"C. Sanford Lowe & G. David Nordley - The Small Pond" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lowe C Sanford)

“As a last measure, I hope.”
 Liz laughed. “If that. Now, could I invoke authority?”
“Earth is a long way away.”
“But life is a lot longer these days. Twenty-five years, back and forth, can go
just like that. Does he really want to have the most powerful people in the Galaxy
pissed off at him forever?”
David shook his head. “If he were rational, I would think not. Okay, on the
table.” He grinned at her.
“That’s the spirit.” How was it that she was now cheering him up?
“We could try blackmail again. It worked once.”
They looked at each other.
“For a while,” they said almost simultaneously, and laughed.
“Back to the authority option,” David said. “Gunheim is not an absolute
authority here. He must answer to a council.”
Liz shook her head. “Which has been very compliant, it seems.”
“We could at least argue the case. Show his relationship to DeRoot and their
history. We put all the facts before them. They are people.”
“They are Gunheim’s people.”
David shrugged. “That does not mean that their brains have ceased to work.
Anyway, they are the ultimate authority here.”
Liz shook her head. They were not the ultimate authority. “David, they are
elected. He doesn’t have to control ten people, he has to control ten thousand! If I
can get an election called, the AI will recognize the electorate as the ultimate human
authority. He won’t be able to fix it.”
David frowned. “Perhaps. But are you suggesting a frontal public assault?
That burns any hope of making any of the other options work. It would be a
gamble.”
“But a clean, open gamble. We can expose him and DeRoot.”
“Liz, he is a good politician. Somehow, I think, you will end up looking like a
dirty whore. And many people who agree with you will not be able to say so
publicly. Judi and myself, for instance.”
“You won’t back me?”
“I can’t. I would lose my project. I am taking great risks even talking to you
about it.”
 “But you are talking.”
He nodded. “There are people here he can’t threaten so easily, and people
who remember Lenore....”
****
Three weeks later, in Liz’s now certified bug-free home environment, David
glanced at the latest projections, displayed in various graphs on her dome. The good
news was that in plastering the truth about DeRoot and Gunheim’s escapades all
over the colony, Liz had gotten two council members to support her and enough
signatures on an election petition to start a campaign. Out of a hundred and fifty
supporters, she found enough candidates for a reform slate that, if elected, would
control the Campbell system governing council. That had gotten the AI to override
DeRoot on monitoring political activity. The bad news was that Liz had, at best,
maybe twenty percent support. Forty-six percent of the electorate either thought she
was a troublemaker or didn’t believe the charges at all, and thirty-four percent didn’t
know what to think, or weren’t saying.
“Liz?” Cyan Mutori’s voice rang out from outside the hedge. That she was