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we can hear ourselves talk, us!” Paulie
bawled. People slouching at the tables near the foodbelt didn’t even
look up, them. Probably all doing sunshine. Paulie walked over, him,
and turned down the noise.
    “Well,” Jack Sawicki said, “what are we going to do, us, about these
sick coons?”
    Only a few people snickered, them, and they were the dumbest ones.
Like Annie said: somebody has to serve at meetings, even if serving is
donkey work. Jack is mayor, him. He can’t help it. East Oleanta ain’t
big enough to have a regular donkey mayor— no donkeys live here and we
don’t want none. So we elected Jack, us, and he does what he has to do.
    Somebody said, “Call County Legislator Drinkwater on the official
terminal.”
    “Yeah, call Pisswater!”
    “District Supervisor Samuelson’s got the warden franchise, him.”
    “Then call Samuelson!”
    “Yeah, and while you’re at it, you, make another town protest that
the goddamn warehouse don’t distribute, it, but once a week now!” That
was Celie Kane. I ain’t never seen her not angry.
    “Yeah. Rutger’s Corners, they still got distrib, them, twice a week.”
    “I had to wear these jacks two days in a row!”
    “I got sick, me, and missed a distrib, and we run out of toilet
paper!”
    Next election, District Supervisor Aaron Simon Samuelson was a
squashed spider. But Jack Sawicki, he knew, him, how to serve a meeting.
    “Okay, people, shut up now. This is about the sick coons, not about
warehouse distrib. I’m going, me, to just call up our donkeys.”
    He unlocked the official terminal. It sits way in the corner of the
cafe. Jack pulled his chair, him, right up close to it, so his belly
almost rested on his knees. A few stomps from the alley gang swaggered
into the cafe, carrying their wooden clubs. They headed, them, for the
foodbelt, laughing and smacking each other, drunk on sunshine. Nobody
told them to shut up. Nobody dared.
    “Terminal activate,” Jack said. He didn’t mind, him, talking donkey
in front of us. None of this fake shit about
I don’t carry out
orders I give them I’m an agro Liver, me
. Jack was a good mayor.
    But I’m careful, me, not to tell him so.
    “Terminal activated,” the terminal said. For the first time I
wondered what we’d do if the thing was as broke as Annie’s apple-peeler
‘bot.
    Jack said, “Message for District Supervisor Aaron Simon Samuelson,
copy to County Legislator Thomas Scott Drinkwater, copy to State
Senator James Richard Langton, copy to State Representative Claire
Amelia Forrester, copy to Congresswoman Janet Carol Land.” Jack licked
his lips. “Priority Two.”
    “One!” Celie Kane shouted. “Make it a one, you bastard!”
    “I can’t, Celie,” Jack said. He was patient, him. “One is for
disasters like attack or fire or flood at the Y-plant.” That was
supposed to make us smile. A Y-plant can’t catch fire, can’t break down
no way with its donkey shields. Can’t nothing get in, and only energy
can get out. But Celie Kane don’t know how to smile, her. Her daddy,
old Doug Kane, is my best friend, but he can’t do nothing with her
neither. Never could, not even when she was a child.
    “This
is
a disaster, you shithead! One of them coons kills
a kid of mine, and I’ll tear you apart myself, Jack Sawicki!”
    “Hey, stay together, Celie,” Paulie Cenverno said. Somebody muttered
“Bitch.” The door opened and Annie came in, her, holding Lizzie’s hand.
The stomps at the foodbelt were still shouting and shoving.
    The terminal said, “Please hold. Linking with District Supervisor
Samuelson’s mobile unit.” A minute later the holo appeared, not
life-sized like on the HT, but a tiny, eight-inch-high Samuelson seated
at his desk and dressed in a blue uniform. He looked, him, about forty,
but of course with donkey genemods you can’t never tell. He had thick
gray hair and big shoulders and crinkly blue eyes—handsome, like all of
them. A few people shuffled their feet,