Titan

18 February 2096: Evening

Despite Berkowitz’s assurances, Holly felt wired tighter than a bomb as she stepped before the video cameras. There was no one else in the studio. She had chosen to give her first political speech from the communications center, alone, without a claque of an audience to applaud her words. I don’t have a following, she realized. Not like Malcolm. Not yet.

Pancho, Wanamaker, Wunderly and several other friends had offered to come with her, but Holly had told them all that their presence would only make her more nervous. In truth, the only person she wanted to have there was Raoul, but he hadn’t said more than six words to her that morning in the simulations lab, when the power failure had struck.

So now she stood nervously in front of a trio of cameras with their unblinking lenses focused on her. Berkowitz was smiling benignly at her from behind the central camera. There had been a couple of other technicians in the studio when Holly had come in, but they seemed to have disappeared now.

“Your introduction is prerecorded. I’ll set it going and then give you a five-second countdown,” Berkowitz said. “When I point to you like this”—he aimed a stubby forefinger at her—“it’ll be time for you to start.”

“’Kay,” Holly said. “I click.”

There was a monitor screen beside the camera on her right. Holly thought she looked terrible: strung tight and eyes staring like a skinny, frightened waif. Slightly to her left, another monitor displayed the words of her speech in oversize capital letters.

The seconds dragged by, until at last Berkowitz began, “Five … four … three … two …” He pointed dramatically.

Holly tried to make a smile as she began, “Good evening. I’m Holly Lane, and I’m running for the office of chief administrator. Until yesterday I was your director of human resources, but I was fired from that job, prob’ly because the guy who’s currently chief administrator got sore that I decided to run against him.”

She took a breath, saw her next paragraph scrolling up on the monitor, then focused her eyes on Berkowitz, rocking up on his toes and down again as he smiled and nodded encouragement to her from behind the center camera.

“I’d like to tell you why I decided to run against my former boss. It’s because of a certain married couple who came to me to ask permission to have a baby. They made me realize that there must be a lot of women in this habitat of ours who want to have children.

“Now, I know we live in an enclosed environment with limited resources. And I know we all signed onto to the Zero Population Growth protocol when we first joined this habitat. But I feel that it’s time to examine that protocol and see if there isn’t some way we can allow our population to expand—within the limits of our resources, naturally. More than half of our habitat is empty, unpopulated, unused. I believe that with care, we can allow our population to grow. I believe that we have the intelligence and the courage to allow controlled population growth. I don’t think that this habitat of ours should continue to be barren and childless.”

Berkowitz continued to nod and smile at her. The monitor had scrolled to her final, wrap-up paragraph.

But Holly ignored it and blurted, “And I also believe that there’s absolutely no acceptable reason for power outages like we had this morning. That’s inexcusable. We need to pay much more attention to the equipment that keeps us alive. That’s all I’ve got to say. For now. I’ll have more later on. Thank you.”

Holly thought she could hear Eberly’s howl of anguish from halfway across the village.