The Postman (21 page)

Gordon felt a frantic dread rise within him, as when, during his boyhood, he had encountered his grandfather lying perfectly still on the porch swing, and feared to find that the beloved old man had died.

The pattern of lights repeated, over and over.

Gordon wondered. How many people would recall, after the hell of the last seventeen years, that the parity displays
of a great computer never repeated themselves? Gordon remembered a cyberneticist friend telling him that the patterns of lights were like snowflakes, none ever the same as any other.

“Cyclops,” he said evenly. “Answer
me!
I
demand
you answer—in the name of decency! In the name of the United St—”

He stopped. He couldn’t bring himself to meet this lie with another. Here, the only living mind he would fool would be himself.

The room was warmer than it had seemed during his interview. He looked for, and found, the little vents through which cool air could be directed at a visitor seated in the guest chair, giving an impression of great cold just beyond the glass wall.

“Dry ice,” he muttered. “To fool the citizens of Oz.”

Dorothy herself could not have felt more betrayed. Gordon had been willing to lay down his life for what had seemed to exist here. And now he knew it was nothing but a cheat. A way for a bunch of surviving sophisticates to fleece their neighbors of food and clothing, and have them be
grateful
for the privilege.

By creating the myth of the “Millennium Project,” and a market for salvaged electronics, they had managed to convince the locals that the old electric machines were of great value. All through the lower Willamette Valley, people now hoarded home comps, appliances, and toys—because
Cyclops
would accept them in trade for its advice.

The “Servants of Cyclops” had arranged it so that canny people like Herb Kalo hardly even counted the tithe of food and other goods that were added
for the Servants themselves
.

The scientists ate well, Gordon remembered. And none of the farmers ever complained.

“It’s not your fault,” he told the silent machine, softly. “You really
would
have designed the tools, made up for all the lost expertise—helped us find the road back. You and your kind were the greatest thing we had ever done.…”

He choked, remembering the warm, wise voice in Minneapolis, so long ago. His vision blurred and he looked down.

“You
are right, Gordon. It is nobody’s fault.”

Gordon gasped. In a flash, molten hope burned that he had been mistaken! It was the voice of Cyclops!

But it had not come from the speaker grille. He turned quickly, and saw—

—that a thin old man sat in the shadowed back corner of the room, watching him.

“I often come here, you know.” The aged one spoke with the voice of Cyclops—a sad voice, filled with regret. “I come to sit with the ghost of my friend, who died so long ago, right here in this room.”

The old man leaned forward a little. Pearly light shone on his face. “My name is Joseph Lazarensky, Gordon. I built Cyclops, so many years ago.” He looked down at his hands. “I oversaw his programming and education. I loved him as I would my own son.

“And like any good father, I was proud to know that he would be a better, kinder, more
human
being than I had been.”

Lazarensky sighed. “He really did survive the onset of the war, you know. That part of the story is true. Cyclops
was
in his Faraday cage, safe from the battle pulses. And he remained there while we fought to keep him alive.

“The first and only time I ever killed a man was on the night of the Anti-Tech riots. I helped defend the powerhouse, shooting like somebody crazed.

“But it was no use. The generators were destroyed, even as the militia finally arrived to drive the mad crowds back … too late. Minutes, years too late.”

He spread his hands. “As you seem to have figured out, Gordon, there was nothing to do after that … nothing but to sit with Cyclops, and watch him die.”

Gordon remained very still, standing in the ghostly ashlight. Lazarensky went on.

“We had built up great hopes, you know. Before the
riots we had already conceived of the Millenium Plan. Or I should say
Cyclops
conceived of it. He already had the outlines of a program for rebuilding the world. He needed a couple of months, he said, to work out the details.”

Gordon felt as if his face were made of stone. He waited silently.

“Do you know anything about quantum-memory bubbles, Gordon? Compared to them, Josephson junctions are made of sticks and mud. The bubbles are as light and fragile as thought. They allow mentation a million times faster than neurons. But they must be kept supercold to exist at all. And once destroyed, they cannot be remade.

“We tried to save him, but we could not.” The old man looked down again. “I would rather have died myself, that night.”

“So you decided to carry out the plan on your own,” Gordon suggested dryly.

Lazarensky shook his head. “You know better, of course. Without Cyclops the task was impossible. All we could do was present a shell. An illusion.

“It offered a way to survive in the coming dark age. All around us was chaos and suspicion. The only leverage we poor intellectuals had was a weak, flickering thing called Hope.”

“Hope!” Gordon laughed bitterly. Lazarensky shrugged.

“Petitioners come to speak with Cyclops, and they speak with me. It isn’t hard, usually, to give good advice, to look up simple techniques in books, or to mediate disputes with common sense. They believe in the impartiality of the computer where they would never trust a living man.”

“And where you can’t come up with a commonsense answer, you go oracular on them.”

Again the shrug. “It worked at Delphi and at Ephesus, Gordon. And honestly, where is the harm? The people of the Willamette have seen too many power-hungry monsters over the last twenty years to unite under any man or group of men. But oh, they remember the machines! As they recall
that ancient uniform you wear, even though in better days they so often treated it with terrible disrespect.”

There were voices in the hall. They passed close by, then faded away. Gordon stirred. “I’ve got to get out of here.”

Lazarensky laughed. “Oh don’t worry about the others. They’re all talk and no action. They aren’t like you at all.”

“You don’t know me,” Gordon growled.

“No? As ‘Cyclops’ I spoke with you for some hours. And both my adopted daughter and young Peter Aage have talked of you at length. I know more about you than you might imagine.

“You’re a rarity, Gordon. Somehow, out there in the wilderness you managed to retain a modern mind, while gaining a strength suited for these times. Even if that bunch out there ever tried to harm you, you would outsmart them.”

Gordon moved to the door, then stopped. He turned and looked back one last time at the soft glow from the dead machine, the tiny lights rippling hopelessly over and over again.

“I’m not so smart.” His breath was hard in his throat. “You see, I
believed!
”

He met Lazarensky’s eyes, and finally the old man looked down, unable to answer. Gordon stumbled out then, leaving the death-chilled crypt and its corpses behind him.

He made it back to where his horse was tethered just as faint glimmers of dawn were brightening the eastern sky. He remounted, and with his heels he guided the filly up the old service road to the north. Within he felt a hollow grief, as if a freezing cold had locked up his heart. Nothing within him could move, for fear of shattering something tottering, precarious.

He had to get away from this place. That much was clear. Let the fools have their myths. He was finished!

He would not return to Sciotown, where he had left the mailbags. All that was behind him now. He began unbuttoning the blouse of his uniform, intending to drop it in a roadside ditch—along, forever, with his share in all the lying.

Unbidden, a phrase echoed in his mind.

Who will take responsibility now …?

What? He shook his head to clear it, but the words would not go away.

Who will take responsibility now, for these foolish children?

Gordon cursed and dug in his heels. The horse gamely sped northward, away from everything he had treasured only yesterday morning … but now knew to be a Potemkin facade. A cheap, dime store mannequin. Oz.

Who will take responsibility …

The words repeated over and over again within his head, firmly lodged like a tune that would not let go. It was
the same rhythm—he realized at last—as the winking lights of the parity display on the face of the old, dead machine, lights that had rippled again and again.

 … 
for these foolish children?

The filly trotted on in the dawnlight past orchards bordered by rows of ruined cars, and a strange thought suddenly occurred to Gordon. What if—at the end of its life, as the last drops of liquid helium evaporated away and the deadly heat rushed in—what if the final thought of the innocent, wise machine had somehow been caught in a loop, preserved in peripheral circuits, to flash forlornly over and over again?

Would that qualify as a ghost?

He wondered, what would Cyclops’s final thoughts, its last words, have been?

Can a man be haunted by the ghost of a
machine?

Gordon shook his head. He was tired, or else he would not think up such nonsense. He didn’t owe anybody
anything!
Certainly not a scrap of ruined tin,
or
a desiccated specter found in a rusted jeep.

“Ghosts!” He spat on the side of the road and laughed dryly.

Still, the words echoed round and round inside.
Who will take responsibility now …

So absorbed was he that it took a few moments at first for him to recognize the faint sounds of shouting behind him. Gordon pulled up on the reins and turned to look back, his hand resting on the butt of his revolver. Anyone who pursued him now did so at great peril. Lazarensky had been right about one thing. Gordon knew he was more than a match for this bunch.

In the distance he saw there was a flurry of frantic activity in front of the House of Cyclops, but … but the commotion apparently did not have to do with him.

Gordon shaded his eyes against the glare of the new sun, and saw steam rising from a pair of heavily lathered horses. One exhausted man stumbled up the steps of the House of Cyclops, shouting at those hurrying to his side.
Another messenger, apparently badly wounded, was being tended on the ground.

Gordon heard one word cried out loudly. It told all.

“Survivalists!”

He had one word to offer in reply.

“Shit.”

He turned his back on the noises and snapped the reins, sending the filly northward once again.

A day ago he would have helped. He’d been willing to lay down his life trying to save Cyclops’s dream, and probably would have done just that.

He would have died for a hollow farce, a ruse, a con game!

If the Holnist invasion had really begun, the villagers south of Eugene would put up a good fight. The raiders would turn north toward the front of least resistance. The soft north Willametters didn’t stand a chance against the Rogue River men.

Still, there probably weren’t enough Holnists to take the entire valley. Corvallis would fall, certainly, but there would be other places to go. Perhaps he might head east on Highway 22, and swing back around to Pine View. It would be nice to see Mrs. Thompson again. Maybe he could be there when Abby’s baby arrived.

The filly trotted on. The shouts died away behind him, like a bad memory slowly fading. It promised to be fair weather, the first in weeks without clouds. A good day for traveling.

As Gordon rode on, a cool breeze blew through his half open shirtfront. A hundred yards down the road he found his hand drifting to the buttons again, twisting one slowly, back and forth.

The pony sauntered, slowed, and came to a halt. Gordon sat, his shoulders hunched forward.

Who will take responsibility …

The words would not go away, lights pulsing in his mind.

The horse tossed her head and snorted, pawing at the ground.

Who …?
”

Gordon cried out, “Aw,
hell
!” He wheeled the filly about, sending her cantering southward again.

A babbling, frightened crowd of men and women stepped back in hushed silence as he clattered up to the portico of the House of Cyclops. His spirited mount danced and blew as he stared down at the people for a long, silent moment.

Finally, Gordon threw his poncho back. He rebuttoned his shirt and set the postman’s cap on his head so the bright brass rider shone in the light of the rising sun.

He took a deep breath. Then he began pointing, giving terse commands.

In the name of survival—and in the name of the “Restored United States”—the people of Corvallis and the Servants of Cyclops all hurried to obey.

High above gray, foam-flecked wavetops, the jet stream throbbed. Winter had come again, and winds moaned chill recollections over the north Pacific
.

Fewer than twenty cycles past, the normal patterns of the air had been perturbed by great, dark funnels—as if armies of angry volcanoes had chosen the same moment to throw earth against sky
.

If the episode had not ended quickly, perhaps all life might have vanished, and the ice returned forever. Even as it was, clouds of ash had blanketed the Earth for weeks before the larger grains fell out of the sky like dirty rain. Smaller bits of rock and soot dispersed into the high stratospheric streams, scattering the sunlight
.

Years passed before spring came again, at last
.

It
DID
come. The Ocean—slow, resilient—surrendered up just enough heat to stop the spiral short of no-return. In time, warm, sea-drenched clouds again swept over the continent. The tall trees grew, and weeds sprouted earnestly, unmolested, through cracks in broken pavement
.