Island in the Sea of Time (66 page)

On the other hand, it was just too convenient at times. This meeting around the long dining-room table was going to go on long past the dinnertime it was supposed to end at.
On the third hand, with the committee meeting here Martha can go nurse the baby when she has to.
Extremely fortunate; the supply of infant formula was strictly limited.

“Look, let’s stop squabbling about details for a minute, shall we?” Cofflin said, washing down a bite of oatmeal cookie with lukewarm sassafras.

Because otherwise I may strangle somebody.
The dull roar of argument subsided along the long table.

“Most of you were here for the first meetings we had right after the Event. We worked together well enough when we were figuring out how to avoid starving to death, nearly a year ago. Let’s apply a little of that spirit.”

“Good point, Jared,” Martha said. “Everything we do will have repercussions down the road; look at what happened with the original Convention, back in the 1780s. Let’s stand on their shoulders and perhaps see farther. Concentrate on principles, and on making them clear as crystal.”

“I still say the Meeting should be the final authority,” Macy said stubbornly. “Remember the way Congress got, back up in the twentieth? Say one thing, do another, and their hands always out to whoever would give ’em the biggest contribution. Let the voters decide themselves.”

“
For now,
that’s fine,” Ian Arnstein said. “What happens when it gets too big? It’s awkward enough now, when we get a big turnout for a Meeting.”

Oh,
please,
not more about ancient Greek city-states, please.

“How’s this?” Doreen said. “We set a maximum size for Towns—say when their Meetings have five thousand members. Bigger than that, they have to split into two. Towns elect delegates to a, oh, let’s call it a House of Delegates. With an automatic setup for admitting new Townships. We can put in a formula for how many delegates per voter, say a percentage of the total so the ratio automatically goes up as the number of voters increases. That way the House would always be a manageable size.”

“Okay,” Macy said cautiously. “I can see that. But changes in the constitution should still be referred back to the Meetings. And the Meetings ought to be able to recall their delegates, too.”

“How about a two-thirds majority in two-thirds of the Meetings to approve a change the delegates propose?” Ian said.

“Okay. I can go with that. We need a way for ordinary people to propose changes too . . . say, the same two-thirds and two-thirds voting on a petition, what do they call it—”

“Voter initiative, we called . . . will call . . . would have called it out in California,” Ian said. “Damn, those tenses trip you up. We could use the same formula for a recall.”

Macy nodded. There was a group that generally followed his lead; they gestured agreement as well.

“All
right,
” Cofflin said, trying hard to keep the sarcasm out of his voice. “All in favor?”

Hands went up along the table. He ruled a line through that item on the list before him. His stomach rumbled complainingly; dinner was being long delayed. The smells coming from the kitchen didn’t help.

“Next, the military,” he said. “I move we use the Swiss system, suitably modified.”

Martha frowned. “Does that really need to go into the
constitution,
dear?” she said. “Couldn’t we just say where the warmaking power lies and then leave the details to the laws?”

“Ayup, the basics do need to go in, I think. How’s this? Everyone registers at eighteen, serves the equivalent of Basic, and does periodic training after that. Meeting—or this House of Delegates, later—has to approve any prolonged call-up, or sending the . . . hell, let’s call it the Militia abroad. Details beyond that by legislation.”

“I’m for it, Jared,” Macy said.

Cofflin looked down the table to Marian Alston.

She nodded. “Sound, as our basic defense. We’ll need the Guard for operations abroad, ships and landing parties and so forth. I think that should be at the chief’s discretion, with the Meeting as an overall check. We can’t be too centralized, particularly with communications so slow.”

“All in favor?” He glanced around. “Passed by acclamation. All right, next item, the Declaration of Rights. Let’s see, we got the first seven down last session—religion, speech, assembly, franchise, property, privacy, fair and speedy trial by jury.”

“What about bearing arms?” Macy said.

“Sam, that comes under ‘military service’ up the list, in case you hadn’t noticed. Everyone’s in the militia and they keep the personal weapons issued ’em at home, unless convicted of a felony. Satisfied?”

“I suppose,” he grumbled. After a moment: “Ayup, Jared, that about covers it.”

“Good. All right, there’s a short codicil after all of ’em, to make what we mean clear. Like this bit about the freedom of religion not meaning the town can’t put up a creche at Christmas, the speech not including fornicating in the streets, assembly not including rioting, property subject to legal usage, and trial not meaning damnfool stuff like throwing anyone who knows anything off a jury, things like that.”

Joseph Starbuck held up a page, his glasses at the end of his nose. “Phrasing here’s a bit more elegant than that, Jared,” he said dryly.

“Blame Martha.” That brought chuckles. “And Father Gomez, he did most of the religion codicil.”

“Good,” someone farther down the table said. “For a moment there, I was afraid we had a lawyer on the committee.”

There was another chuckle at that. “We’re ahead of the Philadelphia Convention there, at least,” a man said. He’d been a candy-maker before the Event, and still did amazing things with honey and maple sugar now that his chocolate truffles were merely a sadly happy memory. “They were lousy with lawyers.”

“All in favor?” Jared asked. “Passed by acclamation. Next item, the everybody-means-everybody-no-exceptions part of the Declaration of Rights. No abridging citizens’ rights on the grounds of race, religion, origin, gender, or sexual orientation. The codicil covers things for damn fools again, in case we get many down the road. We didn’t put in anything for green-eyed dwarves with two heads, on the assumption you can’t cover all the angles.”

“Excuse me, Chief.” He looked down the table; it was Lisa Gerrard.
Might have known.

“Yes, Lisa?” He tried to keep the coldness out of his voice. Gerrard wasn’t a
bad
person, exactly. She did good work on the School Committee, though the closest she came to children of her own was seven cats.
Just can’t keep her mouth from flapping when she hears certain words. What was that Russian doctor . . . Pavlov?

“Why do we need to include, um, sexual orientation? Isn’t that special rights for some and not others? Those people are covered by the general rights, aren’t they?”

Alston touched him on the arm, and he nodded to her. She leaned forward, looking coolly down the stretch of mahogany. “As one of
those people,
Ms. Gerrard—three times over, black, gay, and female—it’s my experience that we’re not covered by general provisions unless it’s made quite plain. Which is why, fo’ example, I lost custody of my children, in fact couldn’t even
ask
for it. Accordingly I’m for that provision. Strongly. Very strongly.”

“All in favor?” Hands went up; close enough this time that he had to count. “Abstentions? Opposed? Passed.”

He made a mental note to start talking people around.
About sixty-forty.
If it was that close, it might not pass the Meeting without some work—mainly on getting people to attend; the constitution was being passed in chunks, and not everyone bothered to attend every session, so a small band of enthusiasts could be disproportionately influential if he didn’t watch out.
Maybe we should make voting compulsory, like the Aussies did?
Ian Arnstein had brought that up a couple of sessions ago.
On the other hand, no.
People too damned lazy to vote didn’t deserve a say. He’d pass the word to Sandy Rapczewicz, and she’d see that the Guard people showed up en masse; most of them would vote for legally protecting cream-cheese three-way llama bondage if they knew Captain Alston favored it, but Marian’d never dream of using her position to influence the turnout. Cofflin had no such inhibitions, and neither did the XO.
Hmm.
Father Gomez, he’d noticed, abstained—which might mean either . . .

Christ, I hate politics.
Even when you were doing the right thing it could make you feel like you had rancid oil on your soul.

“And that’s the last item on tonight’s agenda. The minutes’ ll be posted at the Hub and the Athenaeum as usual, copies of the proposed articles in the Warrant, and we’ll all vote on this chunk next Meeting. Thanks, people.”

“What my husband means is that he’s ready for dinner and would all those who aren’t eating here please leave,” Martha said.

Cofflin’s stomach rumbled again in counterpoint, which brought a general laugh. He stood at the door, shaking hands as people opened their umbrellas and Martha helped them find their coats. The chill night air crept in, raw with the fog and rain.

The door closed finally, leaving only himself, Martha, Alston, and the Fiernan; the Arnsteins were going to settle for sandwiches at a meeting of their chess club. Cofflin winced slightly; he’d taken on Ian in a friendly game once, and it had lasted a whole six moves. Doreen beat him in three. Doc Coleman could give either of them a run for their money, though, and the game had become quite popular over the winter. The four remaining looked at each other and sighed, then a thin wail came from upstairs.

“Our overlord’s voice,” Martha said resignedly. “Now if only I could learn to tell the ‘I’m hungry’ cry from the ‘I need to be changed’ cry. Or the ‘Pay attention to me’ subvariety.”

“I come too,” Swindapa said eagerly, joining the older woman on the stairs.

Cofflin smiled to himself; according to Martha, the Fiernan thought cloth diapers were the greatest invention since matches.

“Better you than me, Martha,” Alston said. “
I’m
going to check the roast. Lordy, how some of those people love to hear themselves talk.”

He busied himself clearing and setting the table, taking out the middle leaves that had extended it for the committee meeting and rummaging in the sideboy for the plates and cutlery. The carving knife and sharpening steel rasped together; the pigs the
Eagle
had brought back from Britain last spring had thrived—there were nearly a thousand of them now—but you couldn’t say they were tender eating. Flavorful, yes. Tender, no. Then he uncorked a bottle of the island’s red wine, which Martha told him needed to be done to let the stuff breathe.
I can’t tell the difference, myself.

“Drink?” Cofflin said, when Alston came back.

“Wouldn’t say no,” Alston replied. “The roast’s standing. Ready to carve in about five minutes.”

“Thanks for making the time to attend these meetings. It’s pretty dull stuff,” Cofflin said, handing her a bourbon-and-water. This was her sixth committee meeting, but the first time she’d spoken more than a few words.

“No, I wouldn’t say dull,” she said, her voice remote as she sipped at the drink and bared her teeth at the bite. “Interestin’, more like. Seeing history up close.” She paused for a moment and then went on: “You know, before . . . all this, I’d never met many Yankees. The real thing, I mean, not just people who live no’th of Mason and Dixon’s line.”

The silence stretched. They leaned back in their chairs, looking into the low blue-red flicker of the heartwood coals. At last he looked over at her. “Penny for ’em,” he said.

She turned and looked into his eyes. “Jared, I love this place.”

Cofflin blinked surprise; that was a bit effusive, for her. “Well . . . thanks.”

“No, I mean it.” Her voice was still remote and calm, but there was a flat intensity of purpose in it. “I was in the Guard a long time, since I turned eighteen, a lot of it down in the Gulf. DEA liaison shit, Columbians, refugees . . . when we weren’t pulling drunken speedboaters out from under after a three-day lovefest with the eels and crabs. Staring up the ass end of the world.”

“I was a cop too . . . well, ayup, you’ve got a point. I was a small-town cop, here.”

“Still and all, I started out thinking I was doin’ something worthwhile for the country, you know? And that meant a lot to me, because the country did—does, for that matter, or I wouldn’t have kept wearin’ the uniform. . . . After a while, I got convinced I was standing at the bottom of the sewer drain, tryin’ to push the flow back up with a plumber’s helper. A while more, and I got to thinkin’ the whole country had flushed itself right down that drain and we were just waiting to hit the septic tank. Got posted to
Eagle,
training duty, and sometimes at night I’d think . . . am I just giving these kids a shuck-and-jive?”

They sat listening to the crackle and soft popping sounds from the hearth, and the rippling tap of rain on the windows.

“Here . . .” she said.

“Here . . .” Cofflin went on. “No gangbangers, no Wall Street downsizers, no nutcases on a mission from God, no ‘national media,’ no redneck black-helicopter paranoids, no multi-cultis, no animal rights lunatics—not anymore, thanks to the Jaguar God—no trial lawyers, no Beltway crowd with their collective head so far up their butts they’re looking at their tonsils from the rear. Our own share of natural-born damn fools as Martha likes to call ’em, but they’re nothing by comparison.”

She raised her glass. “Exactly, my friend. Exactly.” The full lips quirked in a wry smile. “No
damnosa hereditas
like the foundin’ fathers had on their backs, either. Tom Jefferson talked about havin’ the wolf by the ears, but hell, the wolfs ears get mighty sore too. Here we don’t have all that.”

Slowly, he said: “That’s why you finally gave in and started coming to these committee meetings?”