October 28, the day Daybreak hit, would have been in mud season here, when tourist businesses shut down because it was too cold for hikers and riders but there wasn’t enough snow yet for skiers. It looked like the caretakers had never come back; the horses had died helplessly penned up.
I want out of here, soon. Bambi turned to go back to her radio.
The wide doorway framed a dozen men and women, all armed, dressed in old coats, decorated hats, immense amounts of handmade jewelry—tribals. All had weapons drawn, mostly spears and axes, but a couple of them were holding drawn wooden bows, the arrows pointed at Bambi, and one was whirling what could only be a real, honest-to-God little-David style sling.
The stout woman in the center, who wore what had probably been a homecoming tiara before it had been decorated with small machine parts and colored stones, said, “In the name of the Blue Morning People, I declare you our captive. Raise your hands over your head.”
Bambi put her hands up. The bows relaxed, the sling stopped spinning up to speed, but the spears stayed leveled. You guys’ll be in so much trouble when Heather hears about this.
ABOUT THE SAME TIME. PALE BLUFF, NEW STATE OF WABASH (PCG) OR ILLINOIS (TNG). 6:30 AM CST. THURSDAY, JULY 10, 2025.
Chris Manckiewicz was coming back from putting together a series of articles about life in the Temper capital at Athens, Georgia, and had caught a ride on the Gooney Express with Quattro Larsen; as always, heading back for Pueblo, Quattro had chosen to land in Pale Bluff. The main reason for choosing that route was to visit Carol May Kloster.
Carol May’s pancakes with apple butter (supposedly the orchards that surrounded Pale Bluff had been planted by Johnny Appleseed himself) would have been justification enough, even if Carol May hadn’t been one of the Reconstruction Research Center’s most important agents, and Chris’s best stringer. She handed Chris her pieces for the Pueblo Post-Times. “Got my pieces for you on the table, Chris. It’ll save the telegraph man’s finger if you just take them along.”
He speed-read as he ate; they were “the usual fine work,” he said, amused at how that made her blush.
To most people, Carol May probably looked like any other small, plump lady in a hand-sewn dress, but Chris suspected she was one of those invisible people who drives history—not that she would ever admit it.
As the Secretary of the Pale Bluff Town Meeting, she’d taken down and transcribed Graham Weisbrod’s brief speech to the Pale Bluff city council when his plane had been forced down here during his escape from the TNG’s prison. Chris had obtained a copy from her a few days later, and immediately seen that if now-Acting President Weisbrod kept his word—and if Cameron Nguyen-Peters, who ran the TNG, could see it—Weisbrod’s “Pale Bluff Address” was the basis for reunification. Chris figured it would probably enter American history alongside The Crisis, the Gettysburg Address, and “we choose to go to the moon.” And now that he had been editing her work for a while, he couldn’t help noticing that though the ideas in the Pale Bluff Address were Graham Weisbrod’s, the stirring phrases and ringing cadences were pure Carol May Kloster.
Chris turned the last page of her last article and read,
Chris, don’t look up or let Quattro know. Bambi’s plane is down in Idaho, she’s okay and has radioed in, Larry is on the way, and Heather says don’t let Quattro know till you land in Pueblo, so he doesn’t freak. CMK.
“That last piece,” he said, “really has an impact, but I can see why they don’t want word to get out.”
“Exactly,” Carol May said.
Quattro, who rarely read anything, kept his attention on his pancakes.
Carol May said, “Excuse me here, but I’m going to have to talk your ears right off, because I think we’ve got big trouble here, and it’s going to take some time to explain it. Lieutenant Marprelate, the representative from the TNG, doesn’t say much out in public, but he spends a lot of time with the town militia, and Freddie Pranger says he’s always reading the Constable’s Log. He scares the hell out of the gun-and-war kind of conservatives, and draws a lot of maps. My guess is, the TNG has this place in mind for a fort.
“And the Provi guy here is no better. Congressman Tornwell, our rep for the New State of Wabash in the PCG Congress, at least has to be away at Olympia, but his idiot nephew here treats Marprelate like he’s an army of occupation, and I know he’s hiring kids to put up anti-Temper graffiti.
“So if anything the Provi-Temper tension is getting worse. Definitely not what we had in mind when Heather made them make peace back in April. Tell Heather I said it’s serious.”
Chris nodded. “We will.”
“Okay, second big thing, which might just be personal. My niece Pauline, a few weeks ago, decided to go off with a tribal boy, up to the northeast of here, and there hasn’t been a word heard from her, or any of the other kids that went with that band of tribals, in six weeks now, and on their way out of the territory they trashed a little town just north of here, Wynoose.”
“Trashed how?”
“Smashed everything, killed some people, took others with them—the survivors, and there weren’t many, all moved down here. I don’t suppose the Army has any plans to do anything about the tribes?”
“It’ll be in the next Post-Times,” Chris said. “Tribals were threatening to wipe out some of the Old Amish families in Pennsylvania. That Temper general, Grayson, basically fought his way down the Yough Valley and brought the Amish out—with all that farming knowledge we’ll need. The Amish told Grayson that the tribals had been talking like Daybreakers, telling them to quit killing Mother Gaia with their plows, ordering them to liberate their poor oppressed horses, that kind of thing, and had been threatening and intimidating them.”
“Well, good on Grayson, then. When that tribe camped here, supposedly it was for peaceful trade, but we had a good number of brawls here in town because so many tribals wouldn’t shut up about how nice the world is since Daybreak, and our people who lost relatives and friends in Daybreak weren’t going to take that. Anyway, I’m worried about Pauline, and more worried that nobody comes over the border anymore, and Freddie Pranger admits he’s scared to scout in that direction—he still does, but he’s scared, and you know Freddie, that’s not natural.”
Quattro nodded. “We’ve got some things in the works, and some of our people are pushing to make the tribes a bigger priority. They don’t look as much like harmless bad cases of PTSD as they did three months ago.”
“Just so Heather knows and she’s thinking about doing something; if she’s on the job I don’t worry. I’m sure right now she’s distracted—having a baby will distract you, every time. Can I get more food into you before you go? Flying that plane looks like hard work to me.”
“Any excuse for more of the apple butter,” Quattro said.
ABOUT THE SAME TIME. PUEBLO, COLORADO. 6:30 AM MST. THURSDAY, JULY 10, 2025.
Heather O’Grainne always ignored her alarm; she was too large and heavy, this far into the pregnancy, to go downstairs to her living quarters, the antique wind-up alarm clock would run down in a couple of minutes, there was no one else in the building at this hour, and she had just climbed up here to her office anyway. It had only been this last month when she’d gotten really big, with this great whacking thing in front of her; a lifelong athlete and only reluctantly a bureaucrat, she felt as if this were some terrible prank of nature. She rested a hand on her belly and thought, Get big and healthy before you come out, kid, but don’t waste any time.