Yishuv

the birth of a nation

chapter II: "the first seeds"

(Washington, D.C)--The Senate Subcommittee
on the Constitution, Federalism and Proper-
ty Rights held public hearings today on
the so-called Harrison Amendment, which
would revamp the autonomous mutant/metahuman
cantons, essentially stripping them of
several key powers made implicit by the
28th Amendment to the Constitution.

Sen. Kenneth Harrison (Nationalist-Idaho)
opened the hearing with a blistering attack
on the financial disarray and corruption that
is endemic amongst most cantons. "The US
taxpayers can no longer afford to pay the
tab for an ill-conceived layer of government
that has clearly done nothing to alleviate
either the condition of mutants in general
nor stop the incipient warzones that have
developed in our major cities during the
last generation or so."

A spokesman for the Nationalist Party
National Committee reiterates that the
party's long-term goal is to either seek
outright repeal of the 28th Amendment or
to modify it in such a way as to bring
the cantons under more strict federal
guidelines.

On the streets outside the building where
the hearings were being held, members of the
mutant activist organisation '46+X' created
havoc when they overturned cars and attacked
DC Police sent to keep the protesters away
from the hearings. Four policemen and six
protesters were hurt, one seriously.
(Reuters)

(Basle, Switzerland)--The first World
Mutant Congress meets today following
a massive publicity campaign that saw
the issue of mutant rights placed
squarely on the centre stage of world
diplomacy.

With the best-selling 'Mutant Manifesto'
still hot on the charts with no end in
sight, the Congress is meeting amidst
unprecedented acknowledgement of the
plight of mutants world-wide. Delegates
from around the globe have gathered in
Switzerland to find a way to organise
their people and draft a plan to end
the precarious status some of them
face in countries of birth.

However lacking in drama this stated goal
is there is one plank on the Congress'
platform that has dominated press coverage
and received the most attention from
those covering it: the call for the
creation of an independent mutant state
as a refuge of final resort. Many dele-
gates interviewed have said that it is
for this very reason that they've risked
their livelihoods to attend the Congress,
knowing that there is the possibility of
overt or covert retribution upon return
to their countries. The dream, they say,
is enough.

Not all who've come, however, support the
separatist ideal. Sen. Scott Summers of
the United States is attending, but advo-
cates working within the current system
to achieve needed changes. He points to
the success of the autonomous mutant cantons
in the US as a model for such progress.

Others have noted, however, that those same
cantons have become little more than reser-
vations or Bantustans and that even what
little autonomy they have is under fire by
those who feel they are a failed experiment
and a financial drain on the US taxpayers.
(Reuters)

New York Times Bestsellers List
for the week ending December 1, 2007

NON-FICTION

1. The Mutant Manifesto: Autoemancipation
as the Final Solution for the 'Mutant
Question'-by Anonymous

No. of Weeks at #1: 6
No. of Weeks on the Chart: 10

...

Basle, Switzerland

December 3, 2007

"I stand before you a changed man," I said, addressing those assembled in the hall before me, the congress of peoples that I had helped create in a matter of mere months. I wasn't all too certain this was a tribute to the cause I espoused...or to the man who espoused it. I sincerely hoped for the former though, to be sure, as long as the latter motivation didn't impede progress, I could accept that as well. "A changed man because I have lived through every possible option a man could, given every possible idea credence, allowed every possible faction or movement sweep along our people at their whim...and seen them all fail, fail, FAIL!" I pounded on the podium. The crowd roared their approval, coming to their feet in a great tumult. Look at them! I thought to myself, almost dizzy at the sight. I allowed myself a groundswell of pride. Hundreds of them! White, black, yellow and red. All races, creeds and ideologies, from all corners of the globe! In my wildest estimates, during those feverish days after Augustus initially visited me, I had never anticipated such a response.

Admittedly, it was intoxicating.

Dangerously so, in my estimation...

"We will not fail this time!" I shouted over the din, only to find that my words fueled their reaction further. "We will show the world that we, too, should have our place at the table of nations!"

Pandemonium.

Almost as one, the crowd erupted like a volcano. For a moment, I was unsure whether or not the situation was under control. I glanced to the front aisles where Swiss police had been arrayed, ostensibly for crowd control in this, the very most sensitive of political gatherings. I held up my arms straight, urging calm. "Thank you," I said, waiting until they quieted down before I continued. But the cheers continued, seemingly ceaseless, wave upon wave of them cascading over me like the ocean itself. The chronometer read a full five minutes or so later until I was able to do anything but nod and proclaim my thanks for their tribute. "Thank you, thank you all," I mumbled, somewhat sheepishly, feeling foolish at my inability to control my message. Is this truly what I had in mind?

"We have a solemn duty before us, one which I daresay is like unto no other duty ever put forth by such a vast array of people. We need to find a common platform with which we can all rally around, one which clearly paints the way towards the path of freedom and sovereignty. It is an absolute from which we can never compromise. We've seen how our compatriots across the globe have faired. In Russia, they're still officially harassed, the legacy of the former Soviet Union still heavy upon their shoulders. In much of the Third World they are viewed with suspicion and fear. Many would rather have no child than a child who is a mutant. Credible reports out of Africa and Asia have come bearing tales of the infanticide of those mutants with more pronounced or obvious physical features."

"And what of America?" I asked rhetorically. Gripping the podium, my sweat-slick hands untrustworthy, I leaned forward, capturing the gaze of one who was once a compatriot of mine, long ago. Once, but no longer. To watch Summers sit there, contended and seemingly at ease with his upper-middle-class nouveau riche lifestyle and newfound influence in Congress was enough to give me pause. I had to be very careful of my next words, lest my rancor--years of stifled opposition under Charles' hegemony--leaked out. In truth, I almost did not trust myself to speak... "What of America, indeed. There are those amongst us, some of whom I know of very well, who would say that of all nations, the United States has come closest to fulfilling our ideals to some degree. Mayhap that was true at one point...or maybe not. In any case, such is not true of our community there now."

"I was there when the federal and State governments lined up to prosecute one of our own, using charges whose merits are spurious at best and usurious at worst!" I thundered, pounding the podium. My heart began to throb in my chest, the adrenaline soaring through my veins like liquid fire. "I was there when Charles Xavier's Institute for Higher Learning was surreptitiously closed down, her students rounded up and charged and were forced, ultimately, to break the law in order to flee the outrageous attempts to single them out!" I no longer looked at Scott, knowing full well how ill-at-ease he must feel, now that I've all-but singled him and his raison d'être out. "And I was there, forced into inactivity, when there was nothing that could be done to save the life of a student under my tutelage, a man with whom I felt a great degree of affinity...and a man I never had an opportunity to tell was right when he openly disagreed with my then-reactivity and complaisance in the face of overt oppression." I could feel my voice thicken as the events of those years came flooding back to me. The stain of those events, even now, left the most bitter of tastes in my mouth. "I left America a broken man, forced into a no-win situation because I followed the path of what I thought was honourable. It cost lives. It cost freedoms, freedoms that, only now, the so-called 'autonomous cantons' are beginning to realise are gone."

"I stand before you a changed man, my friends. A changed man who has seen all manner of oppression. A man who's seen his people systematically gathered, branded, driven into slavery and, very nearly, wiped clean from the face of the Earth in a cataclysmic event which, to this day, scores the souls of those generations who've come after those terrible, terrible events of the Second World War. I've dedicated my life to the watchwords 'Never Again!'...and yet...and yet, here we are, sixty years later, and the forces of darkness once more swirl about. Only this time, it is not the Jews, the Rom, the Slavs, the handicapped or those who even disagree with an officially-mandated ideology. No...this time, it is our sons and our daughters. It is the next generation that lies in fear, wondering if the Angel of Death will come swooping down to claim them."

My eyes began to mist. It was too much, the memories, the 'most bitter of mistresses.' I raised my hands to my helm and, to the gasps of all in the audience, I lifted it off, my hair spilling out. Tears flowed down my cheeks. "Who will be there to paint the blood of the lamb on their doors, my friends? Who will save our children?"

"My name...my name is Magnus, the man called 'Magneto'. And I...I will be one who will step forward to take the challenge." Slowly, I raised my hand to them. "Will you, my friends, have the courage to join with me and lead our kind to a new Canaan? Will you? Will you take that first step with me, walk this path with me, and sacrifice your all if need be? Will you? Dwell heavily on this, comrades, and peer deep into your souls this eve...for this is the first nite of the Redemption. The Ingathering comes soon. Be certain the first step you take outside this hall is the step that will lead you to the Promised Land."

"Thank you."

Utter silence.

As I walked off the stage, helm firmly under my arm, the applause began. First an isolated clap...then another...and another...but soon a thunderous roar of approval. In the corner of my eye--at the last moment before the view was obscured--I saw the entire hall come to its feet.

I walked past a stunned Lord Augustus, his face slack and pale. The roars of the amphitheater echoed in my ears. They all, however, mattered not to me. My single, burning thought was on the future...and that path I laid the first brick on tonite.

*

"What...is this?" I asked, placing my hand lightly on the large three-ring binder that had been placed in my hands.

"'This'," Augustus said, with an impish gleam in his eyes, "is a way of unifying our people, one more step in solidifying them around a single cause. It's the product of a vibrant, young philologist by the name of Malcolm MacLaughlin, an American, late of Boston University and now out of work."

I began thumbing through it. Strange symbols--letters, on second glance--jumped out at me. What the devil? "And again I ask: what is this?"

"A language," the Briton said, almost giddy beyond measure. "Our own."

I blinked. "A language? Why on earth--?"

"Think about it, Magnus," he interrupted. "We're spread across the planet. We speak English, Russian, French, even Swahili and Xhosa. One of the things that unifies a people is a common tongue. Even similar tongues do the trick. Look at the pan-Slavic movement of the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth centuries. It didn't matter that Belarussian and Russian weren't exactly the same; nor were Bulgarian or Serbian. What mattered was they were similar and that was enough to cause a massive swelling of pride in being Slavic. Now, mutants have only one thing in common, correct?"

"The so-called 'x-factor', yes," I nodded, the tome heavy in my hands.

"Exactly. But that's abstract, almost intangible. It's like trying to garner affinity through hair colour. Try organising a movement of blondes and see how far it gets you." He held up a finger. "Ah, but a language! That can bring together disparate peoples with very different physical, social and cultural characteristics. Indeed, it spurs the creation of a common culture! Think about it! A common tongue, one which people will start a new literature in, one that expresses the yearning in their hearts for a domicile they can call their own... Think of what propaganda value that has for the cause--and I'm thinking of 'propaganda' in the least-cynical of definitions. Is it such an outlandish idea?"

"Rubbish," I murmured, thumbing through it nonetheless. "Where did this madman derive this language from? It looks somewhat...Semitic. Like Arabic or Aramaic."

"Close," Augustus said. "Think a bit earlier, actually. Malcolm, until he was fired, was Chairman of the Ancient Semitic Languages Department. He specialised in Chaldean/Babylonian, Aramaic and the various dialects usually lumped under the term 'Early Canaanite'."

I looked up. "This is based on an extinct language?"

The viscount nodded. "Very extinct, to be more direct."

"And you want me to put my imprimatur on this...this language, ostensibly to adopt it as our own?"

Another nod.

I shook my head, incredulous. But still...the argument was very persuasive. Though not a sociologist of any type I saw the truth in his analogy. Another plank to unify us, drawing our people together under a single banner...a single culture. Our own literature. Poets and authors speaking a tongue we, alone, would possess. The thought was...intriguing. I admitted as much. "All right," I said, looking up. "You've piqued my curiosity. I'm not saying I'm entirely convinced by the notion," I cautioned. "But I'm interested enough so that I want to see this gentleman, get a good feel of him. I've got a hunch that there's a bit more to this than meets the eye. The motivation to create an entire language isn't found in a soul every day. I want to test the mettle of this person. I trust you can arrange for me a meeting with him, hmm?"

"Certainly," Augustus said. "He's eager to meet you, in any case."

"Time was when I would view that assertion with skepticism," I snorted. "But times, I see, have changed."

"And they'll continue to do so if you keep on making speeches like the one you just made," the viscount said, positively gushing with praise. "Good heavens, Magnus! You had them practically eating out of the palm of your hand!"

A sigh escaped from my lips. "That's not what I'd intended, Your Highness. My sole intent was simply to express my opinion as honestly and with as much forcefulness as I could muster without causing too much trouble to the cause, itself...but I, too, saw their reactions. Their faces positively lit up!" Again I shook my head. "I've never seen anything quite like it...and certainly not in response to anything I've done or said."

Augustus sat on the edge of the hotel bed. "Every movement, I think, has its time and place under the sun. If it's to be a successful movement, certain social criteria must be met. I think we've come at the right place and the right time. Any earlier and your call might've been met with skepticism or even downright derision amongst our own kind. Not eight or nine years ago it looked like the States had finally managed to point the way towards a solution. If you'd published the Manifesto then, it might indeed have sold well...and then subsequently split the mutant and mutant-sympathising community in half."

I walked over to the window of my room, looking out over the Rhein and the partial gloom of Basle in twilight. "No Germany without Bismark. No Italy without Garibaldi. No United States without Washington...is that what you're saying? That history moves in the shadows of great men? I'm not an adherent of such philosophies, Your Highness."

"No, no, not necessarily a single person," the Briton said. "But a single person certainly can galvanise a movement, steel it for the crux-time. But the movement, itself, even with its Great Man--so to speak--can and will falter if certain social events do not pave the way for it. In fact--"

knock! knock! knock!

"Hold that thought," I said, heading towards the door. My firm grip on the knob nearly slipped when I saw who was on the other side. Instantly, my jaw set and my heart began thumping in my chest. "Senator Summers...what a surprise," I observed though, in truth, I knew that at some point and time a meeting such as this was inevitable. "Do come in--but leave the Secret Service retinue outside. I assume you want a modicum of privacy and, frankly, I don't want to see them." I cast a glance over Scott's head at his minders. "They leave a bad taste in my mouth."

The Senator nodded briefly and, without so much as looking back to see if they would continence to obeying my request, he entered the room. I quickly shut the door behind him. "Senator Summers, this is Lord Viscount August Saxe Coburg & Gotha, a member of the British House of Lords and my aide de camp. Your Highness, this is the junior senator from the State of New York, Scott Summers, formerly co-leader of the X-Men."

I walked over to the window once more, hands tightly clasped behind my back. Dread filled my soul but I might as well at least begin this discussion on the right foot. "I'm sorry I couldn't provide better accomodations, Senator...but I've come to enjoy living austerely as of late. But I'm sure you didn't come here to hear that. State your piece, Scott."

"You know this isn't what Charles would have wanted," he said solemnly. No viturpitude, no vehemence in his voice. A statement of fact, not of opinion. And...something else. Perhaps a world-weariness, a sense that he, like I, was simply going through the motions; placing our markers on the board, as it were, knowing full well we would not convince the other of the veracity of our arguments.

"Yes," I nodded, smiling to myself. "I know that moreso than you, Scott. I know that because he and I saw eye-to-eye in opposing the cantonment policy and one of the reasons we both used was that it could very well spark the very movement I now seek to ignite. Times, though, have changed. That was a decade ago, Summers. Much is not as it was...you, nearly as much as I, should know that."

I turned to face the man who, in many ways, has been the penultimate thorn in my side. Always there to test me, to try me, whether it be on the fields of battle when he was young and foolish...or, like now, when our strikes are much more subtle; the barb of the tongue vice the stab of the blade. His face was almost unrecognisable from the child whose life I once held in my hand oh so many years ago when we first clashed. Age and stress has taken its toll on him, etching their lessons deep into his face, hollowed out his cheeks. His hair, once a luxurious brown, was now grey and thinning. Looking at him now, I was disheartened. He looked older even than I.

"Why?" he asked, finally. "Why did you turn your back on the system? You know, for a while, I had started to trust you. You had every opportunity to leave but you didn't. Even when the Institute was shut down, you helped organise us. What happened? Was it Charles? Did you finally just stop believing him and his dream?"

I gave my old adversary a wane smile. "Oh that things were that simple, Summers. Truth be told, my reservations about Charles' methods never fully left me. I merely subsumed them, recognising that I could be wrong...and hoping that was the case. No, my parting of ways began years before they put a bullet through Xavier's head. That, however, was the final straw. What I want to ask you, though, is why you've kept the flame alive? You were there. Charles was butchered, no less so than the others who at least had a fighting chance. Not so, he. What made you think there was anything left to keep but a set of memories and a few pictures?"

"I almost didn't, Magnus, if you want to know the truth," he said, voice low. "But the public reaction after the trial...and Charles' murder...pulled me back from the brink. It gave me a second chance. It's why I ran for office. I thought for certain that there was something left in the people, that they could be trusted ultimately...even if the government, perhaps, could not be."

I glanced across the Rhein once more, to Germany beyond. "If it is one thing that I have learned in my long life, Scott, it is that governments are made of people. Ultimately, if they are democratically-elected, they personify the people, themselves. And people come in all different creeds. One thing unites them, though," I held up a finger. "Fear. The public reacted typically, Scott. Aghast at the prime-time assassination they drew back and did a little bit of soul searching. It was temporary, and I think you know that well enough. America is a land of the least-common denominator. Populists and the rhetoricians can gain a share of power simply by becoming the loudest shouter on the block. The public is lazy, anti-intellectual and refuses to make hard decisions that will meaningfully impact their lives or pocketbooks. They would rather stare disaster in the face, force their representatives to create a quick-fix and then summarily boot them out of office in a fit of hypocritical pique." My eyes drew to his. "Your poll numbers are what the spin doctors call 'shallow', are they not? Certainly you can already feel the pressures to conform..."

"I'm not a lemming, Magnus," Summers responded, testily. "And I don't care what my poll numbers say."

"No, you're not a lemming...just a conformist...and an idealist blinded by his own naivette." Before he could reply I turned fully towards him. "You're not going to stop me, Summers," I said, lifting a finger before him. "You've no base save the well-spring of knee-jerk liberal masses that elected you. Masses that will abandon you before long if you do not conform to their diktats and you know it. And while you're gallavanting around in Washington pursuing the camera lense and pontificating ad nauseum about your moral superiority, remember that you had the chance to keep the X-Men alive and that, when asked, you chose to let them fall apart. You have nothing to oppose me with save words."

"Words may very well be enough, Magnus," Scott said, leaning forward. "You're dangerous; much more so now than you've ever been before. You mask your reactionary beliefs in a thin skin of rhetoric that comes damned close to the dangers of ethnocentrism--"

"But we're not a single ethnic group, nor even a single race!" I interrupted but, predictably, he wasn't listening.

"--and your militant separatism is now beginning to make things difficult for all of us, not just those fools who follow you! Do you have any idea of the chaos you've thrown the cantons into?!"

I slit my eyes. "The cantons were the epitome of chaos long before I reemerged, Scott. Their mismanagement of taxpayer funds and poor leadership doomed them from the very beginning. Federal and State intransigence in helping them achieve a semblance of stability didn't make things any easier. No, Summers, I daresay that the canton leadership very much needs a wakeup call. Now they can either heed that call or one day face the business end of a gun but either way they'll be getting the message!"

We stood there, impassive, unmoving. Two men who'd faced each other on the fields of battle and with words of war for the better part of nearly forty years. He and I were frozen in our positions, unlikely to even listen to alternatives. I watched the tension stretch between us, taut and brittle. In another time and place, we might've thrown down the gauntlet here and begin our almost ritualised combat...but that was long ago. I doubted Scott had even fired his optic blast in years, certainly not since he was elevated to the Senate. It would've been too...unseemly of him. I could think of only one term that discribed how I felt about the man I saw now. All the efforts to ameliorate the differences between mutants and humans and all the failures they entailed now shook me like an earthquake. I realised just how much wasted effort it was. And when I saw that spark of naivette on Scott's face, in spite of all that had happened over the years that would seem to demand he submit to the reality of the situation, that word sprung to my lips. "You're nothing but an assimilationist," I is spat, oozing contempt. "You bend over backwards to placate everyone else but your own kind. Anyone who disagrees with you and your ilk you villify and pile kilogram after kilogram of vitriole upon." I sneered, baring my teeth. "I don't know why you came here, Summers. If you intended all along to not support me--if your intent was always to disrupt--then you're wasting our time. I'd already anticipated your intransigence and planned for it."

That shook him. I could tell. The stony gaze of his softened and his thin lips separated a bit. "No...that's not why I came," he said, lowering his head. "Actually, I wanted to hear you, hoping that you could convince me that there was some other alternative to what I was already attempting." He shook his head. "I didn't come here with a closed mind...but I'm probably leaving here with one."

An opening. Immediately I rushed in. "Wait," I said, holding up my hand and holding my tongue--against my initial instincts. "Scott...I doubt we will ever be on anything but the most...stony of terms. Our relations have never been warm, even though Charles strove his damnedest to bring us together. But consider this if you will: I am not blind to your efforts; I merely think they are doomed to failure. There is a difference between that and being contemptuous of them. Indeed, if the latter were the case, why spend over a decade with Charles, following his lead as long as I did? I wanted him to prove me wrong!" I clenched my fists.

"If you and I are to be forever at odds...let us at least be so within the framework of the same organisation. Do not leave the Congress denouncing it. There are those, I'm certain, who would agree with your assessment. Many of them, in fact, are probably Americans. Meet me half-way, Scott. Join us. Run a list in the elections we're going to hold in two months time. Use your platform to advance those ideas Charles--and through him, you--held and hold dear. Do not split our community."

"And legitimise your approach?" Summers responded. "By partaking in the elections, I'm admitting that I at least agree in part with what you're suggesting. I'm not sure that I do."

"Do you not?" I said, raising a brow. "How different are these elections from those being held in the cantons you claim to believe so much in? If anything, they are a logical extension of them! We'll have representation from the entire planet and we'll do it using proportional representation, thus guaranteeing all voices will be heard. There will be no large minimum electoral threshold. Three percent of the vote will guarantee representation. Surely you can garner at least that much, Scott. You've survived in the US Senate this long, yes? Your skills are known outside the Beltway. I challenge you to make your ideological stand within a common framework, one that will inevitably help all of our people."

"If you leave here implacably opposed to us...you will be marginalised," I said, quietly. "You saw the crowds. You'll be represented; of that I can guarantee you. But outside of the World Mutant Congress, you'll be viewed as something of a collaborationist amongst our own kind, who clearly believe this forum has its uses. Ultimately, it comes down to this: will you help us build the future or leave that entirely up to those of my ideology? It's your choice...but I beg you not to make the wrong one. If not for your, than for Charles. His voice deserves to be heard, no matter how much I disagree with it."

The play across his face was difficult for me to read but I knew that I had successfully lured him into the process. If he took more than a moment to consider my offer he would realise that his chances outside the WMC were slim to none. Inside...who knows?

He nodded. "Okay...I'll participate. Fax me the rules and I'll set up my own party list. I'll play this game out until I think it's no longer viable...for the sake of the whole community."

"'For the sake of the whole community'," I echoed, offerring my hand. He took it, immediately, giving me a strong shake. "As always, Scott, you temper your idealism with a strong streak of pragmatism. I salute that and wish you the honest best. Now," I let go, "on to more personal items. There are things more important in life than politics, eh?" I placed an arm on his shoulder. "A drink?"

He nodded. "Cutty Sark, if you don't mind." A half-smile. "Seems all those years of watching you guzzle Scotch had its effects. You know before I met you I couldn't stand the stuff."

I wrinkled my nose in mock consternation. "Humph. Well...how is your family?" I asked, pouring a shot glass for Scott. "It's not Cutty Sark--I wouldn't have that label in my room if you paid me--but at least it's Scotch."

He took a small sip and inhaled sharply. "Nathan's been accepted at Harvard, though I'm not certain he'll actually go."

"Oh?" I lifted a brow. "And why wouldn't he?"

A wry smile. "It's what the Old Man wants, that's why. He made Rhodes scholar and he's thinking more about that than Harvard." He shrugged. "I guess I can understand that. It looks a bit more prestigious these days to have Oxford on your resume than Havard but...I was hoping to at least be able to see him during his breaks. Somehow I get the feeling that's not going to be the case if he goes overseas. We, uh," he lowered his head, "we've had our differences of opinion."

Yes...and they probably go much deeper than you're consciously willing to admit. "And Madelyne? Have you kept in contact with her since...?"

"The divorce?" he completed, then shook his head. "Not as much as I should." His lips thinned; so tightly were they pressed they turned positively white. "She stopped calling about two years ago and, frankly, I haven't bothered to pick up on it. We don't even write to each other any more. It's not a pleasant situation."

My mind rewound back to Alytes and the months following our breakup. "No," I agreed. "It never is. No matter how hard you try to place it behind you, it's always there in one way, shape or form. In your case, it's a decade of memories and a son. That cannot've been easy for either of you...or for young Nathan."

He jerked a head up. "No...I suppose not. And you?" he said, turning the tables on me. "You've been obviously busy lately. Who talked you into this because I've got a hunch you didn't come up with it on your own."

Augustus, who was quietly observing the tete-a-tete, lifted a hand. "I must admit, Senator, that was partly my fault." Scott turned to him. "I was the one who put the fire underneath him, jumpstarted him, as 'twere." An impish grin. "So, blame me if you wish."

Scott chuckled, then lifted his glass to his lips. "Okay," he said, peering over the edge at me. "Maybe I will...or maybe I won't."

I nodded to myself. The game's a-foot. This little truce notwithstanding, tomorrow's an entirely new day...and a new era. My gaze was once more drawn to the city lights and the winding Rhein. Like the water as it drifted across the banks, we would change things. Nothing would be the same once we leave this room.

So much the better.

(Basle, Switzerland)--The first
World Mutant Congress closed today
with an unprecendented amount of
unity. In a prepared statement,
co-signed by Magnus, the former
militant mutant activist known
as 'Magneto', and his estranged
former teammate Sen. Scott Summers,
the Congress promised to reconvene
in two months to elect representa-
tives for a 'more democratically-
aligned movement executive'.

Analysts from across the spectrum
agree that this 'executive', however,
clearly refers to the ebryonic
parliament-in-exile concept outlined
in the 'Mutant Manifesto'.

When asked to comment on the Congress,
State Department spokesman Martin
Little merely repeated the Admini-
stration's position that 'the United
States is doing her utmost to alleviate
the fears of the mutant community and
that (we) caution those who would
inflame passions to a point where
beyond which lies terra incognita.'

In private, it is said that Secretary
of State Allen Friedkin is lobbying
the White House to restrict contact
between the so-called 'autonomous
mutant/metahuman cantons' and the
World Mutant Congress, partly in the
hopes of containing the situation be-
fore things 'get out of hand.'

Meanwhile, on Capitol Hill, Nationalist
and Reform Party members of Congress
are huddling in an effort to draft an
unprecedented joint communique condemn-
ing the WMC as a 'thinly-veiled separitist
organisation bent on stripping US sover-
eignty in the area of mutant relations.'
Rumours continue to surface that even
the Republican majority might seek to
tacitly endorse a variation of such a
statement.

Reached for comment on such a possibility,
House Speaker John Kaisich (R-Ohio)
dismisses it as 'sheer fantasy'. Like-
wise, Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott
(R-Mississippi) calls such a contingency
part of the 'Loony Left's effort to tie
the Republican Party with the fringe
elements of society.'

In spite of their denounciations and
denials, sources close to both leaders
will admit the preliminary negotiations
have begun on a watered-down statement
which would express 'concern' over the
direction of the World Mutant Congress'
apparent 'militant' ideology.
(Reuters)