INTERLUDE

High above gray, foam-flecked wavetops, the jet stream throbbed. Winter had come again, and winds moaned chill recollections over the north Pacific.

Fewer than twenty cycles past, the normal patterns of the air had been perturbed by great, dark funnels — as if armies of angry volcanoes had chosen the same moment to throw earth against sky.

If the episode had not ended quickly, perhaps all life might have vanished, and the ice returned forever. Even as it was, clouds of ash had blanketed the Earth for weeks before the larger grains fell out of the sky like dirty rain. Smaller bits of rock and soot dispersed into the high stratospheric streams, scattering the sunlight.

Years passed before spring came again, at last.

It did come. The Ocean — slow, resilient — surrendered up just enough heat to stop the spiral short of no-return. In time, warm, sea-drenched clouds again swept over the continent. The tall trees grew, and weeds sprouted earnestly, unmolested, through cracks in broken pavement.

Still, there remained plenty of dust, riding the high winds. Now and then the cold air ventured south again, carrying reminders of the Long Chill. Vapor crystalized around the grains, forming complex, fractal hexahedrons. Snowflakes grew and fell.

Obstinate, Winter arrived one more time to claim a dark country.

III. CINCINNATUS

1

Gusts sculpted whirling devil shapes in the blowing snow — flurries that seemed to rise, ghostlike, from the gray drifts, fluttering and darting windblown under the frosted trees.

A heavily laden branch cracked, unable to bear the weight of one more dingy snowflake. The report echoed like a muffled gunshot down the narrow forest lanes.

Snow delicately covered the death-glazed eyes of a starved deer, filling the channels between its starkly outlined ribs. Flakes soon hid faint grooves in the icy ground where the animal had last pawed, only hours ago, in its fruitless search for food.

Taking no sides, the dancing flurries went on to cloak other victims as well, settling soft white layers over crimson stains in the crushed, older snow.

All the corpses soon lay blanketed, peaceful, as if asleep.

The new storm had erased most signs of the struggle by the time Gordon found Tracy’s body under the dark shadow of a winter-whitened cedar. By then a frozen crust had stanched the bleeding. Nothing more flowed from the unlucky young woman’s slashed throat.

Gordon pushed away thoughts of Tracy as he had briefly known her in life — ever cheerful and brave, with a slightly mad enthusiasm for the hopeless job she had taken on. His lips pressed together grimly as he tore open her woolen shirt and reached in to feel under her armpit.

The body was still warm. This had not happened long ago.

Gordon squinted to the southwest, where tracks — already fading under the blowing snow — led off into the painful ice-brightness. In a flat, almost silent movement, a white-clad shape appeared beside him.

“Damn!” he heard Philip Bokuto whisper. “Tracy was good! I could have sworn those pricks wouldn’t have been able to—”

“Well, they did” Gordon cut him off sharply. “And it wasn’t more than ten minutes ago.”

Taking the girl’s belt buckle, he heaved her over to show the other man. The dark brown face under the white parka nodded silently, understanding. Tracy had not been molested, or even mutilated with Holnist symbols. This small band of hyper-survivalists had been in too much of a hurry even to stop and take their customary, grisly trophies.

“We can catch ‘em,” Bokuto whispered. Anger burned in his eyes. “I can fetch the rest of the patrol and be back here in three minutes.”

Gordon shook his head. “No, Phil. We’ve already chased them too far beyond our defense perimeter. They’ll have an ambush set by the time we get close. We’d better just collect Tracy’s body and go home now.”

Bokuto’s jaw clenched, a bunching of tendons. For the first time his voice rose above a whisper. “We can catch the bastards!”

Gordon felt a wave of irritation. What right does Philip have to do this to me? Bokuto had once been a sergeant in the Marines, before the world fell to ruin nearly two decades ago. It should have been his job, not Gordon’s, to make the practical, unsatisfying decisions… to be the one responsible.

He shook his head. “No, we will not. And that’s final.” He looked down at the girl — until this afternoon the second best scout in the Army of the Willamette… but apparently not quite good enough. “We need living fighters, Phil. We need fierce men, not more corpses.”

For a silent moment neither looked at the other. Then Bokuto pushed Gordon to one side and stepped over the still form on the snow.

“Give me five minutes before you bring up the rest of the patrol,” he told Gordon as he dragged Tracy’s body into the leeward shadow of the cedar and drew his knife. “You’re right, sir. We need angry men. Tracy and I’ll see to it that’s what you get.”

Gordon blinked. “Phil.” He reached forward. “Don’t.”

Bokuto ignored Gordon’s hand as he grimaced and tore Tracy’s shirt open wider. He did not look up, but his voice was broken. “I said you’re right! We have to make our cow-eyed farmers mad enough to fight! And this is one of the ways Dena and Tracy told us to use, if we had to…”

Gordon could hardly believe this. “Dena’s crazy, Phil! Haven’t you realized that by now? Please, don’t do this!” He grabbed the man’s arm and pulled him around, but then had to step back from the threatening glitter of Bokuto’s knife. His friend’s eyes were hot and agonized as he waved Gordon away.

“Don’t make this harder for me, Gordon! You’re my commander, and I’ll serve you so long as it’s the best way to kill as many of those Holnist bastards as possible.

“But Gordon, you get so frigging civilized at the worst of times! That’s when I draw the line. Do you hear me? I won’t let you betray Tracy, or Dena, or me with your fits of Twentieth-Century sappiness!

“Now, get outta here, Mr. Inspector… sir.” Bokuto’s voice was thick with emotion, “And remember to give me five minutes before you bring up the others.”

He glowered until Gordon had backed away. Then he spat on the ground, wiped one eye, and bent back to the grisly task awaiting him.

At first Gordon stumbled, half stunned, as he retreated down the gray-sided meadow. Phil Bokuto had never turned on him that way before, waving a knife, wild-eyed, disobeying orders…

Then Gordon remembered.

I never actually commanded him not to do this, did I? I asked, I pleaded. But I didn’t order him…

Am I completely sure he isn’t right, at that? Do even I, deep inside, believe some of those things Dena and her band of lunatic women are preaching?

Gordon shook his head. Phil was certainly right about one thing — the stupidity of philosophizing on a battlefield. Out here survival was enough of a problem. That other war — the one he had been waging each night in his dreams — would have to wait its turn.

He made his way downslope carefully, clutching his drawn bayonet, the most practical weapon for this kind of weather. Half his men had put aside their rifles and bows for long knives… another trick painfully learned from their deadly, devious enemy.

He and Bokuto had left the rest of the patrol only fifty meters back, but it felt like much more as his eyes darted in search of traps. The whirling snow-devils seemed to take on forms, like the vaporous scouts of a faerie army that had not yet taken sides. Ethereal neutrals in a quiet, deadly war.

Who will take responsibility… ? they seemed to whisper at him. The words had never left Gordon, not since that fateful morning when he had chosen between practicality and a doomed charade of hope.