But Californians do not limit themselves to electing, recalling, indicting, and (sometimes) lynching their swarms of officials; they also legislate directly. Every election has on the ballot more proposed laws than candidates. The provincial and national representatives show some restraint-I have been assured that the typical California legislator will withdraw a bill if you can prove to her that pi can't equal three no matter how many vote to make it so. But grassroots legislation ("the initiative") has no such limitation.
For example three years ago a grassroots economist noticed that college graduates earned, on the average, about 30 percent more than their fellow citizens who lacked bachelor's degrees. Such an undemocratic condition is anathema to the California Dream, so, with great speed, an initiative was qualified for the next election, the measure passed, and all California high-school graduates and/or California citizens attaining eighteen years were henceforth awarded bachelor's degrees. A grandfather clause backdated this benefit eight years.
This measure worked beautifully; the holder of a bachelor's degree no longer had any undemocratic advantage. At the next election the grandfather clause was expanded to cover the last twenty years and there is a strong movement to extend this boon to all citizens.
Vox populi, vox Dei. I can't see anything wrong with it. This benevolent measure costs nothing and makes everyone (but a few soreheads) happier.
About fifteen o'clock Georges and I were sliding along the south side of the National Plaza in front of the Chief's Palace, headed for the main offices of MasterCard. Georges was telling me that he saw nothing wrong with my having asked to stop at a Burger King for a snack in lieu of luncheon-that, in his opinion, the giant burger, properly prepared from top sirloin substitute and the chocolate malt made with a minimum of chalk, constitutes California's only contribution to international haute cuisine.
I was agreeing with him while burping gently. A group of women and men, a dozen to twenty, were moving down the grand steps in front of the Palace and Georges had started to swing off to avoid them when I noticed the eagle-feather headdress on a little man in the middle of the group, spotted the much-photographed face under it, and checked Georges with one hand.
And caught something out of the corner of my eye: a figure coming out from behind a pillar at the top of the steps.
It triggered me. I pushed the Chief down flat to the steps, knocking a couple of his staff aside to do it, then bounded up to that pillar.
I didn't kill the man who had lurked behind that pillar; I merely broke the arm he had his gun in, then kicked him sort of high when he tried to run. I hadn't been hurried the way I had been the day before. After reducing the target the Chief Confederate made (really, he should not wear that distinctive headdress), I had had time to realize that the assassin, if taken alive, might be a clue to the gang behind these senseless killings.
But I did not have time to realize what else I had done until two Capital police seized my arms. I then did realize it and felt glum indeed, thinking about the scorn there would be in Boss's voice when I had to admit that I had allowed myself to be publicly arrested. For a split moment I seriously considered disengaging and hiding behind the horizon-not impossible as one police officer clearly had high blood pressure and the other was an older man wearing frame spectacles.
Too late. If I ran now using full overdrive, I could almost certainly get away and, in a square or two, mingle with the crowd and be gone. But these bumblers would possibly burn half a dozen bystanders in trying to wing me. Not professional! Why hadn't this palace guard protected their chief instead of leaving it up to me? A lurker behind pillars fer Gossake!-nothing like that had happened since the assassination of Huey Long.
Why hadn't I minded my own business and let the killer burn down the Chief Confederate in his silly hat? Because I have been trained for defensive warfare only, that's why, and consequently I fight by reflex. I don't have any interest in fighting, don't like it-it just happens.
I did not then have time to consider the advisability of minding my own business because Georges was minding mine. Georges speaks unaccented (if somewhat stilted) BritCan English; now he was sputtering incoherently in French and trying to peel those two praetorians off me.
The one with the spectacles let go my left arm in an effort to deal with Georges so I jabbed him with my elbow just under his sternum. He whooshed and went down. The other was still holding on to my right arm, so I jabbed him in the same spot with the first three fingers of my left hand, whereupon he whooshed and laid himself across his mate, and both vomited.
All this happened much faster than it takes to tell it-i.e., the cows grabbed me, Georges intervened, I was free. Two seconds? Whatever it was, the assassin had disappeared, his gun with him.
I was about to disappear, too, with Georges even if I had to carry him, when I realized that Georges had made up my mind for me. He had me by my right elbow and had me firmly pointed toward the main entrance of the Palace just beyond that row of pillars. As we stepped into the rotunda he let go my elbow while saying softly, "Slow march, my darling-quietly, quietly. Take my arm."
I took his arm. The rotunda was fairly crowded but there was no excitement, nothing at all to suggest an attempt had just been made a few meters away to kill the nation's chief executive. Concession booths rimming the rotunda were busy, especially the offtrack betting windows. Just to our left a young woman was selling lottery tickets-or available to sell them I should say, as she had no customers just then and was watching a detergent drama on her terminal.
Georges turned us and halted us at her booth. Without looking up she said, "Station break coming up. Be with you then. Shop around. Be my guest."
There were festoons of lottery tickets around the booth. Georges started examining them, so I pretended a deep interest, too. We
stretched the time; presently the commercials started, the young woman punched down the sound and turned to us.
"Thanks for waiting," she said with a pleasant smile. "I never miss One Woman's Woes, especially right now when Mindy Lou is pregnant again and Uncle Ben is being so unreasonable about it. Do you follow the theater, deane?"
I admitted that I rarely had time for it-my work interfered.
"That's too bad; it's very educational. Take Tim-that's my roommate-won't look at anything but sports. So he doesn't have a thought in his head for the finer things in life. Take this crisis in Mindy Lou's life. Uncle Ben is purely persecuting her because she won't tell him who did it. Do you think Tim cares? Not Tim! What neither Tim nor Uncle Ben realizes is that she can't tell because it happened at a precinct caucus. What sign were you born under?"
I should phrase a prepared answer for this question; human persons are always asking it. But when you weren't born, you tend to shy away from such things. I grabbed a date and threw it at her: "I was born on the twenty-third of April." That's Shakespeare's birthday; it popped into my mind.
"Oho! Have I got a lottery ticket for you!" She shuffled through one of the Maypole decorations, found a ticket, showed me a number. "See that? And you just walked in here and I had it! This is your day!" She detached the ticket. "That's twenty bruins."
I offered a BritCan dollar. She answered, "I don't have change for that."
"Keep the change for luck."
She handed me the ticket, took the dollar. "You're a real sport, deane. When you collect, stop by and we'll have a drink together. Mister, have you found one you like?"