“When do we start?” Dork asked.
Skarn removed his pipe from his lips and made another blundering attempt at a smoke ring. “Tomorrow. I’ll ask this Mayor Schwartz to have dinner with me.”
* * * *
The Honorable Ernest Schwartz entered Skarn’s enormous living room with the air of belonging there. A big man, hearty, robust, his hair shining black despite his sixty years, his booming voice and laugh seemed to conjure up unnatural echoes, as though some left over from the open house had been lying inert behind the furniture awaiting a clarion invocation. The mayor had the voice for it. While Skarn was placing his coat, hat and cane in one of the closets, his commonplace compliments about the house filled the living room and shook every somnolent echo into wakefulness.
Skarn turned, absently rubbing his ears, and regarded the mayor strangely. He was seeing him, not as the Honorable Mayor of Centertown, Indiana, but as a specimen in sealed plastic in the Royal Museum. He was seeing him as one of a long row of bottled monstrosities that His Imperial Majesty’s patrol ships had sent in from a multitude of planets. He was seeing His Imperial Majesty himself, cackling with delight, leading a noisy crowd of visiting dignitaries through the displays and stopping to point out Mayor Schwartz’s ridiculous black hair, his smug little mustache, his flamboyant clothing, the sparkling cuff links, the gold chain that hung from his vest pocket.
It seemed wrong. Alien though he was, Skarn could sense the man’s personal charm. He was friendly. He was obviously intelligent.
Skarn shrugged. The decision was not his to make. The Door would decide.
“Excuse me, please,” he said. “I do not like to entertain with servants around. I’ll bring the food myself. If you’ll make yourself comfortable—”
“Why, certainly,” Schwartz boomed. “Anything I can do to help?”
“No, thank you. I can manage nicely.”
Skarn joined Dork in the laboratory, and the two of them sat watching Schwartz in the viewer. Dork was jubilant.
“What a specimen he’ll make!” he exulted. “He’s a big one. Do you suppose the specimen bottle will hold him?”
“It held that thing they call a calf,” Skarn said.
Schwartz had taken a seat, but the reflected light from the sign on the Door caught his attention. He calmly got to his feet, crossed the room and read the label. The sign instructed him to push. He pushed. The Door resisted firmly.
Dork explosively released a series of involved Huzzian oaths. “Why? Why? There isn’t a creature in our files better qualified than this one!”
Skarn said thoughtfully, “So it would seem. We must have made a mistake. Perhaps I can find out what it was. If you’d care to take notes—”
“Not me. He shouts. Even with the volume turned down he gives me a headache. I’m going to bed.”
Skarn wheeled a serving cart into the living room. The mayor hurriedly got to his feet and helped him place the dishes on the table. They took their places, and Skarn poured the cocktails.
The mayor raised his glass and said seriously, “May your residence in Centertown be a long and happy one.”
“Thank you,” Skarn said, feeling strangely moved.
The mayor sniffed hungrily as Skarn uncovered the dishes. He said with a sly grin, “I have a confession to make. The reason I jumped at this invitation was because I knew you’d hired Lucy Morgan.”
Skarn said indifferently, “She seems capable.” He found the native foods so strange that he had to measure the cooks’ skills in terms of more or less indigestion.
“Man, she’s marvelous!” the mayor exclaimed. “She used to work for me.”
“Indeed? But if you like the food she prepares, why didn’t you keep her in your employment?”
The mayor scowled. “Women get funny notions. That was years ago. Lucy was in her early twenties, and my wife couldn’t get it through her head that it was Lucy’s cooking that I was interested in. Are you married?”
“Not now,” Skarn answered cautiously.
The mayor nodded and helped himself to steak. He concentrated on his food and talked little between mouthfuls, mainly about Centertown. Skarn ate sparsely and tried to appear interested.
“I appreciate this,” the mayor said suddenly. “Don’t often get a quiet evening. The mayor’s time belongs to everyone, day or night. Complaints about taxes, or the garbage service, or a hole in the street, or anything else. Each time I’m elected I swear it’ll be the last time. But here I am—ten straight terms and I’ll probably go on until I die. Unless the voters decide to throw me out.”
“To throw you—” Skarn paused. “I see. You were expressing it symbolically. I don’t understand these elections of yours. We don’t have them where I come from.”
“I figured you were one of those refugees. Well, it seems simple to us, but I suppose it really isn’t. Two or three men run for mayor, and the people vote their choice, and the one that gets the most votes is elected. For two years. Then there’s another election and the defeated candidates try again. Or maybe some new candidates. All it amounts to is that the people decide who runs things—those of them that take the trouble to vote.”
“This voting is not required?”
“Purely voluntary. Sometimes the turnout isn’t so hot.”
Skarn considered this with a deep frown. “Wouldn’t it be simpler just to have your—” He thought for a moment and attempted a translation. “Have your Director of Vocational Assignments appoint a mayor?”
“You’re thinking of the city manager sort of thing,” the mayor said. “Some places have them, but it’s usually the city council that does the appointing. Those places usually have mayors, too.”
Skarn squirmed uncomfortably and tried again. “Your Director of Vocational Assignments—”
“We haven’t got anything like that”
“Then who assigns the vocations?”
“Nobody. People work at what they want, if they can get it, and if they can’t they work at what they can get. It isn’t like those Iron Curtain countries. If a man doesn’t like his job, or his boss, or if he can get something better, he quits. The people run the show here. Sometimes they get the wool pulled over their eyes, but not for long.”
“And—you’re going to be mayor until you die?”
“I suppose it’ll work out that way, unless the people throw me out”
“When are you going to die?”
The mayor winced. “For God’s sake!” He dissolved in laughter, booming out great reverberating rolls of sound until he gasped for breath. “How do I know? I might get hit by a car on the way home, or drop dead from overeating. Or I might live to be a hundred. What a question!”
Skarn leaned back to stare at the mayor. Ideas were coming at him so fast that he could not get a grip on them, and his thoughts whirled dizzily.
“I came up the hard way,” the mayor said. “I made my money honestly and I went into politics honestly. I’ve kept my hands about as clean as a politician can. Most of the people know that, which is why they vote for me. It’s petty politics. I’m just a big frog in a small puddle, but I like it that way. I know everyone personally and everyone knows me. Every time a new baby is born, I