Pennsylvania Omnibus (37 page)

“I thought you were a man of
peace.”

“I am,” Jed said.

“Then you have no need to know
of my plans,” Amos said. “You have your BICE, and you can do your own research.
I would appreciate one thing, though: if you do learn anything that will be of
assistance in protecting and serving the people of New Pennsylvania, will you
inform me?”

“I don’t know what I’m going to
do, Amos.”

For a long moment, there were
no words. Then, when the silence became too heavy for either of them to lift,
Amos spoke.

“I’m not asking you to fight,
brother. I know you wouldn’t, and you’ve helped us enough already. I respect
who you are and what you are, and I always will. I hope you know that. I’m just
asking you to go be what the rest of us are fighting for. Maybe that’s
something we can both get behind.”

WEDNESDAY

On Wednesday, after the chores
were done, two of the Amish elders showed up at Matthias’s farm to help with
the next step of preparing for the barn-raising. These were the two men who had
the most experience with these events, so they were put in charge of the
construction of Matthias’s barn.

As part of the overall project,
Matthias would also, eventually, be getting a springhouse. Just like Tom
Hochstetler’s, the partially buried building would serve as a place for him to
store his fresh milk until it could be delivered or processed into another
product. The springhouse wouldn’t be built on Saturday, but the hole for the
project was going to be dug now. It was really the dirt from the hole that they
needed immediately, in order to bank the barn—the hole for the future
springhouse was just an additional benefit.

A banked barn is a handy thing,
because it means that the barn (usually) is built into a hillside. Having the
barn built into the side of a hill means that the upper level of the barn is
reachable directly by vehicle. So rather than lift heavy hay bales or other
weighty items using a block and tackle, the farmer can haul these items into
the barn directly from a wagon or other conveyance, which can be pulled up
to—even backed into—the barn from the upper level. Hay or other crops can be
easily stored upstairs, and then, as needed, dropped through a great opening in
the middle of the barn to the animals—who, in the wintertime, are housed in the
lower level.

The land Matthias’s farm sat on
had a few slight elevation changes, but no slopes dramatic enough to support a
banked barn. So instead, a suitable hill was going to be
made
. In
effect, a banked hill of dirt would form a large, very gradual ramp up to the
second floor of the barn. Such a project would require even more dirt than
they’d get from digging the hole for the springhouse, so there would need to be
a second excavation later in the week. But today they would just tackle the
springhouse excavation.

The TRACE soldiers were all
given shovels and other digging implements, and the Amish men marked out the
area where the springhouse would go. The new structure wouldn’t have to be
built directly on a spring. The cold water from the nearby spring, when
developed, could flow into the springhouse through a piece of pipe, or a
channel or tunnel formed by the careful laying of smooth rocks.

The Amish elders wanted a hole
that was four meters square and two meters deep. And they made sure that the
Englischer soldiers took turns with the hard digging. The dirt was scooped into
wheelbarrows and carted the seventy meters to the location of the banked barn.
The dirt wouldn’t be pushed up against the barn’s concrete and cinderblock
foundation until Friday afternoon, to make sure the foundation had enough time
to dry and cure before adding any lateral pressure to the new walls.

For the first time since he’d
arrived in New Pennsylvania, Jed felt like he was able to immerse himself in
farm work to the point that he was able to forget everything else that was
going on outside the walls of the AZ. If only for a moment, his mind was
completely absorbed in thoughts about the soil. He could breathe in the pure
air, and dream of the process of building his own farm—maybe someday with a
wife of his own. And for just that beautiful sliver of time, Jed was more than
willing to let the Englischers have their own war, and hoped they could just
leave him out of it.

Amos Troyer busied himself
making sure the Tulsa was fully battle-ready. He and his officers personally
toured the Tulsa’s massive platforms and decks, observing as the attack craft
and support vehicles were made ready for the coming battle. Amos watched as the
ships were being loaded with armaments, supplies, and equipment, and he sat in
as the pilots were briefed on their missions. He visited the engineering and
maintenance decks and personally interviewed the officers there to make certain
that everyone was on the same page.

Just as he’d always been, Amos
was a hands-on commander. He was briefed by the team that was implementing the
now redesigned
Corinth
battlefield intelligence system, and he even
observed as a few of the remaining intelligence officers had their Corinth
chips flash-updated in the medical bays. Transport had hacked the Corinth chips
once before, and he hoped now that the vulnerability issues had been fixed.

Amos didn’t know what event or
proximate cause would act as the trigger for the next phase of the war. But
while the council and the people waited and watched, he was preparing his force
to invade the area beyond the Great Shelf—to find Transport’s forces and ships,
and destroy them.

That night, Jed didn’t even get
online. He was so exhausted from the digging, and so pleased with the day’s
work, that he never even logged on to see if he had any messages from his
brother. Had he gotten online—and had he, perhaps, hacked into Transport’s
communications from out beyond the Shelf—he might have noticed some anomalies.
There was some interesting chatter that might have indicated to him that
something interesting was taking place out west. All of TRACE’s analysts missed
it, but maybe Jed wouldn’t have. It could have been that with Jed’s unique
perspective, and his willingness to question everything, he would have noticed
something: some track, or trail, or telltale clue that an amassing armada must,
inevitably, leave behind.

Because out beyond the Shelf,
Transport’s forces were gathering. Hundreds of attack airships were being
prepared, and a thousand unmarked white orbs—unmanned Transport drones,
manufactured in the old world and relayed to New Pennsylvania through a
makeshift portal hidden in a large factory in a mostly unpopulated city—were
receiving their final memory updates from Transport command.

It’s possible that Jed would
have missed all the signs. But it’s also possible that had he taken a look, he
might have seen something that no one else did. And maybe he would have given
his brother—and the whole world—another twenty-four hours to act. But such
surmisings aren’t usually profitable. Who can say what
might have
happened in any situation?

What matters is what
did
happen.

And what did happen is, Jed
didn’t get online. He was still an Amish man after all, and averse to getting
involved in conflict. So Jed didn’t notice the signs of a pending Transport
counteroffensive for another full day. And in that full day, while Jed slept
and woke and worked and loved, the forces in the world around him rushed
headlong toward an inevitable, and violent, climax.

THURSDAY

On Thursday, after the milking and
a large breakfast, the TRACE squad joined a dozen Amish men who showed up to
move even more dirt. The concrete and cinderblock foundation walls they’d
constructed a few days earlier were now sturdy enough to hold up against the
strain. so half of the men were assigned to start forming the long, gradual
ramp that would lead to the second floor of the barn. The soldiers, and the
other half of the Amish men, would be digging a hole for a small stock pond.

First, the sod was cut from the
whole area of the future pond, and the grassy turf was carefully laid aside.
This grass would eventually be placed on the embankment they’d be building that
day. After the sod was cut, a half dozen wheelbarrows trucked dirt back and
forth from the site of the new pond to the barn. The barn needed the dirt, and
the farm needed the pond, in order to trap and hold more surface moisture for
the watering of animals. Digging, then, was on tap for the second straight
day.

On this Thursday, Dawn and Jed
worked together. The women didn’t usually join the men in their building
chores, but Dawn insisted that she wanted to help, and no one was willing to
tell her no. And if the truth be told, she wanted to spend some time with Jed
as well. So she put her muscles to work and dug out big shovelfuls of deep,
black soil, dumping them into the wheelbarrow; and when it was so full that she
was afraid it might tip over, Jed would push the load up the low hill to the
foundation of the new barn, where men were placing the soil, spreading it, and
tamping it down to make the bank.

This process gave the two of
them a lot of time to talk, because between runs, Jed would flop down on the
grass while Dawn was digging (she got to rest while he was hauling).

“Do you want to swap jobs?” Jed
asked.

“Nah, I’m all right,” Dawn
said. “Besides, I have the easy job.”

“Digging’s not easy!” Jed said.
“And I have the blisters from yesterday to prove it!”

“That’s why you should wear
gloves,” Dawn said with a smile, and held up a gloved hand. “You may be the
strongest one in this relationship, but I think I’m the smartest.” She winked
at Jed.

“Oh, I don’t doubt that one
single bit,” Jed said, nodding his head.

Dawn went back to digging, and
Jed reached up and smoothed out a pile in the wheelbarrow that was looking like
it might make the thing lean too much to one side. “Relationship, huh?” he
said.

Dawn stopped digging and leaned
on the shovel. “What?”

“You said ‘this relationship,’
and I wondered what you meant by that.”

“Uh… I don’t know,” Dawn said.
“I thought we both said we might want to get married or something. Was I
dreaming that part? Or…”

“No,” Jed said, “you weren’t
dreaming at all. I just… It was just weird hearing it all official like.”

“Weird, huh?”

“No… no.” Jed held up his hands
in mock surrender. “Wait a minute. I don’t mean weird. I meant it was… nice. It
was nice to hear you say it. That’s all I meant to say.”

Dawn scowled at him. “Yes, I’m
sure that is what you meant to say, Jed.”

“It was. I liked hearing
it.”

“Yeah, well, maybe I’d like
hearing it too.”

Jed looked down at his boots,
and shuffled them for a moment before he spoke again. “Dawn… listen… we have
ways we do things. You know that. We don’t have girlfriends and stuff. We don’t
‘date.’”

“I know,” Dawn said. “But your
parents aren’t around, and mine aren’t either. I mean, who are we going to ask
for permission, or tell, so we can make things official?”

“When we’re ready, we’ll talk
to the elders,” Jed said.

“I’ve been married before, and
I’m not Amish.” Dawn didn’t say it like she was apologizing, because she
wasn’t. She spoke in a very matter-of-fact tone, as if to say, “Okay, how do we
deal with these facts?”

“You’re a widow, and you can be
Amish again whenever you want to be,” Jed said.

“It’s just…” Dawn threw down
the shovel and climbed up out of the low hole. She stood very close to him, and
looked deeply into his eyes. “All I’ve wanted to do since Ben died was fight
his enemies. It’s all I
have
done. But now…”

“But now?” Jed asked.

“But now, all I want to do is
be with you. Wherever you are. I just want to build a life with you, Jed.”

Jed looked at Dawn and inhaled
deeply. This was what he’d hoped for—maybe not openly, but he’d felt very
strongly for Dawn almost from the moment he’d met her. From the instant his
eyes had opened up in that pod in the Transport Station and he’d seen her
looking down at him.

“Billy talked to me yesterday,”
Dawn said.

“Oh… Oh, he did? What…” He put
his hands into his pockets. “Well, I guess it’s not my business to ask.”

“Of course it’s your business,
Jed. That’s why I’m telling you.”

“Okay, so…” He threw up his
hands, showing that he was flustered.

“He asked me if there was any
hope for the two of us,” Dawn said. “He wanted to know if he could take care of
me. Like Ben did.”

“And what did you say?”

“I told him that I loved
you
, Jed. That’s what I told him.”

Jed smiled. “I love you,
too.”

“I just want to be with
you.”

“Okay, so you’ll give up TRACE?
You’ll leave the resistance?”

“I… I… I don’t know. I don’t
know what to say. I haven’t thought it all out yet. I don’t know what to
do.”

Jed smiled at her. “I
understand.” He pushed a loose strand of hair out of her face, and smiled wider
when he saw a grin break across her face. “We’ll wait until we know exactly
what we should do, okay?”

Dawn looked up at him for a
moment and then nodded.