And after that the Highest Councils were unanimous in their resolve. The trouble was that they couldn't find anything very promising to resolve to do.
When Tsoong Delilah deigned to visit Renmin Police Headquarters these days, even the commissioners leaped to open the doors in her way. She didn't do it often; she had too much to do to waste time with routine police matters, and everyone in the Renmin administration knew it. Promotion? She could have had any promotion in the commissioners' power by the snap of her fingers; she was above promotion, she was an insider in the Highest Circles.
That was all an accident, pretty much. Because Delilah had been the one whom chance (and a little help from her glands) directed to bring to New Orleans the tapes that were too secret to transmit, she was present at that first emergency meeting of the New Orleans Renmin. Because she was there then, she was the logical choice to be assigned to the committee permanently. Why should the committee need a permanent policeone? Because anything might happen! Nearly eight million Yanks were still alive in what used to be called the Lower Forty-Eight, and who knew what craziness some of them might get into? Even serious and dangerous craziness, if they were not watched. They seemed placid, true. Placid people, all the same, sometimes blew up for no good reason at all— look at the Cultural Revolution. Quiet subject races went insane with religion or patriotism or tribal loyalties—look at old Iran or Ireland or South Africa. The most prosperous and peaceful state could be ruined by riots and bloodshed—look at everywhere. No. The police had to be ready at an instant's need. A police liaison had to be there always.
So Delilah sat silent at the back of the New Orleans People's Hall, listening to the debates and diatribes.
It was as bad, almost, as the first meetings of the Highest Councils in Beijing—in fact, there were a lot of Beijing all-highests there in New Orleans, for the leadership had split off a chunk from itself to send to America. They could not conduct secret meetings by satellite—the alien spacecraft would be listening. And New Orleans was where the action was; it was the United States that was the problem, and the United States was the best place to look for an answer.
No one had any idea what that answer might be, of course.
Castor was allowed into the meetings, too, as the page of the high party member Manyface; from her seat at the back of the room Delilah could see him, sitting at Many-face's knee, his eyes turning from speaker to speaker. Half the remarks were addressed to her: "Increase surveillance!" "Certainly, Cadre Hsu; I will notify Renmin headquarters at once." "Arrest known 'patriots' like that Feng Miranda." "With all respect, Comrade Fiscal Director, I advise against it. It suggests we are afraid the masses will follow them. At need we can conduct many arrests very quickly. We know who they all are." She was extraordinarily busy, Delilah was, and formidably competent; but all the same those qualities did not, when she caught sight of Castor on his low stool, prevent her knees from moving an inch or two apart. They moved wider than that, of course, when she could find an hour or two to be alone with him. What a pity that he wanted to spend so many of their scarce hours together talking! And what mad ideas he had of what constituted pillow talk! "Will the spaceship really attack China?" he would breathe in her ear, just as her ear was softening for some sweeter breath; and she would push herself erect and tell him not to be a fool. No one would dare attack Han China! And a precious quarter of an hour would be lost while they settled that question and went back to what was important.
To what was important, at least, to her.
What was important to Pettyman Castor was not at all the same. Oh, certainly he enjoyed the use of her body! But certainly he had other things on his mind as well. For a time Delilah had the worrisome suspicion that Castor was secretly praying for a great victory for the alien spaceship—real freedom for "America," laughable as that notion was. But that fear dwindled and disappeared. Castor was not political at all. The idea of a rescue mission to liberate America from the Han struck him as bizarre enough to be fascinating, but he did not take sides—go it husband, go it bear; the quarrel was interesting to him to contemplate, but he was not interested in who won.
What interested him—no, what excited him far more than freedom for America or the soft, sweet recesses of Delilah's body—was space. The idea of actual human beings in orbit excited him. The possibility that something important might happen in space excited him. The vagrant, hopeless hope that somehow, some day, he himself might have a chance to climb out there into the void beyond the air excited him most of all.
And they all, Delilah reflected, stung, excited him much more than she did.
He did not in the least appreciate that the hours she spent in his bed carried a heavy price tag for her. She had to steal that time. She had a son at home now, and a son who did not in the least approve of liaisons with arrogant Yankee peasants who did not know their place. When at last Delilah got to her own home each night, young Tsoong Arnold was always waiting up for her, almost sniffing at her for the stink of sex that would confirm what he already was sure she had been doing with Pettyman Castor. He was his father's son, was Tsoong Arnold. The old man had also been puritanical and righteous, though Delilah had given him no cause for jealousy—well, not much, anyway, and not very often.
What was most annoying to Delilah was that the boy did not ever charge her with what, in fact, she was doing. He only engaged her in conversation—at midnight and later, when what she desperately wanted was sleep.
Sometimes the conversations were of some importance, for indeed there were questions to settle. Questions, for instance, of Arnold's future. He had been discharged from his compulsory service in the Militia only a week before coming home. It was not the best time to be discharged, he told her, because for the first time there might be a reason to prolong his service. He was fidgeting around with the notion of reenlisting—quickly—while he could still keep his rank and assignments. So, "What do you think, Delilah?" he would demand. "Will there be trouble with the Yankees?"
"Not a chance, son"—wishing he would go to sleep— or reenlist—or miraculously drop sixteen years off his age so she could pack him off to nursery school again.
"But there might be! There might be pacification missions. There might be fighting! Chasing aboriginals into their mountain fastnesses, capturing their leaders, bringing criminal outlaws to justice—"
"There are no mountains to speak of in Louisiana province," his mother reminded him, yawning longingly.
He set his jaw. His fingers were working, as though curling around the butt of a gun. "What is the Council going to do about the ultimatum?"
"They will send the American president to meet them in space, of course," his mother said with a flash of humor as she slipped out of her polished boots.
Her son had no sense of humor. "President? What president? There is no American president," he said, and his mother said,
"Then we will have to invent one. Go to bed." She did, too. But she remained upright on the edge of the bed, staring into space, for some time.
There was one good thing to ease the scary tension, and that was the law of orbital ballistics. The alien ship had first been spotted on the far side of the Sun, many millions of miles away. It took time for it to approach the Earth. Between the first messages and the ultimatum it actually passed behind the Sun. When the ultimatum was delivered, it was spiraling in. It continued to transmit, but it did not, could not, expect the "conquerors" to deliver the actual, physical body of the president of the United States until it came much, much, closer.