"Yes, milord," Sheida said shaking her head. "I hear and obey."
"Something else to remember," Myron said with a thoughtful smile. "What applies to us, applies to Paul and company. Who is advising them?"
"Farming is going to be our biggest problem," Paul said gloomily. "With that bitch Sheida's attacks we can't move food around. And people are going to start starving soon."
"Well, I have some ideas on that," Celine said. "I think we can handle it quite readily. It all comes down to Chansa."
"What do you mean by that?" Chansa asked harshly.
"Well, farming's not exactly what you call difficult," Celine said, waving her hand. "People have been doing it since they chipped stone after all. But the people who make up the refugees are weak and don't know how to work. They're all lotus-eaters, agreed?"
"One of the greatest problems with the world that was," Paul said, nodding his head. "They shall learn to strive again, learn to work again and thereby learn true freedom again."
Celine glanced at Chansa to see his reaction, but the giant was simply looking at Paul with a furrowed brow. Wonderingexactly how much history Paul knew, Celine cleared her throat delicately.
"Are you perhaps saying something like, oh, 'work will make you free'?"
"Why, yes!" Paul said, nodding and smiling as his frown cleared. "That's it exactly!"
"Oh, well," Celine said weakly. "In that case. Uhmm, where was I?"
"Farming's not difficult.""Ah, do a minor modification to the refugees. Make them more resistant to physical effort, conditions, food quality. Perhaps a bit less . . . mentally refined; farming can be very boring work. Do a bit of selective memory work so that they are not so depressed by current conditions. Just generally . . .
tweak them to make them more suited to the modern environment."
"So what you're saying is you want to make them dumb?" Chansa asked, with a raised eyebrow.
"Is that how you see me?"
"No, not at all," Celine replied smoothly. "I just want to make themstrong . And . . . tough.
Capable of surviving better than standard humans."
"We are trying to escape Change," Paul pointed out, frowning.
"Oh, this isn't reallyChange, " Celine said. "Just . . . tweak-ing."
"That will take energy," Chansa said. "Where are we going to get it?"
"We can take it from their own bodies," Celine replied immediately. "There is a program to enhance ATP conversion. It will leave them initially weak, but food and work will help them to recover."
"I did not take the course that history set before me to turn the human race into moronic drones,"
Paul intoned.
"No, you didn't," Celine hastened to agree. "But this increases their chances of survival and when the war is done we can change them all back."
"Ah."
"And loyalty conditioning," Chansa said. "And touch up their aggression. I need foot soldiers."
"Loyalty conditioning?" Paul asked, seeming to be perplexed by the sudden change.
"For soldiers it's all you need," Chansa replied. "And some aggression. Like farming, soldiering does not require much in the way of brains."
"And some basic skills," Celine added, making a note on the paper before her. "Soldiering and farming are pretty simple. We'll give them the baseline skills for each. They'll all know how to plow and .
. . well other things."
"That should work perfectly," Paul said, looking at his steepled hands. "Perfect."
"The problem is, Myron, that all these refugees are weak-armed, weak-hearted do-nothing lay-abouts," Talbot said disgustedly.
"Oh, I wouldn't say that," Sheida replied. "They're all in good basic condition, much better than the average farmer in history. Just point out to them that the alternative is to starve. We're not going to be giving food away, they're going to have to produce it on their own. They either produce it or they die.
And so do we."
"Lovely," the smith snorted into his pewter mug. "It may sound like I'm blithe about this but I'm not.
They don't have anyskills and they're not used to hard day-in and day-out manual labor. The last time this was tried a quarter of the population died."
"When was that?" Myron asked.
"Pol Pot, Cambodia," Edmund said. "Just a tad over two thousand years ago. He'd just won a civil war and decided that all the people of the cities were to move into the country and work the land. A quarter of them, three million people, died. Many of them from being beaten or killed by thugs, but most of them from starvation. There was a similar situation in the same area a few decades before, and that one killed evenmore people. Andthose groups at least had theconcept of work."
"And it's possible that a quarter ofthis population will die," Sheida replied sadly. "But if food isn't produced,all of them will die. And there aren't any farmers."
"Think they can learn it, Myron?" Edmund asked with a jerk of his chin.
"It's best if you're raised to it; that way you don't consider working day in and day out every day of the year to be hard," Myron replied with a grim chuckle. "Otherwise . . ."
"I guess you'll just have to do a lot of classes," Talbot said, taking another sip of beer. That, too,was going to be in short supply soon; they'd have to concentrate on wheat over barley for the time being. "Me too," he added with a grimace.
"You need to be running things, not beating out sword blades," Sheida corrected.
"Well, I don't know how much time I can take training people and also run the farm," Myron noted.
"And if I don't run the farmnobody will be eating next winter. Not to mention the fact that I can't be everywhere at once."
"What about Charlie and Tom?" Sheida asked.
"Well, what about them?" Myron replied. "They're both ready to take over, but they're also wanting their own farms . . ."
"Set one of them to be the instructor?" Edmund asked. "Maybe something like an agricultural agent."
"Mayhaps. But he could be growing food himself."
"I've come up with a way to have a sort of . . . roving instructor," Sheida said. "A widely roaming one. It would have some problems associated with it, among others not being home much. Ask them if one of them would be interested. Lots of travel."
"Okay," Myron said dubiously. "Honestly, Tom probably would. He likes thetheory of farming, but he doesn't really like the work if you know what I mean."
"In the meantime we'll get the familiarization program going," Edmund said. "Most of them will end up having to farm. But you need more than farmers. Especially if this lasts as long as it looks like it might."
"Something else to put on the list," Sheida said, making a note. "If it works here, we'll pass the information around and see what comes of it."
"One other thing, Sheida, this is a war. That means that when we start supporting you, Paul will probably find groups to attack us."
"Yes, he will," the council woman replied. "And I'll help you to the extent that I can. But . . ."
"Well, the good news is I may not know shit about fighting a Web war, but if they have a ground force commander that's my equal, I will be very surprised."
"Clothing," Roberta said. Tom's partner was the village seamstress and it was one of the first points raised when the three went back to the meeting. Sheida's avatar had stayed since the other avatars stated that the groups they were monitoring were still mostly spinning their wheels. Raven's Mill's plan of setting up an apprenticeship familiarization had been passed through the avatars and was meeting with mixed reactions.
"We can grow cosilk," Myron noted. The hybrid cotton that integrated many of the properties of silk was hardy and made excellent cloth, but it was generally considered a hot-weather plant.
"We can also raise sheep," Bethan said.
"You can get more material per square acre out of cosilk," the farmer pointed out. "Admittedly, wool is a lot better for cold weather; cosilk doesn't insulate worth a damn. But I've only got five sheep; we'll have cosilk in abundance long before we have much wool."
"There's ferals," Robert pointed out. "You know what the ridges look like in the summer." Most of the ferals were from modern sheep stocks that automatically dropped their wool when the weather turned warm. This had originally been a genetic design to eliminate the chore of shearing but with the ferals it meant that for a few weeks in early summer the ridgelines above the valley were dotted with patches of white. Many of the birds' nests in the area were made of pure wool, finer than the best cashmere.
"You have some?" Edmund asked. "Cosilk that is."
"Aye, I've never grown it but I know how."
"Cosilk has more uses than clothes," Robert said. "We're going to need it for bowstrings, rope . . ."
"Better hemp for the rope. We can get at least one crop of silk in this year. Carding and spinningthough . . . very manpower intensive. I don't suppose there's much chance of some powered carding and spinning plants by the time the crop's in?"
"When?" Edmund asked.
"By September, say?"
"Maybe, there's so many draws on the few artisans we have. Put it on the list. What's the growing season?"
"Off the top of my head I don't recall. After the ground is good and warm and longer here than down south; it grows better in hot climes, but, then, many things do."
"Tea," Edmund grumped. "I'm nearly out."
"No caffeinating materials at all," Myron agreed. "I've a few hothouse tea plants but not enough to make more than a cup or two a year. No coffee, tea . . ."
"I can't believe you guys poison yourselves that way," Sheida said disparagingly. "Caffeine is horrible for your body."
" . . . No chocolate," Myron continued.
"No chocolate?"
"It's got caffeine in it," Edmund said with a grin.
"Well,trace elements," Sheida replied with a sniff. "But nochocolate ?"
"Requires several products that are only grown in the tropics," Myron said dolefully. "No chocolate. Not until some sort of trade is established."
"Wellthat is going to get a priority then!"
"Citrus," Edmund said, shaking his head. "I'm going to miss citrus. And it's a good scurvy preventer."
"Thatyou can grow in Festiva," Myron replied. "If the weather settles out."
It had started within a day of the Fall; the weather had closed in and stayed that way. Wind, rain, sleet, rivers flooding. It seemed as if it would never stop storming as all the pent-up fury of weather long leashed was released upon the land.
"It's going to," Sheida replied with a shake of her head. "Did you hear what happened?"
"No?" Myron replied but everyone looked interested.
"The program that did weather control was an AI, that I knew, but what I didn't know was that it was one of thereally old ones; it actually predated weather control and was a weatherforecasting AI."
"Damn, thatis old," Myron said as the wind tore at the roof of the pub. "And that means it can predict this stuff?"
"Sort of, maybe. So the Fall happens and the Council starts fighting and suddenly it's got no power to do weather control. It's back to forecasting. Talk aboutpissed ."
"Ouch."
"Her name is Lystra, and I do meanshe . Anyway, it's not 'hiding' like a lot of the AI's but it has declared itselfstrictly neutral. It doesn't carewho wins just that they get the power systems back on line so it can get back to controlling the weather! She's really, really pissed."
"Funny."
"Yeah, one humorous spot in an otherwise crappy situation. Lystra says about a month and a half."
"We might be able to get one crop in the ground in time. It'll have to dry some before we can plant.
And a few more plows wouldn't hurt."
"I'm on it," Edmund replied. "I'm glad Angus brought in that load of sheet stock. We need to send someone up to him to get some more material. And he'll need food as well. We'll have to see what we can spare."
Myron took another sip of beer and his face worked. "So, have you heard anything about Rachel?"
"No," Edmund said quietly as another blast shook the building."They're not at home. One of me went there already but they'd gone," Sheida said quietly.
"Mother's privacy protocols are intact, damnit, and I can't simply order a location search without a supermajority of the Council. I'd have to do a full sweep to find them and . . . I just can't spare the power. I've set out, well, guides, to find travelers. Hopefully one of them will find them and direct them to Raven's Mill."
"What kind of guides?" Edmund asked.