The Postman

1

A new legend swept Oregon, from Roseburg all the way north to the Columbia, from the mountains to the sea. It traveled by letter and by word of mouth, growing with each telling.

It was a sadder story than the two that had come before it — those speaking of a wise, benevolent machine and of a reborn nation. It was more disturbing than those. And yet this new fable had one important element its predecessors lacked.

It was true.

The story told of a band of forty women — crazy-women, many contended — who had shared among themselves a secret vow: to do anything and everything to end a terrible war, and end it before all the good men died trying to save them.

They acted out of love, some explained. Others said that they did it for their country.

There was even a rumor that the women had looked on their odyssey to Hell as a form of penance, in order to make up for some past failing of womankind.

Interpretations varied, but the overall moral was always the same, whether spread by word of mouth or by US. Mail. From hamlet to village to farmstead, mothers and daughters and wives read the letters and listened to the words — and passed them on.

Men can be brilliant and strong, they whispered to one another. But men can be mad, as well. And the mad ones can ruin the world.

Women, you must judge them…

Never again can things be allowed to reach this pass, they said to one another as they thought of the sacrifice the Scouts had made.

Never again can we let the age-old fight go on between good and bad men alone.

Women, you must share responsibility… and bring your own talents into the struggle…

And always remember, the moral concluded: Even the best men — the heroes — will sometimes neglect to do their jobs.

Women, you must remind them, from time to time…

2

Gordon sat on a bench just outside the Corvallis Post Office. He rested his back against the rough wall, catching the rays of the morning sun, and thought about things he could not write of in his letter to Mrs. Thompson… things for which he could not find words.

Until they had recaptured the villages of Chesire and Franklin, all the people of the Willamette had to go on were rumors, for not one of the Scouts had ever come home again from that unauthorized, midwinter foray. After the first counterattacks, though, newly released slaves began relating parts of the story. Slowly, the pieces fell together,

One winter day — in fact only two days after Gordon had left Corvallis on his long trek south — the women Scouts started deserting from their army of farmers and townsmen. A few at a time, they slipped away south and west, and gave themselves up, unarmed, to the enemy.

A few were killed on the spot. Others were raped and tortured by laughing madmen who would not even hear their carefully rehearsed declarations.

Most, though, were taken in — as they had hoped — welcomed by the Holnists’ insatiable appetite for women.

Those who could pass it off believably explained that they were sick of living as fanners’ wives, and wanted the touch of “real men.” It was a tale the followers of Nathan Holn were disposed to accept, or so those who had dreamed up the plan imagined.

What followed must have been hard, perhaps beyond imagining. For the women had to pretend, and pretend believably, until the scheduled red night of knives — the night when they were supposed to save the frail remnant of civilization from the monsters who were bringing it down.

What exactly went wrong wasn’t yet clear, as the spring counteroffensive pushed through the first recaptured towns. Perhaps an invader grew suspicious and tortured some poor girl until she talked. Or maybe one of the women fell in love with her fierce barbarian, and spilled her heart in a betraying confession. Dena was correct that history told of such things occurring. It might have happened here.

Or perhaps some simply could not lie well enough, or hide the shivers when their new lords touched them.

Whatever went wrong, the scheduled night was red, indeed. Where the warning did not arrive in time, women stole kitchen knives, that midnight, and slipped from room to room, killing and killing again until they themselves went down struggling.

Elsewhere, they merely went down, cursing and spitting into their enemies’ eyes to the last.

Of course it was a failure. Anyone could have predicted it. Even where the plan “succeeded,” too few of the invaders died to make any real difference. The women soldiers’ sacrifice accomplished nothing at all in any military sense.

The gesture was a tragic fiasco.

Word spread though, across the lines and up the valleys. Men listened, dumbfounded, and shook their heads in disbelief. Women heard also, and spoke together urgently, privately. They argued, frowned, and thought.

Eventually, word arrived even far to the south. By now a legend, the story came at last to Sugarloaf Mountain.

And there, high above the confluence of the roaring Coquille, the Scouts finally won their victory.

“Courier!”

Gordon hailed a passing youth, wearing the blue denim and leather of a postman. The young man hurried over and saluted. Gordon held out the envelope. “Would you drop this onto the regular eastbound sort stack for me?”

“Yessir. Right away, sir!”

“No rush,” Gordon smiled. “It’s just a personal—”

But the young man had already taken off at a dead run. Gordon sighed. The old days of close camaraderie, of knowing every person in the “postal service” were over. He was too high above these young couriers to share a lazy grin and perhaps a minute’s gossip.

Yes, it’s definitely time.

He stood up, and only winced slightly as he hefted his saddlebags.

“So you’re goin’ to skip the hoedown, after all?”

He turned. Eric Stevens stood at the post office’s side door, chewing on a blade of grass and regarding Gordon with folded arms.

Gordon shrugged. “It seems best just to go. I don’t want a party in my honor. All that fuss is just a waste of time.”

Stevens nodded, agreeing. His calm strength had been a blessing during Gordon’s recuperation — especially his derisive dismissal of any suggestion by Gordon that he was to blame for Johnny’s death. To Eric, his grandson had died as well as any man could hope to. The counteroffensive had been proof enough for him, and Gordon had decided not to argue about it.

The old man shaded his eyes and looked out across the nearby garden plots toward the south end of Highway 99.

“More southerners ridin’ in.”

Gordon turned and saw a column of mounted men riding slowly by on their way north, toward the main encampment.

“Sheesh,” Stevens snickered, “look at their eyes pop. You’d think they’d never seen a city before.”

Indeed, the tough, bearded men of Sutheriin and Roseburg, of Camas and Coos Bay, rode into town blinking in obvious amazement at strange sights — at windmill generators and humming electric lines, at busy machine shops, and at scores of clean, noisy children playing in the schoolyards.

Calling this a city may be stretching things, Gordon noted. But Eric had a point.

Old Glory flapped over a busy central post office. At intervals, uniformed couriers leaped onto ponies and sped off north, east, and south, saddlebags bulging.

From the House of Cyclops poured forth rich music from another time, and nearby a small, patchy-colored blimp bobbed within its scaffolding while white-coated workers argued in the ancient, arcane tongue of engineering.

On one flank of the tiny airship was painted an eagle, rising from a pyre. The other side bore the crest of the sovereign State of Oregon.

Finally, at the training grounds themselves, the newcomers would encounter small groups of clear-eyed women soldiers — volunteers from up and down the valley — who were there to do a job, the same as everybody else.

It was all quite a lot for the gruff southerners to absorb at once. Gordon smiled as he watched the rough, bearded fighters gawk and slowly remember the way things once had been. The reinforcements arrived thinking of themselves as saviors of an effete, decadent north. But they would go home changed.

“So long, Gordon,” Eric Stevens said, concisely. Unlike some of the others, he had the good taste to know that goodbyes should be brief. “Godspeed, and come back someday.”

“I will,” Gordon nodded. “If I can. So long, Eric.” He shouldered the saddlebag and started walking toward the stables, leaving the bustle of the post office behind him.

The old athletic fields were a sea of tents as he passed by. Horses whinnied and men marched. Across the grounds, Gordon saw the unmistakable figure of George Powhatan, introducing his new officers to old comrades in arms, reorganizing the frail Willamette Army into the new Defense League of the Oregon Commonwealth.

Briefly, as Gordon walked by, the tall, silver-haired man looked up and met his eyes. Gordon nodded, saying goodbye without words.

He had won after all — had brought the Squire down off his mountain — even though the price of that victory would go with both of them all of their lives.

Powhatan offered up a faint smile in return. They both knew, by now, what a man does with burdens such as those.

He carries them, Gordon thought.

Perhaps some day the two of them might sit together again — in that peaceful mountain lodge, with children’s art hanging on the walls — and talk about horsebreeding and the subtle art of brewing beer. But that time would only come after the Big Things finally let them both go. Neither man planned to hold his breath until then.

Powhatan had his war to fight. And Gordon had quite another job to do.

He touched the bill of his postman’s cap and turned to walk on.

He had stunned them all, yesterday, when he resigned from the Defense Council. “My obligations are to the nation, not to one small corner of it,” he had told them, allowing them to go on believing things which were not lies at heart.

“Now that Oregon is safe,” he had said, “I must continue with my main job. There are other places to be brought into the postal network, people elsewhere too long cut off from their countrymen.

“You can carry on just fine without me.”

All their protests had been to no avail. For it was true. He had given all he had to give here. He would be more useful now elsewhere. Anyway, he couldn’t stay any longer. In this valley everything would perpetually remind him of the harm that he had accomplished in doing good.

Gordon had decided to slip out of town today, instead of attending the party in his honor. He was recovered enough to travel, as long as he took it easy, and he had said good-bye to those who were left — to Peter Aage and to Dr. Lazarensky — and to the shell of that poor, dead machine whose ghost he no longer feared.

The remuda handler brought out the young mare Gordon had chosen for this leg of his journey. Still deep in thought, he adjusted the saddlebags containing his gear and five pounds of mail — letters addressed, for the first time, to destinations outside of Oregon.

On one point he left in complete confidence. The war was won, though there certainly were brutal months and years ahead. Part of his present mission was to seek new allies, new ways of shortening the end. But that end was now inevitable.

He had no fear of George Powhatan ever becoming a tyrant after victory was complete. When every Holnist had been hanged, the people of Oregon would be told in no uncertain terms to manage their own affairs, or be damned. Gordon wished he could be here to watch the thunder, if anyone ever offered Powhatan a crown.

The Servants of Cyclops would go on spreading their own myth, encouraging a rebirth of technology. Gordon’s appointed postmasters would continue lying without knowing it, using the tale of a restored nation to bind the land together, until the fable wasn’t needed anymore.

Or until, by believing it, people made it come true.

And, yes, women would go on talking over what had happened here, this winter. They would pore over the notes Dena Spurgen had left behind, read the same old books the Scouts had read, and argue over the merits of judging men.

Gordon had decided that it hardly mattered now whether Dena really had been mentally unbalanced. The lasting effects would not be known during his lifetime. And even he hadn’t the influence, or the desire, to interfere with the spreading legend.

Three myths… and George Powhatan. Among them, the people of Oregon were in good hands. The rest they could probably manage for themselves.

His spirited mount snorted as Gordon swung into the saddle. He patted and soothed the mare until she was calm, trembling with eagerness to be off. Gordon’s escort already waited out at the edge of town, ready to see him safely to Coos Bay and the boat that would take him the rest of the way.

To California… he thought.

He remembered the bear flag patch, and the silent, dying soldier who had told him so much without ever saying a word. He owed that man something. And Phil Bokuto. And Johnny, who had wanted so to go south and see for himself.

And Dena… how I wish you could have come along.

He would find out for them. They were all with him now.

Silent California, he wondered, what have you been up to, all these years?

He wheeled his mount around and headed down the south road, behind him all the clattering and shouting of an army of free men and women, certain of victory — soldiers who would return gladly to their farms and villages when the distasteful chore was done at last.

Their clamor was loud, irreverent, determined, impatient.

Gordon rode past an open window blaring recorded music. Someone was being lavish with electricity today. Who knew? Maybe the raucous extravagance was even in his honor.

His head lifted, and even the horse’s ears flicked up. It was an old Beach Boys tune, he recognized at last, one he hadn’t heard in twenty years… a melody of innocence, unflaggingly optimistic.

I’ll bet they have electricity in California too, Gordon hoped.

And maybe …

Spring was in the air. Men and women cheered as the little blimp rose, sputtering, into the sky.

Gordon nudged with his heels and the mare sped to a canter. Once out of town, he did not look back.