“You would do nothing. I could not permit any illegal . . .”
“Permit!” Kinnison blazed, leaping to his feet. “Permit—hell! Are you loose- screwed enough to actually think I would ask or need your permission? Listen, Samms!”
The Port Admiral’s voice took on a quality like nothing his friend had ever before heard. “The first thing I would do would be to take off your Lens, wrap you up—especially your mouth—in seventeen yards of three-inch adhesive tape, and heave you into the brig. The second would be to call out everything we’ve got, including every half-built ship on Bennett able to fly, and declare martial law. The third would be a series of summary executions, starting with Morgan and working down. And if he’s got any fraction of the brain I credit him with, Morgan knows damned well exactly what would happen.”
“Oh.” Samms, while very much taken aback, was thrilled to the center of his being. “I had not considered anything so drastic, but you probably would . . .”
“Not ‘probably’,” Kinnison corrected him grimly. “’Certainly!”
“. . . and Morgan does know . . . except about Bennett, of course . . . and he would not, for obvious reasons, bring in his secret armed forces. You’re right, Rod, it will be the election.”
“Definitely; and it’s plain enough what their basic strategy will be.” Kinnison, completely mollified, sat down and lit another cigar. “His Nationalist party is now in power, but it was our Cosmocrats of the previous administration who so basely slipped one over on the dear pee-pul—who betrayed the entire North American Continent into the claws of rapacious wealth, no less—by ratifying that unlawful, unhallowed, unconstitutional, and so on, treaty. Scoundrels! Bribe-takers! Betrayers of a sacred trust! How Rabble-Rouser Morgan will thump the tub on that theme—he’ll make the welkin ring as it never rang before.”
Kinnison mimicked savagely the demagogue’s round and purple tones as he went on: “ ‘Since they had no mandate from the pee-pul to trade their birthright for a mess of pottage that nefarious and underhanded treaty is, a prima vista and ipso facto and a priori, completely and necessarily and positively null and void. People of Earth, arise! Arise! Rise in your might and throw off this stultifying and degrading, this paralyzing yoke of the Monied Powers—throw out this dictatorial, autocratic, wealth-directed, illegal, monstrous Council of so-called Lensmen! Rise in your might at the polls! Elect a Council of your own choosing—not of Lensmen, but of ordinary folks like you and me. Throw off this hellish yoke, I say!’—and here he begins to positively froth at the mouth—‘,so that government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the Earth!’
“He has used that exact peroration, ancient as it is, so many times that practically everybody thinks he originated it; and it’s always good for so many decibels of applause that he’ll keep on using it forever.”
“Your analysis is vivid, cogent, and factual, Rod—but the situation is not at all funny.”
“Did I act as though I thought it was? If so, I’m a damned poor actor. I’d like to kick the bloodsucking leech all the way from here to the Great Nebula in Andromeda, and if I ever get the chance I’m going to!”
“An interesting, but somewhat irrelevant idea.” Samms smiled at his friend’s passionate outburst. “But go on. I agree with you in principle so far, and your viewpoint is — to say the least—refreshing.”
“Well, Morgan will have so hypnotized most of the dear pee-pul that they will think it their own idea when he renominates this spineless nincompoop Witherspoon for another term as President of North America, with a solid machine-made slate of hatchet-men behind him. They win the election. Then the government of the North American Continent – not the Morgan-Towne-Isaacson machine, but all nice and legal and by mandate and in strict accordance with the party platform—abrogates the treaty and names its own Council. And right then, my friend, the boys and I will do our stuff.”
“Except that, in such a case, you wouldn’t. Think it over, Rod.”
“Why not?” Kinnison demanded, in a voice which, however, did not carry much conviction.
“Because we would be in the wrong; and we are even less able to go against united public opinion than is the Morgan crowd.”
“We’d do something—I’ve got it!” Kinnison banged the desk with his fist. “That would be a strictly unilateral action. North America would be standing alone.”
“Of course.”
“So we’ll pull all the Cosmocrats and all of our friends out of North America— move them to Bennett or somewhere—and make Morgan and Company a present of it.
We won’t declare martial law or kill anybody, unless they decide to call in their reserves. We’ll merely isolate the whole damned continent—throw a screen around it and over it that a microbe won’t be able to get through—one that would make that iron curtain I read about look like a bride’s veil—and we’ll keep them isolated until they beg to join up on our terms. Strictly legal, and the perfect solution. How about me giving the boys a briefing on it, right now?”
“Not yet.” Samms’ mien, however, lightened markedly. “I never thought of that way out . . . It could be done, and it would probably work, but I would not recommend it except as an ultimately last resort. It has at least two tremendous drawbacks.”
“I know it, but . . .”
“It would wreck North America as no nation has ever been wrecked; quite possibly beyond recovery. Furthermore, how many people, including yourself and your children, would like to renounce their North American citizenship and remove themselves, permanently and irrevocably, from North American soil?”
“Um . . . m . . . m. Put that away, it doesn’t sound so good, does it? But what the hell else can we do?”
“Just what we have been planning on doing. We must win the election.”
“Huh?” Kinnison’s mouth almost fell open. “You say it easy. How? With whom? By what stretch of the imagination do you figure that you can find anybody with a loose enough mouth to out-lie and out-promise Morgan? And can you duplicate his machine?”
“We can not only duplicate his machine; we can better it. The truth, presented to the people in language they can understand and appreciate, by a man whom they like, admire, and respect, will be more attractive than Morgan’s promises. The same truth will dispose of Morgan’s lies.”
“Well, go on. You’ve answered my questions, after a fashion, except the stinger.
Does the Council think it’s got a man with enough dynage to lift the load?”
“Unanimously. They also agreed unanimously that we have only one. Haven’t you any idea who he is?”
“Not a glimmering of one.” Kinnison frowned in thought, then his face cleared into a broad grin and he yelled: “What a damn fool I am—you, of course!”
“Wrong. I was not even seriously considered. It was the consensus that I could not possibly win. My work has been such as to keep me out of the public eye. If the man in the street thinks of me at all, he thinks that I hold myself apart and above him—the ivory tower concept.”
“Could be, at that; but you’ve got my curiosity aroused. How can a man of that caliber have been kicking around so long without me knowing anything about him?”
“You do. That’s what I’ve been working around to all afternoon. You.”
“Huh?” Kinnison gasped as though he had received a blow in the solar plexus.
“Me? ME? Hell’s-Brazen-Hinges!”
“Exactly. You.” Silencing Kinnison’s inarticulate protests, Samms went on: “First, you’ll have no difficulty in talking to an audience as you’ve just talked to me.”
“Of course not—but did I use any language that would burn out the transmitters?
I don’t remember whether I did or not.”
“I don’t, either. You probably did, but that would be nothing new. Telenews has never yet cut you off the ether because of it. The point is this: while you do not realize .it, you are a better tub-thumper and welkin-ringer than Morgan is, when something—such as just now—really gets you going. And as for a machine, what finer one is possible than the Patrol? Everybody in it or connected with it will support you to the hilt—you know that.”
“Why, I . . . I suppose so . . . probably they would, yes.”
“Do you know why?”
“Can’t say that I do, unless it’s because I treat them fair, so they do the same to me.”
“Exactly. I don’t say that everybody likes you, but I don’t know of anybody who doesn’t respect you. And, most important, everybody—all over space—knows ‘Rod the Rock’ Kinnison, and why he is called that.”
“But that very ‘man on horseback’ thing may backfire on you, Virge.”
“Perhaps—slightly—but we’re not afraid of that. And finally, you said you’d like to kick Morgan from here to Andromeda. How would you like to kick him from Panama City to the North Pole?”