by Rich Horton
Lucas stood and looked down over the valley. He wasn't looking at the lake and the dam, though, or even at the village of the unchurched creatures who had built it. He was looking to his right, down the eastern flank of the ridge they stood on, down the fluvial valley towards where, it suddenly occurred to Sandy, he'd grown up, towards the creek side town they'd stopped in the day before.
Ford raised his voice above an argument he'd been having with two or three others. “Isn't there a question about what that much water will do to the topography downstream? I mean, I know hydrology's a pretty knotty problem, theologically speaking, but we'd have a clear hand in the erosion, wouldn't we? What if the floodwaters subside off ground that's come unwrit because of something that we did?"
"That is a knotty problem, Ford,” said Sandy, looking Lucas straight in the eye. “What's the best way to solve a difficult knot?"
And it was Lucas who answered her, nodding. “Cut through it."
* * * *
Later, while most of the students were meditating in advance of the ceremony, Sandy saw Carmen moving from glass to glass, making minute focusing adjustments and triangulating different views of the lake and the village. Every so often, she made a quick visual note in her sketchbook.
"It's not productive to spend too much time on the side effects of an error, you know,” Sandy said.
Carmen moved from one instrument to the next. “I don't think it's all that easy to determine what's a side effect and what's ... okay,” she said.
Sandy had lost good students to the distraction she could see now in Carmen. She reached out and pivoted the cylinder down, so that its receiving lens pointed straight at the ground. “There's nothing to see down there, Carmen."
Carmen wouldn't meet her eye. “I thought I'd record—"
"Nothing to see, nothing to record. If you could go down and talk to them you wouldn't understand a word they say. If you looked in their little huts you wouldn't find anything redemptive; there's no cross hanging in the wall of the meeting house, no Jesus of the Digging Marmots. When the water is drained, we won't see anything along the lake bed but mud and whatever garbage they've thrown in off their docks. The lake doesn't have any secrets to give up. You know that."
"Ford's books—"
"Ford's books are by anthropologists, who are halfway to being witch doctors as far as most respectable scholars are concerned, and who keep their accreditation by dint of the fact that their field notes are good intelligence sources for the Mission Service. Ford reads them because he's got an overactive imagination and he likes stories too much—lots of students in the archive concentration have those failings. Most of them grow out of it with a little coaxing. Like Ford will, he's too smart not to. Just like you're too smart to backslide into your parents’ religion and start looking for souls to save where there are no souls to be found."
Carmen took a deep breath and held it, closed her eyes. When she opened them, her expression had folded into acquiescence. “It is not the least of my sins that I force you to spend so much time counseling me, Reverend,” she said formally.
Sandy smiled and gave the girl a friendly squeeze of the shoulder. “Curiosity and empathy are healthy, and valuable, señorita,” she said. “But you need to remember that there are proper channels to focus these things into. Prayer and study are best, but drinking and carousing will do in a pinch."
Carmen gave a nervous laugh, eyes widening. Sandy could tell that the girl didn't feel entirely comfortable with the unexpected direction of the conversation, which was, of course, part of the strategy for handling backsliders. Young people in particular were easy to refocus on banal and harmless “sins” and away from thoughts that could actually be dangerous.
"Fetch the others up here, now,” Sandy said. “We should set to it."
Carmen soon had all twenty of her fellow students gathered around Sandy. Lucas had been down the eastern slope far enough to gather some deadwood and now he struck it ablaze with a flint and steel from his travel kit. Sandy crumbled a handful of incense into the flames.
Ford had been named the seminar's lector by consensus, and he opened his text. “Blessed are the Mapmakers...” he said.
"For they hunger and thirst after righteousness,” they all finished.
Then they all fell to prayer and singing. Sandy turned her back to them—congregants more than students now—and opened her heart to the land below her. She felt the effrontery of the unmapped lake like a caul over her face, a restriction on the land that prevented breath and life.
Sandy showed them how to test the prevailing winds and how to bank the censers in chevrons so that the cleansing fires would fall onto the appropriate points along the dam.
Finally, she thumbed an ashen symbol onto every wrist and forehead, including her own, and lit the oils of the censer primorus with a prayer. When the hungry flames began to beam outward from her censer, she softly repeated the prayer for emphasis, then nodded her assent that the rest begin.
The dam did not burst in a spectacular explosion of mud and boulders and waters. Instead, it atrophied throughout the long afternoon, wearing away under their prayers even as their voices grew hoarse. Eventually, the dammed river itself joined its voice to theirs and speeded the correction.
The unchurched in the valley tried for a few hours to pull their boats up onto the shore, but the muddy expanse between the water and their lurching docks grew too quickly. They turned their attention to bundling up the goods from their mean little houses then, and soon a line of them was snaking deeper into the mountains to the east, like a line of ants fleeing a hill beneath a looking glass.
With the ridge to its west, the valley fell into evening shadow long before the Cartographers’ camp. They could still see below though, they could see that, as Sandy had promised Carmen, there were no secrets revealed by the dying water.
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OKANOGGAN FALLS, by Carolyn Ives Gilman
The town of Okanoggan Falls lay in the folded hills of southwestern Wisconsin—dairy country, marbled with deciduous groves and pastureland that looked soft as a sable's fur. It was an old sawmill town, hidden down in the steep river valley, shaded by elderly trees. Downtown was a double row of brick and ironwork storefronts running parallel to the river. Somehow, the town had steered between the Scylla and Charybdis of the franchise and the boutique. If you wanted to buy a hamburger on Main Street, you had to go to Earl's Cafe, and for scented soap there was just Meyer's Drugstore. In the park where the Civil War soldier stood, in front of the old Town Hall infested with pigeons, Mr. Woodward still defiantly raised the United States flag, as if the world on cable news were illusion, and the nation were still reality.
American small towns had changed since the days when Sinclair Lewis savaged them as backwaters of conformist complacency. All of that had moved to the suburbs. The people left in the rural towns had a high kook component. There were more welders-turned-sculptors per capita than elsewhere, more self-employed dollmakers, more wildly painted cars, more people with pronounced opinions, and more tolerance for all the above.
Like most of the Midwest, Okanoggan Falls had been relatively unaffected by the conquest and occupation. Few there had even seen one of the invading Wattesoons, except on television. At first, there had been some stirrings of grassroots defiance, born of wounded national pride; but when the Wattesoons had actually lowered taxes and reduced regulation, the volume of complaint had gone down. People still didn't love the occupiers, but as long as the Wattesoons minded their own business and left the populace alone, they were tolerated.
All of that changed one Saturday morning when Margie Silengo, who lived in a mobile home on Highway 14, came racing into town with her shockless Chevy bouncing like a rocking horse, telling everyone she met that a Wattesoon army convoy had gone rolling past her house and turned into the old mill grounds north of town as if they meant to stay. Almost simultaneously, the mayor's home phone rang, and Tom Abernathy found himself
standing barefoot in his kitchen, for the first time in his life talking to a Wattesoon captain, who in precise, formal English informed him that Okanoggan Falls was slated for demolition.
Tom's wife Susan, who hadn't quite gotten the hang of this “occupation” thing, stopped making peanut butter sandwiches for the boys to say, “They can't say that! Who do they think they are?"
Tom was a lanky, easygoing fellow, all knobby joints and bony jaw. Mayor wasn't his full-time job; he ran one of the more successful businesses in town, a wholesale construction-goods supplier. He had become mayor the way most otherwise sensible people end up in charge: out of self-defense. Fed up having to deal with the calcified fossil who had run the town since the 1980s, Tom had stood for office on the same impulse he occasionally swore—and woke to find himself elected in a landslide, 374 to 123.
Now he rubbed the back of his head, as he did whenever perplexed, and said, “I think the Wattesoons can do pretty much anything they want."
"Then we've got to make them stop wanting to mess with us,” Susan said.
That, in a nutshell, was what made Tom and Susan's marriage work. In seventeen years, whenever he had said something couldn't be done, she had taken it as a challenge to do it.
But he had never expected her to take on alien invaders.
* * * *
Town Council meetings weren't formal, and usually a few people straggled in late. This day, everyone was assembled at Town Hall by five P.M., when the Wattesoon officer had said he would address them. By now they knew it was not just Okanoggan Falls; all four towns along a fifty-mile stretch of Highway 14 had their own occupying forces camped outside town, and their own captains addressing them at precisely five o'clock. Like most Wattesoon military actions, it had been flawlessly coordinated.
The captain arrived with little fanfare. Two sand-colored army transports sped down Main Street and pulled up in front of Town Hall. The two occupants of one got out, while three soldiers in the other stood guard to keep the curious at arms’ length. Their weapons remained in their slings. They seemed to be trying to keep the mood low-key.
The two who entered Town Hall looked exactly like Wattesoons on television—squat lumps of rubbly khaki-colored skin, like blobs of clay mixed with gravel. They wore the usual beige army uniforms that hermetically encased them, like shrink wrap, from neck to heel, but neither officer had on the face mask or gloves the invaders usually employed to deal with humans. An aroma like baking rocks entered the room with them—not unpleasant, just not a smell ordinarily associated with living creatures.
In studied, formal English the larger Wattesoon introduced himself as Captain Groton, and his companion as Ensign Agush. No one offered to shake hands, knowing the famous Wattesoon horror at touching slimy human flesh.
The council sat silent behind the row of desks they used for hearings, while the captain stood facing them where people normally gave testimony, but there was no question about where the power lay. The townspeople had expected gruff, peremptory orders, and so Captain Groton's reasonable tone came as a pleasant surprise; but there was nothing reassuring about his message.
The Wattesoons wished to strip-mine a fifty-mile swath of the hilly, wooded Okanoggan Valley. “Our operations will render the land uninhabitable,” Captain Groton said. “The army is here to assist in your removal. We will need you to coordinate the arrangements so this move can be achieved expeditiously and peacefully.” There was the ever-so-slight hint of a threat in that last word.
When he finished there was a short silence, as the council absorbed the imminent destruction of everything they had lived for and loved. The image of Okanoggan Valley transformed into a mine pit hovered before every eye: no maple trees, no lilacs, no dogs, no streetlights. Rob Massey, the scrappy newspaper editor, was first to find his voice. “What do you want to mine?” he said sharply. “There are no minerals here."
"Silica,” the captain answered promptly. “There is a particularly pure bed of it underneath your limestone."
He meant the white, friable sandstone—useless for building, occasionally used for glass. What they wanted it for was incomprehensible, like so much about them. “Will we be compensated for our property?” Paula Sanders asked, as if any compensation would suffice.
"No,” the captain answered neutrally. “The land is ours."
Which was infuriating, but unarguable.
"But it's our home!” Tom blurted out. “We've lived here, some of us four, five generations. We've built this community. It's our life. You can't just walk in and level it."
The raw anguish in his voice made even Captain Groton, lump of rubble that he was, pause. “But we can,” he answered without malice. “It is not within your power to stop it. All you can do is reconcile yourselves to the inevitable."
"How much time do we have?” Paula bit off her words as if they tasted bad.
"We realize you will need time to achieve acceptance, so we are prepared to give you two months."
The room practically exploded with protests and arguments.
At last the captain held up the blunt appendage that served him as a hand. “Very well,” he said. “I am authorized to give you an extension. You may have three months."
Later, they learned that every captain up and down the valley had given the same extension. It had obviously been planned in advance.
The room smoldered with outrage as the captain turned to leave, his job done. But before he could exit, Susan Abernathy stepped into the doorway, along with the smell of brewing coffee from the hall outside.
"Captain Groton,” she said, “would you like to join us for coffee? It's a tradition after meetings."
"Thank you, madam,” he said, “but I must return to base."
"Susan,” she introduced herself, and, contrary to all etiquette, held out her hand.
The Wattesoon recoiled visibly. But in the next second he seemed to seize control of himself and, by sheer force of will, extended his arm. Susan clasped it warmly, looking down into his pebbly eyes. “Since we are going to be neighbors, at least for the next few months, we might as well be civil,” she said.
"That is very foresighted of you, madam,” he answered.
"Call me Susan,” she said. “Well, since you can't stay tonight, can I invite you to dinner tomorrow?"
The captain hesitated, and everyone expected another evasion, but at last he said, “That would be very acceptable. Susan."
"Great. I'll call you with the details.” As the captain left, followed closely by his ensign, she turned to the council. “Can I bring you some coffee?"
* * * *
"Ish. What did it feel like?” said her son Nick.
Susan had become something of a celebrity in the eleven-year-old set for having touched an alien.
"Dry,” she said, staring at the laptop on the dining room table. “A little lumpy. Kind of like a lizard."
In the next room, Tom was on the phone. “Warren, you're talking crazy,” he said. “We still might be able to get some concessions. We're working on it. But if you start shooting at them, we're doomed. I don't want to hear any more about toad hunts, okay?"
"Have you washed your hand?” Nick wanted to know.
Susan let go of the mouse to reach out and wipe her hand on Nick's arm. “Eew, gross!” he said. “Now I've got toad germs."
"Don't call them that,” she said sharply. “It's not polite. You're going to have to be very polite tonight."
"I don't have to touch him, do I?"
"No, I'm sure touching a grody little boy is the last thing he wants."
In the next room, Tom had dialed a different number. “Listen, Walt, I think I'm going to need a patrol car in front of my house tonight. If this toad gets shot coming up my walk, my house is going to be a smoking crater tomorrow."
"Is that true?” Nick asked, wide-eyed.
"No,” Susan lied. “He's exaggerating."
"Can I go to Jake's tonight?"
"No, I need you here,” Sus
an said, hiding the pang of anxiety it gave her.
"What are we having for dinner?"
"I'm trying to find out what they eat, if you'd just leave me alone."
"I'm not eating bugs."
"Neither am I,” Susan said. “Now go away."
Tom came in and sank into a chair with a sigh. “The whole town is up in arms,” he said. “Literally. Paula wanted to picket our house tonight. I told her to trust you, that you've got a plan. Of course, I don't know what it is."
"I think my plan is to feed him pizza,” Susan said.
"Pizza?"
"Why not? I can't find that they have any dietary restrictions, and everyone loves pizza."
Tom laid his head back and stared glumly at the ceiling. “Sure. Why not? If it kills him, you'll be a hero. For about half an hour; then you'll be a martyr."
"Pizza never killed anyone,” Susan said, and got up to start straightening up the house.
The Abernathys lived in a big old 1918 three-story with a wraparound porch and a witch's-hat tower, set in a big yard. The living room had sliding wood doors, stained-glass fanlights, and a wood-framed fireplace. It could have been fancy, but instead it had a frayed, lived-in look—heaps of books, puppy-chewed Oriental carpet, an upright piano piled with model airplanes. The comfy, well-dented furniture showed the marks of constant comings and goings, school projects, and meetings. There was rarely a night when the Abernathys didn't have guests, but dinner was never formal. Formality was alien to Susan's nature.
She had been an RN, but had quit, fed up with the bureaucracy rather than the patients. She had the sturdy physique of a German farm girl, and the competent independence to go with it. Light brown hair, cropped just above her shoulders, framed her round, cheerful face. Only rarely was she seen in anything more fancy than a jean skirt and a shirt with rolled-up sleeves. When they had elected Tom, everyone had known they weren't getting a mayor's wife who would challenge anybody's fashion sense.
That night, Captain Groton arrived precisely on time, in a car with tinted windows, driven by someone who stayed invisible, waiting. Tom met the guest on the doorstep, looking up and down the street a little nervously. When they came into the living room, Susan emerged from the kitchen with a bouquet of wine glasses in one hand and a bottle in the other.