David Brin - The Postman

“You fellows were doing your job well enough — shaping and making and building things. Males can be brilliant that way. But anyone with any sense can see that a quarter to half of you are also lunatics, rapists, and murderers. It was our job to keep an eye on you, to cultivate the best and cull the bastards.”

She nodded, completely satisfied with her logic. “We women are the ones who failed, who let it happen.”

Gordon muttered. “Dena, you are certifiably crazy, do you know that?” He already realized what she was driving at. This was just another attempt to twist him around to agreeing to another mad scheme to win the war. But this time it wasn’t going to work.

At the front of his mind he wished the would-be Amazon would simply go away and leave him alone. But her scent was inside his head. And even with his eyes closed he knew it when her homespun shirt fell soundlessly to the floor and she blew out the candle.

“Maybe I am crazy,” she said. “But I do know what I’m talking about.” The covers lifted and she slid alongside him. “I know it. It was our fault.”

The smooth stroke of her skin was like electricity along his flank. Gordon’s body seemed to rise even while, behind his eyelids, he tried to cling to his pride and the escape of sleep.

“But we women aren’t going to let it happen again,” Dena whispered. She nuzzled his neck and ran her fingertips along his shoulder and biceps. “We’ve learned about men — about the heroes and the bastards and how to tell the difference.

“And we’re learning about ourselves, too.”

Her skin was hot. Gordon’s arms wound around her and he pulled her down beside him.

“This time,” Dena sighed, “we’re going to make a difference.”

Gordon firmly covered her mouth with his, if for no other reason than to get her to stop talking at last.

“As young Mark here will demonstrate, even a child can use our new infrared night vision scope — combined with a laser spotter beam — to pick out a target in almost pitch darkness.”

The Willamette Valley Defense Council sat behind a long table, on the stage of the largest lecture hall on the old Oregon State University campus, watching as Peter Aage displayed the latest “secret weapon” to come out of the laboratories of the Servants of Cyclops.

Gordon could barely make out the lanky technician when the lights were turned off and the doors closed. But Aage’s voice was stentoriously clear. “Up at the back of the hall we have placed a mouse in a cage, to represent an enemy infiltrator. Mark now switches on the sniper scope.” There came a soft click in the darkness. “Now he scans for the heat radiation given off by the mouse…”

“I see it!” The child’s voice piped.

“Good boy. Now Mark swings the laser over to bear on the animal…”

“Got him!”

“…and once the beam is locked into place, our spotter changes laser frequencies so that a visible spot shows the rest of us — the mouse!”

Gordon peered at the dark area up at the back of the hall. Nothing had happened. There was still only a deep darkness.

Someone in the audience giggled.

“Maybe it got ate!” a voice cracked.

“Yeah. Hey, maybe you techs oughta tune that thing to look for a cat, instead!” Someone gave a rumbling “meow.”

Although the Council Chairman was banging his gavel, Gordon joined the wise guys down below in laughing out loud. He was tempted to interject a remark of his own, but everyone knew his voice. His role here was a somber one, and he would probably only hurt somebody’s feelings.

A bustle of activity over to the left told of a gathering of techs, whispering urgently together. Finally, someone called for the lights. The fluorescents flickered on and the members of the Defense Council blinked as their eyes readapted.

Mark Aage, the ten-year-old boy Gordon had rescued from survivalists in the ruins of Eugene some months ago, removed his night vision helmet and looked up. “I could see the mouse,” he insisted. “Real good. And I hit him with th’ laser beam. But it wouldn’t switch colors!”

Peter Aage looked embarrassed. The blond man wore the same black-trimmed white as the techs still huddled over the balky device. “It worked through fifty trials yesterday,” he explained. “Maybe the parametric converter got stuck. It does some times.

“Of course this is only a prototype, and nobody here in Oregon has tried to build anything like this in nearly twenty years. But we ought to have the bugs out of it before we go into production.”

Three different groups made up the Defense Council. The two men and a woman who were dressed like Peter, in Servants’ robes, nodded sympathetically. The rest of the councillors seemed less understanding.

Two men to Gordon’s right wore blue tunics and leather jackets similar to his own. On their sleeves were sewn patches depicting an eagle rising defiantly from a pyre, rimmed by the legend:

Restored U.S.

Postal service.

Gordon’s fellow “postmen” looked at each other, one rolling his eyes in disgust.

In the middle sat two women and three men, including the Council Chairman, representing the various regions in the alliance: counties once tied together by their reverence of Cyclops, more recently by a growing postal network, and now by their fear of a common foe. Their clothing was varied, but each wore an armband bearing a shiny emblem — a W and a V superimposed to stand for Willamette Valley. The chromed symbols were one item plentiful enough to be supplied the entire Army, salvaged from long-abandoned motorcars.

It was one of these civilian representatives who spoke first. “Just how many of these gadgets do you think you techs can put together by springtime?”

Peter thought. “Well, if we go all out, I guess we ought to have a dozen or so fixed up by the end of March.”

“And they’ll all need ‘lectricity, I suppose.”

“We’ll provide hand generators, of course. The entire kit ought to weigh no more than fifty pounds, all told.”

The farmers looked at each other. The woman representing the Cascade Indian communities seemed to speak for all of them.

“I’m sure these night scopes might do some good defending a few important sites against sneak attacks. But I want to know how they’ll help after the snow melts, when those Holnist dick cutters come down raiding and burning all our little hamlets and villages one by one. We can’t pull the whole population into Corvallis, you know. We’d starve in weeks.”

“Yeah,” another farmer added. “Where are all those super weapons you big domes were supposed to be comin’ up with? Have you guys switched Cyclops off, or what?”

It was the Servants’ turn to look at each other. Their leader, Dr. Taigher, started to protest.

“That’s not fair! We’ve hardly had any time. Cyclops was built for peaceful uses and has to reprogram himself to deal with things like war. Anyway, he can come up with great plans, but it’s fallible men who have to implement them!”

To Gordon it was a marvel. Here, in public, the man actually seemed hurt, defensive of his mechanical oracle… which the people of the valley still revered like great Oz. The representative of the northern townships shook his head, respectful but obstinate.

“Now, I’d be the last one to criticize Cyclops. I’m sure he’s crankin’ out the ideas as fast as he can. But I just can’t see where this night scope is any better than that balloon thing you keep talking about, or those gas bombs or those gimmicky little mines. There just aren’t enough of ‘em to do any damn good!

“And even if you made hundreds, thousands, they’d be great if we were fightin’ a real army, like in Vietnam or Kenya before the Doomtime. But they’re nearly useless against th’ damsurvivalists!”