“That’s what they use when they don’t want you to enter. I say meditating–of course they may be coupling, reading, sleeping, or just pouting.”

Erzulia’s room faced west. It was spacious, with walls entirely covered in woven and embroidered hangings, texture upon texture and color upon color. Her bed was a high platform reached by a ladder, the space underneath closed in with hangings to make a dark cave of cushions, a small altar, shelves of herbs in bottles. The furniture was of a dark knobby substance that reminded her of bamboo. On the bed a strange blue costume was laid out.

“We should not stay here. That’s Erzulia’s raiment.” Luciente used the old formal word.

“Is she a mother getting ready for a naming?”

“Zuli’s never been a mother. Sappho is dying and Erzulia is her friend. They share a sense of old rites. Zuli follows voodoo as a discipline, as many do in Cranberry, while Sappho is an Indian old believer. But they share a closeness to … myths, archetypes.”

“Sappho? That old woman who was telling stories to the kids?”

“The same. A great shaper of tales. Now person is very old. It’s time for per to die.”

“Oh?” She saw the sharp face of the corpse in the tunnel. “I wonder if she’s so sure it’s time.”

“Per body has weakened since Wednesday. Time comes for any fruit to fall. It’s a good death that arrives when you’re ready for it, no?”

They climbed another broad stair to the ground, where the rain was easing and dark clouds scudded over rapidly, going out toward the bay. The air smelled clean and cottony.

In the old white Grange Hall with its octagonal tower, twenty‑five or thirty people sat around an oblong table arguing about cement, zinc, tin, copper, platinum, steel, gravel, limestone, and things she could not identify. Many of them seemed to be women, although she often found when she heard a voice that she had guessed wrong. They ranged from sixteen to extreme old age. Few of them looked entirely white, although their being tanned by the sun made that harder to judge than it might have been in the middle of the winter. They spoke in ordinary voices and did not seem to be speechifying. Behind some seated at the table sat others listening closely and at times putting in their comments and questions.

“We have a five‑minute limit on speeches. We figure that anything person can’t say in five minutes, person is better off not saying.” Luciente and she pulled up chairs to sit behind Otter, whom she had not at first recognized with her black hair in a single braid and her body in overalls splashed with mud and salt. Otter flashed them a smile before turning back to the display set in the table between every other delegate that showed figures, allotments, graphs they were discussing.

“This is your government?”

“It’s the planning council for our township.”

“Are they elected?”

“Chosen by lot. You do it for a year: threemonth with the rep before you and three with the person replacing you and six alone.”

“We want to clear some of the woods on Goat Hill.” A map flashed on the displays set in the table. The person speaking, with sideburns and a bristling mustache, somehow drew on the map indicating the section he referred to. “We would like to increase our buckwheat crop.”

Luciente murmured, “Rep from Goat Hill, Cape Verde flavor village upriver.”

“Seems to me that cuts into the catchment area for rain water. We have none too much water, people,” a person with green hair said.

“We are only thinking of a matter of fifty, sixty acres of second‑growth woods and scrub. Our region imports too much grain, we have all agreed on that,” the mustache argued.

“Without water we can grow nothing. Our ancestors destroyed water as if there were an infinite amount of it, sucking it out of the earth and dirtying and poisoning it as it flowed,” Otter said indignantly. “Let us not be cavalier about water. What does the soil bank say?”

“I’ll direct the question.”

Luciente leaned close. “That’s the rep from Cranberry. That person is chair today.”

“Who’s that with green hair?”

“Earth Advocate–speaks for rights of the total environment. Beside per is the Animal Advocate. Those positions are not chosen strictly by lot, but by dream. Every spring some people dream they are the new Animal Advocate or Earth Advocate. Those who feel this come together and the choice among them falls by lot.”

The computer was flashing figures and more figures on the displays. After everyone had stared at them, the Ned’s Point rep spoke. “The woods in question are fasure catchment. To take these acres from forest would cut our capacity to hold our water table.”

“How can we up our grain output if we can’t pull land from scrubby woods to farming?” the Cranberry rep asked.

“Then we must up the output of the land we have,” the Earth Advocate said. “We’re only starting to find ways of intensively farming, so the soil is built more fertile instead of bled to dust”

Otter was still studying the display, her fat braid hanging over one shoulder. “These woods are birch, cherry, aspen, but with white pines growing up. Will be pine forest in ten years. Its history as we have it is: climax forest, cleared for farming, abandoned, scrub to climax again, bulldozed for housing, burned over, now returning to forest.”

At her ear Luciente murmured, “We arrive with the needs of each village and try to divide scarce resources justly. Often we must visit the spot. Next level is regional planning. Reps chosen by lot from township level go to the regional to discuss gross decisions. The needs go up and the possibilities come down. If people are chilled by a decision, they go and argue. Or they barter directly with places needing the same resources, and compromise.”

A vote was taken and Goat Hill was turned down. The Marion rep suggested, “Let’s ask for a graingrower from Springfield to come to Goat Hill and see if they can suggest how to grow buckwheat without clearing more land. We in Marion would be feathered to feast the guest.”

Luciente’s kenner called. “How long?” Connie heard her say, and then, “We’ll come soon.”

“The old bridge is beautiful,” a middle‑aged man was arguing. “Three hundred years old, of real wrought iron. We have a skilled crafter to top‑shape it.”

“Nobody in your village has bled from the old bridge being out. We need ore for jizers,” an old woman said. “The bridge is pretty, but our freedom may depend on jizers. Head before tail!”

“Weren’t you advised last year to look out for alloys that use up less ore?” the rep from Cranberry said.

“We’re working on it. So is everybody else!”

The Goat Hill rep suggested, “For the bridge, why not use a biological? It’d corrode less. Repair itself.”

“We must scamp now,” Luciente said, pulling her up. “Fast. We’ll hop the dipper.”

“What about the bike?”

Luciente looked at her blankly. “Somebody will use it”

The dipper turned out to be a bus‑train object that rode on a cushion of air about a foot off the ground until it stopped, when it settled with a great sigh. It moved along at moderate speed, stopping at every village, and people got on and off with packages and babies and animals and once with a huge swordfish wrapped in leaves.

They sat down in a compartment with an old man facing them, wizened up like a sultana, fiddling constantly, with a satisfied air, with the blanket wrapped around his baby.

“Why do you have the bus cut up in little rooms this way? You’d get more people in if it was like we used to have, just one big space inside.”

“It’s easier to talk this way,” Luciente said. “Warmer.”

“You’re a guest?” the old man said. “From where? Or are you a drifter?”

“From the past,” Luciente explained.

“Ah, I heard, I heard. So …” He peered at her curiously.

“Where do you live?” Luciente asked.