The Dreeson Incident(60)

Nasi looked at the window again. Neither was he, really. But at least he could understand clearly what Stearns was saying.



And . . . the man might very well be right, after all. If there was one thing Francisco Nasi had learned very thoroughly in the many months since he'd become the head of USE intelligence and one of the Prime Minister's closest advisers, it was not to underestimate the political acumen and shrewdness of Mike Stearns. A "radical," the man might be—well, surely was—but he did not have trace of the airy impracticality of so many political radicals.



"I did not bring up the matter to thrash a dead horse, Michael," Francisco said mildly. "Whether you were right or not, we may never know. What we do know—can be almost certain about, anyway—is that come February 22nd the Crown Loyalists will win the election. On a national level. Not in every province, of course."



Frank shook his head. "Christ, that's not much more than two months from now."



"Well, that's the day the election happens," said Nasi, shrugging. "But in a country as big as the USE, and with the facilities we have available, it will take several weeks for the results to come in and be tabulated. We're not living in your old United States of America up-time where the winner of a national election was usually known by the following day. I don't expect a winner in our upcoming election to be definitely announced until mid-March. Then, given the realities of travel in the here and now, I can't see any realistic way the change in government can happen before June."



"True enough," said Mike. "Even in the late twentieth century, it took us two and a half months to go from a presidential election to inauguration day. When the republic was first founded, the time between election and inauguration was four months. We'll actually be doing quite well if we can inaugurate a new government less than four months after an election on February 22nd."



"How sure are you, Francisco?" asked Frank. "It's not as if we have the kind of polling capabilities that we Americans had up-time."



"No. But the methods and techniques we do have available are not so bad. Not when the results are going to be so lopsided."



"What's your estimate?" Mike asked.



"We will win no more than forty percent of the vote. Perhaps as little as one-third, although not any less. Wettin's party will win a majority. Not much of a majority—somewhere in the low fifty percentile range—but a clear majority. All the small parties put together will get somewhere between five and ten percent of the vote. Most of those votes, however, will be concentrated in a few provinces."



Mike simply nodded. "That's about what I figure, too, just using my own stick-my-thumb-in-the-wind hunches. How about our strongholds?"



"Well, that's the good news. The same strident campaign being waged by the Crown Loyalists that is stirring up fears and uncertainties in most of the provinces is having the opposite effect in regions where we are solidly rooted. It's just making our supporters angry."



Nasi glanced down at his notes. That was just ingrained reflex. By now, he could have recited all of that material in his sleep.



"The State of Thuringia-Franconia is solid as the proverbial rock. Whatever shakiness might have existed in Thuringia is being offset—more than offset—by the continuing political ramifications of the Ram Rebellion in Franconia."



"Ableidinger?" asked Mike, referring to the man generally considered to have been the Ram Rebellion's principal leader. Even its "mastermind," according to those hostilely inclined.



"He'll run for a seat in the USE Congress from the SoTF. There's not much doubt in my mind or anyone else's that he'll win by a landslide."



"About what I figured. And Magdeburg province is probably even more solid than the SoTF. It doesn't have as big a population, of course, but it's still one of the bigger provinces in the USE. So we'll have very solid bases in at least two of the major provinces. And three imperial cities, at least: Magdeburg itself, of course, along with Hamburg and Luebeck."



Jackson looked a bit skeptical. "Are you sure about Magdeburg? The city, I mean. Otto Gericke's the mayor, which means he'll be sitting in the Senate for it, thanks to these idiot rules we set up. He's always struck me as pretty stodgy."



"We didn't 'set up' those idiot rules, Frank," Mike said mildly. "We grudgingly agreed to them in the course of a three-way compromise between us and Wettin and the emperor—with the understanding that if we won the election one of the things we'd be pushing for was broadening the Senate and making it more democratic."