And Miranda hadn’t told me.
“Are you hungry, you?” Joncey said. He spoke to Abigail, now dressed in green jacks, but Hubbley answered.
“Hail, yes. Let’s have at it, boys.”
He pushed my chair himself. I let him, passive, feeling the shapes in my mind hard as carbon-fiber rods. We all went down the left-hand tunnel, passing several closed doors. Eventually everyone else went through one door, Hubbley and I through another. A small white room was furnished with wood — not plas-tisynth — table and chairs. On the wall hung a large holo portrait of a big-nosed, dark-eyed soldier in some sort of antique uniform.
“Brigadier General Francis Marion himself,” Hubbley said, with satisfaction. “I always eat separate from the troops, Mr. Arlen. It makes for better morale. Did y’all know, sir, that General Marion was a fanatic on cleanliness? God’s own truth. He dry-shaved any soldier who didn’t appear neat and clean on parade, and he himself drank vinegar and water every day of his life, pretty near, for his health. Drink of the Roman soldiers. Did you know that, sir?”
“I didn’t know that,” I said. My hatred for him burned cold, sleek shapes in my mind. The room held no terminal.
“As early as 1775 one British general wrote, ‘Our army will be destroyed by damned driblets’ — and Francis Marion was the damndest driblet those poor redcoats ever saw. Just like this war will be won by damned driblets, sir.” Hubbley laughed, exposing his brown teeth. His pale eyes crinkled. He never took them off me.
“Will and idea, son. We got them both. Will and idea. You know what makes the Constitution so great?”
“No,” I said. A young boy entered, dressed in turquoise jacks, his long hair tied back with a ribbon. He carried bowls of hot stew. Hubbley paid him as much attention as a ’bot.
“What makes the Constitution so great is it brought the common man into the decision-making process. It let us decide what kind of country we want. Us, the common man. Our will, and our idea.”
Leisha had always said that what made the Constitution so great was its checks and balances.
She was dead. She was really dead.
“That’s why, sir,” Hubbley continued, “it’s so all-fired necessary that we take back this great country from the donkey masters who would enslave us. By driblets, if necessary. Yes, by God, by driblets.” He attacked his stew with gusto.
“In fact, preferably by driblets,” I said. “You wouldn’t like this war nearly as much if you fought it aboveground, in the courts.”
I had expected to make him angry. Instead he laid down his spoon and squinted thoughtfully.
“Yes, I do believe y’all are right, Mr. Arlen. I do believe y’all are right. We each have our God-given temperament, and mine is for fighting in driblets. Just like General Marion. Now, that’s a real interesting insight.” He went back to spooning stew.
I tasted mine. Standard Liver soy base, but with chunks of real meat added, gamy and a little tough. Squirrel? Rabbit? It had been decades since I’d had to eat either.
“Not that the Constitution don’t have its own limits,” Hubbley continued. “Now y’all take Abigail and Joncey. They understand exactly what those limits need to be. They’re manipulatin’ gene combinations in the right way: through human procreation.” He dragged out the last two words, savoring each syllable. “Some of Joncey’s genes, some of Abby’s, and the final shuffle in God’s hands. They respect the clear line in the Constitution between what is God’s and what is man’s to manipulate.”
I needed to know everything I could about him, no matter how nutty, because I didn’t know yet what I would need to kill him. “Where in the Constitution does it draw that line?”
“Ah, son, don’t they teach you nothin’ in them fancy schools? It oughtn’t be allowed, no, it ought not. Why, right there in the Preamble, it announces clear as daylight that ‘We the People’ are writin’ the thing ‘in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence,’ and et cetera. What’s a perfect union about letting donkeys control the human genome? It just drives people farther apart. What’s Justice about not letting Joncey and Abby’s babe start life on an equal footin’ with a donkey child? How does that make for domestic tranquility? Hail, it makes for envy and resentment, that’s what it makes for. And what on God’s green earth is the ‘common defence’ if it ain’t the defence of the common people, the Livers, to have their kids count just as much as a genemod babe? Abby and Joncey are fightin’ for their own, just like natural parents everywhere, and the Constitution gives ’em the right to do that right there in its first sacred paragraph.”
I had never heard anyone use the word ‘babe’ before. He sat there spooning his wretched stew, Jimmy Hubbley, as artificial and as sincere as anyone I had ever met.
Intellectual arguments confuse me. They always have. I felt the helpless feeling rise in me, the one I’d always had arguing with Leisha, with Miranda, with Jonathan and Terry and Christy. The best I could answer, out of confusion and hatred, was, “What gives you the right to decide what’s right for 175 million people?”
He squinted at me again. His apologetic voice returned. “Why, son — ain’t that what your Huevos Verdes was doin’?”
I stared at him.
“Sure it is. Only they cain’t decide for common people, ’cause they ain’t. Clearly. Not like us. Not like him.” He waved his spoon at the portrait of Francis Marion. Stew dribbled off the spoon onto the table.
“But—”
“Y’all need to examine your premises, son,” he said very gently. “Will and idea.” He went back to eating.
The boy returned, carrying two mugs. Still-brewed whiskey. I left mine untouched, but I made myself eat the stew. I might need my strength. Hatred shone in me like suns.
Hubbley talked more about Francis Marion. His courage, his military strategy, his ways of living off the land. “Why, he wrote to General Horatio Gates to send him supplies because ‘we are all poor Continentals without money.’ Poor Continentals! Ain’t that a great one? Poor Continentals! And so we are.” He drained his whiskey. So much for vinegar and water.
I choked out, “The GSEA will stop you. Or Huevos Verdes will.”
He grinned. “You know what the Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton of His Majesty’s army said about Francis Marion? But as for this damned old fox, the Devil himself could not catch him.”
I said, “Hubbley — you aren’t Francis Marion.”
Immediately he grew serious. “Well, of course not, son. Anybody can see that, so clear it don’t hardly need commentin’ on, does it, except by somebody crazy. Clear as day I’m not Francis Marion. I’m Jimmy Hubbley. What’s wrong with you, Mr. Arlen? You feelin’ all right?”
He leaned across the table, his bony face creased with concern.
I could feel my heart thud in my chest. He was impenetrable, as impenetrable as Huevos Verdes. After a moment he patted my arm.
“That’s all right, Mr. Arlen, sir, y’all just a little shocked by events is all. Y’all will be fine in the mornin’. It’s just real upsettin’, discoverin’ the truth after all this time of believin’ falsehoods. Perfectly natural. Now don’t you worry none; y’all be fine in the mornin’. You just sleep, and please excuse me, I got a council of war to attend to.”
He patted my arm again, smiled, and left. The boy wheeled my chair to a bedroom with a single bed, a chemical toilet, and a deadbolt on the door that could only be unlocked from the outside.
In the morning the doctor came to check me. He turned out to be the small man who had helped Joncey at the landing stage.