Vice-president: Delilah frowned. How had they forgotten to name a vice-president? Should she call Wa and mention it to him? Did it matter? She could not decide that and resolved to think it over more carefully later on. Perhaps, she thought, unable to leave the subject, it was too late for that, for wasn't the vice-president what they called elected, like Castor? Another election would be easy enough to arrange, of course—No. Let it go. She went on to the last post:
Secretary of State: Tsoong Delilah. That completed the roster, and that one, at least, she thought, smiling to herself, would never ever, under any circumstances at all, do anything harmful to the People's Republic of China, by accident or design. It was a good list.
It only remained to get them all together and rehearse them in their roles.
The rehearsals—which Wa, grinning sardonically, instructed her to call cabinet meetings—were in fact political reeducation sessions. Wa himself sat in on some of them, Buddha-grin, absolute certainty of control over them all. For him it was voluntary. For the others it was compulsory—for almost all the others, at any rate. Sebastio was never at the cabinet meetings because he didn't need reeducation; his work was elsewhere, anyway. Delilah certainly didn't need it, either, but the meetings needed her—she was the one who kept one eye on Feng Miranda to see that she didn't get any troublesome ideas and the other on Castor to see that he took the matter seriously. That was not easy. Castor could stand about five quotations from Marx, Lenin, and Mao Tse-tung in one morning, she found. After that he began to scowl and whisper sardonic remarks into the ear of Feng Miranda. At the end of the second session she took him firmly by an arm. "You must be more serious," she scolded as soon as they were out of the chamber.
"For what?" he demanded angrily. "Shit, Delilah, I don't care about all this stuff. It's costing me time at the university—I'll never catch up with the classes!"
"The president of the United States," she said firmly, "does not need to attend a class. You can have tutors. You can become a research fellow. You can order your own degree and it will be given you—all this, providing you do the task the Party has assigned you, will be yours."
And the funny thing was, she realized she meant it. Whatever else happened, Pettyman Castor could never go back to being a peasant on the Heavenly Grain Collective.
What the implications of that were, Delilah could not decide, but a queer burning feeling in her belly told her that they were going to be important to her.
When finally they were all sufficiently indoctrinated to be trusted, a taping session was set up. Castor read his lines handsomely:
"My friends from space," he said, gazing benignly into the camera, "I am afraid there has been a mistake. The Chinese are not our conquerors. They are our friends. Let us both put down our weapons and meet in peace and friendship, and—"
Peace and friendship. Put down our weapons! While the president was delivering his canned message, his secretary of state was doing her very best to keep a dignified expression. The idea of America having any weapons to put down was ludicrous.
The idea, or more accurately the fact, that even Han China had no weapons that might prevail against the spacecraft was not funny at all.
The taping was successful; the technicians all checked in, one by one, with their assurances that sound was good, color was good, no one had a bad shadow to hide his face, all the cabinet had managed to look sufficiently cabinetly; but Delilah was quiet as she and Castor started back. It was only when they were nearing home that she began to grin. The grin came when Castor asked, "Say, Delilah— there was scaffolding around the building when I left this morning. Do you know what they're doing?"
"I know," said Delilah smugly, "very well." But would not answer him. Would not tell him how all the other tenants in the building had been persuaded to move out, how all the "Americn cabinet" had been provided with suitable quarters; would not speak at all on the subject until they rounded the corner and saw what had happened to the building. The pastel lime green was gone under two coats of quick-drying paint the color of rice flour. The workmen were just removing the last of the spidery struts and platforms they had worked from. Castor turn to her in puzzlement, and Delilah snickered. "Mr. President," she said, "behold your White House!"
Living in the same house with Tchai Howard and Feng Miranda and Danbury Eustace and Tsoong Delilah and Tsoong Delilah's son—especially with Miranda and Delilah and the boy—was not a relaxing existence for Castor. For a lousy secretary, Tchai was pretty peremptory with his president. Delilah was peremptory enough, too, with her bed demands—which, it was true, Castor greatly enjoyed meeting. (But why did it always have to be her idea?) Miranda was the most troublesome, for what she saw in Castor was hard to figure out (certainly she treated him as a silly delinquent), but that there was something was clearly demonstrated by the way she hung around.
Life had been a lot less confusing back on the collective.
What it had been back on the collective was boring, and even now there were boring parts. Most boring of all were the "cabinet meetings," where nothing ever seemed to be discussed except why it was dialectically essential to maintain proper political and economic attitudes and what those ordained attitudes had to be. It was so often explained to Castor that the Chinese were not aggressors in America that Castor, who had always assumed that was true anyway, began to doubt it. Miranda fed that doubt. Miranda had no doubts. When one day the meeting was abruptly terminated without explanation and Delilah and Manyface went hurriedly off in her car the same way, Miranda clutched Castor's arm. "We'll walk home," she informed him. "I've got a lot to say to you."
Inside, Castor groaned; he knew what that lot was. After half an hour or so he was groaning audibly, because the lot was just what he expected. "You're a traitor to your country," she lectured. "You make a fool of yourself with that old Han policeone! You have the title, and the title gives you the power—have the courage to use them!"
Reeducation had not worked well on Feng Miranda. Argument did no better: "What 'country'? What is the harm in making love with someone I enjoy? Use the title for what?—and what good is the title when it can be taken away in a minute?"
"You're a silly child," spat Feng Miranda, and the argument could have gone on forever. It lasted more than an hour. Could have lasted for three, but just as they were crossing Canal Street a Renmin police car made a violent U-turn, its siren suddenly ascream, and pulled up beside them. "Are you Citizen Pettyman? Citizen Feng? Get in at once—you are needed!" And no questions answered as they screamed through the streets to the mock-White House, where Delilah was tapping her foot at the door.
"Where have you been?" she demanded; and, without waiting for an answer, "They finished the secure link and transmitted the tape. The answer has just come in."
"Answer?" said Castor, not quite able to follow. "What kind of answer?"
Delilah's face was like thunder. "They won't talk to you by radio. They want you to meet them in space."
IV
Castor had never been in an airplane before. When the takeoff thrust jammed him hard against the seat back he swallowed and grinned weakly and wondered if airsickness disqualified a person for spaceflight. Feng Miranda had never been in the air before, either, and hissed resentment into Castor's ear: "These airplanes should have been ours!" Tsoong Delilah had been in aircraft a thousand times—all types of aircraft, all over the world—and mostly she was watching Miranda and Castor in the seat ahead with cold eyes. It was of course certain that she was not jealous of the way this Overseas-Chinese vixen had set her sights for Castor, since Castor was merely a machine she used to produce good sensations inside her body. There was no question of "love." Therefore there could be no question of "jealousy." When she disciplined Feng, as she intended to do very soon, it would be for none but the most correct political reasons: the woman could not jeopardize this most vital of missions.