David Brin - The Postman

When Powhatan spoke at last, Gordon had to bend to hear him over the rolling thunder.

“I’d hoped… I was so sure I could—”

“So sure you could say no to all the big lies!” Gordon laughed sarcastically, bitterly. “Sure you could say no to honor, and dignity^ and country?

“What made you change your mind, then?

“You laughed off Cyclops, and the promise of technology. Not God, nor pity, nor the ‘Restored United States’ would move you! So tell me, Powhatan, what power was finally great enough to make you follow Phil Bokuto down here and look for me?”

Sitting with clutched hands, the most powerful man alive — sole relic of an age of near-gods — seemed to draw into himself like a small boy, exhausted, ashamed.

“You’re right,” he groaned. “It never ends. I’ve done my share, a thousand times over I have!… All I wanted was to be left to grow old in peace. Is that too much to ask? Is it?”

His eyes were bleak, “But it never, ever ends.”

Powhatan looked up, then, meeting and holding Gordon’s stare for the first time.

“It was the women,” he said softly, answering Gordon’s question at last. “Ever since your visit and those damned letters, they kept talking, asking questions.

“Then the story of that madness up north arrived, even in my valley. I tried… tried to tell them it was just craziness, what your Amazons did, but they—”

Powhatan’s voice caught. He shook his head. “Bokuto stormed out, to come down here all alone… and when that happened they kept looking at me.… They kept after me and after me and after me…”

He moaned and covered his face with his hands.

“Sweet God in Heaven, forgive me. The women made me do it.”

Gordon blinked in amazement. Amidst the pelting raindrops, tears flowed down the last augment’s craggy, careworn face. George Powhatan shuddered and sobbed ach-ingly aloud.

Gordon slumped down to the rough log next to him, a heaviness filling him like the nearby Coquille, swollen from winter’s snows. In another minute, his own lips were trembling.

Lightning flashed. The nearby river roared. And they wept together under the rain — mourning as men can only mourn themselves.

A new legend swept Oregon, from Roseburg all the way north to the Columbia, from the mountains to the sea. It traveled by letter and by word of mouth, growing with each telling.

It was a sadder story than the two that had come before it — those speaking of a wise, benevolent machine and of a reborn nation. It was more disturbing than those. And yet this new fable had one important element its predecessors lacked.

It was true.

The story told of a band of forty women — crazy-women, many contended — who had shared among themselves a secret vow: to do anything and everything to end a terrible war, and end it before all the good men died trying to save them.

They acted out of love, some explained. Others said that they did it for their country.

There was even a rumor that the women had looked on their odyssey to Hell as a form of penance, in order to make up for some past failing of womankind.

Interpretations varied, but the overall moral was always the same, whether spread by word of mouth or by US. Mail. From hamlet to village to farmstead, mothers and daughters and wives read the letters and listened to the words — and passed them on.

Men can be brilliant and strong, they whispered to one another. But men can be mad, as well. And the mad ones can ruin the world.

Women, you must judge them…

Never again can things be allowed to reach this pass, they said to one another as they thought of the sacrifice the Scouts had made.

Never again can we let the age-old fight go on between good and bad men alone.

Women, you must share responsibility… and bring your own talents into the struggle…

And always remember, the moral concluded: Even the best men — the heroes — will sometimes neglect to do their jobs.

Women, you must remind them, from time to time…

April 28, 2012

Dear Mrs. Thompson,

Thank you for your letters. They helped immeasurably during my recovery — especially since I had been so worried that the enemy might have reached Pine View. Learning that you and Abby and Michael were all right was worth more to me than you might ever know.

Speaking of Abby, please tell her that I saw Michael yesterday! He arrived, hale and well, along with the other five volunteers Pine View sent to help in the war. Like so many of our recruits, it seemed he just couldn’t wait to get into the fighting.

I hope I didn’t dampen his spirits too much when I told him of some of my firsthand experiences with Holnists. I do think, though, that now he’ll be more attentive to his training, and maybe a bit less eager to win the war single-handedly. After all, we want Abby and little Caroline to see him again.

I’m glad you were able to take in Marcie and Heather. We all owe those two a debt. Corvallis would have been a shock. Pine View should offer a kinder readjustment.

Tell Abby I gave her letter to some old professors who have been talking about starting up classes again. There just may be a university of sorts here, in a year or so — assuming the war goes well.

Of course the latter’s not absolutely assured. Things have turned around, but we have a long, long way to go against a terrible enemy.

Your last question is a troubling one, Mrs. Thompson, and I don’t even know if I can answer. It doesn’t surprise me that the story of the Scouts’ Sacrifice reached you, up there in the mountains. But you should know that even down here we aren’t exactly clear about the details, yet.

All I can really tell you now is, yes, I knew Dena Spurgen well. And no, I don’t think I understood her at all. I honestly wonder if I ever will.

Gordon sat on a bench just outside the Corvallis Post Office. He rested his back against the rough wall, catching the rays of the morning sun, and thought about things he could not write of in his letter to Mrs. Thompson… things for which he could not find words.

Until they had recaptured the villages of Chesire and Franklin, all the people of the Willamette had to go on were rumors, for not one of the Scouts had ever come home again from that unauthorized, midwinter foray. After the first counterattacks, though, newly released slaves began relating parts of the story. Slowly, the pieces fell together,

One winter day — in fact only two days after Gordon had left Corvallis on his long trek south — the women Scouts started deserting from their army of farmers and townsmen. A few at a time, they slipped away south and west, and gave themselves up, unarmed, to the enemy.

A few were killed on the spot. Others were raped and tortured by laughing madmen who would not even hear their carefully rehearsed declarations.

Most, though, were taken in — as they had hoped — welcomed by the Holnists’ insatiable appetite for women.

Those who could pass it off believably explained that they were sick of living as fanners’ wives, and wanted the touch of “real men.” It was a tale the followers of Nathan Holn were disposed to accept, or so those who had dreamed up the plan imagined.

What followed must have been hard, perhaps beyond imagining. For the women had to pretend, and pretend believably, until the scheduled red night of knives — the night when they were supposed to save the frail remnant of civilization from the monsters who were bringing it down.