Badge of Infamy Read online

  II

  Lobby

  Feldman had set his legs the problem of heading for the great spaceportand escape from Earth, and he let them take him without furtherguidance. His mind was wrapped up in a whirl of the past--his past andthat of the whole planet. Both pasts had in common the growth and suddenruin of idealism.

  Idealism! Throughout history, some men had sought the ideal, and mosthad called it freedom. Only fools expected absolute freedom, but wisemen dreamed up many systems of relative freedom, including democracy.They had tried that in America, as the last fling of the dream. It hadbeen a good attempt, too.

  The men who drew the Constitution had been pretty practical dreamers.They came to their task after a bitter war and a worse period of wildchaos, and they had learned where idealism stopped and idiocy began.They set up a republic with all the elements of democracy that theyconsidered safe. It had worked well enough to make America the numberone power of the world. But the men who followed the framers of the newplan were a different sort, without the knowledge of practical limits.

  The privileges their ancestors had earned in blood and care becameautomatic rights. Practical men tried to explain that there were no suchrights--that each generation had to pay for its rights withresponsibility. That kind of talk didn't get far. People wanted to hearabout rights, not about duties.

  They took the phrase that all men were created equal and left out theimplied kicker that equality was in the sight of God and before the law.They wanted an equality with the greatest men without giving up theirdrive toward mediocrity, and they meant to have it. In a way, they gotit.

  They got the vote extended to everyone. The man on subsidy or publicdole could vote to demand more. The man who read of nothing beyond sexcrimes could vote on the great political issues of the world. No abilitywas needed for his vote. In fact, he was assured that voting alone wasenough to make him a fine and noble citizen. He loved that, if hebothered to vote at all that year. He became a great man by listing hisunthought, hungry desire for someone to take care of him withoutresponsibility. So he went out and voted for the man who promised himmost, or who looked most like what his limited dreams felt to be afather image or son image or hero image. He never bothered later to seehow the men he'd elected had handled the jobs he had given them.

  Someone had to look, of course, and someone did. Organized specialinterests stepped in where the mob had failed. Lobbies grew up. Therehad always been pressure groups, but now they developed into a third armof the government.

  The old Farm Lobby was unbeatable. The big farmers shaped the laws theywanted. They convinced the little farmers it was for the good of all,and they made the story stick well enough to swing the farm vote. Theymade the laws when it came to food and crops.

  The last of the great lobbies was Space, probably. It was an accidentthat grew up so fast it never even knew it wasn't a real part of thegovernment. It developed during a period of chaos when another countrycalled Russia got the first hunk of metal above the atmosphere and whenthe representatives who had been picked for everything but their graspof science and government went into panic over a myth of nationalprestige.

  The space effort was turned over to the aircraft industry, which hadnever been able to manage itself successfully except under the stimulusof war or a threat of war. The failing airplane industry became thespace combine overnight, and nobody kept track of how big it was, excepta few sharp operators.

  They worked out a system of subcontracts that spread the profits so widethat hardly a company of any size in the country wasn't getting a share.Thus a lot of patriotic, noble voters got their pay from companies inthe lobby block and could be panicked by the lobby at the first mentionof recession.

  So Space Lobby took over completely in its own field. It developedenough pressure to get whatever appropriations it wanted, even overPresidential veto. It created the only space experts, which meant thatthe men placed in government agencies to regulate it came from its ownranks.

  The other lobbies learned a lot from Space.

  There had been a medical lobby long before, but it had been aconservative group, mostly concerned with protecting medical autonomyand ethics. It also tried to prevent government control of treatment andpayment, feeling that it couldn't trust the people to know where tostop. But its history was a long series of retreats.

  It fought what it called socialized medicine. But the people wantedtheir troubles handled free--which meant by government spending, sincethat could be added to the national debt, and thus didn't seem to costanything. It lost, and eventually the government paid most medicalcosts, with doctors working on a fixed fee. Then quantity of treatmentpaid, rather than quality. Competence no longer mattered so much. TheLobby lost, but didn't know it--because the lowered standards ofcompetence in the profession lowered the caliber of men running thepolitical aspects of that profession as exemplified by the Lobby.

  It took a world-wide plague to turn the tide. The plague began in oldChina; anything could start there, with more than a billion peoplehuddled in one area and a few madmen planning to conquer the world. Itmight have been a laboratory mutation, but nobody could ever prove it.

  It wiped out two billion people, depopulated Africa and most of Asia,and wrecked Europe, leaving only America comparatively safe to takeover. An obscure scientist in one of the laboratories run by the MedicalLobby found a cure before the first waves of the epidemic hit America.Rutherford Ryan, then head of the Lobby, made sure that Medical Lobbygot all the credit.

  By the time the world recovered, America ran it and the Medical Lobbywas untouchable. Ryan made a deal with Space Lobby, and the twoeffectively ran the world. None of the smaller lobbies could buck them,and neither could the government.

  There was still a president and a congress, as there had been a Senateunder the Roman Caesars. But the two Lobbies ran themselves as theychose. The real government had become a kind of oligarchy, as it alwaysdid after too much false democracy ruined the ideals of real andpractical self-rule. A man belonged to his Lobby, just as a serf hadbelonged to his feudal landlord.

  It was a safe world now. Maybe progress had been halted at about thelevel of 1980, but so long as the citizens didn't break the rules oftheir lobbies, they had very little to worry about. For that, forsecurity and the right not to think, most people were willing to leavewell enough alone.

  Some rules seemed harsh, of course, such as the law that all operationshad to be performed in Lobby hospitals. But that could be justified; itwas the only safe kind of surgery and the only way to make sure therewas no unsupervised experimentation, such as that which supposedlycaused the plague. The rule was now an absolute ethic of medicine. Italso made for better fees.

  Feldman's father had stuck by the rule but had questioned it. Feldmanlearned not to question in medical school. He scored second in MedicalEthics only to Christina Ryan.

  He had never figured why she singled him out for her attentions, but hegloried in both those attentions and the results. He becameautomatically a rising young man, the favorite of the daughter of theLobby president. He went through internship without a sign of trouble.Chris humored him in his desire to spend three years of practice in apoor section loaded with disease, and her father approved; such selflessdedication was the perfect image projection for a future son-in-law. Inreturn, he agreed to follow that period by becoming an administrator. Adoctor's doctor, as they put it.

  They were married in April and his office was ready in May, completewith a staff of eighty. The publicity releases had gone out, and thePublic Relations Lobby that handled news and education was paid to beginthe greatest build-up any young genius ever had.

  They celebrated that, with a little party of some four hundred peopleand reporters at Ryan's lodge in Canada. It was to be a gala weekend.

  It was then that Baxter shot himself.

  Baxter had been Feldman's closest friend in the Lobby. He'd come alongto handle press relations and had gotten romantic about the countryside,never having been
out of a city before. He hired a guide and wenthunting, eighty miles beyond the last outpost of civilization. Somehow,he got his hand on a gun, though only guides were supposed to touchthem, managed to overcome its safety devices, and then pulled thetrigger with the gun pointed the wrong way.

  Chris, Feldman and Harnett from Public Relations had accompanied him onthe trip. They were sitting in a nearby car while Feldman enjoyed thescenery, Chris made further plans, and Harnett gathered material. Therewas also a photographer and writer, but they hadn't been introduced byname.

  Feldman reached Baxter first. The man was moaning and scared, and he wasbleeding profusely. Only a miracle had saved him from instant death. Thebullet had struck a rib, been deflected and robbed of some of itsenergy, and had barely reached the heart. But it had pierced thepericardium, as best Feldman could guess, and it could be fatal at anymoment.

  He'd reached for a probe without thinking. Chris knocked his hand aside.

  She was right, of course. He couldn't operate outside a hospital. Butthey had no phone in the lodge where the guide lived and no way tosummon an ambulance. They'd have to drive Baxter back in the car, whichwould almost certainly result in his death.

  When Feldman seemed uncertain, Harnett had given his warning in a lowbut vehement voice. "You touch him, Dan, and I'll spread it in every oneof our media. I'll have to. It's the only way to retain publicconfidence. There'd be a leak, with all the guides and others here, andwe can't afford that. I like you--you have color. But touch that woundand I'll crucify you."

  Chris added her own threats. She'd spent years making him the outlet forall her ambitions, denied because women were still only second-ratemembers of Medical Lobby. She couldn't let it go now. And she wasprobably genuinely shocked.

  Baxter groaned again and started to bleed more profusely.

  There wasn't much equipment. Feldman operated with a pocketknifesterilized in a bottle of expensive Scotch and only anodyne tablets inplace of anesthesia. He got the bullet out and sewed up the wound with abit of surgical thread he'd been using to tie up a torn good-luckemblem. The photographer and writer recorded the whole thing. Chrisswore harshly and beat her fists against the bole of a tree. But Baxterlived. He recovered completely, and was shocked at the heinous thingthat had been done to him.

  They crucified Feldman.