Double Star (25 page)

           
I shook my head and made a great effort to pull myself together and reply. "Rog, you don't know what you are saying. It's preposterous-ridiculous! Fm no statesman. I'm just a bloody actor! I make faces and make people laugh. That's all I'm good for."

           
To my own horror I heard myself say it in Bonforte's voice.

           
Rog looked at me. "Seems to me you've done all right so far."

           
I tried to change my voice, tried to gain control of the situation. "Rog, you're upset. When you've calmed down you will see how ridiculous this is. You're right; the show goes on. But not that way. The proper thing to do-the only thing to do-is for you yourself to move on up. The election is won; you've got your majority-now you take office and carry out the program."

           
He looked at me and shook his head sadly. "I would if I could. I admit it. But I can't. Chief, you remember those confounded executive committee meetings? You kept them in line. The whole coalition has been kept glued together by the personal force and leadership of one man. If you don't follow through now, all that he lived for-and died for-will fall apart."

           
I had no answering argument; he might be right-I had seen the wheels within wheels of politics in the past month and a half. "Rog, even if what you say is true, the solution you offer is impossible. We've barely managed to keep up this pretense by letting me be seen only under carefully stage-managed conditions-and we've just missed being caught out as it is. But to make it work week after week, month after month, even year after year, if I understand you-no, it couldn't be done. It is impossible. I can't do it!"

           
"You can!" He leaned toward me and said forcefully, "We've all talked it over and we know the hazards as well as you do. But you'll have a chance to grow into it. Two weeks in space to start with-hell, a month if you want it! You'll study all the time-his journals, his boyhood diaries, his scrapbooks, you'll soak yourself in them. And we'll all help you."

           
I did not answer. He went on, "Look, Chief, you've learned that a political personality is not onq man; it's a team-it's a team bound together by common purposes and common beliefs. We've lost our team captain and we've got to have another one. But the team is still there."

           
Capek was out on the balcony; I had not seen him come out. I tuned to him. "Are you for this too?"

           
"It's your duty," Rog added.

           
Capek said slowly, "I won't go that far. I hope you will do it. But, damnit, I won't be your conscience. I believe in free will, frivolous as that may sound from a medical man." He turned to Clifton. "We had better leave him alone, Rog. He knows. Now it's up to him."

           
But, although they left, I was not to be alone just yet. Dak came out. To my relief and gratitude he did not call me "Chief."

           
"Hello, Dak."

           
"Howdy." He was silent for a moment, smoking and looking out at the stars. Then he turned to me. "Old son, we've been through some things together. I know you now, and I'll back you with a gun, or money, or fists any time, and never ask why. If you choose to drop out now, I won't have a word of blame and I won't think any the less of you. You've done a noble best."

           
"Uh, thanks, Dak."

           
"One more word and I'll smoke out. Just remember this: if you decide you can't do it, the foul scum who brainwashed him will win. In spite of everything, they win." He went inside.

           
I felt ton apart in my mind-then I gave way to sheer self-pity. It wasn't fair! I had my own life to live. I was at the top of my powers, with my greatest professional triumphs still ahead of me. It wasn't right to expect me to bury myself, perhaps for years, in the anonymity of another man's role-while the public forgot me, producers and agents forgot me-would probably believe I was dead.

           
It wasn't fair. It was too much to ask.

           
Presently I pulled out of it and for a time did not think. Mother Earth was still serene and beautiful and changeless in the sky; I wondered what the election-night, celebrations there sounded like. Mars and Jupiter and Venus were all in sight, strung like prizes along the zodiac. Ganymede I could not see, of course, nor the lonely colony out on far Pluto.

           
"Worlds of Hope," Bonforte had called them.

           
But he was dead. He was gone. They had taken away from him his birthright at its ripe fullness. He was dead.

           
And they had put it up to me to re-create him, make him live again.

           
Was. I up to it? Could I possibly measure up to his noble standards? What would he want me to do? If he were in my place- what would Bonf one do? Again and again in the campaign I had asked myself: "What would Bonforte do?"

           
Someone moved behind me, I tuned and saw Penny. I looked at her and said, "Did they send you out? Did you come to plead with me?"

           
"No."

           
She added nothing and did not seem to expect me to answer, nor did we look at each other. The silence went on. At last I said, "Penny? If I try to do it-will you help?"

           
She turned suddenly toward me. "Yes. Oh yes, Chief! I'll help!'?

           
"Then I'll try," I said humbly.

           
I wrote all of the above twenty-five years ago to try to straighten out my own confusion. I tried to tell the truth and not spare myself because it was not meant to be read by anyone but myself and my therapist, Dr. Capek. It is strange, after a quarter of a century, to reread the foolish and emotional words of that young man. I remember him, yet I have trouble realizing that I was ever he. My wife Penelope claims that she remembers him better than I do-and that she never loved anyone else. So time changes us.

           
I find I can "remember" Bonforte's early life better than I remember my actual life as that rather pathetic person, Lawrence Smith, or-as he liked -to style himself-"The Great Lorenzo." Does that make me insane? Schizophrenic, perhaps? If so, it is a necessary insanity for the role I have had to play, for in order to let Bonforte live again, that seedy actor had to be suppressed- completely.

           
Insane or not, I am aware that he once existed and that I was he. He was never a success as an actor, not really-though I think he was sometimes touched with the true madness. He made his final exit still perfectly in character; I have a yellowed newspaper clipping somewhere which states that he was "found dead" in a Jersey City hotel room from an overdose of sleeping pills-apparently taken in a fit of despondency, for his agent issued a statement that he had not had a part in several months. Personally, I feel that they need not have mentioned that about his being out of work; if not libelous, it was at least unkind. The date of the clipping proves, incidentally, that he would not have been in New Batavia, or anywhere else, during the campaign of '15.

           
I suppose I should bum it.

           
But there is no one left alive today who knows the truth other than Dak and Penelope-except the men who murdered Bonforte's body.

           
I have been in and out of office three times now and perhaps this term will be my last. I was knocked out the first time when we finally put the eetees-Venerians and Martians and Outer Jovians

-into the Grand Assembly. But the non-human peoples are still there and I came back. The people will take a certain amount of reform, then they want a rest. But the reforms stay. People don't really want change, any change at all-and xenophobia is very deep-rooted. But we progress, as we must-if we are to go out to the stars.

           
Again and again I have asked myself: "What would Bonforte do?" I am not sure that my answers have always been right (although I am sure that I am the best-read student in his works in the System). But I have tried to stay in character in his role. A long time ago someone-Voltaire?-someone said, "If Satan should ever replace God he would find it necessary to assume the attributes of Divinity."

           
I have never regretted my lost profession. In a way, I have not lost it; Willem was right. There is other applause besides handclapping and there is always the warm glow of a good performance. I have tried, I suppose, to create the perfect work of art. Perhaps I have not fully succeeded-but I think my father would rate it as a "good performance."

           
No, I do not regret it, even though I was happier then-at least I slept better. But there is solemn satisfaction in doing the best you can for eight billion people.

           
Perhaps their lives have no cosmic significance, but they have feelings. They can hurt.