“If your village were to speak for itself with you as their spokesperson,” he said, “it might make the guys in New York excited about wrapping things up.”
“Right,” Thula said, “because, with the Restoration Movement gone, there’ll be less of a chance of any new blunders by your company getting to the media.”
“I’m simply trying to do what I can to help your people.”
“I don’t doubt your sincerity.”
“Here’s what I can suggest: You and I and a couple of your village elders will go to Bézam to meet with the director. See what can be done about hastening things in New York. The director may have come across to you as cold, but he’s a good man; he has young children. Hearing about the children in your village is upsetting to all of us.”
“I’m open to the idea,” Thula said.
“But you have to understand that the director and the folks in New York are only going to be interested in talking to you if I tell them in advance that you’re willing to sign an agreement accepting whatever payment Pexton deems to be the best restitution for the deaths and damages, and you’re open to making a joint statement.”
“Absolutely not.”
“You have no leverage. There’s no basis for the suit the Restoration Movement lawyers filed. A judge is going to dismiss it—Pexton has no contractual obligation to Kosawa. I can’t make a fool of myself by asking my bosses to waste their time discussing an agreement with you if you’re going to walk in making outrageous demands. They don’t have time for that. Without a court verdict in your favor, you’re entitled to nothing. I’m offering you a chance, in good faith, to at least get something for your people.”
“And what if we say that a monetary compensation is not enough?” Thula asked. “Money is just a small part of the issue. We deserve to live in a safe environment.”
“I’m not in a position to make any promises on that.”
“And we’re not in a position to keep waiting year after year.”
“I’m sorry” was all Mr. Fish could say in response.
* * *
THULA’S VISITS TO THE VILLAGE multiplied after that meeting. With the possibility of a peaceful accord through dialogue gone after three more meetings with Mr. Fish yielded no compromise, Liberation Day became more vital. For five days of the week she was in Bézam—spending half of her evenings with her Village Meeting, the other half with her mother and new father and her brother—and for two days she was with us, chauffeured from Bézam in the car in which we traveled to other towns and villages. No more than two of us accompanied her on any given trip; we took turns hunting and tending to our families, and planning the revolution.
In every town and village we visited, though men and women our age and older looked at her in befuddlement, the young people were enthralled. They came to sit with her, to hear her talk about her vision. She amused them with her stringy hair and how she sat with her legs crossed, as if she were an eminent man. They were curious about what she had seen and learned in America. Why would anyone travel to America and return to this ugly country? they asked her. The question always made her smile. Don’t you want our country to one day be as great as America? she would respond. She did not need to lecture them on the assured gloominess of their future under His Excellency. She did not need to tell them about how, much like their parents, they would have little ownership of their lives because the country wasn’t theirs and would never be, not when one man controlled it. What she needed to tell them, what few outside the capital knew, was that His Excellency, aging and anxious, had recently been growing even more ruthless.
* * *
—
Thula heard the talks around Bézam, about how His Excellency could sense the end of his reign was near—that was why he showed no mercy to friends and enemies alike. He had survived multiple coups, and executed all those who had plotted his demise, yet his enemies were still plentiful. Which was why he reshuffled his Cabinet every two years, sending former subordinates to prison for the slightest grievance lest they start having ideas. The prison where the Four had been held now contained the same men who had facilitated their entry there. Around Bézam, rumors circulated about how the president never slept in his bed, how he never told anyone where he was sleeping, lest a coup arise in the middle of the night: the first coup he survived had been orchestrated by the captain of the presidential guard. What worried him most, people claimed, was that he had no way of knowing all who hated him—Bézam was full of vultures masquerading as doves.