“But those are all good things, them!”
“Yes. But they all different things, them. Different from most folks. And most folks don’t like too much different. It makes them uneasy, them. Don’t you listen on the talk channels in the county, you?”
Lizzie didn’t. She had too many more important, more interesting deebees to explore, without listening to the endless intertribe gossip and rumors and tiny plans on local comlinks. Somebody said, them, that a friend heard on a donkey channel in New York that some folks in Baltimore got a scooter track powered up and running… Then if you’re from Glen’s Falls, you, do you know my second cousin Pamela Cantrell, she’s oh five foot six with… We got a feeding ground, us, big enough for…
“People talk, them,” Billy said. “And even with the Change, people don’t trust ideas and plans that feel too different from what they’re used to. Maybe because of the Change. We already had so much new, us. And here you come with another new idea, maybe a dangerous idea, if you get donkeys mad at you. If different-type folks like me are running for public servant, too—well, everybody’s gonna be so uneasy, them, they won’t vote for me.”
“But—”
“Besides,” Billy went on in his gentle voice, “we’re the family, us, who got Miranda arrested by the Genetic Standards Enforcement Agency, even if we didn’t mean to and even if they let her go, them. Miranda Sharifi. No, Lizzie, dear heart, ain’t nobody gonna vote in a donkey election for me. Or Annie or you or Vicki. Nobody, them.”
“Then who?” Lizzie cried. “Who would they vote for, them?”
“Somebody that ain’t too unfamiliar.” Billy stood. “Somebody who used to be a mayor, maybe. Livers are used to a mayor, them, being sort of part of the government.”
This was true. Lizzie considered. The mayors of the Liver towns—when there’d been settled towns—had always been Livers talking donkey. They’d been the ones to talk on the comlinks, back when each town only had one, before the Change Wars. The mayor had been laughed at and teased for working like a donkey when everybody else just enjoyed themselves, even though mayors then hadn’t worked as hard as everybody did now. Still, the mayor had been considered son of dumb to do it at all; a real aristo Liver didn’t serve—they were served. By donkeys. Or so everyone Lizzie knew had thought then.
But a mayor was a familiar person to negotiate with donkeys. To report something broken, to present voter demands to newly elected public servants, to send for police or game wardens or techs when they’d been needed. Maybe Billy was right. Maybe Willoughby County Livers would be more likely to vote for somebody who used to be a mayor. But would a mayor agree to run for election?
“You know any leftover mayors, Billy? Our tribe doesn’t have any, us.”
Billy smiled down at Lizzie, still sitting on the log. “Yes, we do, us. Don’t you know? That’s what comes of dipping all your fancy data instead of talking to people.”
A little flame warmed Lizzie. Billy was proud of her ability to datadip. Billy had always been proud of her, even when she’d been a little girl piecing together broken ’bots, trying to learn without any real system.
“Who’s a mayor, Billy?”
“Who was a mayor.”
“Okay—who was a mayor, them?”
“Shockey,” Billy said, and Lizzie felt her mouth open into a round “O.” Billy smiled. “Ain’t it surprising what people, them, turn up in what places? That’s the biggest thing the Change taught me, dear heart. The biggest thing. We just don’t ever know, us. Hardly nothing.”
“It’s not at all surprising,” Vicki said. “Here, take Dirk, he wants to nurse.”
Lizzie took the baby. The familiar warmth ran through her at just getting her arms around him. She scrunched into a sitting position against the foamcast wall of her cubicle and opened the shirt of her marigold jacks. Dirk’s hungry little mouth fastened onto her nipple like a heat-seeking missile. The thrill, half mommy and half sexy, ran through her body, from nipple to belly to crotch. Lizzie was still a little ashamed of that thrill—it didn’t seem right to get heated up from her own baby! But it happened every time, and she finally settled for just keeping the feeling to herself. But it increased her irritation with Vicki, sitting there beside Lizzie on Lizzie’s pallet, looking like she knew everything. Vicki had never birthed and nursed a baby.
Lizzie said, “Well, I was surprised, and so was Billy. Shockey! He just doesn’t seem like the kind of person who’d been a mayor anyplace.”
Vicki smiled. “What kind of person do you think goes into politics?”
“Somebody like Jack Sawicki was. Interested in helping his village, and not caring if people made fun of him sometimes. Shockey gets mad if you tease him even a little, and I don’t think he ever wanted to help other people in his life.”
Vicki said innocently, “Is that why you’re backing this daring political venture? Because you have a burning desire to help other tribes in Willoughby County?”
“Of course I—” Lizzie began, and stopped. Vicki smiled again.
“Lizzie, honey, the people who go into politics are ninety-nine percent exactly like Shockey. They want personal gain, and they want power, and they want to make the world wag their way. Just as you want warehouse goods and power over tax money for yourself and your tribe. The only difference between—”
“But I don’t want it for myself! I want it for Dirk and Billy and Mama and—”
“Really? If Billy and Annie went south tomorrow, and if the ever-beneficent Jackson Aranow hand-delivered any goods you wanted to you, and also set up a credit account in Dirk’s citizenship number, would you just drop this kingmaker scheme entirely? Hmmmm?”
Lizzie said nothing.
“I didn’t think so. There’s nothing wrong with that, Lizzie—with looking out for your own self-interest. As long as that’s not all you’re looking out for. Someone I once knew told me—”
Here we go again, Lizzie thought. She shifted Dirk, sucking greedily, to a more comfortable position.
“—that there were five states that any human relationship could exist in. Any relationship—an international treaty conference, a marriage, a police department, whatever. Only five possible states. One, healthy negotiation from a basically allied position. Two, complete detachment, without any mutual-aid pacts or significant interaction. Three, dominance-and-dependence, like the Livers used to be with the donkeys. Four, covert struggle for dominance, without much outbreak of actual fighting. Or, five, actual war. As long as you try to stay within the election laws, you’re in a covert struggle for your own interests. Nothing wrong with that. But so is Shockey, only more crudely than most politicians. I’ll bet he was only mayor of his old town briefly, wasn’t he?”
“I don’t know.”
“Bet on it. As John Locke once pontificated—”
“Isn’t there anything you don’t think you already know, you!”
Vicki looked at her. Lizzie dropped her eyes to the baby, then raised them angrily to Vicki. Well, it was true. Vicki was always telling her things Like Vicki knew everything and Lizzie was some kind of datadumb… Liver.
“Actually,” Vicki said quietly, “I hardly know anything, which is peculiarly startling when you consider that just a few years ago I thought I understood it all.”