Starvation Ridge
Book III
Bright in the Skies
And now men see not the light which is
bright in the skies; but the wind passeth, and cleanseth them. Job 37:21
MARY
SAVAGE, Ph.D., sighed. On the one hand, the strange old underground
DARPA hideout held distinct advantages for her. It was relatively
cool in summer and warm in winter, had flat, smooth floors, and a
working elevator. She, a chair-bound invalid with RA, heart
issues and, no doubt, lupus, could particularly appreciate the
surroundings. Anywhere but the Creek, she'd be long dead. At
the Creek, she'd still be dead after that hellacious summer,
had there been no such retreat. On the other hand, the facility had
not been built with her in mind. The doors were all solid-core steel,
and they all swung shut with an authoritative click. Anytime she
wanted to go anywhere alone meant a good deal of rolling, thumping,
grunting and stick-wedging. If the chair had been an electric, she
might have found a less strenuous protocol for the doors. The weight
of the batteries would have counted for much. Time was, she'd have
ordered up a battery-powered chair and Deela and Selk and Ro-eena
would have produced it for her. Somehow. They'd all be too busy now
at other tasks, most of which she herself had set them.
Time for a drink. That last door had about done her in.
She paused at the refectory door, which, some luck at last, was
propped open into the hallway. It was downright odd to see no lights
switched on in here; weeks and weeks of full occupancy by most of the
Creekers had kept this room constantly buzzing. Now everyone was
trying to scatter back to the farms – or those farms whose
buildings remained, after that all-consuming wildfire. Well,
electricity – the good old-fashioned one-ten-volts-on-demand kind
with which she had grown up – was one of Ridge's charms. She
reached up and flipped the switch.
Three
tables away, someone had been sitting in the dark, head and arm on
the table. Unwinding stiffly, the black-haired figure sat up and
blinked. It was Karen, long and lean except in the middle – she was
great with child, a rarity in itself – and looking leaner because
of the shortened and seamed sleeve of her tunic, where her left arm
should have been. As always, Mary's heart – and this too, with
Mary's avowed objectivism, was a rarity – went out to her.
"Whoa, kiddo. Flashin' light in your eyes. Sorry 'bout that.
Catchin' forty?"
"Ma'am? Umm, yes,
ma'am. Couldn't sleep lying down." Karen stretched, a cat-like
gesture, her hand overhead. "What's shift?"
"It's mid-afternoon outside, if you're asking the time. I
thought I would come in and snoop around, see about happy hour. Make
one of Wilson's nasty cocktails if nothing else."
"Oh. Well, then, we have a surprise for you. Guchi showed it to
me. Hang on."
The ungainly child
– woman, of course, but she's more than half still a child
to me – lumbered out to the kitchen and returned with a
pint-sized Mason jar, lidded and ringed.
"Here you go, ma'am."
"Oh,
glory. Is that what I think it is?"
"Yes'm, it's your last beer. If Guchi hadn't hid it, Juanita
would have poured it into the soup." Karen handed the precious
jar to her teacher.
"And she would have
been right. I say that myself, even though all my life I've been all
about 'I, me, and mine.'" Mary untwisted the ring and, finding
the lid unsealed, flipped it onto the table.
"That sounds like a quote."
"Good
ear. Ayn Rand. She was where I got my ideas, when I was all of your
age, about reason and enlightened self-interest, and so on." She
sipped. "Ahh. Not much fizz, but ah anyways."
"I think I've read about her somewhere. And so you became a
physicist?"
"Lots of reasons why
people did that. But, sure, I sure didn't see any point going into
Comp Lit or MFA. Whole different crowd." Mary could see that the
terms confused Karen. "Computers. I should've done
computers. Rand didn't live long enough – if she'd had, say,
'structured query language' to play with when she was young, I dare
say she'd have disappeared into Systems at some university, like any
good Aspie, and never gone into fiction." Much of this was going
over, or maybe under, Karen's head, she could tell, but Mary plowed
on. "I like hands-on. Shapes, textures, properties. So do
you."
"I do, ma'am."
"And the Creekers found me sitting by the roadside out at Bridge
– there was a sign there, then: 'Pepsi-Cola; Brownsville Rockhound
Emporium; seven miles' – I bet I'd stared at that sign for three
hours. And they said – the Murchisons and Elsa – 'y'wanna come
live with a buncha folks?' – and they didn't ask me what I
could do, just did I wanna move in? Well, I thought it
beat sitting out there with more and more flies on me, and the
buzzards watching." She took a pull at the home brew. "Oh,
yeah, that was that last batch. Triple hopped, with
the last of the hops, fresh. Have a sip? It won't hurt th' kid."
"No, ma'am, you just enjoy it, ma'am."
"Ma'am, ma'am, ma'am. All right, I will." She
fingered the raised designs on the glass. On one side, the word
"Ball" in stylized script; on the other, what was clearly
supposed to be the Liberty Bell. Sigh. "Bottoms up. So they took
me in, which I found mortifying on the one hand, and a relief on the
other, and after while I made myself useful, just like almost
everyone else around here. And on the one hand I justified myself to
myself with she that shall not work, shall not eat –"
"Like me."
"– We're alike in
a lot of ways kiddo – but on the other hand knowing that not
everybody here could work, like Mr. Angle or Mrs.
Lazar, much, and we were, y'know taking care of
them, like they had taken care of me in th' beginning. So maybe I had
a commie streak after all."
Karen put on
her thoughtful look, which to Mary always seemed as if she were
trying to stare through the wall – or people. "I think, if a
group is together, there's strength in sharing. Because each of us
takes turns being strong, the able one. You can't always know if
someone will go weak at one time and then be strong again just when
you need them. So – so, a, a mechanism for that is needed, and it's
why we have the councils and the general meetings. It evens out the
strengths for everyone."
"Yes, the
empathy argument. Hence government, bureaucracy and the whole nine
yards. Even taxation, Rand help me."
"Well, stockpiling the food here has pulled us
through – so far." Karen pointed to Mary's half-finished
jar.
"Hmph. And when this is done, 'there's an
end on't.'" Mary swirled the jar. "So, kid – what can you
tell me about th' second law?"
"Entropy,
ma'am? It always increases."
"Or
remains constant. As long as a little more effort went into this
place than we ate up, we were kind of steady state. Productivity
might go up or down, but we sometimes had surpluses, and we stored
'em here at Ridge. But if your productivity is less than, or even
equal to, your consumption of resources, your troubles will multiply.
If entropy always increased, none of us would be here. But life
organizes itself in abundance, in order to stay ahead of the
game. Case in point, babies."
Karen
patted her tummy unconsciously. "Yes, ma'am."
Mary finished the beer and set down the jar. "Thing is, more
babies, somewhere down the road, more consumption, which is great in
the presence of more productivity, up to a point. This
jar will never know another beer, Mrs. Allyn. There are too many
random noises in this location, and insufficient signal to overcome
them. All you young people, take notice. We old-timers
are stuck here. Where the signal goes weak, staying one
step ahead of entropy requires mobility. That would
be you."
Karen's eyes
widened. For a moment, she looked at the empty jar, with its
rapidly-drying floor of barley sediments. Then she met Mary's
piercing gaze. "Yes, ma'am."
A soft
knock at the door brought both their heads round. It was Ro-eena.
"Beg pardon, Dr. Mary, Karen."
"Yes?" asked Mary, swinging her chair round.
"Mr. Avery's compliments, and he says, condition absolutely
red."
"Invasion?" asked Karen,
half-rising.
"We think so," Ro-eena
answered. "Karen's presence is requested upstairs, and we may be
bringing everybody right back to Ridge today or tomorrow."
:::
Emilio
Molinero, in spite of his hurry, kept to what little shade he could
find. It would not do to get light-headed just now; though the slant
of the afternoon sun bore less heat than it had done at the height of
this terrible summer, it still commanded respect. Somewhere ahead of
him were the Bledsoes: in his eyes a rabble of disaffected
paranoiacs, but Creekers all the same. They had produced Huskey.
Though very young, Huskey had shown potential and then some; as a
leader he might have pulled all the Creek together.
Also somewhere ahead of him, and hopefully a long way away through
the frazzled cottonwoods, there was an army. Ellen Murchison and her
crew, the only ones so far that had seen it in the blue distance,
could not tell Emilio much about it; the forest, half-dead from
drought though it might be, intervened. But there were, apparently
in working order, a very large bulldozer and trucks
of military design, and there was a tank. And they were
toiling toward Starvation Ridge behind the dozer. It could, he
supposed, be a good thing; strangers had come to the Creek in large
numbers quite recently and those had not come to destroy, but to
cooperate.
Yet in this instance Ellen had not
held out such a hope, nor had her dour son Avery. "There is very
little alive in the Great Valley, so far as we have seen," Avery
had said, drumming his fingers on the arms of his wheelchair. "Except
for bugs, sucker fish, possums, coons, coyotes, owls, osprey, and
about ten million swamp trees. The Pilgrims have dried up. If
civilization was up and running somewhere, the messengers they would
send out would travel by twos or threes, maybe ten at the most; they
could live on the occasional herd of deer, or maybe learn to use
camas or wapato. But this looks like fifty or more, and Ellen does
not think there are women or children traveling with them. She feels
it must be a war party, carrying its own provisions, and from what
she's telling me, I agree. Also, they are heading straight for
Ridge."
Wilson, whose still-bandaged
chest showed beneath his tunic, had nodded. "Karen has been of
the opinion, all along, that the man who led the bandits last year
would return and have another go at us. It does look as if that might
be the case."
And so here I am,
detailed to prevent our runaways from meeting whatever's out there. A
fool's errand, to be sure.
Emilio came to
the Bridge, which tradition regarded as the gate of Starvation Creek.
At right angles to the valley entrance, it marked what had once been
an intersection. A country road had crossed the Creek here and gone
north, around the base of Ball Butte; another had come from the Great
Valley and, crossing the Bridge road just to its north, followed the
Creek eastward up into the foothills. It had served, at one time,
perhaps sixty households of part-time farmers, retirees, and
commuters. What remained was the cart-track, with its mid-stripe of
dried grasses, behind Emilio; the other three roads had very nearly
vanished into a young and nondescript forest of, mostly, ash and
willow. The few openings were choked with teasel and gorse. Even the
Bridge, which had been maintained for many years by the Creekers,
looked disheveled in its rust and its skirt of weeds – what a
difference a distracted year makes!
He
shifted the strange little rifle to his left hand, gripping it by the
pump-action forearm. He was himself used to bow and crossbow, but
Karen had made a strong case for the longer range of the bullets she
and Deela had so painstakingly made. The weapon could speak with
authority some twenty times with the tiny bullets in his possession.
Ten of them rested, malign in their potential indifference, in the
hollow tube beneath the barrel.
Which way to go? Stooping, with his right hand he tested the edge of
a slight depression in the dust. Recent passage – but by whom? And
were they going north or south?
Emilio became wary.
Though he was not conscious of having heard a sound, he looked,
without standing up, over his shoulder, and could see that someone
had trailed out from the valley behind him. With relief, he
recognized Josep, the young leader of the Roundhousers – now Josep
of the Creek, of one of the farms. The wild blond hair was partially
covered by a wide-brimmed conical straw hat like Emilio's. Josep
carried a rifle on a sling, but also a strung bow on his other
shoulder, and a water bottle swung from his hand. With the other he
waved cheerily to his friend.
"Well met,
Mr. Emilio, and has our quarry absconded?"
"I am having, shall we say, a slow time of it; the ground is so
dry and in so many places hard. Have you been sent to assist in the
search?"
"I am an afterthought of
your many-headed leadership, suggested by myself. We all know you
like to work alone, but it's prudent to have someone watch the trees
while your own eyes scan the earth. Besides, I'm tired of the
hoe."
"Ah. Well, I am not
displeased. But if memory serves me, you are the better tracker of us
two. Let us trade roles for a time. Here are tracks, I think; but to
me they lead nowhere."
Josep leaned over
to inspect Emilio's findings, while Emilio, with his rifle at the
ready, watched the surroundings. Josep walked first to the left, then
to the right, nodding to himself. He snapped off a tall grass stem
and chewed the end of it thoughtfully. "They have parleyed among
themselves where to go from here. They have with them one hand cart?
Yes – drawn first south, then north, and then the pace opens up. It
is confusing because your people walk heel to toe, usually, and here
they are urging themselves forward, and so the toes make the deeper
impression. When this trail strikes the brush, it should be a little
more obvious. How many?"
"Eight."
"So few? How have you kept these farms going?
But there were ten, not so long ago. And there was even a child at
one time."
"Attrition among us, as
with you. In my lifetime there were at one time more than three
hundred Creekers."
"Yes. So I think
we go this way; and from the description given by Mrs. Murchison on
the mountain above us, we may catch them up in two hands' time, maybe
more."
:::
Two
of Lacey's men would be watching for a signal from him. He studied
the few birds in the trees nearby, and concluded from them that there
was little danger anyone would overhear a conference, so he beckoned.
Both, carrying juniper-wood in one hand, with a ready arrow in the
other, caught up to him noiselessly. Each wore trousers, a jerkin and
moccasins, made from deerskin and decorated with rows of colorful
porcupine quills. They wore their hair braided and tied off, with
long leather thongs, and, as he had done, they had painted their
sunburned cheeks and foreheads with fat into which green leaves had
been pounded, to please Spirit and make themselves at peace with
Death. Were it not for their luxurious beards, an observer in this
place some two centuries gone might have taken them for Kalapuya
warriors.
Lacey turned his palm down, and the
three squatted among the bracken in the shade of a thirsty ash tree.
"There are eight. I feel certain they are from the valley that
will be contested; they do not look like those that have been on
Pilgrimage for months. Their passage is noisy and they are not
watching well. Soon they will make camp and sleep, perhaps with one
guard. Bring two more of our men; that should be enough. We will
collect them and make them serve the People."
"Sir–" said one, touching his forehead with an index
finger. "–the Machine-man Mullins said to bring anyone we find
to him?"
"Now that we are away from
the column, I have freedom to speak," replied Lacey. "The
Machines and their army are weaker than we were told, and to feed
them requires the good will of Magee, which surely they no longer
have. We will see this through a little longer; may be this war will
be simple. May be not. We must make preparations to abandon their
campaign, should we find it necessary to do so. We conduct the
present operation on our own, and perhaps provide ourselves with new
Bringers of Food."
"Sir, this is
wise. I shall go and get the others."
"Good; two of us will do to see these travelers to their beds.
Bring our men and follow us from here; we will break twigs at head
height every thirty paces to show our line of march."
"In Spirit I go."
"In Spirit
we await you."
:::
"I
am depressed as all get-out," said Magee, stirring
his coffee with a silver spoon.
"I am
sorry, to hear that, my lord," replied The Doctor demurely. She
reached for the creamer.
Magee peered at her
over his glasses. Still nice hair, after all these years.
Wonder what she dyes it with. "Nothing ever gets under
your skin, does it?"
"'There are
many sharks in the water,' my lord, as one of my professors once told
me, 'and if you choose one to worry over, another will bite
you.'"
"Ahh, that's th' stuff. Well,
even so, everthin's bitin' me today. First, I got
th' inventory from the orchards-keeper; th' weather this summer has
ruint th' pears. With the diesel I lent 'em, they couldn't pump
enough river to save more than about three hundred acres total. An'
th' rivers-keeper chimed in with record-heat this an'
record-low that; upshot is, not enough fish comin' up th'
Rogue or Umpqua, either one, to do any good. Meats-keeper, same
diffy, th' herds from th' wild animal park are goin' t' predators an'
bad pasture an' too many mouths t' feed. So everybody's come here an'
lookin' t' me t' feed 'em out 'a th' bunkers."
"I have looked into that, my lord; there are twenty-four pallets
of MRE remaining untouched, plus a partial. With so many coming here
to seek assistance, we are good for about two months." She
reached him a steaming bowl. "Have some 'beef teriyaki'; you've
barely touched it."
Magee waved it off.
"'Twenty-five-year shelf life' my ass. That batch
started goin' off two years ago early; don't care for it."
"You may watch me; my lord," smiled the Doctor, as she
spooned a portion onto her plate. "If I 'keel over,' you will
know it is truly past date."
"Ah-h-h."
Magee gestured impatiently. "Worst is, th' last
runner came in whining about somebody had raided that damned gun
store Wolf was so effin' proud of – assuming it was ever there. And
then – suddenly no runners! Why am I not surprised? I have cut off
all shipments to Mullins till I hear anythin' good from
up around there."
"That is the
right thing to do, my lord. For a start." The Doctor sipped at
her coffee and dipped her fork into the teriyaki.
"Whatcha thinkin', my dear? If I may ask."
"'There are many ways.' First, let us assume the weapons were
there. Mullins has them, and begins to appreciate his apparent
new-found power. He may think well of his chances of not only
capturing the power plant, but of deposing you."
"Thought of that; but wouldn't he keep sending runners to keep
me happy and stupid?"
"They might
think they could do such; but a fabricated story comes unraveled
under much scrutiny. My young men take care to make an extended visit
with each runner, and they are, in effect, cross-examined."
"As always, love your thoroughness, Doc."
"Second, let us assume the weapons are, as described, gone.
Mullins may have encountered those who took them and been defeated;
or is perhaps engaged with them."
"But,
my dear Doctor, wouldn't someone have been dispatched to ask for
reinforcements?"
"Of a certainty,
my lord, though perhaps they would have been intercepted. There is
almost no way to here from there without using the route we have
ourselves constructed."
"The
eternal problem of long and unguarded lines of communication."
Magee rubbed his stubbled chin thoughtfully.Huh. Out of razor
blades. Oh, well. "Yeah; but I dunno. Those nomads are
good at givin' anybody th' slip. Got a third?"
"But of course, my lord. The tribals may have chosen to turn
upon Mullins, either to obtain the weapons, or in the instance of the
empty gun store, to end the alliance due to a perception that the
campaign is lost."
"That's good
thinking, my dearie, but I deprecate it on two counts. They are
sincere in their dislike of machinery to th' point where th' thought
of handling an assault rifle makes 'em bug-eyed. Seen that myself.
And in t'other case, I think Lacey would see things through."
"He is indeed the 'noble savage,' my lord." The Doctor
reached for a paper napkin. "And now, fourth."
"Yes-s-s? Y'always save th' best for last." Magee narrowed
his eyes and tipped back his head, watching her through thick
lenses.
The Doctor smiled. "It is my
sense of drama. Your man, Wolf, who in my humble opinion
should have died or remained imprisoned here, rather than in your
most important vehicle, has escaped."
"I
think that most likely, Doctor, an' it has occurred
t'me. In any event I have relied upon Mullins at a distance, and your
shark has bit me."
The Doctor smiled her
widest smile. "There are possibilities. Wolf may once again
return here; if so, he is unlikely to use the road we have made. Or
he may choose to take an interest in Mullins' army; or he may seek
his stolen armory. Mullins and Lockerby will have thought about these
matters, meanwhile. They know you cannot be happy with them; and
without the provisions you have been sending, they have insufficient
scope to return and defend themselves by attacking you. They may
await you in a defensive posture, or they may run away, or they may
seek some form of leverage."
"Mmm-hmm.
If I was Mullins, I'd go after the power plant for myself, use it as
a bargaining chip with me. Yep. Th' war is still on, I bet. Only, for
th' moment, it ain't my war." Magee
reached for the teriyaki. "I see th' stuff hasn't killed ya, so
I'll just hold my nose an' have a go." He emptied the bowl onto
his plate. "Huh. 'Morsels, Regurgitated, Eviscerated.' S'why
this stuff stayed behind when the Yew Ess Army left.
And now ... what do ya recommend, O all-knowin' one?"
(To be continued)