It occurred to me that the Farleyfile must include everybody in the ship since they were (a) people (b) whom Bonforte had met. I asked Penny for them. She seemed a little surprised.
Soon I was the one surprised. The Tom Paine had in her six Grand Assemblymen. Rog Clifton and Mr. Bonforte, of course — but the first item in Dak's file read: «Broadbent, Darius K., the Honorable, G. A. for League of Free Travelers, Upper Division.» It also mentioned that he held a Ph.D. in physics, had been reserve champion with the pistol in the Imperial Matches nine years earlier, and had published three volumes of verse under the nom de plume of «Acey Wheelwright.» I resolved never again to take a man at merely his face value.
There was a notation in Bonforte's sloppy handwriting: «Almost irresistible to women — and vice versa!»
Penny and Dr. Capek were also members of the great parliament. Even Jimmie Washington was a member, for a «safe» district, I realized later — he represented the Lapps, including all the reindeer and Santa Claus, no doubt. He was also ordained in the First Bible Truth Church of the Holy Spirit, which I had never heard of, but which accounted for his tight-lipped deacon look.
I especially enjoyed reading about Penny — the Honorable Miss Penelope Taliaferro Russell. She was an M.A. in government administration from Georgetown and a B.A. from Wellesley, which somehow did not surprise me. She represented districtless university women, another «safe» constituency (I learned) since they are about five to one Expansionist Party members.
On down below were her glove size, her other measurements, her preferences in colors (I could teach her something about dressing), her preference in scent (Jungle Lust, of course), and many other details, most of them innocuous enough. But there was «comment»:
«Neurotically honest — arithmetic unreliable — prides herself on her sense of humor, of which she has none — watches her diet but is gluttonous about candied cherries — little-mother-of-all-living complex — unable to resist reading the printed word in any form.»
Underneath was another of Bonforte's handwritten addenda: «Ah, Curly Top! Snooping again, I see.»
As I turned them back to her I asked Penny if she had read her own Farleyfile. She told me snippily to mind my own business! Then turned red and apologized.
Most of my time was taken up with study but I did take time to review and revise carefully the physical resemblance, checking the Semiperm shading by colorimeter, doing an extremely careful job on the wrinkles, adding two moles, and setting the whole job with electric brush. It was going to mean a skin peel before I could get my own face back but that was a small price to pay for a make-up job that could not be damaged, could not be smeared even with acetone, and was proof against such hazards as napkins. I even added the scar on the «game» leg, using a photograph Capek had kept in Bonforte's health history. If Bonforte had had wife or mistress, she would have had difficulty in telling the impostor from the real thing simply on physical appearance. It was a lot of trouble but it left my mind free to worry about the really difficult part of the impersonation.
But the all-out effort during the trip was to steep myself in what Bonforte thought and believed, in short the policies of the Expansionist Party. In a manner of speaking, he himself was the Expansionist Party, not merely its most prominent leader but its political philosopher and greatest statesman. Expansionism had hardly been more than a «Manifest Destiny» movement when the party was founded, a rabble coalition of groups who had one thing in common: the belief that the frontiers in the sky were the most important issue in the emerging future of the human race. Bonforte had given the party a rationale and an ethic, the theme that freedom and equal rights must run with the Imperial banner; he kept harping on the notion that the human race must never again make the mistakes that the white subrace had made in Africa and Asia.
But I was confused by the fact — I was awfully unsophisticated in such matters — that the early history of the Expansionist Party sounded remarkably like the present Humanity Party. I was not aware that political parties often change as much in growing up as people do. I had known vaguely that the Humanity Party had started as a splinter of the Expansionist movement but I had never thought about it. Actually it was inevitable; as the political parties which did not have their eyes on the sky dwindled away under the imperatives of history and ceased to elect candidates, the only party which had been on the right track was bound to split into two factions.
But I am running ahead; my political education did not proceed so logically. At first I simply soaked myself in Bonforte's public utterances. True, I had done that on the trip out, but then I was studying how he spoke; now I was studying what he said.
Bonforte was an orator in the grand tradition but he could be vitriolic in debate, e.g. a speech he made in New Paris during the ruckus over the treaty with the Martian nests, the Concord of Tycho. It was this treaty which had knocked him out of office before; he had pushed it through but the strain on the coalition had lost him the next vote of confidence. Nevertheless, Quiroga had not dared denounce the treaty. I listened to this speech with special interest since I had not liked the treaty myself; the idea that Martians must be granted the same privileges on Earth that humans enjoyed on Mars had been abhorrent to me — until I visited the Kkkah nest.
«My opponent,» Bonforte had said with a rasp in his voice, «would have you believe that the motto of the so-called Humanity Party, “Government of human beings, by human beings, and for human beings,” is no more than an updating of the immortal words of Lincoln. But while the voice is the voice of Abraham, the hand is the hand of the Ku Klux Klan. The true meaning of that innocent-seeming motto is “Government of all races everywhere, by human beings alone, for the profit of a privileged few.”
«But, my opponent protests, we have a God-given mandate to spread enlightenment through the stars, dispensing our own brand of Civilization to the savages. This is the Uncle Remus school of sociology — the good dahkies singin' spirituals and Old Massa lubbin' every one of dem! It is a beautiful picture but the frame is too small; it fails to show the whip, the slave block — and the counting house!»
I found myself becoming, if not an Expansionist, then at least a Bonfortite. I am not sure that I was convinced by the logic of his words — indeed, I am not sure that they were logical. But I was in a receptive frame of mind. I wanted to understand what he said so thoroughly that I could rephrase it and say it in his place, if need be.
Nevertheless, here was a man who knew what he wanted and (much rarer!) why he wanted it. I could not help but be impressed, and it forced me to examine my own beliefs. What did I live by?
My profession, surely! I had been brought up in it, I liked it, I had a deep though unlogical conviction that art was worth the effort — and, besides, it was the only way I knew to make a living. But what else?
I have never been impressed by the formal schools of ethics. I have sampled them — public libraries are a ready source of recreation for an actor short of cash — but I had found them as poor in vitamins as a mother-in-law's kiss. Given time and plenty of paper, a philosopher can prove anything.
I had the same contempt for the moral instruction handed to most children. Much of it is prattle and the parts they really seem to mean are dedicated to the sacred proposition that a «good» child is one who does not disturb mother's nap and a «good» man is one who achieves a muscular bank account without getting caught. No, thanks!