"Sorry. Well, Wyoh?"

"Mannie, we didn't leave everything to chance. Adam and I decided that a Congress of three hundred would be about right. Then we spent hours going over the Party lists--plus prominent people not in the Party. At last we had a list of candidates--a list that included some from the Ad-Hoc Congress; not all were yammerheads, we included as many as we could. Then Adam phoned each one and asked him--or her--if he would serve... binding him to secrecy in the meantime. Some we had to replace.

"When we were ready, Adam spoke on video, announced that it was time to carry out the Party's pledge of free elections, set a date, said that everybody over sixteen could vote, and that all anyone had to do to be a candidate was to get a hundred chops on a nominating petition and post it in Old Dome, or the public notice place for his warren. Oh, yes, thirty temporary election districts, ten Congressmen from each district--that let all but the smallest warrens be at least one district."

"So you had it lined up and Party ticket went through?"

"Oh, no, dear! There wasn't any Party ticket--officially. But we were ready with our candidates... and I must say my stilyagi did a smart job getting chops on nominations; our optings were posted the first day. Many other people posted; there were over two thousand candidates. But there was only ten days from announcement to election, and we knew what we wanted whereas the opposition was split up. It wasn't necessary for Adam to come out publicly and endorse candidates. It worked out--you won by seven thousand votes, dear, while your nearest rival got less than a thousand."

"I won?"

"You won, I won, Professor won, Comrade Clayton won, and just about everybody we thought should be in the Congress. It wasn't hard. Although Adam never endorsed anyone, I didn't hesitate to let our comrades know who was favored. Simon poked his finger in, too. And we do have good connections with newspapers. I wish you had been here election night, watching the results. Exciting!"

"How did you go about nose counting? Never known how election works. Write names on a piece of paper?"

"Oh, no, we used a better system... because, after all, some of our best people can't write. We used banks for voting places, with bank clerks identifying customers and customers identifying members of their families and neighbors who don't have bank accounts--and people voted orally and the clerks punched the votes into the banks' computers with the voter watching, and results were all tallied at once in Luna City clearinghouse. We voted everybody in less than three hours and results were printed out just minutes after voting stopped."

Suddenly a light came on in my skull and I decided to question Wyoh privately. No, not Wyoh--Mike. Get past his "Adam Selene" dignity and hammer truth out of his neuristors. Recalled a cheque ten million dollars too large and wondered how many had voted for me? Seven thousand? Seven hundred? Or just my family and friends?

But no longer worried about new Congress. Prof had not slipped them a cold deck but one that was frozen solid--then ducked Earthside while crime was committed. No use asking Wyoh; she didn't even need to know what Mike had done... and could do her part better if did not suspect.

Nor would anybody suspect. If was one thing all people took for granted, was conviction that if you feed honest figures into a computer, honest figures come out. Never doubted it myself till met a computer with sense of humor.

Changed mind about suggesting that Stu be let in on Mike's self-awareness. Three was two too many. Or perhaps three. "Mi--" I started to say, and changed to: "My word! Sounds efficient. How big did we win?"

Adam answered without expression. "Eighty-six percent of our candidates were successful--approximately what I had expected."

("Approximately," my false left arm! Exactly what expected, Mike old ironmongery!) "Withdraw objection to a noon session--I'll be there."

"It seems to me," said Stu, "assuming that the embargo starts at once, we will need something to maintain the enthusiasm we witnessed tonight. Or there will be a long quiet period of increasing economic depression--from the embargo, I mean--and growing disillusionment. Adam, you first impressed me through your ability to make shrewd guesses as to future events. Do my misgivings make sense?"

"They do."

"Well?"

Adam looked at us in turn, and was almost impossible to believe that this was a false image and Mike was simply placing us through binaural receptors. "Comrades... it must be turned into open war as quickly as possible."

Nobody said anything. One thing to talk about war, another to face up to it. At last I sighed and said, "When do we start throwing rocks?"

"We do not start," Adam answered. "They must throw the first one. How do we antagonize them into doing so? I will reserve my thoughts to the last. Comrade Manuel?"

"Uh... don't look at me. Way I feel, would start with a nice big rock smack on Agra--a bloke there who is a waste of space. But is not what you are after."

"No, it is not," Adam answered seriously. "You would not only anger the entire Hindu nation, a people intensely opposed to destruction of life, but you would also anger and shock people throughout Earth by destroying the Taj Mahal."

"Including me," said Prof. "Don't talk dirty, Manuel."

"Look," I said, "didn't say to do it. Anyhow, could miss Taj."

"Manuel," said Prof, "as Adam pointed out, our strategy must be to antagonize them into striking the first blow, the classic 'Pearl Harbor' maneuver of game theory, a great advantage in Weltpolitick. The question is how? Adam, I suggest that what is needed is to plant the idea that we are weak and divided and that all it takes is a show of force to bring us back into line. Stu? Your people Earthside should be useful. Suppose the Congress repudiated myself and Manuel? The effect?"

"Oh, no!" said Wyoh.

"Oh, yes, dear Wyoh. Not necessary to do it but simply to put it over news channels to Earth. Perhaps still better to put it out over a clandestine beam attributed to the Terran scientists still with us while our official channels display the classic stigmata of tight censorship. Adam?"

"I'm noting it as a tactic which probably will be included in the strategy. But it will not be sufficient alone. We must be bombed."

"Adam," said Wyoh, "why do you say so? Even if Luna City can stand up under their biggest bombs--something I hope never to find out--we know that Luna can't win an all-out war. You've said so, many times. Isn't there some way to work it so that they will just plain leave us alone?"

Adam pulled at right cheek--and I thought: Mike, if you don't knock off play-acting, you'll have me believing in you myself! Was annoyed at him and looked forward to a talk--one in which I would not have to defer to "Chairman Selene."

"Comrade Wyoming," he said soberly, "it's a matter of game theory in a complex non-zero-sum game. We have certain resources or 'pieces in the game' and many possible moves. Our opponents have much larger resources and a far larger spectrum of responses. Our problem is to manipulate the game so that our strength is utilized toward an optimax solution while inducing them to waste their superior strength and to refrain from using it at maximum. Timing is of the essence and a gambit is necessary to start a chain of events favorable to our strategy. I realize this is not clear. I could put the factors through a computer and show you. Or you can accept the conclusion. Or you can use your own judgment."

He was reminding Wyoh (under Stu's nose) that he was not Adam Selene but Mike, our dinkum thinkum who could handle so complex a problem because he was a computer and smartest one anywhere.

Wyoh backtracked. "No, no," she said, "I wouldn't underitand the maths. Okay, it has to be done. How do we do it?"