China Mountain Zhang (17 page)

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Authors: Maureen F. McHugh

BOOK: China Mountain Zhang
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“The Commune is supposed to send five people to the water reclamation project. We won’t send landholders, because landholders are what make the Commune work.” Anger makes my words come out crisp and clear. “We’ll have to send newcomers and if they’ve been here for more than a year and we send them, then we’re making them wait longer to get their holding.”
Alexi is looking at me, vulnerable in the kitchen light.
“Including you, there are four newcomers who have been here for a year. I brought up the fact that you’ve been relocated so many times and that it’s not good for Theresa, but the committee feels that sending you will give you a chance to accumulate a good chunk of credit for when you come back and do get a holding.”
He opens his mouth as if to say something, and then changes his mind.
“Right now, the committee is more interested in trying to figure out how to select the fifth person than it is in listening to why you shouldn’t go, and I can’t think of anything to say that will change that.”
He nods. “Okay,” he says.
There is a little silence.
“Okay,” he says, “so that’s that.”
“There’s still some things to try,” I say. “I have an idea, but I don’t think it will go. Just don’t do anything until I try my idea.”
“What is it?” he asks.
“There are some other people who might go,” I say vaguely.
He nods tiredly. “And if that doesn’t work, it’s only two years.” He is defeated. He says “it is only two years” the way I imagine someone might say, “Everybody has to die sometime.”
But if it doesn’t work, I have one more idea. But I’m not ready to talk about that, because I’m not really sure I’m ready myself.
 
 
Goats, leaks, bees. Bees, leaks, goats. My life goes back to its expected rounds. Alexi and Theresa come the following weekend. Theresa is hyper and unhappy on Saturday, but Sunday she is fine until it is time to leave. Alexi and I are pleasant to each other. We don’t talk much about his reassignment but once he says, “After I come back from the pole …”
They go back to the dorm, Theresa fussing and crying. Monday is goats and bees. Tuesday is bees and goats. Wednesday I get stung twice. Well, I’ll never get arthritis. I sleep badly, dream and dream but I can’t remember what I dream about when I wake up. At least I don’t sleepwalk. And then it is Thursday, time for the council meeting.
There is an empty chair at the front, McKenzie sits in the audience. Aron opens the meeting and says, “We can’t have a meeting until we have a full council. We have one person willing to sit on council, Martine Jansch. Any other nominations or volunteers?”
Kepet Waters stands up, “I’m willing,” and sits down.
McKenzie looks at her lap and frowns. She agrees that Waters is a horse’s ass.
I look around the hall, I have no illusions about my own popularity. Alexi, I am surprised to see, is standing next to the door.
Aron says to me, “Martine, would you like to say anything?”
I think for a moment. I can’t imagine getting up and addressing
all these people, even though I know most of them. “I guess everybody pretty well knows me, Aron.”
“Anybody want to say anything about Martine?”
McKenzie pops up, “I think Martine would do a fine job and she’s the person I’d like to follow me.” She pops back down, shoves her hands in her pockets and frowns.
Aron waits to see if anyone else wants to say anything.
“Kepet?” he says.
The only thing I have going for me is that I don’t think I’ve made many enemies. Not that Kepet has real, honest enemies, but, well, he stands up and says, “I’d like to say a little, Aron,” and proceeds to talk for twenty minutes about what this Commune could be.
Most of us had our fill of speeches during the days of the Cleansing Winds; particularly speeches about how wonderful things are going to be. People are polite while Kepet talks, and a few clap politely when he is done, but I think most of us tend to distrust a man who talks that much.
Still, I’m nervous when everybody votes. Kepet and I don’t vote. I glance back in time to see someone hand a piece of paper to Alexi, who doesn’t know what to do for a moment, then takes it. Back on earth you don’t vote unless you’re a party member, but here everybody on the Commune votes on Commune business if they’re old enough to receive credit for their work. You have to be a party member to vote on anything out of New Arizona, but even many of the party members, like me, don’t bother with most of that. Who cares who our representatives are at the Martian Congress, all the major decisions are made on earth anyway.
They count the votes, it’s eight-forty-five by the time they’re finished but for once I’m not sleepy.
I’m astounded when they read off the totals. “Martine has one hundred and eleven, Kepet has thirty-four.” I had convinced myself I wouldn’t win, that I’m too sour a woman. Kepet’s speech has been more of a drawback than expected. I’m even more
surprised that almost a hundred and fifty people showed up for a council meeting. There are over a thousand people in the Commune, over two hundred landholding families, but council meetings are late, they’re boring, and most of us have better things to do with our time.
Aron says, “Okay. When Martine decides to come up here and sit down we can start the meeting.”
I stand up, embarrassed, and take my seat at the front. I don’t hear much for a few minutes, it’s been a long time since I had to stand in front of people, or even sit in front of them, and that was when I was Captain Jansch and had a uniform to hide behind. I can’t look up for awhile, but finally, while Aron is talking about reducing our water use—a topic of council meetings for as long as I can remember—I glance up to see a little group of four or five people leaving. In fact it doesn’t look like anywhere near a hundred and fifty people are at the meeting.
“Okay,” Aron says—it’s a verbal tic of his, every sentence begins with ‘okay’—“now can we have a report from the committee on the water reclamation volunteers?”
An unfortunate choice of words, that. Volunteers.
Cord stands up, “We are required to provide five people to work for at least two years on the water reclamation project. We thought that we should look first at the newcomers who have been here for less than a year, since newcomers who have been here for more than a year are less than two years from possibly having their own holding.” Cord pauses for a moment. “At least officially.”
There is a titter, everybody knows that it takes closer to five years to get everything together, approved and built.
“So, the problem is there are only four newcomers who have been here for less than a year. This means that we are still one person short.”
I wait for the proverbial other shoe. Cord sits down and doesn’t say any more and I realize he has decided not to go through with
it. And that puts the burden squarely on me. There are some people who are more than two years away from having a plot of their own, who are not newcomers. I don’t know how many there are, but I’m thinking of people like Aron’s daughter. But Aron isn’t going to want to think about offering Lucille Fahey a chance to earn hazard credit at the water reclamation project. So I have to be careful how to introduce it. In fact, I don’t have any idea how to introduce it. I must wait for that magic moment.
Leo Mannheim says, “Perhaps the fifth person should be whoever has the least time here among the people who’ve been here for more than a year.”
Philippa says, “Everybody who has been here for more than six months has been here for thirty-two months at least.” Of course, because we always get newcomers at the beginning of the shipping cycle from earth. We used to get twenty, thirty people at a time, but now they go to communes which aren’t well established.
Cord stands up again.
Aron recognizes him.
“Aron,” Cord says, “Is it true that we consider everybody in the Commune equal?”
Aron nods. I look at Philippa. Her mouth is set.
“Well, has anyone talked to the newcomers about whether or not they particularly want to go?”
Aron says as if talking to a child. “No one wants to go, Cord.”
“So we send the newcomers? Can we consider them equal?”
Aron looks pained. After a moment Leo says, “The Council has to look at the good of the Commune. Newcomers are least likely to be irreplaceable.”
Cord says, “Well, Leo, I’m intrigued to find out that you consider yourself irreplaceable.”
“I don’t consider myself irreplaceable,” Leo says, stuttering a bit. “I mispoke, but everyone knows what I meant, that landholders are unable to leave their holdings. Not like a newcomer, who doesn’t have a side-business and isn’t trying to keep something
going. And it would give a newcomer a chance to accumulate a good chunk of credit before getting their holding. And that would be helpful. It’s actually a good opportunity, better than just living in the dorms, trying to get established.”
Cord nodded. “So, then landholders can’t go because our pottery kilns will be empty and the rest of us won’t have breakfast bowls. No one can contest the logic of that. But I’ve thought of another group which has more than two years until they get their holdings. Young people, like Lucille Fahey.”
I see Aron’s face tighten and I close my eyes. Cord has effectively ruined my chance of introducing the concept diplomatically. And when Cord says it I see Aron’s face tighten and I know he’ll stop this.
“Cord,” he says, “the water reclamation project is hazardous duty. This Commune will not send children.”
I look back at the door in time to see Alexi leave.
The meeting ends fifteen minutes later with the question of who is going to the water reclamation project still unanswered. The feeling at the end of the meeting is ugly.
I leave the cafeteria and turn left towards the dorms instead of right towards home.
I haven’t been in the dorms in six years, and I’ve forgotten how sparse they were; two bunk beds, a couple of dressers and a closet. Bathrooms down the hall. They’re mostly empty, when I first came they were full. The Commune had just started giving out private holdings—during the Cleansing Winds campaign the desire for a private holding had been seen as a desire to own more than other people, to have for oneself. Now they hold mostly newcomers and a few single men who for one reason or another live there. Most people live one or two to a room that used to hold four or more.
“Alexi Dormov?” I say a couple of times, and people point. I finally knock on a door. There’s no answer. I knock again and say, “Alexi?”
After a moment I hear a rustle, a foot hitting the floor. Then the door opens and Alexi is standing there.
“Martine?” he says.
“I saw you at the meeting.”
He nods, “Yeah. Congratulations. You look nice.”
I’m a little dressed up, a cotton blouse and slacks. I look past him into the room.
“Come in,” he says.
It’s painfully bare. He lives alone, there’s nothing on the walls. The bottom bunk of one of the bunkbeds has sheets and a blanket on it, but it’s unmade. Everything else is neat as a pin.
I sit down on the bare mattress. He sits down on the bed. “I don’t have coffee or anything to offer,” he says.
“I didn’t expect anything,” I say. “Alexi—”
“Don’t worry about it,” he says, “I appreciate what you’ve done already. I was there, I saw what it was like. They’re not likely to be interested in my problems, not when the alternative is sending their own children. And I’d be the same way, if it were Theresa who was involved.”
“There might be—”
“It’s all right,” he insists, “it’s only two years. It’s not going to be as bad as the Army, at least they won’t be shooting at me.”
“There’s another way,” I say.
“There is no other way,” Alexi says.
“We could get married,” I say. I mean to present it as a business proposition, but instead my voice comes out small, a bit pleading.
“What?” he says mildly.
“We could get married. If we were married, you’d be a landholder.”
“I can’t ask you to do that,” he says.
“It wouldn’t be a real marriage, of course,” I say. “There are two bedrooms, we can add a third for Theresa. And if you wanted to end it, after a couple of years, of course, that would be fine.”
He shakes his head.
“Why not?” I say, in that little pleading voice I find so absurd.
“I can’t,” he says, “I can’t. Martine, your beautiful house, all you’ve worked for. You’re so, so self-sufficient. I’m nothing, just some refugee. Lenin and Mao Zedong, I can’t believe this.”
“It’s getting to be a bit much for one person,” I say. “And you could establish a side-business, we don’t have much in the way of technicians here, you’d have more work than you knew what to do with.”
“This wasn’t what I had in mind,” he says. “Not at all.”

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