by David Brin
“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 Sutherlin 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 good-byes 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 good-bye 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.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The author would like to express his appreciation to those who gave so generously of their time and wisdom during the evolution of this book.
Dean Ing, Diane and John Brizzolara, Astrid Anderson, Greg Bear, Mark Grygier, Douglas Bolger, Kathleen Retz, Conrad Halling, Pattie Harper, Don Coleman, Sarah Barter, and Dr. James Arnold all contributed helpful comments.
Especially, I would like to thank Anita Everson, Daniel J. Brin, Kristie McCue, and Professor John Lewis, for their important insights.
Appreciation to Lou Aronica and Bantam Books, for excellent support and understanding, and to Shawna McCarthy of Davis Publications, for more of the same.
And finally, my thanks to those women I’ve known who have never ceased to startle me, just when I’ve grown complacent and need most to be startled, and who make me stop and think.
There is power there, slumbering below the surface. And there is magic.
David Brin
April 1985
DAVID BRIN is the author of eleven novels, Sundiver, The Uplift War, Startide Rising, The Practice Effect The Postman, Heart of the Comet (with Gregory Benford), Earth, Glory Season, Brightness Reef, Infinity’s Shore and Heaven’s Reach, as well as Contacting Aliens: An Illustrated Guide to the Uplift Universe (with Kevin Lenagh) and the short-story collections The River of Time and Otherness. He has a doctorate in astrophysics and has been a NASA consultant and a physics professor. He lives in southern California, where he is at work on his next novel.