"And you think I'm that man?"
"Your name is magic on this planet, Mr. Mordirak. If Clutch's famous recluse thinks representation is important enough to warrant endorsement of a candidate, then the voters will think it important enough to warrant their opinion."
"I'm afraid I can't endorse you," Mordirak said, and his tone held an unmistakable tone of finality.
Lenda tried valiantly to hide his frustration. "Well, if not me, then somebody else. Anyone ... just to get things moving."
"Sorry, Mr. Lenda, but I've never had much to do with politics and politicians, and I don't intend to begin now." He rose and started to turn.
"Damnit, Mordirak!" Lenda cried, leaping to his feet "The human race is going to hell! We're degenerating into rabble! A group here doing this, a faction there doing that, out-of-touch, smug, indifferent! We've become a bunch of fragments with a common genetic background as our only link. I don't like what I see happening and I want to do something about it!"
"You have passion, Mr. Lenda," Mordirak said with a touch of approval. "But just what is it you think you can do?"
"I ... I don't know as yet," he replied, cooling rapidly. "First I have to get to Fed Central and work from there—from the inside out. The Federation in its prime was a noble organization with a noble record. I hate to think of it dying of attrition. All the work of men like LaNague and—"
"LaNague ..." Mordirak murmured as his face softened momentarily. "I came of age on his home planet."
"So you're a Tolivian," Lenda said with a sudden nod of understanding. "That would explain your disinterest in politics."
"That's a part of it, yes. LaNague was born on Tolive and is still held in high regard there. And I hold a number of late Tolivians in high regard."
For the first time during their meeting, Lenda felt as if he was talking to a fellow human being. The initial void between them had diminished appreciably and he pressed to take advantage of the proximity. "I visited Fed Central not too long ago. It would break LaNague's heart if he could see—"
"That tactic won't work," Mordirak snapped, and the void reasserted itself.
"Sorry. It's just that I'm at a loss as to what to do."
"I can see that. You're frustrated. You want desperately to be elected but can't even find an election in which to run."
"That's unfair."
"Is it? Why then do you want to go to the seat of power? 'Born to rule,' perhaps?"
Lenda was silent He resented the insinuation but it struck a resonance within the bowels of his mind. He had often questioned his political motives and had never been entirely satisfied with the answers. But he refused to accept the portrait Mordirak was painting for him.
"Not to rule," he replied. "If that were my drive, I'd rejoice at the downfall of the Federation. No one ever went to Fed Central to rule unless he was a Restructurist." He paused and averted his eyes. I'm a romantic, I guess. I've spent most of my adult life studying the Federation and know the way it was in the days before the war. I've seen the old vid recordings of the great debates and decisions. In all sincerity, if you knew the Federation as I know it and could see it now, you would weep."
Mordirak remained unmoved.
"And there's another thing," Lenda pressed. "These slaughters, these senseless attacks on random planets, are accelerating. The atrocities are absolutely barbaric in themselves, but I fear the final outcome will be much worse. If the Federation cannot make an adequate response, I foresee the Terran race—in fact, this entire arm of the galaxy—entering a long and perhaps endless period of interstellar feudalism!"
Mordirak's gaze did not flicker. "What is that to me?"
Lenda sagged visibly but made a final attempt to reach him. "Come to Fed Central with me ... see the decay for yourself."
"If you wish," Mordirak said. "Perhaps next year."
"Next year!" Lenda was astounded at his own inability to convey any sense of urgency to the man. "Next year will be too late! The General Council is in emergency session right now."
Mordirak shrugged. "Today, then. we'll take my tourer."
In a fog of bewilderment at the turn of events and at Mordirak's total lack of a sense of time, Lenda allowed himself to be led down the dim halls and into the crystalline mountaintop sunlight. They boarded a sporty flitter, lifted, then plunged through the tenuous layer of clouds below on a direct course for the coast. No words were spoken as they set down on the bench and entered a cab in the down-chute of the submarine tube. Their momentum grew slowly until the angle steepened and they shot off the continental shelf toward the bottom of the undersea cavern that held the largest of Clutch's three Haas gates.
The Haas gates had revolutionized interstellar travel a millennium before by allowing ships to enter warp within a star's gravity well. For the first half of their existence, the gates had been placed in interplanetary space. Attempts at operation within a planet's atmosphere had met with tragic results until someone decided to try a deep-pressure method on the ocean floor. It worked. The pressure cushioned the displacement effects and peristellar and interstellar travel was rerevolutionized by eliminating escape-velocity requirements. The orbital gate, however, remained an obvious necessity for incoming craft, since contact with anything other than vacuum at the velocities obtained during warp drive would prove uniformly disastrous.
Lenda said nothing as they entered the sleek tourer, and Mordirak appeared disinclined to break the uncomfortable silence, seemed oblivious to it, in fact. But after the craft had been trundled toward the bronze-hued pillars that represented the gate and had shuddered into warp in the field generated between them, Lenda felt compelled to speak.
"If I may be so bold to ask, Mr. Mordirak, what moved you to change your mind and travel to Fed Central?"
Mordirak, the only other occupant of the tourer's passenger compartment, did not seem to realize he had been spoken to. Lenda waited for what he considered a reasonable period of time and was about to rephrase his question when Mordirak replied.
"I have a horrid fascination for the process of government. I am repulsed by all that it implies and yet I am drawn to discussions and treatises on it. You say the Federation is dying. I want to see for myself." He then leaned back in the seat and closed his eyes.
Further attempts at conversation proved fruitless and Lenda finally resigned himself to silence for the rest of the trip.
After flashing through the Fed Central gate and setting up orbit around the planet, Lenda was unpleasantly surprised at the short wait for seats on the down-shuttle. He muttered his apprehensions.
"The Fed must be in even worse shape than I'd imagined. The call for an emergency session should have crammed the orbits with incoming representatives and the shuttles should be running far behind."
Mordirak nodded absently, lost in his own thoughts.
"From your impassioned description," Mordirak said as they strolled through the deserted, polished corridors of the Assembly Complex, "I half expected to see littered streets and cracked walls."
"Oh, there's decay all right. The cracks are there but they're metaphysical. These halls should be crowded with reporters and onlookers. As it is ..." His voice trailed off as he caught sight of a dejected-looking figure farther down the corridor.
"I think I know that man," he said. "Mr. Petrical!"
The man looked up but gave no sign of recognition. "No interviews now, I'm afraid."
Lenda continued his approach and extended his hand. "Josif Lenda. We met last year during my clerkship."
Petrical smiled vaguely and murmured, "Of course." After being introduced to Mordirak, who responded with a barely perceptible nod, he turned to Lenda with a grim expression.