Chapter 11: Scandal

At the same time as the Conservative Party's candidate for President and his wife were dining on sole almondine in the naked lap of luxury aboard the Diane Webber, Roger Wilcox, the Conservative Party's Campaign Director of Media Relations, was staring down at a largely untouched bowl of chili, feeling a touch of indigestion. But it wasn't the five-alarm chili causing his digestive distress, but the news on the main screen in the war room that he was currently using as a dining room.

Sarah Miles and the Party Whip entered the War Room at that moment, bearing sandwiches from the local deli.

"Roger, are you OK?" Sarah asked, noting the Communications Director's downcast expression.

"I made a mistake."

Sarah took in the chili steaming in front of the man. The smell alone was so spicy that her eyes were watering. "Yes, the chili is a mistake, Mr. Cast Iron Stomach."

"No," protested Roger, "That." He waved his hand at the main screen, which displayed Brenner News Network's midday headline update.

"In case you just joined us," the anchorman was saying with impeccable timing, "Tom Lucas, Conservative Party candidate for President of the Solaria Federation, and his wife Barbara, are now heading back to Luna City aboard the luxury liner Diane Webber. They are presumably nude, as that is the official dress code of Spica II, under whose flag the ship sails."

Sarah looked aghast. "Nude?"

The Whip turned his ashen face to Roger. "Spican flagged? Roger, did you know this?"

"No," Roger responded in despair. "I hadn't a clue. And the travel agency didn't say a word about this."

"This is after the official transport for the campaign, a privately owned yacht, was forced to return to her home port for sudden and urgent repairs."

The Whip rolled his eyes to the ceiling. "Ho, boy. This is going to get ugly."

Sarah began a long line of inventive and thoroughly unprintable curses.

"And I notice," the Whip continued, "they're not saying exactly the name of this yacht, or whose it was."

Roger began rubbing his eyes in frustration and despair. He remained silent.

"This incident comes six months after the same Conservative Party made a great deal of fuss over the current President, incumbent Lucy Yamashita, visiting Spica II and showing up in the nude on the nightly newscasts."

"Wonderful, just wonderful," the Whip muttered as Roger dropped his forehead to the table.

"We will be interviewing the Very Reverend Matthew Calhoun, candidate for President for the Social Reform Party and respected ethicist."

"Respected by whom?" Sarah questioned icily. "Not by me. Not after this stunt." She whirled around the room, pointing at staffers at random, her voice steadily rising in both pitch and volume. "Do you? You? How about you?"

"Stand down, Sarah," the Whip instructed through gritted teeth. "We'll get back at him. Somehow."

"I'll get back at him right now. I'm going to tear his liver out," she averred viciously. "Who's with me?"

"Down, girl. Sit."

"Roger?" an aide called, ducking his head into the War Room at that inopportune moment. "You have a call on your line."

"Pipe it in here," Roger suggested.

"You need to take it in your office. You'll want some privacy for this one." The aide paused before adding as quietly as possible, "It's Chandler the Handler."

Roger bolted from the room, leaving his rapidly-cooling bowl of five-alarm chili behind.

Melanie Lucas was also enjoying lunch, if "enjoy" was exactly the right word, with her classmates Tommy, Alicia, Sandra, Anne and Lloyd.

"What is this, again?" Tommy demanded, eyeing a forkful of the food uncertainly.

Sandra rubbed her chin. "Presumably some sort of meatloaf."

"It could easily be a brick of cardboard," offered Anne. "The gravy does resemble wallpaper paste."

"The big question: is it edible?" demanded Lloyd, picking the burnt offering apart as delicately as if he were defusing a bomb.

"The jury's still out on that," Anne responded, moving on to her tapioca pudding. She made a face, pointing to the dessert. "The jury has returned its verdict on this, though. It isn't."

"That jury – is it a coroner's jury, or a grand jury?" pondered Melanie.

"This meal is definitely a crime scene," Tommy offered. "I'd say grand jury."

Lloyd agreed with the sentiment. "Yeah, grand theft appetite."

"Could be worse," Melanie. "I could be with Mom and Dad, eating vulcanized tofu mock-chicken while listening to the same speech for the fiftieth time."

Tommy picked up his cup of tapioca pudding and sniffed it carefully. "I don't know. Somehow I think that is far more tempting than this ... what is this again?"

Just then, a fellow student at a nearby table turned around and whispered at Melanie. "You're parents are on the news again."

Melanie looked back at her. "Yeah, so? It's an election campaign, they're always in the news."

"You'll want to check this out, before you hit the reporters on the way home."

Reluctantly, Melanie dragged her own data pad out and called up the local news net. With the headline screaming back at her, the unappetizing lunch was forgotten. The number-one, front-page, above-the-fold story was about her parents' trip back to Luna City.

Tommy was reading over her shoulder. "Wow! At least they can't complain when you want to go to Sunny Glades again."

"I wouldn't care if they were talking about me – I know what I'd be getting into, and everyone knows I'm a naturist. But this says they had no idea they were getting on board a Spican ship. This latest development makes Mom and Dad look like clueless idiots. Dad's going to get crucified!"

"Your Dad's party had some pretty harsh things to say about President Yamashita when she went nude on Spica six months back, didn't they?" asked Sandra, wincing. "That's gonna leave a mark."

A miserable Melanie nodded. "They're going to call him twenty kinds of hypocrite. I can see the headlines now," she groaned.

Her friends were sympathetic. Melanie realized that she, the family naturist, would be wearing more clothing over the next forty-eight hours than either of her parents. She also realized the press would be out in force, and hungry for blood – hers.