The High Counsel chamber was subdued. There was nothing
left to do but wait. The mole who had been placed in the oppositions camp so
many years before had always been so competent. Her information had, in the
past, always turned out to be of some value. Usually she was quiet and
competent, one of the best investments the Counsel had made. Slow, irritatingly
slow to report at times. But the slowness, the missed reports, the infuriating
show of independence, had all been worth the personal, private, low key snubs.
The Counsel had a vested interest in this venture, but
the payoff would only occur if the situation were controlled, and progress were
made on their time line. The imperative was to make certain all breakthroughs
were credited to the forward thinking of the counsel, not the opposition.
The Counsel members, all women, had cultivated their
positions slowly, carefully, always mindful of public opinion. These six women
who held the regions of their city, had for many years ruled the City State
with the good will of the people. Or at least the apparent good will of the
people to the uninitiated. By carefully installing their paid informants
throughout the warp and woof of the cities social fabric, they had been kept
abreast of which persons ideas were becoming too popular and then it was an
easy matter to find some old skeleton or, at times a nice fresh one, and let
public opinion take its natural course.
The Status Quo had been held now for nearly fifty years,
a long time in anybody's book, for a government of any type to remain static.
The span of time these six Counsel Women had held their positions was no small
feather, when considered against the backdrop of the supposed democratic system
this city was governed under. But it was that very fact that made the Counsel
resort to tactics usually not found in civilized societies tactics that
resembled very closely those Dictatorships, whose infamy is out distanced only
by the facts behind their rise to infamy.
True, in popular opinion, a Dictatorship is directed by
one supreme ruler. But I should point out that when a governing group begins to
think and act as one mind, then that body has become a single entity. That
entity is a dictator, the head of a dictatorship.
Such was the case in the City of Women. Slowly,
imperceptibly the system had become corrupt and unresponsive to those it governs.
The Counsel of Six still held the power. And the Counsel
of Six also thought with one mind, acted as one body. The Counsel of six was
corrupt to the core.
Those at least were the claims of the opposition, and the
opposition had been around for almost as long as the present counsel members
had been in office. Almost, but not quite.
These were the women of the Counsel, who had been elected
so many years before, and in all the years since dispensing their justice and
enforcing what they now referred to as their laws. Too the letter.
Sandy had just broken the first unwritten law of the
Counsel: You shall not commit embarrassment upon the Counsel.
Today the counsel felt embarrassed, and today they had
passed Judgment on Sandy. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty. The
vote was Six to Zero. Sandy was Guilty.
The truth was; Sandy was Guilty, but not of embarrassing
the Counsel. They had done that to themselves. In years past, the Six would
have made a different decision, and let Sandy fry in her own ambition. If they
had only looked at their informants pattern of operation, they would have known
it was to pat. Sandy was the quiet, slow, methodical mole. This new flamboyance
should have told them to drop the potato before they got burned.
Sandy was never seen again in the city. In fact, she was
never in the city again. She was sent to the one place, the only place any who
displeased the Counsel were sent. She was sent away on the bottom side of a
forest bound log. Sandy was sent to the men.
Unknowingly, the Counsel had for the first time in many
years dispensed true, poetic, justice.
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Chapter 26 | Chapter 28
Index | Title Page
| Credits | Preamble | TOC