-- he makes Darth Vader look like a swell guy. That slicked-down, blow-dried
asshole --"

Hershie cut him off. "OK, OK, I get the idea."

"No you don't, Supe! You don't get the half of it. This guy isn't your average
Liberal -- those guys usually basic opportunists. He's a _zealot_! He'd like to
beat us with _truncheons_! I went to one of his debates, and he showed up with a
_baseball bat_! He tried to _hit me_ with it!"

"What were you doing at the time?"

"What does it matter? Violence is never an acceptable response. I've thrown pies
at better men than him --"

Hershie grinned. Thomas hadn't invented pieing, but his contributions to the art
were seminal. "Thomas, the man is a federal Minister, with obligations. He can't
just write me off -- he'll have to pay me."

"Sure, sure," Thomas crooned. "Of _course_ he will -- who ever heard of a
politician abusing his office to advance his agenda? I don't know what I was
thinking. I apologise."

#

Hershie touched down on Parliament Hill, heart racing. Thomas's warning echoed
in his head. His memories of Woolley were already morphing, so that the slick,
neat kid became feral, predatory. The Hill was marshy and cold and gray, and as
he squelched up to the main security desk, he felt a cold ooze of mud infiltrate
its way into his super-bootie. There was a new RCMP constable on duty, a
turbanned Sikh. Normally, he felt awkward around the Sikhs in the Mounties. He
imagined that their lack of cultural context made his tights and emblem seem
absurd, that they evoked grins beneath the Sikhs' fierce moustaches. But today,
he was glad the man was a Sikh, another foreigner with an uneasy berth in the
Canadian military-industrial complex. The Sikh was expressionless as Hershie
squirted his clearances from his comm to the security desk's transceiver.
Imperturbably, the Sikh squirted back directions to Woolley's new office, just a
short jaunt from the exalted heights of the Prime Minister's Office.

The Minister's office was guarded by: a dignified antique door that had the rich
finish of wood that has been buffed daily for two centuries; an RCMP constable
in plainclothes; a young, handsome receptionist in a silk navy power-suit; a
slightly older office manager whose heart-stopping beauty was only barely
restrained by her chaste blouse and skirt; and, finally, a pair of boardroom
doors with spotless brass handles and a retinal scanner.

Each obstacle took more time to weather th