20 March, Y.C. 970
Ponyville
“Welcome to Ponyville, Miss…?”
“Margaret,” said the tan pony, brushing off any inquiry into her surname with a friendly smile. “Just Margaret.”
“Miss Margaret, then” echoed the greyish pony with a smile that didn’t quite reach his lips. “Might be a bit early, but you could probably go with Mayor Margaret at this point.”
“It’s definitely too early for that,” she said, looking around the little hall. It wasn’t much of a town hall, but between the secrepony’s desk, a small office for her, a big room full of records, and the cavernous meeting hall across the street, it technically had everything they needed.
Everything save for an actual mayor.
“How’s Mayor Maher’s condition?”
“He’s…” started the pony, then shook his head. “Doctors give him a chance of pulling through, but whenever I press them on details, they close up quick. His injuries weren’t bad, and there’s no reason why he shouldn’t recover… physically.”
She nodded. At the tail end of her little visit to Ponyville earlier in the month, she had paid the hospital another visit and had a few words with the chief of staff. Three months of recuperation from the shell blast had done him good, and he had physically recovered about as much as it was possible for a pony to recover after losing a limb. Patching up the old stallion was one thing, though; making him whole was another.
“So you’re the one who’s been running things around here,” said Margaret, wandering off towards the actual mayor’s office. A peek inside the door revealed a desk, a set of file cabinets, a lamp… certainly it didn’t seem lived in. “Is it always this…?”
“Mayor Maher never liked — likes — to spend time in here,” offered the secrepony with a shrug. “Office time was work time; the less of it he spent in there the better.”
“Fair enough.”
“As for me, I use my own desk,” he continued, waving a hoof at his own overburdened bit of furniture. “And yes, I’ve been taking care of business around here, at least as much as I can.”
She nodded. They may have lost a mayor, but fortunately for Ponyville, there wasn’t too much for a mayor to actually do. Sure, a pony in charge was useful as a figurehead, but with the majority of the Royal Army parked a few miles outside town, things tended to run themselves pretty neatly.
“Can you get me up to speed in five minutes or less?”
“I’ll do it in two,” he laughed. “Ponyville. Small town, most of the population rural. Solid agricultural base, some light commercial in town. Perfectly normal until the Army moved in next door, and then problems kind of stopped happening.”
“I bet,” she said with a nod. Life’s little problems suddenly mattered a whole lot less when you put them next to the sound of artillery off in the distance, not too close to be actively concerning, but not too far away to wholly ignore either.
“Anyway, things are going well enough.” He waved to a stack of files on one of the cabinets off to the side. “Most of this mess is me reorganizing things, now that I have time to do it. There’s a bit of new stuff that comes in every day — mostly births, divorces, that stuff — but it’s not too long.”
“Right,” she said. That wasn’t exactly the type of report she had in mind, but the informality made sense in this environment, something she had anticipated thanks to Jackie’s advice. Everything was wood, for the love of Celestia. Even the floors! Not a cut stone block in sight. Hopefully this place had decent heating.
“Wait a moment,” she said with a frown. “You’ve got all the records. Divorces, births… deaths?”
“Right,” he said. After a moment, his face lit up with recognition. “Right. Uh, they take care of all of that. Apparently the army has its own internal filings to do anyway. So I had a few words with one of their secreponies, gave them a stack of blank death certificates, and they fill out the civil certificates at the same time as their own stuff. If I had to do it, I’d just need to hike over there anyway to get causes of death and all. Anyway, they ship ‘em over here in boxes every week; I sort ‘em out by city, re-box them, and send ‘em off.”
“That’s why they all come from here,” she realized. “I just figured you were all pulling overtime.”
“Nope,” he said with a sad smile. “Just me. Actually, that reminds me; need to get them a new set of blanks sometime soon. At this rate.”
“At this rate,” she echoed.
The secrepony rubbed his neck uncomfortably for a few moments.
“So — you’re the one who gets everything I send off to Canterlot.”
“Yes,” she said with a nod, glad to steer away from that particular topic. “That’s me. It’s a bunch of us, actually, but we split it all up, so we can stick with towns and get to know the kinds of problems they have.”
“Kinds of problems we have,” he repeated with a laugh. “We’re all a bit different, you know.”
“Of course,” she backpedalled. “I just mean that you’re, uh, not going to get the types of harbor problems that Baltimare might. Ponyville’s a lot more like Hoofington than —”
Margaret stopped short at the look the secrepony was giving her. A moment later she smacked herself in the face.
“That’s, uh, not the kind of analogy you’ll want to use around here,” he said gently.
“Dammit. Sorry.”
“No worries; you’re new around here.” He looked at her curiously. “Why are you here, anyway?”
“You asked for me,” she said.
“I asked for someone to take over, sure thing. I’m not a mayor, never was any good at making the plans. But if you’re on the Canterlot staff.” He paused. “So… why are you out here?”
“Well, they needed to send somepony,” she offered. “I’ve been out to Ponyville a few times before, visiting some friends, and it seemed like a nice enough place. That’s the impression I always got from Mayor Maher’s reports.” She brushed the file cabinets with a hoof; they echoed with a friendly muffled tone. “None of the normal temp town managers were available, so I figured I’d come out and see for myself.”
The secrepony nodded, but there was something in his eye she couldn’t quite place.
Canterlot might be a lot of things, but friendly and inviting it was not. One didn’t rise very far in the central bureaucracy without learning to lie through one’s teeth, and do it well. Not out of malice, but rather out of convenience. Most of the time.
Plus, there was no way he could know she was lying. Why would he? He had submitted a request for a temporary manager for the run of the mayor’s incapacity, and had been promptly informed that one was incoming. Not only did he not have any reason to investigate, but there was no possible way he could learn information about temp availability. Heck, it had even taken her a few days to figure out how to maneuver the placement into her lap, and she knew had done the original administrative scouting!
No, his distrust wasn’t based on knowledge that she wasn’t being level with him. Nor did it seem to come from a dislike of city ponies; he had been friendly enough, and didn’t seem like the type to hold a grudge based on one’s origin. That left only one possible basis for his curious expression: he could read people.
If she was going to take over here, she would need bring in somepony else on whom she could rely. Maybe Jackie, if she was minded to get back behind a desk. If not, she would just have to fire him.
Of course, it was still a bit too early for that. She hadn’t even been here an hour, much less proved she was capable of handling the job. It couldn’t be too hard, though; this country pony had managed for three months alone, and she had him to show her the ropes. Speaking of which.
“Anyway,” she said, brushing aside the previous conversation with a fresh gesture at his desk, “what’s on the docket?”
“Tomorrow’s the twentieth,” he said, smoothly shifting gears and gesturing at a calendar on the wall. “Winter wrap-up.”
“Right.” She paused. “And?”
“And, we’re out of unicorns,” he said with a helpless shrug. “Almost all of them have enlisted, and those who haven’t aren’t strong enough to do much of anything.”
“All right. Pegasi?”
“Again, just old ones or juveniles, maybe a few dozen of each. Most of them can’t fly any more, or not for long.”
“I don’t suppose we can ask the Army for help.”
“I’ve tried,” he said with a roll of his eyes, “but they categorically refuse to give us any unicorns. They need every single one, they say.”
Margaret moved over to what looked like a map on the desk, and traced out the Ponyville contours, mumbling to herself. After a few moments, she glanced back up at him.
“We do it by hoof.”
He blinked.
“By hoof,” she repeated. “Our unicorns can’t melt snow, but they can shuffle some clouds around. We’ll have pegasi spotters for them. I’ll see if I can wrangle a wing or two from the Air Patrol; they aren’t doing much at the moment.”
Not yet, at least… hopefully, they wouldn’t. If the rumors were right, that was a plan that didn’t bear contemplation. If….
“Normal Earth ponies can take care of the ground,” she said, pushing thoughts of rumors out of her head. “We’ll have to jury rig the ploughs, but it can be done. Find somepony to figure out the lake ice, too; maybe we can chop it up.”
“Can we even do that in one day?” wondered the secrepony. “It could probably work, but….”
“At least it will work,” she said firmly. “It’ll probably take two or three days to do it all, but a lot of little towns are in the same boat, and nopony back at Canterlot will fault us for it.”
“Right,” he nodded, taking a few notes on a pad. “I’ll get the woodcutters together and figure out how many axes we can get. I won’t even try with the Air Patrol; they’ll probably turn me away at first sight.”
“I’ll take care of that,” she said. “What about the pegasi?”
“There’s a list of resident names and pony type in a chart on the desk. With those, you can figure out team assignments.”
“Thanks. Does that have wingpower ratings?”
“And hornpower, for the few unicorns we have left.”
“Perfect,” she said with a nod. “I’ll get some basic numbers, figure out how much more we could use from Air Patrol, then pay the forward base a visit.”
“Good luck,” said the secrepony, and then paused for a moment, shaking his head. “By hoof. This is crazy, I hope you realize. Ponyville has wrapped up with magic, always has. Just like everyplace else. It’s traditional!”
“Traditions have to end somewhere,” said Margaret, sitting behind the desk. Her desk — at least for the moment. “Besides, if we pull this off, after a year or two of doing it the hard way? You just watch; doing it by hoof will be traditional.”
“As long as we get it done,” said the secrepony.
“As long as it gets done,” she agreed. “All right. Let’s get to work.”