“The truth was apparent to his people even if Churchill couldn’t see it. He was a war leader. He would have screwed up the peace, he would have become an obstacle to true progress. He had to go.”
Baribeau’s tone softened. It was clear he felt great sympathy as he uttered his next remark. “You’ve got to quit before that happens to you. You saved humanity’s frontier when it was menaced, saved the Earth from stagnation and slow death. The race needed you for that, but it needs something different now. There are great changes in the works, Mr. President. There’s talk now of a constitutional amendment to change the function of congress, to give it an executive mission in place of the legislative responsibility it has now and isn’t meeting. If it happens there might not even be a president before very long.”
“That’s impossible, Sam!” The incredulity in Sumpter’s voice was stark.
But it wasn’t.
Baribeau was a man of imagination. He was not easily impressed by most things but he very definitely was with this, the sight of the immense roofed canyon which men had made into a cavern larger that many terrestrial cities.
The lesser tug of Martian gravity added to the effect by giving an energy far beyond the expectation of his years, and so when the flivver had passed through the airlock and stopped at the operations shack he fairly leapt out to greet his old friend Sumpter, who waited for him there.
“It’s been a long time, Sam,” Sumpter grinned, gripping Baribeau’s hand firmly. “Come on. Let’s talk in my office. It’s warmer.”
Baribeau nodded, then followed Sumpter. He had not noticed the chill through his insulated garments.
Sumpter’s office was not fancy, but it was homey, with stacks of papers and shelves of books and more complicated looking electronic equipment than Baribeau could ever remember seeing in one place before.
Sumpter hustled Baribeau into a chair, then, from some obscure nook he pulled a strangely shaped bottle and some glasses. “You’ll like this stuff,” he said. “The techs make it from fruit they filch from the experimental garden. I warn you, though, take it slow.”
Baribeau did, but its ferocious kick caught him by surprise just the same. He had expected wine. This was brandy.
“Vacuum distilled, Sam. But I did warn you.” He sipped his own. “You know,” he added, “I never did really thank you for what you did. And if you’d left me to follow my own inclinations none of this would be here.”
“You don’t know that for sure,” Baribeau protested.
“Don’t I? You were absolutely right, Sam. I kept busy with scientific work, sure, but every chance I got I watched the show you guys put on too. It didn’t take me very long to realize that mine was the easy part. I just started the fight. You finished it.”
“I see it just the opposite,” Baribeau replied. “I see the breakout as the critical phase, absolutely necessary if we were to complete the circle. We had to get the monkey off our back and you were the guy who made that possible. Inside the government you would have been just another politician. Outside, with no personal interest beyond that of an ordinary citizen, the people could trust you. They did, and they followed your advice.
“Without the confidence you displayed in the reform movement even the United States would have reverted, and without reform there the rest of the world would never have followed.
“The world government we have today has been possible since the communication and computer breakthroughs in the early 1980s but we kept on using our old system out of apathy. We just couldn’t picture a government that functioned without the professional liars around to tell us what to do.
“Look how much better off we are because of your example. Science flourishes now as never before, because market forces are demanding access to the new frontier. The fusion engine on the ship that brought me here could have been built in 1990, and would have been if the right people had been in charge, but no, the vested interests and the bureaucrats had to keep monkeying around with chemical rockets.”
Baribeau paused and took another sip, this time with far more caution. I could get used to this stuff, he thought. His tongue started to feel fuzzy.
Sumpter noticed. “You don’t want to get bombed, Sam, not today. We’ve got the Centauri Project appropriation to vote on today.” He paused to glance at his watch. “Actually,” he continued, “most everybody else already has. We could be the swing vote and I think it might be fairly close. We wouldn’t want you to flunk the sobriety test and lose it for us.”
“Never fear,” Baribeau answered. Yet the stark reality hit him—there had been many issues which had won or lost by one vote margins, and one of them had been the decision to establish the Martian Colony.
He began to wonder what would happen if—no—when the day came that an extra-solar colony was founded. How would the new democracy handle a time lag of light-years? Would the old representative system have to be revived?
He hoped not. Size and dispersal had been the great curse, the price mankind paid for “civilization.” His first solution had been the monarchy, because one man could operate with greater efficiency and dispatch than the old tribal democracy could. Man endured the evils this produced for most of his civilized existence. Republics were a compromise, but inevitably these public servants perverted the system and too often they became the people’s masters.
Now, thanks to scientific progress the people had the whip again. There was no president of the new government. There was no congress either. There were only the people, who used the modern communications system that space technology made possible to propose and vote on legislation. Immensely powerful computers kept track of things, sophisticated programs prevented cheating, and the race at last was on its way to the next frontier.
Baribeau took another quick sip of the brandy, then remarked, “Maybe you’d better log on and let me vote. Then I’ll be able to finish this drink. Maybe I’ll even have a refill. Uh, there’s another piece of legislation up for a vote today. I proposed it. The vote was timed to coincide with my arrival here.” Sam was grinning wolfishly as he plunked the bright new coin down in front of Sumpter.
“What a rotten thing to do,” Sumpter fairly screamed. “But, I am flattered.”
“You deserved it, you know you do. Ordinarily, you have to be dead but I figured the people would waive it this once. Uh, what’s the matter?”
“On the one cent coin? Why not on the one credit piece?”
“Because you’re humble, John, that’s why. Now go ahead and vote. You think the Centauri issue will be close, try this one…”
Sumpter entered his password and voted “yes.” The circle, he realized, had closed again and the species was again at peace with itself. He wondered how long it would last this time.