For what? A colony that was basically a single large city, a couple dozen smaller towns, and just over a million and a half inhabitants? And with no military foes, defense – traditionally one of the largest and spendiest government functions – was unnecessary.
The original spare bureaucracy had grown to be fifteen percent of the total available workforce, and it was always hungry for more people and more money.
Kevin Kendall was the current chairman of the council, and chief executive of the colony. He was the grandson of the original council chairman, Mark Kendall, as the chairmanship had largely become hereditary.
Mark Kendall had learned how to maintain the loyalty of the council to himself by parceling out various perks and remunerations to his favorite council members until he had a compliant council. That system had become self-sustaining through his son and now his grandson.
Forty-five-year-old Kevin Kendall was new to the post, having been elected chairman by his father’s council three years before. He was second-generation, having been born to his colonist father Joseph Kendall five years after the colony landed. Joseph Kendall had retired from the chairmanship at the age of sixty-five.
Kevin Kendall had big plans for the colony, and especially for the colony government. First, he had a long list of additional benefits and services he thought government should provide to its citizens.
Second, the colonists were, by and large, an unruly bunch. The people who had decided to jump off into the unknown of a new colony were largely independent types. They did what they wanted to do, and felt their activities were nobody else’s business. Kendall thought that was OK as a general rule, but it had gone too far.
Firearms was one thing. His grandfather had been forced by the then-untamed council to distribute the firearms and other weapons they had brought with them to the colonists. But Kendall thought there was no need for such weapons in citizen hands now. His own security forces were one thing, but citizens having firearms was dangerous. Some people had been shot and killed for nothing more than breaking into someone’s house, which was not a capital crime, after all.
The black market was another problem. People would trade, sell, buy, and gift any number of things to each other, with no tax on the transaction and no government record of what went where. If Kendall wanted to track down firearms, for instance, there was no way to do it. In his view, the administration needed records if it was going to govern effectively, and that meant shutting down the black market.
Nudity was a problem as well. In the early days of the colony, the administration had provided multiple sets of coveralls to all the colonists, as well as work boots. For their off hours, though, colonists had taken to wearing lavalavas, a simple wrap that was eminently suited to the sub-tropical oceanic climate in the capital. Men wore the lavalavas by themselves and women originally wore them with a halter top. Fine so far.
When the first baby boom came, however, the constant untying and tying of the halter tops to nurse their children became a hassle to the young mothers in the colony, and they had simply done without them. Others had followed suit until topless women became common, if not the norm.
Similarly, in the early days of the colony there was no extra time or cloth to spare for sewing up swimming suits. People going to the beach five miles east of the downtown swam and sunbathed completely nude. When pilferage of lavalavas while swimming became a problem, people simply left them at home. The bus to the beach on nice days was normally full of naked people heading out for a day in the waves and the sun.
People gardening nude in their yards in the warm weather were a commonplace, as were children playing nude in their yards, the parks, and the streets. When the daily cloudburst came through, many people would shower out in their front yard in the warm rain. All of these were holdovers from the days when the temporary plastic houses had no plumbing and the only showers or laundry facilities were downtown in the four initial permanent buildings.
Even in a subtropical paradise like Arcadia, all this nudity made some people uncomfortable, including Kevin Kendall and especially his wife. Shouldn’t the government take steps to protect people from others’ objectionable behavior?
When he had his staff prepare a questionnaire and run it past several hundred people, however, the responses ranged from ‘Mind your own business’ to ‘Go fuck yourself.’
It seemed most people had no problem with firearms, black market transactions, or people running around naked or nearly naked in the beautiful climate. And they didn’t want more government programs in return for higher taxes either.
What Kendall needed were allies. People with positions of respect in the community, who could help him change people’s minds.
Well, why not start at the top?
“I will meet with the Chen,” Kendall told his aide.
The Chen
Chen LiQiang, the grandfather of the Chen family that had come to Arcadia, had died almost thirty years ago, at the age of eighty years. He had been the chief of the whole Chen-Jasic clan, with Bob Jasic as his lieutenant and chief aide.
On the death of Chen LiQiang, Chen GangHai had become Chen Zufu, the honored grandfather and head of the family. GangHai had married Betsy Reynolds shortly after the colonists had arrived on Arcadia, and she was Chen Zumu, honored grandmother. The head couple of the Chen-Jasic clan was then one Chinese, one American. That had prevailed for twenty more years, until GangHai, then eighty years old, had retired from active
