by Allen Steele
The Savant had taken a bullet, he realized; he was dragging his right leg behind him, and he was unable to stand. As Thompson stopped, Castro arched his neck, peered up at him from beneath his hood.
“You planned this, didn’t you?” Less a question than a statement.
“You had a chance.” Thompson let out his breath, not willing to admit the truth. “You didn’t take it.”
“Yes, well . . . so did you.” There was no pain in the Savant’s voice; if there was any emotion, it was only resignation. “So what do you do propose to do now?”
Thompson didn’t answer at once. Nothing would have given him any more satisfaction than to plant his gun barrel against Castro’s head and squeeze the trigger, even though it wouldn’t have done much good. The Savant was a cyborg, a human intelligence downloaded into a quantum comp contained within its chest, adjacent to the nuclear battery that supplied power to the body’s servomotors. Castro’s limbs were his weak points; even if Thompson tried to shoot him in the head, the bullets would probably ricochet. Unlike the flesh-and-blood soldiers he’d led here, the Savant was virtually immortal.
At least three of Thompson’s people were dead, with no telling how many others wounded. Two cabins were ablaze, with black smoke funneling up into the grey sky, and it was only a matter of time before the others would catch fire as well. Even if no one from the squad had managed to transmit a message back to Liberty, it wouldn’t be long before other Union soldiers would arrive to investigate their silence, this time in greater numbers.
His town was doomed. No option left except evacuation; load everything aboard the boats, call back the raft, and make for Midland as fast as possible. He’d known this might happen; that was why he’d told Molly to start packing up the food and Garth to remain on Midland.
His bets were covered . . . except for one detail.
The raft creaked softly, water spilling across the rough planks of its deck as it moved across the channel. The rain had stopped an hour ago; the sky had cleared above New Florida, and Uma had begun to set behind the vast wall of the Eastern Divide. Dark clouds remained above Midland, and in the waning hours of the day a rainbow had formed above the channel, a translucent arch of orange and purple that seemed to form a gateway from one world to another.
“Damn, that’s beautiful.” Clark Thompson stood at the front of the raft, one hand braced against crates of pickled fish. “I mean, I’ve lived here two years now, and I’ve never seen anything quite like this.” He turned to look at Manuel Castro. “What do you think? Isn’t that something?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” The Savant was seated awkwardly on the raft, propped up against a barrel. His cloak had been taken away from him, and without it he looked curiously naked: a robot with a thorax like an upside-down bottle, with narrow pipelike arms tied at the wrists behind his back and spindly legs thrust out before him, the broken one at an odd angle, its knee ruined. “Do you see something?”
“The rainbow.” Thompson turned to look at him. “You don’t see it?”
“Sorry, no. My vision isn’t sensitive enough.” Castro lifted his head; multifaceted red eyes peered unblinkingly from his metallic skull. “I can see colors . . . even ultraviolet and infrared wavelengths . . . but things like sunlight shining through water vapor elude me.”
“So you’ve never seen a rainbow?” This from Lars; he and Garth stood at the winch, turning it hand over hand. The others aboard took little interest in the conversation; their attention was upon the receding New Florida shore, watching the flames that consumed the small village they had once called home.
“Oh, I’ve seen rainbows.” Castro didn’t look back at him. “A long time ago . . . a little over eighty years, by Earth’s calendar . . . I was flesh and blood, just like you. But nature wasn’t as kind to my body as it’s been to yours, so when I had the choice of dying as a human or surviving as a Savant, I gave up watching rainbows.”
“Do you miss them?” Thompson asked.
“It seemed like a good idea at the time.” Castro shrugged, an oddly human gesture. “Are we there yet?”
Thompson turned to gaze the other way. The eastern shore was still almost a mile away; the canoes and kayaks carrying Molly and the rest of the townspeople had nearly reached the Midland Rise, but it would take the slower-moving raft a little while longer to get across. “Almost. So what were you before you had yourself downloaded?”
“You’d never believe me if I told you.”
“Try me. Besides, what do you have to lose now?”
Again, the queer buzz that approximated a laugh. “I was a poet.”
“A poet?” Thompson looked back at him. “I don’t believe you.”
“Well, that makes two of us. I have a hard time believing that you were once a Union Guard officer.”
Several people raised their heads. It wasn’t something that Thompson kept secret. On the other hand everyone knew that he didn’t like to talk about it, either. “We’ve all got our cross to bear,” Thompson said, looking away once more. “Tell me something else . . . why did you do this?”
Castro didn’t answer at once. “You know, I think I may be able to make out that rainbow. Not the same way you see it, of course . . . sort of as an atmospheric distortion. If you had my vision, you might be able to see it the same way that I do.”
“Don’t change the subject.”
“I didn’t.” The Savant looked directly at him. “We see things differently, Colonel. You believe that you’ve just fought for your freedom. It cost many lives, and you even let the fire consume the rest of your town just to prevent it from falling into enemy hands. Nonetheless, you think you’ve won.”
Thompson didn’t reply. By then the fire had reached the lodge, its smoke rising as a thick brown plume that obscured the white bluffs behind it. Somewhere within those flames were the bodies of everyone who’d died that day, laid out upon the long table where he and the others had shared many meals together. He still felt the ache in his arms from hauling the blackwood logs he and his nephews had carried through the Monroe Pass. Sometimes freedom means giving up the things you cherish.
“But the way I see it,” Castro continued, “you’re only resisting the inevitable. Coyote belongs to the Union. That’s a fact. You may not believe in collectivism, but it’s here to stay, whether you like it or not. And so are we.”
“And that’s why you came here? Because of some goddamn political theory?”
“No. I came here because I want to see the human race expand into the cosmos, and because collectivism is the only social system that makes sense. What you call freedom, I call anarchy. And anarchy doesn’t—”
“Can’t we just get it over with?” Lars interrupted. “I’m sick of hearing him.”
He and Garth let go of the wheel. The raft drifted to a stop as they stepped across the sacks and crates to stand on either side of the Savant. Castro heard them coming, but he continued to gaze at Thompson with eyes that could no longer see the colors of a rainbow but could make out the lines of a face.
“You think you’ve won,” he went on, “because you’ve ambushed a Union patrol. But there are still more then two hundred soldiers where they came from, and another ship is on its way with even more. It’s futile, Colonel. You’re living on borrowed time and a few stolen guns. Give up now, and you may be able to get out of this with your lives.”
Fists clenched at his sides, Thompson regarded the Savant with helpless anger. He didn’t want to admit it, but Castro was right. They had managed to take down a squad of fourteen soldiers only because they knew they were coming. Next time, they might not be so fortunate. . . .
“You’re wrong,” he said quietly. “You know why? Because this is our home. . . .”
“How noble. Pathetic, but noble.” Again, the eerie laugh. “I hope someone carves that on your tombstone.”
“I hope so. At least I’ll get a grave.”
Thompson glanced at his nephews, then cocked
a thumb toward the channel. Lars and Garth bent over, grasped Castro’s arms from either side. They grunted as they hauled the Savant to his feet. His body was heavier than it looked, yet he didn’t fight back as they pushed him to the edge of the raft. Its weight thrown off-balance, the ferry listed slightly, water sloshing across the planks.
At the last moment, Castro stalled, yet the deck was too slippery and the cords binding his wrists were too tight. Behind him, the other passengers silently watched; there was no emotion on their tired faces, save perhaps for resentment.
“Any last words?” Thompson asked. The Savant said nothing. “Write a poem about this. You’ll have time.” Then he nodded, and his nephews shoved him overboard.
Manuel Castro tumbled into the water with a loud splash. He sank quickly, without leaving so much as a bubble to mark his passage.
They were over the deepest point of the Eastern Channel between New Florida and Midland; his body would plummet more than a hundred feet before it came to rest upon the muddy riverbed. He couldn’t drown, because he was incapable of such a death, nor would he be crushed by the pressure of all that water on top of him, yet he couldn’t swim or even walk. Trapped in an immortal form, marooned in the lightless depths of an alien river, he would have plenty of time to contemplate the nature of freedom.
Thompson watched him long after he disappeared, then he picked up the black robe he’d taken from Castro. At first, he was tempted throw it overboard after him. Instead, he folded it under his arm. Someday, he promised himself, he would raise it on a pole above the ashes of the town he’d built, the day he returned to build it again.
The poet was gone, and so was the mayor. Now only the colonel remained.
“All right, let’s go” he murmured. “We’ve got a war to fight.”
Book 4
Revolution
If you are cheated out of a single dollar by your neighbor, you do not rest satisfied with knowing that you are cheated, or with saying that you are cheated, or even with petitioning him to pay you your due; but you take effectual steps at once to obtain the full due amount, and see that you are never cheated again. Action from principle, the perception and the performance of right, changes things and relations; it is essentially revolutionary, and does not consist wholly with anything which was. It not only divides states and churches, it divides families; ay, it divides the individual, separating the diabolical in him from the divine.
—HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Civil Disobedience
WHSS Spirit of Social Collectivism Carried to the Stars
Part 5
INCIDENT AT GOAT KILL CREEK
CAMAEL, GABRIEL 75 C.Y. 06/0849—PIONEER VALLEY, MIDLAND
A storm had passed over the valley during the night, leaving behind six inches of fresh snow. In the cool, clear light of morning, it lay thick upon the forest, an occasional gust of wind blowing tiny flakes off the branches, the bright sun causing them to scintillate like fairy dust as they drifted toward the ground. The snow muted all sound, turning the valley into a silent winter cathedral. Save for cakes of loose ice gliding along the half-frozen river that meandered between the mountains, nothing moved.
At the river’s edge, a large brown form bobbed upon the cold water like a giant cork. Sunlight reflecting off glass caught Carlos’s eyes. Training the binoculars upon the floating mass, his right forefinger found the autofocus; the image became sharper, losing its fuzziness. Even from a hundred yards uphill, he knew exactly what he was seeing: a Union Guard patrol skimmer, a flat-bottom hovercraft with a 30mm chain gun mounted above the glass hemisphere of its forward cockpit. The top hatch between its two fans was open; as he watched, a soldier climbed up through the hatch, looked around, then disappeared into the vehicle once more.
“Can you see ’em?” Marie whispered. She lay on the ground next to him, belly down behind the boulder that hid them from view. “How many are there?”
“Wait a minute. Still looking.” The skimmer was floating next to the shore; he could hear voices, unintelligible yet distinct nonetheless. Carlos panned the binoculars toward the ramp that had been lowered from the craft, but there were too many trees in the way for him to make anyone out.
He lowered the binoculars, raised himself carefully into a kneeling position, and made a low chirping sound between his lips: too-too-sweet, too-too-sweet, the mating call of a grasshoarder, innocuous in the woodlands unless one knew that the small birds went into hibernation during winter. Most Guardsmen were too new to Coyote to be aware of such things.
The signal caught Barry’s attention. Thirty feet to Carlos’s left, he raised his head from behind the fallen trunk of a rough-bark where he and Lars were crouched. Carlos pointed to his eyes, then pointed down at the river, then traced a question mark in the air: How many do you see? Without hesitation, Barry raised an open hand, then added two fingers.
“Shit.” Carlos settled back behind the boulders, turned to his sister. “There’s seven . . . and that’s just what Barry can see. No telling how many are still aboard.”
“Seven? I don’t think so.” Frosted air drifted around Marie’s mouth. “Gimme that,” she said quietly, and Carlos handed the binoculars to her. She raised herself up on her elbows, took a brief look at the skimmer, then came back down again. “He’s wrong. There’s only six.”
“How do you . . . ?”
“That’s an Armadillo AC-IIb,” she said, much as if she was reciting the table of elements in Bernie Cayle’s science class. “Pilot, gunner, and four infantry in the back. Can’t carry more than that.” She caught the look in his eyes. “Sure, I’m sure. I know this stuff.”
“I believe you.” And it was a little scary that she did. Not so long ago she’d been a little girl playing with dolls; now her idea of fun was being able to reload a carbine in less than ten seconds with her eyes closed. That worried him; this wasn’t supposed to be fun. . . .
Not a good time to reflect on such things. This was the first Union patrol anyone had ever seen in the valley. The skimmer had doubtless come upstream from the Great Equatorial River. It was a long way from home . . . and much too close to their home for comfort.
Another birdcall, this time from behind and to the right. He glanced back, spotted Garth crouched behind a faux birch about ten feet away, rifle in hand. Damn it, he’d told the kid to remain with the shags where they had left them farther uphill. He should have known better, though; the Thompson brothers were still new to the outfit, and wherever Lars went, Garth wasn’t far behind. And neither of them was good at listening.
“Stay here,” he murmured, then he crawled away from Marie, careful to keep his butt down and his rifle out of the snow as he made his way to where Barry and Lars were hiding.
“I was wrong,” Barry murmured as he joined them. “There’s six . . . five on the shore, one on the skimmer.”
“I know. We figured that already.” Carlos reached over to tap Lars’s arm. “Tell your brother that when I give him an order, I want it obeyed,” he said, switching to Anglo so Lars could understand him. “Got that?” Lars nodded, started to raise a hand to his jaw. “Not now! They might be on your frequency!”
“Sorry. Forgot.” Red-faced, Lars lowered his hand. The Thompson brothers had subcutaneous implants that enabled them to communicate with each other. A little piece of twenty-third century tech that the kids from the twenty-first century didn’t have. But the soldiers down there would have the same thing; birdcalls and hand signals might not be as efficient, but they were less likely to be intercepted.
“Think we can take ’em?” Barry asked, speaking in Anglo as well.
Good question. Five against six. They had the advantage of surprise, along with better knowledge of the terrain; he and Barry had hiked nearly every square mile of the valley ever since they moved there almost three Coyote years ago, with Marie joining them as soon as she was old enough to go out with Rigil Kent. Yet this would be the first time they’d try taking on the Union Guard, or at least in broa
d daylight. Before, it had always been guerrilla skirmishes, nighttime hit-and-run raids upon Liberty and Shuttlefield with darkness to hide them. This time it would be out in the open. And the chain gun on that skimmer intimidated him. . . .
“We can do it. No sweat.” Lars pointed down the gentle slope; even without using the binoculars, Carlos could now make out the soldiers. Five figures, standing in a circle on the riverside. A couple of cases lay open between them; two of the men were kneeling, doing something he couldn’t see. “The three of us come in on this side,” he went on, “and the other two come in on the other side. Box ’em in, take ’em down. . . .”
“Let me decide the plan, okay?” But he had to admit that it was a good idea. If they came in from both sides, with any luck they might be able to catch the soldiers by surprise.
What then? Shoot them down? Carlos felt a cold knot in his stomach. As much as he despised the Union, the notion of killing six men had little appeal for him. It was different for Lars and Garth, of course; the memory of the battle at Thompson’s Ferry was still fresh for them, and they had payback coming. Carlos glanced at Barry, saw the reluctance in his friend’s eyes. They’d seen death a few times, too, but unlike the brothers, they weren’t eager to repeat the experience.
“All right,” he murmured. “You and Barry come in from the right. I’ll take Garth and Marie and circle around from the left. When we’re in position, I’ll get Garth to com you.” It was risky, but once they were closer the soldiers might get wise to any birdcalls. “One more thing,” he added. “Hold your fire until I give the signal. I want to take ’em alive if we can.”
“You’re crazy.” Lars regarded him with disbelief. “There’s a half dozen guys down there. You think they’re just going to . . . ?”