Neal Stephenson - Reamde

Not long after this little orientation session came to an end, the bus pulled in, and Jake climbed off in the middle of a long stream of senior citizens, ethnic minorities, people too young to drive, and hard-luck cases. Feeling very much the odd woman out despite the Forthrast brothers’ efforts to make her feel welcome, Olivia strolled down the street with them to a bookstore that Jake wanted to visit. Given the fact that Jake believed a lot of crazy stuff, Olivia found it intriguing that the top item on his list was to visit a bookstore. If nothing else, it served as an icebreaker. She had no idea how such a man might react to her as a nonwhite female, but he was quite cordial, even easy to talk to, and went out of his way to describe himself as a “wingnut” and a “wack job,” apparently thinking that this would help put Olivia—or “Laura,” as she was still calling herself—at ease. It was clear that he had been brought thoroughly up to speed on the latest news regarding Zula, and how “Laura” fit into the picture. He had been thinking about it during the bus ride and come up with any number of questions and theories, most of which seemed like the products of an acute and active mind. He was, Olivia realized, at least as intelligent as Richard, and possibly more so.

“Why do you live out there, the way you do?” she finally asked him.

By this point she was sitting across the table from him in the bookstore’s coffee shop. Jake had immediately found the book he wanted: a manual on organic farming. Richard and John had wandered off into other parts of the bookstore, aimlessly browsing, and there was no telling when they’d be back. She had bought Jake a cup of coffee, and he had returned to making self-deprecating jests about his lifestyle, which Olivia was now starting to find a little boring—dancing around the unmentionable. Better to just ask him flat out. As a stranger in a strange land, she reckoned she could get away with it.

“I guess I started with Emerson’s essay ‘On Self-Reliance’ and just followed the trail from there,” he said. “‘Behold the boasted world has come to nothing… Let me begin anew. Let me teach the finite to know its master. ‘I’d already been having thoughts along those lines when Patricia died…Dodge might have told you about that?”

She shook her head. “But I did see something about it…”

“In his Wikipedia entry, sure. Anyway, at the time I had nothing else going for me, and so I decided to spend a summer trying to build a life around that.”

“Emersonian self-reliance, you mean.”

“Yeah. The summer turned into a year, and during that year I met Elizabeth, and after that, well, the die was pretty much cast. Dodge had this property in northern Idaho, which he had acquired years before, during a phase of his life that I believe is also covered pretty well in the Wikipedia article.”

Olivia smiled at the polite evasion, and Jake seemed to draw confidence from her reaction. Olivia said, “As I understand it, this was the southern terminus of his… route. Or whatever you want to call it. Just a few miles south of the Canadian border. But within reach of the U.S. highway network.”

“Exactly. But it also just happens to be one of the most beautiful places you can imagine: the head of a little valley, just where the land gets flat enough to build on and cultivate, but only a few minutes’ walk from mountains full of wildlife and waterfalls, huckleberries and wildflowers.”

“You make it sound marvelous.”

“When I got off the bus in Bourne’s Ford—which is the closest town—an old man told me ‘Welcome to God’s country.’ I thought it was kind of hokey, but once I had found my way up the valley to Dodge’s property, well, then I understood. At first Elizabeth and I were just living in a backpacking tent. I wrote to Dodge and asked him if he wouldn’t mind my trying to improve the place a little, and so we began to build, and things just happened.”

“But where does the whole Chris­tian right-wing thing enter into it? What’s that about?”

Jake’s blissful expression became somewhat guarded. “When we had children, religion came back into our lives, as it does for many people, and Elizabeth has been my pathfinder as far as that is concerned. For me it’s about being part of a community that is not based just on geographical proximity or money, but on spiritual values. There are no cathedrals in the mountains. You create your own church just as you hunt or grow your own food, split your own firewood. And just like those things, it might seem simple and rude to people who live in places with cathedrals and schools of theology.”

“What about the politics?”

He considered it for a moment. The look on his face was a bit hopeless, as if he despaired of ever explaining it to a cosmopolitan outsider like Olivia. “Again,” he quoted, “‘behold the boasted world has come to nothing… let me begin anew.’ What you’re seeing isn’t politics. It’s the absence of politics. It’s us trying to live in a way where we never have to put up with politics and politicians again. That means that when the politicians come after us, try to interfere with our lives, we have to defend ourselves, with passive and nonviolent measures when we can, but, failing that…”

“With guns?”

“We take full advantage of our 2A rights.”

“2A?”

“Second Amendment.”

“Are you carrying a gun now?”

“Of course I am. And I’ll bet there’s ten other people within a hundred feet of us who are doing the same. But you’d never be able to guess who by looking around.” For Olivia had instinctively begun looking around. She did not see any obvious pistol-packers. But she did catch sight of Richard and John, who had fallen into conversation near the store’s exit and were looking at them significantly.

“Looks like we are leaving,” Olivia said, beginning to get up.

“Come and visit us,” Jake blurted out.

“I beg your pardon?”

“I know it’s out of the way. You may never come within five hundred miles of Prohibition Crick, unless you’re flying over it. But if you do, I invite you to come up into our little valley and stay with us. Sincerely. You’ll see. It won’t be weird. It won’t be uncomfortable. No one will be rude to you for being foreign, or not looking like us. You’ll enjoy it. We won’t try to convert you.”

“That is very kind of you,” she said, “and it actually sounds like something I might rather enjoy.”

“Good.”

“Now I just need an excuse to visit—what? Spokane?”

“Or Elphinstone. Or Richard’s Schloss. There’s lots of nice places within a day’s drive.”

OLIVIA WAS TOUCHED by Richard’s including her in the reunion of the three brothers, until she reflected that Richard was anything but a sentimental fool and that he must have done it for tactical reasons. After that, she only pretended to be touched. She told the Forthrasts she could see plainly enough that they had things to discuss. And Olivia had an investigation to pursue. So she parted ways with them at the bookstore and went back to the FBI offices to resume the NAG investigation.

She was still at work late that night, waiting for things to open up in London so that she could confer with some of her colleagues there and suggest some leads for them to pursue while she slept. Her mobile rang and she saw Richard’s name on its screen. “Just calling to check in,” Richard explained. An awkward pause followed as she waited for him to go on. But then she understood that he was really just trying to find out whether she had unearthed any leads, found any scrap of hope, during the hours since he’d last seen her. She could only mumble corporate-sounding buzzwords: drilling down, expanding the envelope, going into the corners of the search space. If those phrases sounded as bad to Richard as they did to her, it was a wonder he didn’t just borrow his brother’s sidearm and put himself out of his misery.