9
My dearest Gordon,
As you read this it is already too late to stop us, so please stay calm while I try to explain. Then, if you still cannot condone what we have done, I hope you can somehow find it in your heart to forgive us.
I’ve talked it over and over with Susanna and Jo and the other Army women. We’ve read as many books as our duties allowed time for. We’ve badgered our mothers and aunts for their remembrances. Finally, we were forced to come to two conclusions.
The first one is straightforward. It’s clear that male human beings should never have been left in control of the world all these centuries. Many of you are wonderful beyond belief, but too many others will always be bloody lunatics.
Your sex is simply built that way. Its better side gave us power and light, science and reason, medicine and philosophy. Meanwhile, the dark half spent its time dreaming up unimaginable hells and putting them into practice.
Some of the old books hint at reasons for this strange division, Gordon. Science might even have been on the verge of an answer before the Doomtime. There were sociologists (mostly women) studying the problem, asking hard questions.
But whatever they learned, it’s lost to us now, except for the simplest truths.
Oh, I can just hear you, Gordon, telling me I’m exaggerating again — that I’m oversimplifying and “generalizing from too little data.”
For one thing, a lot of women participated in the great “male” accomplishments, and in the great evils, as well.
Also, it’s obvious that most men fall in between those extremes of good and bad I spoke of.
But Gordon, those ones in between wield no power! They don’t change the world, for better or worse. They are irrelevant.
You see? I can address your objections as if you were here! Though I never forget that life has cheated me of so much, I certainly have had a fine education for a woman of these times. This last year I’ve learned even more, from you. Knowing you has convinced me that I am right about men.
Face it, my dearest love. There are simply not enough of you good guys left to win this round. You and those like you are our heroes, but the bastards are winning! They are about to bring on the night that comes after twilight, and you cannot stop them alone.
There IS another force in humanity, Gordon. It might have tipped the balance in your age-old struggle, back in the days before the Doomwar. But it was lazy or distracted… I don’t know. For some reason, though, it did not intervene. Not in any concerted way.
That is the second thing we, the women of the Army of the Willamette, have realized: that we have one last chance to make up for what women failed to do in the past.
We’re going to stop the bastards ourselves, Gordon. We are going to do our job at last… to choose among men, and to cull out the mad dogs.
Forgive me, Please. The others wanted me to tell you that we will always love you. I remain yours, always.
“Stop!… Oh, God… Don’t!”
When Gordon came abruptly awake, he was already on his feet. The remains of the evening campfire smoldered inches from his bare toes. His arms were outstretched, as if in the midst of grabbing after something, or someone.
Swaying, he felt the edges of his dream unravel into the forest night on all sides. His ghost had visited him again, only moments ago in his sleep. The voice of the dead machine had spoken to him across the decades, accusing with growing impatience.
… Who will take responsibility… for these foolish children… ?
Rows of running lights, and a voice of sad, cryogenic wisdom, despairing of the endless failings of living human beings.
“Gordon? What’s going on?”
Johnny Stevens sat up in his bedroll, rubbing his eyes. It was very dim under the overcast sky, with only the fading embers and a few wan stars here and there, twinkling faintly through the overhanging branches.
Gordon shook his head, partly in order to hide his shivers. “I just thought I’d check on the horses and the pickets,” he said. “Go back to sleep, Johnny.”
The young postman nodded. “Okay. Tell Philip and Cal to wake me when it’s time for watch change.” The boy lay back down and pulled the bedroll over his shoulders. “Be careful, Gordon.”
Soon his breath was whistling softly again, his face smooth and careless. The hard life seemed to suit Johnny, something that never ceased to amaze Gordon. After seventeen years of it, he still wasn’t reconciled with having to live this way. Every so often — even as he approached middle age — he still imagined he was going to wake up in his student dormitory room, back in Minnesota, and all the dirt and death and madness would turn out to be a nightmare, an alternate world that had never been.
Near the coals, a row of lumpy bedrolls lay close together for shared warmth. There were eight figures there besides Johnny — Aaron Schimmel plus all the fighters they had been able to recruit from the Camas Valley.
Four of the volunteers were boys, hardly old enough to shave. The others were all old men.
Gordon did not want to think, but memories crowded in as he pulled on his boots and woolen poncho.
For all of his near-total victory, George Powhatan had seemed quite eager to see Gordon and his band depart. The visitors made the patriarch of Sugarloaf Mountain uncomfortable. His domain would not be the same until they left.
It turned out that Dena had sent two packages — one more in addition to her crazy letter. In the other she had managed to convey gifts to the women of Powhatan’s household in spite of Gordon, by dispatching them via “U.S. Mail.” Pathetic little packets of soap and needles and underwear were accompanied by tiny mimeographed pamphlets. There were vials of pills and ointments Gordon recognized from the Corvallis central pharmacy. And he had seen copies of her letter to himself.
The whole thing had Powhatan mystified. At least as much as Gordon’s speech, Dena’s letter had made the man ill at ease.
“I don’t understand,” he had said, straddling a chair while Gordon hurriedly packed to leave. “How could an obviously intelligent young woman have come up with such a bizarre set of ideas? Hasn’t anybody cared enough to knock some sense into her? What does she and her crew of little girls think they can accomplish against Holnists?”
Gordon had not bothered to answer, knowing it would irritate Powhatan. Anyway, he was in a hurry. He still hoped there was time to get back and stop the Scouts before they performed the worst idiocy since the Doomwar itself.
Powhatan kept probing, though. The man sounded genuinely puzzled. And he was unaccustomed to being put off. At last, Gordon found himself actually speaking put in Dena’s defense,
“What kind of ‘common sense’ would you have had someone knock into her, George? The logic of the colorless drabs who cook meals for complacent men, here in the Camas? Or perhaps she should speak only when spoken to, like those poor women who live as cattle down in the Rogue, and now in Eugene?
“They may be wrong. They may even be crazy. But at least Dena and her comrades care about something bigger than themselves, and have the guts to fight for it. Do you, George? Do you?”
Powhatan had looked down at the floor. Gordon barely heard his reply. “Where is it written that one should only care about big things? I fought for big things, long ago… for issues, principles, a country. Where are all of them now?”
The steely gray eyes were narrow and sad when next he looked up at Gordon. “I found out something, you know. I discovered that the big things don’t love you back. They take and take, and never give in return. They’ll drain your blood, your soul, if you let them, and never let go.