The Fifth Sacred Thing (49 page)

“There’s another question here that we need to face clearly,” Bird went on. “Not whether we’re ready to die, because many of us will die whether
we’re ready or not. The question we each have to answer is whether we’re willing to kill. This war doesn’t start when the troops arrive, it’s been going on most of my lifetime. I have almost died already in it, and I have killed. It’s very easy to kill once you take up a weapon in your hand. Nothing is easier or more natural. My hands aren’t worth much anymore, but still I don’t want to put them to work making weapons or holding weapons. I do not want to kill again.”

Now the room was absolutely still. They trust me, Bird thought. My words carry weight with them. Except for Cress and his faction, who hate me a little.
Diosa
, I hope I’m right.

Nobody spoke. Cress’s head was sunk into his shoulders, and the other members of Water Council were nodding thoughtfully.

“Do we have an agreement in principle that this is the direction we want to take?” Joseph asked.

“How can we agree to something in principle if we don’t know what the plan is?” someone called.

“We’re agreeing to the principle of a strategy of resistance based on nonviolence and noncooperation.”

“Then let’s work out the strategy before we agree to it,” someone shouted.

“Okay.” Joseph gave in. “Who has practical suggestions or concerns to raise?”

“This is the proposal from Defense,” Greta said. “That we do not aid them or cooperate with them in any way. That we don’t insult or antagonize individuals, but refuse to obey any order or command. If they attempt to destroy something of ours, we physically but nonviolently block them. And yes, we like Maya’s suggestion, that we offer them a place at our table. And mean it. Certainly there is room here for more people, should some of them wish to settle.”

“Are there questions on that proposal?” Salal asked. “Or concerns to raise?”

“I have one,” Cress said. He faced Bird. “You said we have to commit ourselves one way or the other. Okay. Water Council isn’t too happy with this proposal but we won’t block it. We won’t oppose the will of the city. But if we adopt it, we have to be prepared to go all the way. No collaboration. No cooperation, in the big things or the small things. No giving way to their attempts to intimidate us.”

“Agreed,” Bird said, although a little squirrel of uneasiness ran down his back. It’s so easy to be absolute in theory, he thought, but when they come?

Cress stood for a moment, surveying the room, commanding it. Heads nodded at him in every direction. Satisfied, he sat down.

“Other concerns?” Salal asked.

“I have one,” Bird said. For days he’d been trying to picture in his imagination what might happen, what might work. “They’ll look for our leaders. We ought to let them find a few.”

“We don’t have leaders,” one of Cress’s circle objected.

“That could be argued,” Holybear said.

“Defense will volunteer,” Greta offered.

“No offense, Greta,” Bird said, “but you don’t understand the way they think. They’re never in a millennium going to believe that the city is led by a bunch of old women. They’re going to look for the biggest, strongest men they can find. Pick a few, to throw to them.”

“Human sacrifices?”

“Volunteers,” Bird said.

“What are you suggesting?” Salal asked.

“We set up a pseudo-council,” said an older man. “It wouldn’t have to be big.”

“Hell, no,” Bird said. “It’s more believable to them if it’s small, and one guy is the head of it. You could have a woman or two—actually, that’d be better. There’s a whole thing they have about women and this city; they’d be disappointed if they didn’t find
any
women in power.”

“It should represent all the races,” Greta said. “Not just because of reprisals. Because we’ll also be sending a message to all of them, the ones we hope to turn.”

They talked on about the composition of the group, until Salal called for volunteers.

“I’ll volunteer,” Sister Marie said, rising to her feet.

“But you’re not well,” Sage objected.

“I have very little to lose.”

There was another long moment of silence; then, slowly, Bird rose to his feet. Now it comes, he thought. Let me open my mouth and there’s no going back, once again. His jaw felt heavy, reluctant to move, but he forced it open.

“I’ll volunteer,” he said. “It was my suggestion—it’s only right that I should volunteer for it.”

Maya had reached out her hand as if to pull him back down, but she let it drop in midair. Pain, almost physical in its intensity, shrieked through her body. Oh, Goddess. Not him. Not again. It’s not fair.

“Besides,” he said, “maybe more than anybody else here, I do know what we’re getting into. I know how their system works. I think this is the way I can be most useful.”

“You can be most useful if you use your true gift,” Lily said.

“Maybe I know better than you what that is.” Maybe it’s a talent for endurance, not for music, Lily. Fuck you anyway.

“Haven’t you suffered enough, Bird?” Sam asked.

“When the Stewards come, Sam, we’re all going to suffer.”

“Are you sure you can take it?” Cress asked.

Lily intervened before Bird could speak. “Nobody is ever sure what they can or cannot withstand. Are you so sure of your own endurance, Cress?”

“I’m not leaping forward eagerly to be our leader,” Cress said.

“I don’t want to be anybody’s leader,” Bird said. “If there are questions about my motivations, believe me, I’ll happily withdraw.”

“No, no, we want you,” voices chorused from around the hall, and he was acclaimed by consensus. Cress remained silent.

The discussion went on, but Maya heard no more of it. Bird sat back down, and Sage laid her hand on his knee in sympathy. But why give me sympathy more than others? Bird thought. What I said is true. Who can predict who will suffer and who escape, when the war comes?

Lou stood up to volunteer but was rejected. The city couldn’t spare its healers. Finally they chose graceful, dark-eyed Lan, a teacher of Indonesian dance who had lost his wife and child to the last disease, and white-haired Roberto, Salal’s grandfather, a robust man in his early seventies.

“Other concerns or additions to the proposal?” Joseph asked.

“The East Bay towns have a suggestion,” said a tall woman in a green cape, “and I believe the North Bay is with us on this.”

“What’s that?” Salal asked.

“Blow up the bridges.”

There was dead silence in the room.

“If war is like a virus, shouldn’t we try as much as possible to isolate it? We’ve already demolished the stretch of old roadbed leading up the east side of the Bay from the San Jose contaminated area. We think they’ll head straight on up the peninsula, not try to go our way. Once they’re here, the bridges are their main routes east and north. If they have to repair them, or cross by water, it could delay them considerably. Especially if we remove water transport from this side.”

“It won’t stop them, it’ll only delay them,” came an objection.

“But who knows what will happen in that time? Maybe they will transform. Maybe we’ll have time to come up with some other plan.”

“But then if we win?” a young man in the tunic favored by the tecchies asked. “Do we have the resources to repair the bridges?”

“Considering that they were built in the 1930s, we ought to be able to muster up the technological expertise,” the woman said.

“It’s not the technology, but the iron and steel and the industrial infrastructure,” protested an older man. “We are in most ways a backward, primitive country compared to the United States of the 1930s.”

“Engineering Council has considered this. We can do it if we have to do it.”

“It’s a waste,” Maya protested.

“But perhaps a worthwhile one,” Lily said. “We cannot hope to come out of this completely pure. Bridges can be rebuilt, lives cannot.”

Maya winced. She loved the bridges, the graceful arch of the Golden Gate, the long sweep of the Bay Bridge. They were human-made, yet they had the grace and beauty and rightness of natural objects. But she kept silent. Let this be the worst sacrifice they made, and she would not complain.

There was more discussion, but the group generally seemed to feel that sacrificing the bridges made sense.

“Okay, here’s the full proposal,” Salal said. “We mount a campaign of nonviolent noncooperation, refusing all aid to the enemy, offering the soldiers a place at our table if they will join us. We have chosen a Liaison Council to interface with them and pose as the leadership of the city. And before the soldiers arrive, we blow the bridges and attempt to make transportation a major problem. Anything I’ve forgotten?”

“Training,” Greta said. “We need to train ourselves for this encounter just as if we were going into battle with weapons.”

“I can help with that,” Bird said.

“Do we have consensus?”

“The Wild Boar People will spear the ass of anybody who messes with us,” said a dreadlocked figure from the corner. “That has always been our position, and we hold to it.”

“Of course,” Salal said.

One of the booted figures in the corner rose. “The Forest Communities stand aside. We won’t interfere with you here in the City, but we’re not ready to commit ourselves to a nonviolent stance at this time. We need to go back home and talk this over. To tell you the truth, I don’t know what the answer will be. We have a good stockpile of rifles, the roads and rail lines into our lands are easily cut and guarded, and the trees are our families. I tend to think we’ll fight if the fight comes to us. But if you have folks you want to protect, or things you need to preserve, we can offer a refuge if you come soon. There’s places in the mountains where armies will never go. And whatever happens down below here, whatever becomes of the City, some of us will survive. Remember that.”

“The East Bay towns will have to consider our own strategies,” said their representative. “We have listened to the debate; we will report our decision at another Council.”

A woman Maya recognized from the Pomo Dances in the autumn stood. “The Tribes cannot say yet what we will do. We have listened to the words of
the Elders, and we listen with respect. Now we will go back to talk among ourselves.”

“Well then, do we have consensus?” Salal asked again. Around the room, people raised their clasped hands in the sign of agreement.

“That’s a victory right there,” Holybear murmured. Maya put her face in her hands and wept.

18

I
am changed, Madrone thought. The bees have marked me, as surely as their scar sits on my forehead. She moved through a world that came to her now as much through instinct and smell as through sight. Even when she stayed out of the bee mind, she knew what was blossoming and who was about to become ill. She walked through zones of smells, pungent sage, new-leafed oak or sycamore, human sweat. She knew where the birds nested and where scurrying mice piled their droppings. People had their own unique fragrances; her nose told her more than her hands or eyes about the energies moving in their bodies, about their needs and lacks and imbalances, about states of arousal, anger, or fear. She often felt mildly nauseated, without appetite in spite of the meager diet. The honey that infused all they ate nourished her more fully than she would have believed possible.

The sun was hotter in spring, and no one moved much by day. Even the able-bodied spent much of their time sleeping in the shade. The flu had abated, but Baptist had woken one night crying out in agony. Madrone had gone to him to try to soothe the pain. The ammonia tinge of the air around him told her he had a blocked kidney. Her hands did the rest, shifting his energies, feeling out the obstruction, easing and stretching the tubes of the ureter so the stone could pass. By morning, he was sleeping peacefully, and she was exhausted.

“How’s Baptist?” Hijohn asked her, coming over to squat companionably beside her as she perched on a log to drink her morning’s ration of water.

I’m getting to be like a dog, Madrone thought, smelling her own adrenaline rush of irritation. Don’t interrupt me when I’m eating or drinking. But she answered him courteously.

“He’s better. I was able to strengthen his kidney
ch’i
, and he passed the stone. But it could happen to him again—or to any of us. We all need more water.”

“We need a lot of things.”

“Hijohn, what about some sort of rotation, between the camps with more water and this one? Like, three months on and off, even—just to get everyone
good and hydrated periodically. Otherwise, over the years you’re going to get out-and-out renal failure.”

“What’s that?”

“The shutdown of the kidneys.”

“Is that so?”

“It’s so.”

“The good camps are too far away.”

“Far away from what?”

Hijohn looked up at her and smiled, his lips stretching into a challenging line. “Maybe it’s time we sent you on a raid.”

He smelled a lot like the trees, like acorns and honey, and she had a sudden urge to reach out and touch his wizened cheeks.
Diosa
, Madrone thought, I do find him attractive. She’d been too long without a lover, except for the bee women, and what they had done had only amplified her need for touch, skin on her skin.