of person who likes to spread malicious gossip, if you’re lazy, if you like to browbeat others. If you’re inclined to cheat and lie… you won’t make it in this society.”
“What happens to them?”
“Well,”—Bridge grinned—“you start spreading lies about somebody in this society, you’re liable to get the shit beat out of you. It’s happened a few times.”
“And the law did what to the parties involved?”
“Nothing,” Bridge said flatly. “I don’t know of anyone, male or female, who doesn’t gossip; that’s human nature. Just don’t make it vicious lies.”
“I’m surprised there haven’t been any killings, if that’s the kind of laws you people live under. If you want to call it law, that is.”
“There’ve been a couple of shootings,” Bridge admitted. “But not in the past three or four years. We’re all pretty much of one mind in this area.”
“Who shot whom, and why?” Clayton questioned.
“One fellow was messin’ with another man’s wife. He kept messin’ with her even though, as witnesses pointed out, the woman told him, time after time, to leave her alone. She finally went to her husband and told him. The husband warned the man—once. The warning didn’t take. The husband called the man out one afternoon; told him he was going to beat the hell out of him. Romeo came out with a gun in his hand. Bad mistake. Husband killed him.”
The press waited. And waited. Finally Clayton blurted, “Well, what happened?”
“Nothing, really.” Bridge’s face was impassive. “There was a hearing, of course. The husband was turned loose; Romeo was buried.”
“Are you serious?”
“Perfectly. I told you all: this is not an easy place to live. But that’s only happened three… yes, three times since the Tri-states were organized. There is an old western saying, sir: man saddles his own horses, kills his own snakes. And if I have to explain that, you’d better turn this bus around and get the hell out of here.”
The bus driver chuckled.
The press corps absorbed that bit of western philosophy for a moment… in silence. Clayton broke the silence by clearing his throat and saying, “Let’s return to the people controlling their own lives, if we ever indeed left it. Elaborate on that, please, without the
“I believe that Sergeant Roisseau told Mr. Barney Weston that this is a one-mistake state and he’d had his —right?”
Barney felt his face grow hot. “Mr. Oliver, maybe I was out of line, but I just got mauled and humiliated. Don’t you think that’s going a bit far?”
“Would you do it again?” Bridge asked.
“Absolutely not!”
Bridge laughed. “Well… you just answered your question.”
“Mr. Oliver?” Judith said. “Are you taking us on a preselected route? I’ve seen no shacks or poor-looking people. No crummy beer joints. No malnourished kids. Nothing to indicate poverty or unhappiness.”
“I’m not qualified to speak on the unhappiness part of your question. I’m sure there must be
The newspeople had just left an area—America—where people were still dying from the sickness caused by the bombings: cancer-related illnesses from radiation sickness; where people were starving and out of work; where gangs of thugs still roamed parts of the nation; where the sights of devastation were still very much in evidence. Now, for Bridge Oliver to tell them that here, in the Tri-states, there was no poverty, no hunger… that was ludicrous.
“Oh, come now, man!” Clayton’s tone was full of disbelief. “That is simply not possible.”
“Perhaps not in your society, but it certainly did happen here. You’ll be free to roam the country, talk to people. The only hungry people you’ll find in Tri-states will be those people who might be on a diet.”
“Well, would you be so kind as to tell us just how you people managed that?”
“By ripping down any slum or shack area and building new housing, and not permitting a building to deteriorate. We have very tough housing codes, and they are enforced….”
“I can just imagine how,” Barney muttered, his face reddening at the laughter around him.
“…We have no unemployment—there are jobs going begging right now. We’re opening factories, little by little, but the process of screening takes time; it’s long and slow. As I’ve tried to explain, it takes a very special person to live in our society. We won’t tolerate freeloaders, of any kind. We have no unions here, and will not permit any to come in. They are not necessary in this society. You’ll see what I mean as you travel about. Our economy matches our growth, and wages are in line with it. Wages are paid commensurate to a person’s ability to do a job, and a person’s sex has nothing to do with it. It’s equal pay right down the line. There is a minimum wage for certain types of work, but I defy you—any of you—to find a sweatshop anywhere in the Tri-states. The people won’t stand for it.”
“That doctrine is somehow vaguely familiar,” a reporter said.
“If you’re thinking socialism or communism, put it out of your mind; you haven’t got your head screwed on straight. I’d like to hear you name any communist country—ever—where the entire population was armed—to the teeth! No, none of you can. Believe me, if the people living here ever decide they don’t like the government, they’ve damned sure got the firepower to change it. But they won’t. Because, as I’ve told you, we like it this way.
“Now in terms of wealth, it would be very difficult for a person to become a millionaire—not impossible, but difficult. Taxes get pretty steep after a certain income level. But if a person is poor, it’s that person’s own fault, and he or she can blame no one else. But, it’s as I said; we don’t have any poor people.”
“And no rich people.”
“That is correct.”
“Number of churches here,” a woman observed. “Is attendance mandatory?”
“No!” Bridge laughed. “Where in the world are you people getting these off-the-wall questions?”
“But you people do place a lot of emphasis on religion,” Judith said. “Right?”
Bridge shrugged. “Some do, some don’t. Hell, people! Prostitution is legal here.”
The newspeople all looked at each other, not believing what they had just heard.
“Well,” Clayton Charles said, “I’d certainly like to get into that.”
The bus rocked with laughter.
“I didn’t mean it that way!” the chief correspondent said, his face crimson.
Judith shook her head. “I’m… still very confused about this area. I just witnessed a young lady—a teenager —beat up a grown man with nothing but her hands for weapons, and you people obviously thought it perfectly all right for her to do so. It’s obvious you are teaching your young that violence—in some forms, and incidents, I suppose—is acceptable. Yet, I have only to look out the window to see that your society is religious. You people claim to have completely obliterated hunger, poverty, and slums…. That’s the height of compassion. Yet capital punishment—so we’ve been told—is the law of the land. Tri-states seems to be, at least to me, a marvelous combination of good and evil.”
“We agree on the definition of one word, but not on the other,” Bridge replied. He found himself, for some reason, liking this reporter; he believed she would report fairly. “Here in our society, we have, I believe, returned to the values of our forefathers—in part. Much more emphasis is placed on the rights of a law-abiding citizen than on the punks who commit the crimes.
“There is honor here that you don’t have in your states—that you haven’t had in your central government for decades. You people still want it both ways, and it won’t work; I’m amazed that you can’t see that. We believe our system will always be worlds apart from yours. We set it up that way.”
“Then where does that leave Tri-states and the rest of America?” he was asked.
“In a position of separate but workable coexistence.”
“But that violates the entire concept of
Bridge glanced at the bus driver, the man who would soon be moving into the area. The driver smiled and shook his head.
