It was four days to the first round of voting and things looked good. Michael Lever was up even on the more dubious EduVoc polls, and talk was that his father's man, Edward Gratton, would be lucky to pick up more than a third of the vote. All night people had been coming up to Michael and slapping his back, congratulating him, as if the count were a formality. It had made him uneasy. It felt like tempting the gods.
"You worry too much, Michael," Kustow was saying. "What can Gratton do in four days? TheyVe flung every last bit of dirt at you they could find and it still wasn't enough. It's our time, and nothing can prevent it. The tide has turned against the old men. People want change. And by the gods, they're going to get it!"
Parker and Fisher laughed, but Michael was silent, brooding. His own seat looked safe, it was true, but things weren't going quite so well across the board. Indeed, if things didn't improve, they'd be lucky to take four of the thirty seats they were contesting. But he was also thinking of something Kennedy had said—something he had whispered to him earlier that evening—about the possibility of a deal. He had warned Michael to be careful. To be very careful.
"A lot hangs on this one, though," said Fisher. He turned in his seat to summon a waiter for more ch'a, then turned back. "You know, there's a whole clutch of seats that are vulnerable in the second round. Forty or more, I reckon. And each and every one ripe for the picking."
"That's provided we get a good vote first time out," Kustow added more cautiously.
"Sure . . ." Fisher leaned forward, looking from one to another. "I think we will. I think we'll do better than the poll showings. Much better. That's why I've asked Kennedy if I could run for one of those seats."
Michael looked up. "That's good, Carl. What did he say?"
Fisher laughed. "He said yes."
All three congratulated him at once. "Damn the ch'a," Kustow said, getting up unsteadily from his chair. "This calls for another bottle of that special wine!"
"Where are you going to run?" Michael asked, pulling Kustow down from his feet.
"Miami Hsien. Against Carver."
Miami was Fisher's home stack. The place where his father's Company was registered. Like Michael, he was going to be running directly against his old man's candidate.
Michael looked down. "Is that wise?"
Parker and Kustow were watching Fisher closely now. Both knew what Lever meant. The day after Kennedy had been nominated to run in Boston, Fisher's father had disinherited him: had frozen the funds to all three of his son's companies. Fisher had been forced to lay off his work force. Some had found other jobs, but more than a hundred families had "gone down." The local media had had a field day, and Representative Carver had returned from a business trip in City Europe to fly back and be interviewed in the home of one of those families that had suffered through, as he termed it, "the irresponsible management of a young and untried man." Going down—with all its social stigma—was the one thing all voters feared in common, and in the minds of the voters of Miami, what Carl Fisher had done was unforgivable.
"I want the chance to put my case," Fisher said. "I want the opportunity effacing Carver and telling him to his face that he's a liar and a cheat. That for eighteen years he's been in the pocket of my father."
Kustow whistled. "You'll say that to his face?"
"He'll sue," said Parker.
Fisher smiled. "Kennedy's hoping he will. He wants to fight the case himself. I've given him all the stuff I had. Accounts books, file numbers, memory copies of conversations."
For the first time since the crowds had left the club, Michael sat forward and smiled. "YouVe got all that stuff?"
Fisher nodded. "I got it all together first thing. After I'd first met Kennedy. Thought I might need some insurance."
Slowly, but with gathering force, Michael began to laugh. And in a few moments they were all laughing. The waiter, when he brought the ch'a, looked around at them, then shrugged and walked away, keeping his thoughts to himself.
EMILY TURNED, looking about her, trying to estimate the scale of the problem at a single glance, but it was hard to take it all in. The eye was drawn constantly to the smaller details: to the distressed face of a wheezing ancient, or the empty, hopeless eyes of a silent, uncomplaining child; to the weeping sores of a young blind beggar or the mute suffering in the face of a mother who yet cradled her cold, long-dead baby. In the face of all this individual misery the greater picture just slipped away. This much suffering was, quite literally, unimaginable. She had thought Europe bad, but this . . .
She was down at Level Eleven, immediately above the Net, at the very foot of Washington Hsien, here to publicize the newly launched "Campaign for Social Justice." It was their plan to fund and build fifty "Care Centers" across the City to try to deal with the problem of low-level deprivation, but from the moment she had stepped out into Main here, she had known how pathetic, how woefully inadequate their scheme was. It would take a hundred times what they proposed even to scratch the surface of this problem. Why, there were more than fifty thousand people crammed into this deck alone—fifty thousand in a deck designed to hold eighteen thousand maximum!
When she had been voted Chairwoman by the committee of Young Wives, she had thought that this might^just might—be a way of getting something done. For the past six months she had thrown herself into the task of organizing meetings and raising funds. But now, seeing it for herself, she understood. She had been fooling herself. There was only one way to change all this. From the top. By destroying those who allowed this to go on.
She walked among the crowds, feeling a thousand hands brush against her, or tug briefly at her silks, a thousand eyes raised to her in silent supplication. Feed me! Relieve me! Free me from this Hell!
Above her the tiny media cameras hovered close, capturing the scene, focusing in on the expression in her face. And as she returned to the great platform, with its banners and waiting guests, a reporter pressed close, clamoring for a statement.
"Just show it," she said. "And let everyone in the Mids know that this is how the people down here have to live. Every day. And"—she steeled herself to say the lie—"and that they can help. That if they give only a single yuan to the Campaign, it'll help relieve some of this suffering."
She turned away quickly, lest her anger, her bitterness, made her say more. No, It would help no one for her to speak out in public. Least of all these people. What it needed now was action. Action of the kind she had held back from until now.
It was time for her to organize again. To adopt the false ID DeVore had prepared for her all those years back and become someone new. Rachel DeValerian. Terrorist. Anarchist. Leveler.
Yes, it was time for the Ping Tiao to be reborn.
FROM WHERE KIM STOOD, high up on the viewing gallery, two U above the great ocean's surface, the events of the great world seemed far off, like the sound of distant thunder. The night was calm, immense, the darkness stretching off in all directions. Without end. Literally, without end. He could move forever through that darkness and never reach its limit.
Darkness, he thought. In the end there's nothing but darkness. And yet, all his young life, he had sought the light. Had striven upward toward it, like a diver coming up from great depths.