The Stainless Steel Rat for President

As soon as I faced this indisputable fact the glimmerings of an idea began tapping faintly for attention. But why? What was important about this bit of bad news? I paced the floor, smoked a cheroot, scratched my head, poured some ron, rubbed my chin and did all of the other things that are supposed to make the brain tick over. One of them must have worked because I was suddenly electrified, leaping into the air and clicking my heels together. Or rather thudding them together, since I was barefoot. I grabbed for the phone and punched in de Torres's personal number. It took a moment for the call to go through, and when his face appeared on the screen it was bouncing up and down with the sky in the background.

"What is it?" he asked. There was a regular thudding sound beating time behind his voice. Then I realized that he must have gone riding and that the telephone pickup was in the pommel of the saddle.

"Just a question if you don't mind. This planet is now theoretically an established democracy, isn't it?" He bounced and nodded. "Theoretically is the right word. We have a constitution that promises everything, though of course we receive nothing. Our motto should be that there are no fixed rules. Anyone can be bribed, anyone corrupted. On paper, yes, we are a democracy..." "Well that paper is what I am interested in. Where can I see a copy of this constitution?" "In my library. It is in the memory banks, but there is also a bound volume on the stand between the windows. Why do you ask?" "All will be revealed very soon. Thanks." I pulled on some clothes and hurried down to the library, tiptoeing past the tall windows that opened out onto the balcony, because I could see Angelina and the boys having coffee there. It wasn't quite time for explanations yet.

The constitution was just where the marqu6z had said. I opened it and groaned. There were over nine thousand pages of fine print. I obviously had my work cut out for me.

There was no point in going through the massive thing page by page and scribbling out handwritten notes. Never keep a dog and bark for yourself; that's one of my mottoes. I turned on the library computer, dredged the constitution up from the memory stacks and punched it into current memory. I then wrote a simple search program and went to pour myself a drink while it began dredging through the massive thing for some nuggets of gold.

It wasn't easy. There did not seem to be much coherence to the constitution. It was written in a half-dozen styles, all of them obfuscatory of course, and contained repetitions and redundancies galore. After awhile I began to see why. It soon became obvious that Zapilote had not written the thing, but instead must have clobbered it together from a number of other documents. This was both good news and bad. Bad in that I had to scan almost every page myself, good because there was such a variety of material. There had to be something I could use among all this legal rubbish.

The shadows were lengthening across the floor before I did. A secondary reference to a sub-clause in an appendix relating to additional addenda. I read it once quickly, and as I did I felt a warm glow suffuse my body. Then I went through it again, more slowly, dancing a little jig as the glowing letters moved across the screen.

"Eureka!" I cried, unable to contain myself any longer. Then Eureka! again as I keyed in the computer's voice simulator, then actuated it to say Eureka too. And to repeat itself in a number of different voices and melodies. Within moments a chorus of booming "Eurekas!" was filling the air. Angelina appeared at the doorway and lifted one quizzical eyebrow.