Gerard shrugged and saluted. “I must get back to my men.”
John shook his head again. “Visit my home soon,” he said. “You won’t do your people any good by collapsing.”
The shrewd brown eyes studied him. “You will not be there?” he said.
“No. There’s . . . trouble brewing. Exactly what I can’t say, but I can say that the board’s going to be reshuffled thoroughly, and soon.”
* * *
“Citizens!”
The sixth of the twelve-man Executive Council of the Sierra Democratica y Populara stood to address the seven hundred members of the Board of Cantonal Delegates. One of his colleagues passed him a ceremonial spear, the mark of the speaker, and pushed the button on top of a very modern timer clock.
I do not believe this, Gerta Hosten thought to herself. She and the Land delegation were sitting in the visitors’ seats to one side of the Executive Council. An extremely ancient oak in the middle of the beaten dirt of the circle hid many of the delegates from her, and from each other. This was where the first representatives of the people-in-arms had met four hundred years ago to proclaim the Sierra, probably under the parent of this very tree, and so here they still met, where the city of Nueva Madrid had grown up. And met, and met, and met; the speeches had been going on for a week and looked good for another two.
Every one of them carried a rifle and wore a bandolier. That was about the only uniformity. Dress ranged from fringed leather to Santander-style business suits, with a predominance of berets and ferocious waxed mustaches. There were no women, since females didn’t have the vote in any of the Sierran cantons, although they weren’t badly treated otherwise.
Every adult male did have the vote, and every delegate here could be recalled at any time by the cantonal voters meeting in open assembly. Any hundred men could call an assembly. The delegates chose the twelve-man executive, but the voters could recall them at any time, and often did.
I do not believe anything this absurd has survived this long, she thought. Whenever I think our councils are cumbersome, I should remind myself of this.
The speaker shouted in an untrained bellow, with a strong up-country peasant accent to his Ispanyol: “Citizens! For four hundred years, no enemy has gotten anything but disaster from attacking us. We drove out the Imperials!”
Well, that’s no particular accomplishment, she thought. Then: To be fair, that was when the Empire was a real power. They drove us into the ocean back then.
“We drove out the Union! We threw the Errife back into the sea when their ships ranged every coast! We made the Republic withdraw from our island of Trois! In the Sierra, every one of us is a fighting man, every one!”
Funny, in most places half the population are women, Gerta thought as the delegates cheered wildly.
“So let the cunt-whipped Chosen perverts fuck themselves!” The speaker’s mountain-peasant accent grew thicker. “Let the dirty money-grubbing Santanders fuck themselves! The Sierra pisses on all of them!”
Eventually the timer rang, loud and insistent. The president pro tem of the Executive Council—each member held the office in rotation for a week—cleared his throat as he took back the spear.
“We must, in courtesy, listen to the arguments of the honorable Thomas Beemer, Ambassador Plenipotentiary to the Sierra from the Republic of the Santander.”
Assistant head of the Research Department of the Foreign Ministry, Gerta reminded herself. That made him the equivalent of the second-in-command of the Fourth Bureau back home, although the Research Department didn’t have the internal security functions the Fourth Bureau did. A very high-powered spook. A rabbity-looking little man, bald and peering out through thick glasses. Important not to underestimate him because of that.
“Honorable delegates,” Beemer said. “The Chosen took the Empire fifteen years ago. Over the last five they have conquered the Union. Only you Sierrans and we in the Republic remain independent.
“The Republic does not intend to let the Chosen eat the world, not all in one gulp or one nibble at a time. I am here to announce that from this midnight, the Republic of the Santander declares a total naval blockade of the Union. This blockade will be maintained until all foreign troops are withdrawn and a legitimate government chosen by free elections under Santander supervision. The Republic will regard it as a grave breach of friendly relations if the Democratic and Popular Sierra allows overland transit to evade this blockade.”