Woman on the Edge of Time - Marge Piercy [73]
“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,