This is the ninth installment of an exploration of some of
the possible futures discussed on this blog, using the toolkit of narrative
fiction. Our narrator finally has his interview with the President of the
Lakeland Republic, asks some hard questions, and prepares for a trip into
unexpected territory.
***********
Finch flagged down a cab as soon as we got out onto the
sidewalk, and within a minute or two we were rolling through downtown at
however many miles an hour a horse makes at a steady trot. Before too many more
minutes had gone by, we were out from among the big downtown buildings, and the
unfinished dome of the Capitol appeared on the skyline. Finch was in high
spirits, talking about the compromise Meeker had brokered with the Restos, but
I was too keyed up to pay much attention. A day and a half in the Lakeland
Republic had answered a few of my questions and raised a good many more that I
hadn’t expected to ask at all, and the meeting ahead would probably determine
whether I’d be able to get the answers that mattered.
The cab finally rolled to a halt, and the cabbie climbed
down from his perch up front and opened the door for us. I’d been so deep in my
own thoughts for the last few blocks that I hadn’t noticed where we’d ended up,
and I was startled to see the main entrance to the Capitol in front of me. I
turned to Finch. “Here, rather than the President’s mansion?”
The intern gave me a blank look. “You mean like the old
White House? We don’t have one of those. President Meeker has a house in town,
just like any other politician.” I must have looked startled, because he went
on earnestly: “We dumped the whole
imperial-executive thing after Partition. I’m surprised so many of the other
republics kept it, after everything that happened.”
I nodded noncommittally as we walked up to the main
entrance, climbed the stair, and went in. There were a couple of uniformed
guards inside the outer doors, the first I’d seen anywhere in the Lakeland
Republic, but they simply nodded a greeting to the two of us as we walked by.
We pushed open the inner doors and went into the rotunda.
There was a temporary ceiling about forty feet overhead, and someone had taken
the trouble to paint on it a trompe l’oeil view of the way the dome
would look from beneath. In the middle of the floor was a block of marble maybe
three feet on a side; I could barely see it because a dozen or so people were
standing around it. One of them, a stout
and freckled blonde woman in a pale blue gingham dress, was saying something in
a loud clear voice as we came through the doors:
“...do solemnly swear that, should I be elected to any
official position, I will faithfully execute the laws of the Lakeland Republic
regardless of my personal beliefs, and should I be unable to do so in good
conscience, I will immediately resign my office, so help me my Lord and Savior
Jesus.” Three sudden blue-white flashes told of photos being taken, a little
patter of applause echoed off the temporary ceiling, and then some of the
people present got to work signing papers on the marble cube.
Finch led me around the group to a door on the far side of
the rotunda. “What was that about?” I asked him with a motion of my head toward
the group around the cube.
“A candidate,” he explained as we went through the doors.
“Probably running for some township or county office. A lot of them like to do the ceremony here at
the Capitol and get the pictures in their local papers. You can’t run for any
elected position here unless you take that oath first—well, with or without the
Jesus bit, or whatever else you prefer in place of it. There was a lot of
trouble before the Second Civil War with people in government insisting that
their personal beliefs trumped the duties of their office—”
“I’ve read about it.”
“So that went into our constitution. Break the oath and you
do jail time for perjury.”
I took that in as we went down a corridor. On the far end
was what looked like an ordinary front office with a young man perched behind a
desk. “Hi, Gabe,” Finch said.
“Hi, Mike. This is
Mr. Carr?”
“Yes. Mr. Carr, this is Gabriel Menendez, the President’s
assistant secretary.”
We shook hands, and Menendez picked up a phone on his desk
and asked, “Cheryl, is the boss free? Mr. Carr’s here.” A pause, then: “Yes. I’ll send him right in.” He put down
the phone and waved us to the door at the far end of the room. “He’ll see you
now.”
We shed coats and hats at the coatrack on one side of the
office, and went through the door. On the other side was another corridor, and
beyond that was a circular room with doors opening off it in various
directions. Off to the left an ornate spiral stair swept up and down to
whatever was on the floors above and below.
To the right was another desk; the woman sitting at it nodded greetings
to us and gestured to the central door. I followed Finch as he walked to the
door, opened it, and said, “Mr. President? Mr. Carr.”
Isaiah Meeker, President of the Lakeland Republic, was
standing at the far side of the room, looking out the window over the Toledo
streetscape below. He turned and came
toward us as soon as Finch spoke. He looked older than the pictures I’d seen,
the close-trimmed hair and iconic short beard almost white against the dark
brown of his face. “Mr. Carr,” he said as we shook hands. “Pleased to meet you.
I hope you haven’t been completely at loose ends this last day or so.” He
gestured toward the side of the room. “Please have a seat.”
It wasn’t until I turned the direction he’d indicated that I
realized there were more than the three of us in the room. A circle of chairs
surrounded a low table there. Melissa
Berger and Fred Vanich, whom I’d met in the Toledo train station, were already seated there, and so were two other people I
didn’t know. “Stuart Macallan from the State Department,” Meeker said, making
introductions. “Jaya Patel, from Commerce. Of course you’ve already met Melissa
and Fred.”
Hands got shaken and I took a seat. Macallan was the
assistant secretary of state for North American affairs, I knew, and Patel had
an equivalent position on the trade end of things. “I apologize for the delay,”
Meeker went on. “I imagine you know how it goes, though.”
“Of course.”
“And you seem to have put the time to good use—at least for
our garment industry.”
That got a general chuckle, which I joined. “When in Rome,”
I said. “I take it that’s not one of the things visitors usually do, though;
Mr. Finch here looked right past me this morning.”
Finch reddened. “It really does vary,” Patel said. “Some of
the diplomats and business executives we’ve worked with have taken to buying
all their clothes here—we’ve even fielded inquiries about exporting garments
for sale abroad. Still, most of our visitors seem to prefer their bioplastic.”
Her fractional shrug showed, politely but eloquently, what she thought of that.
“To each their own,” said the President. “But you’ve had the
chance to see a little of Toledo, and find out a few of the ways we do things
here. I’d be interested to know your first reactions.”
I considered that, decided that a certain degree of
frankness wasn’t out of place. “In some ways, impressed,” I said, “and in some
ways disquieted. You certainly seem to have come through the embargo years in
better shape than I expected—though I’m curious about how things will go now
that the borders are open.”
“That’s been a matter of some concern here as well,” Meeker
allowed. “That said, so far things seem to be going smoothly.”
Macallan paused just long enough to make sure his boss
wasn’t going to say more, and then cleared his throat and spoke. “One of the
things we hope might come out of your visit is a better relationship with the
Atlantic Republic. I’m sure you know how fraught things were with Barfield and
his people. If Ms. Montrose is willing to see things ratchet down to a more
normal level, we’re ready to meet her halfway—potentially more than halfway.”
“That was quite an upset she pulled off in the election,”
Meeker observed. “I hope you’ll pass on my personal congratulations.”
“I’ll gladly do that,” I said to the President, and then to
Macallan: “It’s certainly possible. I
don’t happen to know her thoughts on that, but a lot of people on our side of
the border are interested in seeing things change, and she’s got a stronger
mandate than any president we’ve had since Partition. Still—” I shrugged.
“We’ll have to see what happens after the inauguration.”
“Of course,” Macallan said.
“One thing we’d be particularly interested in seeing,” said
Patel, “is a widening of the opportunities for trade. Obviously that’s going to
be delicate—it’s a core policy of ours that the Republic has to be able to meet
its essential needs from within its own borders, and I know that stance isn’t
exactly popular in global-trade circles.
We’re not interested in global trade, but there are things your country
produces that we’d like to be able to buy, and things we produce that you might
like to buy in exchange.”
“Again,” I said, “we’ll have to see what happens—but I don’t
know of any reason why that wouldn’t be a possibility.”
She nodded, and a brief silence passed. Vanich’s featureless
voice broke it. “Mr. Carr,” he said, “you mentioned that you found some of the
ways we do things here disquieting. I think we’d all be interested in hearing
more about that, if you’re willing.”
Startled, I glanced across the table at him, but his face
was as impenetrable as it had been the first time I’d seen him. I looked at the
President, who seemed amused, and then nodded. “If you like,” I said. “At first
it was mostly the—” I floundered for a term. “—deliberately retro, I suppose,
quality of so much of what I’ve seen: the clothing, the technology, the
architecture, all of it. I have to assume that that’s an intentional choice,
connected to whatever’s inspired your Resto parties in politics.”
Meeker nodded. “Very much so.”
“But that’s not actually the thing I find most disquieting.
What has me scratching my head is that your republic seems to have gone out of
its way to ignore every single scrap of advice you must have gotten from the
World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the other global financial
institutions—in fact, from the entire economics profession—and despite that,
you’ve apparently thrived.”
Meeker’s face broke into a broad smile. “Excellent,” he
said. “Excellent. I’ll offer just one correction: we haven’t succeeded as well
as we have despite ignoring the economic advice of the World Bank and so forth.
We’ve done so precisely because we’ve ignored their advice.”
I gave him a long wary look, but his smile didn’t waver.
“Mr. Carr,” Melanie Berger said then, “Since the end of the
embargo we’ve been approached four times by the World Bank and the IMF. I’ve
been involved in the discussions that followed. Each time, their economists
have made long speeches about how the way we do things is hopelessly
inefficient, and how we’ve got to follow their advice and become more
efficient. Each time, I’ve asked them to answer a simple question: ‘more
efficient for what output in terms of what input?’ Not one of them has ever
been able, or willing, to give me a straight answer.”
“I had a lecture on that subject yesterday from a bank
officer,” I told her.
Her eyebrows went up, and then she smiled. “Not surprising.
It’s something most people here know about, if they know anything at all about
money.”
I nodded, taking that in. “So what you’re suggesting,” I
said, as much to Meeker as to her, “is that the rest of the world doesn’t have
a clue about economics.”
“Not quite,” said the President. “It’s just that our history
has forced us to look at things in a somewhat different light, and prioritize
different things.”
It was a graceful answer, and I nodded. “The question that
comes to mind at this point,” he went on, “is whether there’s anything else
you’d like to see, now that you know a little more about our republic.”
“As it happens, yes,” I said. “There is.”
He motioned me to go on.
“When I drew up the list we sent to your people right after
the election, I didn’t know about the tier system, and I’ve got some serious
questions about what things are like at the bottom rung of that ladder. I’ve
read a little bit about the system, but I’m frankly skeptical that anybody in
this day and age would voluntarily choose to live in the conditions of 1830.”
“That’s actually a common misconception,” Jaya Patel said,
with the same you-don’t-get-it smile I’d seen more than once since my arrival.
“The only thing the tier system determines is what infrastructure and services
gets paid for out of tax revenues.”
“I saw a fair number of horsedrawn wagons on the train ride
here,” I pointed out. “That’s not a matter of infrastructure.”
“Actually, it is,” she said. “Without a road system built to
stand up to auto traffic, cars and trucks aren’t as efficient as wagons—” Her
smile suddenly broadened. “—in terms of the total cost of haulage. That doesn’t
keep people in tier one counties from having whatever personal technologies
they want to have, and are willing and able to pay for.”
“Got it,” I said. “I’d still like to see how it works out in
practice.”
“That’s easy enough,” the President said. “Anything else?”
“Yes,” I said, “though I know this may be further than
you’re willing to go. I’d like to see something of your military.”
The room got very quiet. “I’d be interested,” Meeker said,
“in knowing why.”
I nodded. “It seems to me that whatever you’ve achieved by
this retro policy of yours comes at the cost of some frightful vulnerabilities.
Ms. Berger told me a little about the war with the Confederacy and Brazil, and
of course I knew a certain amount about that in advance. Obviously you won that
round—but we both know that the Confederacy wasn’t in the best of shape in ‘49,
and I really wonder about your ability to stand up to a modern high-tech
military.”
“Like the Atlantic Republic’s?” Meeker asked, with a raised
eyebrow.
I responded with a derisive snort. “With all due respect,
I’m sure you know better than that. I’m thinking about what would happen if we
ended up with a war zone or a failed state on our western borders.”
“Fair enough,” he said after a moment, “and I think we can
satisfy you about that.”
“I’d like to suggest something,” Berger said to the
President. “Defiance County is first tier.”
He glanced at her. “You’re thinking Hicksville?”
“Yes.”
“We’ll have to find someone.”
“Tom Pappas comes to mind,” she said.
The President’s face took on a slightly glazed expression,
and then he laughed. “Yes, I think Tom will do. Thank you, Melanie.” He turned
to me. “Have you made any plans for tomorrow?”
“Not yet.”
“Good. The day after tomorror, there’s a—military exercise,
I think you would call it—in a first tier county a couple of hours from here by
train. If you’re willing, I can have my staff make the arrangements for you to
go there tomorrow, have a look around, stay the night, see how our military
does things the next day, and then come back. Is that workable?”
