Short Stories Vol.1

by Isaac Asimov

  "Indiana is a key state, Matthew," said Norman, just as mildly, "on account of the Hawkins-Smith Act and this mess in Indianapolis. It-"

  Matthew twisted his old face akrmingly and rasped out, "No one says Bloomington or Monroe County, do they?"

  "Well-" said Norman.

  Linda, whose little pointed-chinned face had been shifting from one speaker to the next, said pipingly, "You going to be voting this year, Daddy?"

  Norman smiled gently and said, "I don't think so, dear."

  But this was in the gradually growing excitement of an October in a presidential election year and Sarah had led a quiet life with dreams for her companions. She said longingly, "Wouldn't that be wonderful, though?"

  "If I voted?" Norman Muller had a small blond mustache that had given him a debonair quality in the young Sarah's eyes, but which, with gradual graying, had declined merely to lack of distinction. His forehead bore deepening lines born of uncertainty and, in general, he had never seduced his clerkly soul with the thought that he was either born great or would under any circumstances achieve greatness. He had a wife, a job and a little girl, and except under extraordinary conditions of elation or depression was inclined to consider that to be an adequate bargain struck with life.

  So he was a little embarrassed and more than a little uneasy at the direction his wife's thoughts were taking. "Actually, my dear," he said, "there are two hundred million people in the country, and, with odds like that, I don't think we ought to waste our time wondering about it."

  His wife said, "Why, Norman, it's no such thing like two hundred million and you know it. In the first place, only people between twenty and sixty are eligible and it's always men, so that puts it down to maybe fifty million to one. Then, if it's really Indiana-"

  "Then it's about one and a quarter million to one. You wouldn't want me to bet in a horse race against those odds, now, would you? Let's have supper."

  i Matthew muttered from behind his newspaper, "Damned foolishness."

  Linda asked again, "You going to be voting this year, Daddy?" jj, Norman shook his head and they all adjourned to the dining room.

  By October 20, Sarah's excitement was rising rapidly. Over the coffee, she announced that Mrs. Schultz, having a cousin who was the secretary of an Assemblyman, said that all the "smart money" was on Indiana.

  "She says President Villers is even going to make a speech at Indianapolis."

  Norman Muller, who had had a hard day at the store, nudged the statement with a raising of eyebrows and let it go at that.

  Matthew Hortenweiler, who was chronically dissatisfied with Washington, said, "If Villers makes a speech in Indiana, that means he thinks Mul-tivac will pick Arizona. He wouldn't have the guts to go closer, the mush-head."

  Sarah, who ignored her father whenever she could decently do so, said, "I don't know why they don't announce the state as soon as they can, and then the county and so on. Then the people who were eliminated could relax."

  "If they did anything like that," pointed out Norman, "the politicians would follow the announcements like vultures. By the time it was narrowed down to a township, you'd have a Congressman or two at every street corner."

  Matthew narrowed his eyes and brushed angrily at his sparse, gray hair. "They're vultures, anyhow. Listen-"

  Sarah murmured, "Now, Father-"

  Matthew's voice rumbled over her protest without as much as a stumble or hitch. "Listen, I was around when they set up Multivac. It would end partisan politics, they said. No more voters' money wasted on campaigns. No more grinning nobodies high-pressured and advertising-campaigned into Congress or the White House. So what happens. More campaigning than ever, only now they do it blind. They'll send guys to Indiana on account of the Hawkins-Smith Act and other guys to California in case it's the Joe Hammer situation that turns out crucial. I say, wipe out all that nonsense. Back to the good old-"

  Linda asked suddenly, "Don't you want Daddy to vote this year, Grandpa?"

  Matthew glared at the young girl. "Never you mind, now." He turned back to Norman and Sarah. "There was a time I voted. Marched right up to the polling booth, stuck my fist on the levers and voted. There was nothing to it. I just said: This fellow's my man and I'm voting for him. That's the way it should be."

  Linda said excitedly, "You voted, Grandpa? You really did?"

  Sarah leaned forward quickly to quiet what might easily become an incongruous story drifting about the neighborhood, "It's nothing, Linda. Grandpa

  doesn't really mean voted. Everyone did that kind of voting, your grandpa, too, but it wasn't really voting."

  Matthew roared, "It wasn't when I was a little boy. I was twenty-two and I voted for Langley and it was real voting. My vote didn't count for much, maybe, but it was as good as anyone else's. Anyone else's. And no Multivac to-"

  Norman interposed, "All right, Linda, time for bed. And stop asking questions about voting. When you grow up, you'll understand all about it."

  He kissed her with antiseptic gentleness and she moved reluctantly out of range under maternal prodding and a promise that she might watch the bedside video till 9:15, if she was prompt about the bathing ritual.

  Linda said, "Grandpa," and stood with her chin down and her hands behind her back until his newspaper lowered itself to the point where shaggy eyebrows and eyes, nested in fine wrinkles, showed themselves. It was Friday, October 31.

  He said, "Yes?"

  Linda came closer and put both her forearms on one of the old man's knees so that he had to discard his newspaper altogether.

  She said, "Grandpa, did you really once vote?"

  He said, "You heard me say I did, didn't you? Do you think I tell fibs?"

  "N-no, but Mamma says everybody voted then."

  "So they did."

  "But how could they? How could everybody vote?"

  Matthew stared at her solemnly, then lifted her and put her on his knee.

  He even moderated the tonal qualities of his voice. He said, "You see, Linda, till about forty years ago, everybody always voted. Say we wanted to decide who was to be the new President of the United States. The Democrats and Republicans would both nominate someone, and everybody would say who they wanted. When Election Day was over, they would count how many people wanted the Democrat and how many wanted the Republican. Whoever had more votes was elected. You see?"

  Linda nodded and said, "How did all the people know who to vote for? Did Multivac tell them?"

  Matthew's eyebrows hunched down and he looked severe. "They just used their own judgment, girl."

  She edged away from him, and he lowered his voice again, "I'm not angry at you, Linda. But, you see, sometimes it took all night to count what everyone said and people were impatient. So they invented special machines which could look at the first few votes and compare them with the votes from the same places in previous years. That way the machine could compute how the total vote would be and who would be elected. You see?"

  She nodded. "Like Multivac."

  "The first computers were much smaller than Multivac. But the machines grew bigger and they could tell how the election would go from fewer

  and fewer votes. Then, at last, they built Multivac and it can tell from just I one voter." ,-fj Linda smiled at having reached a familiar part of the story and said,

  ("That's nice."

  Matthew frowned and said, "No, it's not nice. I don't want a machine

  telling me how I would have voted just because some joker in Milwaukee

  says he's against higher tariffs. Maybe I want to vote cockeyed just for the

  •i pleasure of it. Maybe I don't want to vote. Maybe-"

  ( But Linda had wriggled from his knee and was beating a retreat.

  She met her mother at the door. Her mother, who was still wearing her coat and had not even had time to remove her hat, said breathlessly, "Run , along, Linda. Don't get in Mother's way."

  Then she said to Matthew, as she lifted her hat from her head and patted he
r hair back into place, "I've been at Agatha's."

  Matthew stared at her censoriously and did not even dignify that piece of information with a grunt as he groped for his newspaper. Sarah said, as she unbuttoned her coat, "Guess what she said?"

  •. Matthew flattened out his newspaper for reading purposes with a sharp

  • crackle and said, "Don't much care."

  Sarah said, "Now, Father-" But she had no time for anger. The news i had to be told and Matthew was the only recipient handy, so she went on,

  "Agatha's Joe is a policeman, you know, and he says a whole truckload of

  secret service men came into Bloomington last night."

  • "They're not after me."

  "Don't you see, Father? Secret service agents, and it's almost election (time. In Bloomington."

  "Maybe they're after a bank robber."

  "There hasn't been a bank robbery in town in ages. . . . Father, you're hopeless."

  She stalked away.

  Nor did Norman Muller receive the news with noticeably greater excitement.

  "Now, Sarah, how did Agatha's Joe know they were secret service agents?" he asked calmly. "They wouldn't go around with identification cards pasted on their foreheads."

  But by next evening, with November a day old, she could say triumphantly, "It's just everyone in Bloomington that's waiting for someone local to be the voter. The Bloomington News as much as said so on video."

  Norman stirred uneasily. He couldn't deny it, and his heart was sinking. If Bloomington was really to be hit by Multivac's lightning, it would mean newspapermen, video shows, tourists, all sorts of-strange upsets. Norman liked the quiet routine of his life, and the distant stir of politics was getting uncomfortably close.

  He said, "It's all rumor. Nothing more."

  "You wait and see, then. You just wait and see."

  As things turned out, there was very little time to wait, for the doorbell rang insistently, and when Norman Muller opened it and said, "Yes?" a tall, grave-faced man said, "Are you Norman Muller?"

  Norman said, "Yes," again, but in a strange dying voice. It was not difficult to see from the stranger's bearing that he was one carrying authority, and the nature of his errand suddenly became as inevitably obvious as it had, until the moment before, been unthinkably impossible.

  The man presented credentials, stepped into the house, closed the door behind him and said ritualistically, "Mr. Norman Muller, it is necessary for me to inform you on the behalf of the President of the United States that you have been chosen to represent the American electorate on Tuesday, November 4, 2008."

  Norman Muller managed, with difficulty, to walk unaided to his chair. He sat there, white-faced and almost insensible, while Sarah brought water, slapped his hands in panic and moaned to her husband between clenched teeth, "Don't be sick, Norman. Don't be sick. They'll pick someone else."

  When Norman could manage to talk, he whispered, "I'm sorry, sir."

  The secret service agent had removed his coat, unbuttoned his jacket and was sitting at ease on the couch.

  "It's all right," he said, and the mark of officialdom seemed to have vanished with the formal announcement and leave him simply a large and rather friendly man. "This is the sixth time I've made the announcement and I've seen all kinds of reactions. Not one of them was the kind you see on the video. You know what I mean? A holy, dedicated look, and a character who says, 'It will be a great privilege to serve my country.' That sort of stuff." The agent laughed comfortingly.

  Sarah's accompanying laugh held a trace of shrill hysteria.

  The agent said, "Now you're going to have me with you for a while. My name is Phil Handley. I'd appreciate it if you call me Phil. Mr. Muller can't leave the house any more till Election Day. You'll have to inform the department store that he's sick, Mrs. Muller. You can go about your business for a while, but you'll have to agree not to say a word about this. Right, Mrs. Muller?"

  Sarah nodded vigorously. "No, sir. Not a word."

  "All right. But, Mrs. Muller," Handley looked grave, "we're not kidding now. Go out only if you must and you'll be followed when you do. I'm sorry but that's the way we must operate."

  "Followed?"

  "It won't be obvious. Don't worry. And it's only for two days till the formal announcement to the nation is made. Your daughter-"

  "She's in bed," said Sarah hastily.

  "Good. She'll have to be told I'm a relative or friend staying with the family. If she does find out the truth, she'll have to be kept in the house. Your father had better stay in the house in any case."

  "He won't like that," said Sarah.

  "Can't be helped. Now, since you have no others living with you-"

  "You know all about us apparently," whispered Norman.

  "Quite a bit," agreed Handley. "In any case, those are all my instructions to you for the moment. I'll try to cooperate as much as I can and be as little of a nuisance as possible. The government will pay for my maintenance so I won't be an expense to you. I'll be relieved each night by someone who will sit up in this room, so there will be no problem about sleeping accommodations. Now, Mr. Muller-"

  "Sir?"

  "You can call me Phil," said the agent again. "The purpose of the two-day preliminary before formal announcement is to get you used to your position. We prefer to have you face Multivac in as normal a state of mind as possible. Just relax and try to feel this is all in a day's work. Okay?"

  "Okay," said Norman, and then shook his head violently. "But I don't want the responsibility. Why me?"

  "All right," said Handley, "let's get that straight to begin with. Murtivac weighs all sorts of known factors, billions of them. One factor isn't known, though, and won't be known for a long time. That's the reaction pattern of the human mind. All Americans are subjected to the molding pressure of what other Americans do and say, to the things that are done to him and the things he does to others. Any American can be brought to Multivac to have the bent of his mind surveyed. From that the bent of all other minds in the country can be estimated. Some Americans are better for the purpose than others at some given time, depending upon the happenings of that year. Multivac picked you as most representative this year. Not the smartest, or the strongest, or the luckiest, but just the most representative. Now we don't question Multivac, do we?"

  "Couldn't it make a mistake?" asked Norman.

  Sarah, who listened impatiently, interrupted to say, "Don't listen to him* sir. He's just nervous, you know. Actually, he's very well read and he always follows politics very closely."

  Handley said, "Multivac makes the decisions, Mrs. Muller. It picked your husband."

  "But does it know everything?" insisted Norman wildly. "Couldn't it have made a mistake?"

  "Yes, it can. There's no point in not being frank. In 1993, a selected Voter died of a stroke two hours before it was time for him to be notified. Multivac didn't predict that; it couldn't. A Voter might be mentally unstable, morally unsuitable, or, for that matter, disloyal. Multivac can't know everything about everybody until he's fed all the data there is. That's why

  alternate selections are always held in readiness. I don't think we'fl be using one this time. You're in good health, Mr. Muller, and you've been carefully investigated. You qualify."

  Norman buried his face in his hands and sat motionless.

  "By tomorrow morning, sir," said Sarah, "he'll be perfectly all right. He just has to get used to it, that's all."

  "Of course," said Handley.

  In the privacy of their bedchamber, Sarah Muller expressed herself in other and stronger fashion. The burden of her lecture was, "So get hold of yourself, Norman. You're trying to throw away the chance of a lifetime."

  Norman whispered desperately, "It frightens me, Sarah. The whole thing."

  "For goodness' sake, why? What's there to it but answering a question or two?"

  "The responsibility is too great. I couldn't face it."

  "What responsibility? There isn't an
y. Multivac picked you. It's Mul-tivac's responsibility. Everyone knows that."

  Norman sat up in bed in a sudden excess of rebellion and anguish. "Everyone is supposed to know that. But they don't. They-"

  "Lower your voice," hissed Sarah icily. "They'll hear you downtown."

  "They don't," said Norman, declining quickly to a whisper. "When they talk about the Ridgely administration of 1988, do they say he won them over with pie-in-the-sky promises and racist baloney? No! They talk about the 'goddam MacComber vote,' as though Humphrey MacComber was the only man who had anything to do with it because he faced Multivac. I've said it myself-only now I think the poor guy was just a truck farmer who didn't ask to be picked. Why was it his fault more than anyone else's? Now his name is a curse."

  "You're just being childish," said Sarah.

  "I'm being sensible. I tell you, Sarah, I won't accept. They can't make me vote if I don't want to. I'll say I'm sick. I'll say-"

  But Sarah had had enough. "Now you listen to me," she whispered in a cold fury. "You don't have only yourself to think about. You know what it means to be Voter of the Year. A presidential year at that. It means publicity and fame and, maybe, buckets of money-"

  "And then I go back to being a clerk."

  "You will not. You'll have a branch managership at the least if you have any brains at all, and you will have, because I'll tell you what to do. You control the kind of publicity if you play your cards right, and you can force Kennel! Stores, Inc., into a tight contract and an escalator clause in connection with your salary and a decent pension plan."

  "That's not the point in being Voter, Sarah."

  "That will be your point. If you don't owe anything to yourself or to me -I'm not asking for myself-you owe something to Linda." Norman groaned. "Well, don't you?" snapped Sarah. "Yes, dear," murmured Norman.

  On November 3, the official announcement was made and it was too late for Norman to back out even if he had been able to find the courage to make the attempt.

  Their house was sealed off. Secret service agents made their appearance in the open, blocking off all approach.

  At first the telephone rang incessantly, but Philip Handley with an engagingly apologetic smile took all calls. Eventually, the exchange shunted all calls directly to the police station.