Woman on the Edge of Time - Marge Piercy [74]
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.
“Ned’s Point, where I just got on, where else? We’re Ashkenazi,” he told Connie.
“I don’t know what that is.”
“We’re the flavor of Eastern European Jewry. Freud, Marx, Trotsky, Singer, Aleichem, Reich, Luxembourg, Wassermann, Vittova—all these were Ashkenazi!”
“They build kenners,” Luciente said. “We were just visiting the planners.”
“Look, I don’t understand,” Connie said. “If workers in a factory, say the kenner factory, want to make more kenners and the planners decide to give them less stuff, who wins?”
“We argue,” the man said. “How else?”
“There’s no final authority, Connie,” Luciente said.
“There’s got to be. Who finally says yes or no?”
“We argue till we close to agree. We just continue. Oh, it’s disgusting sometimes. It bottoms you.”
“After a big political fight, we guest each other,” the man said. “The winners have to feed the losers and give presents. Have you been to a town meeting?”
When Connie shook her head he clucked and shook a finger at Luciente. “You must take per. How will person learn about us?”
“Fasure,” Luciente said sourly. “I’m trying! Grasp, political decisions—like whether to raise or lower population—go a different route. We talk locally and then choose a rep to speak our posit on area hookup. Then we all sit in holi simulcast and the rep from each group speaks their village posit. Then we go back into local meeting to fuse our final word. Then the reps argue once more before everybody. Then we vote.”
“You must spend