"Yeah, sure." Dumarest snorted.

Palmer-Levy started to answer hotly, but Harris' raised hand stopped her. Personally, the President tended to agree with Dumarest, but he could see Palmer-Levy's point as well. The CRU believed the Dolists had a God-given right to an ever higher Basic Living Stipend. They blew up other people (including their fellow Dolists) to make their point, and it would have done Harris' heart good to shoot every one of them. Unfortunately, the Legislaturalist families who ran the People's Republic had no choice but to permit organizations like the CRU to exist. Quite aside from the potential for even greater violence inherent in any open move against them, they'd been around for so long, become so deeply entrenched, that eliminating one would only make room for another, so it made sense to keep an eye on the devil they knew rather than rooting it up for a devil they knew nothing about.

Yet Walter Frankel's assassination was frightening. Dolist violence was almost legitimized, part of the power structure which kept the mob satisfied while the Legislaturalists got on with the business of running the government. Occasional riots and attacks on expendable portions of the Republic's bureaucratic structure had become a sanctioned part of what passed for the political process, but there was—or had been—a tacit understanding between the Dolist leaders and the establishment that excluded cabinet-level officials and prominent Legislaturalists from the list of acceptable targets.

"I think," the President said finally, his slow words chosen with care, "that we have to assume, for the moment at least, that the CRU did sanction the attack."