«Certainly not this administration!»
«Nor any, the next will be worse. Ben, you undervalue Joe Douglas.»
«He's a cheap politician, with morals to match!»
«Yes. And ignorant to six decimal places. But he is also a fairly conscientious world chief — better than we deserve. I would enjoy poker with him… he wouldn't cheat and he would pay up with a smile. Oh, he's an S.O.B. — but that reads “Swell Old Boy”, too. He's middlin' decent.»
«Jubal, I'm damned if I understand you. You told me that you had been fairly certain that Douglas had had me killed… and it wasn't far from it! You juggled eggs to get me out alive and God knows I'm grateful! But do you expect me to forget that Douglas was behind it? It's none of his doing that I'm alive — he would rather see me dead.»
«I suppose he would. But, yup, just that — forget it.»
«I'm damned if I will!»
«You'll be silly not to. You can't prove anything. And there's no call to be grateful to me and I won't let you lay this burden on me. I didn't do it for you.»
«Huh?»
«I did it for a little girl who was about to go charging out and maybe get herself killed. I did it because she was my guest and I stood in loco parentis. I did it because she was all guts and gallantry but too ignorant to monkey with such a buzz saw. But you, my cynical and sin-stained chum, know all about buzz saws. If your carelessness causes you to back into one, who am I to tamper with your karma?»
«Mmm… Okay, Jubal, you can go to hell — for monkeying with my karma. If I have one.»
«A moot point. The predestinationers and free-willers were tied in the fourth quarter, last I heard. Either way, I have no wish to disturb a man sleeping in a gutter. Do-gooding is like treating hemophilia — the real cure is to let hemophiliacs bleed to death… before they breed more hemophiliacs.»
«You could sterilize them.»
«You would have me play God? But we're off the subject. Douglas didn't try to have you assassinated.»
«Says who?»
«Says the infallible Jubal Harshaw, speaking ex cathedra from his belly button. Son, if a deputy sheriff beats a prisoner to death, it's sweepstakes odds that the county commissioners wouldn't have permitted it had they known. At worst they shut their eyes — afterwards — rather than upset applecarts. Assassination has never been a policy in this country.»
«I'll show you backgrounds of a number of deaths I've looked into.»
Jubal waved it aside. «I said it wasn't a policy. We've always had assassination — from prominent ones like Huey Long to men beaten to death with hardly a page-eight story. But it's never been a policy and the reason you are alive is that it is not Joe Douglas's policy. They snatched you clean, they squeezed you dry and they could have disposed of you as quietly as flushing a dead mouse down a toilet. But their boss doesn't like them to play that rough and if he became convinced that they had, it would cost their jobs if not their necks.»
Jubal paused for a swig. «Those thugs are just a tool; they aren't a Praetorian Guard that picks the Caesar. So whom do you want for Caesar? Courthouse Joe whose indoctrination goes back to when this country was a nation and not a satrapy in a polyglot empire… Douglas, who can't stomach assassination ? Or do you want to toss him out — we can, just by double-crossing him — toss him out and put in a Secretary General from a land where life is cheap and assassination a tradition? If you do, Ben — what happens to the next snoopy newsman who walks down a dark alley?»
Caxton didn't answer.
«As I said, the S.S. is just a tool. Men are always for hire who like dirty work. How dirty will that work become if you nudge Douglas out of his majority?»
«Jubal, are you saying I ought not to criticize the administration?»
«Nope. Gadflies are necessary. But it's well to look at the new rascals before you turn your present rascals out. Democracy is a poor system; the only thing that can be said for it is that it's eight times as good as any other method. Its worst fault is that its leaders reflect their constituents — a low level, but what can you expect? So look at Douglas and ponder that, in his ignorance, stupidity, and self-seeking, he resembles his fellow Americans but is a notch or two above average. Then look at the man who will replace him if his government topples.»
«There's little difference.»
«There's always a difference! This is between “bad” and “worse” — which is much sharper than between “good” and “better”.»
«Well? What do you want me to do?»
«Nothing,» Harshaw answered. «I'll run this show myself. I expect you to refrain from chewing out Joe Douglas over this coming settlement — maybe praise him for “statesmanlike restraint — ”»
«You're making me vomit!»
«Use your hat. I'm going to tell you what I'm going to do. The first principle in riding a tiger is to hang on tight to its ears.»
«Quit being pompous. What's the deal?»
«Quit being obtuse and listen. Mike has the misfortune to be heir to more wealth than Croesus dreamed of… plus a claim to political power under a politico-judicial precedent unparalleled in jug-headedness since Secretary Fall was convicted of receiving a bribe that Doheny was acquitted of paying. I have no interest in “True Prince” nonsense. Nor do I regard that wealth as “his”; he didn't produce it. Even if he had earned it, “property” is not the natural and obvious concept that most people think it is.»
«Come again?»
«Ownership is a sophisticated abstraction, a mystical relationship. God knows our legal theorists make this mystery complicated — but I didn't dream how subtle it was until I got the Martian slant. Martians don't own anything… not even their bodies.»
«Wait a minute, Jubal. Even animals have property. And the Martians aren't animals; they're a civilization, with cities and all sorts of things.»
«Yes. “Foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests”. Nobody understands “meus-et-tuus” better than a watch dog. But not Martians. Unless you regard joint ownership of everything by millions or billions of senior citizens — “ghosts” to you, my friend — as “property”.»
«Say, Jubal, how about these “Old Ones”?»
«You want the official version?»
«No. Your opinion.»
«I think it is pious poppycock, suitable for enriching lawns — superstition burned into the boy's brain so early that he stands no chance of breaking loose.»
«Jill talks as if she believed it.»
«You will hear me talk as if I did, too. Ordinary politeness. One of my most valued friends believes in astrology; I would never offend her by telling her what I think. The capacity of humans to believe in what seems to me highly improbable — from table tapping to the superiority of their children — has never been plumbed. Faith strikes me as intellectual laziness but Mike's faith in his “Old Ones” is no more irrational than a conviction that the dynamics of the universe can be set aside through prayers for rain.»
«Mmm, Jubal, I confess to a suspicion that immortality is a fact — but I'm glad my grandfather's ghost doesn't boss me. He was a cranky old devil.»
«And so was mine. And so am I. But is there any reason why a citizen's franchise should be voided simply because he is dead? The precinct I was raised in had a large graveyard vote — almost Martian. As may be, our lad Mike can't own anything because the “Old Ones” already own everything. So I have trouble explaining to him that he owns over a million shares of Lunar Enterprises, plus the Lyle Drive, plus assorted chattels and securities. It doesn't help that the original owners are dead; that makes them “Old Ones” — Mike never would stick his nose into the business of “Old Ones”.»
«Uh . . . damn it, he's incompetent.»
«Of course. He can't manage property because he doesn't believe in its mystique — any more than I believe in his ghosts. Ben, all that Mike owns is a toothbrush — and he doesn't know he owns that. If you took it, he would assume that the “Old Ones” had authorized the change.»