“You spics are stealing our jobs!” the man bawled. “We don't need none of you in office!” He brought his laser to bear on me and pulled the trigger.
I was already flying out of my chair, the recoil sending it toppling backward, my military reflexes operating. Spirit, too, was diving away. But I saw, as if it were in slow motion, that Megan did not understand. She was standing stock-still, gazing at the worker.
The first bolt seared into the floor where my chair had been. I veered around to charge the man from the side, and Spirit moved in from his other side. But it would take us seconds to reach him. Already he was striding up past Thorley.
The Saxon worker's face fastened on Megan. “And we don't need no spic-lovers, neither!” he cried, and swung the laser to bear on her.
“Get out of there, Megan!” I cried, but still she stood. Maybe she didn't believe she could actually be a physical target; it was foreign to all her experience.
The man pulled the trigger just as Thorley launched himself from his chair. The deadly beam sizzled out and was muffled by Thorley's body. Steam spread out, and in a moment the horrible odor of fried flesh developed.
In another moment I reached the scene. As Thorley fell to the floor I got my hands on the worker's arm.
I locked it in, neutralizing the laser, and ducked down to haul him over my shoulder in a judo throw, Ippon seoi nage . He rolled over me and landed hard on the floor beyond, the air whooshing out of his body. The laser tool fell free. The man had the fight knocked out of him; he would be no further trouble even if no bones were broken.
I kneeled beside Thorley. He was curled up in agony, trying to grip his left leg. The laser beam had seared into his thigh. I saw at a glance that it was not a lethal wound but was certainly a hellishly painful one. It could cost him his leg if a key nerve had been burned out.
There were more urgent things to do at this moment, as the hall erupted into pandemonium. Thorley needed immediate medical attention, we needed the police to take charge of the murderous worker, and I had to get Megan away from this place before she went into shock. But for the moment all that was closed out, pushed back into the background of my awareness. It was as if only the two of us existed.
“Thorley,” I said. “Why did you intercede?”
His pain-glazed eyes focused briefly on me. “I don't believe,” he gasped, “in assassination. Not even of liberals.”
I had to smile grimly. “How can I repay you?”
“Just... keep the press... free,” he whispered, and passed out.
“Always!” I swore to his unconscious body.
Then the planet resumed its motion. Things were happening all around us. I looked up and saw Spirit, who was bringing heavy bandages, knowing that prompt attention to the wound was essential. All officers in the Navy had paramedic training; she knew what to do.
“Spirit,” I said. “Take care of this man.”
She nodded. She worked efficiently, cutting away his burned trouser leg, applying the bandages to the seared flesh. No cauterization was required; laser wounds are already cauterized. It was only necessary to protect the surrounding flesh.
When the medics came for him with the stretcher, Spirit went with them. “His cat!” I called after her, and she nodded again. Thorley would be in competent hands.
I put my arm around Megan, who was shivering with reaction. She had never seen physical violence like this before; it was a shock that could send her into trauma. I had to take care of her.
I can't say that it makes much logical sense, but that was the turning point of the campaign. Photographs appeared on the front page of the newspaper: the angry worker charging out of the audience; Spirit and I jumping out of the way; Megan standing astonished; Thorley intercepting the laser beam; the worker flying over my shoulder; Spirit bandaging Thorley. The photographer, a professional in his own specialty, had gotten it all, in marvelously clear pictures. No written story was even needed. It was obvious that Spirit and I had acted with dispatch, but that Megan and at least one of us would have been caught by that laser if Thorley hadn't acted.
Thorley was a hero, but I got the votes. Perhaps it was sympathy for my close call. Maybe the voters thought that anyone worth assassinating was worth electing. Most likely, it was merely the impact of notoriety. I won the election by a comfortable margin, unseating the incumbent, who really had had nothing to do with any of this. He was a victim of peculiar circumstances. Of such flukes is politics made.
But I felt little sympathy for him. Had he done the decent thing and agreed to debate me, none of this might have occurred.
The event made national news, because I was a former Navy hero and also one of the few Hispanics to win office anywhere. Thorley got less press on the national scene, but there was no question about the enhancement the event brought him. He was now newsworthy in his own right, the conservative who had risked his life to save that of the liberal he was debating. He became the symbol of the saying “I disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” He was promoted and became a popular local speaker after his recovery.
Spirit was away from me much of the time, in the first days after the event, seeing to it that Thorley was taken care of. She arranged for his cat to be cared for, his plants watered, and she made sure his hospitalization was expedient. He was confined only briefly before going home. His insurance did not cover the cost of a registered nurse, but Spirit arranged for that, too, while his wife remained absent. A competent Hispanic boy stayed with him, handling his routine. Thorley was not generally kind to Hispanics as a class, in print, but he had no personal animus. It was that he felt too many of them were illegal immigrants from Redspot, where they forged across the sparsely guarded border, and too many did not bother to learn English, complicating things, and too many of their children were burdening the school system. But it seemed that he had no trouble accepting a Hispanic male nurse and houseboy.
Certainly he never expressed objection.
“Whom did you appoint?” I asked Spirit when I saw her again.
“Sancho,” she said.
I was taken aback. Sancho was a very special person, who lacked legal status on Jupiter. “Are you sure that's wise?”
She grimaced. “It's necessary. We can afford him.”
It was true that our finances were limited, and Sancho was as cheap as it was possible to get. I shrugged, refusing to interfere. “He can certainly do the job—if no one suspects.”
“No one will.”
“ Thorley will! That man is no fool!”
“Thorley knows,” she said, meeting my gaze.
I made a motion as of washing my hands. “It is your affair, Spirit.”
She smiled obscurely. We did not speak of that matter again.
Megan, stunned by the violence, soon recovered. “I can appreciate the advantage of military reflexes,”
she remarked. “You and your sister moved like lightning while I stood dazed.”
“But it was Thorley who saved you,” I reminded her. “He's no military man.”
“True. I must call and thank him.”
“After he recovers,” I suggested, knowing that she would indeed call.
“After he recovers,” she agreed. “But I do understand correctly that you have arranged for an illegal immigrant to care for him in the interim?”
“Not exactly,” I said. I explained about Sancho, for I kept no secrets from her.
She pursed her lips and nodded thoughtfully. “Certainly it is not my prerogative to interfere.” Then, after a moment: “Hope, I am especially vulnerable right now. I wonder whether you—” She did not finish.
She was speaking her special language again. We had replaced our twin beds with a double bed and slept holding hands, but it had not gone beyond that. Now she was suggesting that it should.
It did seem to be time. Gently I led her to that bed, turned out the lights, and took off her clothes and mine. I did not handle her; she was not yet ready for that. I lay on the bed with her and took her in my arms and kissed her, and slowly and delicately made love to her for the first time. It was not anything spectacular in the physical sense; my overwhelming concern was that I not hurt her in any way. I had to climax; she expected that of me, to show that the experience was genuine. But I did not attempt to bring her to climax; that would come another time. It was enough for her to have completed the act without trauma. In that I believe we were successful.
Perhaps it seems I was indifferent to her satisfaction. In fairness to myself I must say that this was not so.
I cared very much for her need, but on this occasion that need was not for sexual gratification. It was for that minimal degree of interaction that qualified as complete consummation of our marriage. She was too disturbed to enjoy it physically, and would, ironically, have felt guilty if she had enjoyed it. In her archaic lexicon of romance, which she knew to be dated but which remained in her deepest nature, sex was a thing the cultured woman submitted to as an unfortunate necessity, never for pleasure. Her sole satisfaction was supposed to be in the satisfaction of her man and in the effort to beget offspring. Megan was beyond the latter stage, having had the decycling treatment before I came to her, so only the former remained. Now she had tolerated my ultimate familiarity; the worst was over, and in the future she should be able to relax and participate more fully. I looked forward to that occasion. I remembered how it had been with Juana, my first Navy roommate; a wonderful woman but never comfortable with the sexual act.
The Navy had required performance of male and female, so she had obliged—in much the way Megan had. A man who judges a woman solely by her sexual performance is a fool.
When it was done, Megan kissed me more in relief than in passion. “Thank you, Hope,” she murmured.
“You are very understanding.”
“I love you,” I said. This had nothing to do with sex, and she knew it. She took my hand again and squeezed it, and I brought her fingers to my lips and kissed them. In this gesture I was perhaps being more intimate than I had been before, because I was showing genuine affection. The body of any woman may be taken by guile or force but never her love.
“Would you mind very much if I cried?” she inquired.
“I would consider it an honor.”
She set her head against my shoulder and sobbed, delicately, for several minutes. I stroked her hair.
After a time she fell asleep. I thought of Helse, my first love, and knew that however different these two women were in most matters, they were similar in this: Love, and the expression of it, came hard to them.
Helse had had absolutely no trouble physically but had been unable for a long time to tell me that she loved me; Megan had not done it yet. That was part of what caused me to love each of them—make of that what you will.
I do learn from experience. I had supposed that I had put physical violence behind me when I left the Navy, but obviously that was not the case. I believed that Spirit and I could take care of ourselves, but when a laser was as apt to be trained on Megan as on us, I got nervous. So I set about hiring a bodyguard. “Find me some candidates,” I told Shelia. “Winnow them down to the probables and let me know.”
“Got it, boss,” she said. Shelia still looked young and frail in her wheelchair, but that was deceptive. She had kept her head during the assassination-attempt crisis and had summoned the police and ambulance, though the experience must have brought most unpleasant associations to her. Now she was glad to get on this assignment.
“We could use a gofer, too,” Megan said.
“A gofer?”
“Gofer. A person to run errands,” she explained.
“Got it, Megan,” Shelia said.
“Why do you call her by name and not me?” I inquired.
“The distaff hath its privileges,” Shelia replied, and went to her communications.
The gofer was easy to find: Shelia sent the first applicant on to me. She was a Black woman named Ebony, about thirty, without distinguishing features.
“That name—isn't it unkind?” I asked, nonplussed.
“Nickname that stuck,” she explained, evidently used to this. “In the flux of the reintegration of schools I got shipped to a mostly Saxon nursery school, and I was twice as dark as anyone else there, so they called me Ebony, and I stayed with it.”
“You are aware that this is a rather simple, low-paying job?” I inquired. “You will simply run errands for others?”
“That's what I'm good at,” she said.
I found no fault with her; she was honest and interested in doing a good job, simple as that job might be.
She had accurately assessed her prospects and capabilities and knew that she would never be a top executive or policy-maker; she was good at following simple directions and satisfied to do that all her life.
What she wanted most was the security of a regular job, one that she understood.
There really wasn't any problem; I hired her.
The other was more complicated. For a bodyguard I needed a man I could trust with my life, and that was not a casual thing. It wasn't just a matter of skill or trust; I had to be sure that he knew how to ferret out the threats before they materialized, and distinguish real from false. We found a number of highly trained martial artists, but some were unprincipled and others were unsubtle. For a politician needs not only to protect himself physically but also to protect his image. If my bodyguard attacked a man who turned out to be innocent, my career could suffer. Discretion and finesse were vital. Far better to nullify a killer by applying a subtle come-along grip and marching him quietly to the police than to have a blazing brawl that might damage bystanders. I had known people in the Navy who qualified, but this was not the Navy. So the search continued, fruitlessly.
One day a young Mongol woman called for an appointment, wishing to talk to me personally. She said she sought employment and was qualified. Shelia tried to explain that we already had hired our gofer, and in any event there was a language handicap, for the woman was a refugee from Saturn and spoke English poorly. But she would not take no for an answer; she believed that everything would be all right if she could just meet me directly.
At last Shelia buzzed me. “Senator, if you could make a few minutes for Miss Coral—” She knew I could, as she maintained an iron grip on my schedule; at the moment I was researching a routine piece of legislation, doing my homework before deciding my position. She knew I had a way with people, and this was called for now.
So Coral was admitted to my private office. I could tell immediately that she was far more potent as a person than she looked; her motions were precise and her expression sure. She was a petite, black-haired, olive-skinned woman whose figure, while not voluptuous, was remarkably apt; she could be a beauty of her race—or any race—if she wished. But she did not wish; her simple trousers and long-sleeved jacket deemphasized her attributes, and her hair was cut almost masculinely short.
“Coral,” I said, wishing to feel her out before committing myself to any further impressions. “That is not a Saturnine name.”
“Name-translation,” she said, her words accented. “Pretty snake-poison.”
“The coral snake,” I agreed. “Loveliest and most deadly reptile in the zoo.”
“Yes. For job.”
Suddenly it clicked. She meant the bodyguard! I had never thought of a woman, but of course, it was possible. “You know martial arts?”
She nodded curtly.
I kept a rubber knife in my desk, a memento of Navy days. I brought it out, flexed it to show its nature, and circled my desk. Suddenly I charged her, knife stabbing.
She caught my arm in an aikido hold that caused me to pause and drop the knife. So I closed my left hand into a fist and moved it toward her pert Oriental nose. Her free hand intercepted mine, deflected it, and her fingers seemed only to touch my forearm. Suddenly my arm was numb.
I was now standing behind her, one arm trapped, the other numb. I raised a knee, slowly, as if to ram her in the back. She twisted around, caught my standing foot with her own, and laid me gently on the floor.
It wasn't just the fact that she had countered my moves; it was the way she had done it. I had made my moves deliberately, inviting the appropriate counters. I am versed in judo, aikido, and karate, and can tell the competence of an opponent almost immediately. Coral was black-belt level in any of these and, despite her smaller size, could probably have taken me in an honest match.
But I needed more than this. I got up and returned to my desk, flexing my arm to restore sensation while she remained where she was. “Suppose that door,” I said, gesturing to one across the room, “is a man with drawn laser, about to shoot.”
Coral's arm hardly seemed to move, but something flashed through the air and smacked into the door at head level. It hung there, a bright little metal star, one point lodged in the door. “Shuriken,” she said.
“Shuriken,” I agreed. It was one of the throwing-knife type weapons of the ancient Earthly ninjas, or secret warriors.
“But if I want merely to disarm, not to hurt—” Her arm moved again. This time a little whirling thing flew, with extended weighted threads. It wrapped around the shuriken and carried it to the floor, entangled.
Impressive indeed! “Suppose we suspect a concealed ambush, in a crowd, and want no disturbance?”
Coral smiled. “You buy X ray, computer, red-beam?” The so-called X rays were no longer used, being hazardous to human tissues, but I knew what she meant: a device that used radiation in radarlike fashion, with computerized image-tracking. We had such equipment in the Navy, to locate all metals in the vicinity and distinguish what belonged from what did not. In this fashion the metal components of a laser pistol could be distinguished from those of a news camera, even if the laser parts were built into the camera.