The Postman

1

Gusts sculpted whirling devil shapes in the blowing snow — flurries that seemed to rise, ghostlike, from the gray drifts, fluttering and darting windblown under the frosted trees.

A heavily laden branch cracked, unable to bear the weight of one more dingy snowflake. The report echoed like a muffled gunshot down the narrow forest lanes.

Snow delicately covered the death-glazed eyes of a starved deer, filling the channels between its starkly outlined ribs. Flakes soon hid faint grooves in the icy ground where the animal had last pawed, only hours ago, in its fruitless search for food.

Taking no sides, the dancing flurries went on to cloak other victims as well, settling soft white layers over crimson stains in the crushed, older snow.

All the corpses soon lay blanketed, peaceful, as if asleep.

The new storm had erased most signs of the struggle by the time Gordon found Tracy’s body under the dark shadow of a winter-whitened cedar. By then a frozen crust had stanched the bleeding. Nothing more flowed from the unlucky young woman’s slashed throat.

Gordon pushed away thoughts of Tracy as he had briefly known her in life — ever cheerful and brave, with a slightly mad enthusiasm for the hopeless job she had taken on. His lips pressed together grimly as he tore open her woolen shirt and reached in to feel under her armpit.

The body was still warm. This had not happened long ago.

Gordon squinted to the southwest, where tracks — already fading under the blowing snow — led off into the painful ice-brightness. In a flat, almost silent movement, a white-clad shape appeared beside him.

“Damn!” he heard Philip Bokuto whisper. “Tracy was good! I could have sworn those pricks wouldn’t have been able to—”

“Well, they did” Gordon cut him off sharply. “And it wasn’t more than ten minutes ago.”

Taking the girl’s belt buckle, he heaved her over to show the other man. The dark brown face under the white parka nodded silently, understanding. Tracy had not been molested, or even mutilated with Holnist symbols. This small band of hyper-survivalists had been in too much of a hurry even to stop and take their customary, grisly trophies.

“We can catch ‘em,” Bokuto whispered. Anger burned in his eyes. “I can fetch the rest of the patrol and be back here in three minutes.”

Gordon shook his head. “No, Phil. We’ve already chased them too far beyond our defense perimeter. They’ll have an ambush set by the time we get close. We’d better just collect Tracy’s body and go home now.”

Bokuto’s jaw clenched, a bunching of tendons. For the first time his voice rose above a whisper. “We can catch the bastards!”

Gordon felt a wave of irritation. What right does Philip have to do this to me? Bokuto had once been a sergeant in the Marines, before the world fell to ruin nearly two decades ago. It should have been his job, not Gordon’s, to make the practical, unsatisfying decisions… to be the one responsible.

He shook his head. “No, we will not. And that’s final.” He looked down at the girl — until this afternoon the second best scout in the Army of the Willamette… but apparently not quite good enough. “We need living fighters, Phil. We need fierce men, not more corpses.”

For a silent moment neither looked at the other. Then Bokuto pushed Gordon to one side and stepped over the still form on the snow.

“Give me five minutes before you bring up the rest of the patrol,” he told Gordon as he dragged Tracy’s body into the leeward shadow of the cedar and drew his knife. “You’re right, sir. We need angry men. Tracy and I’ll see to it that’s what you get.”

Gordon blinked. “Phil.” He reached forward. “Don’t.”

Bokuto ignored Gordon’s hand as he grimaced and tore Tracy’s shirt open wider. He did not look up, but his voice was broken. “I said you’re right! We have to make our cow-eyed farmers mad enough to fight! And this is one of the ways Dena and Tracy told us to use, if we had to…”

Gordon could hardly believe this. “Dena’s crazy, Phil! Haven’t you realized that by now? Please, don’t do this!” He grabbed the man’s arm and pulled him around, but then had to step back from the threatening glitter of Bokuto’s knife. His friend’s eyes were hot and agonized as he waved Gordon away.

“Don’t make this harder for me, Gordon! You’re my commander, and I’ll serve you so long as it’s the best way to kill as many of those Holnist bastards as possible.

“But Gordon, you get so frigging civilized at the worst of times! That’s when I draw the line. Do you hear me? I won’t let you betray Tracy, or Dena, or me with your fits of Twentieth-Century sappiness!

“Now, get outta here, Mr. Inspector… sir.” Bokuto’s voice was thick with emotion, “And remember to give me five minutes before you bring up the others.”

He glowered until Gordon had backed away. Then he spat on the ground, wiped one eye, and bent back to the grisly task awaiting him.

At first Gordon stumbled, half stunned, as he retreated down the gray-sided meadow. Phil Bokuto had never turned on him that way before, waving a knife, wild-eyed, disobeying orders…

Then Gordon remembered.

I never actually commanded him not to do this, did I? I asked, I pleaded. But I didn’t order him…

Am I completely sure he isn’t right, at that? Do even I, deep inside, believe some of those things Dena and her band of lunatic women are preaching?

Gordon shook his head. Phil was certainly right about one thing — the stupidity of philosophizing on a battlefield. Out here survival was enough of a problem. That other war — the one he had been waging each night in his dreams — would have to wait its turn.

He made his way downslope carefully, clutching his drawn bayonet, the most practical weapon for this kind of weather. Half his men had put aside their rifles and bows for long knives… another trick painfully learned from their deadly, devious enemy.

He and Bokuto had left the rest of the patrol only fifty meters back, but it felt like much more as his eyes darted in search of traps. The whirling snow-devils seemed to take on forms, like the vaporous scouts of a faerie army that had not yet taken sides. Ethereal neutrals in a quiet, deadly war.

Who will take responsibility… ? they seemed to whisper at him. The words had never left Gordon, not since that fateful morning when he had chosen between practicality and a doomed charade of hope.

At least this particular raiding party of Holn survivalists had fared worse than usual, and the local farmers and villagers had done better than anyone would have expected. Also, Gordon and his escort party had been on an inspection tour nearby. They had been able to join the fray at a critical moment.

In essence, his Army of the Willamette had won a minor victory, losing only twenty or so men to five of the enemy. There were probably no more than three or four of this Holnist band left to flee westward.

Still, four of those human monsters were more than enough, even tired and short on ammunition. His patrol only numbered seven now, and help was far away.

Let them go. They’ll be back.

The hoot of a horned owl warbled just ahead of him. He recognized Leif Morrison’s challenge. He’s getting better, Gordon thought. If we’re still alive in a year, it might even sound real enough to fool someone.

He pursed his lips and tried to mimic the call, two hoots in answer to Morrison’s three. Then he dashed across a narrow glade and slid into the gully where the patrol waited.

Morrison and two other men gathered close. Their beards and sheepskin cloaks were coated with dry snow, and they fingered their weapons nervously.

“Joe and Andy?” Gordon asked.

Leif, the big Swede, nodded left and right. “Pickets,” he said tersely.

Gordon nodded. “Good.” Under the big spruce he untied his pack and pulled out a thermos bottle. One of the privileges of rank; he didn’t have to ask permission to pour himself a cup of hot cider.

The others took their positions again, but kept glancing back, obviously wondering what “the Inspector” was up to this time. Morrison, a farmer who had barely escaped the rape of Greenleaf Town last September, eyed him with the simmering look of a man who had lost everything he loved, and was therefore no longer entirely of this world.

Gordon glanced at his watch — a beautiful, prewar chronometer provided by the technicians of Corvallis. Bokuto had had enough time. By now he would be circling back, covering his tracks.

“Tracy’s dead,” he told the others. Their faces blanched. Gordon went on, weighing their reactions. “I guess she was trying to cut around past the bastards and hold them for us. She didn’t ask my permission.” He shrugged. “They got her.”

The stunned expressions turned into a round of seething, guttural curses. Better, Gordon thought. But the Holnists won’t wait for you to remember to get mad next time, boys. They’ll kill you while you’re still deciding whether or not to be scared.

Well practiced by now at the art of lying, Gordon continued in a flat tone. “Five minutes quicker and we might have saved her. As it is, they had time to take souvenirs.”

This time anger battled revulsion on their faces. And burning shame overcame both. “Let’s go after ‘em!” Morrison urged. “They can’t be far ahead!” The others muttered agreement.

Not quickly enough, Gordon judged.

“No. If you boys were sluggish getting here, you’re much too slow to deal with the inevitable ambush. We’ll move up in skirmish line and retrieve Tracy’s body. Then we’re going home.”

One of the farmers — among the loudest demanding pursuit — showed immediate relief. The others, though, glared back at Gordon, hating him for his words.

Stand in line, boys, Gordon thought bitterly. If I were a real leader of men, Id have found a better way to put backbone into you than this,

He put away his thermos, not offering any cider to the others. The implication was clear — that they didn’t deserve any. “Hop to it,” he said as he slung his light pack over his shoulders.

They did move quickly this time, gathering their gear and scrambling out across the snow. Over to the left and right he saw Joe and Andy emerge from cover and take their places on the flanks. Holnists would never have been so visible, of course, but then, they had had a lot more practice than these reluctant soldiers.

Those with unlimbered rifles covered the knife men, who dashed ahead. Gordon easily kept up, just behind the skirmish line. In a minute he felt Bokuto fall in beside him, appearing as if out of nowhere from behind a tree. For all of their earnestness, none of the farmers had spotted him.

The scout’s expression was blank, but Gordon knew what he was feeling. He did not meet Bokuto’s eyes.

Ahead there came a sudden, angry exclamation. The lead man must have come upon Tracy’s mutilated body. “Imagine how they’d feel if they ever found out the truth about that,” Philip told Gordon softly. “Or if they ever discovered the real reason why most of your scouts are girls.”

Gordon shrugged. It had been a woman’s idea, but he had agreed to it. The guilt was his alone. So much guilt, in a cause he knew was hopeless.

And yet he could not let even the cynical Bokuto sense the full extent of the truth. For his sake Gordon maintained a front.

“You know the main reason,” he told his aide. “Underneath Dena’s theories and the promise of Cyclops, beneath it all you know what it’s for.”

Bokuto nodded, and for a brief moment there was something else in his voice. “For the Restored United States,” he said softly, almost reverently.

Lies within lies, Gordon thought. If you ever found out the truth, my friend . . ,

“For the Restored United States,” he agreed aloud. “Yeah.”

Together they moved ahead to watch over their army of frightened, but now angry men.

2

“It’s no good, Cyclops.”

Beyond the thick pane of glass, a pearly, opalescent eye stared back at him from a tall cylinder swaddled in cool fog. A double row of tiny, flickering lights rippled a complex pattern over and over again. This was Gordon’s ghost… the specter that had haunted him for months now … the only lie he had ever met to match his own damnable fraud.

It felt proper to do his thinking here in this darkened room. Out in the snows, on village stockades, in the lonely, dim forests, men and women were dying for the two of them — for what he, Gordon, supposedly represented, and for the machine on the other side of the glass.

For Cyclops and for the Restored United States.

Without those twin pillars of hope, the Willametters might well have collapsed by now. Corvallis would lie in ruins, its hoarded libraries, its fragile industry, its windmills and flickering electric lights, all vanished forever into the lowering dark age. The invaders from the Rogue River would have established fiefdoms up and down the valley› as they had done already in the area west of Eugene.

The farmers and aged techs were battling an enemy ten times more experienced and capable. But they fought anyway — not so much for themselves as for two symbols — for a gentle, wise machine that had really died many years ago, and for a long-vanished nation that existed now only in their imaginations.

The poor fools.

“It isn’t working,” Gordon told his peer, his fellow hoax. The row of lights replied by dancing the same complex pattern that burned in his dreams.

“This heavy winter has stopped the Holnists, for now. They’re kicking back in the towns they captured last autumn. But come springtime they’ll be back again, picking away at us, burning and killing until, one by one, the villages sue for ‘protection.’

“We try to fight. But each of those devils is a match for a dozen of our poor townsmen and farmers.”

Gordon slumped in a soft chair across from the thick sheet of glass. Even here, in the House of Cyclops, the smell of dust and age was heavy.

If we had time to train, to prepare… if only things had not been so peaceful here for so long.

If only we had a real leader.

Someone like George Powhatan.

Through the closed doors he could hear faint music. Somewhere in the building there lifted the light, moving strains of Pachelbel’s Canon — a twenty-year-old recording playing on a stereo.

He remembered weeping when he had first heard such music again. He had been so eager to think something brave and noble still existed in the world, so willing to believe he had found it here in Corvallis. But “Cyclops” turned out to be a hoax, much like his own myth of a “Restored United States.”

It still puzzled him that both fables thrived more than ever in the shadow of the survivalist invasion. They had grown amid the blood and terror into a something for which people were daily giving their lives.

“It’s just not working,” he told the ruined machine again, not expecting an answer. “Our people fight. They die. But the camouflaged bastards will be here by summer, no matter what we do.”

He listened to the sweet, sad music and wondered if, after Corvallis fell, anyone anywhere would listen to Pa-chelbel, ever again.

There was a faint tapping on the double door behind him. Gordon sat up. Other than himself, only the Servants of Cyclops were allowed in this building at night. “Yes,” he said.

A narrow trapezoid of light spilled in. The shadow of a tall, long-haired woman stretched across the carpeted floor.

Dena. If there was anyone he did not want to see right now …

Her voice was low, quick. “I’m sorry to disturb you, Gordon, but I thought you’d want to know at once. Johnny Stevens just rode in.”

Gordon stood up, his pulse rising. “My God, he got through!”

Dena nodded. “There was some trouble, but Johnny did get to Roseburg and back.”

“Men! Did he bring—” he stopped, seeing her shake her head. Hope crashed in the look in her eyes.

“Ten,” she said. “Gordon, he carried your message to the southerners, and they sent ten men.”

Strangely, her voice seemed to carry less dread than shame, as if everyone had let him down, somehow. Then something happened that he had never witnessed before. Her voice broke.

“Oh, Gordon. They aren’t even men! They’re boys, only boys!”

3

Dena had been taken in as a toddler by Joseph Lazarensky and the other surviving Corvallis techs, soon after the Doomwar, and was raised among the Servants of Cyclops. Because of this she had grown tall for a woman of these times, and was far better educated. It was one reason he had been first attracted to her.

Lately, though, Gordon found himself wishing she had read fewer books … or an awful lot more. She had developed a theory. Worse — she was almost fanatical about it, spreading it among her own coterie of impressionable young women and beyond.

Gordon was afraid that, inadvertently, he had played a role in this process. He was still unsure just why he had let Dena talk him into letting some of her girls join the Army as Scouts.

Young Tracy Smith’s body, sprawled upon the windblown drifts… tracks leading off into the blinding snow…

Wrapped in winter coats, he and Dena walked past the men guarding the entrance of the House of Cyclops, and stepped outside into the bitterly clear night. Dena said, softly, “If Johnny really has failed, it means we have only one chance left, Gordon.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.” He shook his head. “Not now.” It was cold and he was in a hurry to get to the Refectory to hear the Stevens lad’s report.

Dena grabbed his arm tightly and held on until he looked at her. “Gordon, you’ve got to believe that nobody’s more disappointed about this than I am. Do you think my girls and I wanted Johnny to fail? Do you think we’re that crazy?”

Gordon refrained from answering on first impulse. Earlier in the day he had passed a cluster of those recruits of Dena’s — young women from villages all over the northern Willamette Valley, girls with passionate voices and the fervid eyes of converts. They had been a strange sight, dressed in the buckskin of Army Scouts with knives sheathed at hip, wrist, and ankle, sitting in a circle with books open on their laps.

Susanna: No, no, Maria. You’ve got it mixed up. Lysistrata isn’t anything at all like the story of the Danaids! They were both wrong, but for different reasons.

Maria: I don’t get it. Because one group used sex and the other used swords?

Grace: No, that’s not it. It’s because both groups lacked a vision, an ideology …

The argument had halted abruptly when the women caught sight of Gordon. They scrambled to their feet, saluted, and watched him as he hurried uncomfortably by. All of them had that strange shining expression in their eyes… something that made him feel they were observing him as a prime specimen, a symbol, but of what he could not tell.

Tracy had had that look. Whatever it meant, he didn’t want any part of it. Gordon felt badly enough about men dying for his lies. But these women …

“No.” He shook his head as he answered Dena. “No, I don’t think you’re that crazy.”

She laughed, and squeezed his arm. “Good. I’ll settle for that much, for now.”

He knew, though, that that would not be the end of it.

Inside the Refectory, another guard took their coats. Dena at least had the wisdom to hang back then, as Gordon went on alone to hear the bad news.

Youth was a wonderful thing. Gordon remembered when he had been a teenager, just before the Doomwar. Back then, nothing short of a car wreck could have slowed him down.

Worse things had happened to some of the boys who had left southern Oregon with Johnny Stevens, nearly two weeks ago. Johnny himself must have been through hell.

He still looked seventeen though, sitting near the fire nursing a steaming mug of broth. The young man needed a hot bath and maybe forty hours’ sleep. His long, sandy hair and sparse beard covered innumerable small scratches, and only one part of his uniform was untattered — a neatly repaired emblem that bore the simple legend

“Gordon!” He grinned broadly and stood up.

“I prayed you would return safely,” Gordon said, embracing Johnny. He pushed aside the sheaf of dispatches the youth drew from his oil-skin pouch … for which Johnny doubtless would have given his life.

“I’ll look at those in a little while. Sit. Drink your soup.”

Gordon took a moment to glance over toward the big fireplace, where the new southern recruits were being tended by the Refectory staff. One boy’s arm was in a sling. Another, lying on a table, was having a scalp gash tended by Dr. Pilch, the Army’s physician.

The rest sipped from steaming mugs and stared at Gordon in frank curiosity. Obviously Johnny had been filling their ears with stories. They looked ready, eager to fight.

And not one of them was over sixteen.

So much for our last hope, Gordon thought.

People in the midsouthern part of Oregon had been fighting the Rogue River survivalists for nearly twenty years, and in the last ten or so had managed to beat the barbarians to a standstill. Unlike Gordon’s northerners, the ranchers and farmers down around Roseburg had not been weakened by years of peace. They were tough, and knew their enemy well.

They also had real leaders. There was one man Gordon had heard of who had driven back one Holnist raid after another in bloody disarray. No doubt that was why the enemy had come up with their new plan. In a bold stroke the Holnists had taken to sea, landing up the coast at Florence, far north of their traditional foes.

It was a brilliant move. And now there was nothing to stop them. The southern farmers had sent only ten boys to help. Ten boys.

The recruits stood up as Gordon approached. He went down the line asking each his name, his hometown. They shook his hand earnestly, and each addressed him as Mr. Inspector. No doubt they all hoped to earn the highest honor, to become postmen… officers of a nation they were too young ever to have known.

Neither that, nor the fact that the nation no longer existed, would keep them from dying for it, Gordon knew.

He noticed Phil Bokuto sitting in a corner, whittling. The black ex-Marine said nothing, but Gordon could tell he was sizing up the southerners already, and Gordon agreed. If any of them had any skill at all, they would be made scouts, whatever Dena and her women said.

Gordon sensed her watching from the back of the room. She had to know he would never agree to her new plan. Not while he was in command of the Army of the Lower Willamette.

Not while he had a breath left in his body.

He spent some minutes talking with the recruits. When he next looked back toward the door, Dena had left, perhaps to carry word to her cabal of would-be Amazons. Gordon was resigned to an inevitable confrontation.

Johnny Stevens fingered the oil-skin pouch as Gordon returned to the table. This time the young man would not be put off. He held out the packet he had carried so far.

“I’m sorry, Gordon.” He kept his voice low. “I did my best, but they just wouldn’t listen! I delivered your letters, but…” He shook his head.

Gordon leafed through replies to the entreaties for help he had written more than two months ago. “They all did want to join the postal network,” Johnny added with irony in his voice. “Even if we fall up here, I suppose there’ll still be a sliver of Oregon free and ready when the nation reaches here.”

On the yellowed envelopes Gordon recognized the names of towns all around Roseburg, some legendary even up here. He scanned some of the replies. They were courteous, curious, even enthusiastic about the stories of a reborn U.S. But there were no promises. And no troops.

“What about George Powhatan?”

Johnny shrugged. “All the other mayors and sheriffs and bosses down there look to him. They won’t do anything without he does it first.”

“I don’t see Powhatan’s reply.” He had looked at all of the letters.

Johnny shook his head. “Powhatan said he didn’t trust paper, Gordon. Anyway, his answer was only two words long. He asked me to tell it to you, direct.”

Johnny’s voice fell.

“He said to tell you — ‘I’m sorry.’”

4

Light shone under the door as Gordon returned to his room much later in the evening. His hand hesitated inches from the knob. He clearly remembered snuffing the candles earlier, before leaving to commune with Cyclops.

A soft, female scent solved the mystery before he had the door more than half open. He saw Dena on his bed, her legs under the covers. She wore a loose shirt of white homespun and held a book up close to the bedside candle.

“That’s bad for your eyes,” he said as he dropped Johnny’s dispatch pouch onto his desk.

Dena replied without looking up from her book. “I agree. May I remind you that you are the one who put your room back into the Stone Age, while the rest of this building is electrified. I suppose you prewar types still have it in your silly heads that candlelight is somehow romantic. Is that it?”

Gordon wasn’t exactly sure why he had taken down the electric bulbs in his room, and carefully packed them away. During his first few weeks in Corvallis he’d felt a lump of joy every time he had a chance to turn a switch and make electrons flow again, as they had in the days of his youth.

Now, in his own room at least, he could not bear the sweetness of such light.

Gordon poured water and then soda powder over his toothbrush. “You have a good forty-watt bulb in your own room/’ he reminded her. “You could do your reading there.”

Dena ignored the pointed remark and instead used the flat of her hand to slap the open book. “I don’t understand this!” she declared, exasperated. “According to this book, America was having a cultural renaissance, just before the Doomwar. Sure, there was Nathan Holn, preaching his mad doctrine of super machismo — and there were problems with the Slavic Mystics overseas — but for the most part it was a brilliant time! In art, music, science, everything seemed about to come together.

“And yet these surveys taken at the end of the century say that the majority of American women of that time still mistrusted technology!

“I can’t believe it! Is it true? Were they all idiots?” Gordon spat into the wash basin and looked up at the cover of the book. It bore a legend in bright holographic print:

He shook out his toothbrush. “It wasn’t that simple, Dena. Technology had been thought of as a male occupation for thousands of years. Even in the nineties, only a small fraction of the engineers and scientists were women, though there were more and more damn fine—”

“That’s irrelevant!” Dena interrupted. She shut the book and shook her light brown hair in emphasis. “What’s important is who benefits! Even if it was mostly a male art, technology helped women far more than men! Compare America of your time with the world today, and tell me I’m wrong.”

“The present is hell for women,” he agreed. Gordon picked up the pitcher and poured water over his washcloth. He felt very tired. “Life is far worse for them than it is even for men. It’s brutish, painful, and short. And to my shame I let you persuade me to put girls in the worst, most dangerous—”

Dena seemed determined not to let him finish a sentence. Or was it that she sensed his pain over young Tracy Smith’s death, and wanted to change the subject? “Fine!” she said. “Then what I want to know is why women were afraid of technology before the war — if this crazy book is right — when science had done so much for them. When the alternative was so terrible!”

Gordon rehung the damp cloth. He shook his head. It had all been so long ago. Since those days, in his travels, he had seen horrors that would leave Dena stunned speechless, if ever he managed to make himself speak of them.

She had been only an infant when civilization came crashing down. Except for the terrible days before her adoption into the House of Cyclops — no doubt by now long gone from her memory — she had grown up in perhaps the only place in the world today where a vestige of the old comforts still maintained. No wonder she had no gray hairs yet, at the ripe age of twenty-two.

“There are those who say technology was the very thing that wrecked civilization,” he suggested. He sat on the chair next to the bed and closed his eyes, hoping she might take a hint and leave in a little while. He spoke without moving. “Those people may have a point. The bombs and bugs, the Three-Year Winter, the ruined networks of an interdependent society…”

This time she did not interrupt. It was his own voice that caught of its own accord. He could not recite the litany aloud.

… hospitals… universities… restaurants… sleek airplanes that carried free citizens anywhere they might want to go …

… laughing, clear-eyed children, dancing in the spray of lawn sprinklers… pictures sent back from the moons of Jupiter and Neptune… dreams of the stars… and wonderful, wise machines who wove delicious puns and made us proud …

… knowledge …

“Anti-tech bullshit,” Dena said, dismissing his suggestion in two words. “It was people, not science, that wrecked the world. You know that, Gordon. It was certain types of people.”

Gordon lacked the will even to shrug. What did it matter now, anyway?

When she spoke again her voice was softer. “Come here. We’ll get you out of those sweaty clothes.”

Gordon started to protest. Tonight he only wanted to curl up and close out the world, to postpone tomorrow’s decisions in a drowning of unconsciousness. But Dena was strong and adamant. Her fingers worked his buttons and pulled him over to sag back against the pillows.

They carried her scent.

“I know why it all fell apart,” Dena declared as she worked. “The book was right! Women simply didn’t pay close enough attention. Feminism got sidetracked onto issues that were at best peripheral, and ignored the real problem, men.

“You fellows were doing your job well enough — shaping and making and building things. Males can be brilliant that way. But anyone with any sense can see that a quarter to half of you are also lunatics, rapists, and murderers. It was our job to keep an eye on you, to cultivate the best and cull the bastards.”

She nodded, completely satisfied with her logic. “We women are the ones who failed, who let it happen.”

Gordon muttered. “Dena, you are certifiably crazy, do you know that?” He already realized what she was driving at. This was just another attempt to twist him around to agreeing to another mad scheme to win the war. But this time it wasn’t going to work.

At the front of his mind he wished the would-be Amazon would simply go away and leave him alone. But her scent was inside his head. And even with his eyes closed he knew it when her homespun shirt fell soundlessly to the floor and she blew out the candle.

“Maybe I am crazy,” she said. “But I do know what I’m talking about.” The covers lifted and she slid alongside him. “I know it. It was our fault.”

The smooth stroke of her skin was like electricity along his flank. Gordon’s body seemed to rise even while, behind his eyelids, he tried to cling to his pride and the escape of sleep.

“But we women aren’t going to let it happen again,” Dena whispered. She nuzzled his neck and ran her fingertips along his shoulder and biceps. “We’ve learned about men — about the heroes and the bastards and how to tell the difference.

“And we’re learning about ourselves, too.”

Her skin was hot. Gordon’s arms wound around her and he pulled her down beside him.

“This time,” Dena sighed, “we’re going to make a difference.”

Gordon firmly covered her mouth with his, if for no other reason than to get her to stop talking at last.

5

“As young Mark here will demonstrate, even a child can use our new infrared night vision scope — combined with a laser spotter beam — to pick out a target in almost pitch darkness.”

The Willamette Valley Defense Council sat behind a long table, on the stage of the largest lecture hall on the old Oregon State University campus, watching as Peter Aage displayed the latest “secret weapon” to come out of the laboratories of the Servants of Cyclops.

Gordon could barely make out the lanky technician when the lights were turned off and the doors closed. But Aage’s voice was stentoriously clear. “Up at the back of the hall we have placed a mouse in a cage, to represent an enemy infiltrator. Mark now switches on the sniper scope.” There came a soft click in the darkness. “Now he scans for the heat radiation given off by the mouse…”

“I see it!” The child’s voice piped.

“Good boy. Now Mark swings the laser over to bear on the animal…”

“Got him!”

“…and once the beam is locked into place, our spotter changes laser frequencies so that a visible spot shows the rest of us — the mouse!”

Gordon peered at the dark area up at the back of the hall. Nothing had happened. There was still only a deep darkness.

Someone in the audience giggled.

“Maybe it got ate!” a voice cracked.

“Yeah. Hey, maybe you techs oughta tune that thing to look for a cat, instead!” Someone gave a rumbling “meow.”

Although the Council Chairman was banging his gavel, Gordon joined the wise guys down below in laughing out loud. He was tempted to interject a remark of his own, but everyone knew his voice. His role here was a somber one, and he would probably only hurt somebody’s feelings.

A bustle of activity over to the left told of a gathering of techs, whispering urgently together. Finally, someone called for the lights. The fluorescents flickered on and the members of the Defense Council blinked as their eyes readapted.

Mark Aage, the ten-year-old boy Gordon had rescued from survivalists in the ruins of Eugene some months ago, removed his night vision helmet and looked up. “I could see the mouse,” he insisted. “Real good. And I hit him with th’ laser beam. But it wouldn’t switch colors!”

Peter Aage looked embarrassed. The blond man wore the same black-trimmed white as the techs still huddled over the balky device. “It worked through fifty trials yesterday,” he explained. “Maybe the parametric converter got stuck. It does some times.

“Of course this is only a prototype, and nobody here in Oregon has tried to build anything like this in nearly twenty years. But we ought to have the bugs out of it before we go into production.”

Three different groups made up the Defense Council. The two men and a woman who were dressed like Peter, in Servants’ robes, nodded sympathetically. The rest of the councillors seemed less understanding.

Two men to Gordon’s right wore blue tunics and leather jackets similar to his own. On their sleeves were sewn patches depicting an eagle rising defiantly from a pyre, rimmed by the legend:

Gordon’s fellow “postmen” looked at each other, one rolling his eyes in disgust.

In the middle sat two women and three men, including the Council Chairman, representing the various regions in the alliance: counties once tied together by their reverence of Cyclops, more recently by a growing postal network, and now by their fear of a common foe. Their clothing was varied, but each wore an armband bearing a shiny emblem — a W and a V superimposed to stand for Willamette Valley. The chromed symbols were one item plentiful enough to be supplied the entire Army, salvaged from long-abandoned motorcars.

It was one of these civilian representatives who spoke first. “Just how many of these gadgets do you think you techs can put together by springtime?”

Peter thought. “Well, if we go all out, I guess we ought to have a dozen or so fixed up by the end of March.”

“And they’ll all need ‘lectricity, I suppose.”

“We’ll provide hand generators, of course. The entire kit ought to weigh no more than fifty pounds, all told.”

The farmers looked at each other. The woman representing the Cascade Indian communities seemed to speak for all of them.

“I’m sure these night scopes might do some good defending a few important sites against sneak attacks. But I want to know how they’ll help after the snow melts, when those Holnist dick cutters come down raiding and burning all our little hamlets and villages one by one. We can’t pull the whole population into Corvallis, you know. We’d starve in weeks.”

“Yeah,” another farmer added. “Where are all those super weapons you big domes were supposed to be comin’ up with? Have you guys switched Cyclops off, or what?”

It was the Servants’ turn to look at each other. Their leader, Dr. Taigher, started to protest.

“That’s not fair! We’ve hardly had any time. Cyclops was built for peaceful uses and has to reprogram himself to deal with things like war. Anyway, he can come up with great plans, but it’s fallible men who have to implement them!”

To Gordon it was a marvel. Here, in public, the man actually seemed hurt, defensive of his mechanical oracle… which the people of the valley still revered like great Oz. The representative of the northern townships shook his head, respectful but obstinate.

“Now, I’d be the last one to criticize Cyclops. I’m sure he’s crankin’ out the ideas as fast as he can. But I just can’t see where this night scope is any better than that balloon thing you keep talking about, or those gas bombs or those gimmicky little mines. There just aren’t enough of ‘em to do any damn good!

“And even if you made hundreds, thousands, they’d be great if we were fightin’ a real army, like in Vietnam or Kenya before the Doomtime. But they’re nearly useless against th’ damsurvivalists!”

Although he kept silent, Gordon couldn’t help agreeing. Dr. Taigher looked down at his hands. After sixteen years of peaceful, benign hoaxing — doling out a small stream of recycled Twentieth-Century wonders to keep the area farmers entranced — he and his technicians were being called on to deliver real miracles, at last. Fixing toys and wind-driven electric generators to impress the locals just wouldn’t suffice anymore.

The man sitting to Gordon’s right stirred. It was Eric Stevens, young Johnny Stevens’s grandfather. The old man wore the same uniform as Gordon, and represented the Upper Willamette region, those few towns just south of Eugene that had joined the alliance.

“So we’re back to square one,” Stevens said. “Cyclops’s gimmicks can help here and there. Mostly they’ll make a few strong points a bit stronger. But I think we’re all in agreement that that won’t do much more than inconvenience the enemy.

“Likewise Gordon tells us that we can’t expect help from the civilized East anywhere near in time. It’s a decade or more before the Restored U.S. will arrive out here in any force. We have to hold out at least that long, maybe, before real contact is established.”

The old man looked at the others fiercely. “There’s only one way to do that, and that’s to fight!” He pounded the table. “It all comes down to basics, once again. Men are what’ll make the difference.”

There was a mutter of agreement down the table. But Gordon was acutely aware of Dena, sitting in the seats below, waiting her chance to address the Council. She was shaking her head, and Gordon felt as if he could read her mind.

Not just men… she was thinking. The tall young woman wore the robes of a Servant, but Gordon knew where her real loyalties lay. She sat with three of her disciples — buckskin-clad female scouts in the Army of the Willamette — all members of her eccentric cabal.

Until now the Council would have rejected their scheme out of hand. The girls had barely been allowed to join the Army at all, and then only out of a latent sense of last-century feminism that lingered in this still-civilized val-ley.

But Gordon sensed a growing desperation at the table today. The news Johnny Stevens had brought home from the south had struck hard. Soon, when the snows stopped falling and the warm rains began again, the councillors would begin grasping at any plan. Any idiocy at all.

Gordon decided to enter this discussion before things got out of hand. The Chairman quickly deferred when Gordon lifted his hand.

“I’m sure the Council wishes to convey to Cyclops — and to his technicians — our gratitude for their unceasing efforts.” There was a mutter of agreement. Neither Taigher nor Peter Aage met his eyes.

“We have perhaps another six or eight weeks of bad weather on our side before we can look for a resumption of major activity by the enemy. After hearing the reports of the training and ordnance committees, it’s clear we have our work cut out for us.”

Indeed, Philip Bokuto’s summary had begun the morning’s litany of bad news. Gordon took a breath. “When the Holnist invasion began last summer, I told you all not to expect any help from the rest of the nation. Establishing a postal network, as I have been doing with your help, is only the first step in a long process until the continent can be reunited. For years to come, Oregon will stand essentially alone.”

He managed to lie by implication while speaking words that were the literal truth, a skill he had grown good at, if not proud of.

“I won’t mince words with you. The failure of the people of the Roseburg region to send more than a dribble of aid has been the worst blow of all. The southern folk have the experience, the skill, and most of all, the leadership we need. In my opinion, persuading them to help us must take priority over everything else.”

He paused.

“I shall go south personally, then, and try to get them to change their minds.”

That brought on an immediate tumult.

“Gordon, that’s crazy!”

“You can’t…”

“We need you here!”

He closed his eyes. In four months he had welded an alliance strong enough to delay and frustrate the invaders. He had forged it mostly through his skill as a storyteller, a posturer … a liar.

Gordon had no illusions that he was a real leader. It was his image that held the Army of the Willamette together… his legendary authority as the Inspector — a manifestation of the nation reborn.

A nation whose only remaining spark will soon be stone cold dead if something isn’t done damn quick. I can’t lead these people! They need a general! A warrior!

They need a man like George Powhatan.

He cut the uproar by holding up a hand.

“I am going. And I want you all to promise me you’ll not agree to any crazy, desperate enterprises while I’m away.” He looked directly at Dena. For an instant she met his gaze. But her lips were tight, and after a moment her eyes clouded and she jerked her head aside.

Is she concerned for me? Gordon wondered. Or for her plan?

“I’ll be back before spring,” he promised. “I’ll be back with help.”

Under his breath he added:

“Or I’ll be dead.”

6

It took three days to get ready. All that time Gordon chafed, wishing he could simply be off.

But it had turned into an expedition, the Council insisting that Bokuto and four other men accompany him at least as far as Cottage Grove. Johnny Stevens and one of the southern volunteers rode ahead to prepare the way. After all, it was only fitting that the Inspector be well heralded.

To Gordon it was all a lot of nonsense. An hour with Johnny, spent going over a prewar road map, would be enough to tell him how to get where he was going. One fast horse, and another for remount, would protect him as well as an entire squad.

Gordon particularly resented having to take Bokuto. The man was needed here. But the Council was adamant. It was accept their terms or not be allowed to go at all.

The party departed Corvallis early in the morning, their horses steaming in the bitter cold as they rode out past the old OSU athletic field. A column of marching recruits passed by. Muffled as they were, it was nonetheless easy to tell from their chanting voices that these were more of Dena’s girl soldiers.

Oh, I won’t marry a man who smokes,

Who scratches, belches, or bellows bad jokes,

I might not marry at all, at all,

I might not marry at all!

Oh I would rather just sit in the shade,

And be a choosy, picky old maid,

Oh I might not marry at all, at all,

I might not many at all!

The troop performed eyes right as the men rode by. Dena’s expression was masked by distance, but he felt her gaze, nonetheless.

Their farewell had been physically passionate and emotionally tense. Gordon wasn’t sure if even prewar America, with all its sexual variations, had ever come up with a name for the kind of relationship they had. It was a relief to be getting away from her. He knew he would miss her.

As the women’s voices faded behind him, Gordon’s throat was tight. He tried to pass it off partly as pride in their obvious courage. But it wasn’t possible to completely rule out dread.

The party rode hard past barren orchards and frosted countryside to make the stockade at Rowland by sundown. That was how close the lines were — one day’s journey from the fragile center of what passed for civilization. From here on it would be bandit country.

In Rowland they heard new rumors — that one contingent of Holnists had already established a small duchy in the ruins of Eugene. Refugees told of bands of the white-camouflaged barbarians roaming the countryside, burning small hamlets and dragging off food, women, slaves.

If it was true, Eugene presented a problem. They had to get by the ruined city.

Bokuto insisted on taking no chances. Gordon glowered and hardly spoke at all as the expedition wasted three days on frozen, buckled asphalt roads, skirting far to the east of Springfield then south again to arrive at last at the fortified town of Cottage Grove.

It had been only a short time since a few towns south of Eugene had been reunited with the more prosperous communities to the north. Now the invaders had nearly cut them off again.

On Gordon’s mental map of the once great state of Oregon, the entire eastern two-thirds were wilderness, high desert, ancient lava flows, and the mountainous ramparts of the Cascades.

The gray Pacific bounded the rain-shrouded coast range in the west.

The northern and southern edges of the state, too, were virtually impassible blotches. In the north the Columbia Valley still glowed from the bombs that had tortured Portland and shattered the great river’s dams.

The other blot spilled a hundred miles into the southern edge of the state from unknown California — and centered on the mountainous canyonland known as the Rogue.

Even in happier times the area around Medford had been known for a certain “strange” element. Before the Doomwar it had been estimated that the Rogue River Valley held more secret caches, more illegal machine guns, than anywhere outside the Everglades.

While civil authority was still struggling to hang on, sixteen years ago, it was the hyper-survivalist plague that struck the final blow, all over the civilized world. In southern Oregon the followers of Nathan Holn had been particularly violent. The fate of the poor citizens of that region was never known.

Between the desert and the sea, between radiation and the Holnist madmen, two small areas had come out of the Three-Year Winter with enough left to do a little more than scratch as animals… the Willamette in the north and the towns around Roseburg in the south. But in the beginning, the southernmost patch seemed surely doomed to slavery or worse at the hands of the new barbarians.

Then, somewhere between the Rogue and the Umpqua, something unexpected happened. The cancer had been arrested. The enemy had been stopped. To find out how was Gordon’s desperate hope, before the transplanted disease took hold fully in the vulnerable Willamette Valley.

On Gordon’s mental map an ugly red incursion had spread inland from the invader beachheads west of Eugene. And Cottage Grove was now nearly cut off.

They got their first glimpse of how bad things had become less than a mile out of town. The bodies of six men hung by the road, crucified on sagging telephone poles. The corpses had not been left unmarked.

“Cut them down,” he ordered. Gordon’s heart pounded and his mouth was dry, exactly the reaction the enemy had wanted from this exercise in calculated terror. Obviously the men of Cottage Grove weren’t even patrolling this far out anymore. That did not bode well.

An hour later he saw how much had changed since the last time he had visited the town. Watchtowers stood at the comers of new earthen ramparts. On the outside, prewar buildings had been razed to make a broad free-fire zone.

Population had swollen three-fold with refugees, most living in crowded shanties just inside the main gate. Children clung to the skirts of gaunt-faced women and stared as the riders from the north passed by. Men stood in clusters, warming their hands over open fires. The smoke mixed with a mist from unwashed bodies to make an unpleasant, aromatic fog.

Some of the men looked like pretty rough customers. Gordon wondered how many of them were Holnist infiltrators, only pretending to be refugees. It had happened before.

There was worse news. From the Town Council they learned that Mayor Peter Von Kleek had died in an ambush only days before, trying to lead a patrol to the aid of a besieged hamlet. The loss was incalculable and it struck Gordon hard. It also helped explain the mood of stunned silence on the cold streets.

He gave his best morale speech that evening, by torchlight in the crowded square. But this time the cheers of the crowd were tired and ragged. His address was interrupted twice by the faint, echoing crack of gunshots, carrying over the ramparts from the forest hills beyond.

“I don’t give ‘em two months, once the snow melts,” Bokuto whispered the next day as they rode out of Cottage Grove. “Two weeks, if the damsurvivalists try hard.”

Gordon did not have to reply. The town was the southern linchpin of the alliance. When it collapsed, there would be nothing to prevent the full force of the enemy from turning north to the heartland of the valley and Corvallis itself.

They rode south in a light flurry of snow, climbing the Coast Fork of the Willamette River toward its source. The dark green pine forest glistened under its white blanket. Here and there the bright red bark of myrtlewood stood out against the gray banks of the half-frozen stream.

Still, a few obstinate Mergansers fished the icy waters, trying in their own way to survive until spring.

South of the abandoned town of London, they left the diminished river. There followed a long, uninhabited stretch, featured only by the overgrown ruins of farms and an occasional tumbled-down gas station.

It had been a silent trek, so far. But now, at last, security lightened a bit as even the suspicious Philip Bokuto felt sure they were beyond the likely range of Holnist patrols. Talking was allowed. There was even laughter.

All of the men were over thirty, so they played the Remember Game… telling old-time jokes that would have no meaning at all to any of the new generation, and arguing lightheartedly over dimly recollected sports arcana. Gordon nearly fell out of his saddle laughing as Aaron Schimmel gave nasal impressions of popular television personalities of the nineties.

“It’s amazing how much of our youth gets stored away, ready to be recalled,” he commented to Philip. “They used to say one sign of getting old is when you remember things from twenty years ago easier than recent events.”

“Yeah,” Bokuto said, grinning, and his voice took on a querulous falsetto. “What was it we were just talking about?”

Gordon tapped the side of his head. “Eh? Can’t hear you, fellah. . … Too much rock ‘n’ roll, way back when.”

The men grew accustomed to the cold bite of wintry mornings and the soft pad of horses’ hooves on the grass-covered Interstate. The land had recovered — deer grazed these forests once again — but man would for a long time be too sparse to come back and retake all the abandoned villages.

The Coast Fork tributaries fell away at last. The travelers crossed a narrow line of hills and a day later found themselves by the banks of a new stream.

“The Umpqua,” their guide identified.

The northerners stared. This chilled torrent did not empty into the placid Willamette, and thence the great Columbia. Rather it carved its own untamed way westward toward the sea. “Welcome to sunny southern Oregon,” Bokuto muttered, subdued once again. The skies glowered down on them. Even the trees seemed wilder than up north.

The impression held as they began passing small, stockaded settlements once again. Silent, narrow-eyed men watched them from eyries on the hillsides, and let them pass on by without speaking. Word of their coming had preceded them, and it was clear that these people had nothing against postmen. But it was just as obvious they had little use for strangers.

Spending a night in the village of Sutherlin, Gordon saw up close how the southerners lived. Their homes were simple and spare, with few of the amenities still owned by those in the north. Hardly anyone did not bear visible scars from disease, malnutrition, overwork, or war.

Although they did not stare or say anything discourteous, it wasn’t hard to guess what the locals thought of Willametters.

Soft.

Their leaders expressed sympathy, but the hidden thought was obvious. If the Holnists are leaving the south, why should we interfere?

A day later, in the trading center of Roseburg, Gordon met with a committee of headmen from the surrounding area. Bullet-spalled windows looked out on scenes recalling the destructive seventeen-year war against the Rogue River barbarians. A blasted Denny’s, its yellow plastic sign canted and melted, showed where the enemy had been turned back from their deepest thrust, nearly a decade ago.

The wild survivalists had never penetrated as far since. Gordon felt certain the site for the meeting had been chosen to make a point.

The difference in mood and personality was unmistakable. There was little curiosity about the legendary Cyclops, or about the flickering rebirth of technology. Even tales of a nation rising from its ashes in the far lands to the east brought only mild interest. It was not that they doubted the stories. The men from Glide and Winston and Lookinglass simply did not seem to care all that much.

“This is a waste of time,” Philip told Gordon. “These hicks have been fighting their own little war for so long, they don’t give a damn about anything but day to day existence.”

Does that make them smarter, perhaps? Gordon wondered.

But Philip was right. It didn’t really matter what the bosses, mayors, sheriffs, or headmen thought anyway. They blustered, boasting of their autonomy, but it was obvious there was only one man whose opinion counted in these parts.

Two days later, Johnny Stevens rode in from the west on a steaming mount. He looked neither right nor left, but leapt from his horse to run to Gordon, breathless. This time the message he carried was three words long.

“Come on up.”

George Powhatan had agreed to hear their plea.

7

The Callahan Mountains bordered Camas Valley from Roseburg seventy miles to the sea. Below them, the main fork of the little Coquille River rushed westward under the shattered skeletons of broken bridges before meeting its north and south branches under the morning shadow of Sugarloaf Peak.

Here and there, along the north side of the valley, new fenceposts outlined pastures now covered with powdery snow. Chimney smoke rose from an occasional hilltop stockade.

On the south bank, however, there was nothing — only scorched, crumbled ruins slowly succumbing to the relentless blackberry thickets.

No fortifications overlooked the river fords. The travelers found the absence puzzling, for this valley was supposed to be where the defense against the Holnist enemy had dug in, and finally held.

Calvin Lewis tried to explain. The wiry, dark-eyed young man had guided Johnny Stevens since his earlier journey to south Oregon. Cal’s hand gestured left and right as he spoke.

“You don’t guard a river by buildin’ strong points,” he told them in the low, lazy, local drawl. “We protect the north bank by crossin’ over ourselves, from time to time, and by knowin’ everything that moves over on the other side.”

Philip Bokuto grunted, nodding in approval. Obviously, that was how he would have done it. Johnny Stevens made no comment, having heard it all before.

Gordon kept looking into the trees, wondering where the watchers were. Doubtless both sides had them out, and observed the party at intervals along the way. Occasionally he caught a glimpse of motion or a glint of what might have been a binoculars lens at some height. But the trackers were good. A damn sight better than anyone in the Army of the Willamette — excluding, perhaps, Phil Bokuto.

The war in the south did not seem to be one of armies or companies, of sieges and strategic moves. It was more as battles had been fought among the American Indians… with victory measured in quick, bloody raids, and in the number of scalps taken.

Survivalists were expert at this type of sneak and run warfare. Unaccustomed to such terror, the Willametters were their ideal prey.

Here, though, the farmers had managed to stop them. It was not his place to critique their tactics, so he let Bokuto ask most of the questions. Gordon knew that these were skills one acquired over a lifetime. He was here for one reason and one reason only — not to learn, but to persuade.

The view was spectacular as they climbed the old Sug-arloaf Mountain road, overlooking the merging forks of the Coquille. Snow-covered pine forests looked much as they must have before man came — as if the horror of the last seventeen winters was a matter of significance only to ephemeral creatures, irrelevant to the abiding Earth.

“Sometimes the bastards try to sneak by in big canoes,” Cal Lewis told them. “The south fork comes this way almost straight up from the Rogue country, and by the time it joins the center fork here, it’s movin’ pretty fast.”

The young man grinned. “But George always seems to know what they’re up to. George is always ready for ‘em.”

There it was again, that affection mixed with awe in mentioning the leader of the Camas Valley communities. Did the man eat nails for breakfast? Did he strike his enemies with lightning? After all the tales, Gordon was ready to believe anything about George Powhatan.

Bokuto’s broad nostrils flared as he suddenly reined back, stopping Gordon protectively with his left arm. The ex-Marine’s machine pistol was upraised in a blur.

“What is it, Phil?” Gordon drew his carbine as he scanned the woody slopes. The horses danced and snorted, sensing their riders’ agitation.

“It’s…” Bokuto sniffed. His eyes narrowed incredulously. “…I smell bear fat!”

Cal Lewis looked up into the trees beside the road and smiled. From just upslope there came bass, throaty laughter.

“Very good, my man! You have keen senses!”

As Gordon and the others peered, a large, shadowed figure shifted between the Douglas firs, outlined against the afternoon sun. Gordon felt a brief thrill as a part of him wondered, for just a moment, if it was a human being at all, or perhaps the legendary Sasquatch — Bigfoot of the Northwest.

Then the shape stepped forward and was revealed as a craggy-faced, middle-aged man whose shoulder-length gray hair was bound by a beaded headband. A homespun, short-sleeved shirt exposed thigh-like shoulders to the open air, but he was apparently unbothered by the cold.

“I am George Powhatan,” the grinning man said. “Welcome, gentlemen, to Sugarloaf Mountain.”

Gordon swallowed. What was it about the man’s voice that matched his physical appearance? It spoke of power so casually assumed that there was no need for bluster or display. Powhatan spread his hands. “Come on up, you with the sharp nose. And the rest of you with your fancy uniforms! You caught a whiff of bear fat? Well then, come look at my down-home weather station! You’ll see what the stuff is good for.”

The visitors relaxed and put away their weapons, put at ease by the ready laughter. No Sasquatch, Gordon told himself. Just’a hearty mountain man — nothing more.

He patted his skittish northern horse, and told himself that he, too, must have been reacting only to the smell of rendered bear.

8

The Squire of Sugarloaf Mountain used jars of bear fat to predict the weather, refining a traditional technique with meticulous, scientific record keeping. He bred cows to give better milk, and sheep for better wool His greenhouses, warmed by biogenerated methane, produced fresh vegetables the year round, even in the harshest winters.

George Powhatan took special pride in showing off his brewery, famed for the best beer in four counties.

The walls of the great lodge — the seat of his domain-featured finely woven hangings and the proudly displayed artwork of children. Gordon had expected to see weapons and trophies of battle, but there were none in sight anywhere. Indeed, once one passed within the high stockade and abatis, there were hardly any reminders of the long war at all.

That first day, Powhatan would not speak of business. He spent all of it showing his guests around and supervising preparations for a potlatch in their honor. Then, late in the afternoon, when they had been shown their rooms in order to rest, their host vanished.

“I thought I saw him head west,” Philip Bokuto answered, when Gordon asked. “Toward that bluff over there.”

Gordon thanked him and headed that way down a gravel-lined path through the trees. For hours Powhatan had skillfully avoided any serious discussion at all, always diverting them with something new to see, or with his apparently infinite store of country lore.

Tonight could be more of the same, with so many people coming to meet them. There might be no opportunity to get to business at all.

Of course he knew he shouldn’t be so impatient. But Gordon did not want to meet any more people. He wanted to talk to George Powhatan alone.

He found the tall man seated, facing the edge of a steep dropoff. Far below, waters roared with the meeting of the branches of the Coquille. To the west, the mountains of the Coast Range shimmered in purple haze that was rapidly darkening into an orange and ocher sunset. The ever-present clouds burned with a hundred autumnal shades.

George Powhatan sat zazen on a simple reed mat, his upturned hands resting on his knees. His expression was one Gordon had seen sometimes, before the war — one he had called, for want of another name, “The Smile of Buddha.”

Well, I’ll be… he thought. The last of the neohippies. Who would have believed it?

The mountain man’s sleeveless tunic showed a faded, blue tattoo on his massive shoulder — a powerful fist with one finger gently extended, upon which was delicately perched a dove. Below could clearly be read a single word, AIRBORNE.

The juxtaposition didn’t really surprise Gordon. Nor did the peaceful expression on Powhatan’s face. Somehow they seemed fitting.

He knew that courtesy didn’t require that he leave — only that he not interfere with the other man’s sitting. He quietly cleared a space a few feet to Powhatan’s right, and lowered himself to the ground facing the same direction. Gordon did not even try to get into a lotus. He hadn’t practiced the skill since he was seventeen. But he did sit, back straight, and tried to clear his mind as the colors shimmered and changed out in the direction of the sea.

At first all he could think of was how stiff he felt. How sore from riding and sleeping on hard, cold ground. Puffs of wind chilled him as the sun’s warmth hid behind the mountains. His thoughts were a churned antheap of sounds, concerns, memories.

But soon, without willing it at all, his eyelids began to grow heavy. They settled down, microscopically, and then stopped about halfway, unable to rise or fall any farther.

If he hadn’t known what was happening, he surely would have panicked. But it was only a mild meditation trance; he recognized the feelings. What the hell, he thought, and let it grow.

Was he doing this out of a sense of competition with Powhatan? Or to show the man that he wasn’t the only child of the renaissance who still remembered?

Or was it simply because he was tired, and the sunset was so beautiful?

Gordon felt a hollow sensation within him — as if a pocket of each lung were closed, and had been for a very long time. He tried to inhale hard and deep, but his pattern of breathing did not alter in the slightest — as if his body knew a wisdom that he did not. The calm that crossed his face with the numbing breeze seemed to trickle downward, touching his throat like a woman’s fingers, running across his tight shoulders and stroking his muscles until they relaxed of their own accord.

The colors… he thought, seeing only the sky. His heart rocked his body gently.

Had it been a lifetime since he last sat like this and let go? Or was it just that there was so much to let go of?

They are …

In an easing that could never have been forced, the locked sensation in his lungs seemed to let go, and he breathed. Stale air escaped, to be swept away by the western wind. His next breath tasted so sweet that it came back out as a sigh.

“The colors…”

There was motion to his left, a stirring. A quiet voice spoke. “I used to wonder if these sunsets were God’s last gift… something to match the rainbow he gave Noah, only this time it was his way of saying… ‘So long’… to us all.”

He did not answer Powhatan. There was no need.

“But after many years watching them, I guess the atmosphere is slowly cleansing itself. They aren’t quite what they were, just after the war.”

Gordon nodded. Why did people on the coast always assume they had a monopoly on sunsets? He remembered how it had been on the prairie — once the Three-Year Winter had passed and the skies were clear enough to see the sun at all. It had seemed as if Heaven had spilled its palette in a garish splash of hues, glorious, if deadly in their beauty.

Without turning to look, Gordon knew that Powhatan had not moved. The man sat in the same position, smiling softly.

“Once,” the gray-haired squire said, “perhaps ten years ago, I was sitting here, just as I am now, recovering from a recent wound and contemplating the sunset, when I caught sight of something, or somebody, moving by the river, down below. At first, I thought they were men. I pulled out of my meditation quickly and headed down for a closer look. And yet something told me that it was not the enemy, even from this range.

“I approached as quietly as I could, until I had come within a few hundred meters, and I focused the little monocular I used to keep in my pouch.

“They weren’t human beings at all. Imagine my surprise when I saw them strolling by the river bank, hand in hand, him helping her over stony banks, she murmuring softly as she carried something wrapped in a bundle.

“A pair of chimpanzees, for Heaven’s sake. Or maybe one was a chimp and the other a smaller ape or even a monkey. They vanished into the rain forest before I could be sure.”

For the first time in ten minutes, Gordon blinked. The image was so stark in his imagination, as if he were looking over Powhatan’s shoulder into the man’s memories from that long ago day. Why is he telling me this?

Powhatan continued, “They must have been set free from the Portland Zoo, along with those leopards running wild in the Cascades, now. That was the simplest explanation… that they had worked their way south for years, foraging and keeping out of sight, helping each other as they headed for what they must have hoped would be warmer territory.

“I realized that they were moving down the south branch of the Coquille, right into Holnist territory.

“What could I do? I thought about following. Trying to catch them, or at least divert them. But it was doubtful I’d be able to do anything more than frighten them. And anyway, if they had come so far, what need had they of me to warn them of the dangers of being around man?

“They had been caged, now they were free. Oh, I wasn’t foolish enough to conclude they were happier, but at least they weren’t subject to the will of others anymore.”

Powhatan’s voice was subdued. “That can be a precious thing, I know.”

There was another pause. “I let them go,” he said, finishing his story. “Often, as I sit here watching these humbling sunsets, I wonder what ever became of them.”

At last, Gordon’s eyes closed completely. The silence stretched on. He inhaled and with some effort made the heaviness fall aside. Powhatan had been trying to tell him something, with that strange story. He, in turn, had something to say to Powhatan.

“A duty to help others isn’t necessarily the same as being subject to the will of…”

He stopped — sensing that something had changed. His eyes opened, and when he turned, he saw that Powhatan was gone.

That evening people gathered from all over, more men and women than Gordon had thought still lived in the sparsely settled valley. For the visiting postman and his company, they put on a folk festival, of sorts. Children sang, and small troupes performed clever little skits.

Unlike in the north, where popular songs were often those remembered from the days of television and radio, here there were no fondly recalled commercial jingles, few rock and roll melodies retuned to banjo and acoustic guitar. Instead, the music went back to an older tradition.

The bearded men, the women in long dresses tending table, the singing by fire and lamplight — it might easily have been a gathering from nearly two centuries ago, back when this valley had first been settled by white men, coming together for company and to shake off the chill of winter.

Johnny Stevens represented the northerners during the songfest. He had brought his treasured guitar, and dazzled the people with his flair, setting them clapping and stamping their feet.

Normally, this would have been wonderful fun, and Gordon might gladly join in with offerings from his old repertoire — from back before he had hit on being a “postman,” when he had been a wandering minstrel trading songs and stories for meals halfway across the continent.

But he had listened to jazz and to Debussy the night before leaving Corvallis. He could not help wondering if it would turn out to have been the last time, ever.

Gordon knew what George Powhatan was trying to accomplish with this fete. He was putting off the confrontation… making the Willametters sit and stew… taking their measure.

Gordon’s impression back at the cliff had not changed. With his long locks and ready banter, Powhatan was the very image of the aging neohippy. The long-dead movement of the nineties seemed to fit the Squire’s style of leadership.

For instance, in the Camas Valley, clearly everyone was independent and equal.

Still, when George laughed, everyone else did. It seemed only natural. He gave no orders, no commands. It did not seem to occur to anyone that he would. Nothing happened in the lodge that displeased him enough to even raise an eyebrow.

In what had once been called the “soft” arts — those requiring neither metals nor electricity — these people were as advanced as the busy craftsmen of the Willamette. In some ways, perhaps, more so. That, no doubt, was why Powhatan had insisted on showing off his farm — to let the visitors see that they were not dealing with a society of throwbacks, but folk just as civilized in their own right. Part of Gordon’s plan was to prove that Powhatan was wrong.

At last it was time to bring out the “gifts from Cyclops” they had brought all this way.

The people watched wide-eyed as Johnny Stevens demonstrated a cartoon graphics game on a color display that had been lovingly repaired by the Corvallis techs. He gave them a video puppet show about a dinosaur and a robot. The images and bright sounds soon had everybody laughing in delight, the adults as much as the children.

And yet Gordon detected once again that uncanny something in their mood. The people cheered and laughed, but their applause seemed to be in honor of a clever trick. The machines had been brought to whet their appetites, to make them want high technology once again. But Gordon saw no covetous glow in the watchers’ eyes, no rekindled urge to own such wonders again.

Some of the men did sit up when Philip Bokuto’s turn came. The black ex-Marine stepped up with a battered leather valise, and from it he drew out a few of the new weapons.

He showed the gas bombs and mines, and told them how they might be used to hold strong points against attack. Philip described the night vision scopes, soon to be available from the workshops of Cyclops. A ripple of uncertainty moved from man to man — battle-scarred veterans of a long war against a terrible enemy. While Bokuto talked, people kept glancing at the big man in the corner.

Powhatan did not say or do anything explicit. The picture of politeness, he only yawned once, demurely covering his mouth. He smiled indulgently as each weapon was displayed, and Gordon was awed to see how, with body language alone, the man seemed to say that these presents were quaint, perhaps even clever… but really quite irrelevant.

The bastard. But Gordon really didn’t know how to fight back. Soon, that smile had spread around the room, and he knew that it was time to cut their losses.

Dena had pestered him to bring along her own list of presents. Needles and thread, base-neutral soap, samples of that new line of semicotton underwear they had started weaving again up in Salem, just before the invasion.

“They’ll convert the women, Gordon. They’ll do more good than all your whiz-bangs and razzle-dazzles. Trust me”

The last time he had trusted Dena, though, it had led to a slender, tragic corpse under a snow-blown cedar. By that time Gordon had had quite enough of Dena’s version of pseudofeminism.

Would it have been any worse than this, though? Was I hasty? Perhaps we should have brought along some of the more mundane things — tooth powder and sanitary napkins, pottery, and new linen sheets.

He shook his head; that was all water under a dam. He gave Bokuto the signal to wrap it up and reached for his third ace. He drew forth his saddlebag and handed it to Johnny Stevens.

A hush fell over the crowd. Gordon and Powhatan watched each other across the room as Johnny stood — proud in his uniform — in front of the flickering fire. He riffled through envelopes and began reading names aloud in order to deliver the mail.

All through the still-civilized parts of the Willamette, the call had gone out. Anyone who had ever known anybody in the south had been asked to write to them. Most of the intended recipients would turn out to be long dead, of course. But a few letters would certainly arrive in the right hands, or those of relatives. Old connections might be resumed, the theory went. The plea for help would have to become something less abstract, more personal.

It had been a good idea, but once again the reaction was not as expected. The pile of undeliverable letters grew. And as Johnny called out name after name without reply, Gordon saw that a different lesson was being brought home.

The people of the Camas were being reminded of how many had died. Of how few had survived the bitter times.

And now that peace seemed to be theirs at last, it was easy to see how they resented being asked to sacrifice again, for near strangers who had had it easier for years. Those few who did acknowledge letters seemed to take them reluctantly, folding them away without reading them.

George Powhatan looked surprised when his own name was called. But his flicker of puzzlement vanished quickly as he shrugged and took a package and a slim envelope.

Things were not going well at all, Gordon realized. Johnny finished his task and gave his leader a look that seemed to say, What now?

Gordon had only one card left — the one he hated most of all — and the one he knew best how to use.

Damn. But there’s no other choice.

He stepped in front of the fireplace, facing the silent people with the warmth to his back, and took a deep breath. Then he started right in… lying to them.

“I have come to tell you a story,” he said. “I want to tell you about a country of once upon a time. It may sound familiar, since many of you were born there. But the story ought to amaze you, nevertheless. I know it always amazes me.

“It’s a strange tale, of a nation of a quarter of a billion people who once filled the sky and even the spaces between the planets with their voices, just as you good folk filled this fine hall with your songs tonight.

“They were a strong people, the strongest the world had ever known. But that hardly seemed to matter to them. When they had a chance to conquer the entire world, they simply ignored the opportunity, as if there were far more interesting things to do than that.

“They were wonderfully crazy. They laughed and they built things and they argued… They loved to accuse themselves of terrible crimes as a people: a strange practice until you understood that its hidden purpose was to make themselves better — better to each other — better to the Earth — better than prior generations of Man,

“You all know that to look up at the moon at night, or at Mars, is to see the footprints where a few of those people walked. Some of you remember sitting in your homes and watching those footprints being made.”

For the first time that evening, Gordon felt he had their full attention. He saw eyes flicker to the emblems on his uniform, and to the bright brass rider on the peak of his postman’s cap.

“The people of that nation were crazy all right,” he told them. “But they were crazy in a manner that was magnificent… in a way that had never been seen before.”

One man’s scarred face stood out from the crowd. Gordon recognized old, never-healed knife wounds. He looked at that man as he spoke.

“Today we live by killing,” he said. “But in that fabled land, for the most part, people settled their differences peaceably.”

He turned to the tired women, slumped on benches from butchering and cleaning and laying out food for so many people. Their lined faces were flickering crags in the firelight. Several showed telltale scars from the Pox, or the Big Mumps, wartime diseases or merely old plagues that had returned in new force with the end of sanitation.

“They took for granted a clean, healthy life,” he said, reminding them. “A life far gentler, far sweeter than any that had gone before.

“Or, perhaps,” he added softly, “sweeter than any that would ever come again.”

The people were looking at him now, rather than at Powhatan. And it wasn’t just in older faces that eyes glistened wetly. A boy hardly over fifteen sobbed out loud.

Gordon spread his arms. “What were those people like, those Americans? You remember how they criticized themselves, often rightly. They were arrogant, argumentative, often shortsighted …

“But they did not deserve what happened to them!

“They had begun to wield godlike powers — to create thinking machines, to give their bodies new strengths, and to mold Life itself — but it was not pride in their accomplishments that struck them down.”

He shook his head. “I cannot believe that! It cannot be true that we were punished for dreaming, for reaching out.”

His balled fist clenched whitely. “It was not fated that men and women should always live like animals! Or that they should have learned so much in vain—”

In complete surprise, Gordon felt his voice break, mid-sentence. It failed him just as it was time to begin telling the lie… to give Powhatan a story of his own.

But his heart pounded and his mouth was suddenly nearly too dry to speak. He blinked. What was happening? Tell them, he thought. Tell them now!

“In the east…” Gordon began, aware of Bokuto and Stevens staring at him.

“In the east, across the mountains and deserts, rising from that great nation’s ashes…”

He stopped again, breathing hard. It felt as if a hand were clutching his heart, threatening to squeeze if he continued. Something was preventing him from launching into his well-practiced pitch, his fairy tale.

All around they waited for him. He had them in his palm. They were ripe!

That was when Gordon glanced at George Powhatan’s visage, craggy and impervious as a cliff face in the flickering firelight. And he knew then, in a sudden insight, what the problem was.

For the first time he was trying to pass his myth of a “Restored United States” before a man who was clearly much, much stronger than he.

Gordon knew that it wasn’t only a story’s believability that mattered, but the personality behind it as well. He might convince them all of the existence of a resurgent nation, somewhere over the eastern mountains, and it wouldn’t make a whit of difference in the end… not if George Powhatan could make it all moot with a smile, an indulgent nod, a yawn.

It would become a thing of bygone days. An anachronism. Irrelevant.

Gordon closed his half-open mouth. Rows of faces looked up at him expectantly. But he shook his head, abandoning the fable, and with it, the lost fight.

“The east is far away,” he said softly.

Then he lifted his head and some strength returned to his voice. “What is going on back there may affect us all, if we live long enough. But in the meantime there is the problem of Oregon — Oregon, standing by herself, as if she alone were America still.

“The nation I spoke of smolders under the ashes, ready, if you help, to cast its light again. To lead a silent world back to hope. Believe it, and the future will be decided here, tonight. For if America ever stood for anything, it was people being at their best when times were worst — and helping one another when it counted most.”

Gordon turned and looked straight at George Powha-tan. His voice dropped low, but it no longer felt weak.

“And if you have forgotten that, if none of what I have said to you matters, then all I can say is that I pity you.”

The moment seemed to hang, a supersaturated solution in time. Powhatan sat still, like the carved image of a troubled patriarch. The tendons in his neck stood out starkly, like knotty ropes.

Whatever conflict went on in the man’s mind, though, was over in seconds. Powhatan smiled sadly.

“I understand,” he said. “And you may well be right, Mr. Inspector. I can think of no easy answer except to say that most of us have served and served until there is simply nothing more for us to give. You may ask for volunteers again, of course. I won’t forbid anyone. But I doubt many will go.”

He shook his head. “I hope you will believe it when we say that we are sorry. We are, deeply.

“But you are asking too much. We have earned our peace. It is, by now, more precious than honor, or even pity.”

All this way, Gordon thought. We came all this way, for nothing.

Powhatan lifted two sheets of paper from his lap and held them out to Gordon.

“This is the letter I received from Corvallis this evening — carried all the way in your pouch. But although it had my name on the envelope, it was not intended for me. It was meant to be delivered to you… says so on the top of the first page.

“I hope you will forgive me, though, if I took the liberty of reading the text.”

There was sympathy in the man’s voice as Gordon reached out to take the yellowed pages. For the first time Gordon heard Powhatan repeat himself, too softly for the others to overhear.

“I am sorry,” the man said. “I am also quite amazed.”

9

“Stop!… Oh, God… Don’t!”

When Gordon came abruptly awake, he was already on his feet. The remains of the evening campfire smoldered inches from his bare toes. His arms were outstretched, as if in the midst of grabbing after something, or someone.

Swaying, he felt the edges of his dream unravel into the forest night on all sides. His ghost had visited him again, only moments ago in his sleep. The voice of the dead machine had spoken to him across the decades, accusing with growing impatience.

… Who will take responsibility… for these foolish children… ?

Rows of running lights, and a voice of sad, cryogenic wisdom, despairing of the endless failings of living human beings.

“Gordon? What’s going on?”

Johnny Stevens sat up in his bedroll, rubbing his eyes. It was very dim under the overcast sky, with only the fading embers and a few wan stars here and there, twinkling faintly through the overhanging branches.

Gordon shook his head, partly in order to hide his shivers. “I just thought I’d check on the horses and the pickets,” he said. “Go back to sleep, Johnny.”

The young postman nodded. “Okay. Tell Philip and Cal to wake me when it’s time for watch change.” The boy lay back down and pulled the bedroll over his shoulders. “Be careful, Gordon.”

Soon his breath was whistling softly again, his face smooth and careless. The hard life seemed to suit Johnny, something that never ceased to amaze Gordon. After seventeen years of it, he still wasn’t reconciled with having to live this way. Every so often — even as he approached middle age — he still imagined he was going to wake up in his student dormitory room, back in Minnesota, and all the dirt and death and madness would turn out to be a nightmare, an alternate world that had never been.

Near the coals, a row of lumpy bedrolls lay close together for shared warmth. There were eight figures there besides Johnny — Aaron Schimmel plus all the fighters they had been able to recruit from the Camas Valley.

Four of the volunteers were boys, hardly old enough to shave. The others were all old men.

Gordon did not want to think, but memories crowded in as he pulled on his boots and woolen poncho.

For all of his near-total victory, George Powhatan had seemed quite eager to see Gordon and his band depart. The visitors made the patriarch of Sugarloaf Mountain uncomfortable. His domain would not be the same until they left.

It turned out that Dena had sent two packages — one more in addition to her crazy letter. In the other she had managed to convey gifts to the women of Powhatan’s household in spite of Gordon, by dispatching them via “U.S. Mail.” Pathetic little packets of soap and needles and underwear were accompanied by tiny mimeographed pamphlets. There were vials of pills and ointments Gordon recognized from the Corvallis central pharmacy. And he had seen copies of her letter to himself.

The whole thing had Powhatan mystified. At least as much as Gordon’s speech, Dena’s letter had made the man ill at ease.

“I don’t understand,” he had said, straddling a chair while Gordon hurriedly packed to leave. “How could an obviously intelligent young woman have come up with such a bizarre set of ideas? Hasn’t anybody cared enough to knock some sense into her? What does she and her crew of little girls think they can accomplish against Holnists?”

Gordon had not bothered to answer, knowing it would irritate Powhatan. Anyway, he was in a hurry. He still hoped there was time to get back and stop the Scouts before they performed the worst idiocy since the Doomwar itself.

Powhatan kept probing, though. The man sounded genuinely puzzled. And he was unaccustomed to being put off. At last, Gordon found himself actually speaking put in Dena’s defense,

“What kind of ‘common sense’ would you have had someone knock into her, George? The logic of the colorless drabs who cook meals for complacent men, here in the Camas? Or perhaps she should speak only when spoken to, like those poor women who live as cattle down in the Rogue, and now in Eugene?

“They may be wrong. They may even be crazy. But at least Dena and her comrades care about something bigger than themselves, and have the guts to fight for it. Do you, George? Do you?”

Powhatan had looked down at the floor. Gordon barely heard his reply. “Where is it written that one should only care about big things? I fought for big things, long ago… for issues, principles, a country. Where are all of them now?”

The steely gray eyes were narrow and sad when next he looked up at Gordon. “I found out something, you know. I discovered that the big things don’t love you back. They take and take, and never give in return. They’ll drain your blood, your soul, if you let them, and never let go.

“I lost my wife, my son, while away battling for big things. They needed me, but I had to go off trying to save the world.” Powhatan snorted at the last phrase. “Today I fight for my people, for my farm — for smaller things — things I can hold”

Gordon had watched Powhatan’s large, hard-calloused hand flex, as if straining to grasp life itself. It had never occurred to him until then that this man feared anything in the world, but there it was, visible for only the briefest moment.

A certain rare kind of terror in his eyes.

At the door to Gordon’s guest room, Powhatan had turned, his chiseled face outlined in the flickering light from the tallow candles. “Me, I think I know why your crazy woman is pulling whatever mad stunt she’s cooked up, and it doesn’t have to do with that grand ‘heroes and villains’ bullshit she wrote about.

“The other women, they’re just following her because she’s a natural leader in desperate times. She has them swept along in her wake, poor girls. But she…” Powhatan shook his head. “She thinks she’s doing it for the big reasons, but one of the small things lies beneath it all.

“She’s doing it out of love, Mr. Inspector. I think she’s doing it for you alone.”

They had looked at each other, that last time, and Gordon realized then that Powhatan was paying the visiting postman back with interest for the unasked-for guilt he had been delivered.

Gordon had nodded to the Squire of Sugarloaf Mountain, accepting the burden — postage prepaid.

Leaving the warmth of the coals, Gordon felt his way over to the horses and carefully checked their lines. All seemed well, though the animals were a little jumpy still. After all, they had been driven hard today. The ruins of the prewar town of Remote lay behind them, and the old Bear Creek Campgrounds. If the band really flew tomorrow, Calvin Lewis figured they might make Roseburg by a little after nightfall.

Powhatan had been generous with provisions for their journey. He had given of the best of his stables. Anything the northerners wanted, they could have. Except for George Powhatan, of course.

As Gordon patted the last nickering horse, and stepped out under the trees, a part of him was still unable to believe they had come all this way for nothing. Failure tasted bitter in his mouth.

… rippling lights… the voice of a long-dead machine …

Gordon smiled without amusement.

“If I could have infected him with your ghost, Cyclops, don’t you think I would have? But you don’t reach a man like him as simply as that! He’s made of stronger stuff than I was.”

… Who will take responsibility… ?

“I don’t know!” he whispered urgently, silently, at the darkness all around him. “I don’t even care anymore!”

He was maybe forty feet from the campsite now. It occurred to him that he could just keep on going should he choose. If he disappeared into the forest, right now, he would still be better off than sixteen months ago when, robbed and injured, he had stumbled upon that ancient, wrecked postal jeep in a high, dusty forest.

He had taken the uniform and bag only in order to survive, but something had latched onto him that strange night, the first of many ghosts.

At little Pine View the unsought legend began — this Johnny Appleseed “postman” nonsense that had long since gone completely out of control, thrusting upon him unasked-for responsibility for an entire civilization. Since then his life had no longer been his own. But now, he realized, he could change that!

Just walk away, he thought.

Gordon felt his way in the pitch blackness, using the one forest skill that had never failed him, his sense of path and direction. He walked surefootedly, sensing where the tree roots and little gullies had to be, using the logic of one who had come to know woodlands well.

It required a special, remote kind of concentration to move this way in the near-total darkness… a zenlike exercise that was elevating — as detached but more active than that sunset meditation two days ago, overlooking the roaring confluence of the Coquille. As he walked, he seemed to rise higher and higher above his troubles.

Who needed eyes to see, or ears to hear? Only the touch of the wind guided him. That and the scent of the red cedars, and the faint salt traces of the distant, expectant sea.

Just walk away.… Joyfully, he realized that he had found a counter incantation! One that matched and neutralized the rippling of little lights in his mind. An antidote to ghosts.

He hardly felt the ground, striding through the darkness, repeating it with growing enthusiasm. Just walk away!

The exalted journey ended abruptly, jarringly, as he tripped over something completely unexpected — something that did not belong there on the forest floor.

He tumbled to the ground with barely a sound, a puff of snow-covered pine needles breaking his fall. Gordon scrambled around, but couldn’t make out the obstacle that had brought him down. It was soft and yielding to the touch, though. His hand came away sticky and warm.

Gordon’s pupils should not have been able to dilate wider, but sudden fear did the trick. He bent forward and the face of a dead man came into sudden focus.

Young Cal Lewis stared back at him in a frozen expression of surprise. The boy’s throat gaped, expertly slit.

Gordon scuttled backward until he came up against a nearby tree trunk. In a daze he realized he hadn’t even taken his belt knife or pouch with him. Somehow, perhaps because of the spell of George Powhatan’s mountain, he had let that deadly sliver of complacency slip in. Perhaps his last mistake.

In the dark, he could hear the rushing waters of the middle fork of the Coquille. Beyond lay the enemy’s home ground. But right now they were on this side of the river.

The ambushers don’t know I’m out here, he realized. It didn’t seem possible after the way he had been moving around, mumbling to himself obliviously, but perhaps there had been a gap in their closing circle.

Perhaps they had been preoccupied.

Gordon understood the principles well. First you take out the pickets, then, in a rush, swoop down on the unsuspecting encampment. Those boys and old men sleeping by the campfire did not have George Powhatan with them, now. They never should have left their mountain.

Gordon hunched down. The raiders would never find him here in the roots of this tree. Not so long as he kept quiet. When the butchery began, while the Holnists were busy collecting trophies, he could be off into the deep woods without a trace.

Dena had said there were two kinds of men who counted… and those in between who did not matter. Fine, he thought. Let me be one of those in between. Living beats “mattering” any day.

He hunkered down, trying to keep as silent as possible.

A twig snapped — barely the tiniest click over in the direction of the camp. A minute later a “night bird” cooed, a little farther away. The rendition was understated and completely believable.

Now that he was listening, Gordon found he could actually follow the deadly encirclement as it closed. His own tree had already been left behind, and was well outside the narrowing ring of death.

Quiet, he told himself. Wait it out.

He tried not to envision the stealthy enemy, their camouflage-painted faces grinning in anticipation as they stroked their oiled knives.

Don’t think about it! He closed his eyes hard, trying to listen only to his pounding heart while he fingered a thin chain around his neck. He had worn it, along with the little keepsake Abby had given him, ever since leaving Pine View.

That’s right, think about Abby. He tried to picture her, smiling and cheerful and loving, but the inner commentary kept on running within his head.

The Holnists would want to make sure the pickets were all finished before they closed the trap. If they had not yet taken care of the other man on watch — Philip Bokuto — they would do it soon.

He made a fist around Abby’s present. The chain made a taut line across the back of his neck.

Bokuto… guarding his commander even when he disapproved… doing Gordon’s dirty work for him under the falling snow… serving with all his heart for the sake of a myth… for a nation that had died and would never, ever rise again.

Bokuto …

For the second time that night Gordon found himself on his feet without remembering how it had happened. There was no volition at all, only a shrill screech that pierced the night as he blew hard on Abby’s whistle, then his own voice, screaming through cupped hands.

“Philip! Watch out!”

… out!… out!… out!… The echo rolled forth, seeming to stun the forest.

For a long second the stillness held, then six sharp concussions shook the air in rapid succession, and suddenly, shouting filled the night.

Gordon blinked. Whatever had come over him, it was too late to turn back now. He had to play it out. “They walked right into our trap!” he shouted as loud as he could. “George says he’ll take them on the river side! Phil, cover the right!”

What an ad lib performance! Even though his words were probably lost amid the outcries and gunfire and yelped survivalist battle calls, the commotion had to be setting their plans off. Gordon kept shouting and blowing the whistle to try to confuse the ambushers.

Men screamed and dark shapes rolled through the undergrowth in desperate struggle. Flames rose high from the stirred campfire, casting grappling silhouettes through the trees.

If the fight was still going on after two full minutes, Gordon knew it meant there was a chance after all. He shouted as if he were directing a whole company of reinforcements.

“Don’t let the bastards get back across the river!” he cried. And indeed, there did seem to be some hurried motion off that way. He ducked from tree to tree toward the fighting — even though he had no weapon. “Keep them bottled in! Don’t let ‘em—”

That was when a shape emerged suddenly from around the very next tree. Gordon stopped only ten feet from the jagged patterns of black and white that made the painted face so hard to focus on. A slashlike mouth split into a broad, gap-toothed grin. The body below the unfriendly smile was immense.

“Pretty noisy feller,” the survivalist commented.

“Oughta quiet up for a bit, right, Nate?” The dark eyes flickered over Gordon’s shoulder.

For the briefest instant Gordon started to turn, even as he told himself that it was all a trick — that the Holnist was probably alone.

His attention only wavered for a moment, but it was long enough. The camouflaged figure moved like a blur. One blow from a ham-sized, rock-hard fist sent Gordon spinning to the ground.

The world was a whirl of stars and pain. How could anyone move so fast? he wondered with unravelling shreds of consciousness.

It was Gordon’s last clear thought.

10

A frigid, misty rain turned the slushy trail into a quagmire that sucked at the prisoners’ shuffling feet. With hanging heads they fought the mud, struggling to keep up with the horses and riders. After three days, all that mattered in the captives’ narrow world was keeping up, and avoiding any more beatings.

The victors looked hardly less fearsome now, without their war paint. In winter camouflage parkas they rode imperiously on their seized Camas Valley mounts. The rearmost and youngest Holnist — with only one gold ring hanging from his ear — occasionally turned back to snarl at the prisoners and tug the tether around the lead man’s wrist, causing the whole line to stumble ahead faster for a time.

Everywhere along the trail lay trash left by successive waves of refugees. After countless small battles and massacres, the strongest held the high ground in this territory. This was the paradise of Nathan Holn.

Several times the caravan passed through small clusters of hovels, filthy warrens made from bits and scraps of prewar salvage. At every ragged hamlet a population of wretched creatures stumbled out to pay their respects, eyes downcast. Now and then an unlucky one cowered under a few lazy blows meted out for no apparent reason by those on horseback.

Only after the warriors had passed did the villagers look up again. Their tired eyes held no hatred, only a glittering hunger as they watched the receding rumps of the well-fed horses.

The serfs hardly glanced at the new prisoners. Their lack of attention was returned.

Walking filled the daylight hours with few breaks. At night the captives were separated to prevent talking. Each was tied to a hobbled horse for warmth without a fire. Then, with dawn and a meal of weak gruel, the long walk began anew.

By the fourth day two of the prisoners had died. Two more who were too weak to continue were left with the Holnist baron of a tiny, scrabble-backed manor — replacements for serfs whose crucified corpses still hung over the trail as object lessons to anyone contemplating disobedience.

All this time, Gordon saw little more than the back of the man in front of him. He grew to hate the prisoner tethered behind his waist. Each time that one stumbled, the sudden jerk tore into the tortured muscles of his arms and sides. Still, he scarcely noticed by the time that man also disappeared, leaving only two captives to follow the plodding horses. He envied the one who had been left behind, not even knowing if the fellow had died.

The journey seemed interminable. He had awakened into it days ago and had hardly risen to complete awareness since. In spite of the agony, a small part of him welcomed the stupor and monotony. No ghosts bothered him here. No complexities and no guilt. It was all quite straightforward actually. One put a foot in front of the other, ate what little one was given, and kept one’s head down.

At some point he noticed that his fellow prisoner was helping him, taking part of his weight on his shoulders as they fought the mud. Semiconsciously, he wondered why anyone would do such a thing.

At last there came a time when he blinked and saw that his hands had been untied. They stood next to a wood-sided structure, offset some distance from a maze of teetering, noisome shanties. From not far away came the roar of rushing water.

“Welcome to Agness Town,” one of the harsh-voiced men said. Someone planted a hand in his back and pushed. There was laughter as the prisoners tumbled inside to collapse on a filthy straw tick.

Neither bothered to move from the exact spot where he rolled to a stop. It was a chance to sleep. For the moment, that was all that mattered. Again, there were no dreams — only occasional twitching as abused muscles misfired through the rest of the day, the night, and all the following morning.

Gordon awakened only when bright sunlight rose high enough to shine painfully through his eyelids. He rolled aside, groaning. A shadow passed over him, and his eyelids fluttered like rusty shutters.

It took a few seconds to focus. Recognition came some time after that. The first thing that occurred to him was that there was a tooth missing from the familiar smile.

“Johnny,” he croaked.

The young man’s face was blistered and bruised. Still, John Stevens grinned cheerfully, gap and all “Hullo, Gordon. Welcome back among the unlucky — the living.”

He helped Gordon sit up and steadied a ladle of cool river water for him to sip. Meanwhile, Johnny talked. “There’s food over in the corner. And I overheard a guard say something about gettin’ us cleaned up sometime soon. So maybe there’s a reason our balls aren’t already hanging from some asshole’s trophy belt. I guess they brought us all this way to meet some bigshot.”

Johnny laughed, dryly. “Just you wait, Gordon. We’ll talk rings around the guy, whoever it is. Maybe we can offer to make him a postmaster, or something. Is that what you meant when you lectured me about the importance of learning practical politics?”

Gordon was too weak to strangle Johnny for his incredible, jarring cheerfulness. He tried to smile back instead, but it only made his cracked lips hurt.

A scuttling movement in the corner opposite them showed that they were not alone. There were three other prisoners in the shed with them — filthy, wild-eyed scarecrows who had obviously been here a long time. They stared back with saucer eyes, obviously long past human.

“Did… did anyone get away from the ambush?” It had been Gordon’s first lucid opportunity to ask.

“I think so. Your warning must have buggered the bastards’ timing. It gave us a chance to make a pretty good fight of it. I’m sure we took out a couple of them before they swamped us.” Johnny’s eyes shone. If anything, the boy’s admiration seemed to have increased. Gordon looked away. He didn’t want praise for his behavior that night.

“I’m pretty sure I killed the sonovabitch who smashed my guitar. Another one—”

“What about Phil Bokuto?” Gordon interrupted.

Johnny shook his head. “I don’t know, Gordon. I saw no black ears or… other things… among the ‘trophies’ the crumbs collected. Maybe he made it.”

Gordon sagged back against the slats of their pen. The sound of rushing water, a roar that had been with them all night, came from the other side. He turned and peered through the gaps in the rough planks.

About twenty feet away was the edge of a bluff. Beyond it, through ragged shreds of drifting fog, he could see the heavily forested wall of a canyon cut by a narrow, swift stream.

Johnny seemed to read his thoughts. For the first time the young man’s voice was low, serious.

“That’s right, Gordon. We’re right in the heart of it. That down there’s the bitch herself. The bloody Rogue.”

11

The mist and icy drizzle turned back into flurries of snow-flakes for the next week. With food and rest, the two prisoners slowly regained some strength. For company they had only each other. Neither their guards nor their fellow captives would speak to them in more than monosyllables.

Still, it wasn’t hard to learn some things about life in the Holnist realm. Their meals were brought by silent, cowering drudges from the nearby shanty town. The only figures they saw who weren’t emaciated — besides the earringed survivalists themselves — were the women who served the Holnists’ pleasure. And even those worked by day: drawing water from the frigid stream or currying the stable of well-fed horses.

The pattern seemed well established, as if this was an accustomed way of life. And yet Gordon became convinced that the neofeudal community was in a state of flux.

“They’re preparing for a big move,” he told Johnny as they watched a caravan arrive one afternoon. Still more frightened serfs trudged into Agness, pulling carts and setting up camp in the swelling warren. Obviously, this little valley could not hold such a population for very long.

“They’re using this place as a staging area.”

Johnny suggested, “That mob of people might offer us an advantage, if we find a way to bust out of here.”

“Hmm,” Gordon answered. But he didn’t hold much hope for aid from any of the slaves out there. They’d had any spirit beaten out of them, and had problems enough of their own.

One day, after the noon meal, Gordon and Johnny were ordered to step out of their pen and strip naked. A pair of shabby, silent women came and gathered up their clothes. While the northerners’ backs were turned, buckets of cold river water were thrown on them. Gordon and Johnny gasped and sputtered. The guards all laughed, but the women’s eyes did not even flicker as they left, heads bowed.

The Holnists — dressed in green and black camouflage, their ears arrayed with golden rings — competed in lazy knife practice, flipping their blades in quick, underhand arcs. The two northerners clutched greasy blankets in front of a small fire, trying to stay warm.

That evening their cleaned and patched clothes were returned to them. This time one of the women actually looked up briefly, giving Gordon a chance to see her face. She might have been twenty, though her lined eyes looked far older. Her brown hair was streaked with gray. She glanced at Gordon for only a moment as he dressed. But when he ventured a smile, she turned quickly and fled without looking back.

The sunset meal was better fare than the usual sour gruel. There were scraps of something like venison amidst the parched corn. Perhaps it was horsemeat.

Johnny dared fate by asking for seconds. The other prisoners blinked in amazement and cringed even farther into their corners. One of the silent guards growled and took their plates away. But to their surprise he returned with another helping for each of them.

It was full dark when three Holn warriors in floppy berets marched up behind a stoop-shouldered servant bearing a torch. “Come along,” the leader told them. “The General wants to see you.”

Gordon looked at Johnny, standing proud again in his uniform. The young man’s eyes were confident. After all, they seemed to say, what did these jerks have that could compare with Gordon’s authority as an official of the Restored Republic?

Gordon remembered how the boy had half-carried him during the long journey south from the Coquille. He had little heart anymore for pretenses, but for Johnny’s sake he would try the old scam one more time.

“All right, postman,” he told his young friend. Gordon winked. “Neither sleet, nor hail, nor gloom of night…”

Johnny grinned back. “Through bandit’s hell, through firefight…”

They turned together and left the jail shed ahead of their guards.

12

“Welcome, gentlemen”

The first thing Gordon noticed was the crackling fireplace. The snug pre-Doom ranger station was stone sealed and warm. He had almost forgotten what the sensation felt like.

Second noticed was the rustle of silk as a long-legged blond rose from a cushion by the hearth. The girl was a striking contrast to nearly all the other women they had seen here — clean, erect, laden down with glittering stones that would have brought a fortune before the war.

Nevertheless, her eyes were lined, and she looked at the two northerners as one might regard creatures from the far side of the moon. Silently, she stood up and exited the room through a beaded curtain.

“I said welcome, gentlemen. Welcome to the Free Realm.”

At last Gordon turned and took notice of a thin, bald man with a neatly trimmed beard, who rose to greet them from a cluttered desk. Four gold rings glittered from one earlobe, and three from the other — symbols of rank. He approached holding out his hand.

“Colonel Charles Westin Bezoar, at your service, formerly of the bar of the State of Oregon and Republican Commissioner for Jackson County. I presently have the honor of being judge advocate of the American Liberation Army.”

Gordon arched an eyebrow, ignoring the outstretched hand. “There have been a lot of ‘armies’ since the Fall. Which one did you say you were with, again?”

Bezoar smiled and let his hand drop casually. “I realize that some apply other names to us. Let’s defer that for now and just say I serve as aide-de-camp to General Volsci Macklin, who is your host. The General will be joining us shortly. Meanwhile, may I offer you some of our hill country sour mash?” He lifted a cut glass decanter from the carved oak sideboard. “Whatever you may have heard about our rough life up here, I believe you’ll find we’ve refined at least a few of the old arts.”

Gordon shook his head. Johnny looked over the man’s head. Bezoar shrugged.

“No? Pity. Perhaps some other time. I hope you don’t mind if I do indulge.” Bezoar poured himself a glass of brown liquor and gestured to two chairs near the fire. “Please, gentlemen, you must still be exhausted from your journey. Be comfortable. There is much I’d like to know.

“For instance, Mr. Inspector, how are things back in the states to the east, beyond the deserts and the mountains?”

Gordon did not even blink as he sat down. So the “Liberation Army” had an intelligence service. It was no surprise that Bezoar knew who they were… or at least who north Oregon thought Gordon was.

“Things are much the same as in the west, Mr. Bezoar. People try to live, and rebuild where they can.”

In his mind Gordon was trying to recreate the dreamscape — the fantasy of St. Paul City, of Odessa and Green Bay — images of living cities leading a bold, resurgent nation — not the windswept ghost towns he remembered, picked clean by ragged bands of wary survivors.

He spoke for the cities as he had dreamed them. His voice was stern. “In some places citizens have been luckier than in others. They’ve regained much, and hope for more for their children. In other areas, the recovery has been… hindered. Some of those who nearly ruined our nation, a generation ago, still wreak havoc, still harry our couriers and disrupt communications.

“And as I speak of it” Gordon continued coldly. “I cannot put off any longer asking you just what you’ve done with the mail your men have stolen from the United States.”

Bezoar put on wire-rimmed glasses and lifted a thick folder from the table next to him. “You are speaking of these letters, I presume?” He opened the packet. Dozens of grayed and yellowed sheets rustled dryly. “You see? I do not bother to deny it. I believe we should be open and frank with each other, if anything is to come of this meeting.

“Yes, a team of our advance scouts did find a pack horse in the ruins of Eugene — yours, I imagine — whose saddlebags contained this very strange cargo. Ironically, I believe that at the very moment our scouts were seizing these samples, you were killing two of their comrades elsewhere in the deserted town.”

Bezoar raised one hand before Gordon could speak. “Have no fear of retribution. Our Holnist philosophy does not believe in it. You defeated two survivalists in a straight fight. That makes you a peer in our eyes. Why do you think you were treated as men after you were captured, and not gelded as serfs or as sheep?”

Bezoar smiled amiably, but Gordon seethed inside. In Eugene last spring he had seen what Holnists did to the bodies of the harmless gleaners they had mowed down. He remembered young Mark Aage’s mother, who saved his life and her son’s with one heroic gesture. Bezoar clearly meant what he said, yet to Gordon the logic was sickly, bitterly ironic.

The bald survivalist spread his hands. “We admit to taking your mail, Mr. Inspector. Can we mitigate our guilt by claiming ignorance? After all, until these letters reached me here, none of us had ever heard of the Restored United States!

“Imagine our amazement when we saw such things… letters carried many miles from town to town, warrants for new postmasters, and these,” he raised a sheaf of official-looking flyers. “These declarations from the provisional government in St. Paul City.”

The words were conciliatory and sounded earnest. But there was something in the man’s tone of voice.… He could not quite pin it down, but whatever it was disturbed Gordon.

“You know of it now,” he pointed out. “And yet you continue. Two of our postal couriers have disappeared without a trace since your invasion of the north. Ybur ‘American Liberation Army’ has been at war with the United States for many months now, Colonel Bezoar. And that cannot be mitigated by ignorance.”

The lies came easily, now. In essence, after all, the words were true.

Ever since those few weeks, right after the big war had been “won” — when the U.S. still had a government, and food and materiel still moved protected on the highways — the real problem had not been the broken enemies without so much as the chaos within.

Grain rotted in bulging silos while farmers were felled by simple, innoculable plagues. Vaccine was available in the cities, where starvation reaped multitudes. More people died due to the breakdown and lawlessness — the shattered web of commerce and mutual assistance — than from all the bombs and germs, or even from the three-year dusk.

It had been men like this who delivered the coup de grace, who ended any chance those millions had.

“Perhaps, perhaps.” Bezoar tossed back a shot of the pungent liquor. He smiled. “Then again, many have claimed to be the true inheritors of American sovereignty. So your ‘Restored United States’ controls large areas and populations, and so its leaders include a few old farts who once bought elected office with cash and a television smile. Does that mean that it is the true America?”

For an instant the calm, reasonable visage seemed to crack, and Gordon saw the fanatic within, unchanged except perhaps by deepening over the years. Gordon had heard that tone… long ago in the radio voice of Nathan Holn — before the survivalist “saint” was hanged — and spoken by his followers ever since.

It was the same solipsistic philosophy of ego that had stoked the rage of Nazism, of Stalinism. Hegel, Horbiger, Holn — the roots were identical. Derived truth, smug and certain, never to be tested in the light of reality.

In North America, Holnism had been a nut fringe during a time of otherwise unparalleled brilliance, a throwback to the egoistic eighties. But another version of the same evil — “Slavic Mysticism” — actually seized power in the other hemisphere. That madness finally plunged the world into the Doomwar.

Gordon smiled with grim severity. “Who can say what is legitimate, after all these years? But one thing is certain, Bezoar, the ‘true spirit of America’ seems to have become a passion for hunting down Holnists. Your cult of the strong is loathed — not only in the Restored U.S. but almost everywhere I’ve traveled. Feuding villages will join forces on rumor of sighting one of your bands. Any man caught wearing surplus camouflage is hanged on sight.”

He knew he had scored, then. The earringed officer’s nostrils flared. “That’s Colonel Bezoar, if you please. And I’ll wager there are some areas where that’s not true, Mr. Inspector. Florida, perhaps? And Alaska?”

Gordon shrugged. Both states had gone silent the day after the first bombs fell. There had been other places too, such as southern Oregon, where the militia had not dared enter, even in strength.

Bezoar stood up and walked to a bookshelf. He pulled down a thick volume. “Have you ever actually read Nathan Holn?” he asked, his voice amiable once again. Gordon shook his head.

“But, sir!” Bezoar protested. “How can you know your enemy without learning how he thinks? Please, take this copy of Lost Empire… Holn’s own biography of that great man, Aaron Burr. It just might change your mind.

“You know I do believe, Mr. Krantz, that you are the sort of man who could become a Holnist. Often the strong need only have their eyes opened to see that they have been cozened by the propaganda of the weak, that they could have the world, if only they stretched out their hands and took it.”

Gordon suppressed his initial response, and picked up the proffered book instead. It probably wouldn’t be wise to provoke the man too far. After all, he could probably have both northerners killed with a word.

“All right. It might help pass the time while you arrange our transportation back to the Willamette,” he said, quite calmly.

“Yeah,” Johnny Stevens contributed, speaking for the first time. “And while you’re at it, how about paying the extra postage it’ll take to finish delivering that stolen mail we’re going to take back with us?”

Bezoar returned Johnny’s cold smile, but before he could reply, they heard footsteps on the wooden porch of the former ranger station. The door opened and in stepped three bearded men dressed in the traditional green and black fatigues.

One of them, the shortest but easily the most imposing figure, wore only a single earring. But it glittered with large, inset gems.

“Gentlemen,” Bezoar said, standing up. “Allow me to introduce Brigadier General Macklin, U.S. Army Reserve, uniter of the Oregon clans of Holn and commander of the American Forces of Liberation.”

Gordon stood up numbly. For a moment he could only stare. The General and his two aides were among the strangest-looking human beings he had ever seen.

There was nothing unusual about their beards or earrings… or the short string of shriveled “trophies” that each wore as ceremonial decorations. But all three men were eerily scarred, wherever their uniforms permitted view of their necks and arms. And under the faint lines left by some long ago surgery, the muscles and tendons seemed to bulge and knot oddly.

It was weird, and yet it occurred to Gordon that he might have seen something akin to it, sometime in the past. He could not quite remember where or when though.

Had these men suffered from one of the postwar plagues? Supermumps, perhaps? Or some sort of thyroid hypertrophy?

In a sudden recognition Gordon knew that the biggest of Macklin’s aides was the pig-ugly raider who had struck so quickly on the night of the ambush by the banks of the Co-qunie, knocking him to the ground with the punch of a bull before he could even begin to move.

None of the men was of the newer generation of feudal-survivalists, young toughs recruited all through southern Oregon. Like Bezoar, the newcomers were clearly old enough to have been adults before the Doomwar. Time did not seem to have slowed them down any, however. General Macklin moved with a catlike quickness that was intimidating to watch. He wasted no time in pleasantries. With a jerk of his head and a glance at Johnny, he made his wishes known to Bezoar.

Bezoar pressed his fingers together. “Ah. Yes. Mr. Stevens, if you would please accompany these gentlemen back to your, um, quarters? It appears the General wants to speak with your superior alone.”

Johnny looked at Gordon. Obviously, if given the word, he would fight.

Gordon quailed inwardly under the burden of that expression in the youth’s eyes. Such devotion was something he had never sought, not from anybody. “Go on back, John,” he told his young friend. “I’ll join you later.”

The two hulking aides accompanied Johnny outside. When the door had closed, and the footsteps receded into the night, Gordon turned to face the commander of the united Holnists. In his heart he felt a powerful determination. There was no regret, no fear of hypocrisy here. If it was in him to lie well enough to bluff these bastards, he would do it. He felt full within his postman’s uniform, and got ready to give the best performance of his life.

“Save it,” Macklin snapped.

The dark-bearded man pointed a long, powerful hand at him. “One word of that crap about a ‘Restored United States’ out of you, and I’ll stuff your ‘uniform’ down your frigging throat!”

Gordon blinked. He glanced at Bezoar and saw that the man was grinning.

“I am afraid I’ve been less than open with you, Mr. Inspecter.” There was a clear lilt of sarcasm this time in Be-zoar’s last two words. The Holnist Colonel bent to open a drawer in his desk. “When first I heard of you I immediately sent out parties to trace your route backwards. By the way, you are right that Holnism is not very popular, in certain areas. At least not yet. Two of the teams never returned.”

General Macklin snapped his fingers. “Don’t drag this out, Bezoar. I’m busy. Call the jerk in.”

Bezoar nodded quickly and reached back to pull a cord on the wall, leaving Gordon wondering what he had been trying to find in the drawer.

“Anyway, one of our scouting parties did encounter a band of kindred spirits in the Cascades, in a pass north of Crater Lake. There were misunderstandings, most of the poor locals died, I’m afraid. But we did manage to persuade a survivor—”

There were footsteps, then the beaded curtain parted. The svelte blond woman held it open and watched coldly as a battered-looking man with a bandaged head stumbled into the room. He wore a uniform of patched, faded camouflage, a belt knife, and a single, tiny earring. His eyes were downcast. This survivalist was one who seemed less than joyous at being here.

“I would introduce you to our latest recruit, Mr. Inspector,” Bezoar said. “But I believe you two already know each other.”

Gordon shook his head, thoroughly lost. What was going on here? To his knowledge he had never seen this man before in his life!

Bezoar prodded the drooping newcomer, who looked up, then. “I cannot say for certain,” the unsteady Holn recruit said, peering at Gordon. “He might be the one. It was a passing event, really, of so… so little consequence at the time…”

Gordon’s fists balled suddenly. That voice.

“It’s you, you bastard!”

The jaunty Alpine cap was gone, but now Gordon recognized the salt-and-pepper sideburns, the sallow complexion. Roger Septien seemed far less serene than when Gordon had last seen the man — on the slopes of a death-dry mountainside, helping to carry away nearly everything Gordon owned in the world, blithely, sarcastically, leaving him to almost certain death.

Bezoar nodded in satisfaction. “You may go, Private Septien. I believe your officer has suitable duty arranged for you, tonight.”

The former robber and onetime stockbroker nodded wearily. He didn’t even glance again at Gordon, but passed outside without another word.

Gordon realized that he had blundered in reacting so quickly. He should have ignored the man, pretended he didn’t recognize him.

But then, would it have made a difference? Macklin had already seemed so sure…

“Get on with it,” the General told his aide.

Bezoar reached into the drawer again, and this time drew forth a small, ragged, black notebook. He held it out to Gordon. “Do you recognize this? It has your name in it.”

Gordon blinked. Of course it was his journal, stolen — along with all his goods — by Septien and the other robbers only hours before he stumbled onto the ruined postal van and started down the road to his new career.

At the time he had mourned its loss, for the diary detailed his travels ever since leaving Minnesota, seventeen years ago… his careful observations of life in postholocaust America.

Now, though, the slim volume was the last thing on Earth he would ever have wanted to see. He sat down heavily, suddenly weary, aware of how completely the devils had been toying with him. The lie had caught up with him, at last.

In all the pages of that little journal, there wasn’t a single word about postmen, or recovery, or any “Restored United States.”

There was only the truth.

13

Lost Empire by NATHAN HOLN

Today, as we approach the end of the Twentieth Century, the great struggles of our time are said to be between the so-called Left and so-called Right — those great behemoths of a contrived, fictitious political spectrum. Very few people seem to be aware that these so-called opposites are, in reality, two faces to the same sick beast. There is a widespread blindness, which keeps millions from seeing how they have been fooled by this fabrication.

But it was not always so. Nor will it always be.

In other tracts I have spoken of other types of systems — of the honor of medieval Japan, of the glorious, wild American Indians, and of shining Europe during the period effete scholars today call its “Dark Age.”

One thing history tells us, over and over again. Throughout all eras, some have commanded, while others have obeyed. It is a pattern of loyalty and power that is both honorable and natural. Feudalism has always been our way, as a species, ever since we foraged in wild bands and screamed defiance at each other from opposing hilltops.

That is, it was always our way until men were perverted, the strong sapped by the whimpering propaganda of the weak.

Think back to how things were when the Nineteenth Century was just dawning in America, Back then the opportunity stood stark and clear to reverse the sick trends of the so-called “Enlightenment.” The victorious Revolutionary War soldiers had expelled English decadence from most of the continent. The frontier lay open, and a rough spirit of individualism reigned supreme throughout the newborn nation.

Aaron Burr knew this when he set out to seize the new territories west of the original thirteen colonies. His dream was that of all natural males — to dominate, to conquer, to win an empire!

What would the world have been like if he had won? Could he have prevented the rise of those mis-born twin obscenities, socialism and capitalism?

Who can tell? I will tell you, though, what I believe. I believe the Era of Greatness was at hand, ready to be born!

But Burr was brought down before he could accomplish much more than the punishment of that tool of traitors, Alexander Hamilton. Superficially, his chief foe would seem to have been Jefferson, the conniver who robbed him of the Presidency. But in fact the conspiracy went far, far deeper than that.

That evil genius, Benjamin Franklin, was at the heart of it — that cabal to kill the Empire before it could be born. His instruments were many, too many even for a man as strong as Burr to fight.

And the chiefest of those instruments was the Order of Cincinnatus…

Gordon slammed the book facedown on the ground beside the straw tick. How could anyone have read crap like this, let alone published it?

It was still light enough to read after the evening meal, and the sun was out for the first time in days. Nevertheless, a crawling chill ran up and down his back as the mad dialectic echoed within his head.

That evil genius, Benjamin Franklin …

Nathan Holn did make a good case that “Poor Richard” had been much more than a clever printer-philosopher, who played ambassador in between scientific experiments and wenching. If even a small fraction of Holn’s citations were correct, Franklin certainly was at the center of unusual events. Something odd did happen after the Revolutionary War, something that somehow thwarted the men like Aaron Burr, and brought about the nation Gordon had known.

But beyond that, Gordon was impressed mostly with the magnitude of Nathan Holn’s madness. Bezoar and Macklin had to be completely crazy if they thought these ravings would convert him to their plans!

The book had, in fact, just the opposite effect. If a volcano were to go off right here in Agness, he felt it would be worth it to know this nest of snakes would go to Hell along with him.

Not far away, a baby was crying. Gordon looked up but could barely make out shabby figures moving beyond the nearby copse of alders. New captives had been brought in last night. They moaned and huddled close around the small fire they had been allowed, not rating even the shelter of a roofed pen.

Gordon and Johnny could be joining those miserable serfs soon if Macklin did not get the answer he wanted. The “General” was losing patience. After all, from Macklin’s point of view his offer to Gordon must have seemed quite reasonable.

Gordon had only a little while left in which to make up his mind. The Holnist offensive would begin again with the first thaw, with or without his compromised cooperation.

He did not see where he had much choice.

Unbidden, a memory of Dena came to mind. He found himself missing her, wondering if she was still alive, wishing he could touch her and be with her… pestering questions and all.

By now, of course, it was probably too late to stop whatever crazy scheme she and her followers had dreamed up. Gordon frankly wondered why Macklin had not already gloated to him, over yet another disaster to the hapless Army of the Willamette.

Perhaps it’s only a matter of time, he thought gloomily.

Johnny finished rinsing out the nub-worn toothbrush that was their sole common possession. He sat next to Gordon and picked up the Burr biography. The youth read for a while, then looked up, clearly puzzled.

“I know our school at Cottage Grove wasn’t much by prewar standards, Gordon, but Grandfather used to give me lots to read, and talked to me a lot about history and stuff. Even I know this guy Holn is making up half this junk.

“How did he get away with pushing a book like this? How is it anyone ever believed him?”

Gordon shrugged. “It was called ‘the Big Lie’ technique, Johnny. Just sound like you know what you’re talking about — as if you’re citing real facts. Talk very fast. Weave your lies into the shape of a conspiracy theory and repeat your assertions over and over again. Those who want an excuse to hate or blame — those with big but weak egos — will leap at a simple, neat explanation for the way the world is, Those types will never call you on the facts.

“Hitler did it brilliantly. So did the Mystic of Leningrad. Holn was just another master of the Big Lie.”

And what about you? Gordon asked himself. Did he, inventor of the fable of the “Restored United States,” collaborator in the hoax of Cyclops, have any right to cast stones?

Johnny read on for a few minutes more. Then he tapped the book again. “Who was this Cincinnatus guy, then? Did Holn make him up too?”

Gordon lay back on the straw. His eyes closed. “No. If I remember right, he was a great general of ancient Rome, back in the days of the Republic. According to the legend, he got sick of fighting one day, and retired from the army to farm his land in peace.

“One day though, emissaries came out from the city to see him. Rome’s armies were in rout; their leaders had proven incompetent. Disaster seemed inevitable.

“The delegation approached Cincinnatus — they found him behind his plow — and they pleaded with him to take command of the last defense.”

“What did Cincinnatus tell the guys from Rome?”

“Oh, well,” Gordon yawned. “He agreed all right. Reluctantly. He rallied the Romans, beat the invaders, and drove them all the way back to their own city. It was a great victory.”

“I’ll bet they made him king or something,” Johnny suggested.

Gordon shook his head. “The army wanted to. The people, also… But Cincinnatus told them all they could go chase themselves. He returned to his farm, and never left it again.”

Johnny scratched his head. “But… why did he do that? I don’t get it.”

Gordon did though. He understood the story completely, now that he thought about it. He had had the reasons explained to him, not so very long ago, and he would never forget.

“Gordon?”

He did not answer. Instead he turned over at a faint sound from outside. Looking through the slats, he saw a party of men approaching up the trail from the river docks. A boat had just come ashore.

Johnny seemed not to have noticed yet. He persisted in his questions, as he had ever since they had recovered from their capture. Like Dena, the youth never seemed willing to lose any opportunity to try to improve his education.

“Rome was a long time before the American Revolution wasn’t it, Gordon? Well then, what was this—” He picked up the book again. “—this Order of Cincinnatus Holn talks about here?”

Gordon watched the procession approach the jail pen. Two serfs labored with a stretcher, guarded by khaki-clad survivalist soldiers.

“George Washington founded the Order of the Cincinnati after the Revolutionary War,” he said absently. “His former officers were the chief members—”

He stopped as their guard stepped over and unlocked the gate. They both watched as the serfs entered and laid their burden on the straw. They and their escorts turned and left without another word.

“He’s hurt pretty bad,” Johnny said when they hurried over to examine the injured man. “This compress hasn’t been changed in days.”

Gordon had seen plenty of wounded men in the years since his sophomore class had been drafted into the militia. He had learned a lot of bush diagnosis while serving with Lieutenant Van’s platoon. A glance told him that this fellow’s bullet wounds might have healed, eventually, with proper treatment. But the smell of death now hung over the still figure. It rose from limbs suppurated with marks of torture.

“I hope he lied to them,” Johnny muttered as he labored to make the dying prisoner comfortable. Gordon helped fit their blankets around him. He was puzzled over where the fellow had come from. He did not look like a Willametter. And unlike most Camas and Roseburg men, he had obviously been clean shaven until recently. In spite of his ill treatment, there was too much meat on his bones for him to have been a serf.

Gordon stopped suddenly, rocking back on his haunches. His eyes closed and opened. He stared. “Johnny, look here. Is this what I think it is?”

Johnny peered where he pointed, then pulled back the blankets for a better view. “Well I’ll be… Gordon, this looks like a uniform!”

Gordon nodded. A uniform… and clearly one of postwar making. It was colored and cut totally unlike anything the Holnists wore, or for that matter, anything either of them had ever seen in Oregon before.

On one shoulder, the dying man wore a patch embroidered with a symbol Gordon recognized from long ago… a brown grizzly bear striding upon a red stripe… all against a field of gold.

A while later word arrived that Gordon was wanted again. The usual escort came for him by torchlight. “That man in there is dying,” he told the head guard.

The taciturn, three-earring Holnist shrugged. “So? Woman’s comin’ to tend him. Now move. General’s waitin’.”

On their way up the moonlit path they encountered a figure coming down the other way. The slope-shouldered drudge stepped aside and waited for the men to pass, eyes downcast to the tray of rolled bandages and unguents she held. None of the aloof guards seemed to notice her at all.

At the last moment, however, she looked up at Gordon. He recognized the same small woman with gray-streaked brown hair, the one who had taken and repaired his uniform some days back. He tried to smile at her as they passed, but it only seemed to unnerve her. She ducked her head and scuttled back into the shadows.

Saddened, Gordon continued up the path with his escort. She had reminded him a little of Abby. One of his worries had to do with his friends back in Pine View. The Holnist scouts who discovered his journal had corne very close to the friendly little village. It wasn’t only the frail civilization in the Willamette that was in terrible danger.

Nobody anywhere was safe anymore, he knew — except, perhaps, George Powhatan, living safe atop Sugar-loaf Mountain, tending his bees and beer while the rest of what was left of the world burned.

“I’m getting tired of your stalling, Krantz,” General Macklin told him when the guards had left the book-lined former ranger station.

“You put me in a hard position, General. I’m studying the book Colonel Bezoar lent me, trying to understand—”

“Cut the crap, will you?” Macklin approached until his face was two feet from Gordon’s. Even looking upward, the Holnist’s strangely contorted visage was intimidating. “I know men, Krantz. You’re strong all right, and you’d make a good vassal. But you’re all mucked up with guilt and other ‘civilized’ poisons. So much so that I’m beginning to think maybe you’ll be useless, after all.”

The implication was direct. Gordon forced himself not to show the weakness in his knees.

“You can be the Baron of Corvallis, Krantz. A senior lord in our new empire. You can even hold onto some of your quaint, old-fashioned sentiments, if you want… and if you’re strong enough to enforce them. You want to be nice to your own vassals? You want post offices?

“We might even find a use for that ‘Restored United States’ of yours.” Macklin gave Gordon a toothy, odorous smile. “That’s why only Charlie and I know about that little black journal of yours, until we can check the idea out.

“It’s not because I like you, understand. It’s because we’d benefit a little if you cooperated. You might rule those techs in Corvallis better than any of my boys could. We might even decide to keep that Cyclops machine going, if it paid its keep.”

So the Holnists hadn’t yet pierced the legend of the great computer. Not that it mattered much. They never had really cared about technology, except what was necessary to make war. Science benefitted everyone too much, especially the weak.

Macklin picked up the fireplace poker and slapped it into his left palm. “The alternative, of course, is that we’ll take Corvallis anyway, this spring. Only if we have to do it our way, it’ll burn. And there won’t be no post offices anywhere, boy. No smart-ass machines.”

With the poker Macklin reached out and touched a sheet of paper on the desk. A pen and ink pot lay next to it. Gordon well knew what the man expected of him.

If all he had to do was agree to the scheme, Gordon would have done so at once. He would have played along until he had a chance to make a break for it.

But Macklin was too canny. He wanted Gordon to write to the Council in Corvallis, convincing them to surrender several key towns as an act of good faith before he would be released.

Of course he had only the General’s say-so that he would be made “Baron of Corvallis” after that. He doubted Macklin’s word was any better than his own.

“Perhaps you don’t think we’re strong enough to take your pathetic ‘Army of the Willamette’ without your help?” Macklin laughed. He turned to the door.

“Shawn!”

Macklin’s burly bodyguard was in the room so swiftly and smoothly it seemed almost a blur. He closed the door and marched up to the General, snapping stiffly to attention.

“I’m going to let you in on something, Krantz. Shawn and I, and that mean cat who captured you, are the last of our kind.”

Macklin confided. “It was really hush-hush stuff, but you might have heard some of the rumors. The experiments led to some special fighting units, unlike any ever known before.”

Gordon blinked. Suddenly it all made sense, the General’s uncanny speed, the tracery of scars under his skin and his two aides’,

“Augments!”

Macklin nodded. “Smart boy. You paid attention good, for a college kid weakening his mind with psychology and ethics”

“But we all thought they were only rumors! You mean they really took soldiers and modified them so—”

He stopped, looking at the strangely knotted muscles along Shawn’s bare arms. As impossible as it seemed, the story had to be true. There was no other rational explanation.

“They tried us out for the first time in Kenya. And the government did like the results in combat. But I guess they weren’t too happy with what happened after peace broke out and they brought us home.”

Gordon stared as Macklin held out the poker to his bodyguard, who took one end — not in his massive fist but between two fingers and a thumb. Macklin took the other end in a similar grip.

They pulled. Without even breathing hard, Macklin kept talking. “The experiment went on through the late eighties and early nineties. Special Forces, mostly. They chose gung ho types like us. Naturals, in other words.”

The steel poker did not rock or shake. Almost totally rigid, it began to stretch.

“Oh we tore up those Cubans good,” Macklin chuckled, looking only at Gordon. “But the Army didn’t like how some of the vets acted when the action ended and we all went home.

“They were afraid of Nate Holn, you see, even then. He appealed to the strong, and they knew it. The augmentation program was cut off.”

The poker turned dull red in the middle. It had stretched to half again its former length when it began to neck and shred like pulled taffy. Gordon glanced quickly at Charles Bezoar, standing beyond the two augments. The Holnist colonel licked his lips nervously, unhappily. Gordon could tell what he was thinking.

Here was strength he could never hope for. The scientists and the hospitals where the work had been done were long gone. According to Bezoar’s religion, these men had to be his masters.

The tips of the torn poker separated with a loud report, giving off friction heat that could be felt some distance away. Neither of the enhanced soldiers even rocked.

“That’ll be all, Shawn.” Macklin threw the pieces into the fireplace as his aide swiveled smartly and marched out of the room. The General looked at Gordon archly.

“Do you doubt any longer we’ll be in Corvallis by May? With or without you? Any of the unaugmented boys in my army are equal to twenty of your fumblebum farmers — or your zany women soldiers.”

Gordon looked up quickly, but Macklin only talked on.

“But even if the sides were more equal, you still wouldn’t have a chance! You think we few augments couldn’t slip into any of your strong points and level them at will? We could tear your silly defenses to pieces with our bare hands. Don’t you hesitate to believe it for even a second.”

He pushed forward the writing paper and rolled the pen toward Gordon.

Gordon stared at the yellowed sheet. What did it matter? In the midst of all these revelations, he felt he knew where things stood. He met Macklin’s eyes.

“I’m impressed. Really. That was a convincing demonstration.

“Tell me though, General, if you’re so good, why aren’t you in Roseburg right now?”

As Macklin reddened, Gordon gave the Holnist chieftain a faint smile.

“And while we’re on the topic, who is it who’s chasing you out of your own domain? I should have guessed before why you’re pushing this war so hard and fast. Why your people are staging their serfs and worldly possessions to move north, en masse. Most barbarian invasions used to start that way, back in history, like dominoes toppled by other dominoes.

“Tell me, General. Who’s kicking your ass so bad you have to get out of the Rogue?”

Macklin’s face was a storm. His knotted hands flexed and made white-hard fists. At any moment Gordon expected to pay the ultimate price for his deeply satisfying outburst.

Barely in control, Macklin’s eyes never left Gordon. “Get him out of here!” he snapped at Bezoar.

Gordon shrugged and turned away from the seething augment.

“And when you get back I want to look into this, Bezoar! I want to find out who broke security!” Macklin’s voice pursued his intelligence chief out onto the steps, where the guards fell in behind them.

Bezoar’s hand on Gordon’s elbow shook all the way back to the jail pen.

“Who put this man here!” The Holnist Colonel shouted as he saw the dying prisoner on the straw tick between Johnny and the wide-eyed woman.

One guard blinked. “Isterman, I think. He just got in from the Salmon River front—”

… the Salmon River front… Gordon recognized the name of a stream in northern California. “Shut up!” Bezoar nearly screamed. But Gordon had his confirmation. There was more to this war than they had known before this evening.

“Get him out of here! Then go bring Isterman to the big house at once!”

The guards moved quickly. “Hey, take it easy with him!” Johnny cried as they grabbed up the unconscious man like a potato sack. Bezoar favored him with a withering glare. The Holnist colonel took out his anger by kicking at the drudge woman, but her instincts were well-honed. She was out the door before he connected.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Bezoar told Gordon. “I think you’d better reconsider writing that letter to Corvallis in the meantime. What you did tonight wasn’t wise.”

Gordon looked casually through the man, as if he barely merited notice. “What passes between the General and myself is of no concern to you,” he told Bezoar. “Only peers have the right to exchange threats, or challenges.”

The quote from Nathan Holn seemed to rock Bezoar back as if he had been struck. He stared as Gordon sat down on the straw and put his arms behind his head, ignoring the former lawyer altogether.

Only after Bezoar had departed, when the gloomy shed had quieted again, did Gordon get up and hurry over to Johnny.

“Did the bear-flag soldier ever speak?”

Johnny shook his head. “He never regained consciousness, Gordon.”

“What about the woman? Did she say anything?”

Johnny looked left and right. The other prisoners were in their corners, facing the wall as they had for weeks.

“Not a word. But she did slip me this.”

Gordon took the tattered envelope. He recognized the papers as soon as he pulled them out.

It was Dena’s letter — the one he had received from George Powhatan’s hand, back on Sugarloaf Mountain. It must have been in his pants pocket when the woman took his clothes away to be cleaned. She must have kept it.

No wonder Macklin and Bezoar never mentioned it!

Gordon was determined the General would never get his hands on the letter. However crazy Dena and her friends were, they deserved their chance. He began tearing it up, prior to eating the pieces, but Johnny reached out and stopped him. “No, Gordon! She wrote something on the last page.”

“Who? Who wrote…” Gordon shifted the paper in the faint moonlight that slipped between the slats. At last he saw scrawled pencil scratchings, rude block letters that contrasted starkly under Dena’s flowing script.

Gordon sat for a long time looking at the sad, simple words. Everywhere his ghosts foDowed him, in spite of his newfound resignation. What George Powhatan had said about Dena’s motives still gnawed within him.

The Big Things would not let go.

He ate the letter slowly. He would not let Johnny share this particular meal, but made a penance, a sacrament, of every piece.

About an hour later there was a commotion outside — a ceremony of sorts. Out across the clearing, at the old Agness General Store, a double column of Holnist soldiers marched to the slow beat of muffled drums. In their midst walked a tall, blond man. Gordon recognized him as one of the camouflaged fighters who had dumped the dying prisoner into their midst earlier that day.

“Must be Isterman,” Johnny commented, fascinated.

“This’ll teach him not to come back without reporting in to G-2 first thing.”

Gordon noted that Johnny must have watched too many old World War Two movies, back at the video library in Corvallis.

At the end of the line of escorts he recognized Roger Septien. Even in the dark he could tell that the former mountain robber was trembling, barely able to hold on to his rifle.

Charles Bezoar’s barrister voice sounded nervous, too, as he read the charges. Isterman stood with his back to a large tree, his face impassive. His trophy string lay across his chest like a bandolier… like a sash of grisly merit badges.

Bezoar stood aside and General Macklin stepped up to speak to the condemned man. Macklin shook hands with Isterman, kissed him on both cheeks, then moved over beside his aide to watch the conclusion. A two-earringed sergeant snapped sharp orders. The executioners knelt, raised their rifles, and fired as one.

Except for Roger Septien. Who fainted dead away.

The tall blond Holnist officer now lay crumpled in a pool of blood at the foot of the tree. Gordon thought of the dying prisoner who had shared their captivity for so short a time, and who had told them so much without ever opening his eyes.

“Sleep well, Califomian,” he whispered. “You’ve taken one more of them with you.

“The rest of us should only do so well.”

14

That night Gordon dreamed he was watching Benjamin Franklin play chess with a boxy iron stove.

“The problem is one of balance,” the graying statesman-scientist said to his invention, ignoring Gordon as he contemplated the chessboard. “I’ve put some thought to it. How can we set up a system which encourages individuals to strive and excel, and yet which shows some compassion to the weak, and weeds out madmen and tyrants?”

Flames licked behind the stove’s glowing grille, like dancing rows of lights. In words more seen than heard, it inquired:

“…Who will take responsibility… ?”

Franklin moved a white knight. “Good question,” he said as he leaned back. “A very good question.

“Of course we can establish constitutional checks and balances, but those won’t mean a thing unless citizens make sure the safeguards are taken seriously. The greedy and the power-hungry will always look for ways to break the rules, or twist them to their advantage.”

The flames flicked out, and somehow in the process a red pawn had moved.

“…who …?

Franklin took out a handkerchief and wiped his brow. “Would-be tyrants, that’s who… they have an age-old panoply of methods — manipulating the common man, lying to him, or crushing his belief in himself.

“It’s said that ‘power corrupts,’ but actually it’s more true that power attracts the corruptible. The sane are usually attracted by other things than power. When they do act, they think of it as service, which has limits. The tyrant, though, seeks mastery, for which he is insatiable, implacable.”

“…foolish children…” the flames flickered.

“Yes,” Franklin nodded, wiping his bifocals. “Still, I believe that certain innovations might help. The right myths, for instance.

“And then, if Good is willing to make sacrifices…” He reached out, picking up his queen, hesitated for a moment, and then moved the delicate ivory piece all the way across the board, almost under the glowing hot grille.

Gordon wanted to cry out a warning. The queen’s position was completely exposed. Not even a pawn was nearby to protect her.

His worst fears were borne out almost at once. The flames licked forth. In a blur, a red king stood on a pile of ashes where the slender white figure had been only a moment before.

“Oh lord, no,” Gordon moaned. Even in the half-critical dream state, he knew what was happening, and what it symbolized.

“…Who will take responsibility… ?” the stove asked again.

Franklin did not answer. Instead, he shifted and pushed back in his chair. It squeaked as he turned around. Over the rims of his bifocals, he looked directly at Gordon.

You too? Gordon quailed. What do you all want from me!

The rippling red. And Franklin smiled.

He startled awake, staring until he saw Johnny Stevens crouching over him, about to touch his shoulder.

“Gordon, I think you’d better take a look. Something’s the matter with the guards.”

He sat up, rubbing his eyes. “Show me.”

Johnny led him over to the east wall of the shed, near the door. It took a moment to adjust to the moonlight. Then Gordon made out the two survivalist soldiers who had been assigned to watch them.

One lay back against a log bench, his mouth hanging open as he stared blank-eyed up at the low, growling clouds.

The other Holnist still gurgled. He clawed at the ground, trying to crawl toward his rifle. In one hand he held his burnished sheath knife, glinting in the low firelight. By his knees lay a toppled ale stein, a brown stain spreading from its broken lip.

Seconds after they had begun to watch, the last guard’s head slumped. His struggles died away in a faint rattle.

Johnny and Gordon looked at each other. As one, they rushed to test the door, but the lock was firmly in place. Johnny stretched his arm through a gap in the planks, trying to grab any part of the guard’s uniform. The keys… “Damn! He’s just too far!”

Gordon began prying at the boards. The shack certainly was flimsy enough to take apart by hand. But when he pulled, the rusty nails creaked and sent the hair rising up the back of his neck.

“What do we do?” Johnny asked. “If we yank hard, all at once, we might be able to crash out real fast, and dash down the trail to the canoes. …”

“Shhh!” Gordon motioned for silence. Out there in the darkness he had seen a figure move.

Tentatively, nervously, a small, shabby shape scuttled toward the moonlit clearing just outside the shack, where the fallen guards lay.

“It’s her!” Johnny whispered. Gordon also recognized the dark-haired drudge, the one who had written the pathetic little addendum to Dena’s letter. He watched as she overcame her terror and conditioning to approach each of the guards in turn, checking for breath and life.

Her whole body shook and low moans escaped her as she sought the ring of keys under the second man’s belt. To get at them she had to push her fingers through his line of gruesome trophies, but she closed her eyes and brought them forth, clinking softly.

Each second was an agony as she fumbled with the lock. Their releaser ducked back out of the way as the two men pushed outside and ran to each of the guards, stripping them of knives, ammo belts, rifles. They dragged the bodies back into the shed and closed and locked the door.

“What is your name?” Gordon asked the crouched woman, squatting before her. Her eyes were closed as she answered. “H-Heather.”

“Heather, Why did you help us?”

Her eyes opened. They were a startling green. “Your… your woman wrote…”

She made a visible effort to gather herself. “I never kenned what th’ old women said about th’ old days… But then some of th’ new prisoners talked about things up north… and there you was… Y-you won’t beat me too hard for readin’ yer letter, will you?”

She cringed as Gordon put his hand out to touch the side of her face, so he withdrew it. Tenderness was too alien to her. All sorts of reassurances came to mind, but he kept to the simplest — one she would understand. “I won’t beat you at all,” he told her. “Not ever.”

Johnny appeared beside him. “Only one guard down by the canoes, Gordon. I think I see a way we can get up within range. He may be a Rogue, but he won’t be expecting anything. We can take him.”

Gordon nodded. “We’ll have to bring her with us,” he said.

Johnny looked torn between compassion and practicality. He clearly considered his first duty to get Gordon away from this place. “But…”

“They’ll know who poisoned the guards. She’s crucified if she stays.”

Johnny blinked, then nodded, apparently glad to have the dilemma resolved so straightforwardly. “Okay. Let’s go, though!”

They started to rise, but Heather took Gordon’s sleeve.

“I have a friend,” she said, and turned to wave into the darkness.

From the shadow of the trees there stepped a slender figure in pants and shirt several sizes too large, bunched up and cinched tight by a large belt. In spite of that, the second woman’s figure was unmistakable. Charles Bezoar’s mistress had her blond hair tied back and she carried a small package. If anything, she seemed more nervous than Heather.

After all, Gordon thought, she had more to lose in any escape attempt. It was a sign of her desperation that she was willing to throw herself in with two motley strangers from a nearly mythical north.

“Her name is Marcie,” the older woman told him. “We wasn’t sure you’d want to take us, so she brought some presents for you.”

With trembling hands, Marcie untied a black oilskin. “H-here’s your m-mail,” she said. The girl held the papers out delicately, as if afraid of defiling them with her touch.

Gordon nearly laughed out loud when he saw the sheaf of almost valueless letters. He stopped short, though, when he saw what else she held: a small, ragged, black-bound volume. Gordon could only blink then, thinking of the risks she must have taken to get it.

“All right,” he said, taking the packet and tying it up again. “Follow us, and keep quiet! When I wave like this, stay low and wait for us.”

Both women nodded solemnly. Gordon turned, intending to take point, but Johnny had already ducked ahead, leading the way down the trail to the river.

Don’t argue this time. He’s right, damn it.

Freedom was wonderful beyond relief. But with it came that bitch, Duty.

Hating the fact that he was “important” once again, he crouched and followed Johnny, leading the women toward the canoes.

15

There was no choice of which way to go. Spring’s thaw had begun, and the Rogue was already a rushing torrent. The only thing to do was head downstream and pray.

Johnny still exulted over his successful kill. The sentry hadn’t turned until he was within two steps, and had gone down nearly silently as Johnny tackled him, ending his struggles with three quick knife thrusts. The young man from Cottage Grove was full of his own prowess as they loaded the women into the boat and set off, letting the current pull them into midstream.

Gordon hadn’t the heart to tell his young friend. But he had seen the guard’s face before they tumbled him into the river. Poor Roger Septien had looked surprised — hurt — hardly the image of a Holnist superman.

Gordon remembered his own first time, nearly two decades ago, firing at looters and arsonists while there still remained a chain of command, before the militia units dissolved into the riots they had been sent to put down. He did not recall being proud, then. He had cried at night, mourning the men he killed.

Still, these were different times, and a dead Holnist was a good thing, no matter how you cut it.

They had left a beach littered with crippled canoes. Every moment of delay had been an agony, but they had to make sure they weren’t followed too easily. Anyway, the chore gave the women something to do and they went at it with gusto. Afterward, both Marcie and Heather seemed a bit less cowed and skittish.

The women huddled down in the center of the canoe as Gordon and Johnny hefted paddles and struggled with the unfamiliar craft. The moon kept ducking in and out behind clouds as they dipped and pulled, trying to learn the proper rhythm as they went.

They had not gone far before reaching the first set of riffles. In moments the time for practice was over as they went crashing through foamy rapids, barely skimming past glistening, rocky crags, often seen only at the last moment.

The river was fierce, driven by snow melt. Her roar filled the air, and spray diffracted the intermittent moonlight. It was impossible to fight her, only to cajole, persuade, divert, and guide their frail vessel through hazards barely seen.

At the first calm stretch, Gordon guided them into an eddy. He and Johnny rested over their oars, looked at each other, and at the same moment burst out laughing. Marcie and Heather stared at the two men — giggling breathlessly from adrenaline and the roar of freedom in their blood and ears. Johnny whooped and slapped the water with his paddle.

“Come on, Gordon. That was fun! Let’s get on with it.”

Gordon caught his breath and wiped river spume out of his eyes. “Okay,” he said, shaking his head. “But carefully, okay?”

They stroked together and banked steeply as the current caught them again.

“Oh, shit,” Johnny cursed. “I thought the last one…”

His words were drowned out, but Gordon finished the thought.

And I thought the last one was bad!

Gaps between the rocks were narrow, deadly shoots. Their canoe scraped horribly through the first, then shot out, canting precipitously. “Lean hard!” Gordon shouted. He wasn’t laughing now, but fighting to survive.

We should have walked… we should have walked… we should have walked…

The inevitable happened sooner, though, than even he expected… less than three miles downstream. A sunken tree — a hidden snag just beyond the hard rock face of a turn in the canyon wall — a streak of rolling water cloaked in darkness until it was too late for him to do more than curse and dig in his paddle to try to turn.

An aluminum canoe might have survived the collision, but there were none left after years of war. The homemade wood-and-bark model tore with an agonized shriek, harmonized by the women’s screams as they all spilled into the icy flood.

The sudden chill was stunning. Gordon gulped air and grabbed at the capsized canoe with one arm. His other hand darted out and seized a grip on Heather’s dark hair, barely in time to keep her from being swept away. He struggled to avoid her desperate clutching and to keep her head above water… all the while fighting for his own breath in the choppy foam.

At last he felt sand beneath his feet. It took every last effort to fight the river’s pull and the sucking mud until he was able at last to haul his gasping burden out and collapse onto the mat of rotting vegetation by the steep shore.

Heather coughed and sobbed next to him. He heard Johnny and Marcie spluttering not far away, and knew that they had made it, too. There wasn’t a flicker of energy to spare for celebration, though. He lay breathing hard, unable even to move for what felt like hours.

Johnny spoke at last. “We didn’t really have any gear to lose. I guess my ammo’s wet, though. Your rifle gone, Gordon?”

“Yeah.” He sat up groaning, touching a thin gash where the breaking canoe had stroked his forehead.

There did not seem to have been any serious injuries, though the coughing was now starting to shift over to general shivers. Marcie’s borrowed clothes stuck to the blond concubine in ways that Gordon might have found interesting had he not been so miserable.

“W-what do we do now?” she asked.

Gordon shrugged. “For starters we go back in and get rid of the wreck.”

They stared at him. He explained. “If they don’t find it, they’ll probably assume we went a whole lot farther than this, tonight. That could turn out to be our only advantage.

“Then, when that’s done, we head overland.”

“I’ve never been to California,” Johnny suggested, and Gordon had to smile. Since they had discovered that the Holnists had another enemy, the boy had spoken of little else.

The idea was tempting. South was one direction their pursuers wouldn’t expect them to go.

But that would mean crossing the river. And anyway, if Gordon remembered correctly, the Salmon River was a long way south of here. Even if it were practical to sneak through a couple of hundred miles of survivalist baronies, there just wasn’t time. With spring here, they were needed back home worse than ever.

“We’ll wait up in the hills until pursuit’s gone past,” he said. “Then we might as well try for the Coquille.”

Johnny, forever cheerful and willing, did not let their dim chances get him down. He shrugged. “Let’s go get the canoe then.” He jumped into the frigid, waist-deep water. Gordon picked up a sturdy piece of driftwood to use as a gaff, and followed a little more gingerly. The water wasn’t any less bitterly cold the second time. His toes were starting to go numb.

Together they had almost reached the belly-up canoe when Johnny cried out and pointed, “The mail!”

At the fringe of their eddy, a glistening oilskin packet could be seen drifting outward, toward the swift center of the current.

“No!” Gordon cried. “Let it go!”

But Johnny had already leaped head first into the rushing waters. He swam hard toward the receding package, even as Gordon screamed after him. “Corne back here. Johnny, you fool! It’s worthless!

“Johnny!”

He watched hopelessly as the bundle and the boy chasing it were swept around the next bend in the river. From just ahead there came the heavy, heartless growl of rapids.

Cursing, Gordon dove into the freezing current and swam with all his might to catch up. His pulse pounded and he inhaled icy water along with every desperate breath. He almost followed Johnny around the bend, but then, at the last moment, he grabbed an overhanging branch and held on tightly… just in time.

Through the curtain of foam he saw his young friend tumble after the black package into the worst cascade yet, a horrible jumbling of ebony teeth and spray.

“No,” Gordon whispered hoarsely. He watched as Johnny and the packet were swept together over a ledge and disappeared into a sinkhole.

He continued staring, through the hair plastered over his eyes and the blinding, stinging droplets, but minutes passed and nothing emerged from that terrible whirlpool.

At last, with his grip slipping, Gordon had to retreat. He drew himself hand over hand along the shaky branch until he reached the slow, shallow water at the river’s bank. Then, mechanically, he forced his feet to carry him upstream, slogging past the wide-eyed women to the ruined bark canoe.

He used a driftwood hook to draw it after him behind a jutting point in the canyon wall, and there he pounded the little boat to pieces, smashing it into unrecognizable flinders.

Sobbing, he kept striking and slashing the water long after the bits had sunk out of sight or drifted away.

16

They passed the day in the brambles and weeds under a tumbledown concrete bunker. Before the Doomwar, it must have been someone’s treasured survivalist hideaway, but now it was a ruin — broken, bullet-scarred, and looted.

Once, in prewar days, Gordon had read that there were places in the country riddled with hideouts like this — stockpiled by men whose hobby was thinking about the fall of society, and fantasizing what they would do after it happened. There had been classes, workshops, special-interest magazines … an industry catering to “needs” which went far beyond those of the average woodsman or camper.

Some simply liked to daydream, or enjoyed a relatively harmless passion for rifles. Few were ever followers of Nathan Holn, and most were probably horrified when their fantasies at last came true.

When that time finally arrived, most of the loner “sur-vivalists” died in their bunkers, quite alone.

Battle and the rain forest had eroded the few scraps left by waves of scavengers. Cold rain pattered over the concrete blocks as the three fugitives took turns keeping watch and sleeping.

Once they heard shouts and the squish of horses’ hooves in the mud. Gordon made an effort to look confident for the women’s sake. He had taken care to leave as little trail as possible, but his two charges weren’t even as experienced as the Willamette Army scouts. He wasn’t at all sure they would be able to fool the best forest trackers who had lived since Cochise.

The riders moved on, and after a while the fugitives were able to relax just a little. Gordon dozed.

This time he did not dream. He was too exhausted to spare any energy for hauntings.

They had to wait for the moonrise before setting out that night. There were several trails, crisscrossing each other frequently, but Gordon somehow kept them going in the right direction, using the semipermanent ice on the north sides of the trees as a guide.

Three hours after sunset, they came upon the ruins of a little village.

“Illahee.” Heather identified the place.

“It’s been abandoned,” he observed. The moonlit ghost town was eerie. From the former Baron’s manor to the lowliest hovel, it seemed to have been picked clean.

“All the soldiers an’ their serfs were sent up north,” Marcie explained. “There’s been a lot of villages emptied that way, last few weeks.”

Gordon nodded. ‘They’re fighting on three fronts. Macklin wasn’t kidding when he said he would be in Corvallis by May. It’s take over-the Willamette or die.”

The countryside looked like a moonscape. There were saplings everywhere, but few tall trees. Gordon realized that this must have been one of the places where the Holnists had tried slash-and-burn agriculture. But this country was not fertile farmland, like the Willamette Valley. The experiment must have been a failure.

Heather and Marcie held hands as they walked, their eyes darting fearfully. Gordon couldn’t help comparing them to Dena and her proud, brave Amazons, or to happy, optimistic Abby back in Pine View. The true dark age would not be a happy time for women, he decided. Dena had been right about that much.

“Let’s go look around the big house,” he said. “There might be some food.”

That sparked their interest. They ran ahead of him to the abandoned manor with its stockade and abatis surrounding a solid, prewar house.

When he caught up they were huddled over a pair of dark forms just within the gate. Gordon flinched when he saw that they were skinning and flaying two large German shepherd dogs. Their master couldn’t take them on a sea voyage, he realized a little sickly. No doubt the Holnist Baron of Dlahee grieved more over his treasured animals than over the slaves who would die during the mass exodus to the promised lands up north.

The meat smelled pretty ripe. Gordon decided he would wait a while, in hopes of something better. The women, though, weren’t quite so finicky.

So far they had been lucky. At least the search seemed to have swept westward, away from the direction the fugitives were headed. Perhaps General Macklin’s men had found Johnny’s body by now, falsely confirming the trail toward the sea.

Only time would tell how far their luck would last though.

A narrow, swift stream swept north from near abandoned Illahee. Gordon decided it could be nothing other than the south fork of the Coquille. Of course there were no convenient canoes lying about. The torrent looked unnavi-gable anyway. They would have to walk.

An old road ran along the east bank, in the direction they wanted to go. There was no choice but to use it, whatever the obvious dangers. Mountains crowded in just ahead, hulking against the moonlit clouds, blocking every other conceivable path.

At least the going would be quicker than on the muddy trails. Or so Gordon hoped. He coaxed the stoic women, keeping them moving at a slow, steady pace. Never once did Marcie or Heather complain or balk, nor were their eyes reproachful. Gordon could not decide whether it was courage or resignation that kept them plodding on, mile after mile.

For that matter, he wasn’t sure why he persevered. To what point? To live in the dark world that seemed certain to come? At the rate he was accumulating ghosts, “crossing over” would probably feel like Homecoming Week anyway.

Why? he wondered. Am I the only Twentieth-Century idealist left alive?

Perhaps, he pondered. Perhaps idealism really was the disease, the scam, that Charles Bezoar had said it was.

George Powhatan had been right, too. It did you no good to fight for the Big Things… for civilization, for instance. All you accomplished was getting young girls and boys to believe in you — to throw their lives away in worthless gestures, accomplishing nothing.

Bezoar had been right. Powhatan had been right. Even Nathan Holn, monster that he was, had told the essential truth about Ben Franklin and his constitutionalist cronies — how they had hoodwinked a people into believing such things. They had been propagandists to make Himmler and Trotsky blush as amateurs.

… We hold these truths to be self evident …

Hah!

Then there had been the Order of the Cincinnati, made up of George Washington’s officers who — halfway embarked one night upon a mutinous coup — were shamed by their stern commander into giving their tearful, solemn vow… to remain farmers and citizens first, and soldiers only at their country’s need and call.

Whose idea had it been, that unprecedented oath? The promise was kept for a generation, long enough for the ideal to set. In essence, it lasted into the era of professional armies and technological war.

Until the end of the Twentieth Century, that is, when certain powers decided that soldiers should be made into something more than mere men. The thought of Macklin and his augmented veterans, loosed on the unsuspecting Willametters, made Gordon heartsick. But there wasn’t anything he or anyone else could do to prevent it.

Not a whit can be done about it, he thought wryly. But that won’t keep the damn ghosts from pestering me.

The South Coquille grew more swollen with every mile they slogged, as streamlets joined in from the enclosing hills. A gloomy drizzle began to fall, and thunder rumbled in counterpoint to the roaring torrent to their left. As they rounded a bend in the road, the northern sky brightened with distant flashes of lightning.

Looking up at the glowering clouds, Gordon almost stumbled into Marcie’s back as she came to a sudden halt. He put out his hand to give her a gentle push, as he had been forced to do more and more often the last few miles. But this time her feet were planted.

She turned to face him, and in her eyes there was a bleakness that went beyond anything Gordon had seen in seventeen years of war. Chilled with a dark foreboding, he pushed past her and looked down the road.

Thirty yards or so ahead lay the ruins of an old roadside trading post. A faded sign advertised myrtlewood carvings for sale at fabulous prices. Two rusted automobile hulks lay half settled into the mud in front.

Four horses and a two-wheeled cart were tethered to the slump-sided shack. From under the canted porch roof, General Macldin stood with his arms folded, and smiled at Gordon.

“Run!” Gordon yelled at the women and he dove through the roadside thicket, rolling up behind a moss-covered trunk with Johnny’s rifle in his hands. As he moved, he knew he was being a fool. Macklin still might have some faint wish to keep him alive, but in a firefight he was already dead.

He knew he had leaped on instinct — to get away from the women, to draw attention after himself and give them a chance to get away. Stupid idealist, he cursed. Marcie and Heather simply stood there on the road, too tired or too resigned even to move.

“Now that ain’t so smart,” Macklin said, his voice at its most amiable and dangerous. “Do you think you can manage to shoot me, Mr. Inspector?”

The thought had occurred to Gordon. It depended, of course, on the augment letting him get close enough to try.

And on whether the twenty-year-old ammo still worked after its dunking in the Rogue.

Macklin still had not moved. Gordon raised his head and saw through the leaves that Charles Bezoar stood beside the General. Both of them looked like easy targets out there in the open. But as he slid the rifle’s bolt and began to crawl forward, Gordon realized, sickly, there were four horses.

There came a sudden crashing sound from just overhead. Before he could even react, a crushing weight slammed onto his back, driving his sternum onto the rifle stock.

Gordon’s mouth gaped, but no air would come! He could barely twitch a muscle as he felt himself lifted into the air by his collar. The rifle slipped from nearly senseless fingers.

“Did this guy really waste two of ours last year?” a gravelly voice behind his left ear shouted in cheerful derision. “Seems a bit of a woos to me.”

It felt like an eternity, but at last something reopened inside him and Gordon was able to breathe again. He sucked noisily, caring more about air at the moment than dignity.

“Don’t forget those three soldiers back at Agness,” Macklin called back to his man. “He gets credit for them, too. That makes five Holnist ears on his belt, Shawn. Our Mr. Krantz deserves respect.

“Now bring him in, please. I’m sure he and the ladies would like a chance to get warm.”

Gordon’s feet barely touched the ground as his captor half carried him by his collar through the thicket and across the road. The augment wasn’t even breathing hard when he dumped Gordon unceremoniously on the porch.

Under the leaky canopy, Charles Bezoar stared hard at Marcie; the Holnist Colonel’s eyes burned with shame and promised retribution. But Marcie and Heather watched only Gordon, silently.

Macklin squatted beside Gordon. “I always did admire a man with a knack for the ladies. I’ve got to admit, you do seem to have a way with ‘em, Krantz.” He grinned. Then he nodded to his beefy aide. “Bring him inside, Shawn. The women have work to do, and the Inspector and I have some unfinished business to discuss.”

17

“I know all about your women now, you know.”

Gordon’s view of the moldy, broken-down trading post kept rotating. It was hard to focus on anything in particular, let alone the man talking to him.

He hung by a rope tied around his ankles, his hands dropping to a couple of feet above the muddy wooden floor. General Macklin sat next to the fire, whittling. He looked at Gordon each time his captive’s steady tortional swing brought them face to face. Most of the time, he smiled.

The constriction on his ankles, the pain in his forehead and sternum, were nothing to the heavy weight of blood rushing to his brain. Through the rear door Gordon could hear low whimpering — a pathetic enough sound in itself, but definitely a relief after the screams of the last half hour or so. At last, Macklin had ordered Bezoar to stop and let the women do some work. There was a prisoner in the next room he wanted tended, and he didn’t want Marcie and Heather beaten senseless while they still had their uses.

Macklin also wanted to be able to draw out his session with Gordon in peace and quiet. “A few of those crazy Willametter spies of yours lived long enough to be questioned,” the Holnist commander told him mildly. “The one in the next room here hasn’t been too cooperative yet, but we have reports from our invasion force as well, so the picture’s pretty clear. I have to give you credit, Krantz. It was a pretty imaginative plan. Too bad it didn’t work.”

“I haven’t any idea what in hell you’re talking about, Macklin.” The thickness in Gordon’s tongue made it hard to speak.

“Ah, but I see from your face that you do understand,” his captor said. “There’s no need to maintain secrecy anymore. You needn’t concern yourself any longer for your brave girl soldiers. Because of their sneaky mode of attack, we did suffer some losses. But I’ll wager far fewer than you’d hoped for. By now, of course, all your ‘Willamette Scouts’ are dead, or in chains. I compliment you on a worthy attempt, however.”

Gordon’s heart pounded. “You bastard. Don’t give me the credit. It was their own idea! I don’t even know what they planned to do!”

For only the second time Gordon saw surprise cross Macklin’s face. “Well, well,” the barbarian chieftain said at last. “Imagine that. Feminists, still around in this day and age. My dear Inspector, it seems we come to the rescue of the poor people of the Willamette just in the nick of time!” His smile returned.

The smugness on that face was too much to bear. Gordon reached for anything at all to try to wipe it off. “You’ll never win, Macklin. Even if you burn Corvallis, if you crush every village and smash Cyclops to bits, people will never stop fighting you!”

The smile remained, unperturbed. The General tsked and shook his head. “Do you think us inexperienced? My dear fellow, how did the Normans domesticate the proud, numerous Saxons? What secret did the Romans use to tame the Gauls?

“You are indeed a romantic, sir, to underestimate the power of terror.

“Anyway,” Macklin went on as he sat back and resumed his whittling, “you forget that we will not remain outsiders for long. We’ll recruit among your own people. Countless young men will see the advantage in being lords, rather than serfs. And unlike the nobility of the Middle Ages, we new feudalists believe that all males should have a right to fight for their first earring.

“That is the true democracy, my friend. The one America was heading toward before the Constitutionalist Betrayal. My own sons must kill to become Holnists, or they will scratch dirt to support those who can.

“We will have recruits. More than plenty, believe it. With the astonishing population you have up north, we can have — within a decade — an army the like of which has not been seen since ‘Franklinstein’ Civilization crumbled under its own hypocrisy.”

“What makes you think your other enemies will give you that decade?” Gordon gritted. “Do you think the Californians will let you sit on your conquests long enough to lick your wounds and build that army of yours?”

Macklin shrugged. “You speak out of very little knowledge, my dear fellow. Once we’ve pulled back, the loose confederation in the south will break apart and forget us. And even if they could put aside their own perpetual petty squabbles and unite, those ‘Californians’ you speak of would take a generation to reach us in our new realm. By then we’ll be more than ready to counterstrike.

“For another thing — and this is the delightful part — even if they pursued us, they would have to go through your friend on Sugarloaf Mountain to get at us!”

Macklin laughed at the expression on Gordon’s face. “You thought I didn’t know about your mission? Oh, Mr. Krantz, why do you imagine I arranged to have your party ambushed, and to have you brought to me? I know all about the Squire’s refusal to help anyone outside the line from Roseburg to the sea.

“Isn’t it wonderful, though? The ‘Wall of the Callahan Mountains’ — the famed George Powhatan — will keep to his valley, and in so doing, he will defend our flank while we consolidate up north… until at last we are ready to begin the Great Campaign.”

The general smiled pensively.

“I’ve often regretted that I never got my hands on Powhatan. Whenever our sides clashed he was always too slippery, always somewhere else doing mischief. But this way is even better, I believe! Let him have ten more years on his farm, while I conquer the rest of Oregon, Then it’ll be his turn.

“Even from your point of view, Mr. Inspector, I am sure you’ll agree that he deserves what’s coming to him then.”

There was no way to answer that except by silence. Macklin tapped Gordon with his stick, just hard enough to set him rotating again. As a result, Gordon found it hard to focus when the front door opened and a pair of heavy moccasins padded into view.

“Bill an’ I checked up along th’ mountainside,” he heard the huge augment, Shawn, tell his commander. “Found th’ same tracks as we saw before, up by th’ river. I’m sure it’s th’ same black bastard as slitted those sentries.”

Black bastard …

Gordon breathed a word silently. Phil?

Macklin laughed. “There now. You see, Shawn? Nathan Holn wasn’t a racist and neither should you be. I’ve always regretted that the racial minorities were at such a disadvantage in the riots and postwar chaos. Even the strong among them had little fair chance to excel.

“Now consider that Negro soldier out there. He has cut the throats of three of our river guards. He’s strong, and would have made an excellent recruit.”

Even upside down and spinning, Gordon could make out Shawn’s sour expression. The augment did not dispute his commander aloud, however.

“Pity we have no time to play games with the fellow,” Macklin continued. “Go and kill him now, Shawn.”

There was a swirl of disturbed air, and the burly veteran was out the door again, without a word and almost without sound.

“I really would have preferred to give your scout a warning, first,” Macklin confided in Gordon. “It’d have been more sporting if your man out there knew that he was up against something — unusual.” Macklin laughed again.

“Alas, in these times it’s not always sensible to play fair.”

Gordon thought that he had felt hate before this moment. But his cold anger right now was unlike anything he remembered. “Philip! Run!” He cried out as loud as he could, praying the sound of his voice would carry over the patter of raindrops. “Watch out, they’re—”

Macklin’s stick lashed out, striking Gordon’s cheek and sending his head rocking back. The world blurred and nearly faded into blackness. It took a long time for his eyes to clear, blinking away tears. He tasted blood.

“Yes,” Macklin nodded. “You are a man. I’ll give you that. When the time comes, I’ll try to see to it you die like one.”

“Don’t do me any favors,” Gordon choked. Macklin merely grinned and went back to his whittling.

A few minutes later the door at the back of the ruined store opened. “Go back and see to your women!” Macklin snapped. Charles Bezoar quickly closed the door to the win-dowless storage room — where Marcie and Heather presumably still tended the other prisoner Gordon had not yet seen.

“Just goes to show you, not every strong man is likable,” Macklin commented sourly. “He’s useful, though. For now.”

Gordon had no idea whether it was hours or a few minutes later when a trill call carried through the boarded windows. He thought it was only the cry of a river bird but Macklin reacted swiftly, blowing out the small oil lantern and throwing dust onto the fire.

“This is too good to miss,” he told Gordon. “The guys appear to have a good chase going. I hope you’ll excuse me for a few minutes?”

He grabbed Gordon’s hair. “Of course if you so much as make a sound while I’m gone, I’ll kill you the instant I get back. That’s a promise.”

Gordon could not shrug in his position. “Go join Nathan Holn in Hell,” he said.

Macklin smiled. “Undoubtedly, someday.” Then the augment was out the door, running through the darkness and rain.

Gordon hung while his pendulumlike swinging slowly abated. Then he took a deep breath and got to work.

Three times he tried to pull himself up to within reach of the rope around his ankles. Each time he fell back, grunting from the tearing agony of sudden, jerking gravity. The third time was almost too much to bear. His ears rang and he thought he almost heard voices.

Through tear-filled eyes he seemed to half see an audience to his struggle. All the ghosts he had accumulated over the years appeared to line the walls. It occurred to him that they were making book on his plight.

… take… it… Cyclops said for all of them, speaking in a code of rippling highlights in the fireplace coals.

“Go away,” Gordon muttered angrily, resenting his imagination. There was neither time nor energy to waste on such games. He hissed hard as he got ready for one more try, then heaved upward with all his might.

He barely caught the rope this time, slippery with dripping rain, and held on tightly with both hands. His whole body quaked from the strain, bent double like a folded pocket knife, but he knew he dare not let go. There just wasn’t anything left for another try.

With both hands fully occupied he couldn’t venture to untie himself. There was nothing to cut the rope with. Up, he concentrated. It’ll be better if you stand.

Slowly, he pulled himself up the rope, hand over hand. His muscles trembled, threatening cramps, and there was intense pain in his chest and back, but at last he “stood,” his ankles twisted in loops of cutting rope, holding on tight as he swung like a chandelier.

Over by the wall, Johnny Stevens cheered unabashedly. Tracy Smith and the other Army Scouts smiled. Pretty good, for a male, they seemed to say.

Cyclops sat in his cloud of supercooled mist, playing checkers with the smoking Franklin stove. They, too, seemed to approve.

Gordon tried lowering himself to get at the knots, but it put so much pressure on the loops around his ankles that he nearly fainted from the pain. He had to straighten out again.

Not that way. Ben Franklin shook his head. The Great Manipulator looked at him over the tops of his bifocals.

“Over the tops of his… over the t—” Gordon looked up at the stout beam from which the rope had been hung.

Up and over the top, then.

He raised his arms and wound the rope around them. You did this back in gymnastics class, before the war, he told himself as he began to pull.

Yeah. But now you’re an old man.

Tears flowed as he started hauling himself upward, hand over hand, helping where he could with his knees. In the blur between his eyelids, his ghosts seemed more real the more he struggled. They had graduated from imagination to first-class hallucinations.

“Go, Gordon!” Tracy called up to him.

Lieutenant Van gave him thumbs up. Johnny Stevens grinned encouragement alongside the woman who had saved his life back in the ruins of Eugene.

A skeletal shade in a paisley shirt and leather jacket grinned and gave him a fleshless thumbs up. Atop the bare skull lay a blue, peaked cap, its brass badge glimmering.

Even Cyclops ceased its nagging as Gordon gave the endless climb everything he had.

Up… he moaned, grabbing slick hemp and fighting the crushing hug of gravity. Up, you worthless intellectual.… Move or die…

One arm floundered over the top of the rough wooden beam. He held on and brought up the other to join it.

And that was all. There was no more to give. He hung by his armpits, unable to move any farther. Through the blur of his eyelashes, his phantoms all looked up at him, clearly disappointed.

“Oh, go chase yourselves,” he told them inwardly, unable even to speak aloud.

…Who will take responsibility… the coals in the fireplace glittered.

“You’re dead, Cyclops. You’re all dead! Leave me alone!” Utterly exhausted, Gordon closed his eyes to escape them.

Only there, in the blackness, he encountered the one ghost that remained. The one he had used the most shamelessly, and which had used him.

It was a nation. A world.

Faces, fading in and out with the entopic speckles behind his eyelids… millions of faces, betrayed and ruined but striving still…for a Restored United States.

For a Restored World.

For a fantasy… but one which refused obstinately to die — that could not die — not while he lived.

Gordon wondered, amazed. Was this why he’d lied for so long, why he had told such fairy tales?… because he needed them? Because he couldn’t let go of them? He answered himself,

Without them, I would have curled up and died.

Funny, he had never seen it quite that way before, in such startling clarity. In the darkness within himself the dream glowed — even if it existed nowhere else in the Universe — flickering like a diatom, like a bright mote hovering in a murky sea.

Amidst the otherwise total blackness, it was as if he stood in front of it. He seemed to take it in his hand, astonished by the light. The jewel grew. And in its facets he saw more than people, more than generations.

A future took shape around him, enveloping him, penetrating his heart.

When Gordon next opened his eyes, he was lying atop the beam, unable to recall how he had gotten there. Unbelievingly, he sat up blinking. A spectral light seemed to stream away from him in all directions, passing through the broken walls of the ruined building as if they were the dream stuff, and the brilliant rays the true reality. The radiance spread on and on, beyond limit. For a short time he felt as if he could see forever in that glow.

Then, as mysteriously as it had come, it passed. Energy appeared to flow back into whatever mysterious well he had tapped. In its wake, physical sensation returned, the reality of exhaustion and pain.

Trembling, Gordon fumbled with the knotted tourniquets around his ankles. His torn, bare feet were slippery with blood. When he finally got the ropes loosed, returning circulation felt like a million angry insects running riot inside his skin.

His ghosts were gone, at least; the cheering section seemed to have been taken up by that strange luminance, whatever it had been. Gordon wondered if they would ever return.

As the last loop fell away, he heard shots in the distance, the first since Macklin had left him alone here. Perhaps, he hoped, that meant Phil Bokuto wasn’t dead quite yet. Silently, he wished his friend luck.

He crouched down on the beam as footsteps approached the storeroom door. It opened slowly and Charles Bezoar stared at the empty room, at the limp, hanging rope. Panic filled the ex-lawyer’s eyes as he drew his automatic and stepped out.

Gordon would have preferred to wait until the man came directly underneath, but Bezoar was no idiot. An expression of dark suspicion came over his face, and he started to look up…

Gordon leaped. The .45 swung up and fired at the same instant as they collided.

In the hormonal rush of combat Gordon had no idea where the bullet went, or whose bone had cracked so loud on impact. He grappled for the gun as they rolled together across the floor.

“…kill you!” the Holnist growled, the .45 tipping toward Gordon’s face. Gordon had to duck to one side as it roared again, stinging his neck with burning powder. “Hold still!” Bezoar growled, as if he were in the habit of being obeyed. “Just let me…”

Straining against his enemy with all his might, Gordon suddenly let go of the gun with one hand and struck out. As the automatic came down toward him his right fist smashed upward into the root of Bezoar’s jaw. The bald Holnist’s body convulsed as his head struck the floor hard. The .45 fired twice into the wall.

Then Bezoar was still.

This time the worst pain was in Gordon’s hand. He stood up slowly, gingerly, semiconsciously accounting for what had to be a cracked rib, in addition to his many other bodily insults.

“Never talk while you fight,” he told the unconscious man. “It’s a bad habit.”

Marcie and Heather spilled out of the storage room and drew Bezoar’s knives. When he saw what they were after, he almost told them to stop, to tie the man up, instead.

He didn’t, though. Instead he let them do what they would and turned to step through the back door into the storage room.

It was even darker inside, but as his eyes adapted, he made out a slender figure lying on a dirty blanket over in the corner. A hand reached up toward him and a thin voice called out.

“Gordon, I knew you’d come for me… Is that silly? …

It sounds… sounds like fairy tale talk, but… but somehow I just knew it.”

He sank to his knees beside the dying woman. There had been crude attempts to clean and bandage her wounds, but her matted hair and blood-streaked clothes covered more damage than he dared even look at.

“Oh Dena.” He turned his head and closed his eyes. Her hand took his.

“We stung them, darling,” she said in a reed-thin voice. “Me and the other Scouts.… In some places we really caught some of the bastards with their pants down! It—” Dena had to stop as a fit of coughing made her nearly double up, bringing forth a trickle of ocher fluid. The corners of her mouth were stained.

“Don’t talk,” Gordon told her. “We’ll find a way to get you out of here.”

Dena clutched Gordon’s tattered shirt.

“They found out about our plan, somehow… in more’n half the places they were warned before we could strike…

“Maybe one of the girls fell in love with her rapist, like the legends say h-happened to H-Hypermnestra…” Dena shook her head unbelievingly. “Tracy and I were worried about that possibility, ‘cause Aunt Susan said it used to happen sometimes, in the old days…”

Gordon had no idea what Dena was talking about. She was babbling. Inside he struggled to come up with some idea, any way to carry a desperately wounded and delirious woman away through miles and miles of enemy lines before Macklin and the other Holnists returned.

In agony, he knew it just couldn’t be done.

“I guess we botched it, Gordon… but we did try! We tried…” Dena shook her head, tears welling as Gordon took her into his arms.

“Yes, I know, darling. I know you tried.”

His own eyes blurred. Beneath the filth and ruin, he knew her scent. And realized — much too late — what it meant to him. He held her tighter than he knew he ought to, not wanting to let her go.

“It’ll be all right. I love you. I’m here and I’ll take care of you.”

Dena sighed. “You are here. You are…” She held onto his arm. “You…”

Her body suddenly arched and she shivered. “Oh, Gordon!” she cried. “I see… Can you… ?”

Her eyes met his for a moment. In them was a light he recognized.

Then it was over.

“Yes, I saw it,” he told her gently, still holding her body in his arms. “Not as clearly as you, perhaps. But I saw it, too.”

18

In the corner of the outer room, Heather and Marcie were busy with their backs turned as they worked on something Gordon did not want to look at.

Later, he would mourn. Right now though, there were things he had to do, like getting these women out of here. The chances were slim, but if he could see them to the Callahans, they would be safe.

That would be hard enough, but from there he had other obligations. He would get back to Corvallis, somehow, if it was humanly possible, and he would try to live up to Dena’s ridiculous, beautiful image of what a hero was supposed to do — die defending Cyclops, perhaps, or lead a last charge of “postmen” against the invincible enemy.

He wondered if Bezoar’s shoes would fit him, or if, with badly swollen ankles, he might not be better off barefoot. “Stop wasting time,” he snapped at the women. “We have to get out of here.”

But as Gordon bent to pick up Bezoar’s automatic from the floor, a low, gravelly voice spoke. “Very good advice, my young friend. And you know, I’d like to call a man like you friend.

“Of course, that doesn’t mean I won’t split you open if you try to pick up that weapon.”

Gordon left the gun lying where it was and stood up heavily. General Macklin occupied the open doorway, holding a dagger in throwing position.

“Kick it away,” he said calmly.

Gordon obeyed. The automatic went spinning into a dusty corner.

“That’s better.” Macklin resheathed his knife. He jerked his head at the women. “Get away,” he told them. “Run. Try to live, if you want to and are able.”

Wide-eyed, Marcie and Heather edged past Macklin. They fled out into the night. Gordon had no doubt they would run in the rain until they dropped.

“I don’t suppose the same applies to me?” he asked wearily.

Macklin smiled and shook his head. “I want you to come with me. I need your assistance out here.”

A hooded lantern illuminated part of the clearing across the road, aided from time to time by distant lightning and an occasional moonlit glint at the edge of the rain-clouds. The pelting drisk had Gordon soaked within minutes of limping outside after Macklin. His still-bleeding ankles left spreading pink fog in the puddles where he stepped.

“Your black man is better than I’d thought,” Macklin said, pulling Gordon to one side of the circular, lamp-lit area. “Either that or he had help, and the latter’s pretty unlikely. My boys patrolling the river would have seen more tracks than his, if he’d been accompanied.

“Either way though, Shawn and Bill deserve what they got for being careless.”

For the first time Gordon had an inkling of what was happening. “You mean—”

“Don’t gloat yet,” Macklin snapped. “My troops are less than a mile from here, and there’s a Very pistol in my saddlebags. But you don’t see me hollering for help, do you?”

He smiled again. “Now I’m going to show you what this war is all about. Both you and your scout are the sort of strong men who should have been Holnists.You’re not because of the propaganda of weakness you grew up in. I’m going to take this opportunity to show you just how weak it makes you.”

With a vicelike grip on Gordon’s ami, Macklin shouted into the night.

“Black man! This is Genera] Volsci Macklin. I have your commander here… your United States Postal Inspector!” he sneered.

“Care to earn his freedom? My men will be here by dawn, so you have very little time. Come on in! We’ll fight for him! Your choice of weapons!”

“Don’t do it, Philip! He’s an aug—”

Gordon’s warning collapsed into a groan as Macklin yanked his arm, nearly tearing his shoulder out of its socket. The force threw him crashing to his knees. His throbbing ribs sent shock waves rolling through his body.

“Tsk tsk. Come now. If your man hadn’t already known about Shawn, it means he got my bodyguard with a lucky shot. If so, he certainly doesn’t deserve any special consideration now, does he?”

It took a powerful effort of will, but Gordon lifted his head, hissing through gritted teeth. Overcoming wave after wave of nausea, he somehow managed to wobble up to his feet. Although the world wavered all around him, he refused to be seen on his knees next to Macklin.

Macklin awarded him a low grunt, as if to say he only expected this from a real man. The augment’s body was aquiver like a cat’s — twitching in anticipation. They waited together, just outside the circle of lamplight. Minutes passed with the rain coming and going in intermittent, blustery sheets.

“Last chance, black man!” In a blur, Macklin’s knife was at Gordon’s throat. A grip like an anaconda’s twisted his left arm up behind his back. “Your Inspector dies in thirty seconds, unless you show! Starting now!”

The half minute passed slower than any Gordon had ever known. Oddly enough, he felt detached, almost resigned.

At last Macklin shook his head, sounding disappointed.

“Well, too bad, Krantz.” The knife moved under his left ear. “I guess he’s smarter than I—”

Gordon gasped. He had heard nothing, but suddenly he realized that there was another pair of moccasins down there at the edge of the light, not fifteen feet away.

“I am afraid your men killed that brave soldier you were shouting for.” The soft voice of the newcomer spoke even as Macklin spun around, putting Gordon between them.

“Philip Bokuto was a good man,” the mysterious voice went on. “I have come in his stead, to answer your challenge as he would have.”

A beaded headband glittered in the lamplight as a broad-shouldered man stepped forward into the circle. His gray hair was tied back into a ponytail. The craggy features of his face expressed a sad serenity.

Gordon could almost feel Macklin’s joy, transmitted through that powerful grip. “Well, well. From the descriptions I’ve heard, this could only be the Squire of Sugarloaf Lodge, come down alone out of his mountain and valley at last! I’m gratified more than you might know, sir. You’re welcome, indeed.”

“Powhatan,” Gordon gritted, unable to even imagine how or why the man was here. “Get the hell away, you fool! You haven’t a chance! He’s an augment!”

Phil Bokuto had been one of the best fighters Gordon had ever known. If he had barely managed to ambush the lesser of these devils, and had died in the process, what chance did this old man have?

Powhatan listened to Gordon’s revelation and frowned.

“So? You mean from those experiments in the early nineties? I had thought they were all normalized or killed off by the time the Slavic-Turkic War broke out. Fascinating. This does explain a lot about the last two decades.”

“You’d heard of us then,” Macklin grinned.

Powhatan nodded somberly. “I had heard, before the war. I also know why that particular experiment was discontinued — mostly because the worst kinds of men had been recruited as subjects.”

“So said the weak,” Macklin agreed. “For they made the error of accepting volunteers from among the strong.”

Powhatan shook his head. For all the world it seemed as if he were engaged in a polite argument over semantics. Only his heavy breathing seemed to give away any sign of emotion.

“They accepted warriors…” he emphasized, “…that divinely mad type that’s so valuable when needed, and such a problem when it’s not. The lesson was learned hard, back in the nineties. They had a lot of trouble with augments who came home still loving war.”

“Trouble is the word,” Macklin laughed. “Let me introduce you to Trouble, Powhatan.” He threw Gordon aside as if on an afterthought, and sheathed his knife before stepping toward his longtime foe.

Splashing into a ditch for the second time, Gordon could only lie in the muck and groan. His entire left side felt torn and burning — as if it were loaded with glowing coals. Consciousness flickered, and remained only because he absolutely refused to let go of it. When, at last, he was able to look up again through a pain-squinted tunnel, he saw the other two men circling each other just inside the lamp’s small oasis of light.

Of course Macklin was just toying with his adversary. Powhatan was impressive, for a man his age, but the monstrous things that bulged from Macklin’s neck, arms, and thighs made a normal man’s muscles look pathetic by comparison. Gordon remembered Macklin’s fireplace poker, tearing apart like shredding taffy.

George Powhatan inhaled in hard, shuddering gasps, and his face was flushed. In spite of the hopelessness of the situation, though, a deep part of Gordon was surprised to see such blatant signs of fear on the Squire’s face.

All legends must be based on lies, Gordon realized. We exaggerate, and even come to believe the tales, after a while.

Only in Powhatan’s voice did there seem to be a remnant of calm. In fact, he almost sounded detached. “There’s something I think you should consider, General,” he said between rapid breaths.

“Later,” Macklin growled. “Later we can discuss stock-raising and brewing, Squire. Right now I’m going to teach you a more practical art.”

Quick as a cat, Macklin lashed out. Powhatan leaped aside, barely in time. But Gordon felt a thrill as the taller man then whirled back with a kick that Macklin dodged only by inches.

Gordon began to hope. Perhaps Powhatan was a natural, whose speed — even in middle age — might almost equal Macklin’s. If so — and with that longer reach of his — he just might be able to keep out of his enemy’s terrible grasp…

The augment lunged again, getting a tearing grip on his opponent’s shirt. This time Powhatan escaped even more narrowly, shrugging out of the embroidered garment and dodging a flurry of blows any one of which might have killed a steer. He did nearly land a savage chop to Macklin’s kidneys as the smaller man rushed by. But then, in a blur, the Holnist swiveled and caught Powhatan’s passing wrist!

Daring fate, Powhatan stepped inside and managed to break free with a reverse.

But Macklin seemed to have expected the maneuver. The General rolled past his opponent, and when Powhatan whirled to follow, he grabbed quickly and seized the taller man’s other arm. Macklin grinned as Powhatan tried to slip out again, this time to no avail.

At arm’s length, the Camas Valley man pulled back and panted. In spite of the chill rain he seemed overheated.

That’s it, Gordon thought, disappointed. In spite of his past differences with Powhatan, Gordon tried to think of anything he could do to help. He looked around for something to throw at the monster augment, perhaps distracting Macklin long enough for the other man to get away.

But there was only mud, and a few soggy twigs. Gordon himself hardly had the strength even to crawl away from where he had been tossed. He could only lie there and watch the end, awaiting his own turn.

“Now,” Macklin told his new captive, “Now say what you have to say. But you better make it amusing. As I smile, you live.”

Powhatan grimaced as he tugged, testing Macklin’s iron-jawed grip. Even after a full minute he had not stopped breathing deeply. Now the expression on his face seemed distant, as if completely resigned. His voice was oddly rhythmic when he answered at last.

“I didn’t want this. I told them I couldn’t… too old… luck run out…” He inhaled deeply, and sighed. “I begged them not to make me. And now, to end it here… ?” The gray eyes flickered. “But it never ends… except death.”

He’s broken, Gordon thought. The man’s cracked. He did not want to witness this humiliation. And I left Dena to seek this famous hero…

“You’re not amusing me, Squire,” Macklin said, coldly. “Don’t bore me, not if you value your remaining moments.”

But Powhatan seemed distracted, as if he were actually thinking about something else, concentrating on remembering something, perhaps, and maintaining conversation out of courtesy alone.

“I only… thought you ought to know that things changed a bit… after you left the program.”

Macklin shook his head, his eyebrows knotting. “What the hell are you talking about?”

Powhatan blinked. A shiver ran up and down his body, making Macklin smile.

“I mean that… that they weren’t about to give up on anything so promising as augmentation… not just because there were flaws the first time.”

Macklin growled. “They were too scared to continue. Too scared of us!”

Powhatan’s eyelids fluttered. He was still inhaling hard, in great, silent breaths.

Gordon stared. Something was happening to the man. Perspiration glistened in oily speckles all across his shoulders and chest before being washed away in the scattered, heavy rain. His muscles twitched as if in the throes of cramps.

Gordon wondered. Was the man falling apart before his eyes?

Powhatan’s voice sounded remote, almost bemused. “…newer implants weren’t as large or as powerful… meant more to supplement training in certain eastern arts… in biofeedback…”

Macklin’s head rocked back and he laughed out loud. “Neohippy augments? Oh! Good, Powhatan. Good bluff! That is rich!”

Powhatan didn’t seem to be listening, though. He was concentrating, his lips moving as if reciting something long ago memorized.

Gordon stared, blinked away raindrops, and stared harder. Faint lines seemed to be radiating out along Powhatan’s arms and shoulders, crisscrossing his neck and chest. The man’s shivering had heightened to a steady rhythm that now seemed less chaotic than… purposeful.

“The process also takes a lot of air,” George Powhatan said mildly, conversationally. Still inhaling deeply, he began to straighten up.

By now Macklin had stopped laughing. The Holnist stared in frank disbelief.

Powhatan talked on, conversationally. “We are prisoners in similar cages… although you seem to relish yours.… Alike, we’re both trapped by the last arrogance of arrogant days…”

“You aren’t…”

“Come now, General,” Powhatan smiled without malice at his captor. “Don’t look so surprised.… Surely you didn’t believe you and your generation were the last?”

Macklin must have instantly reached the same conclusion as Gordon — understanding that George Powhatan was talking only in order to buy time.

“Macklin!” Gordon shouted. But the Holnist wasn’t distracted. In a blur his long, machetelike knife was out, glittering wetly in the lamplight before slashing down toward Powhatan’s immobilized right hand.

Still bent and unready, Powhatan reacted in a twisting blur. The blow that landed tore only a glancing streak along his arm as he caught Macklin’s wrist in his free hand.

The Holnist cried out as they strained together, the General’s greater strength pushing the dripping blade closer, closer.

With a sudden step and hip movement, Powhatan fell backward, flicking Macklin overhead. The General landed on his feet, still holding on, and wrenched hard, in turn. Whirling like two arms of a pinwheel, they threw each other, gaining momentum until they disappeared into the blackness beyond the ring of light. There was a crash. Then another. To Gordon it sounded like elephants trampling the undergrowth.

Wincing at the pain of mere movement, he crawled out of the light far enough for his eyes to begin adapting to the darkness, and pulled up under a rain-drenched red cedar. He peered in the direction they had gone, but was unable to do anything more than follow the fight by its tumult, and the skittering of tiny forest creatures fleeing the path of destruction.

When two wrestling forms spilled out into the clearing again, their clothes were in tatters. Their bodies ran red rivulets from scores of cuts and scratches. The knife was gone, but even weaponless the two warriors were fearsome. In their path no brambles, no mere saplings endured. A zone of devastation followed them wherever the battle went.

There was no ritual, no elegance to this combat. The smaller, more powerful figure closed with ferocity and tried to grapple with his enemy. The taller one fought to maintain a distance, and lashed out with blows that seemed to split the air.

Don’t exaggerate, Gordon told himself. They’re only men, and old men, at that,

And yet a part of Gordon felt kinship with those ancient peoples who believed in giants — in manlike gods — whose battles boiled seas and pushed up mountain ranges. As the combatants disappeared again into the darkness, Gordon experienced a wave of the sort of abstract wondering that had always cropped up in his mind when he least expected it. Detached, he thought about how augmentation, like so many other newly discovered powers, had seen its first use in war. But that had always been the way, before other uses were found… with chemistry, aircraft, space-flight.… Later, though, came the real uses.

What would have happened, had the Doomwar not come… had this technology mixed with the worldwide ideals of the New Renaissance, and been harnessed by all its citizens?

What might mankind have been capable of? What, if anything, would have been out of reach?

Gordon leaned on the rough trunk of the cedar and managed to hobble to his feet. He wavered unsteadily for a moment, then put one foot in front of the other — limping step by step in the direction of the crashing sounds. There was no thought of running away, only of witnessing the last great miracle of Twentieth-Century science play itself out under pelting rain and lightning in a dark age forest.

The lantern laid stark shadows through the crushed brambles, but soon he was beyond its reach. Gordon followed the noises until, suddenly, it all stopped. There were no more shouts, no more heavy concussions, only the rumbling of the thunderheads and the roar of the river.

Eyes adapted to the darkness. Shading them from the rain, he finally saw — outlined against the gray clouds — two stark, reddish shapes standing atop a prominence overlooking the river. One crouched, squat and bull-necked, like the legendary Minotaur. The other was shaped more like a man, but with long hair that whipped like tattered banners in the wind. Completely naked now, the two augments faced each other, rocking as they panted under the growling storm.

Then, as if at a signal, they came together for the last time.

Thunder rolled. A blinding staircase of lightning struck the mountain on the opposite river bank, whipping the forest branches with its bellow.

In that instant, Gordon saw a figure silhouetted against the jagged electric ladder, arms outstretched to hold another struggling shape overhead. The blinding brightness lasted just long enough for Gordon to see the standing shadow tense, flex, and cast the other into the air. The black shape rose for a full second before the electric brilliance vanished and darkness folded in again.

The afterimage felt seared. Gordon knew that that tumbling figure had to come down again — to the canyon and jagged, icy torrent far below. But in his imagination he saw the shadow continue upward, as if cast from the Earth.

Great sheets of rain blew southward down the narrow defile. Gordon felt his way back to the trunk of a fallen tree and sat down heavily. There he simply waited, unable even to contemplate moving, his memories churning like a turgid, silt-swirled river.

At last, there was a crackle of snapping twigs to his left. A naked form slowly emerged from the darkness, walking wearily toward him.

“Dena said there were only two types of males who counted,” Gordon commented. “It always seemed a crackpot idea to me. But I never realized the government thought that way too, before the end.”

The man slumped onto the torn bark beside him. Under his skin a thousand little pulsing threads surged and throbbed. Blood trickled from hundreds of scratches all over his body. He breathed heavily, staring at nothing at all.

“They reversed their policy, didn’t they?” Gordon asked. “In the end, they rediscovered wisdom.”

He knew George Powhatan had heard him, and had understood. But still there was no reply.

Gordon fumed. He needed an answer. For some reason, deep within, he had to know if the United States had been ruled, in those last years before the Calamity, by men and women of honor.

“Tell me, George! You said they abandoned using the warrior type. Who else was there, then? Did they select for the opposite? For an aversion to power? For men who would fight well, but reluctantly?”

An image: of a puzzled Johnny Stevens — ever eager to learn — earnestly trying to understand the enigma of a great leader who spurns a golden crown in favor of a plow. He had never really explained it to the boy. And now it was too late.

“Well? Did they revive the old ideal? Did they purposely seek out soldiers who saw themselves as citizens first?”

He grabbed Powhatan’s throbbing shoulders. “Damn you! Why didn’t you tell me, when I’d come all that way from Corvallis to plead with you! Don’t you think I, of all people, would have understood?”

The Squire of Camas Valley looked sunken. He met Gordon’s eyes very briefly, then looked away again, shuddering.

“Oh, you bet I’d have understood, Powhatan. I knew what you meant, when you said that the Big Things are insatiable.” Gordon’s fists clenched. “The Big Things will take everything you love away from you, and still demand more. You know it, I know it… that poor slob Cincinnatus knew it, when he told them they could keep their stupid crown!

“But your mistake was thinking it can ever end, Powhatan!” Gordon hobbled to his feet. He shouted his anger at the man. “Did you honestly think your responsibility was ever finished?”

When Powhatan spoke at last, Gordon had to bend to hear him over the rolling thunder.

“I’d hoped… I was so sure I could—”

“So sure you could say no to all the big lies!” Gordon laughed sarcastically, bitterly. “Sure you could say no to honor, and dignity^ and country?

“What made you change your mind, then?

“You laughed off Cyclops, and the promise of technology. Not God, nor pity, nor the ‘Restored United States’ would move you! So tell me, Powhatan, what power was finally great enough to make you follow Phil Bokuto down here and look for me?”

Sitting with clutched hands, the most powerful man alive — sole relic of an age of near-gods — seemed to draw into himself like a small boy, exhausted, ashamed.

“You’re right,” he groaned. “It never ends. I’ve done my share, a thousand times over I have!… All I wanted was to be left to grow old in peace. Is that too much to ask? Is it?”

His eyes were bleak, “But it never, ever ends.”

Powhatan looked up, then, meeting and holding Gordon’s stare for the first time.

“It was the women,” he said softly, answering Gordon’s question at last. “Ever since your visit and those damned letters, they kept talking, asking questions.

“Then the story of that madness up north arrived, even in my valley. I tried… tried to tell them it was just craziness, what your Amazons did, but they—”

Powhatan’s voice caught. He shook his head. “Bokuto stormed out, to come down here all alone… and when that happened they kept looking at me.… They kept after me and after me and after me…”

He moaned and covered his face with his hands.

“Sweet God in Heaven, forgive me. The women made me do it.”

Gordon blinked in amazement. Amidst the pelting raindrops, tears flowed down the last augment’s craggy, careworn face. George Powhatan shuddered and sobbed ach-ingly aloud.

Gordon slumped down to the rough log next to him, a heaviness filling him like the nearby Coquille, swollen from winter’s snows. In another minute, his own lips were trembling.

Lightning flashed. The nearby river roared. And they wept together under the rain — mourning as men can only mourn themselves.