Executive by Piers Anthony Page A

future elections, why couldn't I name the date? Was I in fact planning to remain a dictator for life? Did I think the people of Jupiter would stand for that? How could there be congressional elections if there was no Congress?
    I answered as well as I could, which wasn't really adequate. I felt like a less-than-bright student before a university panel. I had to promise to try to come up with better answers, after researching the matter.
    Then a respected member of the Holo Guild had his turn. “Tyrant, suppose I were to call you a gnat-brained, pigheaded, philandering son of a spic?”
    Suddenly there was silence in the chamber and on the air, and probably all around Jupiter, for this was being broadcast live. I knew what he was doing: He was testing my commitment to the freedom of the press, which encompassed all the present media. Actually Spirit had arranged to plant the question without telling me; that was her little bit of teasing.
    It took me only a moment to recover. I hauled my open mouth closed. “I really don't think of myself as gnat-brained,” I responded.
    There was a pause as the audience assimilated the significance of that. Then the laughter began, timorously at first, swelling to heroic proportion. It was, I think, comprised mostly of relief. I had answered the true question: There would be no censorship. If the Tyrant himself could be openly insulted, without consequence, then anyone could.
    In all my tenure as Tyrant I never suppressed the press. I remained true to my commitment to Thorley, made some fifteen or sixteen years before I assumed the power. In retrospect, that is one of the things I view with greatest pride. I believe Asoka would have approved.
    The time proceeded in the usual manner, seeming at once phenomenally extended and laser-swift. My next sharp memory is of the handling of the Saturn ship. It cruised to within a day's range of Ganymede, slowed, and maneuvered through the mine field. Our watching instruments perceived a fleeting little nova; a ship had been blown up. But my regretful relief converted abruptly to dismay.
    It was not the Saturn ship. That vessel proceeded on toward the planet, untouched.
    What, then, had it been? Our survey of the debris made it all too clear: a sub had blown. Our sub.
    What had happened? We consulted with our Navy man and came to a conclusion: Either the sub had encountered one of the mines, which would have been colossal bad fortune, or—
    Or there was another sub. One that had lurked in ambush for ours and torpedoed it as the opportunity arose.
    If there was another sub, the implications were chilling. It suggested that Saturn knew that we knew of their Gany ploy and had anticipated our reaction. That they had planned further ahead than we had guessed and secured their plot from our interference. Or that the premier had acted to lure us into the trap.
    I rejected the latter notion. I knew the premier of Ganymede. He was a hard man, but he would not have done that to me. It was not honor so much as the particular brand of acquaintance we had: not precisely friendship but mutual respect.
    Yet I was not sure I could accept the other hypothesis, either. Saturn could not have hidden a sub in Gany space without Ganymede's knowledge and acceptance. Had it done so, the premier would have warned me.
    “She brought her own sub,” Spirit said.
    That had to be it. A Saturn sub could have traveled under the cover of the Saturn ship, perhaps even attached to it. Then, as the ship approached the dangerous region of the mine field, where an ambush would be most likely if any were to occur, the sub could have been launched. It was no easier for one sub to spot another than for a normal ship to spot a sub, but the advantage lay with surprise. Our sub had been intent on the ship it was stalking; it could readily have missed the other sub. But the enemy sub had no such distraction; it was questing only for another sub, and if it nudged ahead of the Saturn ship, it