Confrontation (The Seamus Chronicles Book 4) Read Free Page A

can do about her, so let’s just ignore it,” Sofie says softly, before walking away.
     
    Back at the central cabin for lunch, there is another full group conversation going on.
    Mike has his hands up defensively. He’s saying, “All I’m saying is that if the burden is on the women to keep getting pregnant and having children, it makes sense to me that they should be the ones making most of the decisions.”
    “Having children is a big enough burden. We don’t need to ask them to mediate everything else that goes on,” David replies, more confident of his position.
    “Maybe the fact that you guys make everything so complicated points to the logic of having women in charge.” Marybeth is teasing but sincere.
    “I’m confused about why we need to specify. Aren’t we all equally qualified to lead?” Grace says, injecting her own sense of fairness into the discussion.
    We are faced with another interesting inflection point. Throughout history, societies have been either matriarchal or patriarchal; which are we going to be?
    On Earth, we were taught that women and men were equal. A woman could do any job a man could do. In my seventeen years, I never saw anything that would prove that incorrect.
    Here on Locus, though, it’s a little different. When it comes to purely providing for people, the men are doing more. We spend more time in the fields harvesting, we carry more loads of food back to the central cabin, and we have done the bulk of the construction work.
    Being a modern man, I can see that the women were instrumental in the garden layout and planting, which is having a positive impact on the yield. They also do most of the canning work to preserve the vegetables so that we will have food when there is a lull in the crop production or a change of seasons.
    Neither sex is superior; we have different strengths. The problems come with the nuances of surviving and expanding. The women need more nutrition than the men; they’re eating for two.
    One of the guys has pushed a few times to put men on rations and give the women extra food. Healthy women have healthy children that can grow up strong and help continue our species. The logic is reasonable, though maybe not perfect.
    Most of the women refused and Sofie made a point that what she eats is none of his business. His point was that if we are collectively responsible for the continuation of humans, then it kind of is his business.
    Jane is still finding her voice and position in the group. She says, “I think that we are doing well managing as a group. The fact that men and women can discuss it together is a step forward from the history that I recall. But let’s keep rules to a minimum as long as we can.”
    I wish a sociologist had been with us. There must have been some studies done that show how large a group can get before they need to add structure. Of course there will be an informal structure even in a group of two, but at what point do we need formal rules and defined leadership?
    We still number twenty-one adults. The numbers can conceivably get smaller, if we note that there are nine couples and Henry, Jane and Rich. I would like to say that the couples agree on any single issue, but I know from experience that is not the case.
    It will be fifteen years until we have another adult, and then our numbers will expand significantly. If we double in population, is that when we need to have more formal rules and leadership structure? Right now I feel like thirty-four adults could work out most situations among themselves.
    “I disagree,” Luke says. “What if Paddrick decides he’s tired of bringing food over for breakfast? How do we decide who will take over that role? And who decides what he will be asked to do as a replacement for that task?” He is pointing out problems that don’t exist.
    “We figure it out,” Mom says. “It’s like any team you’ve ever been a part of. If you see something that needs doing but isn’t getting done, do