The kids from town were having a reasonably good time; this was harder work than other summer jobs, but paid a lot better too. They and the estate-born seemed to have similar plans, for the most part: finish high school and do their two years of national service. That would be nominally military for the boys, but he got the impression that it involved more time laboring on public works; they did get basic infantry training, and every adult male had to keep his militia weapons at home. Girls did their service as teaching assistants in elementary schools, helpers in hospitals and nursing homes, or various types of government jobs. Both regarded the service with a mixture of resignation, excitement at getting away from home, and a straightforward corn-fed patriotism that indicated that ironic cynicism wasn’t well regarded here.
A few were going to try for the University of New Virginia afterward; evidently you did that only if you were extremely bright, or wanted to be a doctor or high school teacher or something of that order, or had parents who could afford to pay a stiff price for putting on a little polish. The domain—the Rolfes—would pay the fees for a student who did well enough on the entrance exams. The majority said they’d just look for jobs, which none of them were very worried about, and get married. A few wanted to be policemen or sailors exploring worldwide, or Frontier Scouts or troopers in the Gate Security Force; most of the Seven Oaks youngsters planned to work here, or on other estates, or to become farmers on their own eventually.
“Ever wanted to set up for yourself?” Tom asked Henning.
The mayordomo shrugged and ate a fig—they were finishing off with those, and cherries, and watermelons. He was a middling-tall man in his forties, with graying brown hair and a slender, wiry build. Tom ate some of the cherries; he’d always liked them, and these were right off the tree, with a dark, intense sweetness better than anything he’d tasted before.
“Couple of my brothers did take up allod farms here in the domain,” he said. “Mrs. Durrant—Miz Rolfe’s great-aunt—loaned ’em what they needed to get started and said a good word for ’em with her kinfolk. I like it better working here at Seven Oaks. Money’s about the same, year over year, and it’s steadier—I don’t have to worry so much about prices and such.”
He waved around at the estate. “Managing a bigger operation’s more fun, too, plus it’s less grunt labor. A lot of what you’re seeing is my work, and my father’s and grandfather’s—our sweat, and our brains too.”
“I meant own land, not rent it,” Tom said.
Henning laughed. “Like my grandfather?” he said. “He came through the Gate as a man grown, and he owned land in Oklahoma. Leastways, he thought he did—until the bank taught him different.”
He shook his head. “Heard enough about it from him! He was a good farmer and a hard worker; just not someone to be always figuring how to swallow up the neighbors. So one of his neighbors ended up swallowing him. No, thanks. I’d rather answer to a real human being I can talk to, not some set of flesh-and-blood computers who chew you up and spit you out whenever the numbers say they should.”
Tom winced slightly. Well, yeah, he thought.
Unless you were doing something like growing individually manicured organic zucchini for a high-powered gourmet restaurant, American agriculture meant getting bigger every year or going broke and getting sold up—that was what rising costs and falling prices in a static market meant. As far as he could tell, an allod tenant’s rent here in New Virginia was considerably less than most on the other side of the Gate paid in mortgage and taxes. The tenant here lived better on the whole, and wasn’t under anything like the sort of relentless competitive pressure his American equivalent was. Landholders competed to get tenants instead; it certainly sounded a lot easier for a young man to get started—there were reasons the average farmer back home was in his fifties.
Of course, here you have to defer to a patron from the Thirty Families, Tom thought. Of course number two, they don’t seem to be as nasty as the Internal Revenue Service, most of the time.
“What’s Ms. Rolfe like to work for?” he went on.
“Not bad,” Henning said. “Bit wild as a kid, but that was in Mrs. Durrant’s day. Settled down good after that. She knows she’s boss, but doesn’t think she’s great God almighty, if you know what I mean, or that she knows everything.” The older man got up and dusted crumbs off his shirt. “No rest for the wicked—I don’t like the sound of the engine on Maconi’s rig. Better have a look at it before we start up again.”
Tom rejoined Adrienne; something she’d said back in Napa had come back to him. “What was that bit you said to the kids at that soda joint in town? That you weren’t asking for their votes? What votes?”
“For the House of Burgesses.” At his quirked eyebrow she went on: “The name’s from Old Virginia’s history. Sort of a House of Commons to the committee’s House of Lords; it votes on taxes and suchlike. Of course…”
“…we don’t need no steenkin’ taxes,” Tom said. “And I’ll give you any odds you want the Families put up most of the candidates, right? Competing by proxy in this burgesses thing.”
“The Old Man set it up that way,” she said; they were a little apart from the others, a social space she seemed to get automatically when she wanted it. “He’s not what you’d call a fervent advocate of democracy, but he does believe in checks and balances. People need the Families, but every member of the Families needs the support of his Settlers, his affiliation. If he tries riding roughshod over them, they’ll go find someone else.”
Everyone dozed for an hour after lunch. The rest of the day was harder; he was thinking too hard, and couldn’t get his mind back into an easy working rhythm. The working day in harvesttime continued until sundown, too, which was around eight—longer, for those whose turn it was to take shotguns or rifles and night-sight goggles and try to keep the wildlife out of the cut grain. There would probably be more quail for lunch tomorrow. By the time he’d ridden a flatbed back to the manor, showered, and wolfed down an enormous portion of stew and bread and steamed vegetables, he was also feeling the truth of what Adrienne had said—muscling the sheaves high all day had been a bad idea. Individually their weight was trivial, but doing some quick mental arithmetic showed how many tons of the stuff he’d been heaving, mostly to a height well above his head.
I’ll feel worse in the morning, he thought.
He did.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“I always find a map helps me think,” Tom said, looking up at the one he had pinned to the corkboard, as the people summoned to the meeting trickled casually in.
At least I’m not too tired to think, he mused. After four days of the harvest his body was adjusting nicely; he had plenty of energy for the after-dinner planning session. I think I’m even losing a little weight—and I didn’t think I had any surplus.