Great sheets of rain blew southward down the narrow defile. Gordon felt his way back to the trunk of a fallen tree and sat down heavily. There he simply waited, unable even to contemplate moving, his memories churning like a turgid, silt-swirled river.
At last, there was a crackle of snapping twigs to his left. A naked form slowly emerged from the darkness, walking wearily toward him.
“Dena said there were only two types of males who counted,” Gordon commented. “It always seemed a crackpot idea to me. But I never realized the government thought that way too, before the end.”
The man slumped onto the torn bark beside him. Under his skin a thousand little pulsing threads surged and throbbed. Blood trickled from hundreds of scratches all over his body. He breathed heavily, staring at nothing at all.
“They reversed their policy, didn’t they?” Gordon asked. “In the end, they rediscovered wisdom.”
He knew George Powhatan had heard him, and had understood. But still there was no reply.
Gordon fumed. He needed an answer. For some reason, deep within, he had to know if the United States had been ruled, in those last years before the Calamity, by men and women of honor.
“Tell me, George! You said they abandoned using the warrior type. Who else was there, then? Did they select for the opposite? For an aversion to power? For men who would fight well, but reluctantly?”
An image: of a puzzled Johnny Stevens — ever eager to learn — earnestly trying to understand the enigma of a great leader who spurns a golden crown in favor of a plow. He had never really explained it to the boy. And now it was too late.
“Well? Did they revive the old ideal? Did they purposely seek out soldiers who saw themselves as citizens first?”
He grabbed Powhatan’s throbbing shoulders. “Damn you! Why didn’t you tell me, when I’d come all that way from Corvallis to plead with you! Don’t you think I, of all people, would have understood?”
The Squire of Camas Valley looked sunken. He met Gordon’s eyes very briefly, then looked away again, shuddering.
“Oh, you bet I’d have understood, Powhatan. I knew what you meant, when you said that the Big Things are insatiable.” Gordon’s fists clenched. “The Big Things will take everything you love away from you, and still demand more. You know it, I know it… that poor slob Cincinnatus knew it, when he told them they could keep their stupid crown!
“But your mistake was thinking it can ever end, Powhatan!” Gordon hobbled to his feet. He shouted his anger at the man. “Did you honestly think your responsibility was ever finished?”
When Powhatan spoke at last, Gordon had to bend to hear him over the rolling thunder.
“I’d hoped… I was so sure I could—”
“So sure you could say no to all the big lies!” Gordon laughed sarcastically, bitterly. “Sure you could say no to honor, and dignity^ and country?
“What made you change your mind, then?
“You laughed off Cyclops, and the promise of technology. Not God, nor pity, nor the ‘Restored United States’ would move you! So tell me, Powhatan, what power was finally great enough to make you follow Phil Bokuto down here and look for me?”
Sitting with clutched hands, the most powerful man alive — sole relic of an age of near-gods — seemed to draw into himself like a small boy, exhausted, ashamed.
“You’re right,” he groaned. “It never ends. I’ve done my share, a thousand times over I have!… All I wanted was to be left to grow old in peace. Is that too much to ask? Is it?”
His eyes were bleak, “But it never, ever ends.”
Powhatan looked up, then, meeting and holding Gordon’s stare for the first time.
“It was the women,” he said softly, answering Gordon’s question at last. “Ever since your visit and those damned letters, they kept talking, asking questions.
“Then the story of that madness up north arrived, even in my valley. I tried… tried to tell them it was just craziness, what your Amazons did, but they—”
Powhatan’s voice caught. He shook his head. “Bokuto stormed out, to come down here all alone… and when that happened they kept looking at me.… They kept after me and after me and after me…”
He moaned and covered his face with his hands.
“Sweet God in Heaven, forgive me. The women made me do it.”
Gordon blinked in amazement. Amidst the pelting raindrops, tears flowed down the last augment’s craggy, careworn face. George Powhatan shuddered and sobbed ach-ingly aloud.
Gordon slumped down to the rough log next to him, a heaviness filling him like the nearby Coquille, swollen from winter’s snows. In another minute, his own lips were trembling.
Lightning flashed. The nearby river roared. And they wept together under the rain — mourning as men can only mourn themselves.
INTERLUDE
IV. NEITHER CHAOS
1
A new legend swept Oregon, from Roseburg all the way north to the Columbia, from the mountains to the sea. It traveled by letter and by word of mouth, growing with each telling.
It was a sadder story than the two that had come before it — those speaking of a wise, benevolent machine and of a reborn nation. It was more disturbing than those. And yet this new fable had one important element its predecessors lacked.
It was true.
The story told of a band of forty women — crazy-women, many contended — who had shared among themselves a secret vow: to do anything and everything to end a terrible war, and end it before all the good men died trying to save them.
They acted out of love, some explained. Others said that they did it for their country.
There was even a rumor that the women had looked on their odyssey to Hell as a form of penance, in order to make up for some past failing of womankind.
Interpretations varied, but the overall moral was always the same, whether spread by word of mouth or by US. Mail. From hamlet to village to farmstead, mothers and daughters and wives read the letters and listened to the words — and passed them on.
Men can be brilliant and strong, they whispered to one another. But men can be mad, as well. And the mad ones can ruin the world.
Women, you must judge them…
Never again can things be allowed to reach this pass, they said to one another as they thought of the sacrifice the Scouts had made.
Never again can we let the age-old fight go on between good and bad men alone.
Women, you must share responsibility… and bring your own talents into the struggle…
And always remember, the moral concluded: Even the best men — the heroes — will sometimes neglect to do their jobs.
Women, you must remind them, from time to time…
2
April 28, 2012
Dear Mrs. Thompson,
Thank you for your letters. They helped immeasurably during my recovery — especially since I had been so worried that the enemy might have reached Pine View. Learning that you and Abby and Michael were all right was worth more to me than you might ever know.
Speaking of Abby, please tell her that I saw Michael yesterday! He arrived, hale and well, along with the other five volunteers Pine View sent to help in the war. Like so many of our recruits, it seemed he just couldn’t wait to get into the fighting.
I hope I didn’t dampen his spirits too much when I told him of some of my firsthand experiences with Holnists. I do think, though, that now he’ll be more attentive to his training, and maybe a bit less eager to win the war single-handedly. After all, we want Abby and little Caroline to see him again.