Executive by Piers Anthony Read Free Book Online

out, causing his lips to twitch. “If not, perhaps we might arrange a shipment from RedSpot.”
    “Unnecessary, thank you, señor ,” I demurred.
    “Lend-Lease, perhaps.” Oh, he was enjoying this! “We prefer to be generous to our less fortunate neighbors.”
    “What is your business, sir?” I inquired through teeth that threatened to clench.
    “Just to wish you well in your endeavors,” he said, stepping on another smile as he glanced at the spreading stain on my shirt. “And to express my government's support for your new policy.”
    “ What policy?” I demanded, lapsing into English. “I haven't been able to organize my own wets, uh, wits yet!”
    “Well, naturally you, as a Hispanic leader, are sympathetic to our concerns. I am sure relations between North Jupiter and RedSpot will be very close.”
    He was getting ready to put the touch on me! Naturally RedSpot wanted more favorable terms on things like the debt owed to our big banks. I didn't want to alienate him, for I did appreciate his expression of support, but I simply wasn't ready to talk finance.
    I was saved by the arrival of the diapers. “Señor, I am sure they will,” I said quickly. “We must talk again soon! But at the moment I wouldn't want to burden you with the sight of a diaper being changed—”
    He laughed. “In RedSpot we teach our women to do such things, but then, we are not as liberated as you of the North.” He faded out, shaking his head.
    I looked around. “Where's a table?” I asked. “It's been about fourteen years since I changed a diaper, but I remember the principle.”
    Spirit showed me to a suitable table. She did not offer to do the job for me; she had had less experience at this than I, and Coral and Shelia were no better off. We stripped Robertico of his clothes and the sodden diaper. It turned out that he had done more than one number; the result was a real mess.
    Naturally we lacked equipment to deal with this problem properly. Coral fetched towels and tissues from the bathroom, and we used a damp washcloth for the cleaning. But the cloth was cold, and Robertico reacted with a howl of distress.
    “Sir,” Shelia said.
    “You know a better way to do it?” I snapped.
    “Call from Senator Stonebridge.”
    Oh. He would be concerned about the opposition walkout. What could I tell him?
    I sighed. “Put him on,” I said.
    Stonebridge's face appeared on the main screen. He glanced at what was going on, seeming perplexed.
    “Minor crisis,” I explained as I dried Robertico's bottom and set him down for the new diaper.
    “I think you need a baby-sitter, Mr. President,” he said gravely.
    “I can't trust this boy to a stranger,” I said. “He doesn't speak English.”
    “Few do, at that age,” he pointed out.
    All three women smiled. It was true: babies of this age did not speak at all. “But he has a Spanish heritage,” I explained. “All he has heard spoken is Spanish. I would rather break him in to English gradually.”
    “There are bilingual baby-sitters,” Stonebridge pointed out.
    “None I know well enough to trust at the moment.”
    “With all due respect, Mr. President, I suggest that that is surely untrue. You have a fully competent bilingual baby-sitter available that you can trust.”
    “Evidently you know something I don't!” I gritted as I stuck my thumb on a pin. The diaper had some kind of self-stick fastener, but I had been unable, in my distracted state, to decipher it, so was using the old-fashioned pin that had been on the old diaper. Diapering an active baby, I was rediscovering, is no simple task.
    “Your daughter.”
    I paused, my mouth dropping open. My daughter Hopie—of course. She was fifteen years old now and eager for just such jobs as this. But she was with Megan.
    I looked helplessly at Spirit. “I can't take Hopie away from Megan!”
    “She would be safer here,” Spirit said. "She has to attend school, and she will now be more of a target.
    Here she could be