David Brin - The Postman

The walls of the great lodge — the seat of his domain-featured finely woven hangings and the proudly displayed artwork of children. Gordon had expected to see weapons and trophies of battle, but there were none in sight anywhere. Indeed, once one passed within the high stockade and abatis, there were hardly any reminders of the long war at all.

That first day, Powhatan would not speak of business. He spent all of it showing his guests around and supervising preparations for a potlatch in their honor. Then, late in the afternoon, when they had been shown their rooms in order to rest, their host vanished.

“I thought I saw him head west,” Philip Bokuto answered, when Gordon asked. “Toward that bluff over there.”

Gordon thanked him and headed that way down a gravel-lined path through the trees. For hours Powhatan had skillfully avoided any serious discussion at all, always diverting them with something new to see, or with his apparently infinite store of country lore.

Tonight could be more of the same, with so many people coming to meet them. There might be no opportunity to get to business at all.

Of course he knew he shouldn’t be so impatient. But Gordon did not want to meet any more people. He wanted to talk to George Powhatan alone.

He found the tall man seated, facing the edge of a steep dropoff. Far below, waters roared with the meeting of the branches of the Coquille. To the west, the mountains of the Coast Range shimmered in purple haze that was rapidly darkening into an orange and ocher sunset. The ever-present clouds burned with a hundred autumnal shades.

George Powhatan sat zazen on a simple reed mat, his upturned hands resting on his knees. His expression was one Gordon had seen sometimes, before the war — one he had called, for want of another name, “The Smile of Buddha.”

Well, I’ll be… he thought. The last of the neohippies. Who would have believed it?

The mountain man’s sleeveless tunic showed a faded, blue tattoo on his massive shoulder — a powerful fist with one finger gently extended, upon which was delicately perched a dove. Below could clearly be read a single word, AIRBORNE.

The juxtaposition didn’t really surprise Gordon. Nor did the peaceful expression on Powhatan’s face. Somehow they seemed fitting.

He knew that courtesy didn’t require that he leave — only that he not interfere with the other man’s sitting. He quietly cleared a space a few feet to Powhatan’s right, and lowered himself to the ground facing the same direction. Gordon did not even try to get into a lotus. He hadn’t practiced the skill since he was seventeen. But he did sit, back straight, and tried to clear his mind as the colors shimmered and changed out in the direction of the sea.

At first all he could think of was how stiff he felt. How sore from riding and sleeping on hard, cold ground. Puffs of wind chilled him as the sun’s warmth hid behind the mountains. His thoughts were a churned antheap of sounds, concerns, memories.

But soon, without willing it at all, his eyelids began to grow heavy. They settled down, microscopically, and then stopped about halfway, unable to rise or fall any farther.

If he hadn’t known what was happening, he surely would have panicked. But it was only a mild meditation trance; he recognized the feelings. What the hell, he thought, and let it grow.

Was he doing this out of a sense of competition with Powhatan? Or to show the man that he wasn’t the only child of the renaissance who still remembered?

Or was it simply because he was tired, and the sunset was so beautiful?

Gordon felt a hollow sensation within him — as if a pocket of each lung were closed, and had been for a very long time. He tried to inhale hard and deep, but his pattern of breathing did not alter in the slightest — as if his body knew a wisdom that he did not. The calm that crossed his face with the numbing breeze seemed to trickle downward, touching his throat like a woman’s fingers, running across his tight shoulders and stroking his muscles until they relaxed of their own accord.

The colors… he thought, seeing only the sky. His heart rocked his body gently.

Had it been a lifetime since he last sat like this and let go? Or was it just that there was so much to let go of?

They are …

In an easing that could never have been forced, the locked sensation in his lungs seemed to let go, and he breathed. Stale air escaped, to be swept away by the western wind. His next breath tasted so sweet that it came back out as a sigh.

“The colors…”

There was motion to his left, a stirring. A quiet voice spoke. “I used to wonder if these sunsets were God’s last gift… something to match the rainbow he gave Noah, only this time it was his way of saying… ‘So long’… to us all.”

He did not answer Powhatan. There was no need.

“But after many years watching them, I guess the atmosphere is slowly cleansing itself. They aren’t quite what they were, just after the war.”

Gordon nodded. Why did people on the coast always assume they had a monopoly on sunsets? He remembered how it had been on the prairie — once the Three-Year Winter had passed and the skies were clear enough to see the sun at all. It had seemed as if Heaven had spilled its palette in a garish splash of hues, glorious, if deadly in their beauty.

Without turning to look, Gordon knew that Powhatan had not moved. The man sat in the same position, smiling softly.

“Once,” the gray-haired squire said, “perhaps ten years ago, I was sitting here, just as I am now, recovering from a recent wound and contemplating the sunset, when I caught sight of something, or somebody, moving by the river, down below. At first, I thought they were men. I pulled out of my meditation quickly and headed down for a closer look. And yet something told me that it was not the enemy, even from this range.

“I approached as quietly as I could, until I had come within a few hundred meters, and I focused the little monocular I used to keep in my pouch.

“They weren’t human beings at all. Imagine my surprise when I saw them strolling by the river bank, hand in hand, him helping her over stony banks, she murmuring softly as she carried something wrapped in a bundle.

“A pair of chimpanzees, for Heaven’s sake. Or maybe one was a chimp and the other a smaller ape or even a monkey. They vanished into the rain forest before I could be sure.”

For the first time in ten minutes, Gordon blinked. The image was so stark in his imagination, as if he were looking over Powhatan’s shoulder into the man’s memories from that long ago day. Why is he telling me this?

Powhatan continued, “They must have been set free from the Portland Zoo, along with those leopards running wild in the Cascades, now. That was the simplest explanation… that they had worked their way south for years, foraging and keeping out of sight, helping each other as they headed for what they must have hoped would be warmer territory.

“I realized that they were moving down the south branch of the Coquille, right into Holnist territory.

“What could I do? I thought about following. Trying to catch them, or at least divert them. But it was doubtful I’d be able to do anything more than frighten them. And anyway, if they had come so far, what need had they of me to warn them of the dangers of being around man?

“They had been caged, now they were free. Oh, I wasn’t foolish enough to conclude they were happier, but at least they weren’t subject to the will of others anymore.”

Powhatan’s voice was subdued. “That can be a precious thing, I know.”

There was another pause. “I let them go,” he said, finishing his story. “Often, as I sit here watching these humbling sunsets, I wonder what ever became of them.”