House Divided. Джек Марс

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СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">      “I’ll keep that in mind,” Susan said. “The next time I’m looking for a ranch hand.”

      But she had chosen him after all. There was something about conservatives and liberals coming together and rebuilding trust in government. There was something about Stephen being able to work magic in Congress, and finally getting an infrastructure bill passed – something the country needed. But so far the reality of Stephen Lief had been altogether less impressive than the fantasy.

      An idea for Stephen Douglas Lief began to take shape in Susan’s mind. He was going to do a month or so traveling the western United States on a chili-tasting tour. He could start as far east as Ohio, sample some world-famous Cincinnati chili, best when smothering hot dogs to death, then move south and west to Louisiana, Texas, Arizona, and southern California.

      It was hardly a punishment assignment – these were pleasant places to be in winter. What’s more, he would get to develop an iron stomach, and Susan was sure that a man like Lief, a graduate of stuffy East Coast schools like Choate, Princeton, and Yale, would love to get out on the road and meet some regular folks for a change. Susan made a mental note of it – Kat would assign someone to start scheduling this important outreach tour as soon as this conversation was over.

      Sitting next to Lief on the TV screen was Lucy Pilgrim. She looked frail and older than her years – a far cry from the young beauty of her street activist days. In her mind’s eye, Susan caught a black-and-white newspaper image of a young Lucy shouting into a bullhorn at some rally or another – young, energetic, very pretty with long straight hair hanging down to her waist, in faded skintight blue jeans and a flower shirt. Time caught up with everybody sooner or later.

      “Hi, Susan,” Stephen Lief said. “I want to thank you for taking this meeting.”

      Susan shrugged. “Of course. I’m sure you both understand that it’s a difficult day and I’ll need to – ”

      Lief cut her off. “Of course we understand. Jack Butterfield was a friend of mine. I’m going to Texas in the morning, to be there when the body arrives.”

      “You should stay for the chili,” Susan almost said, but didn’t.

      Instead, she looked directly at Lucy Pilgrim. “Hi, Lucy, how are you?”

      “Susan, nice to see you. Thanks for chatting with me.”

      “Well, you’ve had a quite a champion there in the former Senator from Florida. He wouldn’t take no for an answer, as I understand it.”

      “Stephen and I go way back.”

      Susan just stared at the screen. She glanced at Kat, thought about introducing her, then thought better of it. Why prolong this with niceties?

      “Lucy, what can I help you with? I’m the President of the United States, as I think you probably know. I don’t make legislation. There’s really no sense in lobbying me.”

      Lucy shook her head. As she did so, Susan could see the effect that slight movement had on the woman’s body. It seemed like her entire frame followed along with the head shake, then continued for another second or more. The effect was subtle, but noticeable. And that was almost certainly while on medications that worked to control the tremors.

      Susan sighed. Life. It went like that. Money was very, very nice to have, but health was true wealth.

      “Susan, I just want to share with you what we’re doing, and see if there’s any point of intersection where we may be able to benefit each other.”

      “Lucy, you may or may not realize that I’m in the midst of an international crisis right now.”

      Lucy nodded. “And I think you’re handling it beautifully. I watched your remarks on the TV news a little while ago. I was struck as always by your ability to inject powerful emotions into your connection with the people. But like all crises, this one will pass. And our domestic problems will still be there. International crises don’t make domestic problems go away.”

      “Or vice versa,” Stephen Lief offered, somewhat awkwardly.

      “Exactly,” Lucy said.

      Susan almost smiled. This could very nearly be a skit on a late night comedy show.

      “Okay,” she said. “Let’s hear it.”

      Lucy launched into it.

      “Susan, times have changed since when you, and especially I, were young women. You may not think about this on a daily basis because it doesn’t seem pressing to you, but we are sitting on a demographic and cultural time bomb. In each successive generation, white women of what we’ll call child-bearing age continue to delay the decision to have children. Women of the so-called Generation X represented a radical break with the past – one out of every six chose not to have children at all. This would be a remarkable development in itself, if it had been temporary. But so-called Millennial women are on pace to double that figure, and are even delaying marriage itself. It gets worse the further down we go. Young girls in high school, when polled about their desire to have children, place it very low on their list of priorities. Marriage is at the bottom of that list.”

      Susan stared into the TV screen.

      “We are not replacing ourselves, Susan. A society dwindles and dies when it doesn’t replace itself. Much more preferable is if a society continues to grow. A growing economy needs people to feed it. And continued leadership in all areas needs – ”

      Susan held up a hand. “Correct me if I’m wrong, Lucy. But as far as I can tell, our population grows in leaps and bounds each year. We’ve got well more than three hundred twenty million people, projected to reach three hundred fifty million by…” Susan trailed off for a moment. “Kat, do you happen to have the numbers on that?”

      Kat shook her head. “No, not off the top of my head, but I’m sure we can get them.”

      Lucy was shaking her head sadly. “Immigrants,” she said. “And the children of immigrants. The only reason this country is still growing is because we are importing people from elsewhere. It is not a good way to grow a population. The Roman Empire found that out, much to their dismay.”

      Susan stared blankly at the screen. She searched for a response, and didn’t find one. She didn’t enjoy being left speechless.

      “I’m pretty sure we’ve always done it this way,” Susan said, finding her voice. She wasn’t sure where this was heading, but she already suspected that she didn’t like it. “Even the Mayflower came from elsewhere, as I recall it. You remember the Statue of Liberty, don’t you? Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free… Does any of that ring a bell with you?”

      Lucy was shaking her head again, emphatically this time, setting off a chain reaction throughout her thin body that Susan could not look away from.

      “We’re not against immigrants, Susan, if that’s what you’re worried about. What we’re against is cultural dislocation. We’re against losing sight of what it means to be an American. We want to preserve that. And so we feel that our job is to encourage young American women to have more children, and to help create an environment conducive for them to do so.”

      “I think young women might be more interested in exploring the other options available to them right now,” Susan said. “I think that, at the moment, options for women may СКАЧАТЬ