Young men, he thought. They think all things are new. Laughing, he stood up and walked across to where he had left the draft of the new Edict he had been working on. As if history were myth and men could change their natures. Again he laughed, and this time a servant came to the door at the far end of his suite, inquiring dumbly if there were anything he needed, but Wu Shih waved him away.
"We are bom old," he said softly to himself, picking up the corriset. "And perhaps that is bad. We do not hope for things the way these young men do."
It was true. He thought them naive, even a touch ridiculous at times. But he admired their hope, their optimism, their energy. Yes, the last above all. Confucianism had never really touched them here in North America. Elsewhere it had thrived, like some strange debilitating bacillus, but in North America it had been grafted on superficially. Like a mask, ready to be removed at any moment.
Which made them dangerous, though not uncontrollable.
A third time he laughed, thinking of what Li Yuan planned for them. To make their desire for change the vehicle for stasis, that was a stroke of genius!
It was crude as yet, and the tests were not yet complete, but it promised much. If this worked then nothing was beyond them. Why, they might yet spread out and take the stars.
He looked at the comset and smiled knowingly. The best designs were always the simplest, the most direct. Like a well-glazed dish, they pleased the eye immediately, yet satisfied more deeply with each reacquaintance. So with this.
Wu Shih sat again, his smile widening. Americans! He'd wire them all!
it was fifteen minutes after midnight when, beneath a barrage of bright lights, the leader of the New Republican and Evolutionist Party, Representative Joseph Kennedy, emerged from the count, smiling and waving to the crowds gathered in the Main below. Behind him, in the long, high-ceilinged room, he had left a shocked and somber group of people gathered about the losing Reformer candidate. Outside, however, beneath banners and awnings that stretched across the wide Main, there was no doubt of the popularity of the NREP's success. At the first sight of Kennedy a great roar of approval and delight went up from the crowd.
To the far right of the balcony, Kennedy's closest associates looked on happily. Like the crowd below, they cheered and clapped enthusiastically, carried away by the emotion of the moment.
Kennedy leaned over, looking out, shielding his eyes with one hand, the other arm about the shoulders of his pretty wife, Jean. Turning to his friends, he gestured for them to come across and share the spotlight. As the young men slowly made their way to him, Fisher pushing Michael in his wheelchair, a huge cheer went up, louder than the first. Kennedy greeted each in turn, introducing each to the masses below, hugging each of them to him delightedly.
They smiled, conscious of the floating cameras overhead catching every word, every nuance of expression. They had grown accustomed to it these past few weeks; even so, it wasn't easy, not knowing what was to come. As Michael turned his chair, he saw how Kennedy's wife moved back, out of the way, as if she understood.
This was the moment when they burned their bridges. The moment when they started something new. Michael eased his wheelchair back, watching as Kennedy stepped forward and, putting out a hand, indicated to the crowd below that he wanted to speak. On huge screens the length of Main, the cameras focused on his tall, handsome figure, panning in on his by-now-familiar features. For a moment the buzz continued, then, slowly, it subsided. Kennedy looked about him, smiling, then leaned toward the crowd.
"We are all, here in this great hall, Americans. And proud to be Americans. And Carl Fisher, our new Representative for Boston, is a fine American, from a fine old American family."
There was a huge roar of approval at that. Kennedy waited for it to subside, then carried on.
"Today, however, we did much more than elect a good candidate, though Carl Fisher is certainly that. Today we launched a new campaign. A new era. A new sense of ourselves as a people."
The cheering went on, beneath Kennedy's voice, greeting every sentence, growing more and more enthusiastic by the moment as the crowd worked itself up. Yes, and in tens of millions of households it will be the same, Michael thought, looking up at Kennedy. They know some' thing is happening here. And they expect something of him. Something. . . different.
Kennedy put his right hand up to his brow, sweeping back his hair with that characteristic gesture of his. "It might seem a small start," he said quietly. "A mere sixty-five seats in the House. But there is still another round of voting. There are still one hundred and eighty-six seats to be contested next month. And that's enough. Enough, if we can take a good number of them, to give us a firm foothold in government—to allow us to wield the kind of influence we need if we're to bring effective change to this great City of ours."
For a moment the cheering was deafening. Kennedy leaned forward again, raising a hand for silence.
"Carl Fisher, your candidate, elected by you here tonight, is more than just another Representative, however. He is one of the first of a new breed of men—good, committed young men—who are set to change the face of politics on this continent. Men who will kick out the old gang and their tired old ways. Men who pledge themselves to get rid of the wheeling and the dealing, the vested interests and the power groupings, and return us to a sense of our greatness as a people."
Kennedy smiled and, for the briefest moment, looked up into the overhead camera, as if he could see Wu Shih and the Old Men looking on.
"This is our time," he said, a sudden power in his voice. "A new time. Time for us all to realize what was once great about our country. What was truly great about America. It's time for us to call it all back. To have back what weVe been denied all these years. To grasp it and hold it and use it. For America. As Americans."
He paused, getting his breath. What he had just said had not been uttered publicly before. Indeed, his words had been close to treason. But no one made to gainsay him. He put out a hand, leaning out over the balcony, looking about him at the great mass of people below. The tension was palpable. When he paused this time he could feel all of them there below him, waiting for his words, powered, just as he was powered at that moment, by the great tidal flow of his rhetoric.
"Americans," he said simply, and felt the great ripple of emotion that the word conjured up roll out from him and roll back like a giant wave. "We are Americans."
He stood there silently a moment, then raised both of his arms, palms open, accepting the wild applause from below.
Michael, watching from his side, felt that great tide of wild emotion sweep over him, and found himself crying suddenly, in love with the man; with his sheer strength and vitality, and with the invigorating spirit of change he had brought to them all.
Change. It was coming. At last, after all these years, it was coming. And nothing—absolutely nothing—could stop them now.
KIM STOOD at the window, staring out across the bright-lit center of Sohm Abyss, the music pounding in his head, merging, it seemed, with the steady pounding of his heart. It was late and the celebrations were growing wilder by the moment. There was a sense of exhilaration in the air, a feeling that change had come at last, that a new age lay ahead for everyone.'
For once he had joined in with the party mood, accepting the drink his host—a plump, middle-aged Han he had met briefly that first night—had offered him. Three refills later he was feeling light-