The Ambassador Read online

of social harmony. It dated back, of course, to the great Dr.Ludmilla Hartwig, psychiatric synthesizer of the final decades of thetwentieth century.

  It was she who had correctly interpreted the growing distrust of thehandsome and the beautiful among the great bulk of the less favored, theintense feelings of inferiority such comely persons aroused. It was fromher computer-psychiatry that the answer employed had come: sinceeveryone cannot be beautiful, let all be ugly.

  This slogan had sparked the mass use of unneeded spectacles, thedistortion harnesses, the harmopan makeup. Now, outside of emergencies,it was as socially unacceptable for a man or woman to reveal a faceuncovered in public as it had been, centuries earlier, for a Moslemodalisque to appear unveiled in the bazaar.

  There were exceptions, of course--aside from those who were naturallyugly to begin with. Vidar-screen actors and actresses were permitted toreveal beauty when their parts demanded it--which was usually only invillains' roles. And among men, professional athletes were expected toshow their faces and bodies _au naturel_ as a mark of their profession.Among women the professional courtesans--the "models", not thetwo-credit whores--displayed their charms on all occasions. Beauty wasbad business for lower-caste prostitutes--it made such clients theycould promote feel too inferior.

  These specialists, the models and gladiators, were something of a raceapart, computer-picked in infancy and raised for their professions likeJapanese _sumo_ wrestlers. They were scarcely expected to enter the moresensitive realms of the arts, business affairs or government.

  It was, Lindsay decided, a hell of a state of affairs.

  * * * * *

  Nina Beckwith, Lindsay's Earth-assigned personal secretary, was leaningfar back in her tilt-chair with her feet on the desk. Her eyes weresquinted behind chartreuse-tinted flat-oval lenses to avoid fumes from acigarette stuck in a corner of her wide mouth. She had shut off theair-conditioner, opened the picture window and pulled the pants of hercoverall far up above her knees to let the warm New Orleans Septemberair wash over her skin.

  Lindsay looked at her legs with surprise--it had not occurred to himthat Nina owned such a long and shapely pair. He whistled softly throughhis teeth.

  Nina removed her smoke, sighed and made a move to stand up and let hercoverall fall back over the exposed limbs. Lindsay said, "Not on myaccount--_please_! Those are the first good looking legs I've seen sinceleaving Mars."

  "Watch yourself, boss," said Nina and indulged in a slow half-smile.Then, putting her feet back on the floor, "You certainly lost a lot offriends and disinfluenced a lot of people down there today. If you'dprepared your speech on the machine I'd have fixed it up for you."

  "Which is exactly why I prepared it in my hot little head," Lindsay toldher. "I wanted to knock some sense into them."

  Nina got out of her chair and snuffed out her cigarette in the disposaltray, then sat on the edge of the desk and poked at the untidydark-blonde hair she wore in a knot on top of her head. She said, "Nightsoil! You'll never knock any sense into that mob."

  Lindsay, who had been thinking wistfully that if Nina would only dosomething about that hair, the thickness of her middle, and her biliouscomplexion, she might be fairly good looking, blinked. He said, "Why inhell do you work for them then?"

  She shrugged disinterested shoulders, told him, "It's a job." Sheyawned, unabashed, added irrelevantly, "You know, boss, the trouble withyou is you look like a gladiator. They won't take you seriously unlessyou wear specs and a harness."

  "Over my dead body," he told her. "What's wrong with athletes anyway? Iplay damned good tennis when I get time to practice."

  "Athletes are lousy lovers," she said. "Your correspondence is on yourdesk." She nodded toward it. "Get it signed, will you? I've got a dinnerdate."

  Lindsay restrained an impulse to ask her with what and signed theletters dutifully.

  Nina was a spy, of course, or she wouldn't have the job. In view of hisown assignment and the delicacy of Terro-Martian relations at themoment, she must be a good one.

  He handed her the letters, noted the slight sway of her thick body asshe walked toward the dispatch-chute. A pity, he thought, that the restof her failed to match the long perfect legs she had so unexpectedly puton display.

  "Oh, Miss Beckwith'" he called after her. "You don't have to list myappointments on the teleprompter when I'm making a speech after this."

  She stopped, cast him an oblique glance over one shoulder and saidwithout much interest, "I didn't know whether you'd get back here ornot--and it wouldn't do to forget the Secretary General."

  "All right," he said in resignation. When she had gone he wondered if heshould have told her what du Fresne had said about his possibleassassination, decided it was just as well he had kept mum. He went upon the roof for a copter.

  * * * * *

  The dinner was informal. Lindsay and Fernando Anderson, the flamboyantjunior senator from New Mexico, were the only guests. They were fourat the charming _ante bellum_ mahogany table of the SecretaryGeneral's Natchez mansion. Carlo Bergozza, the Secretary Generalhimself--courteous, with natural as well as harness-stooped shoulders, atrifle vague--and his daughter and official hostess, Maria--vividlybrunette and dynamic despite the twist given her body by her harness andthe mask of huge triangular spectacles--made up the rest of the party.

  The meal was simple, automatically served, well prepared. It consistedof plankton soup with chives in chilled bowls, noisettes of lamb withyeast-truffles and bamboo-grass and, in deference to Lindsay, a dessertof Martian lichenberries. Conversation consisted of routine gambits andresponses until the dessert.

  Then Senator Anderson removed his diamond-shaped raspberry glasses andsaid, "You'll pardon me, but I want to see what our distinguishedvisitor really looks like. After all, he can see us as we are."

  Secretary General Bergozza looked briefly shocked. Then his overpoweringcourtesy came to his rescue and he laid aside his own dark greenspectacles. He said, "You know, Lindsay, you remind me a little of anAmerican ambassador to the Court of Saint James a hundred and fiftyyears ago--I believe his name was Harvey. He refused to wearknee-britches to his own reception. Other times, other customs."

  "I'm sorry if my appearance is bothering people," said Lindsay, notingthat Maria, without her glasses, came close to being a truly prettyyoung woman. "I'm not trying to disturb them--I merely want them to seeme as a true representative of my own world."

  Maria said impulsively, "It isn't that you bother us--not really. It'sjust that you're a little too good looking. Almost like a gladiator.People aren't used to it in a statesman."

  "Too good looking--with this busted beak of mine?" Lindsay pressed afinger against his nose, which had been broken in youth by a wild pitch.

  Senator Anderson said, "The slight irregularity of your nose is justenough to keep you from being too pretty, Lindsay." He smiled and added,"You certainly stirred up a cyclotron with your speech this afternoon.The British are planning a white paper."

  "I merely stated facts as I know them," said Lindsay.

  "They aren't used to facts--not unless they have beencomputer-processed," said the senator. He seemed pleased for somereason, added, "You may have broken some real ice, Lindsay. I've beentrying for years to work out a way to tell people computers are robbingthem of all powers of decision."

  "All they have to do is confine them to mathematical problems and letpeople decide human ones," said Lindsay.

  The Secretary General cleared his throat. He said, "Without thecomputers there would be no United Worlds. There would be no world atall, probably."

  It was a rebuke. Carlo Bergozza redonned his spectacles and rose fromthe table. He said, "If you'll excuse me I have some business to attendto. I'm sure my daughter will see that you are properly entertained." Heleft the room with slow, old-man steps.

  Maria said fondly, "Poor darling, he gets so upset. He'll take a pilland go to sleep. Let's go to the bathroom, shall we?"
/>   * * * * *

  Though outwardly the Secretary General's mansion was hyper-gingerbreadsteamboat Gothic, inwardly it was entirely modern in plan. There was aliving room, of course, for formal receptions, but as in all normalEarth-dwellings of the period the bathroom was the lived-in chamber.

  There and there only did people of the 2070's permit themselves torelax. This was a logical development of latter-day plumbing and airconditioning and the crowding of apartment and small-house life. Actuallavatory plumbing was concealed, in this instance, by an etched glassscreen. Otherwise the room featured comfortable plastic lounge chairsand sofas around a