There was only one bare overhead bulb in the tabulator room. Bendix
had brought in two plain chairs from the offices upstairs, and now
Kimmensen sat side by side with him, looking at the gray bulk of the
machine. The room was far down under the building. The walls and floor
were cement, and white rime bloomed dankly in the impressions left by
form panels that had been set there long ago.
The tabulating recorder was keyed into every League communicator, and
every key was cross-indexed into the census files. It would accept one
vote from each mature member of every League family. It flashed running
totals on the general broadcast wavelength.
"It seems odd," Bendix said in a husky voice. "An election without
Salmaggi running."
Kimmensen nodded. The flat walls distorted voices until they sounded
like the whispers of grave-robbers in a tomb.
"Did you ask him why he wasn't?" he asked because silence was worse.
"He said he didn't know whose ticket to run on."
Kimmensen absorbed it as one more fact and let it go.
"The first votes ought to be coming in." Bendix was looking at his
watch. "It's time."
Kimmensen nodded.
"It's ironic," Bendix said. "We have a society that trusts itself
enough to leave this machine unguarded, and now the machine's recording
an election that's a meaningless farce. Give the electorate one more
day and it'd have time to think about Messerschmidt's hate-mongering.
As it is, half the people'll be voting for him with their emotions
instead of their intelligence."
"It'll be a close election," Kimmensen said. He was past pretending.
"It won't _be_ an election!" Bendix burst out, slamming his hand on his
knee. "One vote for Bendix. Two votes for Mob Stupidity." He looked
down at the floor. "It couldn't be worse if Messerschmidt were down
here himself, tampering with the tabulator circuits."
Kimmensen asked in a dry voice: "Is it that easy?"
"Throwing the machine off? Yes, once you have access to it. Each
candidate has an assigned storage circuit where his votes accumulate.
A counter electrode switches back and forth from circuit to circuit as
the votes come in. With a piece of insulation to keep it from making
contact, and a jumper wire to throw the charge over into the opposing
memory cells, a vote for one candidate can be registered for the other.
A screwdriver'll give you access to the assembly involved. I ...
studied up on it--to make sure Messerschmidt didn't try it."
"I see," Kimmensen said.
They sat in silence for a time. Then the machine began to click.
"Votes, coming in," Bendix said. He reached in his blouse pocket. "I
brought a communications receiver to listen on."
They sat without speaking again for almost a half hour, listening.
Then Kimmensen looked at Bendix. "Those'll be his immediate followers,
voting early," he said. "It'll even out, probably, when most of the
families finish supper." His voice sounded unreal to himself.
Bendix paced back and forth, perspiration shining wetly on his face in
the light from the overhead bulb. "It's not fair," he said huskily.
"It's not a true election. It doesn't represent anything." He looked at
Kimmensen desperately. "It's not _fair_, Joe!"
Kimmensen sighed. "All right, Jem. I assume you brought the necessary
equipment--the screwdriver, the insulation, and so forth?"
* * * * *
After another half hour, Bendix looked across the room at Kimmensen.
The removed panel lay on the floor at his feet, its screws rocking back
and forth inside its curvature. "Joe, it's still not enough."
Kimmensen nodded, listening to the totals on the receiver.
"How many are you switching now?" he asked.
"One out of every three Messerschmidt votes is registering for me."
"Make it one out of two," Kimmensen said harshly.
* * * * *
They barely caught up with Messerschmidt's total. It was a close
election. Closer than any Kimmensen had ever been in before. Bendix
replaced the panel. They put out the room light and climbed back up to
the ground level offices, bringing the chairs with them.
"Well, Joe, it's done." Bendix whispered though there was no one
listening.
"Yes, it is."
"A thing like this creeps over you," Jem said in a wondering voice.
"You begin by telling yourself you're only rectifying a mistake people
would never make if they had time to think. You set a figure--one out
of five. One person out of five, you say to yourself, would switch his
own vote, given the chance. Then you wonder if it might not be one out
of four--and then three.... Joe, I swear when I first suggested we go
down there tonight, I hadn't a thought of doing--what we did. Even when
I put the insulation and wire in my pocket, I never thought I'd--"
"Didn't you?" Kimmensen said. He felt disinterested. They'd had to do
it, and they'd done it. Now the thing was to forget about it. "Good
night, Bendix."
He left him and walked slowly through the corridors left over from
another time. He went down the front steps and out into the plaza.
He found Messerschmidt waiting for him. He was standing in the shadow
of the plane's cabin, and the plaza lights barely showed his face.
Kimmensen stopped still.
Messerschmidt's features were a pale ghost of himself in the darkness.
"Didn't you think I'd make spot-checks?" he asked with pity in his
voice. "I had people voting at timed intervals, with witnesses, while I
checked the running total."
"I don't know what you're talking about."
Messerschmidt nodded slowly. "Mr. Kimmensen, if I'd thought for a
minute you'd do something like that, I'd have had some of my men in
that building with you." His hands moved in the only unsure gesture
Kimmensen had ever seen him make. "I had a good idea of how the vote
would go. When it started right, and suddenly began petering out, I had
to start checking. Mr. Kimmensen, did you really think you could get
away with it?"
"Get away with what? Are you going to claim fraud--repudiate the
election? Is that it?"
"Wait--wait, now--Mr. Kimmensen, didn't you rig the vote?"
"Are you insane?"
Messerschmidt's voice changed. "I'm sorry, Mr. Kimmensen. Once more, I
have to apologize. I ought to have known better. Bendix must have done
it by himself. I should have known--"
"No. No," Kimmensen sighed, "forget it, Messerschmidt. We did it
together."
Messerschmidt waited a long moment. "I see." His voice was dead. "Well.
You asked me if I was going to repudiate the election."
"Are you?"
"I don't know, yet. I'll have to think. I'll have to do something,
won't I?"
Kimmensen nodded in the darkness. "Somehow, you've won and I've lost."
Suddenly, it was all welling up inside him. "Somehow, you've arranged
to win no matter what decent men do!"
"All right, Mr. Kimmensen. Have it your way."
"Whatever you plan to do now, I'll be home. If you should need me for a
firing squad or some similar purpose."
Messerschmidt made an annoyed sound. "Mr. Kimmensen, you're notorious
for your dramatics, but I think that's going too far." He walked away
into the darkness.
Kimmensen climbed into his plane, sick at the night that covered him,
and furious at Messerschmidt's ruthlessly sharp mind.
* * * * *
There was no one at home. He walked methodically through the house,
doggedly opening Susanne's empty closets. Then he sat down in the
living room with the lights off, staring out into the starlit, moonless
night. He nodded sharply to himself.
"Of course," he said in the dark. "She'd be one of his timed voters."
Then he sat for a long time, eyes straight ahead and focussed on
nothing, every fold of his clothing rigidly in place, as though he were
his own statue.