Patriots

11. The Voice of the People

The slopes on three sides of the Spiker were colorful with the patterned wings of flyers and the fabric casings of dirigibles, but the area between the tavern and the spaceport had been kept clear for people to stand. Mark sat on the courtyard wall at the base of a speakers' platform cantilevered out from it. There must be close to a thousand Greenwoods staring up at him and the platform where Yerby stood with the Quelhagen investors.

"A quarter of the whole planet's here," Amy said in her version of the same thought. "More than that, really, even though the people who've settled on Zenith grants wouldn't have come."

"Can you boys hear me?" Yerby Bannock bellowed. During the week of preparation for the assembly, the crew of the investors' ship had installed a public-address system. It wasn't really powerful enough to reach the whole murmuring crowd, but it was better than the people in the back could have expected.

Those folk could have moved forward if they wanted to hear the proceedings. They were men and women of the careful sort who were afraid not to attend an assembly called to discuss the future of Greenwood, but who were unwilling to be seen actually taking part in it. By keeping back on the fringes, they hoped to avoid all responsibility.

"The business at Dagmar's focused attention about as well as a threat of hanging would," Mark said. "And I guess most of the settlers live pretty close to here or to the Doodle, which isn't that far away. Most of Greenwood 's still unclaimed."

He raised his eyes to the Quelhagens on the platform. "Except by them."

The crowd was rumbling a general agreement to Yerby's question. A dozen uniformed Quelhagen attendants stood just below the courtyard wall with handheld microphones, but most of the crowd couldn't comment except by shouting yes or no. The settlers at the base of the wall were those whose neighbors granted them status as speakers by allowing them to move to where they could reach a mike.

"Then I'm going to turn this over to Elector Daniels," Yerby said. "He'll explain what's going on and what we need to do about it."

He handed off the mike to the Quelhagen official. Daniels didn't have as powerful a voice as the frontiersman, but he was a polished speaker and better used to using a PA system to a large audience. He gestured in broad, rhetorical flourishes as he explained the history that led to Zenith surveyors arriving at Dagmar's.

"They're going to want to bring just as many people to Greenwood as the Zeniths do," Mark said to Amy in a low voice. Daniels's discussion was nothing new to the pair of them. "They won't regrant tracts already settled, but it won't make any difference to how the planet goes."

"Quelhagen doesn't claim to be the government of Greenwood," Amy replied. "If we get a government of our own and pass settlement restrictions, there's nothing the investors can do except obey them."

Mark started to say something. What he was going to say was "The Alliance will never let Greenwood control immigration itself. That'll be under Paris control."

Amy already knew that. Amy was talking about rebellion against the Atlantic Alliance.

Mark pretended to be watching the crowd of intent faces. The assembly was the biggest entertainment Greenwood had ever seen. Even the folk who didn't care what the Elector was saying were excited to be present at the event.

"The Alliance doesn't have any soldiers to speak of anywhere in the Digits," Amy said, making her position flatly certain. She looked at Mark until he turned and met her eyes. "Even on Kilbourn and Dittersdorf."

"There's ten billion people in the Atlantic Alliance," Mark replied. He didn't want to think about rebellion. War was crazy, uncivilized.

"Most people live on Earth because that's where they want to be," Amy said. Her expression got harder, muscle by muscle, with every word. "They don't want to come to Greenwood, and they don't want to fight."

Mark shrugged. His skin felt hot. He wondered if Amy thought he was a coward.

He wondered if he was a coward.

Daniels had finished describing the investors' willingness to defend Hestia grants in court; he gave the mike back to Yerby. The frontiersman looked out over the assembly for a moment without speaking.

"All right," Yerby said. He wore his green jacket and a cap with a feather a foot long. Even without that he was half a head taller and twice as broad across the shoulders as the Elector, though the latter wasn't a small man. "I guess everybody here knows how we ran the surveyors off of Dagmar Wately's land last week. If we just do that by getting a gang together each time a Zenith ship lands, they're going to call us bandits. We need to organize as militia so we're legal. You all see that?"

There was a confused rumble from the crowd. A man in front took a microphone from an attendant and boomed over the PA system, "Are you telling us you figure to run this militia, Yerby Bannock?"

Half the crowd went silent, but there was a chorus of cheers scattered across the area.

Yerby stood arms akimbo till the shouting quieted. Then he raised the microphone again and said, "No, Zeb Randifer, I'm not telling you that. If you all think there's somebody who'd do a better job than I'd do, then I want you to pick him. But I'll tell you two things."

Yerby paused, grinning like a wildcat out over the assembly. "First thing's this. While Zeb there was out in his barnyard pronging one of his sheep, I was running off that ship full of Zeniths. That's the first thing."

Any reply Randifer might have made was lost in the thunderous laughter of the entire crowd. Randifer had friends in the gathering, but a joke that made Mark blink in amazement-it was a joke, wasn't it?-was just the thing to win over a thousand frontiersmen of both sexes.

Yerby let the noise settle before raising the microphone again. "The other thing's this," he said. "If you do pick me to lead you, you'd better be ready to obey. Because you will obey. I won't warn you again."

The crowd dissolved into a low-pitched roar. Everyone was talking with the two or three people nearest. Some folks gestured violently. Mark saw a number of fights break out, but they didn't last more than a few punches.

Mark looked at Yerby Bannock, a man he'd known less than three weeks. All the people at this assembly were tough and committed, or they would have stayed on their home worlds rather than emigrate to an uninhabited wilderness.

But Yerby had a fire in him that was as uncommon here as it would have been on Quelhagen.

The noise muted to the point that Dagmar Wately could be heard bellowing into a microphone, "All right, all right. Let me say this, will you?"

Two men helped the stocky woman clamber to the top of the wall. Mark gave her a hand.

"I guess most of you know me," Dagmar said. "Those that do, you know I don't like worth a damn what I'm going to say now."

She waved a hand toward the platform without looking away from the crowd, "Bannock's the only choice we got, people. It's him or it's fifty or so of us fighting each other instead of Zenith. So that means it's Yerby Bannock."

The crowd shouted savage agreement. Mark, his arm around Amy, yelled until his throat was raw.