“I approached as quietly as I could, until I had come within a few hundred meters, and I focused the little monocular I used to keep in my pouch.
“They weren’t human beings at all. Imagine my surprise when I saw them strolling by the river bank, hand in hand, him helping her over stony banks, she murmuring softly as she carried something wrapped in a bundle.
“A pair of chimpanzees, for Heaven’s sake. Or maybe one was a chimp and the other a smaller ape or even a monkey. They vanished into the rain forest before I could be sure.”
For the first time in ten minutes, Gordon blinked. The image was so stark in his imagination, as if he were looking over Powhatan’s shoulder into the man’s memories from that long ago day. Why is he telling me this?
Powhatan continued, “They must have been set free from the Portland Zoo, along with those leopards running wild in the Cascades, now. That was the simplest explanation… that they had worked their way south for years, foraging and keeping out of sight, helping each other as they headed for what they must have hoped would be warmer territory.
“I realized that they were moving down the south branch of the Coquille, right into Holnist territory.
“What could I do? I thought about following. Trying to catch them, or at least divert them. But it was doubtful I’d be able to do anything more than frighten them. And anyway, if they had come so far, what need had they of me to warn them of the dangers of being around man?
“They had been caged, now they were free. Oh, I wasn’t foolish enough to conclude they were happier, but at least they weren’t subject to the will of others anymore.”
Powhatan’s voice was subdued. “That can be a precious thing, I know.”
There was another pause. “I let them go,” he said, finishing his story. “Often, as I sit here watching these humbling sunsets, I wonder what ever became of them.”
At last, Gordon’s eyes closed completely. The silence stretched on. He inhaled and with some effort made the heaviness fall aside. Powhatan had been trying to tell him something, with that strange story. He, in turn, had something to say to Powhatan.
“A duty to help others isn’t necessarily the same as being subject to the will of…”
He stopped — sensing that something had changed. His eyes opened, and when he turned, he saw that Powhatan was gone.
That evening people gathered from all over, more men and women than Gordon had thought still lived in the sparsely settled valley. For the visiting postman and his company, they put on a folk festival, of sorts. Children sang, and small troupes performed clever little skits.
Unlike in the north, where popular songs were often those remembered from the days of television and radio, here there were no fondly recalled commercial jingles, few rock and roll melodies retuned to banjo and acoustic guitar. Instead, the music went back to an older tradition.
The bearded men, the women in long dresses tending table, the singing by fire and lamplight — it might easily have been a gathering from nearly two centuries ago, back when this valley had first been settled by white men, coming together for company and to shake off the chill of winter.
Johnny Stevens represented the northerners during the songfest. He had brought his treasured guitar, and dazzled the people with his flair, setting them clapping and stamping their feet.
Normally, this would have been wonderful fun, and Gordon might gladly join in with offerings from his old repertoire — from back before he had hit on being a “postman,” when he had been a wandering minstrel trading songs and stories for meals halfway across the continent.
But he had listened to jazz and to Debussy the night before leaving Corvallis. He could not help wondering if it would turn out to have been the last time, ever.
Gordon knew what George Powhatan was trying to accomplish with this fete. He was putting off the confrontation… making the Willametters sit and stew… taking their measure.
Gordon’s impression back at the cliff had not changed. With his long locks and ready banter, Powhatan was the very image of the aging neohippy. The long-dead movement of the nineties seemed to fit the Squire’s style of leadership.
For instance, in the Camas Valley, clearly everyone was independent and equal.
Still, when George laughed, everyone else did. It seemed only natural. He gave no orders, no commands. It did not seem to occur to anyone that he would. Nothing happened in the lodge that displeased him enough to even raise an eyebrow.
In what had once been called the “soft” arts — those requiring neither metals nor electricity — these people were as advanced as the busy craftsmen of the Willamette. In some ways, perhaps, more so. That, no doubt, was why Powhatan had insisted on showing off his farm — to let the visitors see that they were not dealing with a society of throwbacks, but folk just as civilized in their own right. Part of Gordon’s plan was to prove that Powhatan was wrong.
At last it was time to bring out the “gifts from Cyclops” they had brought all this way.
The people watched wide-eyed as Johnny Stevens demonstrated a cartoon graphics game on a color display that had been lovingly repaired by the Corvallis techs. He gave them a video puppet show about a dinosaur and a robot. The images and bright sounds soon had everybody laughing in delight, the adults as much as the children.
And yet Gordon detected once again that uncanny something in their mood. The people cheered and laughed, but their applause seemed to be in honor of a clever trick. The machines had been brought to whet their appetites, to make them want high technology once again. But Gordon saw no covetous glow in the watchers’ eyes, no rekindled urge to own such wonders again.
Some of the men did sit up when Philip Bokuto’s turn came. The black ex-Marine stepped up with a battered leather valise, and from it he drew out a few of the new weapons.
He showed the gas bombs and mines, and told them how they might be used to hold strong points against attack. Philip described the night vision scopes, soon to be available from the workshops of Cyclops. A ripple of uncertainty moved from man to man — battle-scarred veterans of a long war against a terrible enemy. While Bokuto talked, people kept glancing at the big man in the corner.
Powhatan did not say or do anything explicit. The picture of politeness, he only yawned once, demurely covering his mouth. He smiled indulgently as each weapon was displayed, and Gordon was awed to see how, with body language alone, the man seemed to say that these presents were quaint, perhaps even clever… but really quite irrelevant.
The bastard. But Gordon really didn’t know how to fight back. Soon, that smile had spread around the room, and he knew that it was time to cut their losses.
Dena had pestered him to bring along her own list of presents. Needles and thread, base-neutral soap, samples of that new line of semicotton underwear they had started weaving again up in Salem, just before the invasion.
“They’ll convert the women, Gordon. They’ll do more good than all your whiz-bangs and razzle-dazzles. Trust me”
The last time he had trusted Dena, though, it had led to a slender, tragic corpse under a snow-blown cedar. By that time Gordon had had quite enough of Dena’s version of pseudofeminism.
Would it have been any worse than this, though? Was I hasty? Perhaps we should have brought along some of the more mundane things — tooth powder and sanitary napkins, pottery, and new linen sheets.
He shook his head; that was all water under a dam. He gave Bokuto the signal to wrap it up and reached for his third ace. He drew forth his saddlebag and handed it to Johnny Stevens.