“When we were ready, Adam spoke on video, announced that it was time to carry out the Party’s pledge of free elections, set a date, said that everybody over sixteen could vote, and that all anyone had to do to be a candidate was to get a hundred chops on a nominating petition and post it in Old Dome, or the public notice place for his warren. Oh, yes, thirty temporary election districts, ten Congressmen from each district–that let all but the smallest warrens be at least one district.”
“So you had it lined up and Party ticket went through?”
“Oh, no, dear! There wasn’t any Party ticket–officially. But we were ready with our candidates. . . and I must say my stilyagi did a smart job getting chops on nominations; our optings were posted the first day. Many other people posted; there were over two thousand candidates. But there was only ten days from announcement to election, and we knew what we wanted whereas the opposition was split up. It wasn’t necessary for Adam to come out publicly and endorse candidates. It worked out–you won by seven thousand votes, dear, while your nearest rival got less than a thousand.”
“I won?”
“You won, I won, Professor won, Comrade Clayton won, and just about everybody we thought should be in the Congress. It wasn’t hard. Although Adam never endorsed anyone, I didn’t hesitate to let our comrades know who was favored. Simon poked his finger in, too. And we do have good connections with newspapers. I wish you had been here election night, watching the results. Exciting!”
“How did you go about nose counting? Never known how election works. Write names on a piece of paper?”
“Oh, no, we used a better system . . . because, after all, some of our best people can’t write. We used banks for voting places, with bank clerks identifying customers and customers identifying members of their families and neighbors who don’t have bank accounts–and people voted orally and the clerks punched the votes into the banks’ computers with the voter watching, and results were all tallied at once in Luna City clearinghouse. We voted everybody in less than three hours and results were printed out just minutes after voting stopped.”
Suddenly a light came on in my skull and I decided to question Wyoh privately. No, not Wyoh–Mike. Get past his “Adam Selene” dignity and hammer truth out of his neuristors. Recalled a cheque ten million dollars too large and wondered how many had voted for me? Seven thousand? Seven hundred? Or just my family and friends?
But no longer worried about new Congress. Prof had not slipped them a cold deck but one that was frozen solid–then ducked Earthside while crime was committed. No use asking Wyoh; she didn’t even need to know what Mike had done . . . and could do her part better if did not suspect.
Nor would anybody suspect. If was one thing all people took for granted, was conviction that if you feed honest figures into a computer, honest figures come out. Never doubted it myself till met a computer with sense of humor.
Changed mind about suggesting that Stu be let in on Mike’s self-awareness. Three was two too many. Or perhaps three. “Mi–” I started to say, and changed to: “My word! Sounds efficient. How big did we win?”
Adam answered without expression. “Eighty-six percent of our candidates were successful–approximately what I had expected.”
(“Approximately,” my false left arm! Exactly what expected, Mike old ironmongery!) “Withdraw objection to a noon session–I’ll be there.”
“It seems to me,” said Stu, “assuming that the embargo starts at once, we will need something to maintain the enthusiasm we witnessed tonight. Or there will be a long quiet period of increasing economic depression–from the embargo, I mean–and growing disillusionment. Adam, you first impressed me through your ability to make shrewd guesses as to future events. Do my misgivings make sense?”
“They do.”
“Well?”
Adam looked at us in turn, and was almost impossible to believe that this was a false image and Mike was simply placing us through binaural receptors. “Comrades . . . it must be turned into open war as quickly as possible.”