“Big-screen monitors in all the grottos,” Jack shouted over the joyous grunts and growls of the albinos. “Everybody gets to watch what happens to prisoners who don’t behave themselves.”
‘This is an effective method of motivation.” Fastbinder beamed. “You agree?”
“Yes,” Whiteslaw said. “Can we go now?”
“No. See who is zee main course?”
Whiteslaw realized that he knew the entree personally, as did any American who paid attention to the gamut of elected federal officials. Cecil Luigi was a six-term senator and chairman of the Senate Ways and Means Committee. Luigi and Whiteslaw were bitter political opponents. The feud had become personal. If there was anyone who would fight hard to oppose Whiteslaw’s rise to the presidency, it would be Senator Luigi.
Luigi recognized Whiteslaw, too, as his corpulent, nude torso descended on the clanking chain connected to manacles on his ankles. The Ways and Means chairman pleaded loudly, “Whiteslaw, please have mercy!”
Fast thumbed his PDA and the chain clanked to a halt. He looked expectantly at Senator Herbert Whiteslaw.
“You want to give him mercy, Herbie?”
“It’s not in my nature,” Whiteslaw said with a mixture of revulsion and elation.
Jack grinned. Fastbinder clapped the senator on the back. The Ways and Means chairman descended again, until he was within reach of the lunchtime crowd, which was still famished, by all appearances. The half-dozen rebels at the coronation ceremony hadn’t been enough meat to satiate a thousand hungry mole people, after all.
They had tea on the veranda. Fastbinder spent fifteen minutes relating his struggles to teach the albinos the art of rock breaking and how, after a week or so, they learned it well enough to hollow out the massive granite boulder that was now the palace of the king.
“I don’t get it, Jacob,” the senator asked finally. “It’s fantastic, sure, but what’s the point of all this? What’s in it for you?” Whiteslaw sneered at the filthy albinos working below them. “They’re just ingrates. They’re useless.” Fastbinder was wearing a tight smile. “On the contrary, they are very much up to zee tasks I need them to do. They are loyal to myself and Jack. They will do whatever I ask, even march to their deaths. This advantage you will not enjoy as President. Even when you are President you will be struggling, day after day, to legitimize your hold on power, and you will be compromising with the other wielders of power. But see, I have already attained a status that is all-powerful, eh?”
Whiteslaw had to concede the point “Still…”
“And as for the albinos, they are my muscle and my workers, but soon I will have a population of civilized human beings large enough to satisfy my social needs. Loyalists, I mean.”
“I see,” Whiteslaw said.
“I see you are beginning to see. The reach of my power is not yet known in geographic terms, but the albinos have legends of their previous generations exploring as far as the land of permanent snow, and as far east as the sea, and as far south as the sea.”
“What south sea are you talking about, exactly?” Whiteslaw asked.
Fastbinder shrugged. “A mystery. Probably the Gulf of Mexico. Regardless, it is a vast territory.”
It was indeed vast. It was the entire North American continent. After their stiff and polite replies, and during the first few hours of the journey back to the surface, Whiteslaw thought about it. He tried to put it out of his mind, but he had forgotten to bring any magazines or books. His mind kept pondering what Fast- binder had said. Could it be true? Was the belowground population really that big?
Jack cocked his head, staring into the mirror of the near-black windows of the interior of Jack’s Earth Drill. JED rolled along smoothly, with the heavily shielded lightning flashes and the muffled noise of frying rock giving its occupants a distant perspective to the violent activity outside.
“Lots of ways my dad could help you out,” Jack was saying. “His albino army will be able to go just about anywhere, including most of the places the U.S. government thought were its best-kept secrets. Anybody gets in your way, we’ll be able to get at them and, you know, take them out of your way. Trouble is, my dad doesn’t think you’ll be able to do much in return.”
“Well—”
“I mean, whatever we need, we take. No problems.”
“I can keep you from being harassed by the military,” Whiteslaw said, trying to sound confident. Jack was tedious company.
“Well, that’s a so-what in my dad’s book. The military’s doing its best already and they’re getting squat for it,” Jack pointed out “You know we’ve only been down here a couple of months. Just think how much stronger we’ll be when we consolidate, bring more albinos into the fold.”
Whiteslaw felt ice in his veins.
“We’re not sure how many there are, mind you,” Jack added nonchalantly. “Maybe a thousand more. Maybe ten thousand.”
“Impossible!”
