“What did you do when you heard this exchange?” Drake wanted to know. “Did you confront them at once?”
The congressman avoided his eyes and took a sip of his brandy. Finally he said, “No, I didn’t. As a matter of fact the overheard conversation was so startling to me that I did nothing. I voted with my wife and when I looked around later for the two young men they were gone. Of course if the election results had been clearly one-sided, I never would have thought any more about the incident. But they weren’t one-sided. They were very close. And the memory of that conversation has been haunting me all these months since the election. Was it fixed? Were some University students paid to vote for me?”
“Are you certain of what they said?” Roger Halsted asked. “Is there any possibility you misunderstood the whole thing?”
“No, no. I’m sure.”
“Most voters earn money just showing up near polls. “
“That’s it.”
”The implication certainly is that they were given money to influence their vote in the election.”
“But he said most voters, not most students, “ Gonzalo pointed out. “ And that is patently untrue. Everyone knows that even in a corrupt election most voters would not receive money to influence their vote.”
“Maybe they did, in that particular district,” Trumbull argued.
Manny Rubin held up a hand. “I’m more interested in the second part of the conversation. Congressman, are you certain the other student said, It’s as easy as homes?”
“Yes, indeed. That’s exactly what he said.”
“Could he have said, It’s as easy as Holmes?”
“Referring to your ideal, Sherlock Holmes, of course!” Trumbull said with a snort.
“Why not?”
“A reference to the Holmes stories? I know of none that deal with an election. They’re more likely to concern vague European royalty, who don’t stand for election.”
The discussion had grown a bit heated, as it often did, and Avalon’s voice rose to its full baritone splendor. “Let’s remember our guest, gentlemen! He deserves some courtesy from us.”
The voices were lowered but the disagreements continued. “Why did he say near polls rather than at polls?” Gonzalo wanted to know. “Surely the money wouldn’t be paid unless the voter was actually about to enter the poll.”
Halsted disagreed with that. “Naturally there are always poll watchers. One doesn’t stand in the doorway handing out twenty-dollar bills. I believe the custom in the old Chicago days was for the money to change hands in a nearby tavern. That would be near rather than at the polls.”
“We’re getting nowhere,” Avalon decided. “I’m afraid, Walter, that we simply do not have enough information to solve your problem. On the basis of the few facts you’ve given us, those two students might have been discussing a serious effort to bribe voters, or they might have been talking about something else entirely. “
Halsted snorted. “How could they be talking about anything else when they use the words voters and polls as they’re entering the polling place? It’s like talking about a bomb on an airliner. There’s no possibility of misunderstanding.”
Henry was refilling some of the brandy glasses as they talked, and now Rubin turned to him. “What about it, Henry? Do you have any suggestions?”
Congressman Lutts frowned. “You’re asking the waiter?”
“Henry is much more than a waiter,” Rubin explained. “He’s one of us. Often in the past he’s come up with solutions to problems none of us could untangle.”
“I may be of some slight help, sir,” Henry admitted. “ Just a minute,” Trumbull said, holding up both hands to restore some semblance of order. “We’re talking about a very serious matter here. What if Henry’s explanation supports the notion that the election was fixed, that you were returned to Congress through fraud of some sort. What action would you take?”
“Action?” Walter Lutts repeated. “I really hadn’t thought it through that far. “
“Would you resign?”
“I-I don’t know.”
“I for one have always admired your service in the House of Representatives,” Tom Trumbull continued. “I would not want to lose you over something like this when you had no control of it.”
“How do you know he had no control?” Gonzalo countered. “I admire his politics too, but his staff-”
“Would he have told us about it if he’d really tried to fix the election? Use your head, Mario!”
Avalon again resorted to his commanding voice to restore some degree of decorum. “Let’s all listen to what Henry has to say before we start speculating about resignations. Henry?”
“Well, sir, it seems to me that you’re all forgetting these were college students. I assume that having lived in the neighborhood of the campus for some years Congressman Lutts was accurate in identifying them. They probably were graduate students, but their exact year of study needn’t concern us. What does concern us is the topic of their conversation. In my limited experience students sometimes discuss politics, but they also discuss other topics as well-young women:, and their studies.”
“Nothing was said about young women,” Drake pointed out.
“No, sir-but what about studies? Does the second young man’s reply suggest anything to you?”
“It’s as easy as homes?” Drake repeated. “Not a thing, unless Manny is right and he really said Holmes.”
Henry’s bland face seemed to suggest a twinkle. “If we rule out the immortal Sherlock, and the equally immortal Oliver Wendell Holmes, I believe we can agree that the congressman was quite accurate in reporting what he heard. The word was indeed homes. “
“Does It’s as easy as homes make any sense?” Trumbull wondered. “There used to be an expression safe as houses. Is it something like that?”
“You may have forgotten it since your school days,” Henry said, “but the word homes is a device for remembering the names of the Great Lakes-Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, and Superior. “
Rubin nodded agreement. “That’s right. It sometimes appears in crossword puzzles. But what could that have to do with the crucial first line of the overheard conversation? Most voters earn money just showing up near polls?”
“Since the second student compared it to the word homes, it’s obvious that the other speaker’s sentence was also a memory device of some sort-no doubt one thought up on the spot since it dealt with voting and they were entering the polling place. “
“A memory device?” Lutts looked blank.
“Might I suggest the first letters of each word, sir, as in the Great Lakes?”
“MV-E-M-J-S-U-N-P?” James Drake grunted. “It certainly doesn’t remind me of anything. “
Avalon cleared his throat. “Henry, your entire theory rests upon coming up with a list of nine objects a student might need to remember. What is it?”
“I would suggest, sir, the nine known planets of our solar system, in order of their distance from the sun Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus… Neptune, and Pluto.”
Blot
by Hal Clement
Chile stepped through the inner lock door, and turned white as it closed behind him. The woman at the data station shivered as she felt his presence.
“I’m sorry, Sheila,” he said hastily. “Rob wanted to use the lock himself right away, and said I should defrost inside.”
“Why didn’t he come through first? Armor doesn’t have anything like your heat capacity.”
“He didn’t say.” ZH50 had stood still since entering, using his own power to warm up; the frost was already disappearing from his extremities. Sheila McEachern waited, knowing there was nothing to be gained by complaining to the robot, her irritation giving way to curiosity anyway as the lock cycled again. She could hope, but not be sure, that Robert Ling had not wanted to annoy just to gain her full attention.
The valve slid open to reveal a human figure, its armor’s gold background fogging briefly under a layer of white as the ship’s air touched it. The man unclamped his bulky helmet as its contrasting black started to show again, and flipped it back.
“Chile, you’re in the way. Why did you think I wanted you inside first? I was hoping to see the new display as soon-”
“I can answer that.” The woman snorted. “You didn’t tell him why, just sent him first. Otherwise he’d have taken the reason as an order and given me frostbite while he plugged into the console.”
“I would not have injured you, Sheila.”