"A million people," Stu said, awed. He looked out over the sprawling, mostly deserted city of Boulder, now brightening as the sun began to hoist itself over the flat eastern horizon. "I just can't picture that. This town would be busting at the seams."
"Boulder couldn't hold them. I know that boggles the mind when you walk around the empty streets downtown and out toward Table Mesa, but it just couldn't. We'd have to seed the communities around us. The situation you'd have is this one giant community and the rest of the country east of here absolutely empty."
"Why do you think we'd get most of the people?"
"For a very unscientific reason," Glen said, riffling his tonsure of hair with one hand. "I like to believe most people are good. And I believe that whoever is running the show west of us is really bad. But I have a hunch..." He trailed off.
"Go on, spill it."
"I will because I'm drunk. But it stays between us, Stuart."
"All right."
"Your word?"
"My word," Stu said.
"I think he's going to get most of the techies," Glen said finally. "Don't ask me why; it's just a hunch. Except that tech people like to work in an atmosphere of tight discipline and linear goals, for the most part. They like it when the trains run on time. What we've got here in Boulder right now is mass confusion, everyone bopping along and doing his own thing... and we've got to do something about what my students would have called 'getting our shit together.' But that other fellow... I'll bet he 's got the trains running on time and all his ducks in a row. And techies are just as human as the rest of us; they'll go where they're wanted the most. I've a suspicion that our Adversary wants as many as he can get. Fuck the farmers, he'd just as soon have a few men who can dust off those Idaho missile silos and get them operational again. Ditto tanks and helicopters and maybe a B-52 bomber or two just for chuckles. I doubt if he's gotten that far yet - in fact, I'm sure of it. We'd know. Right now he's probably still concentrating on getting the power back on, re-establishing communications... maybe he's even had to indulge in a purge of the fainthearted. Rome wasn't built in a day, and he'll know that. He has time. But when I watch the sun go down at night - this is no shit, Stuart - I get scared. I don't need bad dreams to scare me anymore. All I have to do is think of them over there on the other side of the Rockies, busy as little bees."
"What should we be doing?"
"Should I give you a list?" Glen responded, grinning.
Stuart gestured at his battered notebook. There were two dancers in silhouette and the words BOOGIE DOWN! on its hot pink cover. "Yup," he said.
"You're kidding."
"No, I ain't. You said it, Glen, we got to start getting our shit together someplace. I feel it, too. It's getting later every day. We can't just sit here jacking off and listening to the CB. We may wake up some morning to find that hardcase waltzing into Boulder at the head of an armored column, complete with air support."
"Don't look for him tomorrow," Glen said.
"No. But what about next May?"
"Possible," Glen said in a low voice. "Yes, quite possible."
"And what do you think would happen to us?"
Glen didn't reply with words. He made an explicit little trigger-pulling gesture with the forefinger of his right hand and then hurriedly scoffed the last of the wine.
"Yeah," Stu said. "So let's start getting it together. Talk."
Glen closed his eyes. The brightening day touched his wrinkled cheeks and forehead.
"Okay," he said. "Here it is, Stu. First: Re-create America. Little America. By fair means and by foul. Organization and government come first. If it starts now, we can form the sort of government we want. If we wait until the population triples, we are going to have grave problems.
"Let's say we call a meeting a week from today, that would make it August eighteenth. Everyone to attend. Before the meeting there should be an ad hoc Organization Committee. A committee of seven, let us say. You, me, Andros, Fran, Harold Lauder, maybe, a couple more. The job of the committee would be to create an agenda for the August eighteenth meeting. And I can tell you right now what some of the items on that agenda should be."
"Shoot."
"First, reading and ratification of the Declaration of Independence. Second, r and r of the Constitution. Third, r and r of the Bill of Rights. All ratification to be done by voice vote."