by Ken Saunders
‘No, Prime Minister,’ she corrected him sharply. ‘Some child in the next court did that. I simply told you the truth. You’re not a young man anymore who can gallop back and forth across a tennis court.’ She looked disappointed in him. ‘I was trying to improve your game,’ she offered, implying he should show some gratitude. ‘I never sought to humiliate you.’
‘You didn’t?’
‘No. If you recall, I warned you the Luddites had stolen Alan Chandos’s Play as You Go taxation plan. I prevented you from announcing it and embarrassing yourself. I ridded you of the blackmailing Lister St John, sparing you considerable difficulties there. And when you failed to heed Fiona Brennan’s warning, I was the one who later reminded you there was a spy within our ranks passing information to the Luddites.’
‘But you were that spy!’ Fitzwilliams protested.
‘Yes,’ Olga agreed, ‘but I was still the one who warned you. In many ways, I continued to do my job for you rather well, even though I was working for the other side.’ Fitzwilliams recognised a bizarre work ethic in that answer somewhere. Did double agents pride themselves in doing both jobs well? ‘I sought to defeat you, not humiliate you,’ Olga concluded.
‘But why, Olga? Why didn’t you come to me with your ideas for reforming parliament? You were … you are my closest adviser. I might have listened to you—at least a bit,’ he added more honestly.
‘Prime Minister, you have a good mind,’ Olga observed pensively, ‘but as prime minister you put all your mental efforts into keeping the system functioning exactly as it was. It’s a system in disrepair, a system manifestly failing to come to grips with serious problems. You did nothing to fix it. You were like Brezhnev.’ She looked at him with genuine sadness, as if it hurt her to make that comparison. ‘I didn’t think you were up to being a Luddite.’
It was true. He wouldn’t have listened. It had been his fate—his ambition, really—to push the apple cart along, not upset it. He’d thought of nothing other than keeping it going.
‘What about all the other humiliations?’ he asked Olga. He couldn’t let go of the personal affront so easily. ‘What about Ned Ludd in space? What about the celery stick trick on Donna? What about pitting me against a merry-go-round of debating opponents, including a seventeen-year-old schoolgirl?’
Olga shrugged. ‘I had nothing to do with any of that. The Luddite candidates have initiative. Besides, those are just engagements in the … rough and tumble … of a campaign. You cannot claim it is unfair because you did not win those engagements.’
Fitzwilliams found he couldn’t muster the will to storm at her. ‘How did you do it?’ he asked.
‘What specifically?’
‘How did you organise the whole movement, all those candidates, and yet fly under the radar?’ Not even ASIO knew how the Luddites communicated.
Olga had felt she owed him an explanation, but she wasn’t going to explain that. The Ghost Post was a secret between her and Australia Post. An undercover postal delivery system. No electronic trail. Envelopes sent and delivered with no one other than the clandestine Ghost Posties knowing how. It was they who kept the minimal but necessary flow of information going within the Luddite campaign. She had set up this special arrangement with Australia Post herself and paid for it from her own savings in cash. There was no record of its activities anywhere.
‘You’re not going to tell me,’ Fitzwilliams observed.
‘Need-to-know basis,’ Olga replied. ‘No one but me needs to know.’
‘And now what, Olga? The Luddites win the most seats tomorrow and you become prime minister?’
Olga shook her head. ‘No, I told you I never planned to be prime minister. What I planned was to get rid of this current foolishness. I cannot be prime minister. I am … tainted goods.’ She seemed sad again. ‘I’ve had to do many things in your administration—the Demonstration Protection Act is but one example—that do me no credit. The Luddites in parliament will be a fresh beginning. They could never be seen to have me as their leader.’
Fitzwilliams was astonished to discover that he somehow felt guilty. This traitor had planned her betrayal of him with exquisite precision, had planned it for years. She’d made his carefully-mapped-out final election campaign a torment for him. Why should he feel he had done her wrong? And yet, when he looked into those sad Russian eyes, he sensed he had.
‘Olga …’ Words were forming on his tongue; he was going to try to cheer her up, he realised. ‘It was brilliantly played.’
She visibly brightened at the comment.
‘I’ve never seen a campaign of such genius,’ Fitzwilliams continued. ‘I only wish Lister St John had been my campaign manager throughout, so he could have shared in this defeat.’
‘Really?’
‘Really. Garry Kasparov would be proud.’
She beamed at the mention of the chess grandmaster. ‘Thank you, Prime Minister. That means a lot to me.’
‘What next then?’ Fitzwilliams asked, as if it was just a routine question between colleagues. ‘What happens tomorrow?’
‘Tomorrow, the people decide,’ Olga replied. ‘We take it from there.’ She rose to leave.
‘Olga,’ Fitzwilliams called.
She stopped at the door.
‘Something tells me I shall have rather a lot more time on my hands in the near future.’
Olga merely nodded in agreement.
Fitzwilliams surveyed his opponent. ‘If you are free, I wouldn’t mind another game of tennis sometime,’ he said.
Olga smiled slightly.‘I would very much enjoy that,’ she answered. ‘When the … dust has settled, Prime Minister.’
...
Remarkably, the P&C sausage sizzle at the polling station also had celery sticks available. That had to be a good sign both politically for the Luddites and perhaps nutritionally for a sausage sizzle, Aggie thought. She surveyed the sky with displeasure. Drones were pestering all the high-profile Luddite candidates, seeking footage of them casting their votes. That morning, one had followed Aggie to her fruit-and-veg shop. Celery Ned, the one who had debated Donna Hargreaves, had been shown on TV taking her cat to the vet. Another Luddite appeared on the nation’s screens going with his daughter to her soccer match (a 1–1 draw).
A drone swooped low and hovered in front of Aggie. She heard the remote studio journalist bark a few questions at her through the drone’s speaker. ‘My casting a vote isn’t a news story,’ she told the machine.‘Everyone has to vote. Shoo.’ She waved it away.
The Veronicae had finished voting. Tim, in bodyguard mode, led the way to their bicycles. Aggie looked again at the drones buzzing above them.
A Veronica cycled alongside her. ‘We can give them the slip if you want,’ she suggested.
Aggie gave her an ‘I’m interested’ flick of her eyebrows.
‘We’ll park outside this shop I know,’ Veronica proposed. ‘The drones will stay with the parked bikes. We can head out into the laneway behind the place, cut through a series of shops and find somewhere quiet to watch the election results.’
Aggie looked dubious. ‘Disappearing isn’t the most responsible thing for a candidate to do.’
‘Responsible? You won’t be prime minister until what … ten, ten thirty at the earliest? No need to start acting prime ministerial just yet. Tim,’ Veronica called to the bodyguard, ‘let me lead.’
...
The smarmy face of Damian Boswell, ex-ambassador to Russia, ex-rival to Fitzwilliams for the Liberal Party leadership and possibly resurrected rising star, filled the television screen. He was oozing concern for a prime minister who had served his country well but perhaps too long. The Prime Minister was tired, he thought, the government in need of renewal. Damian Boswell had delivered this assessment with a reluctant half-grimace, a grimace Fitzwilliams could tell was laid atop his smug smile. Boswell was back in the country hoping, no doubt, to deliver the oration at Fitzwilliams’ political funeral tonight.
The Prime Mi
nister was mentally prepared for defeat. Liberal seats would be lost tonight, so many he could not continue as leader. He’d accept responsibility, but he would be damned if that pallid-faced Damian Boswell was going to be the beneficiary of his demise.
Network Seven cut to what they called the Lions’ Den, where the two most divisive former leaders, one Labor and one Liberal, met in the studio to spew opinion at each other. Fitzwilliams turned the sound off, something he wished he could have done when the rusted old hulks had been in parliament.
It was time for cold political calculation. If Labor won outright, he’d resign and make it effective immediately. If his government won the most seats, but lost its majority, he would announce he was stepping down as PM but wouldn’t resign his seat. He wouldn’t open an easy by-election route for Damian Boswell to get back into caucus. If the Luddites won enough seats that they had a chance to form government, Fitzwilliams didn’t know what he would do—probably ask Olga O’Rourke what she thought best. She was still technically an adviser to him.
When he’d voted earlier that day, the Senate ballot had been an absurdity. Six Ned Ludds were listed one under the other in the Luddite column. As the Ludds didn’t go in for middle names, to distinguish between them each Ned had their birth date printed beside their name. One of them, Fitzwilliams noticed, shared his birthday. He’d had to cut short such reverie in the voting booth. It wasn’t a good look for the Prime Minister to appear to be taking a long time deciding how to vote.
Word had come of another unexpected development. The online activist organisation Act Out were appearing at polling stations all over the country passing out Say No to How-to-Vote Cards cards. The whole world seemed to be conspiring against anything being political business as usual.
Network Seven cut away from the lions in the Lions’ Den. Fitzwilliams turned the sound back on. ‘Votes are now coming in and we have our very first numbers to hand,’ a host said excitedly. ‘They are only from one booth so far. In the seat of Fadden. I’ll get this up on the screen. Luddites are currently leading with one hundred and seventy votes. Liberal–National Coalition on one hundred and twenty-five and Labor on eighty-nine. That’s a swing of …’
Were they really going to give the swing based on an early count in one booth? Such statistics addiction. With the results now coming in, Fitzwilliams would have to set off to the bunker, the election nerve centre of the Liberal Party. He would await the result there before heading to the party HQ, the hall where Liberal activists would be on hand to cheer whichever speech, triumphant or brave-in-defeat, needed to be delivered to the media.
Though he knew his wife hated such things, Beatrice was accompanying him tonight. Her hand touched his elbow now, surprising him. He hadn’t noticed that she’d entered the room. ‘Ready to go?’ she asked.
‘Do you have your beeper?’ he inquired, recalling the time she had left during his victory speech for a work emergency.
‘I got Raul to cover for me this weekend.’ Beatrice hesitated. ‘I thought you might need some support tonight.’
He recognised the meaning in the sentence. She knew he was finished. She knew he knew he was finished. She might dislike politics, but Beatrice was going to stand by him at his Waterloo. He found himself deeply touched.
‘Cheer up,’ she said, reading the emotion on his face. ‘Watch this.’ She gazed at him, a look of pride and admiration etched on her face. Tears welled in her eyes. ‘I’ve been practising that look,’ she told him. ‘Let Roslyn Stanfield’s doe-eyed husband match that!’
‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen you do that look before,’ he commented, genuinely impressed.
She laughed. ‘You’ve never needed me to do that look before.’ She slipped her arm through his. ‘Let’s go find out how many Neds will be facing you across the floor of parliament.’
He wanted to say something light-hearted, but his gratitude got in the way. ‘You did vote Liberal, I hope,’ he managed at last.
‘I voted Liberal in the lower house,’ she replied, smiling. Quentin and Leon fell in beside them as they emerged from the room. ‘But only because I’m sleeping with the local candidate.’ She hadn’t bothered to lower her voice in front of the bodyguards. ‘As for the Senate—’ she shrugged charmingly ‘—how I voted is rather my own business, isn’t it?’
...
One hour into the count. It was going to be a long night in the pub for underemployed freelance camera operators Jesse Pelletier and Gunnar Sigurdsson. Twenty-three Liberal–Nationals elected or leading, twenty-one Labor, twenty-one Luddite. The tension at Labor and Liberal headquarters would be incredible. That made the fact that none of the networks needed Jesse and Gunnar to be there all the more bitter.
At the party headquarters, the networks had dispensed with journalists altogether. Both Nine and Seven were trialling prototype Roving Roboters: bloody mutant droids (according to Jesse) that rolled around the party headquarters doing the filming and lining up interviews. Roboters were controlled remotely by the studio production team and, through them, the network hosts could speak directly to party spokespeople on the floor. The Roving Roboter’s biggest asset over a conventional reporter (other than not needing to be paid) turned out to be their ring of sensitive microphones that could pick up muttered comments from all over the hall floor. In their first hour on the job, the Roving Roboters had already fed the network hosts a steady stream of anxious, abusive and sometimes treacherous sotto voce comments from Liberal and Labor figures.
The Luddite Party had no campaign headquarters and both camera operators had hoped there would be freelance work scrambling around finding individual Luddites to interview on election night. Instead, the networks had turned to Australia Post. Drones were poised, ready to swoop upon anything political happening anywhere. The long professional careers of the two camera operators had petered out completely, the career path equivalent of ending up hopelessly lost in the bush.
They’d headed to Melbourne mostly just to get away from Canberra, where they weren’t part of the action. But Melbourne hadn’t exactly lifted their spirits. They were in front of a large television screen in a deserted pub watching Labor’s Jessykah Underhill being interviewed through a Roboter. The interview was going as mundanely as any interview did with Underhill. Gunnar had predicted she’d say, ‘It’s a little early to be making predictions,’ within the first thirty seconds and been proven right.
The television image suddenly went wonky, the camera having been jostled. Both professionals peered at the screen with renewed interest. The image of Underhill was then completely blocked out. The screen switched back to the network hosts. The camera operators looked at each other in excitement. Someone at Labor headquarters had taken out Seven’s new robot camera!
...
‘What the fuck is going on?’ screamed the earpiece of Allison Trang, Network Seven news producer. Though not diplomatically put, it was a fair question from the senior producers upstairs.
The feed from their Roboter hadn’t stopped. Something was obscuring its view.
Her chief technician swore. ‘It’s Nine’s Roboter! Network Nine rammed us from behind! And now they’ve rolled their Roboter between ours and Jessykah Underhill.’
Allison pressed her lips together. ‘This could get very ugly,’ she predicted.
...
PRIVATE FUNCTION read the sign on Low Expectation’s door. The owner had even let the Sydney Luddite campaign team set up a viewing screen by the looms. The place was packed. Wine and beer was being poured into the chipped tea mugs.
Amy Zhao surveyed the boisterous Luddite campaign volunteers. She hadn’t known any of these people seven weeks ago. Seven weeks ago, she didn’t know the Luddites were a real political party. She hadn’t met Renard for that matter—Renard, her Luddite lover, whose flat, in the whirlwind of events, she had agreed to move into next week. She took Renard’s hand and smiled.
If that wasn’t enough of a momentous development in her life for one wee
k, her boss Wilson Huang had more in store for her. When she arrived at Compink Australia on Thursday, Wilson had sacked almost all the ASIO spies employed there. He then announced to the remaining staff that lowly data entry clerk Amy Zhao was now officially Compink Australia’s deputy CEO. Amy’s first public act as deputy CEO was an obvious one. She informed her stunned co-workers that she was instituting a staff kitchen weekly clean-up roster (and with a democratic flourish put Wilson’s name at the top of the list).
And now, tonight, there was the election. In the last half-hour, the Luddites had moved into the lead, but Renard’s electorate of Sydney was stubbornly staying Too Close to Call. Everyone was anxious, but the Luddite surge in other parts of the country was putting this partisan Low Expectations crowd in an increasingly raucous mood.
Kate suddenly shouted and pumped a fist at the screen. ‘Eden-Monaro has fallen to the Luddites!’ she proclaimed. ‘Victory! Victory!’ she roared like the Prussian army swarming onto the field at Waterloo.
‘Congratulations on your campaign, Ned,’ came a voice from behind them.
Amy turned and practically gasped. Before her was Loki, her agent in Baxter Lockwood. ‘Jiang?’ she managed, coming within a whisker of calling him by his codename. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I didn’t know you knew Jiang,’ Renard remarked. ‘Jiang, Sam and Mrs Giardino here gave up their own work time to help me campaign in Surry Hills earlier this week.’
‘And this is my manager, Olivia,’ Jiang added, gesturing to a blonde woman beside him.
‘Gave up their own work time.’ Olivia chuckled. ‘That’s one way of putting it.’
‘You’re a Luddite?’ Amy squeaked at Jiang.
‘Not just any Luddite!’ Sam chortled. ‘Jiang was the one who put the Luddite logo on the moon!’