by John Helfers
Three months passed before she moved from her home into the hospice, and began the next phase of her existential journey.
Sarah was tempted, then, to come off the diamorphine altogether, in order to experience the preliminary stages of her Transfiguration as fully as possible, but it couldn’t be done. The withdrawal symptoms would have wrecked her perceptions far more comprehensively than the drug itself. She had no alternative but to drift off in a haze, the authentic music of her life fading into a background of gentle crooning and soft swing.
She had lost track of time before she would have wanted to, if she’d still been able to want anything in the final weeks. Grief, sorrow, regret and the other members of their dysfunctional family were long gone, and didn’t even pop in to say good-bye while she was in the hospice.
She tried to talk to Alan, Jeanie, and Mike while her vocal cords still worked, but her conversation had evaporated, leaving nothing behind but a crusty residue of platitudes that didn’t sound like her at all, but seemed to belong to some vapid ghost strayed from the electronic hinterlands of daytime 3-V. There would have been nothing left of her old self at all, even before she moved into the hospice, if it hadn’t been for the dreams. The diamorphine couldn’t keep her properly awake, but it did lend color to her sleep.
In a kinder or fairer world Sarah might have been able to dream the kind of dream that Janie had sketched out for her: the dream of a future Golden Age in which the people of every nation on Earth would cultivate their own customized Edens, where their haloed hi-tech cities would be ringed and separated by ancestral forests, and the soil of the United States of America would be bound together by the roots of its people—not its makers, let alone its original natives, but the roots of its remakers: the movers and the shakers who had finally brought it to its proper constitution and its true destiny.
In fact, the dying Sarah never had that kind of dream. She didn’t dream about history and destiny at all. Her imagination had retreated to a smaller scale. She dreamed about her children, a little, and her husband, a little more, and other people a little more than that, but mostly she dreamed about numbers and balancing accounts.
The dreams weren’t nightmarish, as they might have been if the figures had refused to add up and the failure of her enterprise had generated panic, but that hardly ever happened. Almost invariably, the figures did add up, so invariably that there was no sense of triumph in their settlement, but not so easily as to rob her of all legitimate satisfaction.
Then she yielded to the exotic pressures of the injections and was Transfigured into a Tree, in which form she lived for a further thousand years before embarking upon the next phase of her technologically assisted existential journey.
As to whether Alan, Jeanie and Mike came to visit her often, or whether they interrogated her, or whether any of them eventually joined her in the Forest, Sarah’s Tree had no idea. There was no reason why she should; it was their business, and they were free to make what use of her they could, or not.
Sarah’s Tree no longer dreamed, but all the sensitive creatures that were able to hear her, in the course of her millennial existence, perceived that the song of the New World’s wind in her leaves and branches was infinitely more beautiful than silence.
ATTACHED TO THE LAND
by Donald J. Bingle
Don Bingle has had a wide variety of short fiction published, primarily in DAW themed anthologies, but also in tie-in anthologies for the Dragonlance® and Transformers® universes and in popular role-playing gaming materials. Recently, he has had stories published in Fellowship Fantastic, Front Lines, Pandora’s Closet, If I Were an Evil Overlord, and Time Twisters. His first novel, Forced Conversion, is set in the near future, when anyone can have heaven, any heaven they want, but some people don’t want to go. His most recent novel, GREENSWORD, is a darkly comedic thriller about a group of environmentalists who decide to end global warming . . . immediately. Now they’re about to save the world; they just don’t want to get caught doing it. He can be reached at [email protected] and his novels purchased through www.orphyte.com/donaldjbingle.
TRAVIS GREENE PAUSED before saddling his horse. The sun was just edging its way above the horizon, downslope and miles away across the plains, and the moment seemed to hang there with it. A bright, fresh day was upon him, the sky clear and clean and the land wide and fertile. The ranch didn’t have a rooster to greet the day, but the cattle lowing on the hillside gave melody to the morning. He was up by dawn most every day of his seventy years, but every day on the range was a blessing that never grew old.
As he turned back to the barn and the ranch house off to the right, the low rays of the sun set them aglow. Nothing fancy, but they were well maintained and freshly painted and could house every man, woman, child, and critter that he loved in this world. He pulled himself out of his reverie, before he got all misty and foolish, and set back to his task of saddling Jeremiah for his trek to the cabin up in the mountains at the western edge of the ranch. The cabin was the family’s own private retreat, a place a man could go to in order to reflect and enjoy the scenic wilds, or a groom could go with his bride to escape the family long enough to start one of their own. It was stoutly built at a breath-taking altitude. From the front porch, you could sit in a rocker and admire the snowy peaks to the west and watch the weather brew up and blow right at you. It was a place where you could pray or cry or curse a blue streak and no one would hear or see you, save God, Himself, and only then if He wasn’t distracted looking at the scenery.
The cry of a baby broke through his thoughts. The sound came from the ranch house and was quickly joined by the throated bellow of another babe doing his best to outhowl his twin. Travis smiled toward the sound, a grandfather’s beaming pride, but the joyous grin faded as he saw Matthew traipsing toward him, his brow furrowed and his jaw set. His youngest, Matthew was already in his thirties and a dad now for the first time.
‘‘You don’t need to be doing this, Pa,’’ boomed Matthew without so much as a greeting first. ‘‘We’ve got some time. We’ll figure a way. We just didn’t expect twins.’’
‘‘You and me, boy,’’ he replied, ‘‘we don’t make the rules. But they’re good rules all the same. They gave us this place. They gave us everything we have. Don’t be quittin’ on ’em now.’’
Matthew’s face was still grim, but he didn’t seem to know what to do or say. His nervous eyes flicked back toward the house, where the cry of the twins still gave jarring counterpoint to the murmurs of the cattle on the hillside.
Travis waited until the boy’s gaze returned to him and looked him square in the eyes. ‘‘You’d best be seeing to your children and let me see to mine.’’ He mounted up and spurred Jeremiah forward without waiting for a reply, whether it be argument or acquiescence. He didn’t turn back until he had traversed past the corral and upslope to the Ponderosa Pine with the tire swing Matthew and his three brothers had pleaded with him to hang so many years ago. When he did look, he saw that Matthew had apparently heeded his advice. Now, he’d best do the same.
He had no need to rush. He would make the cabin by late afternoon and that was in plenty of time. So he let Jeremiah plod upward at a comfortable pace, winding around trees and scrub and rocks. He drew in the thin, cool, crisp air, tinged with the sweet scent of pine and a hint of moisture from the snow pack above. He watched the eagles soar with the thermals and listened to critters skitter unseen in the wilds to the side of the path. As he gained altitude he could see the patchwork of farms and fields and ranches spread out on the plains below, simple and uncrowded.
Who would have thought a city boy like him would wind up here, the patriarch of a clan of ranchers, with land of his own? It was improbable. Of course, the whole thing ha
d been improbable. As a teenager in Denver, all he had heard—when he wasn’t listening to music fed directly from the world wide web into his cochlear implant—was about crowding and scarcity and drought and forest fires. The future didn’t look bright.
But then, that was back before the mountain and plains states had seceded from the United States of America and formed the Western Range and Mountains, or the Range as it became known. He sure hadn’t seen it coming, not that he was paying much mind to current events at the time. But then, no one had seen it coming. That was the only way it could have occurred. Years later, a former politician turned prospector had explained it all to him.
‘‘The key was,’’ Carl laughed, ‘‘there was no grass roots secession movement. If there was, it would have been endlessly debated and compromised and complicated. When President McClintock was elected, he had never even uttered the word ‘secession.’ Why would he? It would have been political suicide for someone seeking national office. But once he was in power, it was easy to do.’’
Carl put down his pickax and leaned on the handle. ‘‘You know, I always wondered when I was a kid whether Gorbachev was a CIA plant. You know, they take some guy who is a low level official and convert and indoctrinate him secretly and tell him just do what you need to do to get into power. We’ll orchestrate some help from behind the scenes. Then when you do, you suddenly declare Glasnost out of the blue and when people start to demand freedom and democracy and capitalism and separate sovereignty, you just go along and, voila, the Soviet Union is destroyed with hardly a shot fired.’’
The old politician gave a wink before he continued. ‘‘Now, I don’t know if anyone indoctrinated Blake McClintock, but it was pretty much the same thing. One day he’s governor of Wyoming. Next, he’s president of the United States, all of a sudden saying things like he wouldn’t blame the western states if they did secede and control their own resources and manage their own forests and mines. Well, before you know it, Montana and Wyoming and Colorado, they’re all making noises like they’ll do just that. Then Arizona and New Mexico jump on board and Utah and Nevada, they don’t want to be left out. Fearing to get caught as the last conservatives in what looks to be an increasingly urban and liberal United States, or what’s left of it, Kansas, the Dakotas, and Nebraska join up. Alaska, the most Libertarian of all the states to begin with, is overjoyed to increase the acreage and the resources of the new nation. Idaho comes in at the last second.
‘‘Washington, D.C. and the national press are in an uproar, of course. But when secession is declared, McClintock just lets the states go. There’s no military effort to hold the union together ’cause the Commander in Chief, he doesn’t order it.’’ A wide grin spread across Carl’s face. ‘‘Of course, McClintock, he’s no dummy. Suddenly everyone notices that the vice president and the whole line of presidential succession is made up of westerners, so even an assassination ain’t gonna change anything. And Congress, well it’s got its shorts in a bunch, but since the Congress don’t recognize the secession, the western senators and representatives, well, they just delay and filibuster and generally keep anything from happening. In short order, the secession is a fact and the military equipment in the west, nukes and all, are just turned over to the government of the Range. Once that happened, there weren’t no way in hell the bell was gonna be unrung.’’
The secession, itself, wasn’t what made Travis a rancher, though. It was what came after. To make sure the Range didn’t turn into nothing but a folksier version of the behemoth U.S. government and to make sure that the people controlled the land, the Range doled out all the federal owned lands, save a few parks and other pristine places, to the residents of the Range in a lottery. Private property was left where it was, but everybody got their percentage of acreage of the public lands. You could buy or sell or trade the land— so as to combine for timber or mining or parcel out for housing or leave undeveloped for wildlife refuges or whatever. There was even a big internet auction site set up, like eBay, to help move things along. The dole and the auction site, that’s where Travis got his land.
At first, like most, he just had bits and pieces— small parcels of land spread out in various places over the whole Range, which by now had grown to include Alberta, Saskatchewan, British Columbia, the Yukon, and the Northwest Territories (the whole Quebec thing had proved Canada would never stand in the way of any secession). The distribution was set up so everyone got a piece of each of the territories in the Range, so no one could claim they were unfairly disadvantaged. Wheeling and dealing on the Internet auction site had garnered Travis a contiguous chunk of land on the eastern slope of the Rockies straddling the Colorado/Wyoming border.
You could trade land to your heart’s content, but there were a few rules. To claim your land, you had to agree to the insertion of a microchip under your skull, which identified you with your land, as recorded by the Land Office. The chip was easily updated for any transfers, but you always needed to maintain a minimum land ownership equal to the acreage a citizen got in the initial lottery. If you didn’t, you were expelled from the country. Sure, you could sell your land and leave if you were fool enough, but you couldn’t sell your land and stay. Travis never had understood the scientific mechanics of the whole thing, but there were geosynchronous satellites or GPS monitors or somesuch that could locate someone without a chip or someone who had a chip with an insufficient land ownership balance. And once you triggered that, the Rangers would find you and boot you out of the Range, into the crowded cesspool of the United States of America to starve and riot with the rest of the impoverished masses.
Travis clambered off Jeremiah for the last set of switchbacks before they reached the cabin. The air was thin and there was no need to burden the horse more than necessary. Travis was old, but in good shape. He could handle the slope, even in these high reaches. The sun had peaked hours ago and was now brightening the western slope of the mountains. He saw cabins scattered in the woods, near enough one another to be neighborly, but never so close as to be atop one another. Mine shafts dotted the hills and he could see timber and milling operations to the south and west.
By marrying the population to the land, the population was kept in check. Oh, it grew some. The minimum had been based on the dole, so private lands not doled out meant that there could be some net growth without the minimums being exceeded. But things were not near so packed as in the rest of the former United States. Procreation wasn’t prohibited; people would always do what came natural. But if you wanted to stay, you had to have enough land to meet the minimums. If you were rich or just hardworking, it generally worked out. But if you squandered your dole or didn’t work the land, then you had to leave— willingly or unwillingly.
Travis unsaddled Jeremiah and fed and watered him in the lean-to behind the cabin. Then he slapped his backside and shooed him down the mountain. The old horse knew the way home.
That task accomplished, Travis fixed himself a bit of stew to savor on the porch as the sun went down. He’d had a good day and a good life. He had a family he could be proud of and a ranch that would see to their needs. Of course, he wished he’d been able to secure more land. The ranch had been more than enough for him and Libby, back when she was still alive and their lives as ranchers were just starting out. When the time came, it was enough for their four boys: Bryce and Jack and Roderick and Matthew. Even though the three older boys lived, free and single, in the city—there were still cities with lawyers and doctors and architects and factory workers housed in apartments and subdivisions—they needed to have their allocation of land to remain. The ranch had even been enough, along with the bit of a parcel she brought as a dowry, for Eleanor, when Matthew had finally married and the ranch
house once more had been blessed with a woman’s touch.
Matthew and Eleanor were responsible folks. They had planned ahead. The acreage encompassed by the ranch was enough for the hardworking couple to have a child. And so they had.
But it wasn’t enough for twins.
As the sun set, Travis took his shotgun and headed away from the cabin to a boulder sitting in fresh snow. There was no reason to leave a mess at the cabin. He fingered the copy of the land transfer he had made the night before, then pinned it to his flannel shirt, just to make sure the Rangers understood what he had done when they made their investigation.
He had lived free and prosperous, attached to the land. Now the twins could do so, too. And life would be good, very good.
The shot echoed dully across the verdant valleys below like distant snow thunder as Travis went to his final rest, at peace with his choice, home on the Range.
THE THIEF CATCHER
by Theodore Judson
Theodore Judson was born and raised in a small agricultural community in central Wyoming. He attended the University of Wyoming and was first a geologist and then a teacher. His first science fiction book, Fitzpatrick’s War, was published in 2004 by DAW. He has since sold two books, including one to DAW. He is a widower and has one adult daughter and one grandchild, so far.
WHEN SAMUEL CUTLER had driven his motorcycle into the middle of the tiny village named Steens Mountain, he was immediately surrounded by seven armed men dressed in old-fashioned farmers’ coveralls. He had paid no heed to the signs on the road that had been advising him to turn back as soon as he had left Nevada, and he had pushed on when the road had turned to dirt, and now he found himself in a town that was not on the map, a hundred and fifty miles from the closest inhabited spot, and looking down the bores of seven hand-held energy weapons. A less confident man would have despaired just then.