"Jerry Pournelle - Peace With Honor" - читать интересную книгу автора (Pournelle Jerry)

some political reason it was thought desirable to put up offices as quickly as the other buildings were torn
down, to make the displaced people think it was all necessary, and now there were these empty tombs.
They passed the Population Control Bureau, two square blocks of humming activity, then around the
Elipse and past Old State to the gate. The guard checked his identity carefully, using the little scanning
plate on his palm-print, although blast it, that guard knew John Grant as well as he knew his own mother.
Grant sighed and waited until the computer flashed back the "all right," was driven into the White House
basement and escorted quickly up to the Oval Office. He got there one minute early for his appointment.
The President stood when Grant entered, and the others shot to their feet as if they had ejection
charges under them. Grant shook hands around, but looked closely at Lipscomb. The President was
feeling the strain, no question about it. Well, they all were. Too bad about the Chief, but they had to have
him.
"Sorry the Secretary couldn't make it, Mister President," Grant announced ritually.
Lipscomb made a wry face but said nothing. The Secretary of Defense was a political hack who
controlled a bloc of Aerospace Guild votes and an even larger bloc of aerospace industry stocks. As
long as government contracts kept his companies employing his men, he didn't give a damn about policy,
and since he couldn't keep his big mouth shut it was best not to tell him about meetings. He could sit in on
formal Cabinet sessions where nothing was ever said and would never know the difference anyway.
Grant kept his attention on the President. Lipscomb didn't like to be reminded of the incompetence of
his cabinet, the political deceptions that divorced power from its appearance. The ritual was getting old,
why not just sit down and say nothing? Silently, Grant took his place at the center of the table across
from the President.
Except for Lipscomb, none of the men in the Oval Office were well-known to the public. Any one of
them could have walked down the streets of any city but Washington without fear of recognition. But the
power they controlled, as assistants, deputies, clerks even, was immense and they all knew it. There was
no real need to pretend to each other.
The servitor brought drinks and Grant accepted a small scotch. Some of the others didn't trust a man
who wouldn't drink with them. His ulcer would give him hell, and his doctor more, but doctors and ulcers
didn't understand the realities of power. Neither, Grant thought, do I or any of us. But understand it or
not, we've got it, and we've got to do something with it.
"Mr. Karins, would you begin?" the President asked. Heads swiveled to the west wall where Karins
had set up a briefing stand. A polar projection of Earth glowed behind him, lights blinking the status of
forces which the President ordered, but Grant controlled.
Karins stood confidently, his paunch spilling out over his belt, an obscenity in so young a man.
Herman Karins was the second youngest man in the room, Assistant Director of the Bureau of the
Budget, and said to be one of the most brilliant economists Yale had ever produced. He was certainly
one of the best political technicians in the country, but that didn't show in his résumé, or degrees.
He took off the cover sheet to show a set of figures. "I have the latest poll results," Karins said too
loudly. "This is the real stuff, gentlemen, not what we hand out to the papers. It stinks."
It certainly did stink. The Unity Party was hovering around thirty-eight percent, just about evenly
divided between the Republican and the Democratic wings. Harmon's Patriot Party had about
twenty-five, Millington's violently left wing Liberation Party had its usual ten, but the real shocker was
Bertram's Freedom Party. Bertram's popularity stood at an unbelievable twenty percent of the
population.
"These are figures for those who have an opinion and might vote," Karins said. "The usual. 'Course
there're about half who don't give a damn about anything, but they vote by who got to 'em last anyway;
we know how they split off. You see the bad news."
"You're sure of this?" the Assistant Postmaster General asked. He was the leader of the Republican
wing of the Unity Party, and it hadn't been six months since he told them they could forget Bertram and
his bleeding hearts.
"Yes, sir, I'm sure of it," Karins said. "And it's growing. Those riots at the labor convention probably