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blatherskiteThe “California Queen” of the title is a paddleboat charged with bringing the legal system to communities in the Sovereign State of California that have been isolated by rising sea levels and the spread of an inland sea that has cut them off from the big cities. As such, the story fits between the flat-out “Mad Max” post-catastrophe tale and Green’s “Turtle Love” (see the previous review in this blog) in terms of the impacts on civilization: things haven’t entirely collapsed, yet the American union has fallen into independent states due to the central government’s inability to hold things together. Yet despite this, California at least is trying to keep things together. This has led to resurrection of the original form of circuit court, namely the kind that brings justice to each community via a traveling judge and court, something that’s more important than you might at first think. Maintaining the rule of law is a key step in protecting communities well enough that they can begin the long journey back to civilization. The resulting story context evokes images of the glory days of colonization of the American West, with the primary civilization back east separated by long distances from small cities that are only slowly growing in remoter areas.
Taiesha Daniels is a Black woman who’s lost her husband and child during the violence that followed the initial phases of the collapse. She’s part of the California Queen’s crew, and a public defender. It’s not an easy life; the story begins with an attack on the Queen by pirates, clear evidence that although things may be holding together in the cities, they’re very much more fragile on the fringes. Taiesha handles herself admirably, shooting two of the pirates and defeating another in hand-to-hand combat when her gun jams; this is just one example of how skillfully MacEwen slowly reveals information that will prove to have ample justification once the explanation emerges later in the story. For example, when she shoots the first pirate between the eyes, this might be an example of someone who either hasn’t been trained in firearms (when in doubt, professionals aim for the center of mass) or someone who’s been trained very well indeed (a head shot is difficult when you’re reacting fast to an attack). We soon learn the truth: she’s ex-military, and was trained under the G.I. bill as a public defender.
[spoilers] The plot gets rolling when Taiesha is required to defend Eric Moreland, mayor of the town of Atwater, against a charge of murdering Ramon, a 9-year-old refugee child who he accused of attempting to steal food—yet it turns out the boy may only have been catching rats for his family’s sustenance, thereby protecting the warehouse he was accused of planning to rob. Eric is a racist, sexist, violent man who’s set himself up as a local Boss Tweed. All these traits should immediately set us against him, yet Taiesha honors her responsibility to defend him under the law until he’s received a fair trial. But things are more complex than they seem. We soon learn that there may have been extenuating circumstances, since vigilante justice is endorsed by the California legal code when it comes to pirates and thieves; if such forms of cheating are left unpunished, the State believes, many innocent citizens will starve. Moreland is outraged by his arrest, at first seemingly because his authority is being challenged, but there are hints he really believes he was doing what’s best for his people by shooting a thief. This is, after all, a survivalist situation, and his town, though doing better than most, has little margin of safety. In fact, they may only have survived as long as they have because Moreland raised an army large enough to steal a desalinization plant from a nearby gated community; the State may have looked the other way because Atwater’s farmers were more important to the State’s survival than the dead “yuppies”.
A final twist comes when we learn of the laws that have been implemented to keep the population below California’s agricultural carrying capacity. All children must be registered, with their identities established by DNA fingerprints, and even refugee children must undergo DNA testing so they can be entered into the public rolls and receive education, health care, and legal protection. Everyone is allowed a single child if it’s their own clone, or two if they produce their children naturally with a partner, but all additional children receive no legal protection whatsoever. (It’s a chilling echo of China’s one-child policy, gone one step more sinister.) When Taiesha completes one of her duties by DNA testing the mother and siblings of dead Ramon, she discovers that all three were the children of Ramon’s bereaved mother, who had claimed one of the children to be her sister’s child. Taiesha turns this evidence over to the Judge, knowing that it will force the mother to make a terrible choice: register her two surviving children so they will be protected by the law, or register only one of them and dead Ramon, thereby rendering Moreland vulnerable to prosecution for Ramon’s murder. In the end, she chooses to protect her surviving children, even though it means Moreland will go free. But Taiesha can’t accept this outcome, and murders Moreland in a way that makes it look like he’d fallen into the river and drowned after a drunken binge to celebrate his release.
Unfortunately, her colleague Iain MacClure has been following her, and witnessed everything. MacClure’s role and origins have been unclear to this point, as he’s a Scot who retains his accent and therefore isn’t local. But how he’s managed to find his way here is a mystery. He works alongside Taiesha as an “auditor”, though what he audits is initially unspecified. We later learn that it’s the members of the ship’s crew he’s been auditing. Taiesha’s relationship with him is fraught; she clearly despises him, but the reasons aren’t clear, other than that he may remind her of the white mob that attacked her family. MacClure reveals that he’s an agent of the U.N., not California or the federal government, and that he’s here specifically to evaluate Taiesha: he needs someone with her unique abilities and personal moral code who can honor the forms of the law, but who can step outside it when necessary to see that killers receive the justice they deserve. It’s not a remotely plausible setup, as the U.N. would have many larger and more urgent crises to deal with; a simple fix would have been to make MacClure a “black ops” agent of the California government, which would have been logical and easy to swallow.
For me, the heart of the story revolves around the fate of the refugees. As in many semi-legal or extra-legal immigration contexts, the immigrants aren’t being integrated with local society, making it difficult for them to survive without stealing. The pirates are by no means sympathetic (routine testing by the court demonstrates that they’ve become cannibals), yet what choice do they have if no community will accept them, and the only alternative is starvation? This isn’t a trivial problem invented for dramatic stage-dressing, but rather something integral to the greenhouse context. As large populations are displaced by rising seas, lethal droughts, catastrophic rains, and other climate disasters, we’ll face a difficult choice of how to deal with growing numbers of refugees: leave them to die so we can focus on our own survival, allow token numbers into our country but make no effort to integrate them, or make them part of our society, like our own immigrant ancestors. How much misery and crime could be prevented if we embraced our immigrants and helped them find homes and jobs, rather than isolating and alienating them? Lest one think this is all purely hypothetical, it pays to consider the current situation of Hispanic and Latino immigrants in Arizona, a situation in which the immigrants face harsh problems even though they pose little to no threat to anyone and the pressure on society is far lower than it will be when entire nations (Pacific islanders, Bangladeshis) arrive en masse at the borders of developed nations, seeking safety.
The notion of capital punishment comes in for questioning too. In a survival situation, it’s hard to justify imprisoning and feeding murderers when honest citizens are doing without food. Yet Taiesha asks the difficult question of “how long it will be before we can afford not to kill everyone we convict.” The rule of law is something most of us take for granted, yet as the continuing attraction of the vigilante (whether Mad Max or Batman) and the Marshall or Sherriff in “Western” movies shows, it’s something we’ve been able to take for granted for a surprisingly short time. MacEwen reminds us of just how fragile our society is in the face of disruption, and how vulnerable society’s lower classes are, as recently became clear to Americans when Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans.
MacEwan’s writing is mostly straightforward, with no attempts at grandstanding, but there are a few nice turns of phrase. A particular favorite comes when Taiesha describes the mob and its potential for violence: “It wasn’t a happy noise... A herd of cattle about to stampede sounded like that—a low, uneven grumbling that kicked her heart with a cowboy’s spurs”. The last part initially seems like it should have been cut to simplify and improve the phrase, but once we learn that Taiesha and her family were attacked by a starving mob, and that her husband and child may were either lynched or eaten, it makes perfect sense. “California Queen” is one of the darker tales in the anthology thus far, and raises difficult questions about how we’ll treat our future refugees and what proportion of the rights we take for granted are luxuries that we may no longer be able to afford when the fate of New Orleans is re-enacted at a national scale. All things we need to be discussing now (i.e., before the questions become more than hypothetical), prompted by authors who have raised the questions most of us don’t want to face.
Taiesha Daniels is a Black woman who’s lost her husband and child during the violence that followed the initial phases of the collapse. She’s part of the California Queen’s crew, and a public defender. It’s not an easy life; the story begins with an attack on the Queen by pirates, clear evidence that although things may be holding together in the cities, they’re very much more fragile on the fringes. Taiesha handles herself admirably, shooting two of the pirates and defeating another in hand-to-hand combat when her gun jams; this is just one example of how skillfully MacEwen slowly reveals information that will prove to have ample justification once the explanation emerges later in the story. For example, when she shoots the first pirate between the eyes, this might be an example of someone who either hasn’t been trained in firearms (when in doubt, professionals aim for the center of mass) or someone who’s been trained very well indeed (a head shot is difficult when you’re reacting fast to an attack). We soon learn the truth: she’s ex-military, and was trained under the G.I. bill as a public defender.
[spoilers] The plot gets rolling when Taiesha is required to defend Eric Moreland, mayor of the town of Atwater, against a charge of murdering Ramon, a 9-year-old refugee child who he accused of attempting to steal food—yet it turns out the boy may only have been catching rats for his family’s sustenance, thereby protecting the warehouse he was accused of planning to rob. Eric is a racist, sexist, violent man who’s set himself up as a local Boss Tweed. All these traits should immediately set us against him, yet Taiesha honors her responsibility to defend him under the law until he’s received a fair trial. But things are more complex than they seem. We soon learn that there may have been extenuating circumstances, since vigilante justice is endorsed by the California legal code when it comes to pirates and thieves; if such forms of cheating are left unpunished, the State believes, many innocent citizens will starve. Moreland is outraged by his arrest, at first seemingly because his authority is being challenged, but there are hints he really believes he was doing what’s best for his people by shooting a thief. This is, after all, a survivalist situation, and his town, though doing better than most, has little margin of safety. In fact, they may only have survived as long as they have because Moreland raised an army large enough to steal a desalinization plant from a nearby gated community; the State may have looked the other way because Atwater’s farmers were more important to the State’s survival than the dead “yuppies”.
A final twist comes when we learn of the laws that have been implemented to keep the population below California’s agricultural carrying capacity. All children must be registered, with their identities established by DNA fingerprints, and even refugee children must undergo DNA testing so they can be entered into the public rolls and receive education, health care, and legal protection. Everyone is allowed a single child if it’s their own clone, or two if they produce their children naturally with a partner, but all additional children receive no legal protection whatsoever. (It’s a chilling echo of China’s one-child policy, gone one step more sinister.) When Taiesha completes one of her duties by DNA testing the mother and siblings of dead Ramon, she discovers that all three were the children of Ramon’s bereaved mother, who had claimed one of the children to be her sister’s child. Taiesha turns this evidence over to the Judge, knowing that it will force the mother to make a terrible choice: register her two surviving children so they will be protected by the law, or register only one of them and dead Ramon, thereby rendering Moreland vulnerable to prosecution for Ramon’s murder. In the end, she chooses to protect her surviving children, even though it means Moreland will go free. But Taiesha can’t accept this outcome, and murders Moreland in a way that makes it look like he’d fallen into the river and drowned after a drunken binge to celebrate his release.
Unfortunately, her colleague Iain MacClure has been following her, and witnessed everything. MacClure’s role and origins have been unclear to this point, as he’s a Scot who retains his accent and therefore isn’t local. But how he’s managed to find his way here is a mystery. He works alongside Taiesha as an “auditor”, though what he audits is initially unspecified. We later learn that it’s the members of the ship’s crew he’s been auditing. Taiesha’s relationship with him is fraught; she clearly despises him, but the reasons aren’t clear, other than that he may remind her of the white mob that attacked her family. MacClure reveals that he’s an agent of the U.N., not California or the federal government, and that he’s here specifically to evaluate Taiesha: he needs someone with her unique abilities and personal moral code who can honor the forms of the law, but who can step outside it when necessary to see that killers receive the justice they deserve. It’s not a remotely plausible setup, as the U.N. would have many larger and more urgent crises to deal with; a simple fix would have been to make MacClure a “black ops” agent of the California government, which would have been logical and easy to swallow.
For me, the heart of the story revolves around the fate of the refugees. As in many semi-legal or extra-legal immigration contexts, the immigrants aren’t being integrated with local society, making it difficult for them to survive without stealing. The pirates are by no means sympathetic (routine testing by the court demonstrates that they’ve become cannibals), yet what choice do they have if no community will accept them, and the only alternative is starvation? This isn’t a trivial problem invented for dramatic stage-dressing, but rather something integral to the greenhouse context. As large populations are displaced by rising seas, lethal droughts, catastrophic rains, and other climate disasters, we’ll face a difficult choice of how to deal with growing numbers of refugees: leave them to die so we can focus on our own survival, allow token numbers into our country but make no effort to integrate them, or make them part of our society, like our own immigrant ancestors. How much misery and crime could be prevented if we embraced our immigrants and helped them find homes and jobs, rather than isolating and alienating them? Lest one think this is all purely hypothetical, it pays to consider the current situation of Hispanic and Latino immigrants in Arizona, a situation in which the immigrants face harsh problems even though they pose little to no threat to anyone and the pressure on society is far lower than it will be when entire nations (Pacific islanders, Bangladeshis) arrive en masse at the borders of developed nations, seeking safety.
The notion of capital punishment comes in for questioning too. In a survival situation, it’s hard to justify imprisoning and feeding murderers when honest citizens are doing without food. Yet Taiesha asks the difficult question of “how long it will be before we can afford not to kill everyone we convict.” The rule of law is something most of us take for granted, yet as the continuing attraction of the vigilante (whether Mad Max or Batman) and the Marshall or Sherriff in “Western” movies shows, it’s something we’ve been able to take for granted for a surprisingly short time. MacEwen reminds us of just how fragile our society is in the face of disruption, and how vulnerable society’s lower classes are, as recently became clear to Americans when Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans.
MacEwan’s writing is mostly straightforward, with no attempts at grandstanding, but there are a few nice turns of phrase. A particular favorite comes when Taiesha describes the mob and its potential for violence: “It wasn’t a happy noise... A herd of cattle about to stampede sounded like that—a low, uneven grumbling that kicked her heart with a cowboy’s spurs”. The last part initially seems like it should have been cut to simplify and improve the phrase, but once we learn that Taiesha and her family were attacked by a starving mob, and that her husband and child may were either lynched or eaten, it makes perfect sense. “California Queen” is one of the darker tales in the anthology thus far, and raises difficult questions about how we’ll treat our future refugees and what proportion of the rights we take for granted are luxuries that we may no longer be able to afford when the fate of New Orleans is re-enacted at a national scale. All things we need to be discussing now (i.e., before the questions become more than hypothetical), prompted by authors who have raised the questions most of us don’t want to face.