Three nights before the election, the Tyrenne called an emergency meeting. His confidence was shaken.
Yelad looked like a ball top—skinny bottom and skinnier uppers, with a big round bulge in the middle. He chose his tailors so that those defects were emphasized rather than lessened. The clothes themselves were of materials just above middle class. Yelad lived in the same small ward home he had grown up in. He was nice to his mother, spoke well of his wife, and was understanding about the mishaps his brat children got themselves into. All of those artifices he had developed over many decades of campaigning. The message was: As a man of the people, Yelad possessed many of the people's flaws—but also many homespun strengths. It was one of the many reasons he had won term after term.
Not counting his vast patronage, of course, or his giant, smooth machine. On that night, however, nothing was smooth. Yelad was half drunk, one of many bad habits he had slipped into after years of easy victories.
"Whaddya mean, ya don't know what's behind it? What am I pay in' ya clots for? Clottin' lazy bastards, that's what ya all clottin' are. Drakh under my feet."
He stormed and raged, and his aides cowered, waiting for the awful storm to break. It didn't.
"I'll tell ya what's goin' on. It's that clottin' Kenna. Pullin' a sly one. Yeah, well... we'll see what's what, we will. I'm pullin' out all stops. Ya hear! Dumb clottin' low-down piece of drakh bastards...'s'what I got."
Many, many yessirs later, he was soothed enough to grit out orders. With times so tight, he needed a mandate. A mandate of historic proportions.
Teams of thugs and poll riders were doubled, the hired phony voters nearly tripled. Waiting in the wings were those grave vaults to be voted when the final count came in.
Tyrenne Yelad had plenty of funds. What he lacked was organization. After so many years of constant victories, he required a far smaller team to administer the elections. Now he ordered heavies hired by the hundreds. They all hit the ground running—and instantly stumbled into each other and crashed to the ground. But the worst blow came before all that, on the night following the meeting. Less than forty-eight E-hours before the election.
Raschid watched calmly from the sidelines as Kenna oiled onto the big outdoor platform. His eyes swept the audience, making sure his shills were at work, pricking up the vast crowd. Every news livie crew on Dusable was accounted for. Even Yelad's pets had come running when word was leaked a few hours before Kenna's regularly scheduled speech. The talk was that a stunner of a development was about to unfold. The news crews forgot their loyalties, overwhelmed by that headiest of all scents: political bloodshed.
Kenna took up position. The ovation aroused by the shills was deafening. Solon Kenna bowed humbly and raised a weak hand, grinning and begging them to stop... "Stop... I really don't deserve all this outpouring of love."
The shills hit the button again just as the crowd was starting to believe that they really ought to stop as urged. The ovation was louder than before. Raschid let it go for half an hour, then motioned to let it gradually subside.
Kenna laughed and thanked everyone for such a spontaneous show of support. Then composed his face into a portrait of somber wisdom. He briefly sketched his long career of public service, reminding one and all of the hard fights in their behalf. Then Kenna confessed that he had been overwhelmed by doubts in the course of this campaign. He was getting on in years, he said, and he realized that he might not be able to carry on the banner as Tyrenne.
The crowd was hushed. Beings were beginning to get the drift. A few shouts of "No... no..." could be heard. Raschid's magic was such that they were truly spontaneous, not the work of shills. Finally, Solon Kenna reached the end. There was a dramatic pause.
"I have been listening most carefully to the views of my opponents," he said at last. "And I have come to the conclusion that only one true voice speaks for us all. I therefore announce... I am withdrawing from the race... and—"
The crowd erupted in fury, but Kenna commanded them to silence with his august presence.
"And I throw my support to that most worthy of all beings on Dusable..."
On cue, the Dummy walked out on stage to the amazement of the entire planet.
Solon Walsh approached his colleague, tears streaming from his eyes-it had been Raschid who suggested to Avri the astringent in the kerchief.
"I give you... our new Tyrenne... a being for the new ages... Solon Walsh!"
People went mad. Fights erupted. Livie crews smashed into each other trying to get tighter shots, or sprinting off for their standups.
But in the middle of all the madness, the perfect picture was on the stage. As soon as the news crews realized it, they were back to work shooting the image, breaking heads and standing on fellow beings to get it.
It made a grand, instant campaign poster. Solon Kenna and Solon Walsh, weeping in joy, their arms flung about one another in loving unity.
Raschid thought the whole performance had gone well enough. He had done far better in the past, but all in all, he had to admit... Then his mind did a small, dizzy slip. When had he done better? With what? Then the roar of the crowd took him, and he banished the doubts.
The hard part was next. There was still an election to steal.
Election day dawned to the thunder of Tyrenne Yelad's shouts of outrage. His eyes were two blood holes from railing all night at the Judas Solon Walsh. Finally, his aides got him calmed enough to order the counterattack.
Yelad slammed down at his desk and began pouring over his illegal options. Confidence quickly returned. He believed his political arsenal would have made even the late Eternal Emperor weep.
The steam hissed to a stop. Yelad composed himself and ordered up a jug of his headiest brew to steady the nerve for the long day and night ahead.
At that moment a badly frightened aide burst in. Bad news in the 22nd Ward-one of Yelad's greatest strongholds, with one million honest votes in pocket and two hundred thousand from the grave vaults.
In his fear, the aide told it badly-which meant from the beginning, each detail drop by drop. Yelad shouted at him to bottom line it at once. But the being stumbled so badly that Yelad gritted his teeth and told him to start anew.
The 22nd Ward was an island, surrounded by factory-polluted seas. For the working class, which meant all of the voters, there were only two convenient routes in and out of the ward, great bridge spans built with a vast hurrah and a flurry of mordida twenty years before.
"Yes! Yes! I clottin' know that. Spit it out, you little drakhbutt!"
"Well..."the aide wailed. "One of them just collapsed."
"Clot!" was all Yelad could gobble. The voter traffic would soon make the other bridge impassable. And although there had been no injuries, people might fear to even chance that one.
Yelad sucked in half his jug of spirits in one go.
The day was not beginning well.
As Yelad tried to gather his wits, Raschid was being let into the deep, gloomy underground heart of the big building that housed Dusable's computer balloting system.
The toady ushered him and his three-being team of techs to a steel vault. The heavy door hung open. Inside was a snakes' nest of boards and old-fashioned optic wiring.
It was almost too easy. But Raschid knew that in politics, one took it any way it came.
Where earlier there had been two thousand women marching for Kym, election day saw fifteen thousand mothers march out from two wards. Whole gravtrucks of police fled before them.
For three hours they paraded from one ward to the next, gathering beings of all sexes behind banners bearing the likeness of the martyred girl mugger.