Lone Star Planet
Because of their huge size--they ran to a live weight of around fifteen
tons--and their uncertain disposition, supercows are not really
domesticated. Each rancher owned the herds on his own land, chiefly by
virtue of constant watchfulness over them. There were always a couple of
helicopters hovering over each herd, with fast fighter planes waiting on
call to come in and drop fire-bombs or stun-bombs in front of them if
they showed a disposition to wander too far. Naturally, things of this
size could not be shipped live to the market; they were butchered on the
range, and the meat hauled out in big 'copter-trucks.
Slaughtering was dangerous and exciting work. It was done with medium
tanks mounting fifty-mm guns, usually working at the rear of the herd,
although a supercow herd could change directions almost in a second and
the killing-tanks would then find themselves in front of a stampede. I
saw several such incidents. Once Gail and I had to dive in with our car
and help turn such a stampede.
We got back to the ranch house shortly before dinner. Gail went at once
to change clothes; Colonel Hickock and I sat down together for a drink
in his library, a beautiful room. I especially admired the walls,
panelled in plastic-hardened supercow-leather.
"What do you think of our planet now, Mr. Silk?" Colonel Hickock asked.
"Well, Colonel, your final message to the State was part of the briefing
I received," I replied. "I must say that I agree with your opinions.
Especially with your opinion of local political practices. Politics is
nothing, here, if not exciting and exacting."
"You don't understand it though." That was about half-question and
half-statement. "Particularly our custom of using politicians as clay
pigeons."
"Well, it is rather unusual...."
"Yes." The dryness in his tone was a paragraph of comment on my
understatement. "And it's fundamental to our system of government.
"You were out all afternoon with Gail; you saw how we have to handle the
supercow herds. Well, it is upon the fact that every rancher must have
at his disposal a powerful force of aircraft and armor, easily
convertible to military uses, that our political freedom rests. You see,
our government is, in effect, an oligarchy of the big landowners and
ranchers, who, in combination, have enough military power to overturn
any Planetary government overnight. And, on the local level, it is a
paternalistic feudalism.
"That's something that would have stood the hair of any Twentieth
Century 'Liberal' on end. And it gives us the freest government anywhere
in the galaxy.
"There were a number of occasions, much less frequent now than formerly,
when coalitions of big ranches combined their strength and marched on
the Planetary government to protect their rights from government
encroachment. This sort of thing could only be resorted to in defense of
some inherent right, and never to infringe on the rights of others.
Because, in the latter case, other armed coalitions would have arisen,
as they did once or twice during the first three decades of New Texan
history, to resist.
"So the right of armed intervention by the people when the government
invaded or threatened their rights became an acknowledged part of our
political system.
"And--this arises as a natural consequence--you can't give a man with
five hundred employees and a force of tanks and aircraft the right to
resist the government, then at the same time deny that right to a man
who has only his own pistol or machete."
"I notice the President and the other officials have themselves
surrounded by guards to protect them from individual attack," I said.
"Why doesn't the government, as such, protect itself with an army and
air force large enough to resist any possible coalition of the big
ranchers?"
"_Because we won't let the government get that strong!_" the Colonel
said forcefully. "That's one of the basic premises. We have no standing
army, only the New Texas Rangers. And the legislature won't authorize
any standing army, or appropriate funds to support one. Any member of
the legislature who tried it would get what Austin Maverick got, a
couple of weeks ago, or what Sam Saltkin got, eight years ago, when he
proposed a law for the compulsory registration and licensing of
firearms. The opposition to that tax scheme of Maverick's wasn't because
of what it would cost the public in taxes, but from fear of what the
government could do with the money after they got it.
"Keep a government poor and weak and it's your servant; let it get rich
and powerful and it's your master. We don't want any masters here on
New Texas."
"But the President has a bodyguard," I noted.
"Casualty rate was too high," Hickock explained. "Remember, the
President's job is inherently impossible: he has to represent _all_ the
people."
I thought that over, could see the illogical logic, but ... "How about
your rancher oligarchy?"
He laughed. "Son, if I started acting like a master around this ranch in
the morning, they'd find my body in an irrigation ditch before sunset.
"Sure, if you have a real army, you can keep the men under your
thumb--use one regiment or one division to put down mutiny in another.
But when you have only five hundred men, all of whom know everybody else
and all of them armed, you just act real considerate of them if you want
to keep on living."
"Then would you say that the opposition to annexation comes from the
people who are afraid that if New Texas enters the Solar League, there
will be League troops sent here and this ... this interesting system of
insuring government responsibility to the public would be brought to an
end?"
"Yes. If you can show the people of this planet that the League won't
interfere with local political practices, you'll have a 99.95 percent
majority in favor of annexation. We're too close to the z'Srauff
star-cluster, out here, not to see the benefits of joining the Solar
League."
We left the Hickock ranch on Sunday afternoon and while Hoddy guided our
air-car back to New Austin, I had a little time to revise some of my
ideas about New Texas. That is, I had time to think during those few
moments when Hoddy wasn't taking advantage of our diplomatic immunity to
invent new air-ground traffic laws.
My thoughts alternated between the pleasure of remembering Gail's gay
company and the gloom of understanding the complete implications of the
Colonel's clarifying lectures. Against the background of his remarks, I
could find myself appreciating the Ghopal-Klueng-Natalenko reasoning: the
only way to cut the Gordian knot was to have another Solar League
Ambassador killed.
And, whenever I could escape thinking about the fact that the next
Ambassador to be the clay pigeon was me, I found myself wondering if I
wanted the League to take over. Annexation, yes; New Texas customs would
be protected under a treaty of annexation. But the "justified conquest"
urged by Machiavelli, Jr.? No.
I was still struggling with the problem when we reached the Embassy
about 1700. Everyone was there, including Stonehenge, who had returned
two hours earlier with the good news that the fleet had moved into
position only sixty light-minutes off Capella IV. I had reached the
point in my thinking where I had decided it was useless to keep Hoddy
and Stonehenge apart except as an exercise in mental agility. Inasmuch
as my brain was already weight-lifting, swinging from a flying trapeze
to elusive flying rings while doing triple somersaults and at the same
time juggling seven Indian clubs, I skipped the whole matter.
But I'm fairly certain that it wasn't till then that Hoddy had a chance
to deliver his letter-of-credence to Stonehenge.
After dinner, we gathered in my office for our coffee and a final
conference before the opening of the trial the next morning.
Stonehenge spoke first, looking around the table at everyone except me.
"No matter what happens, we have the fleet within call. Sir Rodney's
been active picking up those z'Srauff meteor-mining boats. They no
longer have a tight screen around the system. We do. I don't think that
anyone, except us, knows that the fleet's where it is."
_No matter what happens_, I thought glumly, and the phrase explained why
he hadn't been able to look at me.
"Well, boss, I gave you my end of it, comin' in," Hoddy said. "Want me
to go over it again? All right. In Bonneyville, we found half a dozen
people who can swear that Kettle-Belly Sam Bonney was making
preparations to protect those three brothers an hour before Ambassador
Cumshaw was shot. The whole town's sorer than hell at Kettle-Belly for
antagonizing the Hickock outfit and getting the place shot up the way it
was. And we have witnesses that Kettle-Belly was in some kind of deal
with the z'Srauff, too. The Rangers gathered up eight of them, who can
swear to the preparations and to the fact that Kettle-Belly had z'Srauff
visitors on different occasions before the shooting."
"That's what we want," Stonehenge said. "Something that'll connect this
murder with the z'Srauff."
"Well, wait till you hear what I've got," Parros told him. "In the first
place, we traced the gun and the air-car. The Bonney brothers bought
them both from z'Srauff merchants, for ridiculously nominal prices. The
merchant who sold the aircar is normally in the dry-goods business, and
the one who sold the auto-rifle runs a toy shop. In their whole lives,
those three boys never had enough money among them to pay the list price
of the gun, let alone the car. That is, not until a week before the
murder."
"They got prosperous, all of a sudden?" I asked.
"Yes. Two weeks before the shooting, Kettle-Belly Sam's bank account got
a sudden transfusion: some anonymous benefactor deposited 250,000
pesos--about a hundred thousand dollars--to his credit. He drew out
75,000 of it and some of the money turned up again in the hands of
Switchblade and Jack-High and Turkey-Buzzard. Then, a week before you
landed here, he got another hundred thousand from the same anonymous
source and he drew out twenty thousand of that. We think that was the
money that went to pay for the attempted knife-job on Hutchinson. Two
days before the barbecue, the waiter deposited a thousand at the New
Austin Packers' and Shippers' Trust."
"Can you get that introduced as evidence at the trial?" I asked.
"Sure. Kettle-Belly banks at a town called Crooked Creek, about forty
miles from Bonneyville. We have witnesses from the bank.
"I also got the dope on the line the Bonney brothers are going to take
at the trial. They have a lawyer, Clement A. Sidney, a member of what
passes for the Socialist Party on this planet. The defense will take the
line of full denial of everything. The Bonneys are just three poor but
honest boys who are being framed by the corrupt tools of the Big
Ranching Interests."
Hoddy made an impolite noise. "Whatta we got to worry about, then?" he
demanded. "They're a cinch for conviction."
"I agree with that," Stonehenge said. "If they tried to base their
defense on political conviction and opposition by the Solar League, they
might have a chance. This way, they haven't."
"All right, gentlemen," I said, "I take it that we're agreed that we
must all follow a single line of policy and not work at cross-purposes
to each other?"
They all agreed to that instantly, but with a questioning note in their
voices.
"Well, then, I trust you all realize that we cannot, under any
circumstances, allow those three brothers to be convicted in this
court," I added.
There was a moment of startled silence, while Hoddy and Stonehenge and
Parros and Thrombley were understanding what they had just heard. Then
Stonehenge cleared his throat and said: