Touchwit agreed. “We can’t prevent the handover of power. That’s already happened. But we can knock Meatbreath’s Occasion so out of shape that citizen raccoons will never again take him seriously.”
“The Citizens Brigades will fight another day,” Mindwalker said. He felt gloom. There is nothing worse than a lost revolution. The Brigade packs should have been better led. Starting the revolution prematurely just as the combined High Guard entered the city couldn’t be blamed on the young. After all, it was in their high-spirited, pent-up natures to tell their officers to go climb a tree. “Where is the High Guard deployed? I need to know that.”
Touchwit expressed their common fear. “If the Brigades go rogue again tonight, we won’t get another chance in our lifetimes.”
“We’ll all be tied to trees by Meatbreath. Unable to scratch our fleas. Stinking in our own urine. Seagulls plucking out our …”
“Stop it!” She enjoyed Mindwalker’s feeling for imagery, but he really had a taste for the anatomically grotesque expression.
“Thank you,” the gull said. “I’ll go and remind them of their mission. It’s a guerilla action, not a regime change.”
She couldn’t resist a rhyme:
Hit hard,
Bite clean.
Slip away and
Never be seen.
“The brawling of Mammals in two dimensions is too moronic to contemplate,” was the gull’s opinion.
“The rhyme is very apt, but guerilla action is not our ultimate mission,” Mindwalker said, enlarging the perspective. “Our mission is to create a city in which every raccoon has a future. Nourishing food, spacious dens, free choice of partners, the opportunity to have children, unrestricted travel, and welcome migration.”
“Perhaps if the mission had been clear, the Brigades would have been more certain about what they were fighting for,” the seagull said.
***
The last departing Primate checked to see that the restaurant café door was locked, turned off the lights, got onto his bike, and cycled off. Immediately, hunch-backed shapes glided out of bushes, stole up from the riverbank, walked down the trunks of trees. The lawn at the back of the restaurant became a carnival, literally a time to “put away” (levare) the “meat” (carnem). The masked shadows immediately began sorting themselves out. The greater part of them gathered on the picnic tables in front of the stage, becoming a patient audience: they were here for the feast marking the start of the fattening-up period before hibernation. Sure, there’s going to be an announcement of some kind beforehand, but what event ever happens without a sponsor whose beneficence has to be acknowledged. Something about a change in the city’s administration, with the leadership outsourced by the City Elders to a Protector they’d brought over from the Creek to manage the city’s affairs for them. Of course, some of the spectators had opinions about this issue – you couldn’t be deaf to the concerns that filled the oral web in the last few days – but politics was for the young, who doubtless would put on a demonstration that had to be tolerated along with the Protector’s speech. Then … the drink would flow! And the food!
Ribs dry rubbed with unique blend of seasonings
smoked, slo’ roasted and charcoal grilled
with Signature Sauce for the real BBQ taste
BBQ Chicken
dry rubbed, slo’ roasted, charcoal grilled
brushed with bullet BBQ sauce
Texas Style Pulled Pork
sandwich smoked, slo’ roasted overnight
hand-pulled, lightly sauced, simmered
and served on a bun
Bullet BBQ Beans and Cowboy Coleslaw
Look! They were repositioning the cameras so that they scanned the sides of the trucks. Peoples Corps Volunteers guarded the truck doors and the waste bins with steely eyes. Those P.C.s had teeth like broken bottles. Don’t mess with them.
As for the City’s young, they hung back from view at the edges of the crowd. They weren’t here for food. They were here to turn an aristocratic gift of meat into an anarchist feeding frenzy. Raccoons would be free to hiss and spit over leftovers in the time-honoured way of individuals. And the idea of a city-state run by a Protector would be smashed.
A third group surveyed the scene where the idea of an orderly, well-fed state was about to be demonstrated. Called the High Guard, these silent, determined faces were veterans from the wars on the Southern Frontier. They were said to be ready to die for the Protector, and standing here and there in small formations they were never far from the stage. On the stage stood the fresh-faced daughters and sons of the Honour Guard as pretty as cheerleaders. Didn’t they look sweet?
***
“You smell glad tonight.”
“Thanks, Flaxentips.” Late again, Bandit took his place in the line beside her. “But why does that surprise you? Do I usually smell miserable?”
“It surprises me because my whiskers tell me something absolutely crude is going to happen. Don’t you sense it?”
“I do. But not in a bad way.”
“You mean to say there’s crude in a good way? Oh, I do hope you haven’t become a rebel. I’ve lost all my friends to this stupid event. Half of them have been arrested. The other half won’t speak to me.”
“It’s a change, Tips. Change is messy. I wonder who’s going to lick up the mess?” He remembered Frisk licking his ear mischievously back at Pawsense Manor. Where was Frisk? She wasn’t in the crowd. Had she been arrested?
“The one who comes out on top does the cleaning up.”
“Right now it’s her.” Bandit pointed his nose at the Director of Security. She had found a place to stand at the back of the stage where she wouldn’t be noticed.
“Don’t look at her, Bandit.”
