The Postman

by David Brin

  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 to
ok 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 Powhatan. 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

  My dearest Gordon,

  As you read this it is already too late to stop us, so please stay calm while I try to explain. Then, if you still cannot condone what we have done, I hope you can somehow find it in your heart to forgive us.

  I’ve talked it over and over with Susanna and Jo and the other Army women. We’ve read as many books as our duties allowed time for. We’ve badgered our mothers and aunts for their remembrances. Finally, we were forced to come to two conclusions.

  The first one is straightforward. It’s clear that male human beings should never have been left in control of the world all these centuries. Many of you are wonderful beyond belief, but too many others will always be bloody lunatics.

  Your sex is simply built that way. Its better side gave us power and light, science and reason, medicine and philosophy. Meanwhile, the dark half spent its time dreaming up unimaginable hells and putting them into practice.

  Some of the old books hint at REASONS for this strange division, Gordon. Science might even have been on the verge of an answer before the Doomtime. There were sociologists (mostly women) studying the problem, asking hard questions.

  But whatever they learned, it’s lost to us now, except for the simplest truths.

  Oh, I can just HEAR you, Gordon, telling me I’m exaggerating again—that I’m oversimplifying and “generalizing from too little data.”

  For one thing, a lot of women participated in the great “male” accomplishments, and in the great evils, as well.

  Also, it’s obvious that most men fall in between those extremes of good and bad I spoke of.

  But Gordon, those ones in between wield no power! They don’t change the world, for better or worse. They are irrelevant.

  You see? I can address your objections as if you were here! Though I never forget that life has cheated me of so much, I certainly have had a fine education for a woman of these times. This last year I’ve learned even more, from you. Knowing you has convinced me that I am right about men.

  Face it, my dearest love. There are simply not enough of you good guys left to win this round. You and those like you are our heroes, but the bastards are winning! They are about to bring on the night that comes after twilight, and you cannot stop them alone.

  There IS another force in humanity, Gordon. It might have tipped the balance in your age-old struggle, back in the days before the Doomwar. But it was lazy or distracted … I don’t know. For some reason, though, it did not intervene. Not in any concerted way.

  That is the second thing we, the women of the Army of the Willamette, have realized: that we have one last chance to make up for what women failed to do in the past.

  We’re going to stop the bastards ourselves, Gordon. We are going to do our job at last … to CHOOSE among men, an
d to cull out the mad dogs.

  • • •

  Forgive me, Please. The others wanted me to tell you that we will always love you. I remain yours, always.

  Dena

  “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.