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Melissa sniffed at the men. "Do something useful, why don't you?" She pointed to a row of long tables lining the back wall. "Move those together into the center of the room. Make a big conference table out of them. Then push these silly desks away and go get us some real chairs. Ed'll show you where they are. We'll be meeting here from now on, I imagine. May as well set things up properly."

She turned away, briskly striding toward a cabinet. "I, meanwhile, will demonstrate the marvels of modern technology." Over her shoulder, with a snort: "Stenography. Ha!"

The next few minutes were taken up with a flurry of activity. When the meeting resumed, a large and expensive-looking tape recorder occupied a prominent place in the center of the jury-rigged "conference table."

Melissa turned it on, recorded the time and date, and turned to Mike.

"You're on, Mister Chairman."

Mike cleared his throat. "All right. The first thing I want to take care of is this 'constitutional convention' business. It's important, of course-more important, in the long run, than probably anything else. But we've got way too much emergency business to take care of for this entire committee to spend any time on it."

He could see Melissa's gathering frown out of the corner of his eye. Hurriedly: "So what I want to propose is that we set up a small subcommittee to work on it. When they come up with a proposal, we can discuss it. Until then, the rest of us will concentrate on immediate matters."

"Sounds okay to me," said Nat Davis. "I wouldn't know where to start, anyway. Not with that problem. Who do you want on the subcommittee?"

Mike's first two names came instantly. "Melissa and Ed. She's the history teacher and Ed used to teach civic affairs." Pause. "One or two more people."

Everyone's eyes glanced at everyone else's. Melissa cut through the hesitation. "Willie Ray. He served a few terms as a state representative, way back in the Stone Age. Give us some practical experience, even if he was a chiseling politician like all the rest of them." Everyone chuckled except Hudson, who laughed aloud. "And Dr. Nichols should be on it too."

Nichols' eyes widened. "Why?" he demanded. "I don't know anything about constitutional law." He cocked his head. The gesture was both quizzical and half-suspicious. "If it's because I'm the only-"

"Of course it's because you're the only black man in the room!" snapped Melissa. Her eyes challenged Nichols, and then the other men. "Grow up-all of you. I didn't propose him out of tokenism. There's a good and simple reason to include someone whose people had a different history than most of ours. Whether he knows any law or not, I suspect Dr. Nichols won't be quite as complacent as everyone else about the received wisdom of the ages."

Mike wasn't sure he agreed with Melissa's reasoning. In general, that is. But he realized that he would feel a bit more confident himself, knowing that Nichols had a hand in shaping their new constitution.

"I've got no problems with that. James? Do you accept?"

Nichols shrugged. "Sure, why not?" Grinning: "Man does not live by chitlins alone, after all."

When the laughter died down, Mike moved on to immediate business. He started with the power-plant manager.

"Bill, the way I see it, power is the key to everything. As long as we have electricity, we'll have a gigantic edge over everybody else in this new world of ours. All the way from modern machine tools to computers. So-how long? And what can we do to keep the power coming?"

Porter ran fingers through his thinning hair. "I don't know how much anybody here knows about power plants. The truth is, the design of steam-water cycle power plants hasn't changed much in a long time. They're simple machines, when you get down it. As long as we're provided with water and coal, we can keep running until we use up our small stock of critical spare parts. That'll probably happen somewhere between a year and a half and two years from now. After that, we're shut down for good."

He shook his head. The gesture was both rueful and half-amused. "We've got enough coal stockpiled to last for six months. Water's not a problem at all. We used to get it from the Monongahela. The Ring of Fire cut the pipes, of course, but it turns out-talk about blind luck!-that there's another river pretty much right in the same place. Not as big, but it'll do."

"I don't understand about the spare parts," said Frank. "Can't we make them? We've got three machine shops in town."

Porter shook his head. "That's not the problem, Frank. I wish it was! We've got four machine shops in town, actually. We have a maintenance shop in the plant itself." He glanced at Piazza. "And now that I think about, I just remembered the high school's technical training center has a pretty good shop, too."

Piazza nodded. Porter turned to Davis, the machine-shop owner. "Tell 'em, Nat."