Cheering. But Clutch didn’t cheer. He knew that something in Sensibella would never grow up. Her argument didn’t feel fully shaped and mature. There was a flaw somewhere.
Now Citizen Sensibella took another step forward. She stood at the front edge of the stage. Just her. Vulnerable. Alone. The crowd fell silent, expectant, for her summation.
“As a token of the new rule of self-responsibility, and of my service to you as your Chief Magistrate, I declare that I myself shall not mate with anybody.” She dropped her voice to a whisper in a spirit of modesty and sacrifice. “You see, I do not need to.”
Clutch glanced leftwards. Bandit’s face had gone out of shape.
“Why not, you ask? Because I am already mated to the City. I am mated to each and every one of you. The Commonwealth is my partner and my own heart’s love.”
Delirious applause. Cries of support. Spontaneous dancing.
“Our world has become too hot,” Sensibella said. “Let’s make it cool!”
She’d make a good politician, Clutch conceded. Her proclamation did excellent things to the minds of the citizens. Raccoons who had never had an idea in their lives suddenly developed an interest in political theory.
***
What kind of politician would he make? Clutch thought later that morning. He lay in the crook of a tree overlooking the scene of the victory, now empty of raccoons. Instead, seagulls were picking at the litter. The doors of the meat trucks swung lazily in the breeze off the river. It was that quiet day in the week. Soon the church up on the Heights would ring its carillon. The park would fill up with Primates out for family brunch on the café patio. The scents of fresh-baked croissants, scones, and muffins already drifted up. He wasn’t a politician. In all his growing up he had never felt the instinct to lead. He didn’t want to be Chief Magistrate for Creek Town. He wasn’t a natural leader like the flamboyant Sensibel, or like Hala with her surprising pivots between a tender, sympathetic warmth and a hard, implacable grace. No, he would become a philosopher like Procyonides the sage. “In solitude, be to thyself a throng” – one of his Uncle Wily’s sayings. He wanted to be left alone. He would mate with his studies.
“Ladyfriend?” he said to the form curled up behind him. “I’m afraid I’ve forgotten your name.”
“That’s okay,” she said. “It’s Silverheels.”
58
The Heights slope down gently in the north to a widening in the river overlooking an arched bridge in the French style. Here on the riverbank is the tree house of Smartwhisker, leading citizen in the migrant community that has settled this part of town. Three mothers are enjoying his absence on city business to indulge in gossip. Two of them are sisters, and the third may as well be a sister for the intense time she has shared with Slypaws.
“Do ye wonder,” Pawsense said, “that a raccoon so virtuous as Smartwhisker should love to live in the City? I wish I could take him to the ennobling bosom of Nature where his virtue would receive fit nourishment.”
Sly and Twitch glanced at each other and rolled their eyes.
“If I had a husband, I would lose him to the City,” Slypaws said. “I lost my three cubs to it.”
“Mine too,” Twitchwhisker said. “They’re out there somewhere dancing.”
“It is the great boast of political philosophy to unite dispersed people into societies, and build up cities to house them. Whereupon, having brought them into cities, it becomes easy to cozen them into armies to murder one another.”
Slypaws raised her hand to object.
“’Tis true, they have done so,” Pawsense said. “Philosophy first arose when raccoons were hunters of wild creatures; those same powers of intellect have now made them hunters of their brethren. The city increases daily with their growth. The more people, the more wicked the lot of them.”
“I am sure there are cities where that is not true,” Slypaws said.
“Nay, it is a natural law. When the population of a place becomes too numerous, the Devourer must ever reach for his partner the Prolific to balance things. Whereupon, war and wrack and ruin.”
“I’m a bit winded by all these boom and bust cycles,” Twitchwhisker said.
“I do so wish that philosophy could unravel what it has miswoven, that we might live in innocence again, instead of a supererogation of policies.”
Slypaws took this statement to mark the end of her sister’s effusions. “Many raccoons in far off places have never known wild innocence in a countryside, if there is such a thing. They must live four, five to a burrow in cities. Cities are natural to our species. Raccoons invented the first city.”
“Procyonides cites a legend to that effect,” Twitch said.
“Whatever the origin thereof, cities are our necessary ends,” Pawsense said. “’Twill be an uncomfortable life and ever in alarms. Our lodgings will be cramped and unpleasant and we will always need to keep an eye on our husbands lest they stray into the arms of rent-a-mates.”
“Perhaps we will obtain both City and Nature together,” Slypaws said. “Earth pushes back against her abuse by creating more foliage. And Primates, who are creatures of Earth, can be trusted to plant trees to swallow up the heat and the bad gasses. Imagine it! A Garden City. With trees everywhere for raccoons to climb.”
At this moment, Goodpaws arrived on the bough. Sly thought that her eldest niece had become self-confident since she last saw her. Perhaps it was her new mate, Squire Hairball, who made her so.
“What is it, daughter?” Pawsense asked.
“I think you may be pleased to hear that Uncle Meatbreath is thoroughly departed. He was last seen floating south beyond the Dead Zone.”
“We should pray,” Slypaws said, “that he was carried downriver by the current, to pass into the generating station, there to be transformed into billions of sparks to light our City.”
“A just end for one so radiant,” Twitch said.
Pawsense said nothing. Slypaws wondered if her sister secretly approved of the dictator.
“May I go, mother?”
“Yes, yes. Go about your life, as you see fit.”
The daughter departed with a curtsey.
The three women paused to lick their mint-flavoured Sweet Tea and inhale the late afternoon breeze coming off the river. On this one day of the week when traffic was stilled, the river gathered a peace to herself. “Now, where was I?” Pawsense said.
Slypaws quickly took control of the discussion. “There is nothing that will stop raccoons crowding together in a city if it offers sufficient food.”
