called the “FreeLibs.”
“That old cliche about ‘strange bedfellows’ was never truer,” Spehn said to Maynard one
day. “I never thought I’d live long enough to see renegade capital, labor, Commies,
gangsters, radicals, and facists all eating out of the same dish. How long can such an
alliance as that last, even if they beat us this time?”
“It’s up to us to see to it that they don’t beat us even this time,” Maynard replied,
comfortably, and lit another cigar.
Time went on; the campaign grew hotter and hotter, and at the calculated time the
Galaxians filed criminal charges against almost a hundred Big Names of the opposition.
The “Ins” screamed and howled, of course. They’d been framed. They’d been jobbed.
Swivel-tongued demagogues ranted and raved about freedom and liberty and patriotism
and motherhood; about tyranny and oppression and muzzling and dictatorship and
fascism and slavery and corruption and soullessness and greed. They accused the
“upstairs” of everything they themselves had been doing and were still doing.
The Galaxian psiontists, however, had the facts. Events, names, dates, places, and
amounts. They knew exactly what had been done, who had done it, and for how much,
and they could prove their every allegation.
Truth and honesty and facts are much easier to present and to prove than are lies.
Wherefore the Galaxians, in addition to publicizing their facts in newspapers, magazines,
tapes, brochures, pamphlets, and flyers, also took a lot of time on the communications
networks of vast InStell. According to law, InStell had to allot as much time to the
FreeLibs as to the Galaxians-but it was probably neither accidental nor coincidental that
little or no “network” trouble ever developed on Galaxian time.
Psiontist-lawyers took solid facts to court and inserted them solidly into jurors’ heads.
Corruptionists, extortioners, boodlers, political and legal, and big-shot racketeers -lords
of vice and crime-began to go one by one behind bars.
And the vast, lethargic, unorganized public began to stir … began finally to move….
As Election Day drew near, the “fuss” predicted by Spehn did indeed develop. Nor was it
merely “some” fuss; there was a lot of it. There was a great deal of violence; there were
more than a few deaths. Intrenched and corrupt power does not yield easily to
displacement. The deeper it is intrenched and the more corrupt it is, the more difficult its
ouster is, and WestHem’s government had been corrupt to the core for a very long time.
Thus, while some of the former incumbents were now in jail and more were on the way,
the vacancies had been filled by people of the same stripe and the lower echelons, the
boys and girls who got out the vote, had not been touched.
It was a thoroughly dirty campaign; nor were the Galaxians exactly lily-white. While most
of the mud they threw was true-even though some of it could not be proved except by
psionic evidence, which of course was not admissible in court-they did at times do quite a
little extrapolating: but not when they could get caught at it very easily.
The Galaxians had another great advantage in that every important political meeting was
attended by at least one high-powered psiontist; and at these rallies, Galaxian or
FreeLib, those experts inserted the truth into minds theretofore closed to reason. These
minds thought, of course, that they had perceived the truth for themselves.
Registration soared to an all-time high of ninety eight point nine percent of all eligible
voters.
Maynard knew that the Galaxians would lose every stronghold of organized Labor and
every district controlled by ward heelers. He knew that they would win in all suburbs and
“out in the sticks.” It was in the middle regions that the issue would be decided, and he
knew exactly where those regions were. He also knew that, in spite of all the illegal work
the Galaxians had done in those regions, they would lose a lot of them. The decision
would be close: altogether too close.
On the morning of Election Day, then, especially in those doubtful regions, tension hit its
peak. Voting was far from clean, on both sides, but in that skullduggery the Galaxians
again had two great advantages. First, their ringers and repeaters had been set up so
far in advance and so carefully as to avoid suspicion. Second, they had the psiontists.
Not one in every precinct, of course, but one could ‘port to any polling-place in less than
one second of time.
And whenever a mind-reader stared into an imposter’s eyes and told him who he really
was, where he really lived, when and where and who had paid him how much, and dared
him to sign that false name, the impostor ran: but fast.
Even so, it was very close. It see-sawed back and forth all night. Maynard and his staff
were worn and drawn when, at ten o’clock next morning, it became mathematically
certain that the Galaxians had lost the presidency and had not won control of either the
Senate or the House.
“I can’t say that I’m not disappointed,” Maynard said then, “but-considering the lethargy
of John and Mary Public, that we are a completely new party, and what the FreeLibs
promised everybody-we did very well. We elected such a strong minority that the
opposition will have to maintain a solid front, which will be very hard for them to do. If we
keep on working, and we will, we should be able to win next time.”
Chapter 21
THE BATTLE OF NEW RUSSIA
Bernice sat on the rostrum, at Maynard’s right, when he called the Board to order and
said, aloud for the record:
“Mrs. Jones, who is by far the most sensitive perceiver known to us, has made an
intensive psionic study of New Russia. Her report is already on tape; but, since you are
all psiontists, I have asked her to give you, mind to mind, everything she found out, so
that you will be able to perceive and to fee! the many sidebands, connotations, and
implications that can not possibly be put into words. Mrs. Jones, will you take the floor,
please?”
Bernice took Maynard’s place in the speaker’s box and an almost absolute silence fell; a
silence that, even at the speed of thought, lasted almost half an hour. When she sat
down, all two-hundred-odd members of the Board breathed gustily and stared at each
other with emotions and expressions that simply cannot be described. Maynard resumed
his place at the speaker’s stand and spoke into the microphone:
“You see that Communism has not changed one iota in over two hundred years. It is a
rule based solely upon violence and fear. It is a rule of terror, of spies, of informers, of
secret police of the lowest, most brutal type -police who use by choice the most callous,
the most hideous techniques of all the older regimes of the iron heel; those of the
GESTAPO and the OGPU and the SLRESK and the KARSH. There are no civil liberties,
no rights of any kind except those based upon the power to kill. There have been, there
are now, and there will continue to be assassinations and purges; slaughter at the whim
of one power-mad man or of a group of such men.
“It is my considered opinion that Communism should have been wiped out before atomic
energy was developed. It has never been willing to cooperate with any decent civilization.
It was forced into a kind of coexistence by the certain knowledge that if it did not at least
pretend to accept coexistence it itself would be destroyed in the world-wide holocaust
that would inevitably follow any attempt at conquest by armed force. Its basic drive, its
prime tenet, however, has not changed. Not in any particular. Its insane lust for
dominance will never be satisfied until all civilization lies prostrate under its spike-studded
clubs. Before colonization, it devoted its every effort, fair and foul, to the mastery of the
entire Earth; since the first planet was colonized its innate compulsion was, now is, and
will continue to be the complete mastery of civilization everywhere; where ever in total
space our civilization may go.
“It is my carefully-considered personal opinion that this cancer in the body politic, if it is
not extirpated now, will soon become inoperable. At the time when we acquired the fleet
that had been englobing Earth, the Communists had built on their hidden planet a warfleet
almost as large as our own. They were and still are building more superdreadnoughts.
They intended to attack us as soon as their superiority was sufficient to warrant an
all-out bid for supremacy. It was only the acquirement of that fleet that gave us
overwhelming superiority as of now. How long will our superiority last? They are building
much faster than we can without converting to a war footing. Shall we do that, and try to
perpetuate the cold war? An attempt that will certainly fail sooner or later? The only