-Chief?”
“Certainly.”
I sat and thought about it for several minutes. I was sorry that I had let Corpsman provoke me even into such a mild exchange; it lacked dignity. But I reviewed it in my mind and assured myself that my personal differences with Corpsman had not affected my decision; my mind had been made up before he appeared.
A sharp knock came at the door. I called out, “Who is it?”
“Captain Broadbent.”
“Come in, Dak.”
He did so, sat down, and for some minutes seemed interested only in pulling hangnails. Finally he looked up and said, “Would it change your mind if I slapped the blighter in the brig?”
“Eh? Do you have a brig in the ship?”
“No. But it would not be hard to jury-rig one.”
I looked at him sharply, trying to figure what went on inside that bony head. “Would you actually put Bill in the brig if I asked for it?”
He looked up, cocked a brow, and grinned wryly. “No. A man doesn’t get to be a captain operating on any such basis as that. I would not take that sort of order even from him.” He inclined his head toward the room Bonforte was in. “Certain decisions a man must make himself.”
“That’s right.”
“Mmm-I hear you’ve made one of that sort.”
“That’s right.”
“So. I’ve come to have a lot of respect for you, old son. First met you, I figured you for a clotheshorse and a facemaker, with nothing inside. I was wrong.”
“Thank you.”
“So I won’t plead with you. Just tell me: is it worth our time to discuss the factors? Have you given it plenty of thought?”
“My mind is made up, Dak. This isn’t my pidgin.”
“Well, perhaps you’re right. I’m sorry. I guess we’ll just have to hope he pulls out of it in time.” He stood up. “By the way, Penny would like to see you, if you aren’t going to turn in again this minute.”
I laughed without pleasure. “Just ‘by the way,’ eh? Is this the proper sequence? Isn’t it Dr. Capek’s turn to try to twist my arm?”
“He skipped his turn; he’s busy with Mr. B. He sent you a message, though.”
“He said you could go to hell. Embroidered it a bit, but that was the gist.”
“He did? Well, tell him I’ll save him a seat by the fire.”
“Can Penny come in?”
“Oh, sure! But you can tell her that she is wasting her time; the answer is still ‘No.'”
So I changed my mind. Confound it, why should an argument seem so much more logical when underlined with a whiff of Jungle Lust? Not that Penny used unfair means, she did not even shed tears-not that I laid a finger on her-but I found myself conceding points, and presently there were no more points to concede. There is no getting around it, Penny is the world-saver type and her sincerity is contagious.
The boning I did on the trip out to Mars was as nothing to the hard study I put in on the trip to New Batavia. I already had the basic character; now it was necessary to fill in the background, prepare myself to be Bonforte under almost any circumstances. While it was the royal audience I was aiming at, once we were at New Batavia I might have to meet any of hundreds or thousands of people. Rog planned to give me a defense in depth of the sort that is routine for any public figure if he is to get work done; nevertheless, I would have to see people-a public figure is a public figure, no way to get around that.
The tightrope act I was going to have to attempt was made possible only by Bonforte’s Farleyfile, perhaps the best one ever compiled. Farley was a political manager of the twentieth century, of Eisenhower I believe, and the method he invented for handling the personal relations of politics was as revolutionary as the German invention of staff command was to warfare. Yet I had never heard of the device until Penny showed me Bonforte’s.
It was nothing but a file about people. However, the art of politics is “nothing but” people. This file contained all, or almost all, of the thousands upon thousands of people Bonforte had met in the course of his long public life; each dossier consisted of what he knew about that person from Bon forte’s own personal contact. Anything at all, no matter how trivial-in fact, trivia were always the first entries: names and nicknames of wives, children, and pets, hobbies, tastes in food or drink, prejudices, eccentricities. Following this would be listed date and place and comments for every occasion on which Boriforte had talked to that particular man.