“And what do you think would happen to us?”

Glen didn’t reply with words. He made an explicit little trigger-pulling gesture with the forefinger of his right hand and then hurriedly scoffed the last of the wine.

“Yeah,” Stu said. “So let’s start getting it together. Talk.”

Glen closed his eyes. The brightening day touched his wrinkled cheeks and forehead.

“Okay,” he said. “Here it is, Stu. First: Re-create America. Little America. By fair means and by foul. Organization and government come first. If it starts now, we can form the sort of government we want. If we wait until the population triples, we are going to have grave problems.

“Let’s say we call a meeting a week from today, that would make it August eighteenth. Everyone to attend. Before the meeting there should be an ad hoc Organization Committee. A committee of seven, let us say. You, me, Andros, Fran, Harold Lauder, maybe, a couple more. The job of the committee would be to create an agenda for the August eighteenth meeting. And I can tell you right now what some of the items on that agenda should be.”

“Shoot.”

“First, reading and ratification of the Declaration of Independence. Second, r and r of the Constitution. Third, r and r of the Bill of Rights. All ratification to be done by voice vote.”

“Christ, Glen, we’re all Americans—”

“No, that’s where you’re wrong,” Glen said, opening his eyes. They looked socketed and bloodshot. “We’re a bunch of survivors with no government at all. We’re a hodgepodge collection from every age group, religious group, class group, and racial group. Government is an idea, Stu. That’s really all it is, once you strip away the bureaucracy and the bullshit. I’ll go further. It’s an inculcation, nothing but a memory path worn through the brain. What we’ve got going for us now is culture lag. Most of these people still believe in government by representation—the Republic—what they think of as ‘democracy.’ But culture lag never lasts long. After a while they’ll start having the gut reactions: the President is dead, the Pentagon is for rent, nobody is debating anything in the House and the Senate except maybe for the termites and the cockroaches. Our people here are very soon going to wake up to the fact that the old ways are gone, and that they can restructure society any old way they want. We want—we need —to catch them before they wake up and do something nutty.”

He leveled his finger at Stu.

“If someone stood up at the August eighteenth meeting and proposed that Mother Abagail be put in absolute charge, with you and me and that fellow Andros as her advisers, those people would pass the item by acclamation, blissfully unaware that they had just voted the first operating American dictatorship into power since Huey Long.”

“Oh, I cant believe that. There are college graduates here, lawyers, political activists—”

“Maybe they used to be. Now they’re just a bunch of tired, scared people who don’t know what’s going to happen to them. Some might squawk, but they’d shut up when you told them that Mother Abagail and her advisers were going to get the power back on in sixty days. No, Stu, it’s very important that the first thing we do is ratify the spirit of the old society. That’s what I meant about recreating America. It has to be that way as long as we’re operating under direct threat of the man we’re calling the Adversary.”

“Go on.”

“All right. The next item on the agenda would be that we run the government like a New England township. Perfect democracy. As long as we’re relatively small, it’ll work fine. Only instead of a board of selectmen we’ll have seven… representatives, I guess. Free Zone Representatives. How does that sound?”

“It sounds fine.”

“I think so, too. And we’ll see to it that the people who get elected are the same people who were on the ad hoc committee. We’ll put the rush on everybody and get the vote taken before people can do any tub-thumping for their friends. We can handpick people to nominate us and then second us. The vote’ll go through as slick as shit through a goose.”

“That’s neat,” Stu said admiringly.

“Sure,” Glen said glumly. “If you want to short-circuit the democratic process, ask a sociologist.”

“What’s next?”

“This is going to be very popular. The item would read: ‘Resolved: Mother Abagail is to be given absolute veto power over any action proposed by the Board.’”

“Jesus! Will she agree to that?”

“I think so. But I don’t think she’d ever be apt to exercise her veto power, not in any circumstance I can foresee. We just can’t expect to have a workable government here unless we make her its titular head. She’s the thing we all have in common. We’ve all had a paranormal experience that revolves around her. And she has a… a kind of aura about her. People all use the same loose bunch of adjectives to describe her: good, kind, old, wise, clever, nice. These people have had one dream that frightens the bejesus out of them and one that makes them feel safe and secure. They love and trust the source of the good dream all the more because of the dream that frightened them. And we can make it clear to her that she’s our leader in name only. I think that’s how she’d want it. She’s old, tired…”

Stu was shaking his head. “She’s old and tired, but she sees this problem of the dark man as a religious crusade, Glen. And she’s not the only one, either. You know that.”

“You mean she might decide to take the bit in her teeth?”

“Maybe that wouldn’t be so bad,” Stu remarked. “After all, it was her we dreamed of, not a Representative Board.”

Glen was shaking his head. “No, I can’t accept the idea that we’re all pawns in some post-Apocalypse game of good and evil, dreams or not. Goddammit, it’s irrational!”

Stu shrugged. “Well, let’s not get bogged down in it now. I think your idea of giving her veto power is a good one. In fact, I don’t think it goes far enough. We ought to give her the power to propose as well as dispose.”

“But not absolute power on that side of the slate,” Glen said hastily.

“No, her ideas would have to be ratified by the Representative Board,” Stu said, and then added slyly: “But we might find ourselves a rubber stamp for her instead of the other way around.”

There was a long silence. Glen had put his forehead into one hand. At last he said, “Yeah, you’re right. She can’t just be a figurehead… at the very least we have to accept the possibility that she may have her own ideas. And that’s where I pack up my cloudy crystal ball, East Texas. Because she’s what those of us who ride the sociology range call other-directed.”

“Who’s the other?”

“God? Thor? Allah? Pee-wee Herman? It doesn’t matter. What it means is that what she says won’t necessarily be directed by what this society needs or by what its mores turn out to be. She’ll be listening to some other voice. Like Joan of Arc. What you’ve made me see is that we just might wind up with a theocracy on our hands here.”

“Theoc-what?”

“On a God trip,” Glen said. He didn’t sound too happy about it. “When you were a little boy, Stu, did you ever dream that you might grow up to be one of seven high priests and/or priestesses to a one-hundred-and-eight-year-old black woman from Nebraska?”

Stu stared at him. Finally he said: “Is there any more of that wine?”

“All gone.”

“Shit.”

“Yes,” Glen said. They studied each other’s face in silence and then suddenly burst out laughing.

It was surely the nicest house Mother Abagail had ever lived in, and sitting here on the screened-in porch put her in mind of a traveling salesman who had come around Hemingford back in 1936 or ‘37. Why, he had been the sweetest-talking fellow she had ever met in her life; he could have charmed the birdies right down from the trees. She had asked this young man, Mr. Donald King by name, what his business was with Abby Freemantle, and he had replied: “My business, ma’am, is pleasure. Your pleasure. Do you like to read? Listen to the radio, perchance? Or maybe just put your tired old dogs up on a foot hassock and listen to the world as it rolls down the great bowling alley of the universe?”