First Citizen

by Thomas T. Thomas

  Alcott kicked a fragment of spar, spinning it away over the sand. “This area’s clear, Gran, and no one’s going to find his body. Does it matter?”

  “Not anymore.”

  Chapter 20

  Granville James Corbin: War Among the Lotus Eaters

  Late in life, I found love. Love. Not the brittle mutual-advantage syndrome that my other wives and I had practiced. I finally found a woman with a perfect sense of herself, who fitted perfectly inside her body and her chosen life. Who could share openness and candor with me, yet remain caring and committed. I finally found someone who was like me in her loving. I found her in California, that great state of anarchy that had shaped so much of my early life. Actually, I went there looking for someone else.

  Three weeks after the Battle of Boise River, a game warden patrolling the Malheur River basin in eastern Oregon found the wreck of a Command Stomper. This was a larger version of our aircav workhorses, fitted with extra comm and cyber gear for airtac, or airborne tactical control. It was the kind of plane a general would take into battle with twenty of his staff advisors. It had FSF markings on the fuselage and tail.

  The crash site showed a short gouge in the rangeland grasses, ending in a bounce that broke the plane’s spine. The pilot had flown to the limit of his, or her, fuel reserves, then come in at a shallow, controlled angle from about 50 feet with the landing gear up. Why she, or he, hadn’t popped the gear and set down VTOL two or three miles back, in country no more rugged or closer to anywhere than this was, was a mystery. The game warden reported no bodies, no evidence of injuries, no telltale papers or personal effects, and the data banks were purged. Twenty anonymous men and women had crashed on a hillside and walked away.

  Alcott sent a tech team to the site and the mystery became clear. Two sets of truck tires had gone cross country, cutting into the ground a mile west of the plane and—judging from the vegetation’s recovery—at about the same time as the crash. So the pilot had been stretching it for a rendezvous and run short of fuel. One answer.

  Now, which way had they gone? North into Washington State and ultimately Canada? West to the coast, Coos Bay, and a boat? Or south into California? The tire tracks ceased to give evidence the minute they touched paved road, five miles from the site. We settled it by process of elimination: North or west took them out of my jurisdiction; south was the place to look. But if they, he, Pollock had gone into California, we might never find them, him.

  Over the years since the breakup of Federal power in the late ’90s, California had become more and more isolated, especially in the north. The great eastern road, Interstate 80 from San Francisco to Reno and out across the deserts of Nevada and Utah to the rest of the country, had suffered when Federal money was no longer available to maintain it. The Californians paid to plow snow and repair potholes on the section through the Sierra to Reno, where the gaming action was. Then they figured it was cheaper to allow gambling in their own cities; Reno withered when there was no reason for people to go east.

  I-80 was also the main truck route into and out of the region. When the road closed, the Santa Fe Southern system had regained its rail monopoly, which drove up the price of eastern freight, at least for bulk commodities and manufactured goods. In return, Northern California had turned its face more and more toward trade with the Pacific Rim for these things. Lately there had been rumors of exchange difficulties and embargoes with Asia, although this was all too far from my field of activity to bother sorting out.

  In the south, connections through Vegas and Phoenix had remained more open, but mountains and deserts were still to be crossed. The water way, to Japan, China, and Southeast Asia, would eventually draw their eyes and their dollars, too.

  Except for air travel to the eastern States, which only the rich could afford, the Pacific Coast became as isolated as it had been in Gold Rush days, when goods and news came around the Horn and were never less than three months out of date. The Californians, avant-avant and a little crazy by nature, developed a breed of anarchy that even I couldn’t control. They were part of TENMAC by geography and personal choice, not because they submitted to anything like a regional government.

  We would be following Pollock into the worst of it. The Redwood Empire stretched from Crescent City to San Francisco along the Coastal Range. And facing it across the strip of upper Sacramento Valley were the dark forest counties: Modoc, Lassen, Plumas, Sierra, Nevada, Placer, Eldorado, Amador, dense, green, secret, ingrown. The people of the valley towns like Red Bluff and Chico were sane, plain farmers compared to the ones who lived up in the forests.

  The hill-country tradition had started fifty years ago, in the ’70s, when independent marijuana growers had taken over the national forests and held them with automatic weapons against backpackers, game wardens, Federal narcs, and the National Guard. Commerce Department statistics for the period might have said Northern California’s biggest crop was wine grapes. Pooh! The biggest cash generator in the State—bigger than financial paper, food processing, or petroleum—was maryjane. And all of that cash was going into private, very private hands.

  The sheriff’s deputies learned to unbuckle their holsters and leave them in the patrol car whenever they stopped to take a leak. County extension agents learned to draw their salaries from the comfort and safety of their offices and keep off the land, thank you. State officials learned to check with the growers before proposing any tiresome legislation that, ten to naught, would be righteously ignored wherever the roads left the flatlands. A situation like that, carrying on for fifty years, erodes the social contract. It draws lines around what people will and won’t do. It leaves a lot of shadows where the mushrooms of not-sane behavior grow.

  And we were going on a manhunt into this legal wilderness. I told Alcott I wanted at least five rifle companies at my back when we moved south from Oregon. But I left Mike in Oregon. Someone had to be outside, able to come pull me out if things got sticky, and Birdsong was rallying forces for the final push into the East.

  I took a battalion of about 600 troops down I-5, which had been maintained, from Medford into Siskiyou and Shasta counties. We were mostly in Turtles, with a convoy of supply trucks behind and a short wing of Stompers overhead to provide high cover and spot ambushes. I’d ordered that everything be painted with TENMAC markings, the yellow sun-and-sea, at twice normal size. We didn’t want to be mistaken for an invasion force, although that’s what we felt like. I also ordered the pilots and Turtle gunners to keep their safeties selected. I’d preferred they took the first hit than spook the locals with nervous bursts at shadows. The shadows would probably fire back.

  I-5 took us around the knees of Mount Shasta, across the spidery lake that was backed up by Shasta Dam, and down into the Central Valley. The highway purposefully bypassed the smallest cities and towns, which our recon flights said showed evidence of recent occupation but no people in sight. That didn’t surprise me: The phones still worked and you’d crawl into the storm cellar, too, if your neighbors up the road reported an army coming south.

  The point was not to track Pollock, like a posse with dogs, nor locate him with detective work, asking questions door to door. No, we wanted to see the land, see what there was for him to encounter. And so far, we had found a typical early-summer day in the Sacramento Valley. Which is to say, the sun was just baking the green out of the fields and turning the concrete highway ahead into a river of white lead. No wonder the people kept indoors.

  We were following the interstate south, beyond Cottonwood, when it ended. Not a washout but a cut, as clean as if it was made with concrete saws, thirty feet wide. The roadbed layers of aggregate, rebar, and gravel had been carefully dug away to the underlying soil, and that removed in a ditch fifteen feet deep. If we had been moving at night, we would have lost the head of the column into this hole. As it was, we pulled up, popped hatches, and looked in while the Stompers circled and swooped overhead.

  “Turn back. You are not welcome here.”

>   The voice, electronically amplified, had come from a windbreak of trees a hundred yards away from the highway. There were trees on either side here, I noticed, dense ones. Backed up by knobs of hills that could have hidden a column of heavy tanks, although the Stompers reported nothing. They couldn’t see into the trees, however.

  I went to my Turtle and fished out the handmike for its bullhorn.

  “Who asks us to turn back?” I blared.

  “The Federated Growers of Tehama County.”

  “We have come in peace. We do not want to disturb your plantings.”

  “You won’t, Bub.”

  “We are looking for a party of men and possibly women, who may have come through here less than a month ago. About twenty people with—”

  “No one comes through here.”

  “But we have every reason to believe—”

  “You have your feet planted on a piece of ground, Bub, that’s zeroed in for a dozen wire-guide, armor-piercing rockets, which we’re gonna let loose in about ten seconds if you’re not packin’ into your clamshells and gettin’ out of here.”

  The morning sun was raising a dome of heat under my combat helmet. The sweat was leaking through my hair and running down my neck. I decided to try the obvious approach, an appeal to authority.

  “I am General James Corbin, chief military officer of the States of the TENMAC, to which California is an original signatory. I respectfully request your civilian assistance in locating an enemy of the—”

  “ ‘Corbin’ did you say?”

  “Yes. General Granville James—”

  “Then you’re the one.”

  I didn’t know how to answer that. Shouting “One what?” seemed undignified, a slack-jawed dumb question for a commander to be asking in front of his own troops. The silence grew.

  Then, from the trees, a party of men, ten or so, came toward the road. They were dressed in patchwork cammies, but were still civilians from their walk, the way they bunched and straggled in the face of an armored column. As they got closer, we could see that they were carrying machine pistols and carbines. Their rockets and their reserve troops, if any, were still in the trees. I noticed that the one in front was carrying a twenty-inch, tripod-mounted bullhorn, an awkward thing you would leave back there, if you had any sort of installation. One of his friends lugged along the twelve-volt car battery that powered it.

  For the first time, I focused on a slat-sided green farm truck, parked innocuously on the other side of the ditch, about half a mile down the highway.

  “I’m Jerry Dorner,” the man with the horn said. I recognized his voice without the amplification. He held out his hand to me. Caught off guard, I took it and shook with him.

  “Your rockets are back on the latch?” I asked levelly.

  “Oh, yeah.” He smiled. Then he turned and pointed off to the right side of the road. “Look, the bank’s not too steep over here. If your vehicles can negotiate a twenty-three percent grade—”

  “They can.”

  “You can get them across to the other side.”

  “I suppose you’d like a lift down to your truck, too.”

  “In this sun, we’d surely appreciate it.” He smiled again.

  “And then—?”

  “Then we take you to Mandy. Like she said.”

  The farm truck led us thirty miles down the highway, past Red Bluff, and turned west into the mountains. The hills rise quickly here, about 1,500 feet in three miles, on switchback roads that had my drivers grinding gears and blowing blue smoke. No matter how friendly Dorner seemed, I kept the Stompers on high patrol, but they reported nothing.

  This was sheep country, green meadows broken by white, cheese-textured rocks and cut by rambling stands of live oaks that ran through the country like dark veins in marble. They were goblin trees, bent and twisted, arthritic but incredibly tough. At the crest of these hills, the coastal fog blew enough moisture into the air to support streamers of Spanish moss on the trees. Gray-green lichens covered the exposed stones. It was land that felt old.

  We took State routes, then county roads, then paths of oiled dirt. If Dorner was leading us into an ambush—which the Stompers denied, every time I asked them—then he was going to great lengths for it, in country he seemed to own. Somewhere in northern Mendocino County, by our maps, he took us into a small, level valley and pulled us over.

  Dorner sauntered back toward my Turtle. We watched him through armored glass, waiting until he was right alongside before popping the hatch. He was still smiling.

  “You can park most of these tanks and your men down here. No room for them up at the house, you see. Mandy wants you to come up, of course. And bring these fellas along.” He waved at the inside of the Turtle. “Have everybody else make camp, why don’t you. I saw you got all kind of supplies, but if there’s anything you need, just whistle on Channel 33, and we’ll try to provide.”

  He turned back toward the truck, paused, brought his grin around. “We don’t get much call for diesel in here, not since the loggin’ trucks left. But if that’s all you burn, and you need some, we can bring in a tanker. Suits?”

  “That’s very kind of you.”

  “Mandy said to keep you happy.” He grinned and walked off again.

  We set off uphill, just the truck and my command vehicle, after I ordered the rest of the column to dig in, stay close to camp, and expect a call-in signal from me in four hours or come looking.

  “Up at the house” was humble phrasing for what we found. Someone had taken over the top of one of these ancient hills, left the best parts of the rocks and trees, and rearranged the rest. The house was a fortress, set on ramparts of dressed stone which filled in the natural dips of the ridgeline and lifted their skirts across the stone outcrops. Above this foundation rose walls of white-washed adobe, ranked in three receding levels, like a Chinese pavilion. Each level was cut with a long Spanish arcade; the arches of the second level were half as wide as those below, the third’s half as wide as the second’s. Thousands of red-clay tiles topped it all; the roof was interrupted twice, however, by zags where the hill’s gray-green oaks sprouted through. The house was as big as a small abbey, and no doubt there were outbuildings, garages, gardens, pools, and gracious living hidden in courtyards behind those Spanish arches.

  As we caught glimpses of this gem, while switching back and forth on the road approaching it, I was trying to match lines and shapes with something in my mind. The form was too good, the modern interpretation of a classic theme too subtle. This had to be a Frank Lloyd Wright design, the plans bootlegged from the society that guarded his architectural estate, and unauthorized modifications made to fit a good design to a better setting. I thought it might have started out as the plan for the Marin Civic Center—except for the severe roof line broken up by the trees, and for the red tiles instead of the Center’s delicate sea-blue. Also, there was no flat dome.

  Looking closely at that roof, I detected a patina, a glint of green-and-silver on the red ceramic. I guessed that someone, finally, had perfected my solar tiles. If so, that house was pulling in about thirty kilowatts.

  Coming to a gate that was crafted of oak six-by-threes and bound with steel, set in the eastern end of the foundation’s stonework, Dorner’s farm truck pulled aside and he waved our Turtle through. The paved road took us into a tunnel, up a ramp, and brought us to daylight in a cobbled court surrounded by more covered arcade, with planters hanging between the white arches. We shut down the engines and sensor systems, checked our weapons, and cracked the hatches. The scent of some heavy flower perfume came in to us. There was also moisture: A fountain sprayed and gurgled at the far end of this open space, cooling the hot afternoon air. Some kind of big pond lilies or other flowers danced and jiggled on the water s surface.

  A brown hand, bigger than a triple-oh waldo, gripped the outer edge of the hatch near my head and lifted it to full open, pulling against the hydraulics. If they hadn’t given, he might have bent the hatch. Behind
the hand was a grinning face, dark-skinned, Dravidian, as broad as an iron frying pan, with moustaches like ropes of tarred hemp. This genie wore cowboy boots, white jeans, a jerkin of red buckskin, and a tightly wrapped turban of pale-green linen. He put a hand under my armpits and half-helped, half-lifted me out of the vehicle.

  “Very pleased to meet you, General Corbin. I am great admirer of your exploits.”

  “Why, thank you—umm?”

  “My name is Ram Sen Devi, but Mandy prefers that you call me ‘Punjab.’ It is a small joke with her.”

  “Thank you, Ram. Are you going to take us to Mandy?”

  He nodded his head deeply, almost a bow. “She wishes it.”

  “Do you need to take our weapons?”

  Devi appeared to consider this. “You will want to keep your sidearm, General. Your men may feel—less encumbered—if they can leave their carbines and grenade launchers here. I assure you we offer no violence.”

  My driver whispered behind me, in my ear, “That wasn’t their story back up on the highway.”

  “We sometimes have too many visitors,” Devi said directly to him, “and not enough hospitality. You, however, are very welcome.”

  “Because Mandy wishes it?” I said with a smile.

  “Of course, sir.”

  He led us in through one of the arches, through panels of sliding glass, and into a hallway floored with cut slate that had been waxed to a high gloss. Our boots clicked and scraped across it.

  Beyond was a room, about twenty by forty, with a high ceiling. More slate on the floor, covered with Middle Eastern rugs in blues and greens. The windows along one side looked out through deep, second-level arches onto the valley. We could see the outline of our convoy, parked in serried ranks, in a field about three miles away. The room had the feeling of a working area: a few large tables, covered with maps; three computer terminals in a row; a small PBX switchboard; a rear-projection screen in the end wall. In front of the screen was a single chair, a folding director’s chair with canvas seat and backstrap, set up like an impromptu throne. And on it was, presumably, Mandy.