The leaders of the opposition called for a vote of confidence before Wen Kang finished the first half of his speech. In the debate that followed, they made a number of references to his father’s mental problems and Wen’s own reputation for dubious enthusiasms.

"One does not fight wars by canvassing the populace," the Principal Speaker of the major opposition party pontificated. "The first requirement of war is centralized, coordinated planning. Our new First Administrator is beginning his term in office–which, if we are fortunate, will only last another few hours–with a proposal that is so eccentric it should be considered a symptom of clinically diagnosable derangement."

"We are engaged in a struggle which could decide the political fate of every city on the Moon," the Senior Analyst intoned. "We are opposing forces that are controlled by a single powerful brain. Our most recent surveys confirm that the population of our city includes several hundred citizens whose genetic enhancements have equipped them with brains that exceed the estimated mental power of our adversary by factors that range from 120 percent to 330 percent. Shouldn’t we place our forces under the command of one of those minds? Wouldn’t that make more sense than the bizarre scheme the First Administrator is proposing?"

For Wen Kang, the war was like every other struggle he had ever engaged in–a conflict between pure light and undiluted darkness. "On the one side," Wen orated, "we see a republic whose most honored citizens are scientists, artists, and entrepreneurs. On the other, we see a dark complex ruled by a woman who murdered twenty-three people in her rise to supreme power–a woman who personally cut the throats of five of her rivals at a banquet attended by two hundred guests. If we are to survive this test–if we are to lead our species into the glowing promise of an unimaginable future–we must make full use of our greatest strength: the creativity and imagination of a city inhabited by untrammeled human personalities!"

Fortunately, Wen’s political skills were just as notable as his tendency to indulge in bombast. He and his two assistants had engaged in all the customary preparations before he had stepped before the honored members of the Legislative Assembly and uttered the first words of his speech. The leaders of the eight parties included in his coalition had received satisfactory positions in the cabinet. Certain changes in public policy had been offered and accepted. The proposal passed by a ten-vote margin.

The most prominent item in Wen Kang’s office was a wall-sized, continuously updated map screen. The most conspicuous natural features on the map were a pair of craters: Copernicus in the lower left corner, and its smaller neighbor, Eratosthenes, in the upper right.

The other conspicuous feature was a pair of shaded areas that lay between the two craters. The black area represented the territory controlled by an army of molecular devices that had been creeping northward from Copernicus for the last five years. Most of the units in the army were too small to be seen with the naked eye, but they were as deadly as a mass of toxic microbes. An observer who traveled near the area might have spotted an occasional antenna or a few small toylike vehicles. In the space above the area, his eyes would have picked up pulses from miniature rocket motors and random glints reflected from objects that appeared to be scattered bits of dust. Other than that, the primary sign of the army’s presence was a certain smoothing of the lunar surface.

The army had been launched by Emma Fleuri, the current ruler of the Democratic Commonwealth of Copernicus. Its ultimate aim was the city that had grown up in Eratosthenes. Eventually, if it wasn’t stopped, it would encircle Eratosthenes and cut off all surface communication. Then it would penetrate the crater wall. Its disassemblers would creep toward key components of the infrastructure that supported the city’s inhabitants.

The government of the Convivial Republic of Eratosthenes had ignored the advance for almost four years. It had convinced itself the Copernicans were merely extending their domain over the useless lunar desert that occupied the space between the two cities. Then it had finally listened to a firebrand named Wen Kang and planted an army of its own in the field. The red area represented the current position of the Convivial Republic’s own molecular forces.

The previous administration had appointed a Minister of External Security and placed him in charge of the war effort. The Minister had appointed a Director of External Security and the Director had been responsible for the actual maneuvering of the molecular force. Now Wen had placed the force under the direct control of the voting public.

Every twelve hours, every adult in the city could vote on the orders the Republic would transmit to its military forces. Anyone in the city could cast a vote. Anyone in the city could propose a new plan and post it on the discussion screens Wen had added to the public databanks. Interested citizens could offer general plans (concentrate on the right flank, attack sector B19) or they could propose something more detailed (attack sector B20 with 8,750 units, with 2,500 disassemblers in the first wave, followed by . . .)

This wasn’t the first time citizens had been given direct control of a government operation. Some of the experimental societies developing in the asteroid belt did everything that way. There had even been a twenty-year period when the Czechs had run their economy by direct democracy, with the electorate casting biweekly votes on three basic interest rates. No one had ever tried to run a war by direct democracy, however. Wen had researched the databanks all the way back to the last quarter of the 1900s. The closest thing he had found had been experiments based on games and simulations.

The Director of External Security had been horrified when she’d seen his proposal for the War Poll.

"War isn’t a game," the Director said. "You can’t even compare it to a business. You can recover from mistakes in economic policy. When you lose a war, you cease to exist!"

Wen had automatically replaced the Administrator of External Security when he became First Administrator. The Director of External Security had presented a tougher problem. On Earth, she had been a Tactical Lieutenant Colonel in one of the more celebrated international brigades. She had earned her rank in the forces that had been methodically calming the turbulent political units of the home planet. She had left Earth and emigrated to the Moon because Wen’s predecessor as First Administrator had offered her a huge bonus. How could he possibly remove someone with her professional credentials?

"You and your staff will have the same opportunities as everyone else," Wen said. "I want you to continue doing everything you’ve been doing for the last thirteen months."

"And present our plans to everyone who thinks they’re qualified to cast a vote every twelve hours?"

"Everyone in this city knows what your qualifications are. You’ve been an advertisement for military professionalism from the moment you arrived. I suspect most of our people will vote for your plans merely because you proposed them. Anyone who wants to propose an alternative will have to come up with something that’s so attractive the voters will choose it in spite of their feelings for you."

"We’ve presented you with the best strategy anyone could have worked out for you, given the options. I’m well aware my approach seems cautious and unimaginative. I realize the Copernicans have achieved a forty kilometer advance during the period I’ve been in charge of our efforts. But I can also assure you that we have analyzed all the alternatives. A strategy of delay is your only hope. The Copernican regime changes hands every six years on average. Sooner or later, someone will replace Emma Fleuri and her grandson."

Two million voting age adults lived in Eratosthenes. Three hundred thousand of them participated in the first round of the War Poll. Wen’s preliminary surveys had indicated the normal participation rate would be two hundred and fifty thousand, but he had assumed the first votes would attract more interest. By the fourth day, the participation rate had dropped to two hundred and thirty thousand.

The Director of External Security relaxed some of her hostility when she saw the results of the first polls. Fifty-two percent of the voters had chosen the plans she and her staff had prepared.

"It’s just like I told you," Wen said. "You don’t have anything to worry about."

The Director smiled politely. She was a sturdy, practical woman who was proud of the fact that her parents had both been peasants. She had been dealing with politicians ever since she had first put on a uniform. The world would be a better place, in her opinion, if people avoided adventurous, imaginative personalities when they chose their leaders.

The military professionals dominated the discussion screens–and the decisions–for the next two tendays. Wen inspected every message anyone placed on the screens.

As he had expected, the discussion screens attracted their share of political paranoia. About 10 percent of the more emotional outpourings emanated from people who were convinced that the whole War Poll was a political trick and They were once again manipulating Us. It’s just one more thing they’ve discovered they can use against us. . . . Do they really think they can fool us with something like this? Do they really think we’re that dumb?

They do, one wag had replied. And they’re right!

At the beginning of the third tenday, Wen noticed that a citizen named Nanette Aart seemed to be the center of a small flurry of activity. He had looked at her screens before and decided they were just another set of delusions–a grandiose jumble of complicated maneuvers created by a mind that seemed to think complexity was a sign of intelligence.

Now he discovered that her ideas had attracted the interest of a group which called itself the Thirteen Pedagogues. He had come across the Thirteen before, and nodded approvingly at the way they demolished some of the sillier ideas people were presenting. This time they seemed to think they had found something useful.

We have examined this young person’s ideas in some detail, the Thirteen wrote. We believe they should be subjected to a complete, intense analysis. Some of her proposals may look bizarre. Some are forbiddingly intricate. If you will muster a little patience and follow the reasoning in the rest of this report, we believe you will come to the same conclusion we have.

Wen called up Nanette Aart’s personal information from the databanks and discovered she was nine years old. Her parents were Dutch immigrants who had settled on the Moon just before she was born. Her mother had taught mathematics and published papers on something called hyperbias analysis.

Wen started skimming the Thirteen’s report before he had finished the first five hundred words. It made more sense than Nanette Aart’s proposals, but it was still cluttered with expositions that covered every possible response the enemy could take. We open the attack by assaulting sector C22 with the following forces. . . . Assume the enemy counterattacks from sectors C23 and C24 with these forces. . . . Assume he tries a different approach and counterattacks from C24 and C22 itself with this mix of forces. . . . In that case . . .

To Wen, it all looked too precise. Every little robot would have to get its orders without a hitch in communications or a glitch in the wording. The molecular forces were a kind of collective machine. The Thirteen Pedagogues were assuming every part would work perfectly.

A commentary from a writer named Lan Chih made similar observations. Lan Chih was especially contemptuous of any maneuver that had to be timed to the second. He believed that the Republic’s only hope was a defensive effort founded on a massive buildup in its forces. If they put enough units in front of the Copernican forces, Lan Chih argued, the Copernican advance could be permanently halted.

There were other ideas on the screens that looked promising. None of them seemed to be generating any interest. The voters weren’t going to abandon their allegiance to the professionals until someone offered them something that looked truly brilliant. Wen decided that it was time that he activated the second part of his plan.

None of the conspiracy paranoids had zeroed in on the management method Wen had actually chosen. Wen’s personal political committee had organized seventy thousand voters into a solid bloc. When he gave the signal, the bloc would throw its support behind any proposal he selected–or help him veto anything he considered risky or farfetched.

Wen’s political opponents might feel he was unstable and flighty. Some of his political allies might echo the sentiment. To most of the ordinary apolitical people who lived in his city, he was a high-spirited, glamorous figure who was noted for his achievements as a journalist adventurer. He could have put together a bloc that was 30 percent larger if he had thought it was necessary.

Most of the objects that glittered over the molecular battlefield were only three or four millimeters in diameter, but a small number of them were bigger than teacups. The larger units were miniature spaceships, with their own motors and an array of optical and electronic sensors. The smaller devices were shot out of magnetic projectors and recycled after they fell back to the surface.

In Wen’s opinion, the military experts were trying to stop the Copernican advance by playing chess. They should instead be playing go–the formidably profound Chinese game in which you could lay your pieces on any open space on the board. In chess, armies clashed across a front. In go, you established positions at strategic points and tried to connect your own forces while you disrupted your opponent’s.

Wen left a prearranged message with one of his more fervent allies, and a new advocate started agitating on the discussion screens.

I believe it is time we stopped playing chess, Dou Miriani announced. I believe it is time we tapped the deepest roots of human culture and drew our inspiration from the sophistication and complexity of go. I propose we add a new element to the situation–a strike force built around several hundred of our Type 32 units.

Type 32’s were the biggest of the teacup size units. The strike force should be loaded with a cargo of seed units, Dou argued, and it should cross the enemy line and deposit the seeds in a thinly defended sector. The seeds would produce fighting units and the fighting units would expand the territory under their control and attack the enemy line from the rear. Other units would attack the front line in the same area, and eventually link up with the force that had been placed behind the line.

Lan Chih immediately leaped on the most obvious weakness in the idea. And how do you propose to keep this plan a secret? Lan Chih asked. We know our enemy has spies who monitor everything we say here. Do you really think he will leave an area thinly defended when he knows we are going to attack it?

Wen had passed the advocate’s job to Dou Miriani because Dou was a veteran of years of discussion screen debates. Dou had deliberately ignored the criticisms people would raise when he had made his presentation. He knew his arguments would have more impact if he refuted criticisms after someone else brought them up.

Secrecy had been one of the more troubling aspects of Wen’s schemes. He had withheld his assent to the War Poll until his staff had worked out procedures that would nullify the worst effects of open decision making. In this case, Dou argued, the strike force would have an effect on the battle even if it never actually struck. It would be placed where it could threaten several possible objectives. The Copernicans would have to use up resources strengthening all of them. If the force did engage in a strike, Dou could propose an objective in the last hour of the voting period and the attack could be launched as soon as the system posted the results of the poll.

Dou’s proposal received 3 percent of the vote the first day he offered it. By the fifth day, it was receiving a steady 22 percent. Wen waited for a day when there were several popular proposals on the voting list. He then gave the word, and his bloc threw its support behind the strike force. Five days later, when the strike force was loaded and ready, his bloc forced through a decision to launch.

The super-brain that directed the Copernican forces belonged to a young man named Rafe Fleuri–the grandson of Emma Fleuri. Wen Kang had been in error when he had claimed Emma Fleuri had killed twenty-three people in her rise to eminence. Her grandson could name twenty-seven.

Rafe could have personally verified that his grandmother had cut the throats of five guests at a banquet. One of the victims had been his sister. She had been sitting across the table from him when Emma Fleuri drew the knife across her neck.

Rafe spent most of his days sitting in a lounge chair with two neural/electronic interfaces fastened to his forehead. Information on the military situation flowed across his brain at forty-three megabytes per minute–a paltry figure by electronic standards, but an overwhelming advantage in any contest that pitted him against unmodified humans. Rafe’s genetic intelligence potential had been enhanced by a factor of three. It wasn’t the strongest enhancement possible, but it had been the best the genetic designers could do with one of Emma Fleuri’s linear descendants.

Rafe had spotted six areas that the enemy strike force could attack. He had made no attempt to strengthen the defenses around any of them. Instead, he had created a mobile defensive force and developed defensive programs for each area.

Projectors launched interceptor moles at the strike force as it sailed over Rafe Fleuri’s front line. One third of the force disappeared before it reached its objective. The survivors settled into the area that had topped Rafe’s list of possible targets. The seed moles started generating disassemblers, ground molders, and the other units that made up a properly designed molecular army.

The vulnerable point in Wen Kang’s plan was the fundamental fact that underpinned every activity in the solar system. Nothing could proceed without energy.

Without a steady flow of energy, a molecular force was an inert mass of complex arrangements of atoms. The seed moles couldn’t make new moles, the disassemblers couldn’t chew up their adversaries, and the magnetic projectors couldn’t launch their dust-speck missiles.

The moles in both armies received a fraction of their energy from the sunlight that fell on their part of the lunar surface. The bulk of their energy came from solar energy collectors and hydrogen-fusion reactors located in their home craters. Specialized transmission moles laid lines that connected the army to its energy sources.

The units in Wen’s strike force had been isolated from their energy sources. Everything depended on the next step in the plan. The strike force had to establish a link with the forces it had left behind.

Rafe’s simulations indicated there was a 40 percent probability he could block the linkup. He had shown his conclusions to his grandmother and she had looked them over and concluded that Wen Kang was making a political maneuver.

"He’s deliberately taking a risk," Emma Fleuri said. "His simulations obviously told him the same thing. He didn’t launch this attack just to gain a little ground. He did it for political reasons–so he can overshadow his military experts and get control of the war. Hit him with everything you need to wipe that force out. Don’t hesitate to pull resources away from the rest of the battlefield. Humiliate him."

Rafe would never have initiated such a strategy on his own. If he weakened the rest of his forces, the enemy might see an opportunity and attack somewhere else. But that was only his opinion. His grandmother had spoken.

Rafe knew that he must never let Emma think he might be developing attitudes that could generate a conflict. His grandmother’s personality had been shaped by one of mankind’s more durable cultural patterns. Her society had been founded by gangsters who had been pushed out of Marseilles by their rivals. They had emigrated to the new society developing on the Moon and seized a controlling position in the industrial complex that had been growing in Copernicus crater. Eventually, they had shifted their attention to the possibilities inherent in genetic modification. Copernicus had become a leading exporter of assassins, bodyguards, service employees, and male and female concubines. Through it all, Emma Fleuri’s ancestors had retained the political traditions they had acquired when they had been extorting money from vending-machine owners back on Earth. At the core of Emma’s personality, there was a law which took precedence over every other sentiment and value that might be important to her: you must dominate or be dominated.

Rafe selected twelve areas in the zone he occupied and reduced their energy budgets by 90 percent. The area around the enemy incursion received huge flows of energy. The Copernican seed moles in the area produced new weapons at five times their normal rate. Rafe’s reserve force landed on top of the enemy’s link-up line and hit it with a fury that exceeded anything Wen Kang had anticipated when he had set up his pre-attack simulations. Three hours after the counterattack, Wen’s strike force was hopelessly cut off. Its units faded out, one by one, as they exhausted their internal energy supplies.

Rafe lost all sense of proportion when he was maneuvering his forces through his neural/electronic interfaces. He still smiled, now and then, when he took a break and remembered again that his formidable weapons were so small they looked like creatures the average human could destroy with a few well-aimed stamps. Any human who actually stepped onto the battlefield would have been very foolhardy, of course. A small patch of disassemblers could uncouple the molecular bonds in a spacesuit boot in a few seconds. Full-scale armored vehicles would last a little longer, but most of them would be brought to a halt a few meters after they entered a mole field.

Rafe would have been happier maneuvering larger units, but moles were actually more powerful. The political realities had been an important consideration, too. Three international observation satellites orbited the Moon. A highly visible, macroscale assault would have provoked a full-scale international intervention, led by missiles equipped with the latest developments in arms technology. A slow creep across empty surface was another matter. Wen Kang’s predecessors had lodged complaints with the Secretariat, but the international politicians in Singapore had refused to admit that they were faced with a crisis.

The Copernicans had developed connections with international corporations and other centers of power. The international politicians would start considering intervention when the Convivial Republic was faced with an obvious, undeniable threat to its existence. By then, Rafe Fleuri would be poised to destroy it. His homicidal grandmother would be dangerously disappointed if he weren’t.