The doctor's office was jammed.
Apparently, when folks were out of work, they had little better to do with their time than create more people. Not that Kafari minded, per se. She was too grateful for a chance at having Simon's child—and too distracted by preelection news—to dwell on the urban population explosion underway. The ob-gyn clinic's waiting area boasted the obligatory datascreen for viewing news programs, talk shows, and the mindless round of games and domestic operas most of Jefferson's daytime broadcast stations featured as standard fare, but with the presidential election tomorrow—along with about half the seats in both the House of Law and Senate—virtually everything had been preempted for the biggest story in town.
That story was the Populist Order for Promoting Public Accord, the party that was promising to rescue Jefferson from all that ailed it, right down to the common cold and the clap. Virtually every broadcast station on Jefferson was carrying live feed from an open interview with Nassiona Santorini, reigning queen of POPPA. The epitome of urban sophistication, Nassiona's loveliness arrested the eye and held most men spellbound. Her hair, dark and lustrous, conformed to a simple, uncluttered style popular with working women. Subdued colors and expensive fabrics, exquisitely cut to create an illusion of simplicity and unpretentiousness, served to impart an air of quiet, competent strength. Her voice, low and sultry, was never hurried, never strident, weaving a spell of almost mournful concern, threaded with quiet indignation at the miscarriages of justice she so earnestly enumerated.
"—that's exactly what it is," she was saying to Poldi Jankovitch, a broadcaster whose popularity had risen to stunning new heights as he trumpeted the glorious message POPPA was selling to all comers. "The proposed military draft is nothing less than a death sentence with one deeply disturbing purpose: deporting the honest, urban poor of this world. We're held in literal slavery under the guns of a ruthless off-world military regime. The Concordiat's military machine knows nothing about what we need. What we've suffered and sacrificed. Nor do they care. All they want is our children, our hard-earned money, and our natural resources, as much as they can rape out of our ground at gunpoint."
"Those are fairly serious charges," the broadcaster said, producing a thoughtful frown. "Have you substantiated those claims?"
Lovely brows drew together. "Simon Khrustinov has already told us everything we need to know. Colonel Khrustinov was very clear about the Dinochrome Brigade's agenda. We send our young people to die under alien suns or we pay a staggering penalty. The Concordiat's so-called 'breach of contract' clause is nothing short of blackmail. It would destroy what little of our economy is intact after six months with John Andrews at the helm. When I think of the horrors Colonel Khrustinov's testimony inflicted on the innocent children watching that broadcast, it breaks my heart, Pol, it just breaks my heart."
Kafari put down the book she'd been reading in a desultory fashion and gave Nassiona's performance her full attention. That urbane little trollop was maligning the most courageous man on Jefferson—and the sole reason Nassiona was still alive, to sit there and spin lies about him.
She was leaning forward, voice throbbing with emotional pain. "I've spoken to frightened little girls who wake up screaming, at night, because of what that man said. Those children are traumatized, terrified out of their minds. It's unforgivable, what he said during an open, live broadcast. How the Brigade considers a man as cold and battle-hardened as a robot to be fit for command—let alone defense of an entire, peaceful society—is a question POPPA wants answered."
Women in the waiting room were starting to mutter, agreeing in angry tones.
"And we've all seen," Nassiona added, voice artfully outraged, "what that monstrous machine he commands is capable of, haven't we? How many homes were destroyed by so-called friendly fire? How many people who died were killed unnecessarily by that thing's guns?"
The clever little bitch . . . Nassiona didn't need to answer those questions. They weren't meant to be answered. Just by asking them, she'd implanted the notion that there was an answer, a horrible answer, without ever having to actually come right out and make an accusation she couldn't support. Judging by the angry buzz running through the waiting room, the tactic was working.
Nassiona leaned forward, posture and voice conveying the urgency of her worry. "POPPA has spent a great deal of its own money trying to discover just what Khrustinov and that machine of his are legally allowed to do. It's terrifying, Pol. Just terrifying. At odds with everything Jefferson has ever believed in. Did you know that Bolos are supposed to be switched off between battles? As a routine precaution to ensure the safety of civilians? Yet that death machine on our soil is never turned off. It watches us, day and night, and what it thinks . . ."
She gave a beautifully contrived shudder. "You see the trap we're caught in, Pol. We have to comply with their threats. And it's got to stop. John Andrews certainly won't stop it. He relies on that thing, uses it deliberately to terrify the rest of us into swallowing the disastrous policies he enforces. There's only one way to stop it, Pol, and that's for the honest, decent people of Jefferson to vote for someone who will demand that Colonel Khrustinov shut that thing down like he should have long ago. We need to elect officials who aren't afraid to tell the Concordiat and the Brigade that we've had enough of their threats and their demands and their war-crazed madness. We need officials who aren't taking advantage of the situation to further their careers and build their personal fortunes."
Kafari did a not-so-slow burn. Nassiona Santorini was the daughter of a Tayari Trade Consortium tycoon. She'd been born with a diamond spoon in her mouth. And Tayari's profit margin was higher now than it had been before the Deng invasion. Tayari had bought every fishing trawler still in operation on Jefferson, gobbling up the smaller operations during the postwar havoc, which meant Tayari owned—lock, stock, and barrel—the only means of obtaining the main commodity Jefferson was required to supply to the Concordiat.
As a result, Tayari was exporting hundreds of thousands of tons of Terran-processed fish to the Concordiat, which was—per treaty—paying for it at a higher rate than the same fish could be marketed on Jefferson. Malinese miners and fighting soldiers weren't as finicky as sophisticated urbanites about what ended up on their dinner plates. Tayari was raking in tons of money, as a result, and a great deal of that money ended up in trust funds set up for Vittori and Nassiona Santorini. The interest income from that money—invested shrewdly, off-world, in Malinese mining stock—had given POPPA a vast source of income that was sheltered from the shocks jarring Jefferson's economy. POPPA's war-chest—or anti-war chest, given the party's political platform—was vastly larger than the pool of money any other candidate for office could hope to raise.
Yet Nassiona Santorini and her brother, already rich and rapidly getting richer, had the unmitigated gall to accuse John Andrews of doing what they did every single day. Why weren't the big broadcast companies pointing that out? Had objective reporting gone out the window, along with every other scruple Kafari had been raised to honor? From what Kafari had seen, Pol Jankovitch never asked any POPPA spokesperson a question that might have an unfavorable answer.
His next question, delivered with a thoughtful frown, was typical. "Given the treaty stipulations and the gun to our heads, what can we do about the situation? Our backs are against the wall, on this thing. How would POPPA candidates change that?"
"We must start where we can. The most important thing, and we must do it immediately, is make sure the burden of obeying the Concordiat's demands is fairly shared. If you examine the lobbying record of the big agricultural interest groups, for instance, you'll discover a sorry litany of protests that their children should be exempt from military quotas. Why should farmers enjoy special privileges? This world was founded on principles of equality, fair dealing, individual worth, freedom. Not pandering to wealthy special interest groups!"
Nassiona's dark eyes flashed with outrage. "And what do the farmers clamoring for special treatment give as reasons for their demands? Nothing but flimsy, money-hungry excuses! They need more labor to terraform new acreage. To plant thousands of new fields nobody needs. And they're damaging pristine ecosystems to do it, too. Why? They have one interest. Just one, Pol. Lining their pockets with cold, hard cash. They're not interested in feeding children in mining towns, children who go to bed hungry at night. Whose parents can't even afford medical care.
"It's time we faced facts, Pol. The surplus of stored foods set aside for civil emergencies is so large, we could feed the entire population of Jefferson for five full years. Without planting a single stalk of corn! It's time to stop this nonsense. Time to make sure that no one benefits unfairly. No special deals, Pol, no special privileges. That's what POPPA is demanding. Fair and equal treatment for everyone. Equal sharing of the risk, the burden of compliance. No protection for special groups who think they're better than the rest of us. No under-the-table deals with elitists who think their lives are worth more than the rest of us, worth more than the lives of people thrown out of work through no fault of their own. It's immoral, Pol, grossly immoral and it must stop, now."
Kafari's slow burn went hot as liquid steel. If the burden of meeting troop quotas was "fairly shared," urban residents had a long, long way to go, just to catch up. Almost ninety-eight percent of the nearly twenty thousand troops shipped off-world to date had been Granger-bred volunteers. There was literally no chance in a million that any planetary draft would ever be instituted, let alone rammed through today or next week. Not only were elected officials dead-set against it, not wanting to slit their own throats at the polls, it wasn't needed. Granger volunteers had consistently exceeded the Concordiat's minimum quotas.
As for "special deals," agricultural producers couldn't afford to lose any more of their labor pool. Nearly five thousand people had died in Klameth Canyon, including some of the region's best expertise in animal husbandry and terraforming biogenetics. Most of the volunteers who'd shipped out had come from the Klameth Canyon complex, as well, men and women too angry, too haunted by the ghosts of loved ones who'd died on their land, too financially broke to start over. Come the harvest, those who'd remained on Jefferson would be hard-pressed to take up the burden.
What was wrong with people like Nassiona Santorini? Or the people who believed her? Didn't the truth matter to anyone, any longer? The ob-gyn clinic's waiting room was crammed full of people who apparently had no interest in the truth, judging by conversations on all sides. What she was hearing gave Kafari a deep sense of foreboding.
"Y'know, my sister went looking at the POPPA datasite, the other night, called me on the 'net-phone, she was so mad. Said the government's fixin' to drill right through the Meerland Sanctuary to get at the iron deposits. If they start strip-mining out there, it'll contaminate the water all the way down the Damisi watershed and poison us all!"
"Well, I can tell you, every single person in my family is votin' the same way. We're fixin' to kick President Andrews' ass out of a job. We gotta get somebody in there who knows what it's like to have half the folks in your neighborhood outta work and damn near killin' themselves with despair a' gettin' any . . ."
Kafari couldn't listen to any more of it. She headed toward the bathrooms, stopping briefly at the receptionist's desk to tell them where she'd be, and closed the door on the mindless babble in the waiting room. She preferred to sit in a public lavatory that smelt of air fresheners and stale urine than listen to any more of POPPA's silver-spun lies or the braying of jackasses who believed them. She understood, profoundly, the impact joblessness had on a person, a family. She understood the loss of self-worth, the sense of helplessness it engendered, had watched members of her family and close friends stricken by one such blow after another.
But POPPA's brand of swill wasn't the answer. To anything. Kafari wet a small towel and laved her face and throat, trying to calm down the gut-churning anger and the nausea it had triggered. She drew several deep, slow breaths, reminding herself of things for which she was thankful. She was profoundly grateful to have her job. And not just any job, either, but a good one, a job that tested her skills, her ingenuity, and let her contribute to the all-important job of rebuilding.
Having passed her practicum with flying colors—due as much to Sonny's tutelage as to the rigorous courses necessary to secure a psychotronic systems engineering degree—she'd taken a job at Madison's spaceport, which was being rebuilt almost from the ground up. As part of a ground-based team of psychotronic specialists, she worked in tandem with orbital engineers, calibrating the new space station's psychotronic systems as each new module was mated with the others in orbit, then synched to the spaceport's ground-based controllers. High-tech labs on Vishnu had supplied the replacement components for Ziva Two, including the modules Kafari was responsible for correctly calibrating, programming, and fitting into the existing psychotronic computer matrix.
Difficult as it was, she loved her job. With luck, her work would create the chance for others to work, again, as well. Madison's northwest sector, hit so hard during the fighting, was now jammed with construction crews.
By some small miracle, the Engineering Hub—the nerve center of any surface-based spaceport—had survived, undamaged by Deng missiles. With that infrastructure intact, the cost of rebuilding was far lower than it might have been, despite obfuscations by POPPA's chosen spokespersons.
Everywhere POPPA turned its attention, discord followed. Kafari had been less than amused to learn that a major POPPA rally had been scheduled for the same afternoon as her follow-up appointment with the ob-gyn clinic. She should've been able to finish her appointment and leave well in advance of the rally's starting time, but she'd already been here an hour-and-a-half, waiting while emergency cases came into the clinic and bumped others with appointments. There'd been more than a dozen walk-ins so far, all of them presenting the emergency medical vouchers issued to the jobless and their families. Those vouchers meant a patient had to be seen, regardless of caseload, regardless of the bearer's ability to pay anything for the services of physicians, nurse-practitioners, or medical technicians conducting diagnostic testing.
Kafari was not coldhearted, even though she questioned the long-term sustainability of such a program, and certainly didn't feel that those without money should be denied access to medical care they—and in this case, their unborn children—needed. But it was a financial drain their faltering economy couldn't possibly maintain for long. It was downright irritating that she'd missed half an afternoon's work to keep an appointment that others had bumped, by just walking in off the street. And if she didn't get out of the clinic soon, she'd be caught right in the middle of the crush gathering for the POPPA rally scheduled to begin in an hour's time. There was already an immense crowd outside, streaming through downtown Madison toward the rally's main stage, which had been set up in Lendan Park, across Darconi Street from Assembly Hall.
There wasn't much she could do about any of it, however, and Kafari needed this appointment. So she dried her face carefully, reapplied cosmetics, and returned to the waiting room, where she eased herself down into a chair and tried without much success to ignore the news coverage of the impending rally. An entire host of POPPA luminaries appeared on camera, granting interviews that constituted little more than a steady stream of POPPA doctrine, most of it aimed directly at the masses of unemployed urbanites. Gust Ordwyn, rumored to be Vittori Santorini's right-hand propagandist, was holding forth on the manufacturing crisis that had sent heavy industry crashing to a virtual halt.
"We can't afford five more years of President Andrews' insane policies on mining and manufacturing. Jefferson's mines stand silent and empty. Sixteen thousand miners have lost their jobs, their medical coverage, their very homes. John Andrews doesn't even have a plan to put these people back to work! Enough is enough.
Jefferson needs new answers. New ideas. A new philosophy for rebuilding our economy. One that includes the needs of ordinary, hard-working men and women, not the profit margin of a huge conglomerate that holds half its assets off-world. I ask you, Pol, why do Jefferson's biggest companies transfer their profits off-world when our own people are jobless and starving? Why do they pour huge sums of money into off-world technology instead of rebuilding our own factories, so people can go back to work? It's indecent, it's unethical. It's got to stop."
Pol Jankovitch, predictably, did nothing at all to point out that Gust Ordwyn's accusations, like Nassiona Santorini's "questions" were not designed to be answered factually, but to insinuate a state of affairs that did not, in fact, exist. Kafari was in a position to know exactly what was being ordered from off-world companies: high-tech items Jefferson literally could not manufacture yet.
Pol Jankovitch wasn't interested in the truth. Neither was his boss, media mogul Dexter Courtland. They were interested solely in what message was likeliest to increase viewership, advertising profits, and personal bank accounts. Men like Vittori Santorini and Gust Ordwyn used fools like Courtland and Jankovitch, in an under-the-table handshake that benefitted everyone involved. Except, of course, the average Jeffersonian. And most of them were blinded by the rhetoric, the wild promises of wealth, the feeling of power that comes with participating in something big enough to make the government sit up and take notice.
None of which bolstered Kafari's low spirits.
Neither did the next three speakers. Camden Cathmore was a spin expert who constantly quoted the latest results of his favorite tool, the "popular sentiment" poll, so blatantly manipulated, the results meant nothing at all. Carin Avelaine bleated endlessly about "socially conscious education programs" she wanted to implement. And then there was Khroda Arpad, a refugee from one of the hard-hit worlds beyond the Silurian Void, who spoke passionately about the horrors of war as experienced first-hand. She had lost her children in the fighting, which left Kafari's heart aching for her, but Kafari was less impressed by the direction Khroda's grief had taken her. The refugee had launched a crusade to convince as many people as possible that a planet-wide military draft was about to be enacted for the purpose of sending as many of the urban poor and their children as possible to be shot to pieces under alien guns.
None of it made any logical sense and very little of it was even remotely accurate. But the women in this room were eating it up and so, apparently, was the crowd outside. And so were thousands upon thousands more, in every major urban center on Jefferson. Kafari was actually relieved when her name was called by the nurse, allowing her to escape the ugly mood in the waiting room.
The exam was the only thing she'd encountered all day to reassure her fears.
"You're doing fine and the baby's doing fine," the doctor smiled. "Another couple of months and you'll be holding her."
Kafari returned the smile, although a mist had clouded her eyes. "We've got the nursery all set up. Everything's ready. Except her."
The doctor's smile broadened into a grin. "She will be. Take advantage of the next couple of months to put your feet up and rest every chance you get. You'll be running on mighty short sleep, once she's born."
By the time Kafari re-dressed and checked out at the counter, the crowd outside had swelled to a river of people, a thick and slow-moving stream that jammed the street, with every person in it—except Kafari—trying to get to Lendan Park. Kafari's groundcar was in a parking garage three blocks closer to the park, which left Kafari struggling to push herself and her distended belly through the close-packed jam of people. She could smell cheap cologne, unwashed bodies, flatulence, and alcohol. Within a single city block, she found herself fighting a trickle of panic. She didn't like crowds. The last time she'd been near a crowd anywhere close to this size, it had turned on her. Had tried its utmost to kill her.
Simon wouldn't be swooping in to rescue anybody, tonight.
I have to get out of this crowd, she kept telling herself. I have to get to the parking garage, at least. She wouldn't be able to drive through this mess for hours, yet, but she wanted the security her car represented, modest as it was. She wanted metal walls around her. Bullet-proof glass. The gun in the console.
You're being stupid, she told herself sternly. Just calm down and breathe deeply. There's the garage, right there, just another hundred meters or so . . . She reached the garage. Unfortunately, she couldn't get anywhere close to the entrance. There were too many people between her and the doorway. She was swept inexorably forward, a slow-motion tide that carried her—greatly against her will—toward the heart of Lendan Park. She was close enough, now, she could see a massive platform towering nearly four meters above the ground, a stage big enough to hold an orchestra. The stage boasted public-address microphones and speakers nearly three meters high, all draped with banners and bunting in POPPA's favorite colors: sunset gold and deep, forest green.
POPPA's "peace banners"—a three-armed triskelion of olive leaves, silhouetted against the golden backdrop—fluttered in the early evening breeze from every corner of the stage, from huge, twenty-meter-high streamers behind the stage, from lamp posts, even tree branches where zealots had hung them. A good half the crowd wore gold and green, in fervent declaration of their social and political preferences. Kafari's cream-colored maternity suit—tailored for a meeting with off-world suppliers' representatives, ships' captains, and engineers to work out the kinks as they brought the new station's systems on-line and ordered additional components—stood out conspicuously against the brighter-hued Party colors or the duller shades of jobless factory workers wearing their sturdy shop-floor uniforms.
Her portion of the crowd came to a halt sixty or so meters from the stage, out near the edge of the park. Kafari's back ached already from standing, the muscles protesting the strain of carrying her burden unsupported. At least she was wearing sensible shoes. Kafari hadn't worn anything truly impractical since the war.
The people closest to her were an interesting mixture. From the look of it, there wasn't a Granger anywhere in the bunch, but she was able to peg several distinct "types" near her. Factory workers were obvious. So were the students, ranging from high-school up through college-age kids. Others appeared to be middle-class clerical types, shopkeepers, office workers hit by the slump in retail sales of everything from clothing to groundcars.
Still others had that distinct air about them that said "academia," particularly the social sciences and arts professorial types. She didn't spot anyone that looked—or spoke—remotely like an engineer or physicist, but there were plenty to choose from, based on snatches of conversation, if one were interested in delving deeply into the intricacies of post-Terran deconstructionist philosophies—and philologies—in the arts, literature, and what Kafari had always thought of as the pseudo-sciences: astromancy, luminology, sociography.
Any further speculation she might have entertained about the occupations of those near her vanished under a sudden blare of music from those three-meter-high speakers. The base rhythm of drums struck her bones like a shockwave. If she'd had elbow room, she'd have clapped both hands across her ears. The drums were savage, primal, striking a chord in the waiting crowd, which erupted into howls and a massive tsunamic roar that pounded again and again at her eardrums: "Vit-tor-i! Vit-tor-i!"
It wasn't difficult to imagine the missing hard-c sound that would have transformed the war-chant into "victory," rather than a summons for the reigning lord of the Populist Order for the Promotion of Public Accord. A wild melody began to play, counterpoint to the drum cadence, stirring the blood and numbing the brain. People were shouting and screaming, waving triskelion banners, jumping up and down in a frenzy that left Kafari bruised from too many sharp shoulders and elbows jabbing soft spots, fortunately most of them striking above her abdomen.
The music rose to a wailing crescendo . . .
Then the banners behind the stage parted and he was there. Vittori. The man with Madison in the palm of his hand. He was striding forward, clad entirely in a golden yellow so light, it appeared luminescent in the gathering gloom of twilight. Where the light of sunset streamed across the stage and its twenty-meter triskelion banners, a golden halo of light shone like something from a painting of the virgin Madonna and her child. Vittori Santorini, standing in the center of that halo, glowed like a saint newly descended from heaven. My God, Kafari found herself thinking, does anybody else realize how dangerous this man is?
When he lifted both hands, a prophet parting the seas, the music died instantly and the crowd fell silent in the space between one heartbeat and the next. He stood that way for long seconds, hands uplifted in benediction, in ecstatic triumph, in some twisted emotion Kafari couldn't quite define, but left her skin crawling, to see it wash across his face and down the glowing length of his body.
"Welcome," he whispered into the microphone, "to the future of Jefferson."
The crowd went insane. The mind-numbing roar of human voices shook the air like thunder. Vittori, master of crowds, waited for the ovation to die away of its own accord. He stood looking at his acolytes for long moments, smiling softly down at them, then caressed them with that dangerous, velvet voice.
"What do you want?"
"POPPA! POPPA! POPPA!"
Again he smiled. Leaned forward. Waited . . .
"Then show no mercy!" The whiplash of his shout cracked the air like judgment day. "It's time to take what's ours! Our rights! Our money! Our very lives! No more soldiers drafted to die off-world!"
"No more!"
"No more kickbacks to farmers!"
"No more!"
"No more pillaging in public lands!"
"No more!"
"And no more politicians getting fat and rich while the rest of us starve!"
"NO MORE!"
His voice dropped to a velvet caress again. "What are you going to do about it?"
"Vote! Vote! Vote!"
"That's right! Get out and vote! Make your voice heard. Demand justice. Real justice. Not John Andrews' mockery, kowtowing to the big off-world military machine. It's time Jefferson said 'No!' to war!"
"No war!"
"It's time to say 'No!' to higher taxes."
"No taxes!"
"It's time we said 'No!' to reckless terraforming schemes and new farms."
"No farms!"
"And it's sure as hell time to say 'No more Andrews!'—now or ever!"
"No Andrews! No Andrews!"
"Are you with me, Jefferson?"
The crowd exploded again, thousands of throats screaming themselves raw in the chilly air as night settled inexorably across the heart of Madison. The sound echoed off the walls of Assembly Hall, which stood behind them like a basilisk in the gathering darkness, turning not bodies but minds to stone, rendering them incapable of reason. Susceptible to anything this man said. Anything he suggested. Kafari stood caught in the midst of the unholy uproar and shuddered. She was violently cold with the fear rising up from her soul.
He stood there, arms outstretched, basking in the wild sound of adoration, drinking it down like fine wine. It was grotesque. Obscene. Like watching a man bring himself to orgasm in public. She wanted out of this crowd, out of the insanity flying loose in Lendan Park. Wanted Simon's arms around her and Sonny's guns overhead, keeping watch in the coming night. She knew, in that one, horrible moment, that John Andrews was doomed to lose the election. Knew it as surely as she knew the kind of programming code required to send a psychotronic brain like Sonny's into alert status. Or over the edge into battle mode.
We're in trouble, oh, Simon, we're in trouble . . .
The crowd was shrieking, "V—V—V!"
V for Vittori. For victory. For victim . . . The prophet of the hour lifted his hands again, quieting the crowd to a hush so sudden, the sound of wind snapping through the "peace banners" cracked like gunfire. When the silence was absolute, he said, "We have work waiting for us, my friends. Wild work, critical work. We have to defeat the monsters ruling us with an iron hand and a stone heart. We have to throw off the yoke of slavery and call our skies, our children, our lives our own again. We have to rebuild the factories. The shops. The very future. We have to ensure the rights that everyone has, not just a privileged few. The rights to a job. To economic equality. To choose where we go or don't go. Where we send our children or don't send them. What we do—or don't do—with our land. Our seas. Our air. We choose! We say! AND WE ACT!"
The thunder was back in his voice.
"We act now, my friends! Now, before it's too late. We take charge. Before fools like John Andrews destroy us! It's time to send a message. Loud and clear."
The crowd was screaming again.
Vittori shouted into the microphone, shouted above that primal roar.
"Are you with us?"
"Yes!"
"Are you ready to take back our world?"
"Yes!"
"And are you ready," his voice dropped again to a piercing whisper, "are you ready to give our enemies what they so richly deserve?"
"YES!"
"Then claim your power! Claim it now! Go out into the streets and smite those who oppose us! Do it now! Go! Go! Go!"
The crowd took up the chant, screaming it into the darkness. Vittori moved with sudden, blinding speed. He snatched up a microphone stand, held it overhead like a club, spun suddenly to face a huge picture of John Andrews that had appeared as though conjured from thin air, a picture painted on glass, translucent where spotlights sprang abruptly to life in the darkness. Vittori turned the microphone stand in his hands, swung it in a whistling, vicious arc, let go at the height of the backswing. The heavy metal base crashed through the glass, shattering it. Pieces and shards of John Andrews' broken face rained down onto the stage. A roar erupted, shrieking like a hot, volcanic wind.
The crowd was moving, surging out toward its edges, amoeba-like. Tendrils of that massive amoeba engulfed the streets, the buildings beyond them. The sound of smashed glass punctuated the roar, staccato-quick, a rhythm of hatred and rage. The surging mass of people gathered speed, spreading out in all directions. Kafari found herself forced to run, to avoid being trampled by those rushing toward the edges of the park, into and past her. She held her abdomen, stricken with mortal terror for the baby as she ran with the crowd. They were, at least, running toward the garage where her car was parked.
They'd nearly reached it when the crowd smashed into something that was fighting back. Kafari couldn't see what. Half the lights in the park were out, either pulled down or the glass smashed out, plunging great stretches of park into near-Stygian darkness. Storefronts and public buildings on every side stood with broken doors and widows gaping wide, interior lights splashing across the edges of the battle and the running figures of people smashing and looting their way through the rooms beyond.
Something arced high overhead, exploding with a cloud of choking chemical smoke. Riot gas! Kafari pulled off her jacket, covered her lower face with it as the smoke drifted down, engulfing the crowd within seconds. Eyes streaming, Kafari held her breath as long as she could, straining to reach the edge of the embattled crowd. She could see a line of police, now, truncheons rising and falling as they clubbed rioters to the ground. The savagery of it shocked Kafari, left her faltering, trying to backpedal against the crush of people pressing forward from deeper in the park.
The crowd shoved her right toward the line of police. They had their shields up, riot helmets down, while a second line pumped more gas rounds into the air. Others were firing at the crowd. Something whizzed past Kafari's ear, striking the person behind her with a sickening, meaty thud that wrenched loose a scream. Terror scalded her, terror for her unborn child. She shoved sideways, trying to turn, found herself embroiled in a flying wedge of howling rioters, men who'd ripped up street signs, who'd broken thick branches out of the trees, swinging and jabbing them at the line of riot police. She was shoved forward, trapped in the center—
Police went down. A sudden hole gaped open. Right in front of her. Kafari stumbled forward, driven from behind, carried through the opening by the howling demons who'd battered their way through. She found herself running down the street. She headed toward the garage, less than half a block ahead. Others were streaming into the garage, ahead of her, evidently looking for a way out of the battle. Groundcar alarms screamed theft-attempt warnings. Kafari reached the doorway. Saw the automated attendant's traffic bar snap and vanish as people shoved past the barrier.
Then she was inside, stumbling forward, trying to reach a staircase. She made it to the dubious safety of the nearest stairwell, badly winded and coughing violently. She could hardly climb, could barely see through the streaming tears. She fumbled her way up one flight, reached the floor her car was on. Stumbling badly, she managed to reach the proper row. She keyed her wrist-comm, flashing a message to the car to unlock itself and start the engine. Three seconds later, she fell through the open door into the driver's seat. Kafari slammed the door shut, locked the car, sagged against the cushions and dragged down deep gulps of air.
Other people were running past, having reached her floor. She dug the gun out of the console, held it firm in a double-handed grip that shook with such violence, the muzzle described wide circles in front of her. Shudders gripped her whole body. When something smacked into the door, she twisted around. The gun came up. Her finger slid home. A wild-eyed man stared down the wrong end of the bore. His mouth dropped into an "o" of shock. Then he turned his larcenous attention to another car down the row from hers.
The muzzle of her gun rattled against the window glass in a jittery rhythm.
I will never, ever, she promised herself with devout intensity, get caught in the middle of another political riot. . . . Her wrist-comm beeped at her. Simon's voice, harsh with strain, sliced into her awareness.
"Kafari? Are you there, Kafari?"
She managed to push the right button on her third, shaking try. "Y-yeah, I'm h-here."
"Oh, thank God . . ." A whisper, reverent in its relief. "Where are you? I've been calling and calling."
"In the car. In the garage. I got caught in that unholy hell of a rally."
"How—never mind how. Can you get out?"
"No. Not yet. I'm shaking too hard to drive," she added with grim candor. "And there's gas everywhere, riot gas. I can hardly see. There's no way I'm going to try driving through the mess out there in the streets. This thing's turned ugly. Real ugly. On both sides."
"Yes," Simon growled. "I know. What?" he asked, voice abruptly muffled. "It's my wife, goddammit." A brief pause, as he listened. Then, "You want me to what? Jesus Christ, are you out of your idiotic mind?"
Whatever was being said—and whoever was saying it—Simon was clearly having none of it. She heard an indistinct mumble of voices, realizing abruptly that the transmission was scrambled, somehow, coming across the unsecured transmission to her wrist-comm as garbled sound rather than sensible words. Who was he talking to? The military? The president? Kafari swallowed hard, trying to muffle another fit of coughing. Whoever it was, they wanted something from Simon and the only reason she could imagine for someone to call Simon was for a request that he send Sonny somewhere.
Here? Into the riot? Oh, shit . . .
Memory pinned her to the seat cushions, paralyzed her limbs, her brain with remembrance. Sonny's guns whirling in a dance of rapid-fire death . . . his screens flaring bright under alien guns . . . Not again, she whimpered. Not now, carrying Simon's child. A child they'd struggled so hard to conceive. Then she heard Simon's voice, cracking through the terror in crisp, no-nonsense tones.
"Absolutely not. You don't send a Bolo into the middle of a city for riot control. I don't give a damn how many buildings they've broken into. You don't use a Bolo to quash a civilian riot. It's worse than killing a mosquito with a hydrogen bomb." Another interlude of indistinct sounds interrupted Simon. Her husband finally growled, "It's not my job to make sure you win this or any other election. Yes, I watched the coverage of the rally. I know exactly what that little asshole said. And I repeat, it's your problem, not mine. You're on your own. Yes, dammit, that's my final word. I'm not ordering Sonny to go anywhere tonight."
A moment later, Simon spoke to her again. "Kafari, do you want me to come in with the aircar?"
"No," she said, after squelching the instantaneous, little-girl desire to have him swoop down once again to play knight-errant, "I don't. I'm okay. I may be stuck here for a few hours, but I'm okay. And the baby's okay, Simon, I'm sure of it. If I need help, I'll call."
"You've got your birthday present?" he asked, in oblique reference to the console gun she carried.
"In my hand," she said cheerfully.
"Good girl. All right, sit tight for now. I can be there faster than an ambulance could reach you, if you need help."
"Okay." She smiled through the mess streaming down her face, aware that her blouse was wet and that her suit was probably ruined beyond repair by the damage sustained. Her smile turned rueful. If she could worry about her suit, she really was all right. "Simon?"
"Yes, hon?"
"I love you."
His voice gentled. "Oh, hon, I love you so much it hurts."
I know, she thought silently. She was sorry for that part of it. Sorry for all the reasons behind it. For her inability to change it, to change the reality behind the old pain, the new fears. The best she could do was love him back, as hard and as fiercely as she could manage. She settled back against the cushions, laid the gun in her ungainly lap, and waited for the end of danger, so she could go home, again.
It was, Simon reflected bitterly, one of the worst political mishandlings he had ever witnessed. Images relayed through Sonny's surveillance systems, picked up from a combination of commercial news broadcasts—including sky-eyes in hovering aircars—and police cameras, told a tale of unfolding disaster in the heart of Madison. The wildly inflammatory performance by Vittori Santorini was bad enough, on its own. He'd never seen anything like that virtuoso performance, with one man plucking and vibrating and drumming a crowd's emotions to riotous heat, with nothing more than a fanfare, a well-timed sunset, and a few words uttered with stunning skill.
Far worse—infinitely worse—was John Andrews' reaction to the violence that erupted almost inevitably in the wake of that stellar, if brief, show. With rioters engulfing the heart of downtown Madison, John Andrews had not appreciated Simon's flat refusal to send in the Bolo. Simon hadn't thought it was possible to commit folly greater than using a Bolo to break up a riot, but what he was witnessing now . . .
Riot police, intent on containing the violence, were pumping gas cannisters and riot-control batons into the crowd along a periphery six blocks deep and spreading. Rioters, crazed by hatred, rage, and choking gas clouds, had rushed police lines in dozens of places. Officers were going down under makeshift bludgeons, while the police were using riot clubs in self-defense. Simon noted with a cold, jaundiced eye that none of the commercial news feeds contained footage of rioters beating downed law enforcement agents, but showed graphic images of police clubbing down women and half-grown teenagers.
He sat alone in the apartment, watching the split-screen images in rising dismay, while John Andrews' reelection chances grew dimmer with each passing moment. If he hadn't reached Kafari, reassuring himself that she was unharmed, he would've been streaking toward Lendan Park in an aircar. He was seriously tempted to fly in, anyway, and land on the roof of the parking garage where she was trapped for God-alone knew how long. The only things that stopped him were an unshakable faith in Kafari's ability to defend herself from a blockaded bunker—he'd made damned sure that her groundcar was as well armored as her Airdart—and the knowledge that if things went crazy enough in Madison, tonight, he might well need to be right where he was, to watch developments through Sonny's eyes and ears, rather than in an aircar with nothing but a commlink and a small-scale datascreen.
The crowd spilling out of Lendan Park poured down Darconi Street, looting and pillaging through government offices and retail businesses. A cordon of police stood locked shield-to-shield between the crazed mob and Assembly Hall, swaying in places where the shock of human bodies thudding against the riot shields pushed the officers back, toward the wide steps leading up to Jefferson's highest legislative nerve center.
Simon had a grimly clear picture of what was at risk, given the mood of that crowd and the contents of that building. He could understand, at a deep level, the president's desire to use military force great enough to stun that unholy pack of madmen into silence. Not only was Assembly Hall and all its records and high-tech equipment at risk, so was the Presidential Residence, only a few short blocks away. If the rioters breached the locked shields of the police trying to contain the mob, things would go from ugly to deadly.
Something needed to be done, fast.
Simon wasn't expecting what someone—the president or maybe a panicked military official—did about it. Despite the poor lighting conditions, since full darkness had fallen by now, he caught the first whiff of trouble within moments, far sooner than the news-camera crews realized what was happening. He saw the cannisters go off midair with a gout of flame as they broke open explosively, but there was no smoke, no visible cloud of riot gas, just a colorless burst above the crowd. Within seconds, people were falling down like children's jackstraws, piled every which way. They toppled in a flopping, macabre wave, grotesquely animated for two or three seconds before going utterly still. The wave spread faster than heartbeats. One of the news cameras abruptly plunged to the street, continuing to record the now-skewed images as its owner plummeted to pavement, as well.
Simon came to his feet, sweating and swearing. "Kafari! Can you hear me? Kafari, shut off the ventilation on the car! Seal it up!"
"What?" she sounded confused.
"They've gassed the crowd with war agents!"
"Oh, God . . ."
Simon couldn't tell what she was doing, through the open commlink. He could just make out her pained, gasping breaths, a sound of sudden, raw terror. Surely, Simon told himself, surely they weren't stupid enough to use a lethal compound on an unarmed crowd? He'd looked at a supposedly comprehensive inventory of munitions and war agents, just prior to the Deng invasion, and there hadn't been any biochemical weaponry listed. Had somebody quietly stockpiled it, without recording the fact in the military inventories? Or was this a recent import? From the freighter in parking orbit at Ziva Two, maybe, slipped in with parts and equipment needed to complete the station? Either way, heads needed to roll for it. Roll and bounce.
If it was a big-enough molecule, it might not get into the car. He'd paid top money for both of Kafari's vehicles, air and ground, with dozens of specialized modifications planned with war in mind. Even if it did get inside, it might not be lethal. There were paralytic agents that would immobilize a person without killing or doing irreversible damage. There were others, though, that inflicted permanent damage, sometimes severe. What a "non-lethal" gas could do to Kafari and their unborn child . . . The edge of the desk bit into his hands, while he waited in helpless terror.
Talk to me, hon, talk to me . . .
"I've got everything sealed," Kafari said in a voice hoarse with raw stress. "The vents, the windows, everything I can think to seal."
"Can you get out of the garage? Drive away from the affected zone?"
"No, the streets are jammed. I barely made it to the car."
"Sit tight, then. Sonny, track the signal from Kafari's commlink. Pinpoint her location on a map of Madison. Show me wind speed and direction. And get President Andrews on the line. I need to talk to him."
"Retrieving data. Superimposing now. There is no response from the president."
Simon swore viciously. New split-screen images popped up in a mosaic, showing him the downtown area, the spreading clouds of visible gas marking the drift-direction of the invisible ones, as well, and the atmospherics he'd requested. The tightest of the knots in his muscles relaxed a fraction. Kafari's refuge was upwind of the cone-shaped dispersal pattern. A couple of city blocks upwind. Not a lot of distance, but it might be enough. Maybe. Let it be enough.
"Sonny," he said, voice rough with strain, "send an emergency notice to the commander of Nineveh Base and the hospitals. We're looking at massive casualties, already, and that gas cloud's going to keep spreading. Warn law-enforcement officials downwind. Have 'em sound an emergency alarm. If we can get people into shelters . . ." He broke off, watching the speed of dispersal, and swore again. There wasn't time to warn enough people. The leading edge was already spreading out into the suburbs, the teargas attenuated enough to be essentially harmless, but what about the paralytic agent?
Simon jabbed controls with savage fingers, trying to contact the president again. He managed to raise a staffer on the fourth attempt.
"Simon Khrustinov, here. Find John Andrews. Find him now. I don't care if you have to yank him off the toilet, get him on the line."
"Hold, please," the woman said, voice infuriatingly calm.
An eternity of seconds crawled past. Then the president, sounding out of breath and flustered, snapped, "What the hell do you want, Krustinov?"
"Who authorized use of a paralytic war agent?"
"War agent? What the hell are you talking about? The police are using riot gas, Khrustinov. Thanks to you." The last word was bitter, full of hatred.
"Then you'd better talk to the police, Andrews, because you've got a major disaster spreading through Madison. Turn on your damned datascreen and watch the newsfeed. We're talking thousands of casualties and the downwind dispersal pattern is still spreading—"
"Simon," Sonny broke into the conversation, "riots are erupting in Anyon, Cadellton, and Dunham. Unemployed miners and factory workers are rampaging through residential and commercial districts, protesting the use of biochemical weaponry on unarmed civilians in Madison. I recommend shutting down all commercial news broadcasts to prevent further inflammatory footage from sparking more protest riots."
John Andrews abruptly activated the video link, looking bewildered. "What the hell's going on?" he was demanding of a staffer. "Don't tell me you don't know! Find out!" He turned to look into the camera. "Khrustinov, will you kindly explain the magnitude of the problem?"
Simon sent the data images Sonny was providing, tracking the magnitude of the unfolding disaster. Andrews took one look and blanched, skin fading to the color of dirty snow. "Oh . . . my . . . God . . ." He swung around, shouting, "Get General Gunther on the phone. Get him now. Alert the hospitals. And find out what that stuff is—and who authorized it!"
A deep, nasty trickle of suspicion made itself felt. President Andrews didn't look or sound like a man trying to cover up a bad decision. He genuinely didn't know what was happening, what had been released, who had authorized it. Simon couldn't imagine any lower-ranking officer on site using a paralytic agent without extremely high clearance, which narrowed the field to a very small number of suspects. Acting on a hunch, Simon said, "Sonny, show me Lendan Park, real-time as of now. And did you record anything after the end of that speech?"
"Transmitting view of Lendan Park," Sonny responded. "Accessing databanks."
The heart of Lendan Park was eerie in the darkness, too still and far too silent. The only things moving were tree branches and the gold and green "peace banners" fluttering and snapping in the wind. He could see hundreds, perhaps thousands, of bodies strewn across the ground like flotsam thrown up onto the shore after a storm at sea. He used digital controls to zoom in on the stage, frowning to himself. The stage was empty. Vittori Santorini was nowhere to be seen. When had he left? Where was he now? Somewhere in that crowd of fallen followers?
Sonny shunted a recording of the speech and its aftermath to another split-screen viewing window. He killed the audio and simply watched the final moments of the speech and the frenzied explosion of the crowd. There were multiple views of the stage popping up as Sonny tapped more news and police cameras. Most of the cameras swung to follow the abrupt wave of violence engulfing the edges of the park, but a couple of them, doubtless security cameras installed in police vehicles, continued to show the stage. He watched, cold to his bones, as the clouds of tear gas drifted past the stage. Watched, even colder, as the still-unidentified war agent began its macabre work.
He was still frowning at the scene when a rustle of motion near the base of the stage arrested his attention. He adjusted the zoom and watched, morbidly fascinated, as several people crawled out from under the stage, the skirts of which had been draped in POPPA bunting. Simon leaned forward, abruptly. Whoever they were, they slipped into the open, stepping cautiously across the fallen bodies, moving furtively and quickly. Simon counted five of them, all wearing gas masks. Why? Had they merely exercised prudence, foreseeing the use of tear gas? Or had they known in advance that a more dangerous substance was going to be launched into the air above their loyal followers? He didn't like the implications. Not one teensy bit.
Kafari's voice interrupted his dark and suspicious train of thought.
"I feel okay, Simon," Kafari said. "Should I be feeling sick? What's happening, out there?"
More of the subconscious tension gripping his midsection uncoiled. "Honey, you have no idea how glad I am to hear that." Simon willed his hands to let go their death-grip on the edge of his desk, then drew several deep, calming breaths. "And no, you shouldn't be feeling sick. If you'd breathed that stuff, you'd have gone into convulsions and ended paralyzed within a few seconds."
A shocked, choked sound of horror came through the commlink. "Convulsions? Paralyzed? What in the name of all that's unholy did they turn loose?"
"I'm trying to find out. Don't get out of the car for anyone or anything until you get an all-clear from me. The affected zone is downwind from you, so you should be all right where you are. Don't try driving out, yet. God knows what trigger-happy police would do, watching a car emerge from that part of the city, just now. Do you have anything to eat or drink with you?"
"Uh . . . Let me check the emergency kit." He heard rustling sounds, one sharpish grunt, then she said, "I've got a couple of bottles of water and some energy bars."
"Good. I'd say we're looking at maybe eight to ten hours, to get things calmed down and get some answers on what we're dealing with, here. Ration them, if you have to, but remember dehydration's worse than hunger."
"Right." Grim, down-to-business. The voice of a woman who'd seen combat and knew the score. "I'll wait it out as long as it takes. I don't suppose anyone knows where Vittori Santorini is?"
"Not yet," Simon growled. "Why?"
"I'd like to give him my personal thanks for landing us in this mess."
Simon surprised himself with a smile, fleeting but genuine. "That's a sight I'd give a paycheck to see."
Her chuckle reassured him. "Love you, Simon. Call me when you can."
"Love you, too," he said, voice rough with emotion. All to hell and gone . . .
He turned his attention to the disaster engulfing the rest of Jefferson. Sonny was tapping news feeds from five major cities, now, rocked by explosive protest riots. Law enforcement agencies, engulfed and overwhelmed, were screaming for help from Jefferson's military. Reserve forces were scrambling from half a dozen military bases, rushing riot-control units to contain the damage. Simon scowled. The very presence of soldiers in the street was creating damage, serious damage, guaranteed to play right into Vittori Santorini's grasping hands. Rioters on the receiving end of combat soldiers' armed attention would lay blame, loudly and savagely. And there was only one logical scapegoat available to take the brunt of the blame: John Andrews.
With the election tomorrow . . .
Simon swore under his breath, torn between disgust and a sneaking trickle of admiration for a stunning job of planning and executing the downfall of a political regime inimical to Vittori's plans. The man was fiendishly clever, charismatic, a natural showman—and deadlier than any scorpion hatched on old Terra. Simon had never seen any political or social movement capture hearts and minds as fast as Vittori's Populist Order for Promoting Public Accord had, gaining speed and winning converts by the thousands every day.
How many more would join POPPA after tonight, Simon couldn't even hazard a guess, but he was betting the final tally would run to the millions. He wondered bleakly if John Andrews truly understood the magnitude of political disaster Jefferson now faced. POPPA's so-called party platform was a wildly jumbled hodgepodge of rabid environmentalism, unsupportable social engineering schemes with no basis in reality, and an economic policy that was, at best, a schizophrenic disaster begging the egg for a chance to wreak uncountable chaos.
Within half an hour, the magnitude of the night's damage was brutally apparent. Smoke was rising toward the stars from dozens of arson fires blazing unchecked across downtown Madison, where firefighters—forced by circumstances to relinquish their biohazard gear to emergency medical teams—refused to go into the affected zone until more equipment could be brought in from Nineveh Base. With conflicting news reports flying wild, John Andrews called a press briefing, appearing before the stunned population with a plea for a return to calm.
"We are trying to determine the number of casualties, but the vast majority of victims are alive," he said, visibly shaken. "Medical teams have set up emergency field hospitals in Lendan Park and the Franklin Banks residential area. Nearly a hundred doctors, triage nurses, and emergency medical technicians are moving through the area in full biohazard suits, administering counterparalytic agents and treating people with serious injuries. The paralytic agent appears to be affecting the voluntary muscle groups, which means most people should not be at risk of death. We're still trying to determine what the agent is, so we can administer effective medical treatment. Be assured that no one in my administration or law enforcement will rest until we have found and brought to justice the person or persons responsible for this atrocity against unarmed civilians. I therefore urge you to return to your homes while professional emergency teams respond to the crisis."
It was, Simon scowled, one of the worst speeches he had ever heard. Instead of reassuring the public with carefully considered, factual information designed to relieve fears without conjuring new ones, he had dwelt on the most disturbingly negative aspects of the crisis. He had then, with fumbling stupidity, called the whole sorry disaster an atrocity—a phrase guaranteed to further upset people—and tried to pin blame on a vague threat from unknown subversives.
It didn't matter that he was probably right, given the evidence Simon had already gathered. Millions of people world-wide had been watching in stunned disbelief as embattled law-enforcement officials clubbed civilians to the street and gassed the crowd with riot-control chemicals. With those scenes imprinted vividly on the public consciousness, it was a very, very short step to assuming that police had also fired the paralytic agent.
By refusing to publicly admit that possibility, President Andrews had insulted the intelligence of the entire voting populace. Regardless of who had fired those cannisters, Vittori Santorini had just accomplished his primary objective—violent disruption of the social order, necessitating strong-armed measures to bring things under control.
Just before midnight, John Andrews issued orders imposing martial law on every urban center in Jefferson and announced a planet-wide curfew until order had been restored. Kafari was trapped for the duration. Simon spent a long, bitter, sleepless night, watching the unfolding dynamics of the situation. Armed soldiers with live ammo in their guns deprived the mobs of their ability to loot and destroy at will, so the rioters returned to their homes, switched on their computers, hooked themselves into the datanet, and churned out a flood of angry rhetoric, flaming everyone and everything connected to John Andrews and maligned the president's personal habits, decisions, and political allies.
POPPA's datasite, so inundated by people trying to access the live news footage, the recorded replays of the speech and its aftermath, and the policy statements issued by Vittori Santorini and his sister, crashed the entire datanet for nearly three hours. By dawn, word had finally begun to trickle out that President Andrews had been correct in at least one critical factor: most people would recover. Ninety-eight percent of them, in fact, were ambulatory and able to return home. The agent had—thank God—been a short-duration chemical that was already degrading into an inert, harmless substance. The only casualties were those with underlying medical conditions—asthma and heart failure being the primary causes of death—and those crushed in the stampede or fatally injured when they collapsed on stairways, while driving groundcars, or operating dangerous machinery.
At the mere suggestion that there might be evidence implicating Vittori Santorini and other high-ranking POPPA leaders, the riots flared up again, so violently that John Andrews was forced to call another press conference. "We are continuing the investigation and are conducting a thorough probe into the actions of law enforcement personnel as well as civilians and armed-forces officials. We are trying to determine whether this paralytic agent was obtained from military stockpiles held in reserve for invasion contingencies or if it was acquired recently, either through manufacture on Jefferson or purchase from off-world sources. We have no direct evidence linking this dastardly act to any individual or group. Without hard evidence, this administration cannot condone the unsupported accusations made against Vittori Santorini and his colleagues in POPPA. In the interest of ensuring public safety and protecting the civil rights of those regrettably and publicly named as potential suspects, I therefore extend presidential amnesty to any individuals or groups who might have been associated with this attack. We are asking that people return to their homes again, in the hopes that martial law and curfews will not have to be invoked again."
Simon just groaned, rubbing grit-filled and bloodshot eyes in a weary, frustrated gesture. Offering amnesty to people like Vittori Santorini might—just might—get people back into their homes again, but the long-term effects were staggering and dreadful in every way Simon could twist and turn the implications. Simon knew enough Terran military history to understand very thoroughly the concept of Danegeld. It was possible to buy peace, but only for a short time. Once convinced that a government was willing to capitulate to demands and threats, the Danes came back again and again, each time demanding more concessions and a higher price for continued peace.
John Andrews had already blown his election chances out of the water. He had now blown all hope that Vittori Santorini's uncivilized behavior would cease. Indeed, the double-damned fool had just ensured that Vittori's methods would proliferate, unchecked and unstoppable. Jefferson's future looked, quite abruptly, bleak as a snow-choked winter sky. The sole bright moment in Simon's morning was Kafari's arrival home, safe and unharmed. Exhaustion pulled her shoulders down, left her eyes bleary and her footsteps uncertain. He held onto her for long moments, then took her face in both hands. "You need some sleep," he murmured.
"So do you."
"I'll sleep soon enough. I've got stimulant tablets in my system, just now. I need to stay awake until this crisis is past. But you," he added, lifting her and carrying her into the bedroom, "are taking yourself and our daughter to bed."
"I'm hungry," she protested.
"I'll bring you something."
After setting her down against the pillows, Simon put together a sandwich and some soup, carrying them into the bedroom on a tray. He halted, three strides into the room, then set the tray carefully on one corner of the dresser. Kafari was asleep. She looked more like an exhausted little girl than a woman in the advanced stages of pregnancy, who'd spent the night in a locked car with a gun in her lap. He brushed a wisp of hair back from her brow. She didn't even stir. Very gently, Simon pulled the covers around her shoulders. He tiptoed out, retrieving her dinner on the way. He swung the door closed with a soft click of the latch. She was safely home. For the moment, that was all that mattered.
There'd be time enough later for worrying about what happened next.
The late afternoon sun felt good on her skin as Kafari left the spaceport's new engineering hub and headed through the employee parking area. The fresh wind, whipping inland from the sea that rolled ashore just a stone's throw from the terminal, blew away some of the lingering distaste of a day spent in the company of people who had flocked to the POPPA cause like teglee fish to the net. She was tired of hearing the POPPA manifesto discussed with such fervent enthusiasm. Tired of biting her tongue to keep from answering with brutal honesty when co-workers asked her what it had been like, to see the great, the wondrous Santorini in person, to be right in the middle of ground zero when the police tried to murder decent, honest citizens merely expressing their opinions.
Kafari wanted to keep her job. So she answered in monosyllables and vowed never again to tell her secretary anything about her life outside the office. Truth to tell, most of the people who'd asked breathlessly for the juicy details were disappointed to learn that she hadn't actually been paralyzed by the gas. After a whole day spent fending off ghouls, reporters, and overzealous proselytizers convinced she could aid their cause in seeking new converts—the woman who'd saved President Lendan's life, only to be gassed by John Andrews' uniformed stormtroopers was, they reasoned, a photo-op too good to pass up—Kafari was on nonstop burn mode.
When she got to her aircar, that burn exploded into molten rage. Some slimy little activist had slapped a big, ugly sticker right across the side, with rampant red letters that shouted "POPPA Knows Best!"
"The thrice-blasted hell it does!"
She scraped at the offensive mess in a fury worthy of a valkyrie. She succeeded in shredding her fingernails, the paint job on her beautiful new car, and what was left of her ragged temper. She finally gave up, vowing to use acid, if necessary, and simply repaint the car. She popped the driver's hatch, levered her ungainly bulk into the seat, webbed herself in, and snarled at the psychotronic unit to take her to Klameth Canyon's landing field, which had been designated as a polling place.
For the first time in her life, Kafari resented the constitution's attempt to reduce election fraud by insisting that each voter cast a physical ballot at a controlled polling site. The e-voting encryption methods used on Mali and Vishnu, which allowed people to vote via the datanet, had been deemed insufficiently secure by Jefferson's founders, even though Kafari could have written the psychotronic safeguards into such a system in her sleep. The only voters allowed to cast an electronic ballot were off-world citizens, including nearly twenty-thousand soldiers now serving in the Concordiat's armed forces.
She briefly envied the soldiers. The last thing she wanted, tonight, was to stand in line for God alone knew how long, then fly all the way back to Nineveh Base before she could collapse with Simon and watch the election returns. Kafari leaned back against the cushions and consciously reminded herself that she was proud of her work, proud that she was helping to build a fitting legacy to a fine man's courage and wisdom. That legacy meant more prosperity for her entire world, a labor of love in memory of a man whose death had hurt her profoundly.
By the time her aircar touched down at Klameth Canyon field, it was nearly dark. There were so many other aircars, scooters, and even groundcars overflowing the section allotted to parking ground-based vehicles, the auto-tower routed her to a space virtually at the edge of the immense field. That was just as well, since she didn't want anybody out here to see that wretched POPPA slogan stuck to the side of her Airdart. Kafari popped her aircar's hatch and climbed out into the coolness of early evening, glancing up by habit to see the last of the sunlight fading from blood-red to darkness on the highest peaks of the broken, buckled, spectacularly weathered Damisi ranges.
She shivered in the chilly autumn wind and made her way across the field, heading for the terminal that had been rebuilt by local volunteer labor. The buzz of voices was a welcome sound as she neared the long, low building that housed Klameth Canyon Airfield's engineers, auto-tower equipment, machinery used to maintain the landing field, and storage racks for rental scooters. There was, as she'd feared, a long line, but the voices that reached out from the darkness settling rapidly over the Canyon were friendly, happy ones, engaged in the warm, relaxed conversation that had been a mainstay of Kafari's life until her departure for school on Vishnu. There was a buoyant, comfortable quality to the way country folk spoke to one another that reached out to wrap Kafari in an almost-tangible blanket of soothing familiarity.
When she reached the back of the line, folks paused in their conversation and turned to welcome her. "Hello, child," a grandmotherly woman greeted her with a smile warm as pure Asali honey. "You must've come a far piece, tonight, to vote?"
Kafari found herself smiling as a knot of tension, so habitual she'd nearly forgotten it was there, unwound and let her relax. "Yes, I flew in from work at the spaceport." She grinned. "I forgot to change my residence in the database."
Chuckles greeted that admission, then the conversation resumed, apparently where it had left off. Talk flowed free and easy, in swirling little eddies as they moved forward, each shuffle taking them two or three steps closer to the polling station. Most of the talk revolved around the harvest.
As they approached the big sliding doors where people paused to have their ID scanned, the station's outdoor security lights gave Kafari a better look at those standing with her in line. That was when she noticed a young woman her own age about a meter further along, who kept turning to look back at Kafari. Like Kafari, the girl was visibly pregnant. Her lovely olive-toned complexion and features suggested Semitic ancestry. Every few moments, she would look like she wanted to say something, but was hesitant to speak. They were still about fifteen paces from the doors when she finally found the courage to walk back to where Kafari stood in line.
"You're Kafari Khrustinova, aren't you?"
Tension in her gut tightened down again. "Yes," she said quietly.
"My name's Chaviva Benjamin. I was just wondering . . . Could you give your husband a message?"
"A message?" she echoed.
"Well, yes. My sister Hannah volunteered to go off-world, you see. She sent a message home to us, on the freighter that came in last week, bringing parts for Ziva Two. She's a nurse. They've assigned her to a naval cruiser that came in for repairs and resupply."
Kafari nodded, puzzled as to where this might be going.
"Some of the navy people asked my sister where she was from, so she told them about Jefferson. And she mentioned Simon Khrustinov and his Bolo." Again the girl hesitated, then got the rest of it out in a rush. "The ship was at Etaine, you see. During the fighting and the evacuation. They all knew who he was. Those navy people, they said . . ." She blinked and swallowed hard before saying, "Well, they think pretty highly of him. They told her there's a lot your husband didn't mention, Mrs. Khrustinova, that day the president died."
Kafari didn't know what to say.
Mrs. Benjamin said in a hushed voice, "I wish the folks on the news, here, had told us more about him, when he first came. They never mentioned the Homestar Medallion of Valor he won, the same day his Bolo earned that Gold Galactic Cluster, and I think they should have. The people on my sister's ship said we were luckier than we knew, to have him assigned to us. Could you tell him, please, not everybody believes those idiots at POPPA? I lost both of my parents and all four of my brothers in the invasion, but Colonel Khrustinov and his Bolo aren't to blame. No matter what people like Nassiona Santorini say about it."
Before Kafari could gather her stunned wits, a big rawboned man in his sixties, wearing a utility-looped belt that held the tools of a rancher's trade, spoke up, touching the brim of a sun-bleached work hat. "Girl's right, ma'am. I don't rightly know what those folks in Madison use for brains. Anyone with half a set of wits can see right through all the holes in their thinkin'. There's not two words in ten comes out of their mouths that even make sense."
A much older man, his face and hands as weathered as the dark cliffs above them, said harshly, "They may be stupid, but there's a lot of 'em. I've been watching the folks in this voting line, same as I've been watching the pews of a Sunday morning and the feed and seed shops of a Saturday afternoon, and there's hardly more'n a handful of Grangers to be seen, that's of the age to go getting married and having babies. Beggin' your pardon, ma'am," he offered Kafari an apologetic bow. "But facts is facts. We've sent the best and brightest we got out to the stars, and all their courage and good sense went with 'em. What's left in this canyon is us old folks, mostly, and the little ones too small to go. I don't like it, I'm telling you. Don't like it one bit to hear those ninnies in town and then count up how many folks are left to tell 'em what nonsense they're bleating."
Others chimed in, stoutly defending Simon's good name and asking her to pass along their gratitude. The spontaneous outpouring overwhelmed her, particuarly after the bilge Nassiona Santorini had spewed all over the airwaves. Then the grandmotherly woman who'd greeted her first took both of Kafari's hands in her own. "Child," she said, gripping Kafari's fingers so hard they ached, "you tell that man of yours there's not a soul in this Canyon who thinks anything but the best about him." Then she winked and that honey-warm smile wrapped itself around Kafari's heart. "After all, he had the good sense to marry one of our own!"
Chuckles greeted the observation, dispelling the tension.
"You bring him out here, come the harvest dancing," the older woman added, "and we'll show him what Granger hospitality is all about."
Kafari smiled through a sudden mist and promised to bring Simon to the harvest festivals. Then she asked Chaviva Benjamin about the baby she carried.
"It's a girl," Chaviva said, touching her own abdomen almost reverently. "Our first. My husband, Annais, is so happy his feet hardly touch the ground, these days. She'll be due right about time for Hannukah."
Kafari found herself smiling. "I'm glad for you," she said. "Mine's a girl, too."
"Good," Chaviva said softly, meeting and holding her gaze. "We need the kind of children you and your husband are going to bring into this world."
Before Kafari could think of anything to say in response, it was Chaviva's turn to slide her ID through the card reader and go inside to vote. A moment later, it was Kafari's turn. She walked to the voting booth in a daze, marking her ballot quickly, almost slashing the pen across the slot to reelect President Andrews, then slid the ballot into the reader for tabulation and headed for her aircar.
As she climbed in, fastened safety straps, and received permission for take-off, she lapsed into a pensive, strange little mood that was still with her when the lights from Nineveh Base and the Bolo's maintenance depot finally greeted her from the darkness of the Adero floodplain. It was good to see the lights of home.
Chaviva Benjamin's words had kindled something deep in Kafari's heart, a sweet ache that was part longing, part humble gratitude that the young woman had opened the way for others to share how much she and Simon meant to them. It would be very easy, working where she did, to lose sight of the simple, forthright concern for others that was a hallmark of the world Kafari had grown up in, a world very different from the one she had found in Madison.
Simon had dinner waiting when she walked through the door. She went straight to him, put both arms around him, and just held on for a long moment.
"Rough day?" he asked, stroking her hair.
She nodded. "Yeah. You?"
"I've had better."
She gave Simon a kiss. She wanted to ask him about the medal of valor, which she hadn't known about, but remained silent. Since he hadn't shared it with anyone on Jefferson, including her, he clearly preferred not to be reminded of the circumstances under which he'd earned it. So she contented herself with passing along the messages from Chaviva Benjamin and the others.
Simon stared down into her eyes for a long moment, then looked away and sighed. "An officer knows his actions won't always be popular, but it's never pleasant to be vilified." He didn't say anything more, however, which worried Kafari. He wasn't telling her something. From the sound of his voice, it was an important something. Kafari understood that Simon's job involved military secrets, things she would probably never be privy to, and doubtless wouldn't want to know, even if he told her.
But she wanted to help him, wanted to know what to do and say that would ease the burden on his shoulders. She couldn't do that if she didn't know what was eating away at him like a cutworm in a healthy cabbage patch. She also wanted to know if something Nassiona Santorini had said was actually true or not.
"Simon?"
He frowned. "That sounds unhappy."
"While I was at the clinic, I heard part of an interview with Nassiona Santorini."
A muscle in his jaw jumped. "What about Ms. Santorini?"
Kafari hesitated as her gut twisted. She'd realized a few seconds too late that anything she said now would sound like she didn't trust her husband. She swore aloud and pulled away, damning herself as she waddled into the kitchen. She cracked open a bottle of nonalcoholic beer with a savage yank and gulped half its contents in one long pull, trying to calm the sudden, painful clenching in her stomach.
"Kafari?" he asked quietly.
She turned to face him across the distance of their living room. "Why is Sonny still awake?"
She wasn't sure what she'd expected to see, but it wasn't the faint smile twitched at his lips. "Is that all? I was afraid you were going to ask what 'that machine' and I are legally allowed to do."
She swallowed convulsively. "And you can't answer that?"
He sighed again. "I'd rather not."
Which gave Kafari a fair idea about the answer, but she wasn't about to push him. "That's okay with me, Simon," she said quietly. "But you haven't answered my question."
"No, I haven't. Do you have to stand all the way across the room?"
She flushed and headed back for his arms, which closed around her with great tenderness. He leaned his cheek against her hair, then spoke. "There are a couple of reasons, actually. The main one is simple enough. Another breakthrough from the Void is still a very real threat. I want Sonny to stay awake. To keep track of exactly where our various defense forces have been deployed. If I shut him down and we get a breakthrough, again, he would have to spend critical time figuring out where everybody is, before the Deng or the Melconians hit us. You've seen how fast interstellar battle fleets can cross a star system."
She shivered silently against his chest.
"As to the other reasons . . ." He sighed again. "Let's just say that Abraham Lendan thought it was a good idea."
She caught her breath and looked up, surprised by the hard, angry glitter in his eyes. "Why?"
A muscle jumped in his jaw. "Because he was a very astute statesman. And a superlative judge of human character. I doubt that even one Jeffersonian in five thousand realizes just how much this world lost when he died. It's my fervent hope," Simon added roughly, "that he was wrong."
A chill slithered its way down Kafari's back. What did Simon know? What had President Lendan known? If President Lendan had known about the trouble POPPA was brewing . . .
"Are you afraid of Sonny?" Simon asked abruptly.
She hesitated for just a moment, then opted for the simple truth. "Yes. I am."
"Good." She stared up at her husband. Simon's eyes were dark, filled with shadows of a different shape and hue than she'd seen there before. He said gently, "Only a fool isn't afraid of a Bolo. The more you know about them, the more true that becomes. Officers assigned to the Brigade go through a whole battery of psychology courses before ever setting foot inside a Command Compartment. With Sonny, I had to take special training courses, because he won't react the same way as Bolos with more sophisticated hardware and programming."
He touched her cheek with a whisper-soft fingertip. "You're my wife and Sonny knows that. He considers you a friend, which is a high compliment. But you aren't his commander. He isn't programmed to respond to you at a commander's level of trust. Or, more accurately, a commander's level of engineered obedience. His threat-level threshold can be crossed and reacted to faster than you or any human could hope to defuse the situation. Sonny's an intelligent, self-directing machine. Anything with a mind of its own is unpredictable. With Sonny, there are landmines you could trip without even realizing it. I'd really rather not find out what would happen if you did."
A tightly coiled tension around her bones unwound a little, hearing Simon confirm what she had known, at a deep level. Kafari nodded. "All right."
One eyebrow twitched upwards. "All right? That's it?"
She produced a grin that surprised him into widening his eyes. "Well, yes. There are times when Sonny is as darling as a child and times when he scares me to death. If the needle-gun I carry every day could think for itself, I'd feel a whole lot differently about it, before sticking the thing into my pocket. I like Sonny. But I'd be crazy to trust him."
"Mrs. Khrustinova, you are a remarkable lady."
"Then you'd better feed me, so I don't leave you for a better short-order cook!"
Simon gave her a swift kiss, then swatted her backside and propelled her toward the table. They ate in silence, which Kafari needed, after the day she'd put in. She made only one reference to the unpleasantness in town. "Do you have anything in Sonny's depot that would take off plasti-bond stuck to metal?"
Simon frowned. "Probably. Why?"
"Some jerk wallpapered every aircar in the lot with election slogans."
His lips twitched. "I see. I take it, from your description of the perpetrator, that you weren't in agreement with the sentiment it expressed?"
"Not exactly."
"Huh. I suspect you have a gift for understatement. Yes, I think I can scrounge something that would do the trick. Will we need to have the car repainted?"
"How in the world did you know?"
Simon chuckled. "My dear, I've seen you attack things you don't like."
"Oh." She managed a smile. "Yes, we'll need to repaint the car."
They lingered over dessert and washed the dishes together, then wandered into the living room. Quirking a questioning brow at Kafari, Simon nodded toward the datascreen. She sighed and nodded. As much as she hated to spoil the mood, it was time to watch the election returns. Simon switched it on and reached for Kafari's feet, giving them a gentle and thorough rubdown that left her all but purring.
The picture that greeted them, however, soured Kafari's dinner. She recognized the young attorney speaking with Pol Jankovitch. The journalist apparently harbored a prediliction for attractive POPPA spokeswomen. Isanah Renke's long blond hair and dazzling Teutonic smile had popped up all too frequently, over the last several months. So had her favorite spiel, which she was pouring forth yet again.
"—tired of John Andrews waving thick stacks of data in front of people while rattling off excuses for the economy's slide toward disaster. We've had enough. Jefferson can't afford complicated bureaucratic double-speak and worn-out wheezes about chaotic money markets and arcane budgeting processes. Even attorneys can't unravel this administration's so-called budget plan. The POPPA economic platform is simple and straightforward. We need to put money in the hands of the people who need it. That's why Gifre Zeloc has endorsed POPPA's economic-recovery inititatives."
"What are the most important points of those initiatives, Isanah?"
"It's very simple, Pol. The most important component of POPPA's economic recovery plan is an immediate end to the current administration's loan schemes."
"John Andrews and his analysts insist that economic development loans are critical to rebuilding our manufacturing and retail industries."
"We do need to rebuild, Pol, urgently. But loan schemes do nothing to address the deeper problems our economy faces. And loan schemes place an unjust burden on struggling businesses. Loans force companies, particularly small retailers, into merciless repayment schedules. You must understand, Pol, these loans have draconian forfeiture penalties built into them. If a business can't meet repayment demands on time, the owner faces outrageously unfair punishments, including governmental seizure of property! We're talking about people losing their homes, their livelihoods, just to satisfy legal requirements attached to money these businesses must have to recover. It's outrageous. It's government-sanctioned blackmail. It's got to stop, Pol, it's got to stop now."
Kafari reflected sourly that POPPA's campaign slogan should have been "it's got to stop now," since it was the favorite phrase of every spokesperson POPPA had recruited for fieldwork, followed closely by "we've had enough" of whatever they were preparing to demonize and vilify next.
Pol Jankovitch's expression mirrored horror. "How can a business function if the government confiscates its property? A business can't operate without an inventory of goods, equipment, or buildings! It certainly can't operate if it loses the land it sits on!"
"Huh," Kafari muttered, "a farmer can't grow anything on land he loses, either. How come nobody's pointing that out?"
Simon, voice tight with anger, said, "Because saying it doesn't match their agenda."
Again, Kafari wondered what Simon knew, what Abe Lendan had known.
On the datascreen, Isanah Renke was saying, "You're right, Pol. Businesses can't operate that way. Under these loan schemes, the owner loses everything he or she has spent a lifetime trying to build. And the people working in that business lose their jobs. Everyone suffers. John Andrews' insane economic recovery plan is deliberately engineered to punish those least able to guarantee sustainable profits. Unfair loan practices must go. Otherwise this world faces certain economic disaster."
"And POPPA has a better plan?"
"Absolutely. We need grants and economic aid packages designed to guarantee recovery for hard-hit businesses. We're talking about industries that can't recover under the convoluted, unwieldly, economically disastrous nonsense contained in John Andrews' so-called recovery plan. It's lunacy, Pol, sheer lunacy."
Kafari scowled at the screen. "Doesn't anybody in that broadcasting firm pay attention to regulations about what can be said in a datacast before the polls close?"
The harsh metallic bite in Simon's voice surprised Kafari. "Isanah Renke is not a registered candidate. She's not a member of a candidate's staff. She isn't a registered lobbyist and she doesn't draw a salary from POPPA. Neither," he added with a vicious growl, "does Nassiona Santorini."
Kafari stared at him for a moment, trying to take in the implications. "You can't tell me they work for free?"
Simon shook his head. "They don't. But the shellgame they're playing with holding companies is technically legal, so there's not a damned thing anyone can do about it. Vittori and Nassiona Santorini are the children of a crackerjack industrialist. They know exactly how to tapdance their way through the corporate legal landscape. And they've hired attorneys with plenty of experience doing it. People like Isanah Renke tell them exactly how to accomplish questionable activities without running afoul of inconvenient legislation, court rulings, and administrative policies."
Kafari knew he'd been watching the Santorinis since that first riot on campus, but he'd just revealed more in two minutes than Kafari had learned in the past six months. Nassiona Santorini's allegation that Sonny was watching night and day had unsettled her, which was a strong indication of how powerful that argument was. It had caused Kafari to question the actions and motives of a man she trusted implicitly to safeguard her homeworld and act in its best interests.
Would Kafari's reaction, would her indignant anger over POPPA's allegations, be different if she'd learned that Sonny was watching Grangers as closely as the machine was watching POPPA? It wasn't a comfortable thought. That kind of surveillance was a two-edged sword. She was abruptly glad that Simon Khrustinov was the one wielding it. Were all Brigade officers chosen for their unswerving integrity, as well as honor, loyalty, courage, and every other trait that made Simon a consummate Brigade officer and the finest human being she had ever known?
As the evening droned on, with voting tallies showing massive POPPA victories in the urban centers and strong support for John Andrews in the rural areas, Pol Jankovitch made a show, at least, of interviewing spokespersons from both parties, but there wasn't much to hold her attention in the sound bites supporting the current administration. It might've been that she was simply in philosophical agreement with them, or maybe the trouble was that she already knew everything they were saying. When she found herself yawning against Simon's shoulder, she wondered a little sleepily if the dry presentations that failed to hold her interest could possibly be an orchestrated effort on somebody's part. She had just about decided she was being a little too paranoid when Pol Jankovitch dropped a bombshell that sent her bolt upright in her seat.
"We've just been informed," Pol said, interrupting an economic analyst trying to explain why POPPA's ideas weren't economically tenable, "that the electronic returns sent by off-world troops via SWIFT have been scrambled during transmission. We're trying to find out the magnitude of the problem. We're patching through to Lurlina Serhild, our correspondent at the Elections Commission headquarters. Lurlina, are you there?"
A moment of dead air was followed by a woman's voice a split second before Special Correspondent Lurlina Serhild appeared on screen. "Yes, Pol, we've been told to stand by for a special report from the Elections Commission. It's our understanding that the commissioner will be issuing an advisory within the next few minutes. Everyone here is tense and distressed—" She stopped, then said, "It looks like the commssioner's press secretary is ready to make a statement."
A harried-looking woman in a rumpled suit came on screen, moving decisively to a podium bearing the logo of the Jeffersonian Independent Elections Commission.
"All we know at this time is that an unknown number of absentee ballots have been properly credited, while an unknown number of others have been lost in the data glitch. We are trying to unscramble this serious transmission error, but we can't determine at this time how long it will take to discover the magnitude of the problem. Our system engineers are working frantically to untangle the glitch in time to meet the legal deadline for final vote tallies."
A tendril of sudden, strong dismay threaded its way through Kafari's perpetually queasy middle. Those deadlines were short. Very short. The next moment, the commissioner's press secretary explained why. "The constitution was drafted with reliance on stable computerized tabulation systems designed to count physical ballots. Given the small size of Jefferson's population at the time the constitution was ratified, the tabulation deadlines did not take into account the necessity for massive numbers of off-world, absentee ballots.
"This is the first time in Jefferson's history that we've had more than a hundred absentee ballots transmitted from off-world. These votes require a translation protocol to decode SWIFT data. Somewhere in the translation process or in the transfer protocols that regulate deciphered data-feeds into the balloting computers, a serious error occurred. It scrambled the stream of incoming code and wrecked our ability to trace which ballots lost data integrity.
"We can't tell at this juncture how many ballots from the original SWIFT message were in the translation processors, how many had been incorporated into the master tallies, and which had not yet been processed when the system failed. As little as twenty percent of the ballots might be affected, but our system engineers fear the number of ballots caught in the translator when it crashed may have been closer to eighty or ninety percent.
"The Elections Commissioner takes full responsibility for this difficulty and promises every possible effort to ensure the correct tabulation of absentee votes. We will issue an update when we know more. No, I'm sorry, no questions at this time, please, that's everything I can tell you."
Simon was running a distracted hand through his hair, leaving it disheveled. The anger in his steel-hued eyes surprised her, but what he said left Kafari stunned. He jerked to his feet, pacing the living room like a caged cat, thinking out loud. "They didn't need to do something like this. They already had the election, those voting patterns make it pitifully obvious. They didn't need to commit election fraud. So why the hell did they do it? To rub salt in an open wound? No, there's more to it than that. It's a message, loud and clear. A demonstration of power. And contempt. They're telling the rest of us, 'We can cheat so skillfully, you can't touch us.' And they're right, curse it. We can't. Not without proof."
Kafari watched him in horrified silence. What information had he been in possession of, to prompt an accusation of election fraud? Was that what Abraham Lendan had suspected, when he'd promoted Simon to colonel? If somebody had realized POPPA was conspiring to cheat, why hadn't anybody done anything about it?
"Simon?" she asked, in a scared, little-girl voice.
He looked at her for a long, terrible moment, eyes pleading, then said in a hoarse, rasping voice, "Don't ask. Please. Just don't."
She wanted to ask. Needed to ask. And knew that she couldn't. He was a soldier. Like it or not, she was a soldier's wife. A colonel's wife. She couldn't stand between him and his job. His duty. So she turned her attention back to Pol Jankovitch and the incoming updates from the Elections Commission, which were disjointed and contradictory.
The votes could not be unscrambled. Maybe the votes could be unscrambled. No, they definitely couldn't be straightened out before the time limits expired. The Elections Commission was profoundly sorry, but the law was the law. They could not circumvent clearly worded statutes, not even to honor the intended votes of men and women risking their lives on far-away worlds.
"Turn it off," Kafari groaned, sick at heart.
"No." There was steel in Simon's voice, alien steel. "We need to watch every ugly moment of this."
"Why?" she asked sharply.
Simon's eyes, when they tracked to meet her gaze, took her back to that horrible moment when Simon had stood before the Joint Assembly, speaking his dire truths. Meeting that gaze up-close and personal was harder than Kafari had ever dreamed it would be.
"Because," he said softly, "we need to understand the minds and methods of those who engineered it. This," he waved one hand at the viewscreen, "is just the beginning."
"How can you be sure of that?" Even as she asked, voice sharp with alarm, she knew that she was afraid of his answers. And holding her husband's gaze was like looking into the heart of a star going supernova.
"Know much about Terran history?"
She frowned. "A little."
"Does that little include any Russian history?"
Her frown deepened. "Not much. I've been studying Russian art and music, because I think they're beautiful, but I haven't read much history, yet. I've been too busy," she admitted.
"Russian history," Simon said in a voice as raw as a Damisi highlands blizzard, "is an endless string of cautionary messages on the folly of human greed, dirty politics, mindless ignorance, exploitation of the masses, and the savagery that accompanies absolute power. My ancestors were very effective at creating disasters that took generations to undo. In one twenty-year period, the Russian Empire went from a level of political freedom and prosperity equal to most of its contemporary nations to a regime that deliberately exterminated twenty million of its own men, women, and children."
Kafari stared, cold to her soul. She'd known there was some horrible history from humanity's birth-world, but twenty million people? In only twenty years? Simon jabbed a finger toward the viewscreen, where POPPA candidates were carrying district after district. "Am I worried? You damned well better believe it. Those people scare me spitless. Particularly since there's not a blessed, solitary thing I can do about it."
Then he stalked out of the room. The back door slid open and crashed shut again. Kafari waddled awkwardly to the glass. He was striding through the moonlight, heading for his Bolo. Kafari closed her hand through the curtain fabric, realized she was shaking only when she noticed that the curtain was, too. She didn't know what to do. She couldn't follow him, for a whole basketful of good reasons. She was afraid to be alone, afraid of a threat she didn't understand, one she hadn't seen coming, despite qualms about a lunacy that had gained such wild popularity in so short a time.
She was wondering whether she ought to call her parents, just to hear a familiar and comforting voice, when the lights flickered and dimmed and she heard a sound that set every hair on her body standing on end. In the darkness outside her fearfully empty little home, the Bolo had powered up his main battle systems. She knew that sound, remembered it from that ghastly climb up a cliff with Abraham Lendan at her heels and explosions shaking them through the smoke. Try as she might, Kafari could not come up with a reason for Simon to power up his Bolo that didn't leave her shaking to the bottoms of her abruptly terrified feet.
The hand she laid protectively across her abdomen and the baby inside trembled. There was so little she could do to protect her child from whatever was coming. She knew, as well, that this was one battle Simon would have to fight alone. She couldn't help him. There was no courageous president to rescue. Only a vision of thunderous clouds on every horizon, no matter which way she twisted and turned.
It was a lonely business, being a Bolo commander's wife.