And, off in a corner by himself, sat Phil Danville. No one talked to Danville; the party bigwigs, passing in and out of the studio, astutely ignored his existence.
A technician nodded to Jim. Time to begin his speech.
'It's very popular these days,' Jim Briskin said to the TV camera, 'to make fun of the old dreams and schemes for planetary colonization. How could people have been so nutty ? Trying to live in completely inhuman environments ... on worlds never designed for Homo sapiens. And it's amusing that they tried for decades to alter these hostile environments to meet human needs - and naturally failed.' He spoke slowly, almost drawlingly; he took his time. He had the attention of the nation, and he meant to make thorough use of it. 'So now we're looking for a planet readymade, another "Venus", or more accurately what Venus specifically never was. What we had hoped it would be: lush, moist and verdant and productive, a Garden of Eden just waiting for us to show up.'
Reflectively, Patricia Heim smoked her El Producto alta cigar, never taking her eyes from him.
'Well,' Jim Briskin said, 'we'll never find it. And if we do, it'll be too late. Too small, too late, too far away. If we want another Venus, a planet we can colonize, we'll have to manufacture it ourselves. We can laugh ourselves sick at Bruno Mini, but the fact is, he was right.'
In the control room Sal Heim stared at him in gross anguish. He had done it. Sanctioned Mini's abandoned scheme of recasting the ecology of another world. Madness revisited.
The camera clicked off.
Turning his head, Jim Briskin saw the expression on Sal Heim's face. He had been cut off there in the control room; Sal had given the order.
'You're not going to let me finish ?' Jim said.
Sal's voice, amplified, boomed, 'No, goddam it. No!'
Standing up, Pat called back, 'You have to. He's the candidate. If he wants to hang himself, let him.'
Also on his feet, Danville said hoarsely, 'If you cut him off again I'll spill it publicly. I'll leak the entire thing how you're working him like a puppet!' He started at once toward the door of the studio; he was leaving. Evidently he meant what he had said.
Jim Briskin said, 'You better turn it back on, Sal. They' re right; you have to let me talk.' He did not feel angry, only impatient. His desire was to continue, nothing else. 'Come on, Sal,' he said quietly. 'I'm waiting.'
The party brass and Sal Heim, in the control room, conferred.
'He'll give in,' Pat said to Jim Briskin. 'I know Sal.' Her face was expressionless; she did not enjoy this, but she intended to endure it.
'Right,' Jim agreed, nodding.
'But will you watch a playback of the speech, Jim ?' She said, 'For Sal's sake. Just to be sure you intend what you say.'
'Sure,' he said. He had meant to anyhow.
Sal Heim's voice boomed from the wall speaker. 'Damn your black Col hide, Jim!'
Grinning, Jim Briskin waited, seated at his desk, his arms folded.
The read light of the central camera clicked back on.
2
After the speech Jim Briskin’s press secretary, Dorothy Gill, collared him in the corridor. 'Mr.
Briskin, you asked me yesterday to find out if Bruno Mini is still alive. He is, after a fashion.'
Miss Gill examined her notes. 'He's a buyer for a dried fruit company in Sacramento, California, now. Evidently Mini's entirely given up his planet-wetting career, but your speech just now will probably bring him back to his old grazing ground.'
'Possibly not,' Briskin said. 'Mini may not like the idea of a Col taking up his ideas and propagandizing them. Thanks, Dorothy.'
Coming up beside him, Sal Heim shook his head and said, 'Jim, you just don't have political instinct.'
Shrugging, Jim Briskin said, 'Possibly you're right.' He was in that sort of mood, now he felt passive and depressed. In any case the damage had been done; the speech was on tape and already being relayed to the R-L satellite. His review of it had been cursory at best.
'I heard what Dotty said,' Sal said. 'That Mini character will be showing up here now; we'll have him to contend with, along with all our other problems. Anyhow, how about a drink ?'
'Okay,' Jim Briskin agreed. 'Wherever you say. Lead the way.'
'May I join you ?' Patricia said, appearing beside her husband.
'Sure, 'Sal said. He put his arm around her and hugged her. 'A good big tall one, full of curiouslyrefreshing tiny little bubbles that last all through the drink. Just what women like.'
As they stepped out onto the sidewalk, Jim Briskin saw a picket - two of them, in fact - carrying signs.
KEEP THE
WHITE HOUSE WHITE
LET'S KEEP AMERICA CLEAN!
The two pickets, both young Caucs, stared at him and he and Sal and Patricia stared at them. No one spoke. Several homeopape camera men snapped picks; their flashbulbs lit the static scene starkly for an instant, and then Sal and Patricia, with Jim Briskin following, started on. The two pickets continued to pace back and forth along their little routes.
'The bastards,' Pat said as the three of them sealed themselves at a booth in the cocktail lounge across the street from the TV studio.
Jim Briskin said, 'It's their job. God evidently meant them to do that.' It did not particularly bother him; in one form or another it had been a part of his life as long as he could remember.
'But Schwarz agreed to keep race and religion out of the election,' Pat said.
'Bill Schwarz did,' Jim Briskin said, 'but Verne Engel didn't. And it's Engel who runs CLEAN, not the SRCD Party.'
'I know darn well the SRCD pays the money to keep CLEAN solvent,' Sal murmured. 'Without their support it’d fold in a day.'
'I don't agree with you,' Briskin said. 'I think there'll always be a hate organization like CLEAN, and there'll always be people to support it.' After all, CLEAN had a point; they did not want to see a Negro President, and wasn't it their right to feel like that ? Some people did, some people didn't; that was perfectly natural. And, he thought, why should we pretend that race is not the issue ? It is, really. I am a Negro. Verne Engel is factually correct. The real question was: how large a percentage of the electorate supported CLEAN'S views ? Certainly, CLEAN did not hurt his feelings; he could not be wounded; he had experienced too much already in his years as a newsclown. In my years, he thought to himself acidly, as an American Negro.
A small boy, white, appeared at the booth with a pen and tablet of paper. 'Mr. Briskin, can I get your autograph ?'
Jim signed and the boy darted off to join his parents at the door of the tavern. The couple, welldressed, young, and obviously upper stratum, waved at him cheerily. 'We're with you!' the man called.
'Thanks,' Jim said, nodding to them and trying - but not successfully - to sound cheery in return.
'You're in a mood,' Pat commented.
He nodded. Mutely.
'Think of all those people with lily-white skins,' Sal said, 'who're going to vote for a Col. My, my. It's encouraging. Proves not all of us Whites are bad down underneath.'
'Did I ever say you were ?' Jim asked.
'No, but you really think that. You don't really trust any of us.'
'Where'd you drag that up from ?' Jim demanded, angry now.
'What're you going to do ?' Sal said. 'Slash me with your electro-graphic magnetic razor ?'
Pat said sharply, 'What are you doing, Sal ? Why are you talking to Jim like that ?' She peered about nervously. 'Suppose someone overheard.'
'I'm trying to jerk him out of his depression,' Sal said. 'I don't like to see him give in to them.
Those CLEAN pickets upset him, but he doesn't recognize it or feel it consciously.' He eyed Jim.