“It’s time,” Albert said over his shoulder.
“Now?” Astrid was surprised.
“Once we feed them they’ll go off in separate directions. I got them here and behaving themselves because of food. Once the food is gone…”
“Okay.” Astrid’s heart was in her throat. She clenched her papers again and stood up too suddenly.
“Like Moses, huh?” Albert said.
“What?”
“Like Moses coming down off the mountain with the Ten Commandments,” Albert said.
“Those were written by God,” Astrid said. “This wasn’t.”
She tripped a little walking down the steps but caught herself. No one was paying particular attention as she entered the crowd. One or two kids called out greetings. Many more made rude or hostile remarks. Mostly kids were focused on the small fires, where venison and chunks of fish browned on skewers made of wire clothes hangers.
She reached the fountain, which was close enough to the cook fires that kids noticed when she climbed up and unfolded her papers.
“Everyone…,” she began.
“Oh, puh-leeze, not some speech,” a voice heckled.
“I…I just have a few things to say. Before you can eat,” Astrid said.
A groan went up. One kid picked up a piece of dirt and tossed it with poor aim—and not too much commitment—at Astrid. Orc took two steps, brushing aside a couple of kids in the process, and made a low growling noise with his scary face right up against the kid’s nose. That signaled the end of dirt throwing.
“Go ahead, Astrid,” Orc rumbled.
Astrid noticed Edilio hiding a smile. Back a million years ago, back in the old life, Astrid had tutored Orc.
“Okay,” Astrid began. She took a deep breath, trying to calm herself down. “I…Okay. When the FAYZ came, all our lives changed. And ever since then all we’ve tried to do is get by, day to day. We’ve been lucky because some people worked very hard and took big risks to help us all make it.”
“Can we eat now?” a younger kid cried.
“And we’ve all been focused on getting by and focused on what we’ve lost. Now it’s time to start working on the future. Because we’re going to be here for a while. Maybe for the rest of our lives.”
That drew some very harsh words, but Astrid kept going.
“We need rules and laws and rights and all,” Astrid said. “Because we need to have some justice and some peace.”
“I just want food,” a voice cried.
Astrid plowed ahead. “So, you’ll all get to vote on this. But I’ve written down a list of laws. I kept it simple.”
“Yeah, because we’re too stupid,” Howard said, suddenly just in front of her.
“No, Howard. If anyone was stupid, I was. I kept looking for some perfect system, something that wouldn’t involve compromising anything.”
That got the attention of a few more kids.
“Well, there is no perfect system. So I wrote down an imperfect set of laws.”
“Rule number one: Each of us has the right to be free and to do whatever we want as long as nothing we do hurts anyone else.”
She waited. No heckling. Not even from Howard.
“Two: No one can hurt another person except in self-defense.”