STEVE KALDOR
The first time the question popped up was at the Paxton’s place. I have known Lou and Jerry Paxton for many years. Our friendship started way back, when we all worked on the columns of a since then defunct periodical. Jerry was the features editor and I did “roving reporting”. Lou was our joint secretary and girl-friday.
The paper—funny how these old terms stick—is probably long forgotten by everybody, and the only good thing that came out of it was that Lou and Jerry met there.
After the Paxtons got married Jerry stayed in straight journalism, while I turned into a free-lancer and later took to politics. My work took me all over the Confederated Galaxy, and at some time or other I have visited just about every planet of the Terran Federation—but, whenever I have come back to Earth, it has been a must for me to look up the Paxtons. I suppose, to a planet-trotting bachelor like myself, they represented a kind of permanency. No matter what happened on Ursa Major, in the Paxton’s bar there was always a bottle of cool beer just for me.
As I was saying, we were having dinner at their place, when Jerry asked the question. He had just told me of his latest venture, his first attempt to start a business of his own. It was to be a small publishing firm, specialising in series of low-priced but high quality info-reels on current affairs. His target was the student and young intellectual market, which had discriminating taste without the pocket to match it.
It sounded like a good idea to me. There is always a steady demand for these sorts of things. But he would probably never make a fortune out of it. I told him so.
Jerry laughed. “So what, matey? Who cares? I don’t want to be a millionaire. What I really need now is a few meaty manuscripts on good contemporary topics—like that fellow you worked for—that Russian politician.”
“Suderov?”
“Yes, that’s him. Say, Pete whatever happened to old Suderov! One minute he is up in the limelight, then boing— he vanishes into thin air . . .” Jerry looked at me hopefully. “Couldn’t you give us a story about him? Just a two-reeler of say—30,000 words. . . . Surely you must know more about him than most people.”
To be quite honest it was the idea farthest from my mind to write a monograph about anybody. I had just returned from covering the Emperor’s abdication on Vega and was really looking forward to a couple of months rest, but then Jerry had ways of twisting a man’s arm and Lou’s meringue-pie tasted lovely, and it was a new venture and we were old friends, etcetera. ... By the time I left them that evening, I was more or less committed.
* * * *
In any case, I really did know Ivan Vasilievich Suderov, who was the permanent representative of the Terran Federation at the Galactic Council until the day, a few years ago, when he simply vamoosed. And nobody had seen or heard of him since.
I worked for him as his press-secretary (a de-jure title to a de-facto ghost-writer) in three years of his campaigns, including his last one.
Suderov was a tall gaunt man, with the slight stoop only lanky people have. He carried the most dyspeptic expression one could ever see outside a funeral parlour. In short, he was an ugly-looking customer, but a shrewd politician, right down to his hard core. I don’t mean this as an insult, for he was a professional, and a pretty good one too. (Even in those days I wouldn’t have worked for someone I didn’t respect at least a little.) The Terran Federation could have done an awful lot worse than having him as a delegate.
One gets to know a person during the tension-filled weeks of an election campaign, and we were together in three of them. Even so I am at loss to explain why he disappeared.
Did he jump, or was he pushed?
Or was he kidnapped? I began to get interested.
His last campaign had been the toughest in his career, and for that matter in mine too. For the first time in his electioneering—and he started in politics at twenty—he was up against a tough opposition. Not that he was an amateur—he had spent at least ten years in local politics, the dirtiest of them all, and another five or six in Federal, and by the time he turned Galactic he was a hardboiled pro. With his experience at the United Nations, The Terran Federation and two spells on the Galactic Council, his re-election for the third term would have been a cinch, except for the Frenchman.
Maurice de Jourdan—or Morry the Shrewdy—was our opposition, a dapper and ebullient Frenchman who had an impressive record in Terran politics. To my mind he was everything Suderov wasn’t—a very smooth, fast-talking man-of-the-world oozing Gallic charm from every pore. Also, a formidable ladykiller and the fastest babykisser in the trade. Far be it from me to try to glorify the memory of my ex-boss just because he may be dead, but Suderov was a better man for the job, though he couldn’t have charmed some old lady off her feet, even if he had tried.
As usual, we started our campaign with Terra, the cradle of the Federation, and still the most highly populated, hence the most votiferous of all the planets. According to tradition, we followed the opposition by one week. I had made a careful study of de Jourdan’s tactics and we analysed his policy speeches in detail. It was a very busy seven days for the whole team.
The Frenchman was a clever strategist; he deserved his nickname, no question about it. He was well-known in Terran circles, while Suderov had spent most of the previous six years off-planet at the Galactic Council. Being an attractive man with a great deal of sex-appeal, de Jourdan concentrated his personal appearances on the female section of the population, the forgotten fifty-five percent. He also used extensively giant three-dee blow-ups with pre-recorded oratory, which enabled him to cover the territory much quicker and at the same time kept him safe from embarrassing questions. You can’t heckle, or quiz a hundred foot three-dee image.
We decided on a different approach. “You must go in the flesh, Chief,” I said to him. “We must expose you to the voters. They must see you as a person, not just an image.”
Suderov agreed, though by the end of the Terran campaign the exhaustion had nearly killed him (and all of us too, I might add). Terra was always a hard nut to crack, but you could never go wrong if you promised a cut-down on the outgoings. The Terran voter is a peculiar sort of an animal. On the one hand, he likes to impress visiting extra-terrestrials with “our Federation” and “our Colonies” (pitifully small, as it happens, if you compared them with some of the really big systems in the Confederated Galaxy). On the other hand, isn’t it part of our human heritage that we hate parting from our dough?
Morry the Shrewdy promised a twenty percent reduction in the colonial subsidy, “. . . and if necessary we shall scrap all projects which don’t show profit in a reasonable time, lest we build an Empire in the Stars for our grandchildren’s grandchildren, at the cost of hungry babies on Earth today.”
This, of course, we couldn’t top and our project-statisticians advised against trying: the two or three percent donkey-votes we might lose on Terra would be more than compensated by the colonial support, if we played our cards right. We had a more middle-of-the-road approach. “I have always stood on the platform of proportional development for every member of the human race,” said Suderov—which means much the same, but sounds so much more acceptable to colonial ears.
We wrapped up the Terran campaign in three weeks; one week more than the opposition but it was worth it Starting as rank outsiders on Terra, we reduced de Jourdan’s lead considerably, and the campaign just begun. We were confident of doing better in the Colonies.
* * * *
Next station: Luna.
Luna is a transitional zone. Close enough to Earth to feel the influence of the Mother Country, people there respect Terran authority, and after a few drinks feel nostalgic. Fifty percent of their income is from colonial tourism. A lot of extra-Terrans have never been closer to Earth than Luna. It’s an orbiting pleasure-place, with hotels, casinos and pretty girls, but primarily the Lunar people are business people, out to get what they can while the Sun shines.
“The Progressive Humanist Party wants to see a strong, self-sufficient mini-planet circling the old globe. We shall, if elected, see to the reduction of the Orbital Dues,” said Mr de Jourdan at a luncheon given for him by the Lunar Ladies League. He was wildly cheered by the assembled dowagers, who thought he was gorgeous. He even danced a fandango with the Madame-president, which is no mean achievement considering Lunar gravity.
For us, Luna proved much easier than Earth. The idea was mine originally, but Suderov later attributed it to himself. (Small matter I suppose, but if I ever write that monograph for Jerry I shall put the records straight.)
“When re-elected, this candidate of the Human Advancement Party, pledges himself to the abolition of the unjust and archaic Orbital Dues altogether.” This of course, just about brought the house down in the ultramontane Luna Club, where most of the husbands of the Lunar Ladies belonged. (And why not? To me it always seemed ridiculous to levy tax on the Moon just because it happens to be in orbit around Terra. The financial boys on the team assured us that once elected we could always find some way to replace the lost revenue. If I remember correctly, the legislation later introduced the Tidal Damages Act for this purpose.)
It was computed that we carried Luna with a small margin.
* * * *
After Luna, we turned to Venus, the land of fat, satisfied farmers; I can’t remember meeting anybody there who wasn’t some way or other connected with the hydroponic plants. To me, they all looked alike, stolid, prosperous and somewhat dull. It may be the rotten climate they have up there....
Our sister planet, of course, is the Food Factory of the Terran Federation, and boy—they never let you live it down.
They all have a rather supercilious attitude towards Terra. Their attitude is: “We are happy without you, Mum; you are the one who needs us”, which is basically true, but not quite.
It was on Venus, I feel, that de Jourdan made his first tactical error. (It wasn’t really his fault; I knew my opposite number on his team—lots of theory, but no extra-Terran experience at all—strictly second rate.) He tried to rekindle the cinders of the old Monroe Doctrine: “Venus is for the Venerians,” and that was a fatal faux pas. A thing like that could have gone down quite well on Mars, but not on Venus.
The average Venerian is a pretty decent sort of a cove, a bit dull and very sentimental. They look upon Terra like a rich Aunty on the prodigal nephew—”Once I am gone, you’ll inherit all.” They knew they were rich, and needed no upstart Terran politicians to tell them what to do with their wealth. What they wanted to hear was: “Oh no, Aunt Agatha, you shall live for ever.”
“I can reassure the valiant people of Venus that as long as the Morning Star shines in the blue sky they will always be remembered for their glorious efforts and steel-like endurance. Earth shall always cherish his pretty little sister in Heaven.” It was so corny that I almost puked writing it, but Suderov was rewarded by the fat drops of tears that came running from tender Venerian eyes. They even elected him an Honorary Fellow of the Venerian Agricultural Society.
“Good old Earth, they never forget us.”
Until Venus we trailed de Jourdan. After Venus we were ahead.
* * * *
Mercury is an insignificant place, it is economically un-colonisable, and the only human inhabitants are in orbit around it: the Power House Mob.
The Solar Energy Commission owns the station and runs it at a loss; there were, all counted, about 4000 engineers and technicians and their families.
Mr de Jourdan didn’t bother—and that was another mistake on which we capitalised heavily. True enough, their voting power was nil—less than 10-13 of one percent—but our P-R unit made it worth a fortune.
It wasn’t strictly speaking my department, but I always enjoyed watching good machinery in action:
“THE TERRAN DELEGATE AT THE FARTHEST OUTPOST OF THE FEDERATION. NUMBERS ARE NOT IMPORTANT, SAYS SUDEROV. LITTLE OR BIG, I REPRESENT THEM.”
I can remember only a few of the headline blurbs, but there were many more and the publicity boys were raking the votes in. Our chief project statistician was confident that we gained quite a lot of swinging votes on Terra.
Mercury was a very successful detour.
The outer planets, if my memory serves me right, we split fifty-fifty. Uranus and Neptune went to de Jourdan, which was as we expected, for these two had never supported a sitting candidate yet. (We even tried some old-fashioned chauvinism on Neptune, because a lot of the original settlers were of Russian descent, but it wasn’t much use.)
Jupiter and Saturn fell to us, though not without a fight. On Jupiter, which previously had always supported Suderov, we struck trouble, but at the last moment the Chief pulled a fast one. On his first two campaigns he had promised planetary status and representation to two of the larger satellites, Ganymede and Callisto. A preposterous idea, if you ask me, but it brought in the required number of votes. This time, however, Morry the Shrewdy was there before us and pinched the concept, lock, stock and barrel—so there we were without a platform to stand on. I must hand it to Suderov; when the chips were down he rose to the occasion: “My opponent wants to divide the people of Jupiter,” said Suderov. “My conscience won’t allow it. The citizens of lo and Europa shall not be second-class citizens, as long as I represent them!” And without pausing for a breath, he promised planethood to two more pieces of rock.
Four is better than two—we carried Jupiter with the best margin we ever had there.
Then we braced ourselves, and hit Mars.
Mars was the real McCoy. Whoever carried Mars would win the election, with votes to spare. That much was pretty clear to us and also to the de Jourdan camp. We set up our campaign headquarters on Deimos and the opposition rented the whole of Phobos. There we poised, watching through the windows the enormous arridity of the Red Planet swish by, flexing our muscles for the final showdown.
Mars has always given me the creeping horrors. The first astronauts—or was it cosmonauts?—who saw Earth out of space for the very first time were lost for words . . . “Beautiful .. . Magnificent . . . Brilliant, defies description. . . .” Thirty years later Man orbited Mars. The good colonel, his name escapes me, who commanded the mission reported to his Control Centre, with these classical words: “It’s huge . . . It’s red... It’s UGLY…”
Huge, red and ugly—exactly my sentiments. Mars hasn’t changed much in the centuries passed since then.
As for the Martian voter, he is a politician’s nightmare— naturally suspicious, distrusting anything from Terra, arrogant and rude to the nth degree. But above all, the Martian colonist is TOUGH.
To survive on a Godforsaken planet, which was never meant for an oxygen-breathing, warm-blooded race like ours, he had either to be tough or to perish. They did not perish. Mars became the planet where extra-Terran culture, the dream of the brave dreamers, first became a reality.
When the first settlers arrived in their pitiful plastic domes, it was meant to be an experimental project, a test of adaptability and stamina. But the short expedition turned out to be a long one, as back on Terra there was a war on. The original nations that sent them up there were so busy killing each other off, they forgot, or—as they say on Mars—wrote off, their Martian colonists. Those who survived were tough. The meek may inherit Earth, but Mars was strictly for the survival types. In a sense I can appreciate that the Martian citizen hasn’t got much love for the old country, but understanding it doesn’t make him any more likeable as a person.
When the Great War was over, there started a slow steady trickle of migrants to Mars, mainly disgruntled young people, ex-army and service types from both sides, who just couldn’t find their niche in the post-war economic buoyance. They were the malcontent, the maladjusted, the embittered ones, but Mars took them.
Mars took everybody and everything.
The Great Terraforming Project was started by the reformed United Nations Tribune in the middle of the 24th century, a project so ambitious that it almost bankrupted the Terran economy. There were literally billions poured into the Red Planet; photo-synthetic crops, oxygen-fixing stations, the U-V Absorption Screen and suchlike. The net result, after three centuries, is that today the native-born Martian is quite happy in his thin atmosphere of fifteen percent oxygen, but all Terran visitors are still advised to carry their oxy-packs and masks.
Nowadays with the resources of the Terran Federation of Planets, the project has speeded up a bit, but it still has a long way to go. Repeated attempts to get Galactic backing were turned down hypocritically by the Council: “We don’t interfere with intra-system economics.” But at least it is on the records that Mr Suderov from Sol-III has made (several) representations.
Candidate Suderov did try for Mars.
The native Martian is tall, about 250 centimetres, and rangy, and from the age of about fifteen years onwards his skin is getting gradually darker. Regardless of their ethnic origin, they all look like American Indians. Even the children have dry leathery skins from the lack of water vapour in the atmosphere.
Water, or rather the lack of it, is the biggest problem on Mars. The most fertile valleys on Mars would drive an Australian Aboriginal to run amuck. The key bargaining point in any election campaign on Mars is water. Water is gold, water is VOTES.
The first blows of the campaign were suffered by our side. Martians are almost paranoic about the abuse or wastage of Waters, and this lent itself to a marvellous jibe from de Jourdan. He was addressing a meeting of bearded bauxite miners when he dropped this little beauty: “My opponent tells you, good people, that he is going to get you water. But do you know what his entourage uses every day for shaving only? Two hectolitres of water; 200 litres of good Martian aitch-two-oh.”
When two days later we arrived unsuspecting at the same mining town, the locals almost lynched us. The constabulary made a half-hearted attempt to control the mob, but it was obvious that they would have been much happier to join them. Most of us received a few kicks and bruises and Suderov ended up with a nice lump on his skull.
Morry and his merry men must have had a field day back on Phobos while we were putting cold compresses on our wounds. The Martian Press, which until this episode was coldly impartial, took a definite turn against us. The influential Monitor devoted a quarter-reel editorial to the matter.
“Mr Suderov may not be the water-hog his opponent wants us to believe,” the Commentator said acidly, “but isn’t he the most cleanshaven candidate ever to grace our shores?” (I forgot to mention that de Jourdan and his associates all grew big bushy, Martian type beards, which coupled with the Frenchman’s swarthy complexion made him look like one of the boys. Suderov, who as a child suffered from radiation burns and could grow no facial hair, refused to wear falsies; they irritated his skin.)
Some paleo-historians say that the ancient Roman Empire of Terra went into decline because of the lead goblets Roman emperors drank their wine from. They were supposed to have chronic lead-poisoning with the accompanying heavy-metal psychosis which drove them to inane and insane actions—hence the fall of the Roman Empire. I am not a historian, but this theory to me illustrates the importance of little things. For the want of a beard we almost lost the Martian campaign.
Off to a good start, de Jourdan pressed his advantage. Assured of—at least—sympathetic press coverage, he expounded his main campaign theme, an updated version of the Nakamura-Swenson Plan, a project still dear to Martian ears.
Seventy years ago Nakamura and Swenson, two brilliant young scientists from the Osaka School of Space Biology, published a series of articles in a popular science monthly, euphemistically entitled: How To Create Paradise? Their idea was that by shipping huge chunks of poly-ice from Venus and the outer ring of Saturn and depositing them on Mars, one could create a hydrosphere of poly-water around Mars. Poly-water of course is not much good for human consumption, but both Nakamura and Swenson being biologists primarily, they postulated that certain plant-forms could be devised that would break down poly-water and in time, make honest to goodness H2O out of it. And in sizeable quantities too.
De Jourdan’s improvement of the plan was to cut out the vegetables altogether. No plant intermediary, but a series of giant cracking stations all over Mars which would produce clean water by the mega-litres. “In my dreams,” he said theatrically, “I can see oceans on Mars, miles of steel-blue water...”
The Nakamura-Swenson theory, like most other theories formulated by eager young scientists, had only one pitfall: economy. It is possible with present-day technology to de-polymerise poly-water in cracking plants, and I suppose the efficiency of the operation could be improved to make it worth the effort, but there is one thing no scientist can change, and that is the mean distance from Mars to Saturn and Venus.
Cargo-space for interplanetary transport is expensive. To ferry the necessary amount of poly-ice to Mars across the distance from its source to the cracking plants where it is required would take up to 300 years—provided that the total workforce of the Terran Federation did nothing but build cargo-ships for the purpose.
The amount spent on Terraforming Mars so far was a mere bagatelle compared to the cost of this plan. We knew it, and so did de Jourdan, and most of the better educated, thinking Martians knew it too—but, unfortunately even on Mars there were more people with IQs under 150 than with over.
Suderov relied heavily on his well-known record of being a crusader for Galactic help to Mars. His efforts were respected and appreciated, but it was very hard to pit two unsuccessful attempts against de Jourdan’s promise of Paradise. The tide was definitely against us, and when de Jourdan flew in a couple of experts from Earth, one of them a Martian-born Professor of hydrology, we had cause to be worried. The Professor, having spent half of his life on Mars, was emotionally committed to the Plan, but being a scientist he was fastidiously honest in the usual uncommitted way. I remember the sinking feeling we had while we watched him on three-dee, interviewed by a half a dozen of Mars’s leading political correspondents.
Question: Professor, do you believe that the Nakamura-Swenson Plan as modified by Mr de Jourdan could provide water to Mars?
Answer: It has never been tried on such a large scale, but theoretically it is possible.
Question: Would you support the Plan yourself?
Answer: I was born here, Gentlemen ... I would support old Moses if I could get him to divine up some water on Mars.
Question: According to Mr Suderov, to implement this plan is an economic impossibility. Would you care to comment, Professor?
Answer: Mr Suderov is a politician and I am a hydrologist; neither of us are specialists in global finance or planetary economics.
After the interview we had an emergency conference. There was no use denying it, de Jourdan was forging ahead. To check his progress we had to do something desperate. Eventually Suderov decided on the Artesian Project, and we rebuilt our campaign around it.
The only indigenous water on Mars came from deep artesian wells. Apparently there was sufficient water on the planet, but it was very deep underground, and usually at the most inaccessible part of the desert. Mars, being a primary producer without a sizeable heavy industry, had to rely on Terran equipment and technicians for its water-wells. It was either that or hand-digging. Mazers couldn’t go deep enough and nucleonic techniques would have contaminated the water for generations.
Suderov promised to deliver one hundred drilling rigs and crew-training units. “Unlike my opponent, I don’t offer cloud castles to the People of Mars,” he said. “I offer you the means to bring up your own water, by your own people. If you are prepared to work, I shall provide you with one hundred rigs for every year of my term. This much I can promise.”
This was the right line of approach. Martians were hardheaded realists, and to most of them the idea of water-rigs was more digestible than visionary dreams of Martian waterfalls; hard work they understood. Of the fact that Suderov couldn’t hope to deliver a quarter of what he promised, they were blissfully unaware. To them, his proposition sounded realistic —and we certainly didn’t enlighten them. Once the election was won, there would be three long years before Suderov would face Martians again. He wasn’t worried.
Our team swung into action. I wrote speeches of a deliberately sober tone, clear and factual, devoid of polysyllabic adjectives, hammering the simple message: “You elect; we deliver.” We held all-night rallies, threw junkets with the most expensive Lunar pleasure-girls our agents could hire. Suderov’s image handing a toy water-rig to a little girl was subliminally intra-jected at ten minute intervals on all the major three-dee networks.
It cost us a fortune, but slowly we started to regain the lost terrain. Unfortunately, time was running out. I think I mentioned before that the Martian voter is a politician’s nightmare—once he has made up his mind, and he does that slowly, it takes Hell’s own time to sway him. Had we but one more week, the project-statistician assured us, we would have walked in, but as it happened we were still trailing by 2-3 percent on Poll-Day-minus-two.
De Jourdan’s initial impact must have been much greater than we had thought. Our last hope was the final planet-wide three-dee hookup, traditionally on P-Day-minus-one, which allowed the candidates their last say.
We were desperate. A miracle was needed and there was nothing in sight. I can recollect the depression, the cold frustration that spread over us, thicker than smog, blanketing out all our initiatives. So close to victory and so far from it. Suderov threw the meeting open to the whole team. Everybody was invited to contribute and we all did. When 280 people think together—and boy, did we rack our brains— something usually comes out of it, but by 4 a.m. local time the best offer in was still to kidnap the opposition and convert the race to a solo affair. Since they were on Phobos and we on Deimos this scheme had definitely a few drawbacks.
At 4.30 a.m. young Teddy Wilson, a junior mob-manipulator, approached the Chief. Suderov was in a half daze, resting his chin in his cupped palms, eyes crimson with sleeplessness.
“What’s up, son?” Suderov said tiredly.
“Sir,” said Teddy Wilson to the Chief, “would you be prepared to drink a small glass of your own blood in public?”
“A gallon of it, son,” Suderov said with a tired half-grin, still keeping his gallows humour, “if it does any good.”
Young Teddy was an exchange student at Mars University before graduating as a mob-psychologist, and the only one among us (myself included) who previously had spent any length of time on Mars. When he started to explain his suggestion, for the first time that night everybody listened. Apparently, in the early days of Mars, so the folklore goes—there was a young colonist by the name of Berotta or Perrotta who broke his leg hundreds of miles from his base camp. Knowing that his oxygen wouldn’t last until help could arrive, he stuck a hypo-needle in his cubital vein and slowly exsanguinated himself into a plastic bottle, in which he had carefully placed some anti-coagulant crystals. It’s a pretty gruesome tale, but on Mars it is considered the pinnacle of self-sacrifice—the heroic pioneer who in his dying moments thinks of nothing but the needs of his comrades.
In later years, so the story says, his memory was honoured by the Seal of Blood, a kind of sacrosanct pledge which, once made, no Martian would dream of breaking.
“My idea is, Sir,” said young Teddy Wilson hesitantly, “that, you should make this sacrifice ... in full view of all the three-dee cameras and ...”
Suderov jumped up, grabbed the young man by the shoulder and solemnly kissed him on both cheeks, like a Russian peasant.
“Son, you are a genius. If this doesn’t work, I’ll retire to Siberia.” Suderov stretched himself to his full height as if to shake off his exhaustion, then started to fire orders in every direction. The boys who five minutes before were ready to throw in the towel sprang into action with the galvanised enthusiasm of fresh troops. To me, he had just one order: “Pete, write the best dam’ speech of your life”—and I did. I am an old fox at political journalism, but I don’t think I have ever approached or surpassed the piece I wrote for Suderov in that Martian dawn. But I am not kidding myself, it was Suderov’s day and it was his magnetic delivery alone that made it so ...
* * * *
His peroration was masterful. “We have heard a lot about water in the past few weeks. My opponent seems to think that begging other planets of the Federation would be your answer ... I know it isn’t. I know there is no handout without strings. The regrettably short time I could spend among you has taught me one lesson: this is not your way, not the Martian way and definitely not the path Antonio Perrotta and his comrades would have chosen. I say to you, and experts back me up on it, there is water on this planet of yours, good water, Martian water—but it is hard water. You have to dig for it and dig deep, maybe a thousand, maybe fifteen hundred or even two thousand metres. So what? It is your own. When did hard work ever stop a Martian voortrekker?”
Suderov stopped dramatically and to the surprise of ourselves, watching him on monitors, the studio audience burst into applause. It was the first unrehearsed spontaneous applause I have ever witnessed in my career. Our P-R boys had nothing to do with it. It surprised them too.
“. . . So you want to dream of green fields and rivers abounding with fish—well, People of Mars, dream away. But dream not of Terran money and Venerian rocks of ice, for you shall have a rude awakening. If you want to dream, my friends, you shall have to dream of the vigour and power, the enthusiasm and the muscles of the youth of this planet. There and there alone is the salvation of Mars. If you are ready for hard work, if you are prepared to pit your strength against the desert, the Paradise my opponent dazzled you with shall be yours.
“As for myself, I am a man of facts. I promised you no miracles, no grandiose mirages in the arid desert. I promised you just humble water rigs. But what I have promised, upon my honour, I shall deliver. . . .” Suderov stopped, as if emotion had overcome him, and slowly in full view of all the three-dee pickups he took out a long shiny knife from his pocket. Slowly, but with a determined slash, he cut his left arm just above the wrist.
As the blood started to spurt, he picked up a small transparent cup and let the blood gush in it. When it was half full, he snapped a bandage cuff on the wound, and while all of us watched him fascinatedly, he faced the pickups.
“People of Mars,” said Suderov, “I pledge myself with the Seal of Blood, upon the sacred memory of Antonio Perrotta, that I shall deliver to you one hundred water rigs for every year of my three year term. Should I not fulfil my word, I pledge to come to Mars myself and dig up those wells personally with my own hands.”
Suderov held up his still bleeding left arm and waved a tight fisted farewell to the cameras.
What followed is hard to describe. The sedate Martians of our studio audience, the cold, suspicious, unbribable mob exploded. They screamed, they cheered, they roared, they fought with each other for the honour of carrying Suderov on their shoulders.
And all these, on a planet-wide, pole to pole hook-up.
We won the election with a landslide; de Jourdan conceded defeat before even the count started.
* * * *
After the results from all planets of the Federation were collated, Mr Suderov and myself parted company. Now the officially endorsed Terran representative for the third consecutive term, he flew to the Galactic Council.
As there was a civil war in the Orion-system, my agent sent me there, post haste. I spent the next six months writing hair-raising reports of cruelty and valour; and spent most of my time drinking beer with old buddies under the safety of a force field in the Press-bubble.
I heard about Suderov’s disappearance about twelve months after the elections. After all it was news—and news is my business—but then again many people disappear for one reason or another. Maybe he became sick of being the big wheel and wanted to become a small cog for a change. Maybe he was caught playing footsy with a fellow diplomat’s wife? I didn’t know and didn’t care.
Until that night at the Paxton’s place, when Jerry asked me about him.
I sat in my hotel room, thinking.
It’s funny how a man’s mind works, how little pictures, words and half-formed thoughts flash through your brain, once something triggers off the chain . . . young Teddy Wilson . . . Suderov’s bleeding wrist . . . that ridiculous pledge . . . the face of the barman at Mars-Port, six weeks ago: “I am very sorry, Sir, there are water restrictions” . . . the vision of sinewy emaciated hands digging ... a shovel . . . the wheeze of an air-hungry chest . . . heat . . . desert . . . MARS . ..
I just wonder—
Really...
Whatever happened to old Suderov?