The Highest Frontier (62 page)

“Not to worry.” Rafael nodded at Anouk.

Anouk beamed, extending her hand
allongé.
“I cannot vote here, but I shall offer my services.”

Inside, the amyloid floor had been cleaned till it shone. There was a long desk with the registry, this time with the addition of a large antique polycarbonate jug. The cap of the jug had a slot for ballots. The ballots were sheets of crude carboxy paper, with the form Leora had sent Jenny before. And of course, the bottle of radioactive yellow ink.

At the desk were two voter stations, one for Jenny and Rafael, the other for Leora and Frank, who went about fixing signs and regulation markings. Frank’s toybox window had gone gold; but Leora’s had gone purple. Go figure. At any rate, no other campaign hints were allowed, just voters with their ballots.

Rafael went immediately to the desk and started working through the regulations, as trained. Jenny took a step, then looked around. “Where are the other desks?”

Frank turned from the wall, where he had posted the sample ballot. “We blinked the county board of election, back on Earth, to set up more desks, but it was denied.”

“What do you mean?” Eight hundred students, plus about the same number of colonial adults and employees from the college and the Mound. If each voter took five minutes, and there were two desks … “Did they do the math?”

“They said we had to base our preparations on previous turnout,” Frank explained. “Even the town never turned out more than twenty percent.”

Jenny blinked for a window outside. The line in the early light included farmers and women in bonnets, some with children in hand. “Get the Ohio secretary of state.”

Frank looked at Leora.

“I will,” said the mayor.

Two lines of voters snaked into the hall, down to the two desks. The first, a farmer who delivered potatoes to Lazza’s, blinked his ID to Jenny and gave his name to Rafael. Rafael had to leaf through pages of the Aristotle-like book. After a time that seemed to last the age of the universe, he found the name and checked it off. Then the man moved to Jenny’s side to get his ballot. He picked up the pen full of yellow ink. The ink spattered as he pressed too hard; the radiation meter went off scale. Jenny winced. After he was done, the ballot went in the slot of the polycarbonate jar. There were already several more people waiting.

Jenny texted Leora,
“Are there more pens?”

“We’re waiting to hear.”

The voters moved through faster, as Rafael and Jenny got the hang of the system. The students were not thrilled about the ink. Probed for health incessantly since the cradle, some could not believe they actually had to touch something radioactive. A Begonia held the pen at arm’s length, her left hand holding her nose. The students though at least let Anouk guide their writing. Seeing this, some of the colonists let her help too, and the line moved faster. It was not perfectly anonymous, but at least the ballots went into a jar.

In the window appeared Jenny’s mother, and her father “Spreader of Data,” toy-clothed in his feathers and leggings. They appeared to be standing outside the courthouse amid the pigeons. “
Hola,
Jenny!” called Soledad. “What century are we in?”

“Century zero,”
Jenny texted back. Then to her dad,
“How is the vote back on Earth?”

From where he stood, George would be processing the data stream, along with his fellow toymakers in the fifty-two states, all day until the last vote came in. And he’d continue for the next two years of court challenge, if the last three elections were any guide.

“One hundred thousand sixty-two hundred votes, twenty-three lawsuits, and four appeals so far.”

Jenny reached across the table to the arm of an elderly woman shaking from Parkinson’s. A shame they didn’t fix that here.

George Spreader of Data was finger-weaving his bead recorder.
“Two days plus eighteen and a half hours.”

“What’s that?”

“The time we will need to stay here, until you finish.”

Jenny texted Leora,
“Did you reach the secretary of state?”

“Our request is down to number seventy-one.”

Soledad had turned away, busy in her toybox, while George puffed on his pipe.
“Democracy among the Salt Beings.”
He spoke now in sonorous
Kanien’kéha,
his words flowing around the pipe, converted to English text.
“What the Salt Beings know of democracy they learned from the People of the Longhouse.…”

“Tom!” At last Tom would get his chance to vote. With his Amish training he swiftly penned the candidate names.

Jenny caught Tom’s arm. “How is it out there in the line?”

“It’s hard on some folks, all the standing.”

A blink at her box. At eight in the morning, it looked like half the hab was standing out there. “Maybe you could pump some amyloid for chairs?”

“The Iroquois League of Six Nations taught the Salt Beings the value of uniting states. They taught separation of powers amongst the chief, senate, and people to the Founding Fathers at their Great Council Fire of Philadelphia.”

Jenny replied,
“The Iroquois didn’t teach voting.”
She refilled the pen. The level of ink in the bottle had dipped noticeably. She craned her neck to take a look at Leora’s bottle. Leora’s level had dipped less, probably because without a handwriting assistant fewer voters were processed.

Tom came back with two chairs in each hand. That meant four of about a hundred people waiting inside could have a seat. Most had sat on the floor by now; students brainstreamed a floatball back and forth, while farmers played cards. A woman in a bonnet with two small children got up and started to leave. Jenny’s eyes followed her out the door. “Tom—maybe you could help them write at Leora’s table?”

“The People of the Longhouse never engaged in the bitter practice of voting.…”

A drop of yellow on the table; Jenny tried to wipe up the radioactive stuff.
“Leora, have you heard yet?”

“… so their deliberations took many days. The Salt Beings with their voting decided much faster.”

Leora replied,
“The secretary of state now lists us at eighty-seven.”

Eighty-seven;
Dios mío,
that was worse than the hour before. Were there more complaints, all over Ohio?

“But today, the Salt Beings face an even more bitter practice. The pollmeter splits the vote ever closer. It is the end of voting as we know it.”

Rafael whispered, “I cannot find this gentleman’s name.” Orin Crawford stood there, looking grim.

Jenny leaned over to check the book. She found Crawford’s surname, interchanged with his given name.

Spreader of Data added,
“One might as well flip a coin.”

Suddenly she wondered: Professor Zhang had said the difference always lay within counting error. So how did ToyVote ever declare a winner?

“Jenny!” In the window her mother looked scandalized. “For goodness’ sake, what is going on in there? This
tontería
is inexcusable.”

“Mama, there’s nothing we can do. The state won’t get back to us.”

Name after name, each ballot was sealed and confirmed with the radiation meter, then dropped in the slot. She could hear each ballot land on the paper below; the jug held quite a pile. From the north window, the afternoon light grew; Jenny winced as it shone in her eyes. Anouk stretched her arm and massaged her palm, but did not complain. Hours passed, yet the line outside only grew longer, as voters arrived faster than the early ones left.

“What about my class?”

“I’m missing practice. Coach will kill me.”

“My paper is due.”

An announcement came from President Chase. “All students in the voter line are hereby excused from classes and sports. If our students are true pioneers, in Teddy Roosevelt’s understanding of the term (and we know that they are), then indeed they are frontier democrats, in instinct and principle; and their right to vote must not be denied.” At this announcement the students cheered.

Near the door, people got up and started moving around, some sort of commotion. Students got up and farmers stepped aside. In strode Soledad, trailed by three printout Clives. “As a concerned citizen,” Soledad loudly announced, “I demand an explanation. Everyone knows that long lines are designed to keep genetic inferiors from voting.”

“Mama!” Jenny whispered. “Keep your voice down.”

Soledad repeated louder, with deeper sarcasm, to the Clives: “Everyone knows that long lines keep genetic inferiors from voting.”

Jenny put her head down while her mother stalked out, the Clives in her wake. The colonists ignored the incident, but students grew sullen. Students had little experience of being oppressed, and they were uncertain how to handle it. There were dire mutterings and ugly glares at Frank and Leora.

After about ten minutes, a couple of courthouse workers appeared, carrying a table and a poll book. A second table and poll book soon followed.

“We heard from the state,”
texted Leora.

Jenny sighed with relief, although even with two more tables the line might still last another day.
“What about ink? The ink is getting low.”
Her bottle was down to a thin yellow residue. Perhaps they could dilute it.

“Judge Baynor approved regular ink.”

But the students would have none of it. “It won’t count if it’s not radioactive,” one shouted. “It’s a trick—they won’t count the ballot.” One student thrust his thumb in the ink and shoved his hand in Leora’s face. “You can’t say I didn’t vote.”

Most of the colonists moved over to the new tables, while most of the students stuck with the uranyl acetate. Meanwhile, new voters were arriving from their work in the fields all day, and students after dinner. The poll closing hour approached, with hundreds of people still in line.

Jenny took a break behind the tables with a sandwich from Leora’s hamper. She blinked for news. Despite the late shakeup, the pollmeter showed a tight race all over the country. Apparently the week had been enough time for the parties to soak up the electoral brainstream and recalibrate their campaigns. Zhang must be right, Jenny thought. If even two candidates seeing the light could not break the cycle, voting was a broken system; outdated as a heliograph. But what could they do about it?

“ToyNews—From our box to yours.” Clive appeared, back to his old hairstyle. Jenny’s heart sank. “An exciting Election Day—as vigorous as we’ve ever seen. Poll traffic is more than twice the volume four years ago.” He nodded smartly, the old Clive Rusanov in charge. “All across the country, votes are pouring into ToyVote in record numbers. What a horse race—too close to call.” His voice began to slow. “And everything … is running smoothly. ToyVote is in … control … reporting … fewer problems than.…” Clive stopped. He stared directly at the audience without speaking.

Suddenly Jenny noticed her father’s window was gone. “Mom?” she called. “Where’s Dad?” George always multitasked hundreds of windows at once, including his daughter. There must be real trouble at work, if he’d had to close her out. Or had something happened to him—had the stress got him down? His Aspie nature could take just so much.

At ToyNews, Clive put his hand to his head and grasped his hair. With one swift motion he pulled the hair off. “In truth,” the bald Clive spoke rapidly, ignoring the hairpiece at his feet, “there is chaos at ToyVote nodes across the country. Some nodes are overloaded, others have shut down. Hundreds of complaints were filed in Ohio alone, and in states from Cuba to California…”

From behind Clive, two Weaver DIRGs approached. Each broad-jawed DIRG had a motherly tough-love look, like that of a matron handling a tantrum on a kindergarten playground.

“… while in Washington the riots have begun, not even waiting for the outcome—”

The DIRGs each grasped Clive by an arm.

“Clive Rusanov, reporting from somewhere in custody—”

The window closed.

Jenny looked up. At the table, Rafael calmly processed voters, with the efficiency of long practice. Anouk and Tom helped handwriters. The other tables looked the same.

“Jenny?” Charlie appeared, outside somewhere in the line, in the dark, where the pigeons had tucked their bills under wing. “How are we doing? Do you think Frontera will tip the election?”

It was now a rational, orderly process, the way voting ought to be. Unlike the madness on Earth. And utterly obsolete.

Jenny blinked HuriaNews.
“What’s going on?”

“I don’t know,”
replied Mfumo.
“All I have is rumors. I tried to head Earthside, but the lift is stalled.”

Jenny froze. She swallowed hard.
“The lift isn’t running? No one can get out?”

“They say the anthrax is sporulating.”

That made no sense. She tried Tusker-12 and her other Earth friends. All their windows were frozen. Frontera was cut off, she realized. One tiny capsule suspended amongst the stars. Cut off from Earth.

At three in the morning, her toybox went blank. A collective gasp. Everyone in the room had lost their box. Just a roomful of people, nothing more.

Leora conferred quickly with Frank. Then Frank stood and cupped his hands. “Quiet in here,” he called. “Everyone be quiet. We’re working on a fix.”

The lights dimmed. All went out except the one backup light.

Frank barked, “Quiet,” again, as people rustled and muttered. Meanwhile, Leora got up and went to the window. She put her head out, surveying the landscape.

Jenny joined Leora at the window. “What is it?” Outside, stark backup lights spotted the landscape with pools of light amid darkness. This was no brownout; this was black, darker than the darkest night.

But Leora wasn’t looking. She was listening. Jenny listened too, but heard nothing except the call of an owl.

Leora came back and spoke a word to Frank. Then she climbed onto the table.