by David Brin
His eyes narrowed as he growled lowly, “You ignorant bumpkins have ten minutes to form your militia and be ready to ride, or I warn you, the consequences will be far more unpleasant for you all than a forced march in the rain!”
The townsfolk blinked in astonishment. Most of them had not even moved, but stared at his uniform, and the shiny badge on his peaked hat. The true danger that faced them they could try to ignore, but this fantastic story had to be swallowed whole, or not at all.
For a long moment the tableau held—and Gordon stared them down until it broke.
All at once men were shouting at one another, running about to gather weapons. Women hurried to prepare the horses and gear. Gordon was left standing there—his poncho like a cape whipping behind him in the blustery wind—cursing silently while the Harrisburg guard turned out around him.
What, in God’s name, came over me? he asked himself at last.
Maybe his role was starting to get to him. For during those tense moments, as he had faced down an entire town, he had truly believed! He had felt the power of his role—the potent anger of a servant of the People, thwarted in a high task by little men.…
The episode left him shaken, and a little uncertain of his own mental equilibrium.
One thing was clear. He had hoped to give up the postman scam on reaching northern Oregon; but that was no longer possible. He was stuck with it now, for better or for worse.
All was ready in a quarter of an hour. He left the boy in the care of a local family and departed with the posse in a drizzling rain.
The ride was quicker this time, in daylight and with remounts. Gordon made sure they sent out scouts and flankers to guard against ambush, and kept the main party in three separated squads. When they finally arrived at the UO campus, the militia dismounted to converge on the Student Center.
Although the locals outnumbered the survivalist band by at least eight to one, Gordon figured the odds were actually about even. Wincing at every sound as the clumsy farmers approached the scene of the massacre, he nervously scanned the rooftops and windows.
I hear that down south they stopped the Holnists with sheer guts and determination. They’ve got some legendary leader, down there, who’s whipped the survivalists three falls out of four. Must be the reason the bastards are trying this end run up the coast. Things are different up here.
If this invasion ever really develops, these locals haven’t got a chance.
When they finally burst into the Student Center the raiders were long gone. The fireplace was cold. Tracks in the muddy street led westward, toward the coastal passes and the sea.
The victims of the massacre were found laid out in the old cafeteria, ears and other … parts … removed as trophies. The villagers stared at the havoc the automatic rifles had wrought, rediscovering uncomfortable memories of the early days.
Gordon had to remind them to get a burial detail together.
It was a frustrating morning. There was no way to prove who the bandits had been. Not without following them. And Gordon wasn’t about to try with this reluctant band of farmers. They already wanted to go home to their tall, safe stockade. Sighing, Gordon insisted that they make one more stop.
In the dank, ruined university gymnasium he found his mail sacks—one untouched where he had hidden it, the other torn open, letters scattered and trodden on the floor.
Gordon put on an irate show of fury for the benefit of the locals, who hurried obsequiously to help him collect and bag the remains. He played the role of the outraged postal inspector to the hilt, calling down vengeance on those who dared interfere with the mail.
But this time it was really only an act. Inside, all Gordon could think of was how hungry and tired of it all he was.
The slow, plodding ride back in a chill fog was sheer hell. But the ordeal went on at Harrisburg. There Gordon had to go through all the motions again … passing out a few letters he had collected in the towns south of Eugene … listening to tearful jubilation as a couple of lucky ones learned of a relative or friend thought long dead … appointing a local postmaster … enduring another silly celebration.
The next day he awoke stiff and sore and a little feverish. His dreams had been dire—all ending with a questioning, hopeful look in a dying woman’s eyes.
Nothing the villagers could say would make him remain another hour. He saddled a fresh horse, secured the mailbags, and headed north immediately after breakfast.
It was time, at last, to go see Cyclops.
5
CORVALLIS
May 18, 2011
Transmittal via: Shedd, Harrisburg,
Creswell, Cottage Grove, Culp
Creek, Oakridge, to Pine View
Dear Mrs. Thompson,
Your first three letters finally caught up with me in Shedd, just south of Corvallis. I can’t tell you how glad I was to get them. And news from Abby and Michael too—I’m very happy for them both, and I hope it will be a girl.
I note that you’ve expanded your local mail route to include Gilchrist, New Bend, and Redmond. Enclosed are temporary warrants for the postmasters you recommended, to be confirmed later. Your initiative is to be applauded.
The news of a change in regime in Oakridge was welcome. I hope their revolution lasts.
It was quiet in the paneled guest room as the silver fountain pen scritch-scratched across the slightly yellowed paper. Through the open window, with a pale moon shining amid scattered night clouds, Gordon could hear distant music and laughter from the hoedown he had left a little while ago, pleading fatigue.
By now Gordon was accustomed to these exuberant first-day festivities, as locals pulled out the stops for the visiting “Government Man.” The biggest difference here was that he had not seen so many people in one place since the food center riots, long, long ago.
The music was still of the land; with the Fall, people everywhere had returned to the fiddle and the banjo, to simple fare and square dances. In many ways it was all so very familiar.
But there are other differences as well.
Gordon rolled his fountain pen in his fingers and touched the letters from his friends in Pine View. Arriving with serendipitous timing, they had been real help in establishing his bona fides. The mail courier from the southern Willamette—a man Gordon himself had appointed only two weeks ago—had arrived on a steaming mount and refused even a glass of water until he reported to “the Inspector.”
The earnest youth’s behavior emphatically dissolved all remaining doubts the locals might have had. His fairy tale still worked.
For now, at least.
Gordon picked up the pen again and wrote.
By now you’ll have received my warning of a possible invasion by Rogue River survivalists. I know you’ll take appropriate measures for the defense of Pine View. Still, here in the strange domain of Cyclops I find it hard to get anyone to take the threat seriously. By today’s standards they’ve been at peace here a very long time. They treat me well, but people apparently think I am exaggerating the threat.
Tomorrow, at last, I have my interview. Perhaps I can persuade Cyclops itself of the danger.
It would be sad if this strange little society led by a machine fell to the barbarians. It is the finest thing I have seen since leaving the civilized east.
• • •
Gordon amended the remark in his own mind. The lower Willamette was the most civilized area he had encountered in fifteen years, period. It was a miracle of peace and prosperity, apparently wrought entirely by an intelligent computer and its dedicated human servants.
Gordon stopped writing and looked up as the lamp by his desk flickered. Under a chintz shade, the forty-watt incandescent bulb winked once more, then returned to a steady glow as the wind generators two buildings away regained their stride. The light was soft, but Gordon found his eyes watering each time he looked at it for even a little while.
He still had not gotten over it. On arriving in Corvallis he had seen his first worki
ng electric light in over a decade, and had been forced to excuse himself even as local dignitaries gathered to welcome him. He took refuge in a washroom to hide until he could regain his composure. It just wouldn’t do for a supposed representative of the “Government in Saint Paul City” to be seen weeping openly at the sight of a few flickering bulbs.
Corvallis and its environs are divided into independent boroughs, each supporting about two or three hundred people. All the land hereabouts is cultivated or ranched, using modern farming arts and hybrid seed the locals raise themselves. They have managed to maintain several prewar strains of bio-engineered yeast, and produce medicines and fertilizers from them.
Of course they’re limited to horse plows, but their smithies make implements from high-quality steel. They have even started producing hand-built water- and wind-power turbines—all designed by Cyclops, of course.
Local craftsmen have expressed an interest in trading with customers to the south and east. I’ll enclose a list of items they’re willing to barter for. Copy it and pass it along the line, will you?
• • •
Gordon had not seen so many happy, well-fed people since before the war, nor heard laughter so easy and often. There was a newspaper and a lending library, and every child in the valley got at least four years of schooling. Here, at last, was what he had been looking for since his militia unit broke up in confusion and despair, a decade and a half ago—a community of good people engaged in a vigorous effort to rebuild.
Gordon wished he could be a part of it, not a con artist ripping them off for a few nights’ meals and a free bed.
Ironically, these people would have accepted the old Gordon Krantz as a new citizen. But he was indelibly branded by the uniform he wore and by his actions back at Harrisburg. If he revealed the truth now, he was certain they would never forgive him.
He had to be a demigod in their eyes, or nothing at all. If ever a man was trapped in his own lie …
Gordon shook his head. He would have to take the hand he had been dealt. Perhaps these people really could use a mailman
So far I haven’t been able to find out much about Cyclops itself. I’ve been told that the supercomputer does not govern directly, but insists that all the villages and towns it serves live together peaceably and democratically. In effect, it has become judge-arbitrator for the entire lower Willamette, all the way north to the Columbia.
The Council tells me Cyclops is very interested in seeing a formal mail route created, and has offered every assistance. He … I mean, it … seems anxious to cooperate with the Restored U.S.
Everyone, of course, was glad to hear that they would soon be in contact with the rest of the country again—
Gordon looked at the last line for a long moment, his pen poised, and realized that he simply couldn’t go on with the lies tonight. It was no longer amusing, knowing Mrs. Thompson would read through them.
It made him feel sad.
Just as well, he thought. I have a busy day tomorrow. He covered the pen and got up to prepare for bed.
While he washed his face, he thought about the last time he had met one of the legendary supercomputers. It had been only months before the war, when he was an eighteen-year-old sophomore in college. All the talk had been about the new “intelligent” machines just then being unveiled in a few locations.
It was a time of excitement. The media trumpeted the breakthrough as the end of humanity’s long loneliness. Only instead of coming from outer space, the “other intelligences” with whom man would share his world would be his own creations.
The neohippies and campus editors of New Renaissance Magazine held a grand birthday party the day the University of Minnesota put one of the latest supercomps on display. Balloons floated by, aerostat artists pedaled overhead, music filled the air while people picnicked on the lawns.
In the midst of it all—inside a mammoth, metal-mesh Faraday cage suspended on a cushion of air—they had sealed the helium-cooled cylinder containing Millichrome. Set up this way, internally powered and shielded, there was no way anyone from the outside could fake the mechanical brain’s responses.
He stood in line for hours that afternoon. When at last Gordon’s turn came to step forward and face the narrow camera lens, he brought out a list of test questions, two riddles, and a complicated play on words.
It was so very long ago, that bright day in the spring of hope, yet Gordon remembered it as if it were yesterday … the low, mellifluous voice, the friendly, open laughter of the machine. On that day Millichrome met all his challenges, and responded with an intricate pun of its own.
It also chided him, gently, for not doing as well as expected on a recent history exam.
When his turn was over, Gordon had walked away feeling a great, heady joy that his species had created such a wonder.
The Doomwar came soon thereafter. For seventeen awful years he had simply assumed that all of the beautiful supercomps were dead, like the broken hopes of a nation and a world. But here, by some wonder, one lived! Somehow, by pluck and ingenuity, the Oregon State techs had managed to keep a machine going through all the bad years. He couldn’t help feeling unworthy and presumptuous to have come posing among such men and women.
Gordon reverently switched off the electric light and lay in bed, listening to the night. In the distance, the music from the Corvallis hoedown finally ended with a whooping cheer. Then he could hear the crowd dispersing for home.
Finally, the evening quieted down. There was wind in the trees outside his window, and the faint whine of the nearby compressors that kept the delicate brain of Cyclops supercold and healthy.
And there was something else as well. Through the night came a rich, soft, sweet sound that he could barely place, though it tugged at his memory.
After a while it came to him. Somebody, probably one of the technicians, was playing classical music on a stereo.
A stereo … Gordon tasted the word. He had nothing against banjos and fiddles, but after fifteen years … to hear Beethoven once again.
Sleep came at last, and the symphony blended into his dreaming. The notes rose and fell, and finally melded with a gentle, melodious voice that spoke to him across the decades. An articulated metal hand extended past the fog of years and pointed straight at him.
“Liar!” the voice said softly, sadly. “You disappoint me so.
“How can I help you, my makers, if you tell only lies?”
6
DENA
“This former factory is where we salvage equipment for the Millenium Project. You can see we’ve really hardly begun. We can’t start building true robots, as Cyclops’s plans call for later on, until we’ve recovered some industrial capability first.”
Gordon’s guide led him down a cavern of shelves stacked high with the implements of another era. “The first step, of course, was to try to save as much as we could from rot and decay. Only some of the salvage is kept here. What has no near-term potential is stored elsewhere, against a future day.”
Peter Aage, a lanky blond man only a little older than Gordon, must have been a student at Corvallis State University when war broke out. He was one of the youngest to wear the black-trimmed white coat of a Servant of Cyclops, but even he showed gray at the temples.
Aage also was the uncle and sole surviving relative of the small boy Gordon had rescued in the ruins of Eugene. The man had not made any great display of gratitude, but it was clear he felt indebted to Gordon. None of those outranking him among the Servants had interfered when he insisted on being the one to show the visitor Cyclops’s program to hold off the dark age in Oregon.
“Here we’ve begun repairing some small computers and other simple machines,” Aage told Gordon, leading him past stacks of sorted and labeled electronics. “The hardest part is replacing circuits burned out in those first few instants of the war, by those high-frequency electromagnetic pulses the enemy set off above the continent—you know, by the very first bombs?”
Gordon smiled indulgently, and Aage reddened. He raised a hand in apology. “I’m sorry. I’m just so used to having to explain everything so simply.… Of course you Eastern folks probably know a lot more about the EMP than we do.”
“I am not a technical man,” Gordon answered, and wished he had not bluffed so well. He would have liked to have heard more.
But Aage went back to the subject at hand. “As I was saying, this is where most of the salvage work is done. It’s painstaking effort, but as soon as electricity can be provided on a wider scale, and once more basic needs have been addressed—we plan to put these microcomputers back in outlying villages, schools, and machine shops. It’s an ambitious goal, but Cyclops is certain we can make it happen in our lifetimes.”
The cavern of shelves opened up into a vast factory floor. Long banks of overhead skylights spanned the ceiling, so the fluorescents were used only sparingly. Still, there was a faint hum of electricity on all sides as white-coated techs carted equipment to and fro. Against every wall was stacked tribute from the surrounding towns and hamlets—payment for the benign guidance of Cyclops.
More machinery of all kinds—plus a small tithe of food and clothing for Cyclops’s human helpers—came in every day. And yet, from all Gordon had heard, this salvage was easily spared by the people of the valley. After all, what use had they for the old machines, anyway?
No wonder there were no complaints of a “tyranny by machine.” The supercomputer’s price was easily met. And in exchange, the valley had its Solomon—and perhaps a Moses to lead them out of this wilderness. Remembering that gentle, wise voice from so long ago, Gordon recognized a bargain.
“Cyclops has carefully planned this stage of the transition,” Aage explained. “You saw our small assembly line for water and wind turbines. Besides that, we help area blacksmiths improve their forges and local farmers plan their crops. And by distributing old hand-held video games to children in the valley, we hope to make them receptive to better things, such as computers, when the time comes.”