"Well!" Rebecca seemed to sit a little straighter. "Well, yes, that does make sense."
The two women shared a look of mutual esteem, for a moment. Then Melissa shook her head and made a face. "I have to admit, you're right. This is pretty damn boring, isn't it? James and I could have just as easily stayed down in Grantville, for all the good it did us or we're doing anyone else by coming here."
Nichols shrugged. "What the hell, it's a nice trip."
"It's February," countered Melissa. "It's cold in February."
"Not in that heated compartment on the train it wasn't. I admit, the barge kinda sucked, creature-comfort-wise. But I like to look at snow-covered countryside. Dunno why. Must be my African genetic background."
Melissa looked at him sideways. "It's very well-established in the historical records that almost all Africans brought over to the New World to be slaves came from either West Africa or Angola. Not a snow-covered patch to be found anywhere. African genetics, my ass."
James grinned, very toothily. "Well, sure. That's the white man's version of African history. The same rascals who deny that ancient Egypt was African, and that half the Greek pantheon and Jesus himself were black. In point of fact, I'm quite sure my ancestors were born and reared in the very shadows of Kilimanjaro."
Melissa rolled her eyes. James' grin widened still further. "Did I mention that Neal Armstrong was black, too? Yup. First man on the moon was a brother. Naturally they kept it under wraps and never let him out in public 'less he was wearing whiteface. 'Course, the whole moon expedition was actually a media fraud and it all happened in a studio somewhere in either Culver City, California or Roswell, New Mexico, depending on who you ask. So I guess it'd be more accurate to say that the star of history's greatest and most successful fraud was a brother. But, what the hell. Prestige is where you find it. And speaking of which, Mike, how the hell are you doing in this election?"
"Who knows? I can tell you how we're doing in Magdeburg."
"We're winning by a landslide in the city," pronounced Gunther Achterhof, looking up briefly from the table in the corner where he and Spartacus and three young assistants were keeping a running tally of the vote results as runners brought them in. "The party will win by something like eighty percent. Otto Gericke will get over ninety-five percent as city mayor. Of course, he ran unopposed, so it's not really important."
Spartacus looked up also. "So far, we're doing almost as well in Magdeburg province as we are in the city itself. A little over seventy-five percent. Of course, the only precincts reporting in yet are the ones closest to the city."
Nichols shook his head. "Oh, whoopee. What a shocker." Half-scowling: "For Pete's sake, Gunther, the man in the moon knew we were going to win Magdeburg—city and province both—in a landslide. How are we doing everywhere else?"
"Stop pestering the poor man," chided Rebecca. "We have no way of getting results quickly, and you know it. It will be several weeks before we get the final results from all the outlying areas."
"We'll survive," said Mike, although he sounded perhaps just a tad doubtful. "After all, the Founding Fathers of the old USA had to do the same thing. Just wait and wait and wait till you found out who won the election."
"Would anyone like to play cards?" asked Rebecca.
Grantville, February 22, 1635
The Voice of America announced that on the basis of a survey of sample precincts, the Piazza/Ableidinger ticket had won in a landslide in the State of Thuringia-Franconia.
"Not," Arnold Bellamy said, "that it's exactly a big surprise."
Duke Albrecht of Saxe-Weimar went to the studio and conceded in a very gracious manner. Then, with a sigh of relief, he went home to Weimar.
The station once more brought on Count Ludwig Guenther of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt, who had been providing political analysis throughout the evening.
At the national level, the Fourth of July Party did well in some regions. The SoTF of course. Again no surprise. Mike Stearns would be in Parliament again—as the leader of the Loyal Opposition.
On the basis of early returns, sample precincts again, radioed in from about anywhere a newspaper could put a radio, it definitely looked like the new state capital would be Bamberg. The heart and center of the Ram Rebellion. The symbol of popular democracy in Germany south of the Main. The . . .
Every reporter in Bamberg was having a ball thinking up new headlines.
Magdeburg, late February 1635
"A landslide, as I said." Gunther Achterhof sounded immensely pleased with himself, as if he'd just pronounced some dazzling new scientific theorem. "The Fourth of July Party won Magdeburg province by seventy-six percent."