"Ah, not generous, Inspector Tsoong," the old man protested modestly. "It is what is required by the logic of the situation." He closed his eyes for a moment to try to think if he had forgotten anything and decided he hadn't. He opened them and extended a hand, Western-style. "That will be all, Mr. President," he said, his eyes twinkling. As Castor left with Tsoong Delilah he heard the old Buddha chuckling.
In her car, en route back to her apartment building, Delilah indulgently let Castor chatter. The silly boy was almost believing all this was real! Not real, exactly—of course it was real, or as real as the presidency of a nearly imaginary country could hope to be. But he thought it was substantive!
In certain senses it almost was substantive. As Delilah took Castor up the elevator to the floor of her apartment she greatly enjoyed showing him one of those senses. She led him past her door, to the door of the even larger corner one just beyond, pulled the key to the new apartment out of her bag and handed it to him. "Mr. President," she said grandly, "with the presidency comes a presidential mansion, and Castor, here's yours."
How pop-eyed Yankees got sometimes! The expression on his face would have forced her into hysterical laughter if it hadn't forced her into tenderness instead. The face was sweaty with joy and confusion as he unlocked his very own door and looked in on his very own apartment. He didn't walk in. He trotted in. He didn't wait for Delilah. She followed, smiling at his glee, as he peered into the kitchen—"It's bigger than yours!"— and the master bedroom—"A water bed?"—and the view from the window, and the little toy fountain that plinked into the rock pool built into a corner of the sun porch. Delilah was not at all surprised that he loved the apartment. It was a very good one, better than her own, and the previous tenants had been very surly about leaving it.
At the bed he clutched her to him and fell back with her, the cold water underneath rippling back and forth and jouncing them. Crossly, Delilah tried to pull herself free, but he was too strong. Laughing, he pressed his face into her neck and then pulled it free to stare into her eyes. "Madame Secretary of State," he chortled, "what a hell of a fine cabinet meeting we can have right here!"
She jerked free, squatting on the hard edge of the bed, stern with him: "Have a care, Castor! It is all right to make jokes because in a way this whole situation is no more than a joke. But it is also in some ways very serious, and if you joke it must only be with me. Not with the high cadres. Certainly not when you talk to the spaceship people!"
"Aw, hell, Delilah," he grumbled. "I wouldn't do anything like that. Please, do I get to keep this when it's over?"
"Something of it at least, perhaps," she said, softening.
"How much?" he begged. "No, don't tell me. I will enjoy it while I have it and earn it as best I can."
She looked hard at him, but the look on his face was without guile—inside his heart, perhaps, something entirely different. She got up, slapping back her wandering hair, and sat more decorously on a gilt bench before a makeup table. "Now. There are practical matters. The cadres have caused research to be done into the old American cabinet, and it seems that there are twelve major posts. Most of them will of course have no function, even as a joke—there is certainly no need for a secretary of labor. But we will fill all the posts anyway."
"Of course," he said earnestly, so earnestly that she looked at him warningly.
"For instance," she went on, "we will use some of them for political purposes. To the post of secretary of the interior you will appoint Feng Miranda."
That one, she saw with pleasure, jolted the prepared expressions off his face. "But—But—"
"But she is a revolutionary, yes. I know that, of course."
She patted his head, relaxing, and sat down to take off her boots. What a good student this Castor was, after all! Unruly. Vain. Inclined to be impudent. But educable— more than willing to learn, quick and eager to learn. He was watching her with complete attention as she lectured, "To deal with a revolutionary group, the first thing of importance is to keep the channels open. If you stop them saying what they wish they will say other things you do not hear; trouble begins that way. What does the girl want, after all? Freedom for 'America'? But there is no America. The expulsion of us Han Chinese? How silly, since she is purebred genetic Han herself. So we will give her a title and the illusion of a national government to satisfy her illusion of a nation. Also," she added, smiling as she reached to undo the buttons of his shirt, "it is really quite amusing, and a joke is always worth having. Come try out your new bed."
It was not up to Tsoong Delilah to select a cabinet for Castor to appoint, but she was permitted to make recommendations and to be in on the discussions—which was more than Castor was. They could not find twelve that were worth the naming, but Delilah assured them the people from space would not notice a few shortages.
When the list was complete Delilah returned to her own apartment to think it over. It was not her responsibility in any formal sense to do that; nothing she had done had been done without the approval of higher authorities than she. But Tsoong Delilah did not need to be given responsibility. She was responsible. If things went wrong in any project with which she was concerned, it was never because Renmin Police Inspector Tsoong Delilah had failed to try to anticipate problems and try to avoid them. Delilah knew that of herself. It gave her pride. In that respect she was irreproachable—not counting the occasional reproach or fleeting thought that she might deserve a reproach over the way she had let Pettyman Castor occupy a measurable part of her concerns...
She dismissed that thought peremptorily. It wasn't hard. She'd been practicing it for months.
Tsoong Delilah dropped a chip into her home screen and studied the list of high officials in the American government. (Or American "government"? Or "American" government?)
They were:
President: Pettyman Castor, age twenty-two, nonpolitical, docile (not counting youthful impudence). A satisfactory choice, with watching.
Attorney Generaclass="underline" Sebastio Carlos, poli-sci professor at the university ; Yankee whose family had been in Chinese government for two generations—very loyal. Very loyal in the ways that could be counted on, because the Han Chinese could give him more than anyone else. An excellent choice for attorney general, Delilah thought sardonically. If this "government" should ever succumb to the wild impulse to pass any laws, Sebastio would make sure they didn't matter.
Secretary of Defense: Tchai Howard, small man with a mean disposition—but a former comrade commander in the Air Defense Corps and well able to plan military actions. Killing did not frighten Tchai Howard. Like Tsoong Delilah herself, he was American-born; also like Delilah, he was in no sense an "American."
Secretary of the Interior: Feng Miranda. There was nothing Delilah needed to think over about Feng Miranda, for she had thought it all already. The possible gains outweighed the losses. It was only necessary to be watchful so that the losses did not occur.
Secretary of Agriculture: Danbury Eustace—nonentity—regional director for rapeseed and oil grains for all of the New Orleans area. That didn't matter. What mattered was that when Delilah called up pictures of American statesmen, the most statesmanlike of them were middle-aged, iron-gray-haired, wide-eyed, strong-jawed— exactly like Danbury Eustace. No problem. Didn't even have to be watched, because it would never occur to him to do anything at all not ordered in a party directive.
Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare: Many-face. An obvious choice. A comic one, too, because what experience had Manyface had, these last twenty years, of health?