Safely You Deliver

by Graydon Saunders

  None have said, but I have not asked. Do those as would be citizens die as might those as would be independents?

  It’s never happened. There’s been refusals, you can’t do it if you’re controlled or possessed or insane. The Shape thinks sanity is an accurate perception of reality, it doesn’t care about social norms or behaviour or what you use for logic. You just have to be able to understand what you’re promising to do.

  Able alone?

  Most of a chuckle, all of a smile. No one knows the future. Insisting on full understanding of consequences prevents all choice.

  Some little time passes, and perhaps my deeds may pass for thinking.

  Thou may not, thy flock may not, seek to live by self-constraint?

  What the Shape thinks is important, but can’t be relevant; there’s no evidence the Shape can be deceived. It should reassure Grue more, it’s certainly been tried. So we’re sticking to the old advice to be what is peaceful and do what is lawful.

  Whence the advice?

  Dove was quoting the speaker of the first Commonweal Parliament, the one in the year zero, not our first Parliament. The other thing Dove said was “Later always happens, but it doesn’t always happen to you. Talk to the hoof-lad.”

  So you have done.

  Dove gives me big-sister advice, I listen. Real width of mirth, joy enow and hope’s half-glimmer. I had one, now I’ve got six.

  Something entirely not mirth. I wanted to. Wasn’t sure it was fair before I passed for an Independent, not sure it can be fair after. Talked to Eirene about that.

  If least, justly least, and not abused for it.

  Truth.

  Secure places, as are not found in the wild. Help at the price of peace. These are mighty things.

  I don’t do madly-in-love. Best not do any kind of madly, really. Doesn’t mean I don’t want you for a lover, don’t want to keep asking what we want to do together, don’t want a reliable togetherness. I can’t promise I’ll always want that, always is an unreasonably long time.

  Sing today, and tomorrow is yet silent. Though thou has made me as could sing, still must permit me in all unreason tomorrow’s silence.

  Chapter 54

  Zora

  After breakfast, we wind up in a meeting room with Wake and Clerk Lester and Eirene and a couple of gean officers, an Anicetus who’s the gean treasurer and a Clotho who’s the secretary of the planning committee, and also Creon the member of Parliament, officially present in their office.

  Not at all what I was expecting for after breakfast. We got a swathe of focus and ward design from Ongen yesterday, and today was going to be deciding if we could build a temporary version for testing.

  No one says anything much or starts the meeting until we get another clerk, Clerk Merovich, from the Geld-gesith, who is apologetic for being late. Since they just got off a barge, hardly their fault. Doucelin comes in behind them in formal fylstan’s collar and shuts the door.

  No idea Dove says.

  Vocal, please Wake says, and smiles formally at us.

  Lester and Merovich sort out who is doing what part of the meeting, and we get a bit baffled because there’s a subsequent deferral to Creon.

  “I had hoped this could wait on your becoming Independents,” Creon says. “It will not. You are, collectively, too useful for the tax system.”

  No eerie incidental unison this time. Nothing at all. Not a concept I’ve ever had to consider before. Chloris isn’t willing to consider the concept legitimate. I’m trying not to be sure they’ve done their sums wrong.

  Dove, now, Dove’s almost smiling, and it wouldn’t be any of the good smiles. Eirene makes a tiny head-shake at Dove, which means something, Dove’s face relaxes and then so do Ed and Constant.

  Merovich hauls out ledgers, the definitive attested ones, and Wake makes an “allow me?” gesture and we get pages on the wall.

  I’m baffled until Wake blinks a little square in the bottom left, that’s hundred thousands of marks, not marks.

  Chloris squeaks, and then Dove hugs Chloris sideways.

  Happens a lot in the other order.

  “You have gone from doing half the spring weeding in the Province of Westcreek to doing nigh all of it, and three-fifths of the autumn weeding,” Merovich says. “To the great benefit of everyone, even before we begin to consider canals and other infrastructure.”

  “Isn’t that just service?” My voice is even, I’m proud of that.

  “If you were full Independents, acting in your service years,” Lester says, “the credit is a tenth of the value. As students, you are credited with a twentieth.”

  “It is important to use an Independent’s service wisely,” Wake says. “The Galdor-gesith and the Geld-gesith are both concerned that this be so.” So of course both gesiths credit the Independent and record the requests to charge the requestor, depending on whether or not it’s paid from taxes. They probably filter the requests so food and transportation come first.

  “A twentieth of above half the total agricultural weeding in the Province of Westcreek, averaged over four years,” Anicetus says. “Then there’s the drainage.”

  “It was only one canal,” Chloris says, almost plaintive, and there’s a general chuckle.

  “Lots of dikes and ditches and several penstocks,” Creon says. “Plus lock-gates and dams. I do not think you realize how improved the West Wetcreek watershed’s control structures have become.”

  “Nobody here for the Peace-gesith,” Dove says. “So someone has a plan.”

  Lester smiles. “Three plans.”

  “None of them work without agreement on what you are, wizard-team is a legal category without precise definition.”

  Parliament just said wizard-team was legal term, that it meant something, and that there could be more, Parliament didn’t say what a wizard-team was for taxes. Clerks figure that out, that’s what clerks do, it’s not easy and it takes time. All the ideas are easy, it’s how they combine that gets you.

  “Not a plan to get us to stop,” Dove says, to a room full of emphatic head-shaking and a firm deep “No” from Creon.

  “That would be malfeasance,” Merovich says. “Permitting you to wind up in court of a thane’s taxes likewise.”

  “If a wizard-team is a thing like a collective,” Lester says, “present law fails, because Independents have no gean to which your income goes. Making you members of a gean then fails because that gean exceeds in prosperity its neighbours, if not immediately then in time.” Four-fifths of your collective share goes straight to your gean, just like any other out-of-gean income.

  Exceeds in prosperity is a legal term, we’ve eaten this book. Some relevant book, maybe not the exact one. Factor of ten, thumb rule, really about seven and a half in the Creeks because there’s a formula and the Creeks are good about keeping thing even.

  Lots of good dirt Dove says. Nobody has to struggle with marginal land.

  It does all sit on food.

  “This would also fail a core tenet of the Ur-law of the Commonweal, that sorcerers should have no rule. Geans are in many senses a means of investment; a gean including Independents has gained members of indefinite lifespan, and in the end that would be rule.” Lester says this as a thing beyond debate or question, which is good, because I can feel speculative structures in our head, mostly Ed and Constant, that there might be a way to make it work. There are people who don’t senesce, Doucelin’s one, you can get away with just pretending when they’re not sorcerers.

  “If a wizard-team is a provincial or Commonweal resource, as are roads and canals, it is effectively a condition of servitude.” Lester’s saying this strictly for completeness, and says it into a disapproving silence.

  “If a wizard-team is a partnership, as with doctors or teachers,” or nulls or chemists or actuaries, who go where they’re needed, distinct from a gean or a collective, but are not any kind of clerk, not directly servants of the Commonweal, “the formula for recompense does not improve matters
.” Lester’s clearly amused, which is a lot for a working clerk. “Since that formula rewards efficiency.”

  Right. Just the five of us for a province, and I doubt that formula includes logarithmic decay.

  “Plus we have to live somewhere,” Dove says, to a bunch of careful nods.

  “We are not kicking you out,” Eirene says, in a that’s decided voice Wake approves of much more than anybody aware of only Wake’s facial expression is going to be able to tell.

  We all say some kind of thank you, trying to make it not just polite.

  “There is also,” Merovich says, “the problem of having you switched on and off like a light. The general terms of service for Independents presume the service of Independents is, if not equivalent, substitutable.”

  “Thirty-six days a year isn’t very much,” Chloris says, doubtful.

  “Nor do we wish to regularize the present emergency,” Creon says, sounding too grim for an abstract discussion. “Much ill there arises.”

  It’s a perfectly unremarkable conference room, every gean has one for the kind of meeting where you go over the accounts or next year’s budget or try to sort out why socks always seem to be short. On the nice side, maybe, the maple wainscotting’s really lovely, but basically ordinary.

  This just isn’t any kind of ordinary decision. This one has consequences, we’ve got consequences. This is going to last.

  Dove gets just a bit of a wry look at me, and says “That’s the problem, not the plans” to the room.

  Lester nods, tips a hand at Merovich.

  “The simplest solution is to define another currency, account for your work in that, and define the relationship between that currency and the mark as expedient.”

  “Simplest?” Chloris says, not obviously outraged.

  “Money is what we create so we can do the accounting without having to define a standard chicken,” Merovich says. “We already denominate obligation, debts, differently than money. If I thought you four made a good standard chicken for wizard-teams, I would advocate strongly for this course.”

  Wake chuckles darkly. The wall above the ledgers gets some probability calculations.

  “Flocks of chickens,” Lester says, and Wake nods.

  Yeah. Lucky. All kinds of lucky.

  None of us can tell which of us thought that.

  “The second option,” Lester says, “is to do what was done for the Keepers. You would pass into the keeping of the Commonweal as a whole, supported from the general budget and with your work accounted for but not tallied.”

  “This is not a popular choice with Parliament,” Creon says. “It is tolerable for the few Keepers who we must acknowledge have undertaken obligations much as Standard-Captains, outside of any plausible monetary accounting. To declare swathes of obviously material work untallied does not sit well.”

  “Doesn’t have the votes,” Eirene says.

  Creon nods. “Nor a proposer, nor a second.”

  “The third option,” Clotho says, “wouldn’t have a precedent.”

  Everybody smiles, everybody smiles the way you do when you shouldn’t and you’re really trying not to but you’re going to laugh if you don’t at least smile.

  “If we assign you arbitrary fees, it snarls the accounting. We’d not keep the regular work equivalents, and there’d be uneven prices based on whether or not the wizard-team did it, which wizard-team did it, when we have more. Lots of effort goes into keeping the prices accurate.” Clotho does their best to describe this dispassionately, but both clerks visibly dislike the idea.

  Can’t say as I like thinking of us as disrupting trade across the Commonweal.

  “Fixed rate for your time has the same problem,” Clotho goes on, “and we really don’t want to work you to death or keep you from research, you’ve come up with new things already.”

  I want a garden. If the Line has any sense, it wants Dove to have time to make better gear.

  “Which new things are themselves difficult,” Merovich says. “Own-work projects are entirely public, and we foresee considerable disruption in garment making collectives.”

  Merovich’s carefully neutral voice gets them stern looks from Eirene and Clotho anyway.

  “Producing a specific tax rate for these four people, who happen to be Independents and a wizard-team, is fraught. We’d be trying to individually weight all the wizard-teams, it’d have the disadvantages of a separate currency and few of the benefits.” Merovich intensely doesn’t like that option.

  Constant isn’t any too happy about Merovich being stuck on four people. Constant’s legal status is still undecided, it’s the other thing holding up our examination for Independents.

  “So the third idea,” Clotho says, “is to consider you land.”

  Never seen Dove make that face.

  Nor Ed, and it’s not the same face.

  Chloris and I are just blank.

  There’s a faint elegant snigger from Constant.

  “Land may not be owned,” Creon says. “Land is alive, the use of land is not as the use of non-living property. There are all manner of categories, people pay taxes for their exercise of land-rights.”

  “You’d be equating us with the Commonweal,” Dove says. “In extent.” Dove sounds uncertain, a thought which happens most reluctantly in my mind, but it happens.

  Creon nods.

  Lester says “It would have to be comprehensive, not a matter of service only. It would take an exemplary idiot to wish to discourage your personal creativity with uncertainty over how many people will take up the new enchantment, the new plant, the useful knowledge.”

  “What do we use for income?” I really don’t want to be eating other people’s taxes my whole life.

  Very long life, and who knows how much longer I’ll need food, as such, but.

  “Land use fees,” Dove says.

  Merovich nods, Lester nods, Clotho nods.

  “Not the customary eighth to general improvements,” Merovich says. “But something.”

  Eighth of an eighth of an eighth would still be ridiculous much.

  “It’s not like any of you will spend money in the first place,” Eirene says.

  “Need and want are not the same,” it’s not the same tone, the same pacing, but it’s completely the same inflection from Dove and Chloris and me. I think every Creek mother ever has said that to their children.

  “Tenure,” Chloris says. “We have to live somewhere, we’re hoping to be able to stay there indefinitely.”

  “Independents generally do,” Lester says.

  “I was in one house five hundred and thirty four years in the Commonweal as it was,” Wake says. “Stability of residence is not generally objectionable.”

  “Wait. If Wake can stay in one house, how did that work? Wake doesn’t need to eat, even if it’s a large house the house-fee won’t consume all of Wake’s income, the kind of jobs any of the Twelve would get would be horrible difficult things no one else could do.”

  Like teach us, no matter how much I try not to think about our class like that.

  “Leaving aside the less regular first two centuries of the Commonweal,” Wake says, “the customary mechanism for any Independent is an account maintained under the authority of the Galdor-gesith. The accounting uses a seventy-five year time horizon, in recognition that an Independent might commonly go fifty years between paid work.”

  “Like the majority of work by the Twelve, you have been systematically undervalued,” Doucelin says. “The Old Lake Canal, accounted at what it would have cost to build in the regular way, would have put you well over the seventy-five year limits by itself. The weeding has been accounted by weeding team apprentice rates and the effort-hours of the full teams, not an honest cost of replication. This is not a comfortable solution.”

  “And now despite such irregularity we are at risk of breaking many prices,” Merovich says. “The East Bank Refinery is only the latest example of a large amount of work at risk of being done in a
very small amount of time.”

  Doucelin nods. “Nor does this account for what this team might wish to do should its members achieve the status of Independents.”

  “Take up fifty square kilometres of Lost Creek swamp and make it tidy,” Dove says. “Somebody might reasonably object to that.”

  Eirene says “Fifty?” and Dove says, almost apologetic, “Romping space for unicorns.”

  There’s this silence while no one looks at me. Lester’s face does something, Merovich’s face does something, and Creon collapses into laughter.

  “If put in productive order,” Anicetus says, “I think that’s lawful.”

  There’s a gesture, really it is. “Would want to ask a Food-gesith clerk, maybe some judges, but the law of settlement’s about the ability to put land in productive order, not how much, nor who does the work,” Anicetus says. “More is better in most senses.”

  Nobody ever considered, Constant counts, five people trying anything like that, six if Pelōŕios counts.

  “It’s not like we want to live alone there. No distant tower.” My turn, after “romping unicorns.”

  “If not a tower,” Lester says, in the formal clerk for-the-record voice, and I say “House, large greenhouse, greenhouses, different kinds of soils, moisture gradients, varying shade, lots of arboriculture, and an isolated little watershed where I can do things to the drainage.”

  Smiles, despite the honest inflection on “do things.”

  “Lab space,” Dove says, “besides the hurtling unicorns.” Everyone hears that properly, lab space requires a selection of blast pits. Matter will object.

  “Kitchen,” Chloris says. “Cellars, still room, silence.” There’s a pause, the sensation of a sigh without the sound. “Dancing lawns, if there’s room.”

  “Something that isn’t finished.” Edgar has no hope anyone not us is going to understand this. “Functionally ours, and not finished.”

  I don’t think they all understand, but Creon does, and Anicetus, and I think Eirene, too.

  “Land tenure is problematic,” Lester says. “We are proposing to consider the wizard-team land, not the individuals who comprise it.”