communists will be like?”
“Communists? Like people in the commune?”
“What would you call them, then?”
“Earthers. Most of them. Not sure what they call themselves.”
“You’ve never been up there?”
“God, no. It’s at the other end of the state. Long way to go for fresh vegetables. Wish I had, now.”
“Yeah; we don’t really know what to expect.”
Dustin put down his book. “Quietly crazy. That’s what I expect. Who knows, though, after seventy years.”
“Noisy and crazy,” Card said. “Trigger-happy hillbillies. That’s a cube cliché.”
That was interesting. “With a basis in fact?”
“Not Fruit Farm specifically. Back around the turn of the century, 2100, some communes in the East got together and raised some hell. They tried to secede from the United States, piecemeal. They were followers of that guy . . .”
“Lazlo Motkin,” Alba said.
“Yeah. They had a regular little war.”
“They weren’t even one geographical area,” Alba said. “Spread out over three or four states. They claimed there was an ‘existential border’ between them and us.”
“They had lawyers to prove it?”
“Lawyers and guns,” Card said. “What more do you need?”
“Anything come of it?” I asked.
Card shook his head. “All over in a couple of months. Some people jailed, some leaders executed. Lazlo Motkin himself died in a military action.”
“Which was embarrassing to America,” Alba said. “He was running for president at the time. He was just a rich crackpot until he died. Then he became a symbol of government oppression.”
I had a vague memory of him sending us a loony message on the starship. If we were good Americans, we would do a kamikaze strike on the Others’ home world.
“We ought to start out assuming they are nice rational people,” Elza said, “who have some nineteenth-century ideas about things like electricity.”
“Wonder if they’ll have power after Wednesday,” Alba said. “The only people in the whole country?”
“Not if the Others do the same thing as before,” Dustin said. “Everything stopped working, even batteries. Stuff like hydroelectric power and wind machines. Kept turning around, but without making any juice.
“The question is whether living with this archaic technology makes the Fruit Farmers better equipped for dealing with the brave new world that’s coming. We’re assuming so, but you can argue that their technological primitivism is only skin-deep. They’ve had electricity all along—home-made, but what’s the difference?”
Namir had gone to the head in back of the plane, and he emerged with a bottle of whisky and a stack of cups. “Let’s drink to NASA and their legendary foresight.”
I had a small glass of the stuff, smoky and smooth, and before I finished it, a curtain of fatigue fell over me like a sedative. I walked unsteadily back to my seat, reclined it, and was asleep before my head hit the plastic pillow.
9
I woke suddenly when the plane’s engine throttled down, and we banked sharply. I raised the curtain on my window and saw that we were angling down over some heavily forested hilly land. There was a small, meandering river.
“Should be only a few miles,” Paul said, his amplified voice flat and crackling. “I’m going down low and dead slow, and will cut the engine as we glide over the commune. Your flatscreens should be showing what’s directly under us.” I reached forward and tapped the screen on the back of the seat in front of me. Treetops rolled by underneath, slowly growing larger as we dropped.
They must hear us coming. Were people running for cover? Running to man the anti-aircraft lasers?
“They won’t have lasers.” Namir was reading my mind. “A shotgun could do some damage, though.”
“Why no lasers?”
“They could. But they aren’t getting megawatts out of twentieth-century solar cells and wind machines.”
The forest abruptly stopped, replaced by squares of
“Communists? Like people in the commune?”
“What would you call them, then?”
“Earthers. Most of them. Not sure what they call themselves.”
“You’ve never been up there?”
“God, no. It’s at the other end of the state. Long way to go for fresh vegetables. Wish I had, now.”
“Yeah; we don’t really know what to expect.”
Dustin put down his book. “Quietly crazy. That’s what I expect. Who knows, though, after seventy years.”
“Noisy and crazy,” Card said. “Trigger-happy hillbillies. That’s a cube cliché.”
That was interesting. “With a basis in fact?”
“Not Fruit Farm specifically. Back around the turn of the century, 2100, some communes in the East got together and raised some hell. They tried to secede from the United States, piecemeal. They were followers of that guy . . .”
“Lazlo Motkin,” Alba said.
“Yeah. They had a regular little war.”
“They weren’t even one geographical area,” Alba said. “Spread out over three or four states. They claimed there was an ‘existential border’ between them and us.”
“They had lawyers to prove it?”
“Lawyers and guns,” Card said. “What more do you need?”
“Anything come of it?” I asked.
Card shook his head. “All over in a couple of months. Some people jailed, some leaders executed. Lazlo Motkin himself died in a military action.”
“Which was embarrassing to America,” Alba said. “He was running for president at the time. He was just a rich crackpot until he died. Then he became a symbol of government oppression.”
I had a vague memory of him sending us a loony message on the starship. If we were good Americans, we would do a kamikaze strike on the Others’ home world.
“We ought to start out assuming they are nice rational people,” Elza said, “who have some nineteenth-century ideas about things like electricity.”
“Wonder if they’ll have power after Wednesday,” Alba said. “The only people in the whole country?”
“Not if the Others do the same thing as before,” Dustin said. “Everything stopped working, even batteries. Stuff like hydroelectric power and wind machines. Kept turning around, but without making any juice.
“The question is whether living with this archaic technology makes the Fruit Farmers better equipped for dealing with the brave new world that’s coming. We’re assuming so, but you can argue that their technological primitivism is only skin-deep. They’ve had electricity all along—home-made, but what’s the difference?”
Namir had gone to the head in back of the plane, and he emerged with a bottle of whisky and a stack of cups. “Let’s drink to NASA and their legendary foresight.”
I had a small glass of the stuff, smoky and smooth, and before I finished it, a curtain of fatigue fell over me like a sedative. I walked unsteadily back to my seat, reclined it, and was asleep before my head hit the plastic pillow.
9
I woke suddenly when the plane’s engine throttled down, and we banked sharply. I raised the curtain on my window and saw that we were angling down over some heavily forested hilly land. There was a small, meandering river.
“Should be only a few miles,” Paul said, his amplified voice flat and crackling. “I’m going down low and dead slow, and will cut the engine as we glide over the commune. Your flatscreens should be showing what’s directly under us.” I reached forward and tapped the screen on the back of the seat in front of me. Treetops rolled by underneath, slowly growing larger as we dropped.
They must hear us coming. Were people running for cover? Running to man the anti-aircraft lasers?
“They won’t have lasers.” Namir was reading my mind. “A shotgun could do some damage, though.”
“Why no lasers?”
“They could. But they aren’t getting megawatts out of twentieth-century solar cells and wind machines.”
The forest abruptly stopped, replaced by squares of
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