Chapter 4: Camouflage and Sabotage

Immaculately dressed in a dark business suit and creme-coloured shirt, Tom Lucas sat before the cameras and the panel of three political analysts. Beside him, in a pink pastel dress, his wife Barbara sat in support of him. Tom had expected this to be a pleasant Sunday morning as they were from Brenner News Network, a Solarian News Network competitor who was owned by a noted Tory supporter, Buzz Brenner, but almost from the get-go he found himself being grilled by the trio of Frank, Roberta and Chuck. It might as well have been any other three names, as none of them let down their guard enough for their real personalities to shine through.

"Tom, about this scandal with your daughter..." was as far as Frank got.

"Frank, I don't consider it much of a scandal. After all, it's a Solarian Naturist Federation registered resort, and a member in good standing. There has never been a single complaint registered against it for anything more serious than screwed up reservations, which I should point out happens to every operation in the hospitality industry, including the most prestigious of five-star restaurants."

"But she was nude..." ventured Roberta, her visage displaying distaste at that fact.

"As were everyone else at that resort. Last time I checked, that was perfectly legal in that context."

"But you were unaware of your daughter's activities, were you not?" Chuck growled. "What does that say about your parenting?"

"It says that like every other parent out there, it's impossible to monitor your teen child's life 24 hours a day, seven days a week. You have to raise them right and hope that some of the lessons you've tried to teach them about responsible behaviour rubs off."

Chuck was unwilling to concede the point. "And would you call this 'reasonable behaviour'? Going behind your back and stripping at some sex resort?"

"Chuck, Chuck, Chuck. It's not a sex resort. It's a naturist resort. They go nude there, they go swimming there, they do not have public orgies there."

"So you've gone there yourself?"

That was a loaded question. If he said 'no', they'd accuse him of being in ignorance of his daughter's playground, if he said 'yes', they'd ask when. "Yesterday, two trusted members of the Party hierarchy investigated the resort in person. They did not report any licentious behaviour of the type you're implying."

"So what type of licentious behaviour were they doing?" smirked Roberta.

Tom dredged his memories for details from that report that Sarah Miles had prepared. "Swimming, reading, golfing." He allowed his voice to grow sarcastic. "Oh, there's something terribly licentious: hitting a defenceless white ball with a stick. Call the SPCGB."

Roberta couldn't put the letters together quickly enough. "The SPCGB?"

"Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Golf Balls," he explained diffidently.

As Roberta's fellow panelists guffawed at her expense, the Moderator Fiona McGowan intervened. "Maybe we'd better see the video in question," she suggested.

Barbara grabbed her husband's arm. "Maybe not..."

"Sure," he responded. "The number of people who haven't seen that but want to, can probably be counted on the fingers of one hand."

Once again, the audience of the political analysis show got to see the comely daughter of the Tory party's candidate for President slicing into the water, her movements not constrained by a swimming costume.

"So will you not agree that this is a disgraceful act?" challenged Roberta.

"No. Mind you, her swim coach disagrees."

Roberta smiled. "She is going to drop Melanie from the swim team for this skinny-dipping episode, then?"

"The coach is of the opinion that Melanie's swimming form is disgraceful and costing her valuable time in intramural competitions. I believe the teacher is with Melanie this weekend at the resort's pool, working on the issue."

Roberta blinked at that. "In the nude?"

"Well, we are talking about a naturist resort."

As Tom and Barbara Lucas were "enjoying" being grilled with a coating of extra-hot barbecue sauce by three of the sharpest, pointiest charcoal briquettes in the world of political reporting, Reverend Matthew Calhoun was putting the final touches to the sermon he would deliver in an hour or so. The good Reverend held forth every Sunday morning from his Lunar City-based Crystalline Cathedral, an opulent pressurized structure designed to resemble a glass church glowing from the faith of the flock within. Like all his shows, this would be beamed across the solar system via his private network. What not many knew was that the Crystalline Cathedral that greeted his viewers on their vidscreens every day of the year was a fake, a carefully-constructed miniature prop that only existed inside a sound stage and in the fevered imagination of his faithful if deluded flock.

Like his nemesis Thomas "TK" Kinkade, Matthew Calhoun sported a bolo tie and spoke with a touch of a twang. Like his nemesis, Matthew Calhoun was tall with a full head of hair tinged a distinguished grey. There the similarities between the two Texans ended.

TK was portly, and barrel-chested, whereas Matthew Calhoun was almost cadaverous, and indeed had felt his entire life that his legs were far too long for his torso – his father having often called him the ugliest mutt on the face of the Earth, or any other planet for that matter. TK was bulbous-nosed, but Matthew Calhoun sneered at the world down a hawk's-beak proboscis sharp enough to chop down a mature oak.

TK enjoyed sharing a fine scotch with his wife before bedtime, and the pair never went without a bottle of fine red wine with dinner. Matthew Calhoun was a teetotaller, one of the kind determined to save every drinker if they had to follow Carrie Nation with axes of their own – a result of being a reformed alcoholic like his father.

TK was a man of the world, tolerant of others' vices and preferences and interests, whereas anything that struck Matthew Calhoun as even slightly deviant called for a loud and vociferous condemnation, preferably from the pulpit or from his syndicated column.

Both men had had their views of the universe formed by their parents, but TK and his father still got along, and almost every Saturday night that TK was in Luna City found the old man dropping by for some of TK's famous chicken-fried steak. Matthew Calhoun's father had passed on some years ago, his years of hard drinking having finally caught up with him, and in the living years had been both psychologically and physically abusive toward his brood. Calhoun the Elder had many remarkable prejudices, the majority of which he'd passed along to his desperately unhappy son in his formative years.