The Postman

NATIONAL RECOVERY ACT

PROVISIONALLY EXTENDED CONGRESS OF THE RESTORED UNITED STATES

DECLARATION

to all citizens: Let it be known by all now living within the legal boundaries of the United States of America that the people and fundamental institutions of the nation survive. Your enemies have failed in their aggression against humanity, and have been destroyed. A provisional government, acting in continuous succession from the last freely elected Congress and Executive of the United States, is vigorously moving to restore law, public safety, and liberty once more to this beloved land, under the Constitution and the righteous mercy of the Almighty.

to these ends: Let it be known that all lesser laws and statutes of the United States are suspended, including all debts, liens, and judgments made before the outbreak of the Third World War. Until new codes are adopted by due process, local districts are free to meet emergency conditions as suitable, providing -

1. The freedoms guaranteed under the Bill of Rights shall not be withheld from any man or woman within the territory of the United States. Trials for all serious crimes shall be by an impartial jury of one’s peers. Except in cases of dire martial emergency, summary judgments and executions violating due process are absolutely forbidden.

2. Slavery is forbidden. Debt bondage shall not be for life, nor may it be passed from parent to child.

3. Districts, towns, and other entities shall hold proper secret ballot elections on every even-numbered year, in which all men and women over 18 years of age may participate. No person may use official coercion on any other person unless he or she has been so elected, or is directly answerable to a person so elected.

4. In order to assist the national recovery, citizens shall safeguard the physical and intellectual resources of the United States. Wherever and whenever possible, books and prewar machinery shall be salvaged and stored for the benefit of future generations. Local districts shall maintain schools to teach the young.

The Provisional Government hopes to reestablish nationwide radio service by the year 2021. Until that time, all communications must be carried via surface mail. Postal service should be reestablished in the Central and Eastern States by the year 2011, and in the West by 2018.

5. Cooperation with United States Mail Carriers is a requirement of all citizens. Interference with a letter carrier’s function is a capital crime.

By order of the Provisional Congress

Restored United States of America

May 2009

1. CURTIN

The black bull terrier snarled and foamed. It yanked and strained at its chain, whipping froth at the excited, shouting men leaning over the low wooden walls of the arena. A scarred, one-eyed mongrel growled back at the pit bull from across the ring. Its rope tether hummed like a bowstring, threatening to tear out the ring bolt in the wall.

The dog pit stank. The sick-sweet smoke of locally grown tobacco — liberally cut with marijuana — rose in thick, roiling plumes. Farmers and townspeople yelled deafeningly from rows of benches overlooking the crude arena. Those nearest the ring pounded on the wooden slats, encouraging the dogs’ hysterical frenzy.

Leather-gloved handlers pulled their canine gladiators back far enough to grip their collars, then turned to face the VIP bench, overlooking the center of the pit.

A burly, bearded dignitary, better dressed than most, puffed on his homemade cigar. He glanced quickly at the slender man who sat impassively to his right, whose eyes were shaded by a visored cap. The stranger sat quite still, in no way showing his feelings.

The heavyset official turned back to the handlers, and nodded.

A hundred men shouted at once as the dogs were loosed. The snarling animals shot at one another like quarrels, their argument uncomplicated. Fur and blood flew as the crowd cheered.

On the dignitaries’ bench, the elders yelled no less fiercely than the villagers. Like them, most had bets riding on the outcome. But the big man with the cigar — the Chairman of Public Safety for the town of Curtin, Oregon — puffed furiously without enjoyment, his thoughts cloudy and thick. Once more he glanced at the stranger sitting to his right.

The thin fellow was unlike anyone else in the arena. His beard was neatly trimmed, his black hair cut and combed to barely pass over the ears. The hooded blue eyes seemed to pierce and inspect critically, like in the images of Old Testament prophets the Chairman had seen in Sunday School as a boy, long before the Doomwar.

He had the weathered look of a traveler. And he wore a uniform , . . one no living citizen of Curtin had ever expected to see again.

On the peak of the stranger’s cap, the burnished image of a horseman gleamed in the light of the oil lanterns. Somehow it seemed shinier than any metal had a right to be.

The Chairman looked at his shouting townspeople, and sensed a difference about them tonight. The men of Curtin were yelling with more than their usual gusto at the Wednesday Night Fights. They, too, were aware of the visitor, who had ridden up to the city gates five days ago, erect and proud like some god, demanding food and shelter and a place to post his notices …

… and who then began distributing mail.

The Chairman had money riding on one of the dogs — old Jim Schmidt’s Walleye. But his mind wasn’t on the bloody contest on the sand below. He could not help glancing repeatedly at the Postman.

They had staged a special fight just for him, since he was leaving Curtin tomorrow for Cottage Grove. He isn’t enjoying himself, the Chairman realized unhappily. The man who had turned their lives upside down was apparently trying to be polite. But just as obviously, he did not approve of dogfights.

The Chairman leaned over to speak to his guest. “I suppose they don’t do this sort of thing back East, do they, Mr. Inspector?”

The cool look on the man’s face was his answer. The Chairman cursed himself for a fool. Of course they wouldn’t have dogfights — not in St. Paul City, or Topeka, or Odessa, or any of the civilized regions of the Restored United States. But here, here in ruined Oregon, so long cut off from civilization …

“Local communities are free to handle their affairs as they see fit, Mr. Chairman,” the man replied. His compelling voice carried softly over the shouting in the arena. “Customs adapt to the times. The government in St. Paul City knows this. I’ve seen far worse in my travels.”

Absolved, he could read in the postal inspector’s eyes. The Chairman slumped slightly and looked away again.

He blinked, and at first he thought it was the smoke irritating his eyes. He dropped the cigar and ground it out under his foot, but the stinging would not depart. The bull pit was out of focus, as if he were seeing it in a dream… as if for the very first time.

My God, the Chairman thought. Are we really doing this? Only seventeen years ago I was a member of the Willamette Valley ASPCA!

What’s happened to us?

What’s happened to me?

Coughing behind his hand, he hid the wiping of his eyes. Then he looked around and saw that he was not alone. Here and there in the crowd at least a dozen men had stopped shouting, and were instead looking down at their hands. A few were crying openly, tears streaming down tough faces, hardened from the long battle to survive.

Suddenly, for a few of those present, the years since the war seemed compressed — insufficient excuse.

The cheering was ragged at the end of the fight. Handlers leapt into the pit to tend the victor and clear away the offal. But half the audience seemed to be glancing nervously at their leader and the stern, uniformed figure next to him.

The slender man straightened his cap. “Thank you, Mr. Chairman. But I think I’d better retire now. I have a long journey tomorrow. Good night, all.”

He nodded to the elders, then rose and slipped on a worn leather jacket with a multicolored shoulder patch — a red, white, and blue emblem. As he moved slowly toward the exit, townsmen stood up silently and made way for him, their eyes downcast.

The Chairman of Curtin hesitated, then got up and followed, a murmur of voices growing behind him.

The second event was never held that evening.

2. COTTAGE GROVE

Gordon Krantz lifted his pencil from the sheaf of yellowed paper the citizens of Cottage Grove had donated for his use. A brace of copper oil lamps and two candles flickered over the antique desk, casting bright reflections off glass-framed pictures on the bedroom wall.

The locals had insisted Gordon take the best quarters in town. The room was snug, clean, and warm.

It was a big change from the way things had been for Gordon only a few months before. In the letter, for instance, he said little about the difficulties he had faced last October in the town of Oakridge.

The citizens of that mountain town had opened their hearts to him from the first moment he revealed himself as a representative of the Restored United States. But the tyrannical “Mayor” almost had his unwelcome guest murdered before Gordon managed to make it clear he was only interested in setting up a post office and moving on — that he was no threat to the Mayor’s power.

Perhaps the bossman feared his people’s reaction if he didn’t help Gordon. In the end, Gordon received the supplies he asked for, and even a valuable, if somewhat elderly, horse. On leaving Oakridge, Gordon had seen relief on the Mayor’s face. The local chief seemed confident he could keep control in spite of the stunning news that a United States still existed out there, somewhere.

And yet townspeople followed Gordon for over a mile, appearing from behind trees to shyly press letters into his hands, eagerly talking about the reclamation of Oregon and asking what they could do to help. They complained openly of the petty local tyranny, and by the time he had left that last crowd on the road, it was clear that a change was blow-ing in the wind.

Gordon figured the Mayor’s days were numbered.

Since my last letter from Culp Creek, I’ve established post offices in Palmerville and Curtin. Today I completed negotiations with the mayor of Cottage Grove. Included in this packet is a report on my progress so far, to be passed on to my superiors in the Reclaimed State of Wyoming. When the courier following my trail arrives in Pine View, please give him my records and my best wishes.

And be patient if it takes a while. The trail west from St. Paul City is dangerous, and it may be more than a year before the next man arrives.

Gordon could well imagine Mrs. Thompson’s reaction, on reading that paragraph. The scrappy old matriarch would shake her head, and maybe even laugh out loud at the sheer blarney that filled every sentence.

Better than anybody else in the wild territory that had once been the great state of Oregon, Adele Thompson knew there would be no couriers from the civilized East. There was no headquarters for Gordon to report back to. The only thing the city of St. Paul was capital of was a still slightly radioactive bend in the Mississippi River.

There had never been a Reclaimed State of Wyoming, or a Restored United States for that matter, except in the imagination of an itinerant, dark-age con artist doing his best to survive in a deadly and suspicious world.

Mrs. Thompson was one of the rare folks Gordon had met since the War who still saw with her eyes, and thought with a logical mind. The illusion Gordon had created — at first by accident, and later in desperation — had meant nothing to her. She had liked Gordon for himself, and shown him charity without having to be coaxed by a myth.

He was writing the letter in this convoluted way — filled with references to things that never were — for eyes other than hers. The mail would change hands many times along the route he had set up, before finally reaching Pine View. But Mrs. Thompson would read between the lines.

And she wouldn’t tell on him. Gordon was sure of that.

He only hoped she could contain her laughter.

This part of the Coast Fork is pretty peaceful these days. The communities have even started trading with each other in a modest fashion, overcoming the old fear of war plagues and survivalists. They’re eager for news of the outside world.

That’s not to say all is placid. They tell me the Rogue River country south of Roseburg is still totally lawless — Nathan Holn country. So I’m headed northward, toward Eugene. It’s the direction most of the letters I’m carrying are addressed, anyway.

Deep in his saddlebag, under the bundled letters he had accepted from excited, grateful people all along his way, was the one Abby had given him. Gordon would try to see it delivered, whatever eventually happened to all the others.

Now I must go. Perhaps someday soon a letter from you and my other dear friends will catch up with me. Until then, please give my love to Abby and Michael and all.

At least as much as anywhere, the Restored United States of America is alive and well in beautiful Pine View.

Yours sincerely, Gordon K.

That last remark might be a little dangerous, but Gordon had to include it, if only to show Mrs. Thompson he wasn’t completely caught up by his own hoax — the scam that he hoped would get him safely across the almost lawless countryside to …

To what? After all these years Gordon still wasn’t sure what it was he was looking for.

Perhaps only someone, somewhere, who was taking responsibility — who was trying to do something about the dark age. He shook his head. After all these years, the dream would not quite die.

He folded the letter into an old envelope, dribbled wax from a candle, and pressed it with a seal salvaged from the Oakridge Post Office. The letter went atop the “progress report” he had labored over earlier, a tissue of fantasy addressed to officials of a make-believe government.

Next to the packet lay his postman’s cap. The lamplight flickered in the brass image of a Pony Express rider, Gordon’s silent companion and mentor for months now.

Gordon had stumbled onto his new survival plan by quirk and coincidence. But now, in town after town, people fell over themselves to believe, especially when he actually delivered letters from places he had already visited. After all these years, it seemed people still longed forlornly for a lost, shiny age — an era of cleanliness and order and a great nation now lost. The longing overwhelmed their hard-won skepticism like a spring thaw cracking the icy crust over a stream.

Gordon quashed a threatening sense of shame. No one alive was guiltless after the last seventeen years, and his scam actually seemed to do a little good in the towns he passed through. In exchange for supplies and a place to rest, he sold hope.

One did what one had to do.

There were two sharp raps on the door. Gordon called, “Come!”

Johnny Stevens, the newly appointed Assistant Postmaster of Cottage Grove, poked his head in. Johnny’s boyish face bore a barely sprouted fuzz of almost blond beard. But his lanky legs promised a great cross-country stride, and he was reputed to be a dead shot.

Who could tell? The lad might even deliver the mail.

“Uh, sir?” Johnny was obviously reluctant to interrupt important business. “It’s eight o’clock. You’ll remember that the Mayor wanted to have a beer with you in the pub, since it’s your last night here in town.”

Gordon stood up. “Right, Johnny. Thanks.” He grabbed his cap and jacket, then scooped up the phony report and the letter to Mrs. Thompson.

“Here you are then. These are official packets for your first run over to Culp Creek. Ruth Marshall is postmistress there. She’ll be expecting somebody. Her folk will treat you well.”

Johnny took the envelopes as if they were made of butterfly’s wings. “I’ll protect them with my life, sir.” The youth’s eyes shone with pride, and a fierce determination not to let Gordon down.

“You’ll do no such thing!” Gordon snapped. The last thing he wanted was for a sixteen-year-old to get hurt protecting a chimera, “You’ll use common sense, like I told you.”

Johnny swallowed and nodded, but Gordon wasn’t at all sure he understood. Of course the boy would probably just have an exciting adventure, following the forest paths farther than anyone from his village had traveled in over a decade, coming back a hero with tales to tell. There were still a few loner survivalists in those hills. But this far north of the Rogue River country the odds were Johnny’d make it to Culp Creek and back just fine.

Gordon almost had himself convinced.

He exhaled and gripped the young man’s shoulder. “Your country doesn’t need you to die for her, Johnny, but to live and serve her another day. Can you remember that?”

“Yessir.” The lad nodded seriously. “I understand.”

Gordon turned to blow out the candles.

Johnny must have been rummaging in the ruins of Cottage Grove’s old post office, for out in the hall Gordon noticed the boy’s homespun shirt now bore a proud us. mail patch on the shoulder, the colors still bright after almost twenty years.

“I’ve already got ten letters from people here in Cottage Grove and nearby farms,” Johnny said. “I don’t think most of them even know anybody back east. But they’re writing anyway for the excitement of it, and in hopes somebody will write back.”

So at least Gordon’s visit had gotten people to practice their literacy skills a little. That was worth a few nights’ food and lodging. “You warned them that east of Pine View the route is slow yet, and not guaranteed at all?”

“Sure. They don’t care.”

Gordon smiled. “That’s okay then. The Postal Service has always carried mostly fantasies, anyway.”

The boy looked at him, puzzled. But Gordon set his cap on his head and said nothing more.

Since departing the shards of Minnesota, so long ago, Gordon had seen few villages as prosperous and apparently happy as Cottage Grove. The farms now brought in a surplus most years. The militia was well drilled and — unlike at Oakridge — unoppressive. As hope of finding true civilization faded, Gordon had slowly reduced the scope of his dreams until a place like this seemed almost like Paradise.

It was ironic, then, that the very hoax that had taken him safely this far through the suspicious mountain hamlets now kept him from remaining here. For in order to maintain his illusion, he had to keep moving.

They all believed in him. If his illusion failed now, even the good people of this town would certainly turn on him.

The walled village covered one comer of prewar Cottage Grove. Its pub was a large, snug basement with two big fireplaces and a bar where the bitter local homebrew was served in tall clay steins.

Mayor Peter Von Kleek sat in a corner booth talking earnestly with Eric Stevens, Johnny’s grandfather and newly appointed Postmaster of Cottage Grove. The two men were poring over a copy of Gordon’s “Federal Regulations” as he and Johnny stepped into the pub.

Back in Oakridge, Gordon had run off a few score copies on a hand-cranked mimeograph machine he had managed to get working in the old, deserted post office. A lot of thought and care had gone into those circulars. They had to have the flavor of authenticity, and at the same time present no obvious threat to local strongmen — giving them no reason to fear Gordon’s mythical Restored United States … or Gordon himself.

So far those sheets had been his most inspired prop.

Tall, gaunt-faced Peter Von Kleek stood and shook Gordon’s hand, motioning him to a seat. The bartender hurried over with two tall steins of thick brown beer. It was warm, of course, but delicious — like pumpernickel bread. The Mayor waited, puffing nervously on his clay pipe, until Gordon put his stein down with a lip-smacking sigh.

Von Kleek nodded at the implied compliment. But his frown remained fixed. He tapped the paper in front of him. “These regulations here aren’t very detailed, Mr. Inspector.”

“Call me Gordon, please. These are informal times.”

“Ah, yes. Gordon. Please call me Peter.” The Mayor was clearly uncomfortable,

“Well, Peter,” Gordon nodded. “The Restored U.S. Government has learned some hard lessons. One has been not to impose rigid standards on far-flung localities who have problems St. Paul City can’t even imagine, let alone regulate.”

Gordon launched into one of his prepared pitches.

“There’s the question of money, for instance. Most communities dropped prewar currency soon after the food center riots. Barter systems are the rule, and they usually work just fine, except when debt service turns into a form of slavery.”

That much was all true. In his travels Gordon had seen versions of feudal serfdom rising all over. Money was a joke.

“The federal authorities in St. Paul have declared the old currency moot. There are just too many bills and coins out there for sparse rural economies.

“Still, we’re trying to encourage national commerce. One way is by accepting old-time two-dollar bills to pay postage for letters carried by U.S. Mail. They never were very common, and are impossible to forge with present-day technology. Pre-1965 silver coins are also acceptable.”

“We’ve already taken in over forty dollars’ worth!” Johnny Stevens interjected. “Folks are hunting ail over for those old bills and coins. And they’ve started usin’ them to pay off barter debts too.”

Gordon shrugged. It had started already. Sometimes the little things he added to his tale, simply in order to lend verisimilitude, took off by themselves in ways he had never expected. He couldn’t see how a little money put back into circulation, given value by a local myth in the “Restored U.S.,” could hurt these people much.

Von Kleek nodded. He moved on to the next item.

“This part here about no ‘coercion’ without elections—” He tapped the paper. “Well, we do have sort of regular town meetings, and people from the surrounding hamlets take part when something big is up. But I can’t rightly say I or my militia chief were ever really voted for … not in a real secret ballot, like it says here.”

He shook his head. “And we’ve had to do some pretty drastic things, especially during the early days. I hope we’re not going to have that held too hard against us Mr. Inspe — Gordon. We really have been doin’ our best.

“We have a school, for instance. Most of the younger kids attend after harvest. And we can make a start salvaging machines and voting like it says here—” Von Kleek wanted reassurance; he was trying to catch Gordon’s eye. But Gordon lifted his beer mug in order not to meet his gaze.

One of the major ironies he had found in his travels had been this phenomenon — that those who had fallen the least far into savagery were those who seemed the most ashamed of having fallen at all.

He coughed, clearing his throat.

“It seems… it seems to me you’ve been doing a pretty good job here, Peter. The past doesn’t matter as much as the future, anyway. I don’t think you have to worry about the federal government interfering at all.”

Von Kleek looked relieved. Gordon was sure there would be a secret ballot election here within weeks. And the people of this area would deserve what they got if they elected anyone as their leader but this gruff, sensible man.

“One thing bothers me.”

It was Eric Stevens who spoke. The spry oldster had been Gordon’s obvious choice as postmaster. For one thing, he ran the local trading post, and was the best-educated man in town, with a prewar college degree.

Another reason was that Stevens had appeared the most suspicious when Gordon rode into town several days before, proclaiming a new era for Oregon under the “Restored U.S.” Appointing him postmaster seemed to persuade him to believe, if only for his own prestige and profit.

Only incidentally, he would also probably do a good job — as long as the myth lasted, at least.

Old Stevens turned his beer stein on the table, leaving a broad oval ring. “What I can’t figure out is why nobody’s been out here from St. Paul City before.

“Sure, I know you had to cross a helluva lot of wild country to get here, almost all of it on foot, you say. But what I want to know is why didn’t they just send somebody out in an airplane?”

There was a brief silence at the table. Gordon could tell that townsmen nearby were listening in, as well.

“Aw gramps!” Johnny Stevens shook his head in embarrassment for his grandfather. “Don’t you realize how bad the war was? All the airplanes and complicated machines were wrecked by that pulse thing that blasted all the radios and such right at the beginning of the war! Then, later on, there wouldn’t have been anybody around who knew how to fix ‘em. And there’d be no spare parts!”

Gordon blinked in brief surprise. The kid was good! He had been born after the fall of industrial civilization, yet he had a grasp of the essentials.

Of course everyone knew about the electromagnetic pulses, from giant H-bombs exploded high in space, that had devastated electronic devices all over the world on that deadly first day. But Johnny’s understanding went beyond that to the interdependence of a machine culture.

Still, if the kid was bright he must have gotten it from his grandfather. The older Stevens looked at Gordon archly. “That right, Inspector? No spares or mechanics left?”

Gordon knew that explanation wouldn’t hold under close scrutiny. He blessed those long, tedious hours on broken roads since leaving Oakridge, when he had worked out his story in detail.

“No, not quite. The pulse radiation, the blasts, and the fallout destroyed a lot. The bugs and riots and the Three-Year Winter killed many skilled people. But actually, it didn’t take long to get some machines going again. There were airplanes ready to fly within days. The Restored U.S. has scores of them, repaired and tested and waiting to fly.

“But they can’t take off. They’re all grounded, and will be for years to come.”

The old man looked puzzled. “Why’s that, Inspector?”

“For the same reason you wouldn’t pick up a broadcast even if you put together a working radio,” Gordon said. He paused for effect.

“Because of laser satellites.”

Peter Von Kleek slapped the table. “Son of a bitch!” All over the room heads turned their way.

Eric Stevens sighed, giving Gordon a look that had to be total acceptance … or admiration of a better liar than himself.

“What… what’s a lay … ?”

“Laser sat,” Johnny’s grandfather explained. “We won the war.” He snorted at the famous marginal victory that had been trumpeted in the weeks before the riots began. “But the enemy must have left some sleeper satellites in orbit. Program ‘em to wait a few months or years, then anything so much as lets out a peep over the radio, or tries to fly, and zap!” He sliced the air decisively. “No wonder I never picked up anything on my crystal set!”

Gordon nodded. The story fit so well, it could even be true. He actually hoped so. For it might explain the silence, and the lonely emptiness of the sky, without the world having to be totally vacant of civilization.

And how else to explain the slag heaps that remained of so many radio antennas he had passed in his travels?

“What’s the government doing about it?” Von Kleek asked earnestly.

Fairy tales, Gordon thought. His lies would grow more complex as he traveled until at last someone caught him up.

“There are some scientists left. We hope to find facilities in California for making and launching orbital rockets.” He left the implication hanging.

The others looked disappointed.

“If only there was a way to take out the damned satellites sooner,” the Mayor said. “Think of all those aircraft, just sitting there! Can you imagine how surprised the next Holnist raiding party out of the damned Rogue River would be, to find us farmers backed up by the U.S. Air Force and some bloody A-lOs!”

He gave a whooshing sound and made diving motions with his hands. Then the Mayor did a pretty good imitation of a machine gun. Gordon laughed with the others. Like boys they lived briefly in a fantasy of rescue, and power to the good guys.

Other men and women gathered around, now that the Mayor and the postal inspector had apparently finished their business. Someone pulled out a harmonica. A guitar was passed to Johnny Stevens, who proved to be quite gifted. Soon the crowd was singing bawdy folk songs and old commercial jingles.

The mood was high. Hope was thick as the warm, dark beer, and tasted at least as good.

It was later in the evening that he heard it for the first time. On his way out of the men’s room — grateful that Cottage Grove had somehow retained gravity-flow indoor plumbing — Gordon stopped suddenly near the back stairs.

There had been a sound.

The crowd by the fireplace was singing.… “Gather ‘round and listen to my tale — a tale of a fateful trip…”

Gordon cocked his head. Had he imagined the other murmur? It had been faint, and his head was ringing a bit on its own from the beer.

But a queer feeling at the back of his neck, an intuition, refused to let go. It made him turn around and begin climbing the stairs, a steep flight rising into the building above the basement pub.

The narrow passage was dimly lit by a candle at the halfway landing. The happy, drunken sounds cf the songfest faded away behind him as he ascended slowly, careful of the creaking steps.

At the top he emerged into a darkling hallway. Gordon listened fruitlessly for what felt like a long time. After some moments he turned around, writing it all off to an overworked imagination.

Then it came again.

… a series of faint, eerie sounds at the very edge of audibility. The half-memories they pulled forth sent a shiver up Gordon’s back. He had not heard their like since… since long, long ago.

At the end of the dusty hallway faint light outlined a cracked door jamb. He approached, quietly.

Bloop!

Gordon touched the cold metal knob. It was free of dust. Someone was already inside.

Wah-wah …

The absent weight of his revolver — left in his guest room in supposedly safe Cottage Grove — made him feel half-naked as he turned the knob and opened the door.

Dusty tarpaulins covered stacked crates filled with odds and ends, everything from salvaged tires to tools to furniture, a hoard put aside by the villagers against the uncertain future. Around one row of boxes came the source of that faint, flickering light. There were hushed voices just ahead, whispering in urgent excitement. And that sound -

Bloop. Bloop!

Gordon crept alongside the towers of musty crates — like unsteady cliffs of ancient sediment — growing more tense as he approached the end of the row. The glow spread. It was a cold light, without heat.

A floorboard creaked under his foot.

Five faces turned up suddenly, cast into deep relief by the strange light. In a breathless instant Gordon saw that they were children, staring up at him in terrified awe — the more so because they clearly recognized him. Their eyes were wide and they did not move.

But Gordon cared about none of that, only about a little boxlike object that lay on an oval rug in the center of the small coven. He could not believe what he was seeing.

Across its bottom was a row of tiny buttons, and in the center a flat, gray screen gave off a pearly sheen.

Pink spiders emerged from flying saucers and stepped imperiously down the screen, to a crunching, marching beat. Arriving at the bottom without opposition, they bleated in triumph, then their ranks reformed and the assault began all over again.

Gordon’s throat was dry.

“Where…” he breathed.

The children stood up. One of the boys swallowed. “Sir?”

Gordon pointed. “Where in the name of all that’s holy did you get that?” He shook his head. “More important… where did you get the batteries*”

One of the children began to cry. “Please, sir, we didn’t know it was wrong. Timmy Smith told us it’s just a game the oldtime children used to have! We find ‘em all over, only they don’t work no more…”

“Who,” Gordon insisted, “is Timmy Smith?”

“A boy. His pa has come down from Creswell with a wagon to trade the last couple years. Timmy swapped this one for twenty old ones we found that wouldn’t work no more.”

Gordon recalled the map he had been studying in his room earlier in the evening. Creswell was just a little north of here, not far off the route he had planned to take to Eugene.

Can it be? Hope was too hot and sudden to be a pleasure, or even recognized.

“Did Timmy Smith say where he got the toy?” He tried not to spook the children, but some of his urgency must have spilled over, frightening them.

A girl wailed. “He said he got it from Cyclops!”

Then, in a panicked flurry, the children were gone, disappeared down little alleys in the dusty storage room. Gordon was left suddenly alone, standing quite still, watching tiny invaders descend in the glow of the little gray screen.

“Crunch-crunch-crunch,” they marched.

The game blooped victoriously. Then began to play all over again.

3. EUGENE

The pony’s breath puffed visibly as it plodded on through the dank drizzle, led by a man in a rain-slick poncho. Its only burdens were a saddle and two thick bags, plastic-covered against the damp.

The gray Interstate glistened wetly. Deep puddles lay like small lakes in the concrete. Dirt had blown over the four-lane highway during the postwar drought years, and grass had later begun to grow as the old northwest rains returned. Much of the highway was now a ribbon of meadow, a flat notch in the forested hills overlooking a churning river.

Gordon raised his slicker tentlike to consult his map. Ahead, to his right, a large fen had formed where the south and east forks of the Willamette came together before cutting west between Eugene and Springfield. According to the old map there was a modern industrial park below. Now only a few old roofs stuck out above the mire. The neat lanes, parking lots, and lawns were a realm for water fowl, who seemed not at all discomfitted by the wet.

Back in Creswell they had told Gordon the Interstate would be impassable a little north of here. He would have to cut through Eugene itself, find an open bridge across the river, and then somehow get back onto the highway to Co-burg.

The Creswellers had been a little vague on details. Few travelers had made the trip since the war.

That’s all right. Eugene has been one of my goals for months. We’ll take a look at what’s become of her.

Briefly, though. Now the city was only a milestone along his path toward a deeper mystery, waiting farther to the north.

The elements had not yet defeated the Interstate. It might be grassy and puddled, but the only fallen bridges he had passed still bore obvious signs of violence. When man built well, it seemed, only time or man himself could bring his things down. And they did build well, Gordon thought. Maybe future generations of Americans, ambling through the forests eating each other, would think these works the creations of gods.

He shook his head. The rain, it’s got me in a fey mood.

Soon he came upon a large sign, half buried in a puddle. Gordon kicked away debris and knelt to examine the rusting plate — like a tracker reading a cold trail in a forest path.

“Thirtieth Avenue,” he read aloud.

A broad road cut into the hills to the west, away from the Interstate. According to the map, downtown Eugene was just over the forested rise that way.

He got up and patted his pack animal. ‘”Come on, Dobbin. Swish your tail and signal for a right turn. It’s off the freeway and down surface streets from here.” The horse puffed stoically as Gordon gave the reins a gentle tug and led it down the off-ramp, then under the overpass and on up the slope to the west.

From the top of the hill a gently falling mist seemed somehow to soften the ruined town’s disfigurement. Rains had long since washed away the fire stains. Slow beards of climbing greenery, sprouting from cracks in the pavement, covered many of the buildings, hiding their wounds.

Folk in Creswell had warned him what to expect. Still, it was never easy coming into a dead city. Gordon descended to the ghostly streets, strewn with broken glass. The rain-wet pavement sparkled with another era’s shattered panes.

In the lower parts of town, alders grew in the streets, in dirt laid down when a river of mud slammed into the city from the broken Fall Creek and Lookout Point dams. The collapse of those reservoirs had wiped out Route 58 west of Oakridge, forcing Gordon to make his long detour south and west through Curtin, Cottage Grove, and Creswell before finally swinging north again.

The devastation was pretty bad. And yet, Gordon thought, they held on, here. From all accounts, they almost made it.

Back in Creswell, between all the meetings and celebrations — the election of the new postmaster and excited plans to extend the new mail delivery network east and west — the citizens had regaled Gordon with stories of the valiant struggle of Eugene. They told how the city had struggled to hold out for four long years after war and epidemic had isolated it from the outer world. In a strange alliance of the university community and red-neck country farmers, somehow the city-state had overcome all threats… until at last the bandit gangs finished her off by blasting the upland reservoirs all at once, cutting off both power and unpolluted water.

The tale was already legendary, almost like the fall of Troy. And yet the storytellers hadn’t sounded forlorn in telling it. It was more as if they now looked upon the disaster as a temporary setback, to be overcome within their own lifetimes.

For Creswell had been in a tizzy of optimism even before Gordon’s arrival. His tale of a “Restored United States” was the town’s second dose of good news in less than three months.

Last winter another visitor had arrived — this one from the north, a grinning man in a white-and-black robe — who passed out startling gifts for the children and then departed, speaking the magical name Cyclops.

Cyclops, the stranger had said.

Cyclops would make things right again. Cyclops would bring comfort and progress back into the world, redeeming everybody from drudgery and lingering hopelessness, the legacy of the Doomwar.

All the people had to do was collect their old machinery, particularly electronics. Cyclops would take their donations of useless, ruined equipment, plus perhaps a little surplus food to maintain its volunteer servants. In return, Cyclops would give the Creswellans things that worked.

The toys were only tokens of what was to come. Someday there would be real miracles.

Gordon had been unable to get anything coherent from the people of Creswell. They were too deliriously happy to be completely logical. Half of them assumed his “Restored United States” was behind Cyclops, and half thought it was the other way around. It hardly occurred to anybody that the two wonders could be unconnected — two spreading legends encountering one another in the wilderness.

Gordon didn’t dare disabuse them, or ask too many questions. He had left as quickly as he could — loaded down with more letters than ever — determined to follow the tale to its source.

It was about noon as he turned north on University Street. The gentle rain was no bother. He could explore Eugene for a while and still make it by nightfall to Coburg, where a settlement of gleaners supposedly lived. Somewhere north of there lay the territory from which the followers of Cyclops were spreading word of their strange redemption.

As he walked quietly past the gutted buildings, Gordon wondered if he should even try to pull his “postman” hoax in the north. He remembered the little spiders and saucers, flashing in the darkness, and found it hard not to hope.

Perhaps he could give up the scam and find something real to believe in at last. Perhaps someone, at last, was leading a fight against the dark age.

It was too sweet a glimmer to let go of, but too delicate to hold tightly.

The shattered storefronts of the deserted town gave way at last to Eighteenth Avenue and the University of Oregon campus, the broad athletic field now overgrown with aspen and alder saplings, some more than twenty feet high. There, near the old gymnasium, Gordon slowed down, then stopped abruptly and held the pony still.

The animal snorted and pawed the ground as Gordon listened, and then was sure.

Somewhere, perhaps not too far away, somebody was screaming.

The faint crying crescendoed then fell away. It was a woman’s voice, soaked with pain and deadly fear. Gordon pushed back the cover of his holster and drew his revolver. Had it come from the north? The east?

He pushed into a semijungle between the university buildings, hurriedly seeking a place to go to ground. He had had an easy time of it since leaving Oakridge months ago, too easy. Obviously he had acquired bad habits. It was a miracle no one had heard him, traipsing down these deserted streets as if he owned them.

He led the pony through a gaping door in the side of a slate-sided gymnasium, and tethered the animal behind a fold-down stand of bleachers. Gordon dropped a pile of oats near the animal, but left the saddle in place and cinched.

Now what? Do we wait it out? Or do we check it out?

Gordon unwrapped his bow and quiver and set the string. In the rain they were probably more reliable, and certainly quieter than his carbine or revolver.

He stuffed one of the bulging mail sacks into a ventilation shaft, well out of sight. As he was searching for a place to hide the other, he suddenly realized what he was doing.

He grinned ironically at his momentary foolishness and left the second bag lying on the floor as he set off to find the trouble.

The sounds came from a brick building just ahead, one whose long bank of glass windows still gleamed. Apparently looters hadn’t even thought the place worth bothering with. Now Gordon could hear faint, muttered voices, the soft nickering of horses, and the creaking of tack. Seeing no watchers at the roofs or windows, he dashed across the overgrown lawn and up a broad flight of concrete steps, flattening against a doorway around the corner of the building. He breathed open-mouthed for silence.

The door bore an ancient, rusted padlock and an engraved plastic sign.

The voices came from just within… though too muffled to make out anything distinct. An outside stairway led up to several floors overhead. He stepped back and saw that a door lay ajar three flights up.

Gordon knew he was being a fool once again. Now that he had the trouble located, he really should go collect his pony and get the hell out of there, as quickly as possible.

The voices within grew angry. Through the crack in the door he heard a blow being struck. A woman’s cry of pain was followed by coarse male laughter.

Sighing softly at the flaw in his character that kept him there — instead of running away as anyone with any brains would do — Gordon started climbing the concrete stair, careful not to make a sound.

Rot and mold covered an area just within the half-open doorway. But beyond that the fourth floor of the student center looked untouched. Miraculously, none of the glass panes in the great skylight had been smashed, though the copper frame wore a patina of verdigris. Under the atrium’s pale glow a carpeted ramp spiraled downward, connecting each floor.

As Gordon cautiously approached the open center of the building, it felt momentarily as if he had stepped backward in time. Looters had left the student organization offices — with their passionate tornadoes of paper — completely untouched. Bulletin boards were still plastered with age-dimmed announcements of sporting events, variety shows, political rallies.

Only at the far end were there a few notices in bright red, having to do with the emergency — the final crisis that had struck almost without warning, bringing it all to an end. Otherwise, the clutter was homey, radical, enthusiastic …

Young …

Gordon hurried past and skirted down the spiraling ramp toward the voices below.

A second floor balcony extended out over the main lobby. He got down on his hands and knees and crawled the rest of the way.

On the north side of the building, to the right, part of the two-story glass facing had been shattered to make room for a pair of large wagons. Steam rose from six horses tethered over by the west wall, behind a row of dark pinball machines.

Outside, amid the broken glass shards, the sulking rain created spreading pink pools around four sprawled bodies, recently cut down by automatic weapons fire. Only one of the victims had even managed to draw a sidearm during the ambush. His pistol lay in a puddle, inches from a motionless hand.

The voices came from his left, where the balcony made a turn. Gordon crawled cautiously forward and looked out over the other part of the L-shaped room.

Several ceiling-high mirrors remained along the west wall, giving Gordon a wide view of the floor below. A blaze of smashed furniture crackled in a large fireplace between the reflecting panes.

He hugged the moldy carpet and lifted his head just enough to see four heavily-armed men arguing by the fire. A fifth lounged on a couch over to the left, his automatic rifle aimed idly at a pair of prisoners — a boy of about nine years and a young woman.

Red weals on her face matched the pattern of a man’s hand. Her brown hair was matted and she held the boy close, watching her captors warily. Neither prisoner seemed to have any energy left for tears.

The bearded men were all garbed in, one-piece prewar army surplus outfits in green, brown, and gray-speckled camouflage. Each wore one or more gold earrings in his left ear lobe.

Survivalists. Gordon felt a wave of revulsion.

Once upon a time, before the War, the word had had several meanings, ranging from common sense, community-conscious preparedness all the way to antisocial paranoid gun nuts. By one way of looking at things, perhaps Gordon himself could be called a “survivalist.” But it was the latter connotation that had stuck, after the ruin the worst sort had caused.

Everywhere he had gone in his travels, folk shared this reaction. More than the Enemy, whose bombs and germs had wrought such destruction during the One-Week War, the people in nearly every wrecked county and hamlet blamed these macho outlaws for the terrible troubles that led to the final Fall.

And worst of all had been the followers of Nathan Holn, may he rot in Hell.

But there weren’t supposed to be any survivalists anymore in the valley of the Willamette! In Cottage Grove, Gordon had been told that the last big bunch had been driven south of Roseburg years ago, into the wilderness of the Rogue River country!

What were these devils doing here, then? He moved a little closer and listened.

“I dunno, Strike Leader. I don’t think we oughta go any deeper on this recon. We’ve already had enough surprises with this ‘Cyclops’ thing the bird here let slip about, before she clammed up. I say we oughta head back to the boats at Site Bravo and report what we found.”

The speaker was a short, bald man with a wiry frame. He warmed his hands over the fire, his back to Gordon. A SAW assault gun equipped with a flash suppressor was slung muzzle-down over his back.

The big man he addressed as “Strike Leader” wore a scar from one ear to his chin, only partly hidden by a gray-flecked black beard. He grinned, displaying several gaps in his teeth.

“You don’t really believe that bull the broad was spewing, do you? All that crap about a big computer that talks? What a crock! She’s just feedin’ it to us to give us a stall!”

“Oh yeah? Well how do you explain all that?”

The little man gestured back to the wagons. In the mirror, Gordon could see a corner of the nearest. It was loaded down with odds and ends, no doubt collected here on the University campus. The haul seemed to consist mostly of electronic equipment.

Not farm tools, not clothes or jewelry — but electronics.

It was the first time Gordon had ever seen a gleaner’s wagon filled with salvage like this. The implication caused Gordon’s pulse to pound in his ears. In his excitement, he barely ducked down in time as the little man turned to pick up something from a nearby table.

“And what about this?” the small survivalist asked. In his hand was a toy — a small video game like the one Gordon had seen in Cottage Grove.

Lights flashed and the little box gave out a high, cheerful melody. The Strike Leader stared at it for a long moment. Finally he shrugged. “Don’t mean shit.”

One of the other raiders spoke. “I agree wit’ lil’ Jim…”

“That’s Blue Five,” the big man growled. “Maintain discipline!”

“Right,” the third man nodded, apparently unperturbed by the rebuke. “I agree with Blue Five, then. I think we oughta report this to Colonel Bezoar an’ the General. It could affect the invasion. What if the farmers do got high tech up north of here? We could wind up doin’ an end run right into some heavy-duty lasers or something… especially if they got some old Air Force or Navy stuff working again!”

“All the more reason to continue this recon,” the leader growled. “We’ve got to find out more about this Cyclops thing.”

“But you saw how hard we had to work to get the woman to tell us even what we learned! And we can’t leave her here while we go deeper on recon. If we turned back we could put her on one of the boats and…”

“Off the damn woman! We finish with her tonight. The boy, too. You been in the mountains too long, Blue Four. These valleys are crawling with pretty birds. We can’t risk this one making noise, and we sure can’t take her along on a recon!”

The argument didn’t surprise Gordon. All over the country — wherever they had managed to establish themselves — these postwar crazies had taken to raiding for women, as well as for food and slaves. After the first few years of slaughter, most Holnist enclaves had found themselves with incredibly high male-female ratios. Now, women were valuable chattel in the loose, macho, hyper-survivalist societies.

No wonder some of the raiders below wanted to carry this one back. Gordon could tell that she might be quite pretty, if she healed and if the pall of terror ever left her eyes.

The boy in her arms watched the men with fierce anger.

Gordon surmised that the Rogue River gangs must have become organized at last, perhaps under a charismatic leader. Apparently they were planning to invade by sea, skirting the Roseville and Camas Valley defenses — where the farmers had somehow beaten back their repeated efforts at conquest.

It was a bold plan, and it could very well mean the end of whatever flickering civilization remained here in the Willamette Valley.

Until now, Gordon had been telling himself he might somehow stay out of this trouble. But the last seventeen years had long ago made almost everybody alive take sides in this particular struggle. Rival villages with bitter feuds would drop their quarrels to join and wipe out bands like these. The very sight of Army surplus camouflage and gold earrings elicited a loathing response that was common nearly everywhere, like the way people felt about vultures. Gordon could not leave this place without at least trying to think of a way to harm the men below.

During a lull in the rain, two men went outside and began stripping the bodies, mutilating them and taking grisly trophies. When the drizzle returned, the raiders shifted their attention to the wagons, rummaging through them for anything valuable. From their curses it seemed the search was futile. Gordon heard the smashing of delicate and totally irreplaceable electronics parts under their boots.

Only the one guarding the captives was still in view, turned away from both Gordon and the wall of mirrors. He was cleaning his weapon, not paying particular attention.

Wishing he were less a fool, Gordon felt compelled to take a chance. He lifted his head above the level of the floor and raised his hand. The motion made the woman look up. Her eyes widened in surprise.

Gordon put a finger to his lips, praying she would understand that these men were his enemies, too. The woman blinked, and Gordon feared for a moment she was about to speak. She glanced quickly at her guard, who remained absorbed in his weapon.

When her eyes met Gordon’s again, she nodded slightly. He gave her a thumbs-up sign and quickly backed away from the balcony.

First chance, he drew his canteen and drank deeply, for his mouth was dry as ashes. Gordon found an office in which the dust wasn’t too thick — he certainly couldn’t afford to sneeze — and chewed on a strip of Creswell beef jerky as he settled down to wait.

His chance came a little while before dusk. Three of the raiders left on a patrol. The one called Little Jim remained behind to cook a raggedly butchered haunch of deer in the fireplace. A gaunt-faced Holnist with three gold earrings guarded the prisoners, staring at the young woman while whittling slowly on a piece of wood. Gordon wondered how long it would take for the guard’s lust to overcome his fear of the leader’s wrath. He was obviously working up his nerve.

Gordon had his bow ready. An arrow was nocked and two more lay on the carpet before him. His holster flap was free and the pistol’s hammer rested on a sixth round. There was little more he could do but wait.

The guard put down his whittling and stood up. The woman held the boy close and looked away as he walked closer.

“Blue One ain’t gonna like it,” the bandit by the fire warned lowly.

The guard stood over the woman. She tried not to flinch, but shivered when he touched her hair. The boy’s eyes glistened with anger.

“Blue One already said we’re gonna waste her later, after takin’ turns. Don’t see why my turn shouldn’t come first. Maybe I can even get her to talk about that ‘Cyclops* thing.

“How ‘bout it, babe?” He leered down on her. “If a beatin’ won’t make you loosen your mouf, I know just what’ll tame you down.”

“What about the kid?” Little Jim asked.

The guard shrugged casually. “What about ‘im?” Suddenly a hunting knife was in his right hand. With his left he seized the boy’s hair and yanked him out of the woman’s grasp. She screamed.

In that telescoped instant, Gordon acted completely on reflex — there was no time at all to think. Even so, he did not do the obvious, but what was necessary. Instead of shooting at the man with the knife, he swung his bow up, and put an arrow into Little Jim’s chest.

The small survivalist hopped back and stared down at the shaft in blank surprise. With a faint gurgle he slumped to the ground.

Gordon quickly nocked another arrow and turned in time to see the other survivalist yank his knife out of the girl’s shoulder. She must have hurled herself in between him and the child, blocking the blow with her body. The boy lay stunned in the corner.

Gravely wounded, she still tore at her enemy with her nails, unfortunately blocking Gordon from a clear shot. The surprised bandit fumbled at first, cursing and trying to catch her wrists. Finally, he managed to hurl her to the ground. Angered by the painful scratches — and unaware of his partner’s demise — the Holnist grinned and hefted his knife to finish the job. He took a step toward the wounded, gasping woman.

At that point Gordon’s arrow tore through the fabric of his camouflage fatigues, slicing a shallow, bloody gash along his back. The shaft struck the couch and quivered, humming.

For all their loathesome attributes, survivalists were probably the best fighters in all the world. In a blur, before Gordon could snatch up his last arrow, the man dove to one side and rolled up with his assault rifle. Gordon threw himself back as a rapid, accurate burst of individual shots tore into the balustrade, ricocheting from the ironmongery where he had just been.

The rifle was equipped with a silencer, forcing the raider to fire on semi-automatic; but the zinging bullets clanged all about Gordon as he rolled over and pulled out his own revolver. He scurried over to another part of the balcony.

The fellow down below had good ears. Another rapid burst sent slivers flying inches from Gordon’s face as he ducked aside again, barely in time.

Silence fell, except that Gordon’s pulse sounded like thunder in his ears.

Now what? he wondered.

Suddenly there was a loud scream. Gordon raised his head and caught a blurry motion reflected in the mirror … the small woman below was charging her much bigger foe with a large chair raised over her head!

The survivalist whirled and fired. Red blotches bloomed across the young gleaner’s chest and she tumbled to the ground; the chair rolled to the survivalist’s feet.

Gordon might have heard the click as the rifle’s magazine emptied. Or perhaps it was only a wild guess. Whatever the reason, without thinking he leapt up, arms extended, and squeezed the trigger of his .38 over and over again-pumping until the hammer struck five times on empty, smoking chambers.

His opponent remained standing, a fresh clip already in his left hand, ready to be slammed into place. But dark stains had begun to spread across the camouflage tunic. Looking astonished, more than anything else, his eyes met Gordon’s over the smoking pistol barrel.

The assault rifle tipped and fell clattering from limp fingers, and the survivalist crumpled to the floor.

Gordon ran downstairs, vaulting the rail at the bottom. First he stopped at both men and made sure they were dead. Then he hurried over to the fatally wounded young woman.

Her mouth made a round inquiry as he lifted her head. “Who… ?”

“Don’t talk,” he urged, and he wiped a trail of blood from the corner of her mouth.

Pupils widely dilated, eerily alert on the threshold of death, her eyes took in his face, his uniform — the embroidered restored u.S. mail service patch over his breast pocket. They widened briefly in question, in wonder.

Let her believe, Gordon told himself. She’s dying. Let her believe it’s true.

But he couldn’t make himself say the words — the lies that he had told so often, that had taken him so far for so many months. Not this time.

“I’m just a traveler, miss,” he shook his head. “I’m . … I’m just a fellow citizen, trying to help.”

She nodded — only slightly disappointed it seemed — as if that in itself were a minor miracle.

“North…” she gasped. “Take boy… Warn… warn Cyclops…”

In that last word, even as her dying breath sighed away, Gordon heard reverence, loyalty, and a confident faith in ultimate redemption … all in the spoken name of a machine. Cyclops, he thought numbly, as he laid her body down. Now he had yet another reason to follow the legend to its source.

There was no time to spare for a burial. The bandit’s rifle had been muffled, but Gordon’s .38 had echoed like thunder. The other raiders would certainly have heard. He had only moments to collect the child and clear out of this place.

But ten feet away there were horses to steal. And up north lay something a brave young woman had thought worth dying for.

If only it’s true, Gordon thought as he gathered up his enemy’s rifle and ammunition.

He would drop his postal play-act in a minute, if he found that someone, somewhere, was taking responsibility — actually trying to do something abo.ut the dark age. He would offer his allegiance, his help, however meager it might be.

Even to a giant computer.

There were distant shouts… coming closer rapidly.

He turned to the boy, who was now looking up at him, wide-eyed, from the corner of the room.

“Come on, then,” Gordon said, holding out his hand. “We had better ride.”

4. HARRISBURG

Holding the child on the saddle in front of him, Gordon raced away from the grisly scene as fast as his stolen mount would go. A glance showed figures charging after them on foot. One raider knelt to take careful aim.

Gordon bent forward, sawed on the reins, and kicked. The horse snorted and wheeled around a looted corner Rexall store just as high-velocity bullets tore apart the granite facing behind them. Stone chips flew whistling across Sixth Avenue.

He had been congratulating himself on taking the added time to scatter the other horses before galloping off. But in that last instant, looking back, Gordon had seen one more raider arrive, riding his own pony!

For a moment he felt an unreasoning fear. If they had his horse, they might also have taken or harmed the mail-bags.

Gordon shook the irrelevant thought aside as he sent the horse dashing down a side street. To hell with the letters! They were only props, anyway. What mattered was that only one of the survivalists could pursue at the moment. That made the odds even.

Almost.

He snapped the reins and dug in his heels, sending his mount galloping hard down one of downtown Eugene’s silent, empty streets. He heard the clatter of other hooves, too close. Not bothering to look back, he swerved into an alley. The horse pranced past a fall of shattered glass, then sped across the next street, through a service way and down another clutter-filled alley.

Gordon turned the animal toward a flash of greenery, cantering quickly across an open plaza, and pulled up behind an overgrown oak thicket in a small park.

There was a roar in the air. After a moment Gordon realized that it was his own breath and pulse. “Are… are you all right?” he panted, looking down at the boy.

The nine-year-old swallowed and nodded, not wasting breath on words. The boy had been terrorized and had witnessed savage things today, but he had the sense to keep quiet, brown eyes intense on Gordon.

Gordon stood in the saddle and peered through the seventeen-year growth of urban shrubbery. For the moment at least, they seemed to have lost their pursuer.

Of course the fellow might be less than fifty meters away, quietly listening himself.

Gordon’s fingers were shaking from reaction, but he managed to draw his empty .38 from its holster and reloaded while he tried to think.

If there was only the single rider to contend with, they might do better to just stay still and wait it out. Let the bandit seek them, and inevitably drift farther away.

Unfortunately, the other Holnists would catch up soon. It would probably be better to risk a little noise now than let those master trackers and hunters from the Rogue River country collect themselves and organize a real search of the local area.

He stroked the horse’s neck, letting the animal catch its breath for a moment longer. “What’s your name?” he asked the boy.

“M-Mark,” he blinked.

“Mine is Gordon. Was that your sister, who saved our lives back there at the fireplace?”

Mark shook his head. A child of the dark age, he would save his tears for later. “N-nossir … it was my mom.”

Gordon grunted, surprised. These days it was uncommon for women to look so young after having children. Mark’s mother must have lived under unusual conditions-one more clue pointing to mysterious happenings in northern Oregon.

The light was fading fast. Still hearing nothing, Gordon nudged the horse into motion once more, guiding it with his knees, letting it choose soft ground where it could. He kept a sharp lookout, and stopped often to listen.

Some minutes later they heard a shout. The boy tensed. But the source must have been blocks away, Gordon headed in the other direction, thinking of the Willamette River bridges at the northern end of town.

The long twilight was over before they rode up to the Route 105 bridge. The clouds had stopped dripping, but they still cast a dark gloom over ruins on all sides, denying even the starlight. Gordon stared, trying to penetrate the gloom. Rumor to the south had it the bridge was still up, and there were no obvious signs of an ambush.

And yet anything could hide in that mass of dark girders, including an experienced bushwhacker with a rifle.

Gordon shook his head. He hadn’t lived this long by taking foolish chances. Not when there were alternatives. He had wanted to take the old Interstate, the direct route to Corvallis and the mysterious domain of Cyclops, but there were other ways. He swung the horse about and headed west, away from the dark, glowering towers.

There followed a hurried, twisting ride down side streets. Several times’ he nearly got lost, and had to go by dead reckoning. At last, he found old Highway 99 by the sound of rushing water.

Here the bridge was a flat, open structure, and apparently clear. Anyway, it was the last path he knew of. Bent low over the boy, he took the span at a gallop and kept on riding hard until he was certain all pursuit had been left far behind.

Finally, he dismounted and led the horse for a while, letting the exhausted animal catch its breath.

When he climbed back into the saddle, young Mark had fallen asleep. Gordon spread his poncho to cover them both as they plodded on northward, seeking a light.

About an hour before dawn, they arrived at last at the walled village of Harrisburg.

The stories Gordon had heard about prosperous northern Oregon must have been understated. The town had apparently been at peace much, much too long. Thick undergrowth covered the free-fire zone all the way to the town wall, and there were no guards on the watchtowers. Gordon had to shout for five minutes before anyone arrived to swing back the gate.

“I want to talk to your leaders,” he told them under the sheltered porch of the general store. “There’s worse danger than you’ve known in years.”

He described the ambushed party of gleaners, the band of hard, evil men, and their mission to scout the soft northern Willamette for plundering. Time was of the essence. They had to move quickly and destroy the Holnists before their mission was accomplished.

But to his dismay the sleepy-eyed townsmen seemed slow to believe his story, and even more reluctant to sally forth in the wet weather. They stared at Gordon suspiciously, and shook their heads sullenly when he insisted they call up a posse.

Young Mark had collapsed in exhaustion and wasn’t much of a witness to corroborate his tale. The locals obviously preferred to believe he was exaggerating. Several men stated baldly that he must have run into a few local bandits from south of Eugene, where Cyclops still had little influence. After all, nobody had seen any Holnists around these parts in many years. They were supposed to have killed each other off long ago, after Nathan Holn himself was hanged.

Folk patted him on the back reassuringly and started dispersing to their homes. The storekeeper offered to let Gordon sack out in his store room.

I can’t believe this is happening. Don’t these idiots realize their very lives are at stake? If the scouting party gets away, those barbarians will be back in force!

“Listen …” He tried again, but their sullen, rural obstinacy was impervious to logic. One by one, they drifted away.

Desperate, exhausted, and angry, Gordon flung back his poncho — revealing the postal inspector’s uniform underneath. In a fury, he stormed at them.

“You all don’t seem to understand. I am not asking you for your help. Do you think I give a damn about your stupid little village?

“I care about one thing above all. Those creatures have two bags of mail that they have stolen from the people of the United States, and I am commanding you, under my authority as a federal official, to gather an armed party and assist in their recovery!”

Gordon had had a lot of practice with the role in recent months, but never had he dared such an arrogant pose. It had completely carried him away. When one of the wide-eyed villagers started stammering, he cut the man short, his voice shaking with outrage as he told them of the wrath that would fall when the restored nation learned of this shame — how a silly little hamlet had cowered behind its walls and so let their country’s sworn enemies escape.

His eyes narrowed as he growled lowly, “You ignorant bumpkins have ten minutes to form your militia and be ready to ride, or I warn you, the consequences will be far more unpleasant for you all than a forced march in the rain!”

The townsfolk blinked in astonishment. Most of them had not even moved, but stared at his uniform, and the shiny badge on his peaked hat. The true danger that faced them they could try to ignore, but this fantastic story had to be swallowed whole, or not at all.

For a long moment the tableau held — and Gordon stared them down until it broke.

All at once men were shouting at one another, running about to gather weapons. Women hurried to prepare the horses and gear. Gordon was left standing there — his poncho like a cape whipping behind him in the blustery wind — cursing silently while the Harrisburg guard turned out around him.

What, in God’s name, came over me? he asked himself at last.

Maybe his role was starting to get to him. For during those tense moments, as he had faced down an entire town, he had truly believed! He had felt the power of his role — the potent anger of a servant of the People, thwarted in a high task by little men…

The episode left him shaken, and a little uncertain of his own mental equilibrium.

One thing was clear. He had hoped to give up the postman scam on reaching northern Oregon; but that was no longer possible. He was stuck with it now, for better or for worse.

All was ready in a quarter of an hour. He left the boy in the care of a local family and departed with the posse in a drizzling rain.

The ride was quicker this time, in daylight and with remounts. Gordon made sure they sent out scouts and flankers to guard against ambush, and kept the main party in three separated squads. When they finally arrived at the UO campus, the militia dismounted to converge on the Student Center.

Although the locals outnumbered the survivalist band by at least eight to one, Gordon figured the odds were actually about even. Wincing at every sound as the clumsy farmers approached the scene of the massacre, he nervously scanned the rooftops and windows.

I hear that down south they stopped the Holnists with sheer guts and determination. They’ve got some legendary Ieader, down there, who’s whipped the survivalists three falls out of four. Must be the xeason the bastards are trying this end run up the coast. Things are different up here.

If this invasion ever really develops, these locals haven’t got a chance.

When they finally burst into the Student Center the raiders were long gone. The fireplace was cold. Tracks in the muddy street led westward, toward the coastal passes and the sea.

The victims of the massacre were found laid out in the old cafeteria, ears and other… parts… removed as trophies. The villagers stared at the havoc the automatic rifles had wrought, rediscovering uncomfortable memories of the early days.

Gordon had to remind them to get a burial detail together.

It was a frustrating morning. There was no way to prove who the bandits had been. Not without following them. And Gordon wasn’t about to try with this reluctant band of farmers. They already wanted to go home to their tall, safe stockade. Sighing, Gordon insisted that they make one more stop.

In the dank, ruined university gymnasium he found his mail sacks — one untouched where he had hidden it, the other torn open, letters scattered and trodden on the floor.

Gordon put on an irate show of fury for the benefit of the locals, who hurried obsequiously to help him collect and bag the remains. He played the role of the outraged postal inspector to the hilt, calling down vengeance on those who dared interfere with the mail.

But this time it was really only an act. Inside, all Gordon could think of was how hungry and tired of it all he was.

The slow, plodding ride back in a chill fog was sheer hell. But the ordeal went on at Harrisburg. There Gordon had to go through all the motions again… passing out a few letters he had collected in the towns south of Eugene… listening to tearful jubilation as a couple of lucky ones learned of a relative or friend thought long dead… appointing a local postmaster… enduring another silly celebration.

The next day he awoke stiff and sore and a little feverish. His dreams had been dire — all ending with a questioning, hopeful look in a dying woman’s eyes.

Nothing the villagers could say would make him remain another hour. He saddled a fresh horse, secured the mailbags, and headed north immediately after breakfast.

It was time, at last, to go see Cyclops.

5. CORVALLIS

It was quiet in the paneled guest room as the silver fountain pen scritch-scratched across the slightly yellowed paper. Through the open window, with a pale moon shining amid scattered night clouds, Gordon could hear distant music and laughter from the hoedown he had left a little while ago, pleading fatigue.

By now Gordon was accustomed to these exuberant first-day festivities, as locals pulled out the stops for the visiting “Government Man.” The biggest difference here was that he had not seen so many people in one place since the food center riots, long, long ago.

The music was still of the land; with the Fall, people everywhere had returned to the fiddle and the banjo, to simple fare and square dances. In many ways it was all so very familiar.

But there are other differences as well.

Gordon rolled his fountain pen in his fingers and touched the letters from his friends in Pine View. Arriving with serendipitous timing, they had been real help in establishing his bona fides. The mail courier from the southern Willamette — a man Gordon himself had appointed only two weeks ago — had arrived on a steaming mount and refused even a glass of water until he reported to “the Inspector.”

The earnest youth’s behavior emphatically dissolved all remaining doubts the locals might have had. His fairy tale still worked.

For now, at least.

Gordon picked up the pen again and wrote.

By now you’ll have received my warning of a possible invasion by Rogue River survivalists. I know you’ll take appropriate measures for the defense of Pine View. Still, here in the strange domain of Cyclops I find it hard to get anyone to take the threat seriously. By today’s standards they’ve been at peace here a very long time. They treat me well, but people apparently think I am exaggerating the threat.

Tomorrow, at last, I have my interview. Perhaps I can persuade Cyclops itself of the danger.

It would be sad if this strange little society led by a machine fell to the barbarians. It is the finest thing I have seen since leaving the civilized east.

Gordon amended the remark in his own mind. The lower Willamette was the most civilized area he had encountered in fifteen years, period. It was a miracle of peace and prosperity, apparently wrought entirely by an intelligent computer and its dedicated human servants.

Gordon stopped writing and looked up as the lamp by his desk flickered. Under a chintz shade, the forty-watt incandescent bulb winked once more, then returned to a steady glow as the wind generators two buildings away regained their stride. The light was soft, but Gordon found his eyes watering each time he looked at it for even a little while.

He still had not gotten over it. On arriving in Corvallis he had seen his first working electric light in over a decade, and had been forced to excuse himself even as local dignitaries gathered to welcome him. He took refuge in a washroom to hide until he could regain his composure. It just wouldn’t do for a supposed representative of the “Government in Saint Paul City” to be seen weeping openly at the sight of a few flickering bulbs.

Corvallis and its environs are divided into independent boroughs, each supporting about two or three hundred people. All the land hereabouts is cultivated or ranched, using modern farming arts and hybrid seed the locals raise themselves. They have managed to maintain several prewar strains of bio-engineered yeast, and produce medicines and fertilizers from them.

Of course they’re limited to horse plows, but their smithies make implements from high-quality steel. They have even started producing hand-built water- and wind-power turbines — all designed by Cyclops, of course.

Local craftsmen have expressed an interest in trading with customers to the south and east. I’ll enclose a list of items they’re willing to barter for. Copy it and pass it along the line, will you?

Gordon had not seen so many happy, well-fed people since before the war, nor heard laughter so easy and often. There was a newspaper and a lending library, and every child in the valley got at least four years of schooling. Here, at last, was what he had been looking for since his militia unit broke up in confusion and despair, a decade and a half ago — a community of good people engaged in a vigorous effort to rebuild.

Gordon wished he could be a part of it, not a con artist ripping them off for a few nights’ meals and a free bed.

Ironically, these people would have accepted the old Gordon Krantz as a new citizen. But he was indelibly branded by the uniform he wore and by his actions back at Harrisburg. If he revealed the truth now, he was certain they would never forgive him.

He had to be a demigod in their eyes, or nothing at all. If ever a man was trapped in his own lie …

Gordon shook his head. He would have to take the hand he had been dealt. Perhaps these people really could use a mailman.

So far I haven’t been able to find out much about Cyclops itself. I’ve been told that the supercomputer does not govern directly, but insists that all the villages and towns it serves live together peaceably and democratically. In effect, it has become judge-arbitrator for the entire lower Willamette, all the way north to the Columbia.

The Council tells me Cyclops is very interested in seeing a formal mail route created, and has offered every assistance. He … I mean, it… seems anxious to cooperate with the Restored U.S.

Everyone, of course, was glad to hear that they would soon be in contact with the rest of the country again -

Gordon looked at the last line for a long moment, his pen poised, and realized that he simply couldn’t go on with the lies tonight. It was no longer amusing, knowing Mrs. Thompson would read through them.

It made him feel sad.

Just as well, he thought. I have a busy day tomorrow. He covered the pen and got up to prepare for bed.

While he washed his face, he thought about the last time he had met one of the legendary supercomputers. It had been only months before the war, when he was an eighteen-year-old sophomore in college. All the talk had been about the new “intelligent” machines just then being unveiled in a few locations.

It was a time of excitement. The media trumpeted the breakthrough as the end of humanity’s long loneliness. Only instead of coming from outer space, the “other intelligences” with whom man would share his world would be his own creations.

The neohippies and campus editors of New Renaissance Magazine held a grand birthday party the day the University of Minnesota put one of the latest supercomps on display. Balloons floated by, aerostat artists pedaled overhead, music filled the air while people picnicked on the lawns.

In the midst of it all — inside a mammoth, metal-mesh Faraday cage suspended on a cushion of air — they had sealed the helium-cooled cylinder containing Millichrome, Set up this way, internally powered and shielded, there was no way anyone from the outside could fake the mechanical brain’s responses.

He stood in line for hours that afternoon. When at last Gordon’s turn came to step forward and face the narrow camera lens, he brought out a list of test questions, two riddles, and a complicated play on words.

It was so very long ago, that bright day in the spring of hope, yet Gordon remembered it as if it were yesterday… the low, mellifluous voice, the friendly, open laughter of the machine. On that day Millichrome met all his challenges, and responded with an intricate pun of its own.

It also chided him, gently, for not doing as well as expected on a recent history exam.

When his turn was over, Gordon had walked away feeling a great, heady joy that his species had created such a wonder.

The Doomwar came soon thereafter. For seventeen awful years he had simply assumed that all of the beautiful supercomps were dead, like the broken hopes of a nation and a world. But here, by some wonder, one lived! Somehow, by pluck and ingenuity, the Oregon State techs had managed to keep a machine going through all the bad years. He couldn’t help feeling unworthy and presumptuous to have come posing among such men and women.

Gordon reverently switched off the electric light and lay in bed, listening to the night. In the distance, the music from the Corvallis hoedown finally ended with a whooping cheer. Then he could hear the crowd dispersing for home.

Finally, the evening quieted down. There was wind in the trees outside his window, and the faint whine of the nearby compressors that kept the delicate brain of Cyclops supercold and healthy.

And there was something else as well. Through the night came a rich, soft, sweet sound that he could barely place, though it tugged at his memory.

After a while it came to him. Somebody, probably one of the technicians, was playing classical music on a stereo.

A stereo… Gordon tasted the word. He had nothing against banjos and fiddles, but after fifteen years… to hear Beethoven once again.

Sleep came at last, and the symphony blended into his dreaming. The notes rose and fell, and finally melded with a gentle, melodious voice that spoke to him across the decades. An articulated metal hand extended past the fog of years and pointed straight at him.

“Liar!” the voice said softly, sadly. “You disappoint me so.

“How can I help you, my makers, if you tell only lies?”

6. DENA

“This former factory is where we salvage equipment for the Millenium Project. You can see we’ve really hardly begun. We can’t start building true robots, as Cyclops’s plans call for later on, until we’ve recovered some industrial capability first.”

Gordon’s guide led him down a cavern of shelves stacked high with the implements of another era. “The first step, of course, was to try to save as much as we could from rot and decay. Only some of the salvage is kept here. What has no near-term potential is stored elsewhere, against a future day.”

Peter Aage, a lanky blond man only a little older than Gordon, must have been a student at Corvallis State University when war broke out. He was one of the youngest to wear the black-trimmed white coat of a Servant of Cyclops, but even he showed gray at the temples.

Aage also was the uncle and sole surviving relative of the small boy Gordon had rescued in the ruins of Eugene. The man had not made any great display of gratitude, but it was clear he felt indebted to Gordon. None of those outranking him among the Servants had interfered when he insisted on being the one to show the visitor Cyclops’s program to hold off the dark age in Oregon.

“Here we’ve begun repairing some small computers and other simple machines,” Aage told Gordon, leading him past stacks of sorted and labeled electronics. “The hardest part is replacing circuits burned out in those first few instants of the war, by those high-frequency electromagnetic pulses the enemy set off above the continent — you know, by the very first bombs?”

Gordon smiled indulgently, and Aage reddened. He raised a hand in apology. “I’m sorry. I’m just so used to having to explain everything so simply… Of course you East-em folks probably know a lot more about the EMP than we do.”

“I am not a technical man,” Gordon answered, and wished he had not bluffed so well. He would have liked to have heard more.

But Aage went back to the subject at hand. “As I was saying, this is where most of the salvage work is done. It’s painstaking effort, but as soon as electricity can be provided on a wider scale, and once more basic needs have been addressed — we plan to put these microcomputers back in outlying villages, schools, and machine shops. It’s an ambitious goal, but Cyclops is certain we can make it happen in our lifetimes.”

The cavern of shelves opened up into a vast factory floor. Long banks of overhead skylights spanned the ceiling, so the fluorescents were used only sparingly. Still, there was a faint hum of electricity on all sides as white-coated techs carted equipment to and fro. Against every wall was stacked tribute from the surrounding towns and hamlets — payment for the benign guidance of Cyclops.

More machinery of all kinds — plus a small tithe of food and clothing for Cyclops’s human helpers — came in every day. And yet, from all Gordon had heard, this salvage was easily spared by the people of the valley. After all, what use had they for the old machines, anyway?

No wonder there were no complaints of a “tyranny by machine.” The supercomputer’s price was easily met. And in exchange, the valley had its Solomon — and perhaps a Moses to lead them out of this wilderness. Remembering that gentle, wise voice from so long ago, Gordon recognized a bargain.

“Cyclops has carefully planned this stage of the transition,” Aage explained. “You saw our small assembly line for water and wind turbines. Besides that, we help area blacksmiths improve their forges and local farmers plan their crops. And by distributing old hand-held video games to children in the valley, we hope to make them receptive to better things, such as computers, when the time comes.”

They passed a bench where gray-haired workers bent over flashing lights and screens bright with computer code. A bit lightheaded from all this, Gordon felt as if he had accidentally stumbled into a bright, wondrous workshop where shattered dreams were being carefully put back together by a band of earnest, friendly gnomes.

Most of the technicians were now well into or past middle age. To Gordon it seemed they were in a hurry to accomplish as much as possible before the educated generation passed away forever.

“Of course now that contact has been reestablished with the Restored U.S.,” Peter Aage continued, “we can hope to make faster progress. For instance, I could give you a long list of chips we haven’t any way to manufacture. They would make a world of difference. Only eight ounces’ worth could push Cyclops’s program ahead by four years, if Saint Paul City can provide what we need.”

Gordon didn’t want to meet the fellow’s eyes. He bent over a disassembled computer, pretending to pore over the complicated innards. “I know little about such matters,” he said, swallowing. “Anyway, back East there have been other priorities than distributing video games.”

He had said it that way in order not to lie any more than he had to. But the Servant of Cyclops paled as if he had been struck.

“Oh. I’m so stupid. Certainly they’ve had to deal with terrible radiation and plagues and famine and Holnists.… I guess maybe we’ve been pretty lucky, here in Oregon. Of course we’ll just have to manage on our own until the rest of the country can help out.”

Gordon nodded. Both men were speaking literal truths, but only one knew just how sadly true the words were.

In the uncomfortable silence, Gordon reached for the very first question that came to mind. “So, you distribute toys with batteries, as sort of missionary tools?”

Aage laughed. “Yes, that’s how you first heard of us, isn’t it? It sounds primitive, I know. But it works. Come, I’ll introduce you to the head of that project. If anyone is a real throwback to the Twentieth Century, it’s Dena Spurgen. You’ll see what I mean when you meet her.”

He led Gordon through a side door and down a hallway cluttered with stacked odds and ends, coming at last to a room that seemed alive with a faint electric hum.

Everywhere there were racks of wires, looking much like strands of ivy climbing the walls alive. Socketed amidst the tangle were scores of little cubes and cylinders. Even after all these years, Gordon quickly recognized all manner of rechargeable batteries, drawing current from the Corval-lis generators.

Across the long room, three civilians listened to a longhaired, blond person wearing the black-on-white coat of a Servant. Gordon blinked in surprise as he noticed that all four were young women.

Aage whispered in his ear. “I ought to warn you. Dena may be the youngest of all the Servants of Cyclops, but in one way she’s a museum piece. A genuine, bona fide, rip-snorting feminist.”

Aage grinned. So many things had gone with the Fall of civilization. There were words in common use, back in the old days, that one never even heard anymore. Gordon looked again in curiosity.

She was tall, especially for a woman who had grown up in these times. Since she was facing the other way, Gordon couldn’t tell much about her appearance, but her voice was low and certain as she spoke to the other intense young women.

“So on your next run I don’t want you taking chances like that again, Tracy. Do you hear me? It took a year of holding my breath and threatening to turn blue before I was able to get us this assignment. Never mind that it’s a logical solution — that outland villagers tend to feel less threatened when the emissary is a woman. All the logic in the world would come to nothing if one of you girls came to harm!”

“But Dena,” a tough-looking little brunette protested. “Tillamook’s already heard of Cyclops! It was just a quick hop over from my own village. Anyway, whenever I take Sam and Homer along they just slow me—”

“Never mind!” the taller woman interrupted. “You just take those boys with you next time. I mean it! Or I promise you I’lll have you back in Beaverville in two shakes, teaching school and making babies…”

She stopped abruptly as she noticed that her assistants weren’t paying attention anymore. They were staring at Gordon.

“Dena, come over and meet the Inspector,” Peter Aage said. “I’m sure he’d like to see your recharging facility and hear about your — missionary work.”

Aage spoke to Gordon, sotto voce with a wry smile. “Actually, it was introduce you or face a broken arm. Watch yourself, Gordon.” As the woman Servant approached, he said louder, “I have some matters to look into. I’ll be back in a few minutes to take you to your interview.”

Gordon nodded as the man left. He felt somehow exposed here, with these women staring at him this way.

“That’s it for now, girls. I’ll see you tomorrow afternoon and well plan the next trip.” The others protested with entreating looks. But Dena’s head shake sent them out the door. Their shy smiles and giggles — as Gordon tipped his cap — contrasted with the long knives each wore at hip and boot.

Only when Dena Spurgen smiled, offering Gordon an outstretched hand, did he realize how young she had to be.

She can’t have been more than six when the bombs went off.

Her grip was as firm as her demeanor, and yet her smooth, barely calloused hand told of a life spent more among books than threshers and plows. Her green eyes met his in frank inspection. Gordon wondered when he had last met anyone like this.

Minneapolis, that crazy sophomore year, came his answer. Only then she had been a senior. Amazing 1 should remember that girl now, after so long.

Dena laughed. “Have I your permission to anticipate your question? Yes, I am young and female, and not really qualified to be a full Servant, let alone to be put in charge of an important project.”

“Forgive me,” he nodded, “but those were my thoughts.”

“Oh, no problem. Everybody calls me an anachronism, anyway. The truth is, I was adopted as a waif by Dr. Lazarensky and Dr. Taigher and the others, after the Anti-Tech Riots killed my parents. I have been spoiled terribly since, and learned how to take full advantage. As, no doubt, you guessed on overhearing what I had to say to my girls/’

Gordon finally decided her features could best be described as “handsome.” Perhaps a bit long and square-jawed. But when she was laughing at herself, as now, Dena Spurgen’s face lit up.

“Anyway,” she added, motioning at the wall of wires and little cylinders. “We may not be able to train any more engineers, but it doesn’t take much brains to learn how to cram electrons into a battery.”

Gordon laughed. “You’re unfair to yourself. I had to take introductory physics twice. Anyway, Cyclops must know what he’s doing, putting you in this job.”

This brought a reddening to Dena’s face as she blushed and looked down. “Yes, well, I suppose so.”

Modesty? Gordon wondered. This one is full of surprises. I wouldn’t have expected it.

“Oh rats. So soon. Here comes Peter,” she said in a much softer voice.

Peter Aage could be seen negotiating the clutter in the hallway. Gordon looked at his old-fashioned mechanical watch — one of the techs had adjusted it so that it no longer ran half a minute fast on the hour. “No wonder. My interview is in ten minutes,” he said as they shook hands again. “But I do hope we’ll have another chance to talk, Dena.”

Her grin was back. “Oh, you can bet we will. I want to ask you some questions about the way life was for you, back in the days before the war.”

Not about the Restored U.S., but about the old times. Unusual. And in that case, why me? What can I tell her about the Lost Age that she can’t learn by picking the memories of anyone else over thirty-five?

Puzzled, he met Peter Aage in the hallway and walked with him through the cavernous warehouse toward the exit.

“I’m sorry to rush you off like this,” Aage told him, “but we musn’t be late. One thing we don’t want is for Cyclops to scold us!” He grinned, but Gordon got the feeling Aage was only partly jesting. Guards bearing rifles and white armbands nodded as they passed outside into overcast sunshine.

“I do hope your talk with Cyclops goes well, Gordon,” his guide said. “We’re all excited to be in contact with the rest of the country again, of course. I’m sure Cyclops will want to cooperate in any way he can.”

Cyclops. Gordon returned to reality. There’s no delaying this. And I don’t even know if I’m more eager than scared.

He steeled himself to play out the charade to the end. He had no other choice. “I feel exactly the same,” he said. “I want to help you folks any way I can.” And he meant it, with all his heart.

Peter Aage turned away to lead him across the neatly mowed lawn toward the House of Cyclops. But for a moment Gordon wondered. Had he imagined it, or had he seen, for just a moment, a strange expression in the tech’s eyes — one of sad and profound guilt?

7. CYCLOPS

The foyer of the House of Cyclops — once the OSU Artificial Intelligence Laboratory — was a striking reminder of a more elegant era. The gold carpet was freshly vacuumed and only slightly frayed. Bright fluorescents shone on fine furniture in the paneled lobby, where peasants and officials from villages as far as forty miles away nervously twisted rolled-up petitions as they waited for their brief interviews with the great machine.

When the townsmen and farmers saw Gordon enter, all of them stood up. A few of the more daring approached and earnestly shook his hand in calloused, work-roughened clasps. The hope and wonder were intense in their eyes, in their low, respectful tones. Gordon froze his mind behind a smile and nodded pleasantly, wishing he and Aage could wait somewhere else.

At last, the pretty receptionist smiled and motioned them through the doors at the end of the foyer. As Gordon and his guide passed down the long hallway to the interview chamber, two men approached from the other end. One was a Servant of Cyclops, wearing the familiar black-trimmed white coat. The other — a citizen dressed in a faded but carefully tended prewar suit — frowned over a long sheet of computer printout.

“I’m still not sure I understand, Dr. Grober. Is Cyclops sayin’ we dig the well near the north hollow or not? His answer isn’t any too clear, if you ask me.”

“Now Herb, you tell your people it isn’t Cyclops’s job to figure everything down to the last detail. He can narrow down the choices, but he can’t make the final decisions for you.”

The farmer tugged at his overtight collar. “Sure, everybody knows that. But we’ve gotten straighter answers from him in th’ past. Why can’t he be clearer this time?”

“Well for one thing, Herb, it’s been over twenty years since the geological maps in Cyclops’s memory banks were updated. Then you’re also certainly aware that Cyclops was designed to talk to high-level experts, right? So of course a lot of his explanations will go over our heads… sometimes even we few scientists who survived.”

“Yes, b-but…” At that moment the citizen glanced up and saw Gordon approaching. He moved as if to remove the hat he was not wearing, then wiped his palm on his pants leg and nervously extended it.

“Herb Kalo of Sciotown, Mr. Inspector. This is indeed an honor, sir.”

Gordon muttered pleasantries as he shook the man’s hand, feeling more than ever like a politician.

“Yes sir, Mr. Inspector. An honor! I sure hope your plans include coming up our way and setting up a post office. If they do, I can promise you a wingding like you’ve never—”

“Now Herb,” the older technician interrupted. “Mr. Krantz is here for a meeting with Cyclops.” He looked at his digital watch pointedly.

Kalo blushed and nodded. “Remember that invite, Mr. Krantz. We’ll take good care of you…” He seemed almost to bow as he backed down the hall toward the foyer. The others didn’t appear to notice, but for a moment Gordon’s cheeks felt as if they were on fire.

“They’re waiting for you, sir,” the senior tech told him, and led the way down the long corridor.

Gordon’s life in the wilderness had made his ears more sensitive than these townsmen perhaps realized. So when he heard a mutter of argument ahead — as he and his guides approached the open door of the conference room — Gordon purposely slowed down, as if to brush a few specks of lint from his uniform.

“How do we even know those documents he showed us were real!” someone up ahead was asking. “Sure they had seals all over them, but they still looked pretty crude. And that story about laser satellites is pretty damn pat, if you ask me.”

“Perhaps. But it also explains why we’ve heard nothing in fifteen years!” another voice replied. “And if he were faking, how do you explain those letters that courier brought? Elias Murphy over in Albany heard from his long-lost sister, and George Seavers has left his farm in Greenbury to go see his wife in Curtin, after all these years thinking she was dead!”

“I don’t see where it matters,” a third voice said softly. “The people believe, and that’s what counts…”

Peter Aage hurried ahead and cleared his throat at the doorway. As Gordon followed, four white-coated men and two women rose from a polished oak table in the softly lit conference room. All except Peter were clearly well past middle age.

Gordon shook hands all around, grateful that he had met them all earlier; for it would have been impossible to remember introductions under these circumstances. He tried to be polite, but his gaze kept drifting to the broad sheet of thick glass that split the meeting room in two.

The table ended abruptly at that division. And although the conference room’s lighting was low, the chamber beyond was even darker. A single spotlight shone on a shimmering, opalescent face — like a pearl, or a moon in the night.

Behind the single, gleaming, gray camera lens was a dark cylinder on which two banks of little flashing lights rippled in a complex pattern that seemed to repeat over and over again. Something in the repetitious waves touched Gordon inside… He couldn’t pin down exactly how. It was hard to tear his gaze away from the rows of winking pinpoints.

The machine was swaddled in a soft cloud of thick vapor. And although the glass was thick, Gordon felt a faint sense of cold coming from the far end of the room.

The First Servant, Dr. Edward Taigher, took Gordon by the arm and faced the glass eye.

“Cyclops,” he said. “I’d like you to meet Mr. Gordon Krantz. He has presented credentials showing him to be a United States government postal inspector, and representative of the restored republic.

“Mr. Krantz, may I present Cyclops.”

Gordon looked at the pearly lens — at the flashing lights and the drifting fog — and had to quash the feeling of being like a small child who had seriously overreached himself in his lies.

“It is very good to meet you, Gordon. Please, be seated.”

The gentle voice had a perfect human timbre. It came from a speaker set on the end of the oak table. Gordon sat in a padded chair Peter Aage offered. There was a pause. Then Cyclops spoke again.

“The tidings you bring are joyous, Gordon. After all these years caring for the people of the lower Willamette Valley, it seems almost too good to be true.”

Another brief hiatus, then, “It has been rewarding, working with my friends who insist on calling themselves my ‘Servants.’ But it has also been lonely and hard, imagining the rest of the world to lie in ruins.

“Please tell me, Gordon. Do any of my brothers still survive in the East?”

He had to blink. Finding his voice, Gordon shook his head. “No, Cyclops. I’m very sorry. None of the other great machines made it through the destruction. I’m afraid you are the last of your species left alive.”

Though he regretted having to give it the news, he hoped it was a good omen to be able to start out by telling the truth.

Cyclops was silent for a long moment. Surely it was only his imagination when Gordon thought he heard a faint sigh, almost like a sob.

During the pause, the tiny parity lights below the camera lens went on flashing, as if signaling over and over again in some hidden language. Gordon knew he had to keep talking, or lose himself in that hypnotic pattern. “Uh, in fact, Cyclops, most of the big computers died in the first seconds of the war — you know, the electromagnetic pulses. I can’t help being curious how you yourself survived it.”

Like Gordon, the machine seemed to shake aside a sad contemplation in order to answer.

“That is a good question. It turns out that my survival was a fortunate accident of timing. You see the war broke out on Visitor’s Day, here at OSU. When the pulses flew, I happened to be in my Faraday cage for a public demonstration. So you see…”

Interested as he was in Cyclops’s story, Gordon felt a momentary sense of triumph. He had taken the initiative in this interview, asking questions exactly as a “federal inspector” would. He glanced at the sober faces of the human Servants, and knew he had won a small victory. They were taking him very seriously indeed.

Maybe this would work out, after all.

Still, he avoided looking at the rippling lights. And soon he felt himself begin to sweat, even in the coolness near the superchilled pane of glass.

8

In four days the meetings and negotiations were over. Suddenly, before he had really prepared himself, it was time to leave again. Peter Aage walked with Gordon, helping him carry his two slim saddlebags toward the stables where his mounts were being readied.

“I’m sorry it took so long, Gordon. I know you’ve been anxious to get back to work building your postal network. Cyclops only wanted to fix up the right itinerary for you, so you can swing through north Oregon most efficiently.”

“That’s all right, Peter,” Gordon shrugged, pretending. “The delay wasn’t bad, and I appreciate the help.”

They walked for a time in silence, Gordon’s thoughts a hidden turmoil. If Peter only knew how much I would have preferred to stay. If only there were a way …

Gordon had come to love the simple comfort of his guest room, across from the House of Cyclops, the large and pleasant commissary meals, the impressive library of well-cared-for books. Perhaps most of all he would miss the electric light by his bed. He had read himself to sleep each of the last four nights, a habit of his youth, quickly reawakened after long, long dormancy.

A pair of tan-jacketed guards tipped their hats as Gordon and Aage turned the corner of the House of Cyclops and started across an open field on their way to the stables.

While he waited for Cyclops to prepare his itinerary, Gordon had visited much of the area around Corvallis, talking with dozens of people about scientific farming, about simple but technically advanced crafts, and about the theory behind the loose confederation that made for Cyclops’s peace. The secret of the Valley was simple. No one wanted to fight, not when it might mean being left out of the cornucopia of wonders promised someday by the great machine.

But one conversation, in particular, stuck in his head. It had been last night, with the youngest Servant of Cyclops, Dena Spurgen.

She had kept him up late by the fire in the commissary, chaperoned by two of her girl emissaries, pouring cups of tea until he sloshed, pestering him with questions about his life before and after the Doomwar.

Gordon had learned many tricks to avoid getting too specific about the “Restored United States,” but he had no defense against this sort of grilling. She seemed far less interested in the thing that excited everyone else, contact with the “rest of the nation.” Clearly, that was a process that would take decades.

No, Dena wanted to know about the world just before and after the bombs. She was especially fascinated by that awful, tragic year he had spent with Lieutenant Van and his militia platoon. She wanted to know about every man in the unit, his flaws and foibles, the courage — or obstinacy — that made him continue to fight long after the cause was lost.

No… not lost. Gordon had reminded himself just in time to invent a happy ending to the Battle of Meeker County. The cavalry came. The granaries were saved at the last minute. Good men died — he spared no details of Tiny Kielre’s agony, or Drew Simms’s brave stand — but in his tale their struggles were not for nothing.

He told it the way it should have ended, feeling the wish with an intensity that surprised him. The women listened with rapt attention, as if it were a wonderful bedtime story — or as if it were critical data and they were going to be tested on it in the morning.

I wish I knew exactly what it was they were hearing — what they were trying to find in my own small, grimy tale.

Perhaps it was because the Lower Willamette had been at peace for so long, but Dena had also wanted to know about the worst men he had met, as well… everything he knew about the looters and hyper-survivalists and Holnists.

The cancer at the heart of the end-of-the-century renaissance … I hope you are burning in Hell, Nathan Holn.

Dena kept asking questions even after Tracy and Mary Ann had fallen asleep by the fire. Normally, he would have been aroused by such close, admiring attention from an attractive woman. But this was not the same as it had been with Abby, back in Pine View. Dena had not seemed uninterested in him that way, to be sure. It was just that she seemed much more intensely involved in his value as a source of information. And if he was only to be here for a few days, she was completely unhesitant in choosing how best to use the time.

Gordon found her, all in all, overpowering and maybe a bit obsessed. Yet he knew that she would be unhappy to see him go.

She was probably the only one. Gordon had the distinct feeling that most of the other Servants of Cyclops were happy to be rid of him. Even Peter Aage seemed relieved.

It’s my role, of course. It makes them nervous. Perhaps, deep inside, they sense some falseness. I couldn’t really blame them.

Even if the majority of the techs believed his story, they had little reason to love a representative of a remote “government” certain to meddle — sooner or later — in what they had spent so long building. They talked about eagerness for contact with the outside world. But Gordon sensed that many of them felt it would be an imposition, at best.

Not that they really had anything to fear, of course.

Gordon still wasn’t sure about the attitude of Cyclops itself. The great machine who had taken responsibility for an entire valley had been rather tentative and distant during their later interviews. There had been no jokes or clever puns, only a smooth and involute seriousness. The coolness had been disappointing after his memory of that prewar day in Minneapolis.

Of course his recollection of that other supercomputer long ago might have been colored by time. Cyclops and its Servants had accomplished so much here. He was not one to judge.

Gordon looked around as he and his escort walked past a cluster of burned out structures. “It looks like there was a lot of fighting here once,” he commented aloud.

Peter frowned, remembering. “We pushed back one of the AntiTech mobs right over there, by the old utility shed. You can see the melted transformers and the old emergency generator. We had to switch over to wind and water power after they blew it up.”

Blackened shreds of power-converting machinery still lay in shriveled heaps where the technicians and scientists had fought desperately to save their lifework. It reminded Gordon of his other worry.

“I still think more ought to be done about the possibility of a survivalist invasion, Peter. It’ll come soon, if I overheard those scouts right.”

“But you admit you only heard scraps of conversation that could have been misinterpreted.” Aage shrugged. “We’ll beef up our patrols, of course, as soon as we have a chance to draw up plans and discuss the matter some more. But you must understand that Cyclops has his own credibility to consider. There hasn’t been a general mobilization in ten years. If Cyclops made such a call, and it turned out to be a false alarm…” He let the implication hang.

Gordon knew that local village leaders had misgivings over his story. They didn’t want to draw men from the second planting. And Cyclops had expressed doubts that the Holnist gangs really could organize for a truly major strike several hundred miles upcoast. It just wasn’t in the hyper-survivalist mentality, the great machine explained.

Gordon finally had to take Cyclops’s word for it. After all, its superconducting memory banks had access to every psychology text ever written — and all the works of Holn himself.

Perhaps the Rogue River scouts were merely on a small-time raid, and had talked big to impress themselves.

Perhaps.

Well, here we are.

The stable hands took his satchels, containing a few personal possessions and three books borrowed from the community library. They had already saddled his new mount, a fine, strong gelding. A large, placid mare carried supplies and two bulging sacks of hope-filled mail. If one in fifty of the intended recipients still lived, it would be a miracle. But for those few a single letter might mean much, and would begin the long, slow process of reconnection.

Maybe his role would do some good — enough at least to counterbalance a lie. …

Gordon swung up onto the gelding. He patted and spoke to the spirited animal until it was calm. Peter offered his hand. “We’ll see you again in three months, when you swing by on your way back East again.”

Almost exactly what Dena Spurgen said. Maybe I’ll be back even sooner, if I ever come up with the courage to tell you all the truth.

“By then, Gordon, Cyclops promises to have a proper report on conditions here in north Oregon worked up for your superiors.”

Aage gripped his hand for another moment. Once again Gordon was puzzled. The fellow looked as if, somehow, he were unhappy about something — something he could not speak of. “Godspeed in your valuable work, Gordon,” he said earnestly. “If there’s ever anything I can do to help, anything at all, you have only to let me know.”

Gordon nodded. No more words were needed, thank Heaven. He nudged the gelding, and swung about onto the road north. The pack horse followed close behind.

9. BUENA VISTA

The Servants of Cyclops had told him that the Interstate was broken up and unsafe north of Corvallis, so Gordon used a county road that paralleled not far to the west. Debris and potholes made for slow going, and he was forced to take his lunch in the ruins of the town of Buena Vista.

It was still fairly early in the afternoon, but clouds were gathering, and tattered shreds of fog blew down the rubble-strewn streets. By coincidence, it was the day when area farmers gathered at a park in the center of the unpopulated town for a country market. Gordon chatted with them as he munched on cheese and bread from his saddlebags.

“Ain’t nothin’ wrong with the Interstate up here,” one of the locals told him, shaking his head in puzzlement. “Them perfessers must not get out this way much. They aren’t lean travelin’ men such as yourself, Mr. Krantz. Must’ve got their wires crossed, for all their buzzin’ brains.” The farmer chuckled at his own wit.

Gordon didn’t mention that his itinerary had been planned by Cyclops itself. He thanked the fellow and went back to his saddlebags to pull out the map he had been given.

It was covered with an impressive array of computer graphics, charting out in fine symbols the path he should take in establishing a postal network in northern Oregon. He had been told the itinerary was designed to take him most efficiently around hazards such as known lawless areas and the belt of radioactivity near Portland.

Gordon stroked his beard. The longer he examined the map, the more puzzled he grew, Cyclops had to know what it was doing. Yet the winding path looked anything but efficient to him.

Against his will he began to suspect it was designed instead to take him far out of his way. To waste his time, rather than save it.

But why would Cyclops want to do such a thing?

It couldn’t be that the super machine feared his interference. By now Gordon knew just the right pitch to ease such anxiety… emphasizing that the “Restored U.S.” had no wish to meddle in local matters. Cyclops had appeared to believe him.

Gordon lowered the map. The weather was turning as the clouds lowered, obscuring the tops of the ruined buildings. Drifts of fog flowed along the dusty street, pushing puffy swirls between him and a surviving storefront win-dowpane. It brought back a sudden, vivid recollection of other panes of glass — seen through scattered, refracting droplets.

Death’s head… the postman grinning, his skeletal face superimposed on mine.

He shivered at another triggered recognition. The foggy wisps reminded him of superchilled vapor — his reflection in the cool glass wall as he met with Cyclops back in Corvallis — and the strangeness he had felt watching the rows of little flashing lights, repeating the same rippling pattern over and over… …

Repeating …

Suddenly Gordon’s spine felt very cold.

“No,” he whispered. “Please, God.” He closed his eyes and felt an almost overwhelming need to change his thoughts to another track, to think about the weather, about pesterous Dena or pretty little Abby back in Pine View, about anything but …

“But who would do such a thing?” he protested aloud. “Why would they do it?”

Reluctantly, he realized he knew why. He was an expert on the strongest reason why people told lies.

Recalling the blackened wreckage behind the House of Cyclops, he found himself all at once wondering how the techs could possibly have accomplished what they claimed to have done. It had been almost two decades since Gordon had thought about physics, and what could or could not be achieved with technology. The intervening years had been filled with the struggle to survive — and his persistent dreams of a golden place of renewal. He was in no position to say what was or was not possible.

But he had to find out if his wild suspicion was true. He could not sleep until he knew for sure.

“Excuse me!” he called to one of the farmers. The fellow gave Gordon a gap-toothed grin and limped over, doffing his hat. “What can I do for you, Mr. Inspector?”

Gordon pointed at a spot on the map, no more than ten miles from Buena Vista as the crow might fly. “This place, Sciotown, do you know the way?”

“Sure do, boss. If you hurry, you can get there tonight/’

“I’ll hurry,” Gordon assured the man. “You can bet your ass I’ll hurry.”

10. SCIOTOWN

“Just a darn minute! I’m coming!” the Mayor of Sciotown hollered. But the knock on his door went on insistently.

Herb Kalo carefully lit his new oil lantern — made by a craft commune five miles west of Corvallis. He recently had traded two hundred pounds of Sciotown’s best pottery work for twenty of the fine lamps and three thousand matches from Albany, a deal he felt was sure to mean his reelection this fall.

The knocking grew louder. “All right! This had better be damn important!” He threw the bolt and opened the door.

It was Douglas Kee, the man on gate duty tonight. Kalo blinked. “Is there a problem, Doug? What’s the—”

“Man here to see you, Herb,” the gateman interrupted. “I wouldn’t’ve let him in after curfew, but you told us about him when you got back from Corvallis — and I didn’t want to keep him standin’ out in the rain.”

Out of the dripping gloom stepped a tall man in a slick poncho. A shiny badge on his cap glittered in the lamplight. He held out his hand.

“Mr. Mayor, it’s good to see you again. I wonder if we could talk.”

11. CORVALLIS

Gordon had never expected to forsake an offer of a bed and a hot meal to go galloping off into a rainy night, but this time he had no choice. He had commandeered the best horse in the Sciotown stables, but if he had had to, he would have run all the way.

The filly moved surefootedly down an old county road toward Corvallis. She was brave, and trotted as fast as Gordon considered marginally safe in the darkness. Fortunately, a nearly full moon lit the ragged, leaky clouds from above, laying a faint lambence across the broken countryside.

Gordon was afraid he must have put the Mayor of Sciotown in a state of utter confusion from the first moment he stepped into the man’s home. Sparing no time for pleasantries, he had come straight to the point, sending Herb Kalo hurrying back to his office to retrieve a neatly folded fan of paper.

Gordon had taken the printout over to the lamp, and as Kalo watched, he carefully pored over the lines of text. “How much did this advice cost you, Mr. Mayor?” he asked without looking up.

“Only a little, Inspector,” the man answered nervously. “Cyclops’s prices have been dropping as more villages have joined the trade pact. And there was a discount because the advice was kinda vague.”

“How much?” Gordon insisted.

“Uh, well. We found about ten of those old hand-held vid’ games, plus about fifty old rechargeable batteries, of which maybe ten were good enough to use. And oh yes, a home computer that wasn’t too badly corroded.”

Gordon suspected that Sciotown actually had much more salvage than that, and was hoarding it for future transactions. It was what he would have done.

“What else, Mr. Mayor?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“The question is clear enough,” he said severely. “What — else — did — you — pay?”

“Why nathin’ else.” Kalo looked confused. “Unless, of course, you include a wagon of food and pottery for the Servants. But that’s got hardly any value compared to the other stuff. It’s just added on so’s the scientists have somethin’ to live off while they help Cyclops.”

Gordon breathed heavily. His pulse didn’t seem to want to slow down. It all fit, heartbreakingly.

He laboriously read aloud from the computer printout. “…incipient seepage from plate tectonic boundaries… groundwater retention variance…” Words he had not seen — or thought of — in seventeen years rolled off his tongue, tasting like old delicacies, lovingly remembered.

“…variation in aquifer sustenance ratios… tentative analysis only, due to teleological hesitancy…”

“We think we’ve got a line on what Cyclops meant,” Kalo offered. “We’ll start digging at the two best sites come dry season. Of course if we didn’t interpret his advice right, it’ll be our fault. We’ll try agin’ in some other spots he hinted at…”

The Mayor’s voice had trailed off, for the Inspector was standing very still, staring at empty space.

“Delphi,” Gordon had breathed, hardly above a whisper.

Then the hasty ride through the night began.

Years in the wilds had made Gordon hard; all the while the men of Corvallis had suffered prosperity. It was almost ludicrously easy to slip by the guardposts at the city’s edge.

He made his way down empty side streets to the OSU campus, and thence to long-abandoned Moreland Hall. Gordon spared ten minutes to rub down his damp mount and fill her feedbag. He wanted the animal to be in shape in case he needed her quickly.

It was only a short run through the drizzle to the House of Cyclops. When he got near, he made himself slow down, though he wanted desperately to get this over with.

He ducked out of sight behind the ruins of the old generator building as a pair of guards walked past, shoulders hunched under ponchos, their rifles covered against the dank. As he crouched behind the burned-out shell, the wetness brought to Gordon’s nose — even after all these years — the scent of burning from the blackened timbers and melted wiring.

What was it Peter Aage had said about those frantic early days, when authority was falling apart, and the riots raged? He’d said that they had converted to wind and water power, after the generator house was torched.

Gordon didn’t doubt it would have worked, too, if it were done in time. But could it have been?

When the guards had moved off, he hurried to the side entrance of the House of Cyclops. With a prybar he had brought for the purpose, he broke the padlock in one sharp snap. He listened for a long moment, and when nobody appeared to be coming, slipped inside.

The back halls of the OSU Artificial Intelligence Lab were grimier than those the public got to see. Racks of forgotten computer tapes, books, papers, all lay under thick layers of dust. Gordon made his way to the central service corridor, almost stumbling twice over debris in the darkness. He hid behind a pair of double doors as someone passed by, whistling. Then he rose and peered through the crack.

A man wearing thick gloves and the black-and-white robe of a Servant stopped by a door down the hall and put down a thick, battered, foam picnic chest.

“Hey, Elmer!” The man knocked. “I’ve got another load of dry ice for our lord ‘n’ master. Come on, hurry it up! Cyclops gotta eat!”

Dry ice, Gordon noted. Heavy vapor leaked around the cracked lid of the insulated container.

Another voice was muffled by the door. “Aw, hold your horses. It won’t hurt Cyclops any to wait another minute or two.”

At last the door opened and light streamed into the hall, along with the heavy beat of an old rock and roll recording.

“What kept you?”

“I had a run going! I was up to a hundred thousand in Missile Command, and didn’t want to interrupt—”

The closing door cut off the rest of Elmer’s braggadocio. Gordon pushed through the swinging double doors and hurried down the hallway. A little farther, he reached another room whose door was slightly ajar. From within came a narrow line of light, and the sounds of a late-night argument. Gordon paused as he recognized some of the voices.

“I still think we ought to kill him,” said one; it sounded like Dr. Grober. “That guy could wreck everything we’ve set up here.”

“Oh, you are exaggerating the danger, Nick. I don’t really think he’s much of a threat.” It was the voice of the oldest woman Servant — he couldn’t even remember her name. “The fellow really seemed rather earnest and harmless,” she said.

“Yeah? Well did you hear those questions he was asking Cyclops? He’s not one of these rubes our average citizen has become after all this time. The man is sharp! And he remembers an awful lot from the old days!”

“So? Maybe we should try to recruit him.”

“No way! Anyone can see he’s an idealist. He’d never do it. Our only option is to kill him! Now! And hope it’s years before they send someone else to take his place.”

“And I still think you’re crazy,” the woman answered. “If the act were ever traced to us, the consequences would be disastrous!”

“I agree with Marjorie.” It was the voice of Dr. Taigher himself. “Not only the people — our people of Oregon-would turn on us, but we would face the retribution of the rest of the country, if it were found out.”

There was a long pause.

“I’m still not all that convinced that he’s really—” But Grober was interrupted, this time by the soft voice of Peter Aage.

“Haven’t you all forgotten the biggest reason why nobody should touch him, or interfere with him in any way?”

“What’s that?”

Peter’s voice was hushed. “Good lord, man. Hasn’t it occurred to you who this fellow is? And what he represents? How low have we sunk, to even consider doing him harm, when we really owe him our loyalty and any help we can give him!”

Without conviction: “You’re just biased because he rescued your nephew, Peter.”

“Perhaps. And perhaps it’s what Dena has to say about him.”

“Dena!” Grober sniffed. “An infatuated child with wild ideas.”

“All right But even if I grant you that, too, there are the flags.”

“Flags?” Now there was puzzlement in Dr. Taigher’s voice. “What flags?”

The woman answered, pensively. “Peter is referring to the flags the townsmen have been putting up in all the local boroughs. You know, Old Glory? The Stars and Stripes? You should get out more, Ed. Get a feel for what the people are thinking. I’ve never seen anything stir the villagers up like this, even before the war.”

There was another long silence before anyone spoke again. Then Grober said, softly, “I wonder what Joseph thinks of all this.”

Gordon frowned. He recognized all the voices inside as senior Servants of Cyclops whom he had met. But he didn’t remember being introduced to anyone named Joseph.

“Joseph went to bed early, I think,” Taigher said. “And that’s where I’m headed now. We’ll discuss this again later, when we can go about it rationally.”

Gordon hurried down the hall as footsteps approached the door. He didn’t much mind being forced to leave his eavesdropping spot. The opinions of the people in the room were of no importance, anyway. No importance at all.

There was only one voice he wanted to hear right now, and he headed straight to where he had listened to it last.

He ducked around a corner and found himself in the elegant hallway where he had first met Herb Kalo. The passage was dim now, but that did not keep him from picking the conference room lock with pathetic ease. Gordon’s mouth was dry as he slipped into the chamber, closing the door behind him. He stepped forward, fighting the urge to walk on tiptoes.

Beyond the conference table, soft light shone on the gray cylinder on the other side of the glass wall.

“Please,” he wished, “let me be wrong.”

If he was, then surely Cyclops itself would be amused by his chain of faulty deduction. How he longed to share a laugh over his foolish paranoia.

He approached the great glass barrier dividing the room, and the speaker at the end of the table. “Cyclops?” he whispered, stepping closer, clearing his tight throat. “Cyclops, it’s me, Gordon.”

The glow in the pearly lens was subdued. But the row of little lights still flashed — a complex pattern that repeated over and over like an urgent message from a distant ship in some lost code — ever, hypnotically, the same.

Gordon felt a frantic dread rise within him, as when, during his boyhood, he had encountered his grandfather lying perfectly still on the porch swing, and feared to find that the beloved old man had died.

The pattern of lights repeated, over and over.

Gordon wondered. How many people would recall, after the hell of the last seventeen years, that the parity displays of a great computer never repeated themselves? Gordon remembered a cyberneticist friend telling him that the patterns of lights were like snowflakes, none ever the same as any other.

“Cyclops,” he said evenly. “Answer me! I demand you answer — in the name of decency! In the name of the United St—”

He stopped. He couldn’t bring himself to meet this lie with another. Here, the only living mind he would fool would be himself.

The room was warmer than it had seemed during his interview. He looked for, and found, the little vents through which cool air could be directed at a visitor seated in the guest chair, giving an impression of great cold just beyond the glass wall.

“Dry ice,” he muttered. “To fool the citizens of Oz.”

Dorothy herself could not have felt more betrayed. Gordon had been willing to lay down his life for what had seemed to exist here. And now he knew it was nothing but a cheat. A way for a bunch of surviving sophisticates to fleece their neighbors of food and clothing, and have them be grateful for the privilege.

By creating the myth of the “Millennium Project” and a market for salvaged electronics, they had managed to convince the locals that the old electric machines were of great value. All through the lower Willamette Valley, people now hoarded home comps, appliances, and toys — because Cy-clops would accept them in trade for its advice.

The “Servants of Cyclops” had arranged it so that canny people like Herb Kalo hardly even counted the tithe of food and other goods that were added for the Servants themselves.

The scientists ate well, Gordon remembered. And none of the farmers ever complained.

“It’s not your fault,” he told the silent machine, softly. “You really would have designed the tools, made up for all the lost expertise — helped us find the road back. You and your kind were the greatest thing we had ever done…”

He choked, remembering the warm, wise voice in Minneapolis, so long ago. His vision blurred and he looked down.

“You are right, Gordon. It is nobody’s fault”

Gordon gasped. In a flash, molten hope burned that he had been mistaken! It was the voice of Cyclops!

But it had not come from the speaker grille. He turned quickly, and saw — that a thin old man sat in the shadowed back corner of the room, watching him.

“I often come here, you know.” The aged one spoke with the voice of Cyclops — a sad voice, filled with regret. “I come to sit with the ghost of my friend, who died so long ago, right here in this room.”

The old man leaned forward a little. Pearly light shone on his face. “My name is Joseph Lazarensky, Gordon. I built Cyclops, so many years ago.” He looked down at his hands. “I oversaw his programming and education. I loved him as I would my own son.

“And like any good father, I was proud to know that he would be a better, kinder, more human being than I had been.”

Lazarensky sighed. “He really did survive the onset of the war, you know. That part of the story is true. Cyclops was in his Faraday cage, safe from the battle pulses. And he remained there while we fought to keep him alive.

“The first and only time I ever killed a man was on the night of the Anti-Tech riots. I helped defend the powerhouse, shooting like somebody crazed.

“But it was no use. The generators were destroyed, even as the militia finally arrived to drive the mad crowds back… too late. Minutes, years too late.”

He spread his hands. “As you seem to have figured out, Gordon, there was nothing to do after that… nothing but to sit with Cyclops, and watch him die.”

Gordon remained very still, standing in the ghostly ashlight. Lazarensky went on.

“We had built up great hopes, you know. Before the riots we had already conceived of the Millenium Plan. Or I should say Cyclops conceived of it. He already had the outlines of a program for rebuilding the world. He needed a couple of months, he said, to work out the details.”

Gordon felt as if his face were made of stone. He waited silently.

“Do you know anything about quantum-memory bubbles, Gordon? Compared to them, Josephson junctions are made of sticks and mud. The bubbles are as light and fragile as thought. They allow mentation a million times faster than neurons. But they must be kept supercold to exist at all. And once destroyed, they cannot be remade.

“We tried to save him, but we could not.” The old man looked down again. “I would rather have died myself, that night.”

“So you decided to carry out the plan on your own,” Gordon suggested dryly.

Lazarensky shook his head. “You know better, of course. Without Cyclops the task was impossible. All we could do was present a shell. An illusion.

“It offered a way to survive in the coming dark age. All around us was chaos and suspicion. The only leverage we poor intellectuals had was a weak, flickering thing called Hope,”

“Hope!” Gordon laughed bitterly. Lazarensky shrugged.

“Petitioners come to speak with Cyclops, and they speak with me. It isn’t hard, usually, to give good advice, to look up simple techniques in books, or to mediate disputes with common sense. They believe in the impartiality of the computer where they would never trust a living man.”

“And where you can’t come up with a commonsense answer, you go oracular on them.”

Again the shrug. “It worked at Delphi and at Ephesus, Gordon. And honestly, where is the harm? The people of the Willamette have seen too many power-hungry monsters over the last twenty years to unite under any man or group of men. But oh, they remember the machines! As they recall that ancient uniform you wear, even though in better days they so often treated it with terrible disrespect.”

There were voices in the hall. They passed close by, then faded away. Gordon stirred, “I’ve got to get out of here.”

Lazarensky laughed. “Oh don’t worry about the others. They’re all talk and no action. They aren’t like you at all.”

“You don’t know me,” Gordon growled.

“No? As ‘Cyclops’ I spoke with you for some hours. And both my adopted daughter and young Peter Aage have talked of you at length. I know more about you than you might imagine.

“You’re a rarity, Gordon. Somehow, out there in the wilderness you managed to retain a modern mind, while gaining a strength suited for these times. Even if that bunch out there ever tried to harm you, you would outsmart them.”

Gordon moved to the door, then stopped. He turned and looked back one last time at the soft glow from the dead machine, the tiny lights rippling hopelessly over and over again.

“I’m not so smart.” His breath was hard in his throat. “You see, I believed!”

He met Lazarensky’s eyes, and finally the old man looked down, unable to answer. Gordon stumbled out then, leaving the death-chilled crypt and its corpses behind him.

12 OREGON

He made it back to where his horse was tethered just as faint glimmers of dawn were brightening the eastern sky. He remounted, and with his heels he guided the filly up the old service road to the north. Within he felt a hollow grief, as if a freezing cold had locked up his heart. Nothing within him could move, for fear of shattering something tottering, precarious.

He had to get away from this place. That much was clear. Let the fools have their myths. He was finished!

He would not return to Sciotown, where he had left the mailbags. All that was behind him now. He began unbuttoning the blouse of his uniform, intending to drop it in a roadside ditch — along, forever, with his share in all the lying.

Unbidden, a phrase echoed in his mind.

Who will take responsibility now… ?

What? He shook his head to clear it, but the words would not go away.

Who will take responsibility now, for these foolish children?

Gordon cursed and dug in his heels. The horse gamely sped northward, away from everything he had treasured only yesterday morning… but now knew to be a Potemkin facade. A cheap, dime store mannequin. Oz.

Who will take responsibility …

The words repeated over and over again within his head, firmly lodged like a tune that would not let go. It was the same rhythm — he realized at last — as the winking lights of the parity display on the face of the old, dead machine, lights that had rippled again and again.

… for these foolish children?

The filly trotted on in the dawnlight past orchards bordered by rows of ruined cars, and a strange thought suddenly occurred to Gordon. What if — at the end of its life, as the last drops of liquid helium evaporated away and the deadly heat rushed in — what if the final thought of the innocent, wise machine had somehow been caught in a loop, preserved in peripheral circuits, to flash forlornly over and over again?

Would that qualify as a ghost?

He wondered, what would Cyclops’s final thoughts, its last words, have been?

Can a man be haunted by the ghost of a machine?

Gordon shook his head. He was tired, or else he would not think up such nonsense. He didn’t owe anybody anything! Certainly not a scrap of ruined tin, or a desiccated specter found in a rusted jeep.

“Ghosts!” He spat on the side of the road and laughed dryly.

Still, the words echoed round and round inside. Who will take responsibility now …

So absorbed was he that it took a few moments at first for him to recognize the faint sounds of shouting behind him. Gordon pulled up on the reins and turned to look back, his hand resting on the butt of his revolver. Anyone who pursued him now did so at great peril. Lazarensky had been right about one thing. Gordon knew he was more than a match for this bunch.

In the distance he saw there was a flurry of frantic activity in front of the House of Cyclops, but… but the commotion apparently did not have to do with him,

Gordon shaded his eyes against the glare of the new sun, and saw steam rising from a pair of heavily lathered horses. One exhausted man stumbled up the steps of the House of Cyclops, shouting at those hurrying to his side.

Another messenger, apparently badly wounded, was being tended on the ground.

Gordon heard one word cried out loudly. It told all.

“Survivalists!”

He had one word to offer in reply.

“Shit.”

He turned his back on the noises and snapped the reins, sending the filly northward once again.

A day ago he would have helped. He’d been willing to lay down his life trying to save Cyclops’s dream, and probably would have done just that.

He would have died for a hollow farce, a ruse, a con game!

If the Holnist invasion had really begun, the villagers south of Eugene would put up a good fight. The raiders would turn north toward the front of least resistance. The soft north Willametters didn’t stand a chance against the Rogue River men.

Still, there probably weren’t enough Holnists to take the entire valley. Corvallis would fall, certainly, but there would be other places to go. Perhaps he might head east on Highway 22, and swing back around to Pine View, It would be nice to see Mrs. Thompson again. Maybe he could be there when Abby’s baby arrived.

The filly trotted on. The shouts died away behind him, like a bad memory slowly fading. It promised to be fair weather, the first in weeks without clouds. A good day for traveling.

As Gordon rode on, a cool breeze blew through his half open shirtfront. A hundred yards down the road he found his hand drifting to the buttons again, twisting one slowly, back and forth.

The pony sauntered, slowed, and came to a halt. Gordon sat, his shoulders hunched forward.

Who will take responsibility …

The words would not go away, lights pulsing in his mind.

The horse tossed her head and snorted, pawing at the ground.

Who… ?”

Gordon cried out, “Aw, hell!” He wheeled the filly about, sending her cantering southward again.

A babbling, frightened crowd of men and women stepped back in hushed silence as he clattered up to the portico of the House of Cyclops. His spirited mount danced and blew as he stared down at the people for a long, silent moment.

Finally, Gordon threw his poncho back. He rebuttoned his shirt and set the postman’s cap on his head so the bright brass rider shone in the light of the rising sun.

He took a deep breath. Then he began pointing, giving terse commands.

In the name of survival — and in the name of the “Restored United States” — the people of Corvallis and the Servants of Cyclops all hurried to obey.