Second noticed was the rustle of silk as a long-legged blond rose from a cushion by the hearth. The girl was a striking contrast to nearly all the other women they had seen here — clean, erect, laden down with glittering stones that would have brought a fortune before the war.
Nevertheless, her eyes were lined, and she looked at the two northerners as one might regard creatures from the far side of the moon. Silently, she stood up and exited the room through a beaded curtain.
“I said welcome, gentlemen. Welcome to the Free Realm.”
At last Gordon turned and took notice of a thin, bald man with a neatly trimmed beard, who rose to greet them from a cluttered desk. Four gold rings glittered from one earlobe, and three from the other — symbols of rank. He approached holding out his hand.
“Colonel Charles Westin Bezoar, at your service, formerly of the bar of the State of Oregon and Republican Commissioner for Jackson County. I presently have the honor of being judge advocate of the American Liberation Army.”
Gordon arched an eyebrow, ignoring the outstretched hand. “There have been a lot of ‘armies’ since the Fall. Which one did you say you were with, again?”
Bezoar smiled and let his hand drop casually. “I realize that some apply other names to us. Let’s defer that for now and just say I serve as aide-de-camp to General Volsci Macklin, who is your host. The General will be joining us shortly. Meanwhile, may I offer you some of our hill country sour mash?” He lifted a cut glass decanter from the carved oak sideboard. “Whatever you may have heard about our rough life up here, I believe you’ll find we’ve refined at least a few of the old arts.”
Gordon shook his head. Johnny looked over the man’s head. Bezoar shrugged.
“No? Pity. Perhaps some other time. I hope you don’t mind if I do indulge.” Bezoar poured himself a glass of brown liquor and gestured to two chairs near the fire. “Please, gentlemen, you must still be exhausted from your journey. Be comfortable. There is much I’d like to know.
“For instance, Mr. Inspector, how are things back in the states to the east, beyond the deserts and the mountains?”
Gordon did not even blink as he sat down. So the “Liberation Army” had an intelligence service. It was no surprise that Bezoar knew who they were… or at least who north Oregon thought Gordon was.
“Things are much the same as in the west, Mr. Bezoar. People try to live, and rebuild where they can.”
In his mind Gordon was trying to recreate the dreamscape — the fantasy of St. Paul City, of Odessa and Green Bay — images of living cities leading a bold, resurgent nation — not the windswept ghost towns he remembered, picked clean by ragged bands of wary survivors.
He spoke for the cities as he had dreamed them. His voice was stern. “In some places citizens have been luckier than in others. They’ve regained much, and hope for more for their children. In other areas, the recovery has been… hindered. Some of those who nearly ruined our nation, a generation ago, still wreak havoc, still harry our couriers and disrupt communications.
“And as I speak of it” Gordon continued coldly. “I cannot put off any longer asking you just what you’ve done with the mail your men have stolen from the United States.”
Bezoar put on wire-rimmed glasses and lifted a thick folder from the table next to him. “You are speaking of these letters, I presume?” He opened the packet. Dozens of grayed and yellowed sheets rustled dryly. “You see? I do not bother to deny it. I believe we should be open and frank with each other, if anything is to come of this meeting.
“Yes, a team of our advance scouts did find a pack horse in the ruins of Eugene — yours, I imagine — whose saddlebags contained this very strange cargo. Ironically, I believe that at the very moment our scouts were seizing these samples, you were killing two of their comrades elsewhere in the deserted town.”
Bezoar raised one hand before Gordon could speak. “Have no fear of retribution. Our Holnist philosophy does not believe in it. You defeated two survivalists in a straight fight. That makes you a peer in our eyes. Why do you think you were treated as men after you were captured, and not gelded as serfs or as sheep?”
Bezoar smiled amiably, but Gordon seethed inside. In Eugene last spring he had seen what Holnists did to the bodies of the harmless gleaners they had mowed down. He remembered young Mark Aage’s mother, who saved his life and her son’s with one heroic gesture. Bezoar clearly meant what he said, yet to Gordon the logic was sickly, bitterly ironic.
The bald survivalist spread his hands. “We admit to taking your mail, Mr. Inspector. Can we mitigate our guilt by claiming ignorance? After all, until these letters reached me here, none of us had ever heard of the Restored United States!
“Imagine our amazement when we saw such things… letters carried many miles from town to town, warrants for new postmasters, and these,” he raised a sheaf of official-looking flyers. “These declarations from the provisional government in St. Paul City.”
The words were conciliatory and sounded earnest. But there was something in the man’s tone of voice.… He could not quite pin it down, but whatever it was disturbed Gordon.
“You know of it now,” he pointed out. “And yet you continue. Two of our postal couriers have disappeared without a trace since your invasion of the north. Ybur ‘American Liberation Army’ has been at war with the United States for many months now, Colonel Bezoar. And that cannot be mitigated by ignorance.”
The lies came easily, now. In essence, after all, the words were true.
Ever since those few weeks, right after the big war had been “won” — when the U.S. still had a government, and food and materiel still moved protected on the highways — the real problem had not been the broken enemies without so much as the chaos within.
Grain rotted in bulging silos while farmers were felled by simple, innoculable plagues. Vaccine was available in the cities, where starvation reaped multitudes. More people died due to the breakdown and lawlessness — the shattered web of commerce and mutual assistance — than from all the bombs and germs, or even from the three-year dusk.
It had been men like this who delivered the coup de grace, who ended any chance those millions had.
“Perhaps, perhaps.” Bezoar tossed back a shot of the pungent liquor. He smiled. “Then again, many have claimed to be the true inheritors of American sovereignty. So your ‘Restored United States’ controls large areas and populations, and so its leaders include a few old farts who once bought elected office with cash and a television smile. Does that mean that it is the true America?”
For an instant the calm, reasonable visage seemed to crack, and Gordon saw the fanatic within, unchanged except perhaps by deepening over the years. Gordon had heard that tone… long ago in the radio voice of Nathan Holn — before the survivalist “saint” was hanged — and spoken by his followers ever since.
It was the same solipsistic philosophy of ego that had stoked the rage of Nazism, of Stalinism. Hegel, Horbiger, Holn — the roots were identical. Derived truth, smug and certain, never to be tested in the light of reality.
In North America, Holnism had been a nut fringe during a time of otherwise unparalleled brilliance, a throwback to the egoistic eighties. But another version of the same evil — “Slavic Mysticism” — actually seized power in the other hemisphere. That madness finally plunged the world into the Doomwar.
Gordon smiled with grim severity. “Who can say what is legitimate, after all these years? But one thing is certain, Bezoar, the ‘true spirit of America’ seems to have become a passion for hunting down Holnists. Your cult of the strong is loathed — not only in the Restored U.S. but almost everywhere I’ve traveled. Feuding villages will join forces on rumor of sighting one of your bands. Any man caught wearing surplus camouflage is hanged on sight.”