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:
RESTORED U.S.
POSTAL SERVICE.
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 valley.
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 all
iance 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 marry 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 corners 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.