The Postman (33 page)

“The problem is one of balance,” the graying statesman-scientist said to his invention, ignoring Gordon as he contemplated the chessboard. “I’ve put some thought to it. How can we set up a system which encourages individuals to strive and excel, and yet which shows some compassion to the weak, and weeds out madmen and tyrants?”

Flames licked behind the stove’s glowing grille, like dancing rows of lights. In words more seen than heard, it inquired:

“… Who will take responsibility …?”

Franklin moved a white knight. “Good question,” he said as he leaned back. “A very good question.

“Of course we can establish constitutional checks and balances, but those won’t mean a thing unless citizens make sure the safeguards are taken seriously. The greedy and the power-hungry will always look for ways to break the rules, or twist them to their advantage.”

The flames flicked out, and somehow in the process a red pawn had moved.

“… Who …?”

Franklin took out a handkerchief and wiped his brow. “Would-be tyrants, that’s who … they have an age-old panoply of methods—manipulating the common man, lying to him, or crushing his belief in himself.

“It’s said that ‘power corrupts,’ but actually it’s more true that power
attracts the corruptible
. The sane are usually attracted by other things than power. When they do act, they think of it as
service
, which has limits. The tyrant, though, seeks
mastery
, for which he is insatiable, implacable.”

“
 … foolish children
 …” the flames flickered.

“Yes,” Franklin nodded, wiping his bifocals. “Still, I believe that certain innovations might help. The right
myths
, for instance.

“And then, if Good is willing to make sacrifices …” He reached out, picking up his queen, hesitated for a moment, and then moved the delicate ivory piece all the way across the board, almost under the glowing hot grille.

Gordon wanted to cry out a warning. The queen’s position was completely exposed. Not even a pawn was nearby to protect her.

His worst fears were borne out almost at once. The flames licked forth. In a blur, a red king stood on a pile of ashes where the slender white figure had been only a moment before.

“Oh lord, no,” Gordon moaned. Even in the half-critical dream state, he knew what was happening, and what it symbolized.

“
 … Who will take responsibility
…?” the stove asked again.

Franklin did not answer. Instead, he shifted and pushed back in his chair. It squeaked as he turned around. Over the rims of his bifocals, he looked directly at Gordon.

You
too?
Gordon quailed.
What do you all want from me!

The rippling red. And Franklin smiled.

He startled awake, staring until he saw Johnny Stevens crouching over him, about to touch his shoulder.

“Gordon, I think you’d better take a look. Something’s the matter with the guards.”

He sat up, rubbing his eyes. “Show me.”

Johnny led him over to the east wall of the shed, near the door. It took a moment to adjust to the moonlight. Then Gordon made out the two survivalist soldiers who had been assigned to watch them.

One lay back against a log bench, his mouth hanging open as he stared blank-eyed up at the low, growling clouds.

The other Holnist still gurgled. He clawed at the ground, trying to crawl toward his rifle. In one hand he held his burnished sheath knife, glinting in the low firelight. By his knees lay a toppled ale stein, a brown stain spreading from its broken lip.

Seconds after they had begun to watch, the last guard’s head slumped. His struggles died away in a faint rattle.

Johnny and Gordon looked at each other. As one, they rushed to test the door, but the lock was firmly in place. Johnny stretched his arm through a gap in the planks, trying to grab any part of the guard’s uniform. The keys … “Damn! He’s just too far!”

Gordon began prying at the boards. The shack certainly was flimsy enough to take apart by hand. But when he pulled, the rusty nails creaked and sent the hair rising up the back of his neck.

“What do we do?” Johnny asked. “If we yank hard, all at once, we might be able to crash out real fast, and dash down the trail to the canoes.…”

“Shhh!” Gordon motioned for silence. Out there in the darkness he had seen a figure move.

Tentatively, nervously, a small, shabby shape scuttled toward the moonlit clearing just outside the shack, where the fallen guards lay.

“It’s her!” Johnny whispered. Gordon also recognized the dark-haired drudge, the one who had written the pathetic little addendum to Dena’s letter. He watched as she overcame her terror and conditioning to approach each of the guards in turn, checking for breath and life.

Her whole body shook and low moans escaped her as she sought the ring of keys under the second man’s belt. To get at them she had to push her fingers through his line of
gruesome trophies, but she closed her eyes and brought them forth, clinking softly.

Each second was an agony as she fumbled with the lock. Their releaser ducked back out of the way as the two men pushed outside and ran to each of the guards, stripping them of knives, ammo belts, rifles. They dragged the bodies back into the shed and closed and locked the door.

“What is your name?” Gordon asked the crouched woman, squatting before her. Her eyes were closed as she answered. “H-Heather.”

“Heather. Why did you help us?”

Her eyes opened. They were a startling green. “Your … your woman wrote …”

She made a visible effort to gather herself. “I never kenned what th’ old women said about th’ old days.… But then some of th’ new prisoners talked about things up north … and there you was … Y-you won’t beat me too hard for readin’ yer letter, will you?”

She cringed as Gordon put his hand out to touch the side of her face, so he withdrew it. Tenderness was too alien to her. All sorts of reassurances came to mind, but he kept to the simplest—one she would understand. “I won’t beat you at all,” he told her. “Not ever.”

Johnny appeared beside him. “Only one guard down by the canoes, Gordon. I think I see a way we can get up within range. He may be a Rogue, but he won’t be expecting anything. We can take him.”

Gordon nodded. “We’ll have to bring her with us,” he said.

Johnny looked torn between compassion and practicality. He clearly considered his first duty to get Gordon away from this place. “But …”

“They’ll know who poisoned the guards. She’s crucified if she stays.”

Johnny blinked, then nodded, apparently glad to have the dilemma resolved so straightforwardly. “Okay. Let’s go, though!”

They started to rise, but Heather took Gordon’s sleeve.
“I have a friend,” she said, and turned to wave into the darkness.

From the shadow of the trees there stepped a slender figure in pants and shirt several sizes too large, bunched up and cinched tight by a large belt. In spite of that, the second woman’s figure was unmistakable. Charles Bezoar’s mistress had her blond hair tied back and she carried a small package. If anything, she seemed more nervous than Heather.

After all, Gordon thought, she had more to lose in any escape attempt. It was a sign of her desperation that she was willing to throw herself in with two motley strangers from a nearly mythical north.

“Her name is Marcie,” the older woman told him. “We wasn’t sure you’d want to take us, so she brought some presents for you.”

With trembling hands, Marcie untied a black oilskin. “H-here’s your m-mail,” she said. The girl held the papers out delicately, as if afraid of defiling them with her touch.

Gordon nearly laughed out loud when he saw the sheaf of almost valueless letters. He stopped short, though, when he saw what else she held: a small, ragged, black-bound volume. Gordon could only blink then, thinking of the risks she must have taken to get it.

“All right,” he said, taking the packet and tying it up again. “Follow us, and keep quiet! When I wave like this, stay low and wait for us.”

Both women nodded solemnly. Gordon turned, intending to take point, but Johnny had already ducked ahead, leading the way down the trail to the river.

Don’t argue this time. He’s right, damn it
.

Freedom was wonderful beyond relief. But with it came that bitch, Duty.

Hating the fact that he was “important” once again, he crouched and followed Johnny, leading the women toward the canoes.

There was no choice of which way to go. Spring’s thaw had begun, and the Rogue was already a rushing torrent. The only thing to do was head downstream and pray.

Johnny still exulted over his successful kill. The sentry hadn’t turned until he was within two steps, and had gone down nearly silently as Johnny tackled him, ending his struggles with three quick knife thrusts. The young man from Cottage Grove was full of his own prowess as they loaded the women into the boat and set off, letting the current pull them into midstream.

Gordon hadn’t the heart to tell his young friend. But he had seen the guard’s face before they tumbled him into the river. Poor Roger Septien had looked surprised—
hurt
—hardly the image of a Holnist superman.

Gordon remembered his own first time, nearly two decades ago, firing at looters and arsonists while there still remained a chain of command, before the militia units dissolved into the riots they had been sent to put down. He did not recall being proud, then. He had cried at night, mourning the men he killed.

Still, these were different times, and a dead Holnist was a good thing, no matter how you cut it.

They had left a beach littered with crippled canoes. Every moment of delay had been an agony, but they had to make sure they weren’t followed too easily. Anyway, the chore gave the women something to do and they went at it
with gusto. Afterward, both Marcie and Heather seemed a bit less cowed and skittish.

The women huddled down in the center of the canoe as Gordon and Johnny hefted paddles and struggled with the unfamiliar craft. The moon kept ducking in and out behind clouds as they dipped and pulled, trying to learn the proper rhythm as they went.

They had not gone far before reaching the first set of riffles. In moments the time for practice was over as they went crashing through foamy rapids, barely skimming past glistening, rocky crags, often seen only at the last moment.

The river was fierce, driven by snow melt. Her roar filled the air, and spray diffracted the intermittent moonlight. It was impossible to fight her, only to cajole, persuade, divert, and guide their frail vessel through hazards barely seen.

At the first calm stretch, Gordon guided them into an eddy. He and Johnny rested over their oars, looked at each other, and at the same moment burst out laughing. Marcie and Heather stared at the two men—giggling breathlessly from adrenaline and the roar of freedom in their blood and ears. Johnny whooped and slapped the water with his paddle.

“Come on, Gordon. That was fun! Let’s get on with it.”

Gordon caught his breath and wiped river spume out of his eyes. “Okay,” he said, shaking his head. “But carefully, okay?”

They stroked together and banked steeply as the current caught them again.

“Oh, shit,” Johnny cursed. “I thought the
last
one …”

His words were drowned out, but Gordon finished the thought.

And I thought the last one was bad!

Gaps between the rocks were narrow, deadly shoots. Their canoe scraped horribly through the first, then shot out, canting precipitously. “Lean hard!” Gordon shouted. He wasn’t laughing now, but fighting to survive.

We should have walked … we should have walked … we should have walked.…

The inevitable happened sooner, though, than even he expected … less than three miles downstream. A sunken tree—a hidden snag just beyond the hard rock face of a turn in the canyon wall—a streak of rolling water cloaked in darkness until it was too late for him to do more than curse and dig in his paddle to try to turn.

An aluminum canoe might have survived the collision, but there were none left after years of war. The homemade wood-and-bark model tore with an agonized shriek, harmonized by the women’s screams as they all spilled into the icy flood.

The sudden chill was stunning. Gordon gulped air and grabbed at the capsized canoe with one arm. His other hand darted out and seized a grip on Heather’s dark hair, barely in time to keep her from being swept away. He struggled to avoid her desperate clutching and to keep her head above water … all the while fighting for his own breath in the choppy foam.

At last he felt sand beneath his feet. It took every last effort to fight the river’s pull and the sucking mud until he was able at last to haul his gasping burden out and collapse onto the mat of rotting vegetation by the steep shore.

Heather coughed and sobbed next to him. He heard Johnny and Marcie spluttering not far away, and knew that they had made it, too. There wasn’t a flicker of energy to spare for celebration, though. He lay breathing hard, unable even to move for what felt like hours.

Johnny spoke at last. “We didn’t really have any gear to lose. I guess my ammo’s wet, though. Your rifle gone, Gordon?”

“Yeah.” He sat up groaning, touching a thin gash where the breaking canoe had stroked his forehead.

There did not seem to have been any serious injuries, though the coughing was now starting to shift over to general shivers. Marcie’s borrowed clothes stuck to the blond concubine in ways that Gordon might have found interesting had he not been so miserable.

“W-what do we do now?” she asked.

Gordon shrugged. “For starters we go back in and get rid of the wreck.”

They stared at him. He explained. “If they don’t find it, they’ll probably assume we went a whole lot farther than this, tonight. That could turn out to be our only advantage.

“Then, when that’s done, we head overland.”

“I’ve never been to California,” Johnny suggested, and Gordon had to smile. Since they had discovered that the Holnists had another enemy, the boy had spoken of little else.