The Grasshopper by TheGrasshopper

towards him.
    “I need you, Babe…” Prince suddenly
went silent, wanting to take advantage of this opportunity to have
a good look at the discrete tattoo behind her ear.
     
    It seemed to him that it was just
hieroglyphs, but carefully studying them one at a time he realized
they were letters. “Just a little strange,” he thought. “Distorted,
of different sizes, thickness… overlapping… but they are letters…
There that’s an r , and that’s an h or perhaps an n , and the first one… it’s…”
    “Prince! You’ve tattooed my name!”
he shouted.
    “Quiet, quiet…” Babe calmed
him.
    “You’re driving me crazy…” he
whispered feverishly.
    “Don’t be angry, Mr. Kaella, but I
had to…” she looked at him humbly, her eyes begging for
forgiveness.
    “Be angry? I’m crazy about you!
Crazy!”
    “I had to show it somewhere. This
deepest, most hidden intimate thing.”
    “Deepest?”
    “Yes.”
    “Most hidden?”
    “Yes.”
    “Intimate thing?’
    “Yes.”
    “My name?”
    “Yes.”
    “I can’t go on without you, Babe.
You have to be mine…”
    “If you truly think that, Mr.
Kaella…”
    “’ Mr. Kaella! Mr.
Kaella!’ Is that your deepest intimate thing? Is that what you hid
behind your ear?”
    “Prince…”
     
    “So,” thought Babe, “a tattoo
behind the ear equals ‘Prince’ instead of ‘Mr. Kaella”. Well, we’ll
see, Prince, what the following advertisement will bring. Just as
soon as this guy finishes listing to the Consumers…” Babe looked at
the monitor. And Prince continued excitedly:
    “Your intimacy… deepest… you say,
Babe. And do you know what is my deepest intimate
thing?”
    “I don’t, I don’t dare…”
    “Princess, my Princess! That’s what
I’ll tattoo! Princess!”
     
    “I was wrong,” thought Babe,
pressing her chest with her hand so that her heart would not burst.
“A tattoo behind the ear equals ‘Prince’ instead of ‘Mr. Kaella’
plus ‘Princess’ instead of ‘Babe’.”

Chapter 38
    Jagdish came up to Raul and Margot
and asked:
    “Do you know what I don’t get,
Raul?”
    “What?”
    “Where did this information about
such a high percentage of votes suddenly come from? I mean, we did
our studies, locally, in our cities, but…”
    “Jagdish, we couldn’t get the real
picture based on that. We couldn’t even guess that so many people
from consumer cities, from places we had never set foot in, with
censured media, the Internet… that people there knew about us,
about Pascal… Not only that they knew, but that they would vote for
him. I find something else odd. That’s what the three of us mainly
discussed yesterday. This informant of Seneca’s has been sending
him the results of their polls every two, three week, since the
beginning of the presidential campaign.”
    “Why didn’t you tell us earlier,
Raul?”
    “We couldn’t. Seneca didn’t want
anyone to know about this informant of his.”
    “I understand. And how did the
percentages change? They increased in time, right?” Jagdish
asked.
    “They didn’t. That’s what’s odd.
The entire time they were around twenty seven, no more than thirty
percent for Pascal.”
    “And for Xing?”
    “Close to forty.”
    “So how did it
suddenly…?”
    “We don’t know. We can only assume
that their pollsters this time falsely introduced themselves as
being ours or neutral… I don’t know. So the people weren’t afraid
to say that they would vote for Pascal. Kaella also received all
those periodical results of the polls. And this is now a great
shock to him, as it is to us. That is why we concluded, just as you
did, that they would try to carry out an assassination.”
     
    “Raul… alright, we understand now.
I mean, the situation changed so suddenly with this information
about the certain victory in the elections… But, where does this
trust of yours in Seneca come from? As Liam said, how do you know
that he didn’t immediately hand him over to