“We learned a lot from societies that people used to call primitive. Primitive technically. But socially sophisticated.” Jackrabbit paced, frowning. “We tried to learn from cultures that dealt well with handling conflict, promoting cooperation, coming of age, growing a sense of community, getting sick, aging, going mad, dying–”

“Yeah, and you still go crazy. You still get sick. You grow old. You die. I thought in a hundred and fifty years some of these problems would be solved, anyhow!”

“But Connie, some problems you solveonly if you stop being human, become metal, plastic, robot computer. Is dying itself a problem!”Luciente got up to cast a last, lingering glance at the river. “Come. Bee prompted I show you the children’s house.”

“I can’t resist that! A house for kids?” Her legs felt heavy. Suddenly she was slipping back into her drugged real body in real time. A surge of sadness flowed through her hips and belly. Worse, finally, than never to be loved again was never to hold a child next to her body. Her child. Her flesh. She felt a slackening through her, that beginning to slip out of her connection with Luciente, back to the asylum. For an instant she breathed the stifling heat of the closed isolation room, she smelled its stale fecal smell, its smell of caged and fearful bodies. She fought like a swimmer going down. She cast a soundless appeal toward Luciente: Help me! For a long nauseated moment she blurred over and she was no place, lost, terrified.

SEVEN

Jackrabbit was towering over her, lifting her to her feet. His thin face furrowed with serious intent. He held her against him, supporting her in a close hug with one long bony arm while the other hand gently stroked her hair back from her forehead. “Don’t sadden. Little Pepper and Salt, don’t fade on us.” Her face was level with his unbuttoned work shirt, his tanned chest prickly with brass hairs, and his voice burred through the skin into her. “We’d be stupid not to sense you’re confined wrongly. That you hurt and sadden there and no one seems to want to help you heal. That you’re fed drugs that wound your body. Enjoy us. Don’t fade from old pain and return to present pain. Guest here awhile.”

Unmistakably, as his voice burred against her and his hand kneaded her neck, urging her to relax, she felt the rise of his erection, his hardening against her. She tried to wriggle free, and he at once released her.

“I catch sexually.” He shrugged. “Don’t upset more. Truly I meant to calm you.”

“Doesn’t he drive you crazy with jealousy? Why do you let him act this way?” she asked Luciente, who was trying to control a giggling fit.

“Jackrabbit means it–person was trying to comfort you. But person wants to couple with everybody.”

“Aw, not everybody.Not allof the time.”

“Just most of the people most of the time.” Luciente put one arm through hers and one through Jackrabbit’s. “To the children’s house.”

When was a pass not a pass? When did nineteen‑year‑old artists throw their arms around women twice their age from the loony bin? Little Pepper and Salt: what a thing to call her, meaning her hair with the white streak along the part growing out raggedy. That reminded her too of her Texas family, for they would give each other blunt nicknames like One Arm and Old Dimwit. Anglos thought that cruel, and she had come to accept the judgment and to expect a veneer of polite refusal to admit seeing.

“Don’t you people ever have to work?” she asked irritably. They were passing greenhouses set into the earth, the sound of falling water. “All those adults taking off to watch a twelve‑year‑old go for a ride. You all have a maсana attitude for real.”

“We have high production!” Luciente’s black eyes glinted indignation. “Mouth‑of‑Mattapoisett exports protein in flounder, herring, alewives, turtles, geese, ducks, our own blue cheese. We manufacture goose‑down jackets, comforters and pillows. We’re the plant‑breeding center for this whole sector in squash, cucumbers, beans, and corn. We build jizers, diving equipment, and the best nets this side of Orleans, on the Cape. On top we export beautiful poems, artwork, holies, rituals, and a new style of cooking turtle soups and stews!”

“Why isn’t anybody in a hurry? Why are the kids always underfoot? How can you waste so much time talking?”

Jackrabbit waved his arms windmill fashion. “How many hours does it take to grow food and make useful objects? Beyond that we care for our brooder, cook in our fooder, care for animals, do basic routines like cleaning, politic and meet That leaves hours to talk, to study, to play, to love, to enjoy the river.”

“At spring planting, at harvest, when storms come, when some crisis strikes, Connie, we work, we stiff it till we drop … . The old folks story about how they used to have to stiff it all the time. How long the struggle was to turn things over and change them. After, what a mess the whole ying‑and‑yan of it was from peak to sea.” Luciente waved off into the distance. “Now we don’t have to comp ourselves that hard in ordintime … . Grasp, after we dumped the jobs telling people what to do, counting money and moving it about, making people do what they don’t want or bashing them for doing what they want, we have lots of people to work. Kids work, old folks work, women and men work. We put a lot of work into feeding everybody without destroying the soil, keeping up its health and fertility. With most everybody at it part time, nobody breaks their back and grubs dawn to dust like old‑time farmers … . Instance, in March I might work sixteen hours. In December, four …”

“You said you made jizers, comforters. Where are the factories?”

“We just passed the pillow and comforter factory.”

“Can I see it?” When she met Eddie, she had been working in a loft where many Spanish‑speaking women sewed children’s clothes.

Jackrabbit bounded ahead and the door opened. Inside the opaque peach cube, she saw no one. The machinery made the most noise she had heard in the village. “Is this all automated?” she shouted.

“Fasure,” Jackrabbit shouted back. “Who wants to stuff pillows? I tore one open once hitting Bolivar over the head. What a mess! Gets up your nose. And the padded jackets with down–they’re very warm but who would want to stuff every patch?”

“They’re stuffed first, then sewn,” she said. “So nobody works in this factory? Not even a supervisor?”

“It’s mechanical,” Luciente said. “The analyzer oversees it, with constant monitoring and feedback. In operations like the brooder, most everything is automated, but we need human presence because mistakes are too serious.”

“This runs off solar energy?”

“No, methane gas from composting wastes.”

“Okay, you can automate a whole factory,” she said as they walked back into the sunshine. “So why do I see people grubbing around broccoli plants picking off caterpillars? Why is everybody running around on foot or bicycles?”

“We have so much energy from the sun, so much from wind, so much from decomposing wastes, so much from the waves, so much from the river, so much from alcohol from wood, so much from wood gas.” Luciente checked them off on her fingers. “That’s a fixed amount. Manufacturing and mining are better done by machines. Who wants to go deep into the earth and crawl through tunnels breathing rock dust and never seeing the sun? Who wants to sit in a factory sewing the same four or five comforter patterns?”

“There are ten, in fact,” Jackrabbit said. “I counted them.”

“Only you have been in enough beds to be sure,” Luciente said with a tucked‑in smile. They walked on toward a joined group of free‑form buildings of sinuous curves suggesting a mass of eggs, but with long loops thrown off and high arches and arcades. This just‑grew was the color of terra cotta. A vine ran all over the south side, with big velvet flowers that gave off a fragrance of cloves. Bird feeders hung from every protrusion, out of windows, on posts. The roof was studded with bird‑houses and a pigeon coop built in, as if the masonry broke into lace through which pigeons went fluttering and cooing.