He got significant applause. Jemma stuck her hands in her pockets and glared at him.
Ishmael spoke last. “You all know what I think about this. We’ve talked about it together, more or less.” He looked out into the audience. “Right, Bob? Right, Martha? Right, Alan?” His eyes traveled slowly around the room, and he named thirty or forty of the spectators around the stage, plus a smattering of those who were watching from the first, second, and even the third floors. “Basically, I think everybody’s right. Everybody’s got a part of it. I can’t tell you what I did, what part I played in getting us this big screwing, because I can’t remember. Hell, maybe it’s all my fault, and only mine. Sometimes when I’m angry I wonder if it’s me I’m most angry at, and I look in the mirror sometimes and say, You bastard. But there are things for us to atone for, and to reflect on, and it’s all up to you, that’s true. Nothing is going to happen, no matter how much we stand up here and blab, unless you want it to. And we are a community, I believe that, and feel like a part of it, though I never did much, before, except fetch blankets and change diapers, not knowing what I was good for.
“But there’s something else, there’s something more. I think that we’ve already become something more than just a community. Look around you — this is a family, isn’t it? It’s a very strange family, I’ll admit, but aren’t all families strange? I don’t remember my own family. Maybe that’s why I noticed this. I didn’t have one to miss, or be sad about in the same way as everybody else. But I bet they were strange. I look at myself in the mirror and try to imagine them all around me. Sometimes it’s easy to do and sometimes it’s hard, and they’re different every time. I know some of you do the same, look in the mirror for them or look for them elsewhere.
“I’ll say it again, though. Look around you, at all these adults and the children in their care. So, in a month we’ll be a better family, I think. And in two months we’ll be even better. And in three months we’ll be better in ways we can’t even imagine, in ways that will make all the troubles of the old world seem so small and remote that you’ll all be like me. You will not even remember them.”
Jemma and Rob spent the rest of the evening trying to calm and distract Vivian, who immediately after the debate entered a tizzy which grew more intense as the time to vote, and the wait for the count, drew near.
“I think everybody’s right,” she said, not succeeding very well in imitating Ishmael’s goofy baritone. “But they’re all morons, too.”
“I don’t think he called anybody a moron,” said Jemma. They were in Jemma’s classroom, sitting at the table before a feast of untouched treats. Vivian was too nervous to eat.
“Not in so many words,” Vivian said. “That’s his special gift. He never said moron, but everybody left with ’morons!’ ringing in their heads.”
“You did better than he did,” Jemma said, again. Rob came in with more food.
“Family,” she said. “Who wants to be a family? Like that ever worked before. Shouldn’t we try to be something better than a family?”
“Have a piece of cheesecake,” said Rob.
“I don’t want cheesecake,” Vivian said sharply. “I want to crush him.” Jemma sighed. Rob peeled the paper off a cupcake. A cloud of tiny silver sardines swam by, seeming to disappear as they passed through the bars of darkness between windows. They were circling the hospital, and had been passing by every fifteen minutes the whole time Jemma and Vivian had been in the room.
It was almost ten p.m. The polls had closed at nine, and now volunteers were carefully counting the votes from out of the boxes. There were stations on every floor except the ninth, but most people had voted in the lobby. Jemma and Rob had stood in line for an hour before they were handed their ballots. They were just rectangles of stiff paper, printed with offices and names to select by filling in bubbles, and a space to write in a candidate if the person you wanted wasn’t listed. Jemma thought of all the names she could write in: Bugs Bunny, Eloise, Papa Smurf, any of whom might very well prove to be a capable leader. For the sake of fun she was very much tempted to do it, but if Vivian lost by a single vote she knew she’d have to confess what she did, and never be forgiven. She voted Vivian for Universal Friend, and chose somewhat at random for the Council members, having a hard time remembering what they had said in their speeches and debates, and if she had cared about anything she’d heard.
“What time is it?” Vivian asked. Rob told her.
“The counting is slow,” Jemma reminded her.
“Too slow,” she said. “We should have used the computer.” But there were too many people who didn’t trust the computer to count correctly, or who thought that the angel might pick a favorite to win regardless of the vote count, or who merely wanted to create as much fuss and bustle as possible around the event of voting.
“Would you like to watch a movie?” Jemma asked. Films about First Ladies were very popular that week. Rob had borrowed a couple of non-pornographic titles from Dr. Chandra: Hillary vs. Mothra and Nancy and Martha: A Love Beyond Time.
“No. I want to drug myself to sleep and wake up in the morning. I feel like I’m waiting for my board scores. Remember that?” Vivian had hardly slept at all during the last week of waiting for the small gray envelope to arrive.
“I remember,” Jemma said. “I’m nervous, too. We all are, right?”
“Right,” Rob said. He had sliced up his cupcake and laid it out on top of a piece of cheesecake, and was just about to cut into this new thing with his fork. “Everybody knows I eat when I’m nervous.”
“That’s disgusting,” Vivian said, but it actually looked rather appetizing to Jemma. She’d had no nausea since she’d seen the crab earlier, and was quite hungry now. She wasn’t actually nervous, either. She’d only said that to express solidarity with her friend. In fact, all day, ever since she’d seen the crab, she’d been in a fine mood. It was the fish, she was sure, that were making her happy, and she thought her good mood would persist even if Vivian lost the election. The crab had brought tidings so glad that there was nothing that could make Jemma sad that night.
The message was secret, and just for her. She read it without knowing it, and only became aware she had received the news hours after the ugly creature had dropped off the glass and drifted back into the deep black water underneath the hospital. It was as if the crab had announced in her a confirmation of everything she’d been so tepidly suspecting in the past weeks, that they were indeed floating in anticipation of a new world, and that she herself may anticipate it also. Her old fears finally seemed unreasonable to her, and she wondered, all day long, why she would not marry Rob Dickens.
“Oh, give me a cupcake, dammit,” said Vivian. “And somebody tell me a story. “
“Have you heard about the coprophile of Seven East?” Rob asked. Didn’t Jemma love him enough to marry him? Certainly she did. She loved him too much to marry him, too much to have another light hit him in the head, or have an asteroid come out of the sky to crush him, or to hit him in the face with a meat tenderizer, or establish with him such a miserable institution as a marriage. What use was there for it anyway, now?
“You mean Maggie?” Vivian asked.
“No, a real one. A pair, actually.” Vivian hadn’t heard. But surely there was no danger in it now. That was what the crab had said to her. I am here, you are floating not in a sea of death, but a sea of plenty. Everything is new. “I heard it from Jordan Sasscock,” Rob said.