Chapter 20

THE ELECTION

"On, Babe, look!" Barbara laughed delightedly and hugged Deston's arm against her

side. "And she's four months pregnant, too."

Deston "looked." Cecily Train was romping like a schoolgirl with Teddy and Babbsy. She

was on her hands and knees on the rug in the main lounge, shaking her head and

growling deep in her throat; the kids, with all four hands buried in her thick red mop of

curls, were tugging at it and shrieking with glee.

"Uh-huh; nice," Deston agreed. "And you aren't quite as sylph-like yourself as you were a

while back." He glanced down at a slight bulge.

"Uh-huh. Bun, too. It's catching, I guess. There's some kind of a germ around, must be.

S'pose we'd better fumigate the ship or something'?" Her voice was solemn, but her eyes

danced. "But that wasn't what I meant, that she might hurt herself-I'm so happy for her.

Who'd ever have thought that such an out-and-out stinker as she used to be would turn

out to be such a wonderful person? Why, even Bun loves her now."

"Something made her change her ways, that's for sure. Love? Psionics? It's a shame to

break that joyous roughhouse up, but we've got a lot of . . ."

"We don't have to yet, my sweet and impetuous. It can wait a few minutes. I'm going to

join that roughhouse myself-the kids need exercise, you big dope."

Wherefore it was fifteen minutes later that the Big Six went to work. The fleet englobing

Earth was the first thing on the agenda, and disposing of the multitude of People aboard

those hundreds of huge starships was a problem. So Deston shot a thought across

space and -much to his surprise-Bee-ay and Beedy materialized beside him in the

Explorer.

"You're that good already?" Deston marveled. The two were in perfect fusion. He had

recovered fully from his fight with the Russians. Her face was no longer hard; it was

beautiful. Both were again wearing platinum headbands mounting shining green jewels,

but no lockets. "And those? Reasonable facsimiles, I suppose?"

"No, duplicates. We felt-well, undressed-so the Four-we won't call those wonderful

people funny even in fun-showed us all about 'em and we made 'em in about a minute.

We aren't charged, though, now, of course; but we could be. On most things we're

getting to be pretty good-the Fourth Nume, even. We can't do long-distance 'porting yet,

except on ourselves, but Stella says we'll be ready for anything in a couple of weeks.

Then Mr. Maynard says we can go back to The World. He said, 'See if you can work out

a program of rehabilitation that will begin to show results in the generation now being

born.' He's wonderful, isn't he?"

"He's wonderful at putting people to work, that's for sure. But what we wanted to know

is, how can we put all those people back on your world without lousing everything up

over there?"

'Oh, easy-that'll be perfect! It won't bother them a bit= Acts of the Company,' you know.

There'll he enough of them, maybe . . ." the fusion scanned the fleet, ". . . almost enough,

anyway, to put everything back to normal. The Three-A's will instruct and take care of

caste, and the Aceys will give them all job transfers, housing coupon books, and so on.

Everything will be perfect. And that was a good idea, putting a psionic shield around The

World, in case the Russians-but wouldn't it be a good idea to release it long enough to

blow up their headquarters?"

"It would indeed...." Deston began. "But no atomics!" Barbara said, sharply.

"Maybe not, at that. Half a dozen two-thousand pound charges of cyclodetonite will do

the trick, with no more jar than a very small earthquake, and I know where they keep the

demolition stuff. . . ."

They placed the bombs; then watched a small mountain on The World erupt and then

subside. They could find no trace of what had once been there.

"That's it," Deston said then. "Now if you two will show us exactly where to put each one

of-but listen! There are thousands of 'em-your Aceys will be running themselves

ragged-and those three-A's will smell-hell, everybody will smell a rat-they can't help but

smell such a rough job as that."

"Oh, no, the two assured him, but they did grin at each other. "The Ways of The

Company are just as inscrutable to them as to everyone else. And after such a mal-such

a disaster-it would be perfectly natural, wouldn't it, for The Company to do whatever is

necessary to get its World right back into full production?"

"My . . . God . . ." Cecily breathed. "But that does make a weird kind of sense, at that."

"Another thing," the Aceys went on. "It'd take simply forever to 'port them one at a time

to the homes they used to have, even if they still have 'em. There's a great big recreation

park back of our house-I'll show you where-so you can 'port 'em there in what you call

job lots. That would be even more impressive and Company-like, don't you think?"

"I'll tell that whole cockeyed world it would," Deston agreed, and that was how the job

was done.

After it was done Train, who had been looking around on his own, laughed, suddenly.

"Somebody did smell your rat, Babe. Cantwell. He called Punsunby and they're both

having litters of kittens all over the place."

They all looked, and Jones and Deston laughed, too; but the girls didn't think it was funny

to see even two such men as those suffer so much.

"Well, whatever they decide to do, it'll keep 'em out of mischief for a while," Deston said,

"so let's clean it up. Thanks a lot, you two," and the Aceys 'ported themselves back to

the University.

Then the six turned the entire fleet, together with its Tellurian officers-and also together

with the whole group of Russian saboteurs to be interned-over to Fleet Admiral Guerdon

Dann. All this, of course, was very much contrary to International and Interplanetary Law

-but what else could they have done?

Deston turned then to Bernice. "Bun, you're our supersensitive. We'd like to have you find

out all you possibly can about New Russia without touching off any psychic alarms-I

doubt very much if they've got anybody in your class for delicacy of touch. The rest of us

will go along, to cover you if we have to, but you'll do all the feeling around. Okay?"

"I'll give it the good old college try, Babe," silver haired Bernice said, and Operation New

Russia was begun.

While all these things were going on, and for some time before, the political campaign

throughout all WestHem had been waxing warmer and warmer. It was now in full, hot

swing. With full prosperity restored-and everyone who could either see or hear knew how

that had come about and who had brought it about-the Galaxians were really making

hay.

They had made so much hay that the Sociocrats and the Consercans, the two major

parties before this unprecedented break-up, had merged as the only way of beating the

snowballing Galaxians; and the Communists and the Liberals had joined them after being

promised a place at the trough. This fusion party, the Party of Freedom and Liberty, was

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."