"What became of Abel?" asked Cam before his cortex could intervene. The aide's eyes glowed with a promise of vengeance, as he put Cam through to Sowles.
"How do the preparations progress?" asked the ex-cleric.
"Well, sir. Which is why I called. The first draft of the Speech is ready."
"I'll be there within the hour," said Sowles, and the screen blanked.
When Sowles arrived at MAB, an Execusec conducted him to the door of the "Think-Box." He stared disapprovingly after her. "When the Soldiers hold sway, modesty will be rigidly enforced."
Cam dictated a memo to his pocket recorder forbidding MAB girls to observe the current abbreviated fashions.
"Well, well; Friar Tuck," burbled Ev from his customary prone position on the couch. "Have a toddy, and get that tired, cold blood circulating."
"Revolting," said Sowles.
"Politics make strange bed-fellows, eh, Sowles? Like you 'n' me! And let's not forget the Little Brown Jug! Ho, ho, ho!"
Sowles turned to (or rather, on) Cam. "The Speech?"
"Right. The Speech. Right here, sir." Cam tendered the manuscript.
The Grimmest of Reapers found the most uncomfortable chair in the room, sat, and began reading. The first page was peeled off and dropped to the floor; the second; the third; and finally, the entire effort was strewn beside Sowles, who rose in what he undoubtedly considered righteous wrath.
"You've missed the whole _Message!_" he hissed.
"Sir?"
"All this Pollyanna frou-frou is all right as frosting--but you've left out the _cake!_"
Cam was momentarily spooked--and not "on account of the account,"
either. Sowles looked fully capable of loosing a full-fledged Inquisition, complete with rack and thumbscrew, at Cam's well-barbered head.
Sowles continued to fulminate. "You haven't got one word in there about our _enemies!_"
"But Father, I refer several times to the Slave World and its evil rulers...."
"Not just _Them!_ What about the traitors in our midst--the sinister cabal of pinko liberals and moderate conservatives that have undermined our defenses...."
"I thought the Smirch Society had staked out that claim," said Cam.
"Bah! The Smirchers are too mealy-mouthed for the needs of the hour. I think _they're_ a little soft on Communism. And what about the race mongrelizers?" spluttered Sowles. "Trying to subvert America with an Afro-Asian Trojan Horse!"
"I suppose you can trace your ancestry all the way back to Caligula,"
muttered Everett.
"That's right, you human sewer! If I hadn't been assured you might be of use to the Cause--" He left the sentence unfinished.
"I get the picture, Father." Cam ushered Sowles to the door. "We'll get the new draft out right away."
"And don't forget the economic heretics," Sowles shouted as the door closed on him. "The fiends that concocted the income tax, and Social Security, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and...."
"Wow," breathed Cam, when the torrent was finally cut off.
"How do you like Galahad now?" asked Ev from the bar.
"Build me one too," answered Cam.
Nevertheless, the revision had to be done, and done it was.
"That'll have 'em seein' Red, all right," pronounced Everett.
"It's got everything in it except a declaration of war on Switzerland,"
said Cam ruefully.
"Quiet--or he'll hear about that, and want it too," said Ev.
The Day of the Rally dawned bright and smoggy, but the weather boys promised a clear, cool evening. Naturally, the major 3-D nets were all set to 'cast the "birth in the Bowl" of a potentially historic campaign.
Satellites would bounce the signal over oceans and continents, throughout Euramerica, as well carrying the presentation as to allies and unaligned nations from Tokyo to Karachi. The crusading aspect of Sowles' candidacy had been tom-tommed so well that pundits were already predicting that Sowles might easily go on to the Governorship of North America two years hence--if, indeed, his Soldiers did not sweep to control of the U. S. of E. Parliament then. That, of course, would install the Grim Reaper in the Presidential Palace.... Cam shuddered and thrust the thought from his mind. But wild dreams aside, there was no doubt that two hemispheres' attention was riveted on the big-time debut of the West Coast's Angel of Vengeance.
En route to the Bowl, the "Soldier" theme was already manifest. Every few feet, a "Brother-Private" in a new, usually ill-fitting uniform was directing traffic or hawking MAB-confected wares. "Father-General"
Sowles appeared to have lifted more than one leaf from the Salvation Army's book.
Cam himself had been verbally commissioned Brother Lieutenant-Colonel when the revised oration had been submitted to Sowles. The Reaper ate it up this trip. "You'd have thought it came down from Sinai on tablets,"
said Ev after Sowles left to begin practicing the Speech.
"He'll make it sound that way," Cam had remarked. "Above all, Our Leader is a great orator."
"Translation: bloody demagogue," Ev had replied.
Now their chauffeured air-suspension limo was tooling them up through the thickening crowds to the hill-cradled amphitheater.
Curt had come along to help. "What's going to happen to the overflow?"
he asked anxiously, peering at the turgid sea of faces outside.
"Special buses will take them to closed circuit 3-D houses," said Cam.
"Fantastic," said Ev.
Inside, there were just about the same number of last-minute panics and snafus as at most 3-D spectaculars. Power for the innumerable huge coaxial snakes was several times inadequate, which problem no one, of course, had foreseen. But eventually all the crises had had their moment and were coped with--and suddenly it was almost air time.
Cam, Curt, and Ev repaired to the control booth and found an area where they wouldn't be under the technicians' feet. (Cam had decreed a triple platoon system on this one: a fresh director and crew were alternated in every fifteen minutes.) Ev produced a flask, which Cam and Curt declined; but the super-mongoose took a few greedy licks at the cap.
"A lush _Gestalt_ yet," muttered Curt.
"Don't insult the folks that put you in silk, sonny," advised Ev.