Read Online Politician by Piers Anthony - Free Book Online

couldn't do worse than we've done.”
    “Why not try it, then? Appoint a select committee of workers—Saxon, Black, Hispanic—and pay them to go out and brace those companies. Arm them with the best information you've got, so they can really make their case. You can be sure they'll put their hearts into it, because they really do want those jobs. If there's any way to get through, to make those company execs appreciate the excellent company climate you have here, they'll do it. All you need is to get their attention, get them to take you seriously; then wonderful things might follow.”
    The mayor frowned. “That's not standard procedure—”
    “To hell with standard procedure!” the girl exclaimed. “My brother needs a job! He's got a silver tongue when he's hungry!”
    “Don't we all,” the labor leader agreed.
    “You'd do it?” she asked him. “You'd go with my brother, to—”
    “I'd go to hell with the devil for jobs for me and my crew,” he said.
    “You know, you don't seem so bad, for a Saxon cesspool.”
    He glanced once more at her anatomy. “I could say the same about a 'Spanic pig, but my wife—”
    “Remember that laser,” she said, and kissed him again, more lingeringly than before. She was young, but she had evidently had some practice.
    I looked at the mayor. “Will you do it?”
    He spread his hands. “I may be a fool, but it won't be the first time. I'll set up the committee and give it a year. If it produces—”
    “It'll produce!” the leader and girl said together.
    “Know something, Captain?” the mayor said to me. “You're a born politician.”
    “It's a necessary skill for a Hispanic officer,” I said.
    The parade continued, and it seemed happier now.

Bio of a Space Tyrant 3 - Politician
    Chapter 3 — YBOR
    We took an airplane from the state of Empire to the state of Sunshine. We had never been in one of these before, so we were fascinated all over again. The shuttle ship had not been the same, though it had planed down into the atmosphere. This vehicle had huge projecting wings on either side that planed much more emphatically against the Jupiter atmosphere as the craft jetted forward at relatively high velocity.
    That, and an assist from the gee-shield, enabled this heavier-than-gas vehicle to fly. We got clear of the city, rising above the water-cloud layer, then looped around and accelerated roughly southward at gee for ten minutes. That got us up to about twenty-eight thousand miles per hour velocity, at which point we coasted. The lift provided by the wings was so great at this speed that the pilot turned down the gee-shield to forty percent, so that we experienced approximately normal Earth-gee as a fraction of Jupiter's own greater gravity. Thus we did not have to suffer through a meal in free-fall, which was a blessing.
    The meal was somewhat casually served, plunked down on small trays before us, but the stewardesses were shapely, so I was satisfied. Spirit seemed less satisfied but put up with it. As with the shuttle descent, the other passengers were plainly bored with the ride; obviously the meal was mostly to give them something to do. Some snoozed after eating, some read magazines, and some watched the little flat-screen video images set into the backs of the seats before them. Curious, I turned ours on and discovered a news report in progress, showing my own parade of the day before. “Welcome, hero,”
    Spirit murmured, nudging me.
    I looked out the window-porthole. The plane was racing over the nether clouds, so that I could see monstrous cloud shapes passing like armies. Close clouds fascinated me; they did not exist in space or on airless moons. It was dusk at the moment at this part of Jupiter; though I could not see the direct rays of the sun, I did see the relative brightness of the cloud surface below us and the faint glow of the cloud layer above. We were zooming between the two, a sandwich of clouds, and the experience was moderately