"You're very sensitive today." Her voice was deliberately cool. "No, I wasn't levelling anything at you. I was talking about your grandfather's happy turn of luck. Our positions are completely reversed now, aren't they?"
"I don't know how I feel about it," he said, stopping the tendency to sulk.
Helen's retort had stung him. "I'm not really in support of either of you. I think, on the whole, I favor the RLMs. They could still win the constituency elections, couldn't they, even if you didn't get the Presidency? That would give you a strong voice in the House."
"If they kept me as leader, Alan." Her face softened as she admitted a truth which previously she had been hiding from. "Not everyone who approved of my stand yesterday approves of it today."
"I hate to say I warned you of it. You should have known better, Helen, than to go around whipping up mobs. People have to trust politicians as well as like them. They want a modern, up-to-date President, certainly-but they also want a respectable one. When the voters sit down and think about it, even if this Fireclown business hadn't taken the turn it has, they'll choose the candidate they can feel confidence in. Fiery politics of your sort only work for short spells, Helen. Even I know that much. Admittedly, after showing yourself as a 'Woman of the People' you could have stuck to parliamentary debate to make your points and probably danced home. But now you've identified yourself so strongly with the Fireclown that you haven't a hope of winning. I should give it up." He looked at her wistfully.
She laughed shortly, striding up and down between the bales of posters. "I haven't a dog's chance-you're right. But I'll keep on fighting. Lucky old Simon, eh? He's now the man who warned the people of their danger. Who else could they vote for?"
"Don't get bitter, Helen. Why don't you start painting again? You know what you're doing in that field. Really, even I know more about politics than you do.
You should never have entered them. There are people who are natural born politicians, but you're just not one of them. I've asked you this a dozen times previously, but I'd still like to know what makes you go on with it."
"One of the strongest reasons is because the more people disapprove of my actions, the harder I pursue them. Fair enough?" She turned, staring at him quizzically with her head cocked on one side.
He smiled. "In a word, you're just plain obstinate. Maybe if I’d encouraged you in your political work you might have been a well-known painter by now-and well rid of all this trouble."
"Maybe. But it's more than that, Alan." She spoke softly, levering herself up on to one of the bales. She sat there swinging her legs, looking very beautiful.
She no longer wore the make-up she'd had on earlier. "But I've got myself into this now, and I'm going to stick at it until the end. Sink or swim."
He told her about his visit to the first level-omitting that he'd heard the Fireclown and his friends leaving-and of his narrow escape.
"I thought I was going to be killed," he said, "and I thought of you. I wondered, in fact, if we weren't both searching for the same thing."
"Searching? I didn't know you were the searching kind, Alan."
"Until this Fireclown business blew up, I was the hiding kind. I hid a lot from myself. But something grandfather said must have triggered something else in me." He paused. "Was it only three days ago?" he mused wonderingly.
"What did he say?"
"Oh," Alan answered lightly, "he made a rather pointed reference to the fact that my ancestry isn't all it might be."
"That was cruel of him."
"Maybe it did me good. Maybe it brought something into the open. Anyway, I started getting curious about the Fireclown. Then you visited me and I was even more curious. Perhaps because you associated yourself with the Fireclown's creed, I associated him with you and it led on from there. I went to see the Fireclown the same night, you know."
"Did you speak to him personally?" She sounded envious.
"No. I never got to see him, actually. But I attended yesterday's 'audience.' I thought I understood why you supported him. In his own heavy way he made sense of a kind." He frowned. "But the same could be said for Grandfather, I suppose.
That was a good speech this morning."
"Yes, it was." She was staring at him, her mouth slightly open, her breasts moving beneath her lacy bodice as she breathed.
"I'm glad all this has happened," he continued. "It's done a lot of good for me, I think."
"You're glad about the P-bombs being found-about the fire, too?"
"No. I couldn't really believe the Fireclown was guilty until I saw the evidence for myself. And I still don't hate him for what he tried to do-for what he still might try to do, for that matter. I feel sorry for him. In his own way he is the naive and generous giant you tried to tell me about."
"That's what I think. You were down there-were you satisfied that the Fireclown was responsible for stockpiling those bombs and starting the fire?"
"The evidence was plain, I’m afraid."
"It's idiotic," she said angrily. "Why should he do a thing like that? A man so full of love!"
"Love-or hate, Helen?"
"What do you mean?"
"He professed to love mankind-but he hated mankind's works. He hated what he thought were our faults. Not exactly true love, eh?"
"We'll never know. I wonder if he escaped. I hope he has-so long as he doesn't try any more sabotage."
For the second time in the last few days Alan found himself concealing something from his ex-mistress. He didn't tell her that he knew the Fireclown had managed a getaway, at least from Earth. Instead, he said: "Should he escape? After all, he was responsible for the deaths of least a hundred people. The residential corridors on nine and ten all the way up to fifteen were full of corpses.
Probably a great many more were roasted in their homes. A nasty death, Helen. I know. I came close to it myself. Should he escape without punishment?"
"A man like the Fireclown is probably not conscious of his crime, Alan. So who's to say?"
"He's intelligent. I don't think he's insane, in any way we can understand.
Warped, perhaps…?' "Oh, well, let*s stop talking about the Fireclown. There's a world-wide search out for him now. The fact that he vanished seems to prove his guilt, at least for Simon Powys and the public. I've noticed a few remained loyal to the Fire-clown for some time after they found out about the bombs, If the fire hadn't started he'd probably still have strong support from people who thought the bombs were planted."
"You can't plant a stack of P-bombs, Helen. The Fire-clown must have made them.
He's the only one with the resources."
"That's what everyone thinks. But a few of us politicians know better, Alan."
"Nuclear weapons have been banned for years. What are you talking about?"
"Not everyone gave up all their stockpile in the early days of the Great Disarmament, Alan. There were quite a few who hung on to some secret arms piles until they saw how things were going. Of course, when the Solar Government was found to work and the threat of war dwindled away to nothing, they forgot about them or got rid of them."
"Good God! Nuclear bombs. I'm not superstitious. War's a thing of the past. But it seems dreadful that the weapons should still be around."
"There are plenty," she said ironically. "At least enough to fight a major solar war!"
CHAPTER SEVEN
ALAN, like the rest of his contemporaries, had lived sc long in a peaceful world that the concept of war, particularly war fought on a nuclear scale, was horrifying. For nearly a century the world had hovered on the brink of atomic conflict, but time after time governments had jus! managed to avoid it. With the final outlawing of nuclear weapons in 2042, a great sigh of relief had gone up.