The electoral crisis in The Commonhope of UZ
-- that fictional country much like our own -- draws to a head as my serial
novel "The Country/The Country" moves toward a climax on the eve of
the November 6 Congressional elections. Mr. Pig, the autocratic candidate who
manipulates his country's creaky Voting system -- intimidating opposition
voters and casting a mind-control spell over his own supporters -- orders his
backers to march on the nation's Capital and install him as their new leader. In
the darkness before dawn Citizen Keel broods on taking matters in his own hands
in a wholly uncharacteristic act of violence. But in her hideout in the hills, opposition
leader and seer Mrs. Nathan calls on ancient spirits for assistance and receives
a message, from somewhere, concerning "a wall of flesh."
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We're in the final week of my serial novel "The
Country/The Country," with postings scheduled for today, Friday, and
Monday, Nov. 5 -- the day before the Congressional elections.
I
appreciate the support and words of encouragement I've received from
numerous readers. Some of you took the time to write generous reviews
and post them on the novel's online home. I thank you again for your
attention and your kindness.
Here's an excerpt from Chapter 45. We begin with the drama taking place in the thoughts of the seer Mrs Nathan:
The ancient ones said they were ready now.
Nothing worked the way
it used to, of course, when the world was young. The world had not been young
for some time now. Still, it was there, going on anyoldwhichway. That was
something.
Some of the ancient
ones were tired of being ancient. Renewal was the only answer, they argued.
Build it anew. Time for 'a new.'
New what? someone
asked.
Not up to us, the
others demurred. Our job was to do a job we were set up to do. It's not to
knock things over and start up everything from scratch all over again.
Well whose job is it,
then?
Don't know. Probably
something stronger, and younger. Like a comet, maybe
Are comets young?
Who knows? Maybe a
hole 'nother yoo-niverse young.
So what do we do, just
wait around to be destroyed?
Created? Destroyed?
All that's beyond our understanding. It's not our business.
We really don't know
anything, do we?
No, we don't. You're
right. We don't even know what we look like. In order to do that you have to be
someone else to do the looking.
Now how can you be
someone else and still be yourself?
Can't. Be like
stepping on your own feet.
Swallowing your own
tongue, another one said.
Actually, people do
that.
No!
Really? Gross!
It had been harder, harder than she remembered, to get their attention.
Was that because she was older as
well?
But, hey, they were
the ancient ones. They shouldn't have any problem with 'old.'
Still, she argued
(with herself), if you pursue something that isn't ready yet, you simply push
it further away. You cannot grasp the ineffable with both hands and pull it
from its hiding place. You only cause it to shrink away and hide deeper in the
darkness, which is always there, which is spinning toward the dawn in its own
good time. You have to wait.
But it was hard to
wait.
Sometimes Mrs. Nathan
found it hard as well merely to keep her eyes open. She did not wish to miss
the call when, eventually, it came. It was hardest of all to remain powerless
as the Leading Candidate moved toward what was clearly meant to be the Last
Campaign. The minds of her followers, the workers and messengers of her hive,
have supplied her with images enough to show her what was happening in the
darker, scheming mind of the One Who Would Be Ruler.
She saw, if darkly,
the shadows of his intentions. How they loomed across the country. She saw the
smokes and fires in those intentions. She saw the monuments rise to the new
ruler. She saw the divisions darken between those who brought great bags of
numbers to the tower of the ruler, and those whose fortunes were filled with
holes. She saw the sands run through their fingers. Saw the tatters of their
communities. Derelict factories, empty houses. Abandoned villages.
The peoples who had
not favored the new Ruler separated, willingly or not, from those who did,
their opportunities shrinking. She saw masses of the disfavored 'others'
cleansed from the land. Gathered into herds and driven from their homes toward
the borders of other realms, smaller, less powerful countries that the Ruler
forced to accept these deportees. Though these lands did not want them since
they had people enough of their own. Still, they were driven. Fences pierced. Borders crossed. People
herded, forced along by men in uniform bearing weapons.
She saw the Permanent
Campaign, leather-lunged followers cheering decorated representatives of ACE,
Ass-kicking Community Enforcers, the ruler's favored arm of government.
She saw other men,
armed men, walking the streets of UZ's cities and towns with the slouching
superiority of the conquerors. The New Force with its new uniforms of a dirty
northern green, the boreal green of the cold, polar-tending places, patrolling
the streets with automatic weapons. Given a wide berth by ordinary folk, the
permanently occupied citizens of the Commonhope of UZ.
New armies rise,
restless for purpose, domination, spreading the gospel of strength.
She saw the Festivals
of Money. Grand, palatial interiors inside the transparent many-storied towers
of the New Wealth, mirrored and chandeliered, fitted with ice sculptures and
artificial waterfalls; with cascading gardens of hanging flowers made of vinyl,
where snowfalls of paper currency floated down from the balconies to the
laugh-choking, breathless hysteria of the costumed guests, wearing the gowns
and uniforms of Long-Past Eras of wealth and ostentation: the bangles and boas,
and feathers and cockades and robes, and caped splendors of the regal courts of
ancient regimes... Saw them squealing and laughing and scurrying and squabbling
among themselves to gather up huge handfuls of the carelessly dispossessed
wealth of the nation.
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