Chapter 16

There was a little excitement during the break because Harry, who'd slipped out to handle the regular radio transmission, thought he'd heard something. "It was -- I could barely hear it," he said, but it sounded like somebody trying to communicate. It was just a few words."

"What'd they say?" Ingmar asked.

"I couldn't make it out. I'm not even, y'know, positive it was anything. But it wasn't like just static, y'know? It was like a few words, there."

"Why didn't you call us?"

"It just happened, just before you all came in. And I was still listening, trying to hear more."

"I think you should keep at it, keep trying," Ingmar said.

"Too much background noise in here now," Harry complained.

"I'll herd everybody back out of this area," Ingmar said. "Carter -- you say here and help Harry."

Our break was extended for almost a full hour while Harry and I tried to raise the voice that Harry thought he'd heard earlier. We had no result, and finally, less than an hour before our next scheduled follow-up recorded broadcast, we shut down and signaled Bridgett that we were ready to rejoin the meeting. Bridgett explained the cause of the delay (everyone had already heard about it, anyway) and we resumed.

Bridgett called on Max Coward next.

I didn't like Max much, and I don't think most of the other people in the community did, either. He did his share of the work, and all, but he was a negative kind of guy. And I think he was seriously pissed off about being abandoned by Sandra Shumer.

It wasn't like they had been sweethearts, or something, before the Virus. Nobody had spelled it out, but I think they had a more or less commercial relationship. Maybe he hadn't been flat-out paying Sandra money for sex, but they evidently had been living the beach-resort life together for a few days, and Max had been paying the freight, and in exchange, apparently, Sandra had been letting him fuck her.

Anyway, nowadays, Sandra Shumer was choosing who she slept under a set of changed motivations; Max wasn't one of her chosen.

He confirmed that when he spoke to the group. "I haven't had sex with anybody here except Sandra. That was before -- in Ft. Myers. Well, in Sanibel. Nobody since then. I guess I'm with the people here who've said we don't need a lot of sex rules. It should be every man for himself. Well -- every person."

"You expressed some resentment earlier," Bridgett said, "about Sandra, being with other men."

"Well, yes, I suppose I did. I guess I was, y'know, jealous."

And then Roald challenged him, too: "And you said something, earlier, about how we needed some control. Some 'discipline, ' I think you said?"

"OK, OK. I guess I'm changing my mind, some. Sure, I was pissed that I was missing out. This new order of ours hasn't been particularly kind to me. But the more I hear tonight, the more I think maybe fewer rules are better. But I do think we need to be keeping some -- some records, of children born, and stuff like that. We are going to need that, in the future."

"That's a very good point," Martin said. "We ought to devise ways of recording parentage, and retaining family trees for everyone in the community."

Having someone agree with him -- about anything -- seemed to soften Max Coward a little. "I'm willing to wait, and see what we come up with, in the way of laws, or a constitution, or whatever it's going to be," Max said. "Then we could talk about it some more, and maybe vote on something."

Avril Scott spoke next. He expressed appreciation for the several people in the community who had willingly helped him with his two small motherless children. He thanked Ingmar and Roald, and all of us, for rescuing him and his group. He said he hoped we'd have a community that didn't depart, too far, from past sexual mores, but he conceded it was possible that some changes in rules, and attitudes, might have to be made.

We were all waiting for Brenda DiQuinzio's turn to speak, because she'd made a remark about having been another woman in our group who'd slept with two of the men. I think everybody wanted to know who the men were.

But Brenda didn't say.

"I mentioned before that Sandra and Bridgett weren't the only women here who'd been with two men in the group," she said. "But Sandra has been open about what she did, with both of the men. I haven't been. I don't think either man knows about -- the other one. And I don't feel like this is the right time to tell them, or any of you, either. But what Raymond said? About things having gotten -- different -- since the Virus hit? I feel that, too. I feel more... I feel the urge to have sex, now, 'way more than... before."

"But, having sex with more than one man, and not telling them about it," Bridgett said, "that could be dangerous!" She paused a moment. "I know. I did it, too. But the question whether, in the future, any of us should have that kind of -- secret -- liaison is very much up for discussion here."

"OK, I understand that," Brenda said. "Maybe what I've done -- or the fact that I did it secretly -- was wrong. Right now, though, it's going to stay my secret. Those two men each know who they are. That'll have to be enough."

"Anything else you want to say?" It was Roald.

"Maybe I agree that all these relationships should be out in the open," Brenda said. "Maybe I'll... tell the men. The two of them. About the other one. But not now, not here in front of all of you. I mean, both of them are here in the room, so they both already know, now, I was with somebody else.

"What I think -- we're all too close to the shock, of what happened. We can't be ready to make any kind of commitments, right now, to each other. But it's like Raymond said. We've got all these men -- and women, too -- who're feeling it. Feeling... needs. And it's dangerous, because all sorts of stuff can go wrong, because of it! If we're not careful, there's going to be violence, and maybe exploitation. Because of sex, I'm talking.

"So later on, we gotta maybe worry about who's having babies with who, and about the gene pool, and all that stuff, but, right now -- it's too soon for big rules! We gotta stress how to keep from going to war with each other, over this kind of stuff. Sure, maybe we need rules, but we're not ready to make them yet. Except, maybe, real basic ones, like 'no' still means 'no, ' just like before."

"Yeah. And maybe, a rule that says no sex for trying to gain an advantage, in the group," Max Coward said. "Like, to -- maybe -- get out of work, or something like that. Or to influence somebody."

"I've never done anything like that!" Sandra said. She was extremely angry.

"No! No, Sandra, honest to God, I wasn't talking about you, any more than anybody else," Max said.

Maybe it was true. He sounded sincere to me.

"OK. Let's leave it that what Max described is something that could happen," Bridgett broke in. "And he's right -- it's gotta be the worse kind of way to use sex. And the fact that we're all feeling... horny. Well, that doesn't have to govern everything we do. Brenda's right. A woman still ought to be able to say 'no.' Even here. Even now. Never mind what we do a year from now, when maybe we'll be worrying about making babies. Maybe it's too soon, right now, to make babies."