The Postman (35 page)

Gordon’s view of the moldy, broken-down trading post kept rotating. It was hard to focus on anything in particular, let alone the man talking to him.

He hung by a rope tied around his ankles, his hands dropping to a couple of feet above the muddy wooden floor. General Macklin sat next to the fire, whittling. He looked at Gordon each time his captive’s steady tortional swing brought them face to face. Most of the time, he smiled.

The constriction on his ankles, the pain in his forehead and sternum, were nothing to the heavy weight of blood rushing to his brain. Through the rear door Gordon could hear low whimpering—a pathetic enough sound in itself, but definitely a relief after the screams of the last half hour or so. At last, Macklin had ordered Bezoar to stop and let the women do some work. There was a prisoner in the next room he wanted tended, and he didn’t want Marcie and Heather beaten senseless while they still had their uses.

Macklin also wanted to be able to draw out his session with Gordon in peace and quiet. “A few of those crazy Willametter spies of yours lived long enough to be questioned,” the Holnist commander told him mildly. “The one in the next room here hasn’t been too cooperative yet, but we have reports from our invasion force as well, so the picture’s pretty clear. I have to give you credit, Krantz. It was a pretty imaginative plan. Too bad it didn’t work.”

“I haven’t any idea what in hell you’re talking about, Macklin.” The thickness in Gordon’s tongue made it hard to speak.

“Ah, but I see from your face that you
do
understand,” his captor said. “There’s no need to maintain secrecy anymore. You needn’t concern yourself any longer for your brave girl soldiers. Because of their sneaky mode of attack, we did suffer some losses. But I’ll wager far fewer than you’d hoped for. By now, of course, all your ‘Willamette Scouts’ are dead, or in chains. I compliment you on a worthy attempt, however.”

Gordon’s heart pounded. “You bastard. Don’t give
me
the credit. It was their own idea! I don’t even know what they planned to do!”

For only the second time Gordon saw surprise cross Macklin’s face. “Well, well,” the barbarian chieftain said at last. “Imagine that.
Feminists
, still around in this day and age. My dear Inspector, it seems we come to the rescue of the poor people of the Willamette just in the nick of time!” His smile returned.

The smugness on that face was too much to bear. Gordon reached for anything at all to try to wipe it off. “You’ll never win, Macklin. Even if you burn Corvallis, if you crush every village and smash Cyclops to bits, people will never stop fighting you!”

The smile remained, unperturbed. The General tsked and shook his head. “Do you think us inexperienced? My dear fellow, how did the Normans domesticate the proud, numerous Saxons? What secret did the Romans use to tame the Gauls?

“You are indeed a romantic, sir, to underestimate the power of terror.

“Anyway,” Macklin went on as he sat back and resumed his whittling, “you forget that we will not remain outsiders for long. We’ll recruit among your own people. Countless young men will see the advantage in being lords, rather than serfs. And unlike the nobility of the Middle Ages, we new feudalists believe that all males should have a right to fight for their first earring.

“That
is the
true
democracy, my friend. The one America was heading toward before the Constitutionalist Betrayal. My own sons must kill to become Holnists, or they will scratch dirt to support those who can.

“We will have recruits. More than plenty, believe it. With the astonishing population you have up north, we can have—within a decade—an army the like of which has not been seen since ‘Franklinstein’ Civilization crumbled under its own hypocrisy.”

“What makes you think your other enemies will give you that decade?” Gordon gritted. “Do you think the Californians will let you sit on your conquests long enough to lick your wounds and build that army of yours?”

Macklin shrugged. “You speak out of very little knowledge, my dear fellow. Once we’ve pulled back, the loose confederation in the south will break apart and forget us. And even if they
could
put aside their own perpetual petty squabbles and unite, those ‘Californians’ you speak of would take a generation to reach us in our new realm. By then we’ll be more than ready to counterstrike.

“For another thing—and this is the delightful part—even if they pursued us, they would have to go through your friend on Sugarloaf Mountain to get at us!”

Macklin laughed at the expression on Gordon’s face. “You thought I didn’t know about your mission? Oh, Mr. Krantz, why do you imagine I arranged to have your party ambushed, and to have you brought to me? I know all about the Squire’s refusal to help anyone outside the line from Roseburg to the sea.

“Isn’t it wonderful, though? The ‘Wall of the Callahan Mountains’—the famed George Powhatan—will keep to his valley, and in so doing, he will defend our flank while we consolidate up north … until at last we are ready to begin the Great Campaign.”

The general smiled pensively.

“I’ve often regretted that I never got my hands on Powhatan. Whenever our sides clashed he was always too slippery, always somewhere else doing mischief. But this way is even better, I believe! Let him have ten more years on his
farm, while I conquer the rest of Oregon.
Then
it’ll be his turn.

“Even from your point of view, Mr. Inspector, I am sure you’ll agree that he deserves what’s coming to him then.”

There was no way to answer that except by silence. Macklin tapped Gordon with his stick, just hard enough to set him rotating again. As a result, Gordon found it hard to focus when the front door opened and a pair of heavy moccasins padded into view.

“Bill an’ I checked up along th’ mountainside,” he heard the huge augment, Shawn, tell his commander. “Found th’ same tracks as we saw before, up by th’ river. I’m sure it’s th’ same black bastard as slitted those sentries.”

Black bastard …

Gordon breathed a word silently.
Phil?

Macklin laughed. “There now. You see, Shawn? Nathan Holn wasn’t a racist and neither should you be. I’ve always regretted that the racial minorities were at such a disadvantage in the riots and postwar chaos. Even the strong among them had little fair chance to excel.

“Now consider that Negro soldier out there. He has cut the throats of three of our river guards. He’s
strong
, and would have made an excellent recruit.”

Even upside down and spinning, Gordon could make out Shawn’s sour expression. The augment did not dispute his commander aloud, however.

“Pity we have no time to play games with the fellow,” Macklin continued. “Go and kill him now, Shawn.”

There was a swirl of disturbed air, and the burly veteran was out the door again, without a word and almost without sound.

“I really would have preferred to give your scout a warning, first,” Macklin confided in Gordon. “It’d have been more sporting if your man out there knew that he was up against something—unusual.” Macklin laughed again.

“Alas, in these times it’s not always sensible to play fair.”

Gordon thought that he had felt hate before this moment.
But his cold anger right now was unlike anything he remembered. “Philip! Run!” He cried out as loud as he could, praying the sound of his voice would carry over the patter of raindrops. “Watch out, they’re—”

Macklin’s stick lashed out, striking Gordon’s cheek and sending his head rocking back. The world blurred and nearly faded into blackness. It took a long time for his eyes to clear, blinking away tears. He tasted blood.

“Yes,” Macklin nodded. “You are a man. I’ll give you that. When the time comes, I’ll try to see to it you die like one.”

“Don’t do me any favors,” Gordon choked. Macklin merely grinned and went back to his whittling.

A few minutes later the door at the back of the ruined store opened. “Go back and see to your women!” Macklin snapped. Charles Bezoar quickly closed the door to the windowless storage room—where Marcie and Heather presumably still tended the other prisoner Gordon had not yet seen.

“Just goes to show you, not every strong man is likable,” Macklin commented sourly. “He’s useful, though. For now.”

Gordon had no idea whether it was hours or a few minutes later when a trill call carried through the boarded windows. He thought it was only the cry of a river bird but Macklin reacted swiftly, blowing out the small oil lantern and throwing dust onto the fire.

“This is too good to miss,” he told Gordon. “The guys appear to have a good chase going. I hope you’ll excuse me for a few minutes?”

He grabbed Gordon’s hair. “Of course if you so much as make a sound while I’m gone, I’ll kill you the instant I get back. That’s a promise.”

Gordon could not shrug in his position. “Go join Nathan Holn in Hell,” he said.

Macklin smiled. “Undoubtedly, someday.” Then the augment was out the door, running through the darkness and rain.

Gordon hung while his pendulumlike swinging slowly abated. Then he took a deep breath and got to work.

Three times he tried to pull himself up to within reach of the rope around his ankles. Each time he fell back, grunting from the tearing agony of sudden, jerking gravity. The third time was almost too much to bear. His ears rang and he thought he almost heard voices.

Through tear-filled eyes he seemed to half see an audience to his struggle. All the ghosts he had accumulated over the years appeared to line the walls. It occurred to him that they were making book on his plight.

 … take … -it
 … Cyclops said for all of them, speaking in a code of rippling highlights in the fireplace coals.

“Go away,” Gordon muttered angrily, resenting his imagination. There was neither time nor energy to waste on such games. He hissed hard as he got ready for one more try, then heaved upward with all his might.

He barely caught the rope this time, slippery with dripping rain, and held on tightly with both hands. His whole body quaked from the strain, bent double like a folded pocket knife, but he knew he dare not let go. There just wasn’t anything left for another try.

With both hands fully occupied he couldn’t venture to untie himself. There was nothing to cut the rope with.
Up
, he concentrated.
It’ll
be better if you stand
.

Slowly, he pulled himself up the rope, hand over hand. His muscles trembled, threatening cramps, and there was intense pain in his chest and back, but at last he “stood,” his ankles twisted in loops of cutting rope, holding on tight as he swung like a chandelier.

Over by the wall, Johnny Stevens cheered unabashedly. Tracy Smith and the other Army Scouts smiled.
Pretty good, for a male
, they seemed to say.

Cyclops sat in his cloud of supercooled mist, playing checkers with the smoking Franklin stove. They, too, seemed to approve.

Gordon tried lowering himself to get at the knots, but it put so much pressure on the loops around his ankles that he nearly fainted from the pain. He had to straighten out again.

Not that way
. Ben Franklin shook his head. The Great Manipulator looked at him over the tops of his bifocals.

“Over the tops of his … over the t—” Gordon looked up at the stout beam from which the rope had been hung.

Up and over the top, then
.

He raised his arms and wound the rope around them.
You did this back in gymnastics class, before the war
, he told himself as he began to pull.

Yeah. But now you’re an old man
.

Tears flowed as he started hauling himself upward, hand over hand, helping where he could with his knees. In the blur between his eyelids, his ghosts seemed more real the more he struggled. They had graduated from imagination to first-class hallucinations.

“Go, Gordon!” Tracy called up to him.

Lieutenant Van gave him thumbs up. Johnny Stevens grinned encouragement alongside the woman who had saved his life back in the ruins of Eugene.

A skeletal shade in a paisley shirt and leather jacket grinned and gave him a fleshless thumbs up. Atop the bare skull lay a blue, peaked cap, its brass badge glimmering.

Even Cyclops ceased its nagging as Gordon gave the endless climb everything he had.

Up
 … he moaned, grabbing slick hemp and fighting the crushing hug of gravity.
Up, you worthless intellectual.… Move or die.…

One arm floundered over the top of the rough wooden beam. He held on and brought up the other to join it.

And that was all. There was no more to give. He hung by his armpits, unable to move any farther. Through the blur of his eyelashes, his phantoms all looked up at him, clearly disappointed.

“Oh, go chase yourselves,” he told them inwardly, unable even to speak aloud.

 … Who will take responsibility
 … the coals in the fireplace glittered.

“You’re dead, Cyclops. You’re
all
dead! Leave me alone!” Utterly exhausted, Gordon closed his eyes to escape them.

Only there, in the blackness, he encountered the one ghost that remained. The one he had used the most shamelessly, and which had used him.

It was a nation. A world.

Faces, fading in and out with the entopic speckles behind his eyelids … millions of faces, betrayed and ruined but striving still …

—for a Restored United States.

—for a
Restored World
.

—for a fantasy … but one which refused obstinately to die—that
could not
die—not while he lived.

Gordon wondered, amazed. Was this why he’d lied for so long, why he had told such fairy tales? … because
he
needed them? Because he couldn’t let go of them? He answered himself.

Without them, I would have curled up and died
.

Funny, he had never seen it quite that way before, in such startling clarity. In the darkness within himself the dream glowed—even if it existed nowhere else in the Universe—flickering like a diatom, like a bright mote hovering in a murky sea.