| |
TILLIE BROUGHT REFRESHMENTS to the farmer’s meeting because she worried that it was going to get contentious. Farmers were filing in looking angry. She hoped the classroom that Angus had picked would be large enough. Squeezing together people with high emotions was a very bad combination. She wondered if she should go get a few of the Watch just in case.
“We’re here,” one man announced angrily. “What are you going to tell us?”
Angus beckoned them all in. “This disaster has given us an unprecedented opportunity.”
Tillie saw the angry looks that passed among the men. They were working themselves up to a confrontation. All these people who had been working small subsistence farms hidden in the woods had been too frightened to reach out to neighbors. They were used to braving it alone, and it was going to take more than cookies and smiles to get them to cooperate.
“Is this where you take our land?” asked the angry man.
“Why would I do that?” Angus replied. “No, I’ve asked you all here to figure out the best way to go about this.”
“Rebuild my house. That’s how you go about it.”
“And we will.” Angus offered a hand to the angry man. “I’m Angus.”
The man hesitated, but finally gave his hand. “Karl.”
Angus pointed to the livewall which had a map of the burned area. “We need to be smart about this. Wildfires will still happen, but if we set up natural firebreaks, we can protect a good portion.”
“So you’re going to expect us to make the changes,” Karl snapped.
“I’d like to expand the existing farms to fill the valley,” Angus said blithely. He pressed a button to split the screen for more images causing a gasp and rumble to go round the room. “I know this is not what you had before, but please hear me out.”
Tillie stared at the exquisite renderings of farms and houses that Angus had put up wondering who had spent the time to create it. There hadn’t been that much time since the fire, so this had to have been something Angus had already planned. Sometimes she wondered if he had a secret clone somewhere who got work done while he slept.
The drawings tugged at her heart in a way that she couldn’t explain. The snug cottages and fertile lands spoke of peace and plenty in such a turbulent time. She yearned to live in one of those pretty little homes with window boxes and kitchen garden, sunflowers peeking over a hedge and marigolds lining the path. The artist had captured a deep human emotion. Those images said, “You’d be happy living here.” The room went utterly silent.
“I believe there are presently six farms in the valley. If we center the homes here, and surround them with the fields it consolidates the loading and shipping.” Angus paused for a response.
“Like a little village,” a woman said. There was a wistfulness to her voice that said she felt the same as Tillie.
“It would be less isolated,” Angus continued. “We might be able to run a phone line out there for emergencies.”
“Where would you put the barns?” someone asked.
Angus pointed at the man who spoke. “That’s what I need you to tell me. What makes sense?”
“I’m not from the valley,” a man said. “I lost an orchard.”
“That is not easily replaced,” Angus said. “I’d like you to talk to Bruno. He’s cataloged all the fruit trees in the vicinity and their harvest this year. Can you take cuttings, or is it grafts?”
Something changed in the air and people began moving closer to look at the drawings and maps. Tillie relaxed a little as the anger scaled back, and the conversations began. Angus scribbled on the livewall sketching in barns and outbuildings. He threw up a greater map next to it to pinpoint the farms and orchards outside the valley.
Martin slipped in the door to stand beside her. “Sounds pretty civilized in here.”
“He won them over.”
“This fast?” he asked skeptically.
“This isn’t a political issue. Everyone needs the farms. These folks just want to know how much help they’re going to get. Angus wants to do it efficiently and intelligently. Expanding the farms makes sense and rewards those who were working hard.”
“Is he going to do this with all of the burned out areas?” Martin asked.
“I’m sure he’s got some plan up his sleeve,” Tillie said.
“I think we’re still going to have trouble,” Martin grumbled.
“That’s your job,” she said. She left him on his own and went to start pouring coffee and handing out cookies. Now that the anger had shifted to curiosity, she knew it was time to sweeten the negotiations.
“And we need to diversify,” Angus said over the rumble of conversation.
“What does that mean?” Karl asked sounding like he was on the defensive again.
“We can’t keep everything in one place,” Angus said. “The animals need to be tracked and separated to avoid inbreeding. I think that’s just common sense. And if we give everyone a couple of chicks, then we can have a better selection for cross-breeding.”
“You’re going to give us chicks?”
Tillie heard the disbelief in the man’s voice. These people had been working for their own survival. They had been hiding from raiders which meant hiding from neighbors, too. It was hard for them to trust strangers.
“We have to distribute the livestock,” Angus said. “The more people with chickens, the safer the breed. Now we’ve got geese and some turkeys, too.”
“What do you want in return?” Karl asked.
“Recordkeeping,” Angus said. “We have to be careful with what we have left. Every animal must be tracked. And crops, too. You should all plant a little of everything.”
“I’ve been planting millet and wheat for years,” an older man announced. “I got that seed because I save some every year. You going to make me give some away?”
“Not at all,” Angus said. “We don’t take, we barter. If I give you some rye and sorghum seed will you give me some millet and wheat seed?”
A look of confusion passed from face to face. Tillie knew they weren’t used to sharing anymore. Life after Zero Year had gotten small and mean. “You need to start a union or something.” They all turned to look at her.
“A union?” Angus asked, his eyebrows climbing in alarm.
“Well, we don’t know about farming, and they do. What do you want, a committee, a guild? They need to figure out who grows what, and if they can swap. I don’t know if you can grow peas and beans together, but they do.”
“How about a co-op?” Angus asked. “The point is, I don’t want a monoculture that might fail. We need redundant sources.”
“What will that do to our prices?”
“Here we go,” Tillie grumbled.
“Do you think we could have too much food?” Angus asked carefully. “Because right now, that doesn’t seem like an issue. In a barter system, money is pointless. We trade potatoes for wheat or cheese for oats. An equal trade in which we both benefit. And if by some fluke of good luck, we have more food than we need, then there are traders outside this territory where we can barter any excess.”
“And you’re going to get rich off of it?”
Tillie waited for the arguing to start, but Angus went sideways. “What’s rich? So much food that I can get fat?” He chuckled at his joke, but no one else did. “We trade what we have for what we can’t grow like coffee, tea, some spices, salt. And we bring those things back here, so I can trade them to you for wheat and potatoes and peas.” He cleared the livewall and started scribbling out a diagram. Tillie knew he would get too technical, and this wasn’t really a good time for a lesson in economics.
“So that means that you need to decide what things are worth,” she told them. “How many bags of wheat for how many cartons of coffee. Aside from figuring out who can grow what, we should standardize some of our trades, so we can all plan for the winter.”
The room went quiet, and Tillie knew what they were thinking. They had lost everything to the fires. They had no home and no food for the winter.
“How are we going to get through the winter?” Karl asked. This time his voice was low with a measure of grief giving it weight.
“We’ll give you food,” Tillie said. “And you can stay here at the school until the rebuilding is done.”
“Why?” Karl asked. “You don’t know me. Why are you doing this?”
“Because we need every human being left on this planet to stay alive,” Angus said quietly. “Our species is endangered. If we want to survive, we have to do it by helping each other. Every person we lose to fighting or accident or hunger lowers our chances of making it through another flu season.”
Tillie realized she was holding her breath. The only thing these strangers had in common was their anger at their losses and their fear of being abused. It banded them together with a fragile cohesiveness. Angus had just tried to turn that into something more, and it could tip them either way.
“What kinds of seeds do you have?” Karl asked.
Angus smiled. Tillie felt the tension dissipate. He’d managed to break through.