hilary parted company at Hilary’s door and Tash went on down the corridor to her own rooms.
Inside, she closed the door, but she did not turn on a light. She went out on
