In support of this Declaration we, the duly elected and appointed representatives of Sanctuary, mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortune, and our sacred honor.
The newsgrid facsimile bore fourteen signatures, led by a large, scrawled Jennifer Fatima Sharifi. Jennifer’s usual handwriting, Leisha remembered, was small and neat.
Stella said, “They did it. They really did it.”
Jordan said, “Leisha—what will happen now?”
“The IRS will wait for the nonpayment of the January 15 taxes. When it doesn’t come, they’ll attach a jeopardy assessment to Sanctuary. That means they’ll have the right to physically seize the material assets to hold as protection against getting their money.”
“Physically seize Sanctuary? Without even a hearing or something?”
“Jeopardy assessment puts the seizure first, the hearing second. That’s probably why Jennifer chose this course of action. Everybody will have to move very fast. Half of Congress is away for the holidays.” Leisha noted how detached she sounded, how calm. How amazing.
Stella said, “But seizing Sanctuary—how, Leisha? With the army? An assault?”
Jordan said, “They could blow it out of the sky with a single Truth missile.”
“But they won’t,” Stella argued, “because that would just destroy the property the IRS is trying to seize. It’ll have to be a…an invasion. But that would be just as hard on Sanctuary—orbital environments are fragile. Leisha, what the hell is Jennifer thinking of?”
“I don’t know,” Leisha said. “Look at the signatures. Richard Anthony Keller Sharifi, Najla Sharifi Johnson, Hermione Wells Keller—Richard’s children have married. I don’t think Richard knows that.”
Stella and Jordan looked at each other. “Leisha,” Stella said in her acerbic way, “doesn’t it seem to you this is more than a matter of family news? It’s a civil war! Jennifer has finally succeeded in separating virtually all the Sleepless from the rest of the country, from the mainstream of American society—”
“And are you going to tell me,” Leisha asked, smiling without amusement, “that the twelve of us sitting out here in this forgotten compound in the desert haven’t done exactly the same thing?”
Neither of the others answered her.
“Do you think,” Stella said finally, “that Sanctuary is a match for the United States?”
“I don’t know,” Leisha said, and Stella and Jordan stared at each other, aghast. “I’m not the right person to ask. I’ve never once, in my entire life, been right about Jennifer Sharifi.”
“But, Leisha—”
“I’m going down to the creek,” Leisha said. “Call me if we go to war.”
She left Stella and Jordan staring at each other, bewildered and angry at her, unable to see the distinction between criminal indifference and what, to Leisha, was even worse: criminal uselessness.
The United States congress, from the first, took Sanctuary’s secession threat seriously. This was Sleepless. Senators and congressmen who had scattered to their constituencies for the winter holidays hastily reassembled in Washington. President Calvin John Meyerhoff, a big slow-moving man dubbed in the newsgrids “Silent Cal II,” nonetheless possessed a sharp brain, finely tuned to foreign policy. If it struck Meyerhoff as ironic that the major foreign crisis of his waning first term involved a section of the United States technically part of Cattaraugus County, New York, the irony was not present in any of the press releases from the Oval Office.
The Liver newsgrids, however, saw the Sanctuary threat as hysterically funny, raw material for the two-minute comedy sketches that were the favorite form of entertainment. Few Livers had ever dealt with, heard of, or known any Sleepless, whose dealings were with the donkey class that ran the businesses that ran the country. A Liver newsgrid gleefully made the prediction: “Next to Secede—Oregon! Inside story!” The sketch was dramatized with holoactors with taped-up eyelids standing in downtown Portland and ranting that it was necessary for Oregon people “to dissolve the political bands that connect them with another people.” FREE OREGON banners suddenly appeared at scooter races, at brainie parties, at the free dance palaces. A racer named Kimberly Sands won the Belmont Winter Race in a scooter painted with the Oregon flag superimposed over the United States flag.
On January 3, the White House issued a statement that Sanctuary had in effect made a statement of both sedition and terrorism, declaring its “power to levy war” while conspiring to overthrow the United States government as it pertained to a section of New York State. Neither terrorism nor sedition could be tolerated in a free democracy. The National Guard was put on alert. Sanctuary was told, in a statement released to the press as well, that on January 10 a delegation consisting of members from both the State Department and the IRS—a coupling seldom seen before in American diplomacy—would dock at Sanctuary “for discussion of the situation.”
Sanctuary replied that if any shuttle or other space-going vessel approached the orbital, Sanctuary would open fire.
Congress met in emergency session. The IRS levied a jeopardy assessment against all assets held by Sanctuary, Inc., and its principal shareholders, the Sharifi family. The tabloid newsgrids, more interested in drama than in federal tax procedure, whooped that the IRS would sell Sanctuary at an auction to pay the taxes and penalty: “Anybody want to buy a used shuttle? A slightly dented orbital panel? Oregon?” WBRN, “the Brainie Channel,” held a mock auction in which Oregon was won by a couple in Monterey, California, who announced that Crater Lake National Park wished to secede from Oregon.
On January 8, two days before Sanctuary was to receive the federal delegation, the New York Times, Newsgrid Division, in conjunction with its venerable donkey newspaper, offered an editorial called “Why Keep Oregon?” The newsgrid version was spoken on all six daily holobroadcasts by the leading anchorman; the hard-copy version was centered, alone, on the editorial page.
WHY KEEP OREGON?
In the past week the country has been offered both a serious secession threat by Sanctuary, stronghold of American Sleepless, and a sideshow by the so-called tabloid newsgrids. Sideshows can, depending on your taste, be amusing, vulgar, demeaning, or trivial. This one, however, centering as it does on the lighthearted “Free Oregon” movement, actually serves a useful purpose in aiding understanding of the nature of the threat from Sanctuary.
Suppose it were Oregon that was trying to secede from the union? Suppose further that a thoughtful, objective person—assuming there are any left in the general Liver hoopla—wished to set forth genuine, thoughtful arguments against Oregon’s right to do so. What might those arguments be?
The first point to note is that such arguments must start from a parallel with the American Revolution, not the Civil War, in which eleven Confederate States tried to depart the union. Indeed, in all the fun that irresponsible newsgrids are having with this issue, we don’t remember hearing one reference to Fort Sumter or Jeff Davis. The parallel with the Revolution is implied in the borrowed language of Sanctuary’s so-called Declaration of Independence. Clearly, Sanctuary considers itself as much an oppressed colony as did the original thirteen American colonies, and a thoughtful rebuttal to the Sanctuary document must start with an examination of that parallel.