Power Lines

"Well, sounds to me like we need to do a little campaigning," Yana said.

"We will make them songs so they understand," Clodagh said.

"Cool," Diego said. "Just like the old radical songs from Earth. Ah, if only I had a guitar."

"What's that?" Bunny asked.

"A musical instrument. All of the old protest singers had them. There's some wonderful mining songs in the memory banks back-back at my old place."

"I wish you had one then," Bunny said loyally.

"Me, too. Except I don't know how to play."

"I bet you could learn." Bunny told him. "You make better songs than some people who've made them all their lives."

"Bunka," Clodagh said sharply. "Each song is a good song if it says what the singer means it to say."

"Course it is, Clodagh. I know that. But Diego's sound better. He says what he means to say so everybody can understand it. That's all I meant."

Clodagh smiled, a slightly bawdy smile, with a wink to Sean and Yana. "That's all right then, alannah. He does make good songs."

In the short distance to Clodagh's house, they discussed the finer points of what needed to be said to the villages, both those which dissented and those which Clodagh felt sure could be counted upon to support the planet.

When they reached Clodagh's, what seemed to be the entire village was waiting outside in her yard. Yana found, looking at the yard, that she missed the snow. The village looked like a garbage dump, with its stores of winter provisions half-thawed in the snow, the trash that had been buried, the salvaged equipment lying around the yard, all of the items that had been lost throughout the long winter. Not to mention the leavings of the various dogs and cats and horses housed in the village. Also, without the snow, the roofs of the houses looked patchy, the siding worn despite its gay pastel colors. And everything and everyone was smeared and splattered with mud.

This dreary aspect didn't seem to lessen their regard for each other in the slightest, however, and the villagers crowded as cheerfully as ever into Clodagh's tiny house and began discussing what was to be done.

"We need to have another latchkay," Eamon Intiak said. "We should have one and invite the people who don't understand. Petaybee would speak to them and then they'd know."

"You'd think they'd know already by now," Sinead Shongili said.

"Now, Sinead," her partner Aisling said reasonably, "such things take some folks longer. Their worries about the everyday things in their lives get in the way of understanding what's here."

'We'll each go away and think about these things and make songs," Clodagh said. "Then we'll go talk to the other people. Sinead, you and Sean and the Maloneys must go the farthest because you're the best travelers. I would like to send Frank with you, Sinead, and young Diego with Liam. Yana, you go with Sean. We need you people who know about the company to make talk with the neighbors who are taken in by the promises, too."