Dies The Fire

OK?"

She nodded silently a third time; the huge silver-blue eyes seemed to be looking through to another world as much as at him.

He shook his head: "Let me hear it, Astrid. Don't go hiding in your head. We need you out here."

"I understand, Mike," she said, after taking a deep breath; he saw her blink back to being fully in the waking world.

Suddenly she spat: "They were like orcs!"

"Yeah, that's a fair description."

He restrained himself from tousling her hair. You're a good kid. Let's see if we can get you going on something you care about.

He'd never been of the talk-about-it-forever school when it came to dealing with really bad stuff; in his experience that just made you think about it more and compounded the damage. Hard work and concentrating on the future were the best way to handle trauma.

"What do you think of that bow we captured?"

It was sitting on one of the veranda chairs. Astrid looked at it and sniffed.

"It's a Bear compound," she said, with a touch of her old de-haut-en-bas tone, edged with contempt for the high-tech vulgarity of it. "Adjustable setoff, double round cams: with that, you might as well be using a gun. "

Christ Jesus, how I wish I were able to use a gun, Havel thought. Guns I understand. Aloud he asked: "Will it work?"

"Oh, it will work," she said. "It's easier to use if you're not a real archer and it'll shoot hard and straight: until something breaks. The riser is an aluminum casting, the limbs are fiberglass-carbon laminate, and the cams on the ends are titanium, with sealed bearing races. The string's a synthetic and the arrows are carbon-composite. I could make a copy of my bow, if you gave me time to experiment and the materials I needed. I don't think anyone in the-whole world can repair that one, not now, and to make a new one-forget it."

Purist, he thought, hiding his smile and finishing the hot drink; it was lousy, but coffee was going to be a rare treat.

He went on: "You've got a point, but we'll use it while we've got it. You can give us all instruction."

She sniffed again. "Signe can shoot. Sort of. At targets."

Then she took the cup away for washing and packing; her orange cat slunk at her heels, looking thoroughly frightened.

Havel found himself obsessively running over the inventory in his head again; particularly the food, which was about enough for everyone for four weeks, if they were very careful.

Of course, the Huttons probably have some more back at their vehicles. And we can do some hunting. But we've got to get out to farming or ranching country, somewhere where there is food; if it's there we can get it one way or another. Now they can't ship cattle out, there ought to be plenty, for a while. And farmers store a lot of their own grain these days in those sheet-metal things.

He'd only eat the horses if there was no other choice or the animals were dying anyway; they were too damned useful to lose. A lot of the medical kit had been expended on Mary Larsson, too. God alone knew what they'd do if anyone else got seriously ill or hurt.

Well, yes, actually we do know. The one who gets sick will recover or die. I hope everyone has had their appendix out, he thought grimly, hefting his spear and slipping on his pack. Let's get going.

Suddenly he was conscious that Signe hadn't left; she was standing by the base of the veranda stairs. The bruises on her face were purpling, and her lips were swollen, but she looked at him steadily. There was one new element to her gear; she had Jailhouse Bob's belt and blade. Unexpectedly, she drew it, looking down at the big fighting-knife with wondering distaste.

"It's a tool," Havel said quietly. "Just a tool. Anyone can use it. It's the person that matters, not the equipment."

"I know," she said. Then she looked up at him: "Teach me."

He made an enquiring sound. She went on fiercely: "Teach me how to fight. I don't ever want to be that. helpless: again. Teach me!"

Her knuckles were white on the checked hardwood of the knife hilt.

Problem is, I can teach you dirty fighting, and how to use a knife, he thought. If guns still worked, I could make you into a pretty good shot in a couple of months. But damned if I can tell you how to use a bow or a sword or a spear: which I suspect are going to matter more from now on.

Aloud he went on: "You bet. We've all got a lot to learn, I'm thinking."

Hutton had the horses ready and everyone was outside; decision crystallized, and Havel put his fingers to his mouth and whistled.

Everyone looked up, and he waved them over as he walked down to where the pathway to the cabin joined the Centennial Trail proper.

"Before we go, we ought to settle some things," Havel said, as they gathered around. "Mainly, what we're going to do-and if there's a we to do it." Better than dwelling on our losses, at least.

He leaned on his spear and looked at the Larssons. "I figure my obligations to Steelhead Air and its clients have about run out," he said bluntly. "All things considered."

The younger Larssons looked stricken. Ken gave him a slight smile; he recognized negotiation when he heard it, and so did Will Hutton.

Havel went on: "So if we're going to stick together, we'll have to put it on a new basis. So far we've just been reacting to things as they happened; it's time to start making things happen ourselves. If you folks don't like my notions of how to do that, we can go our separate ways once we reach the highway."

Ken Larsson was evidently relieved to have something to think about but his murdered wife. His face lost some of its stunned, blurred-at-the-edges look as he spoke.

"Something has happened and not just around here," he said. "At least over a big part of this continent, and maybe all over the world. Mike, remember just before the engines cut out, they were reporting that weird electrical storm over Nantucket? I don't think that's a coincidence-and it's also thousands of miles from here."

He shrugged. "I can't imagine what could have caused a Change like this, unless it's simply that God hates us.. Maybe incredibly advanced, really sadistic aliens who wanted to take our toys away? Call it Alien Space Bats. But at a guess, it started there over Nantucket -probably propagated over the earth's surface at the speed of light. It's too: specific: to be an accident, I think. If it were an accidental change in the laws of nature, we'd most likely just have collapsed into a primordial soup of particles."

Will Hutton shook his head. "Hard to get my mind around it," he said.

"We have to," Havel said bluntly. "That's the difference between living and dying, now."

Hutton nodded: "I don't know any of that science stuff, but it occurs to me this might have happened before."

They all looked at him, and he shrugged. "If it happened back in olden times, who'd have noticed? Maybe this"-he waved around-"is the way things was for a long time. That'd account for folks taking so long to get guns and such."

Havel looked at him with respect; that wasn't a bad idea, although of course there was no way to check, short of time travel. He went on: "So the question is, what does each of us want to do? Do we stick together? And if we do, what's our goal?"

Hutton scratched his head thoughtfully. "Not much use in trying to get back to Texas, for me 'n' mine," he said. "Too many hungry, angry strangers between. Got my family with me, 'cept for my boy, Luke. He's in the Army, stationed in Italy with the 173rd. All I can do for him is pray."

He winced slightly, then shook his head and rolled a cigarette, using only his right hand and offering the makings around.

"No, thanks," Havel said. "Wouldn't want to get into the habit again-not much tobacco grows around here."

Once Hutton had lit up, Havel waved towards the cabin and the congealed pool of blood still left on the veranda. "Stuff like this is probably happening all over the world. Most people aren't going to make it through the next year even out here in the boondocks, and it's going to be worse in the cities, a lot worse. I'd like to be one of the minority still living come 1999. That's going to mean teamwork. Sitting around arguing at the wrong moment could get us all killed."

Signe Larsson spoke up: "Dad, the rest of you, we should stick with Mike."

"Yup," Eric concurred. "I'm sort of fond of living myself."

Astrid nodded, silent. Her father spoke: "Money's gone, the whole modern world's gone. We'd all be dead four times over without Mike. I'm for it."

Hutton took a drag on his cigarette and spoke in his slow deep voice. "Man alone, or a family alone, they're dead or worse now. I found that out. Mike here, I've got good reason to trust him, and I misdoubt he'll get drunk with power. So if he wants to ramrod this outfit, I'm for it."

Havel held up a hand. "Let's not get ahead of ourselves," he said. A deep breath: "We have to have someplace to go, and some way of making a living and defending ourselves once we get there. That means getting land and seed and stock and tools however we can, and I sort of suspect it also means fighting to keep it. OK, that's not something a man can do alone; and we here know each other a bit."

He shifted his shoulders, a gesture he used at the beginning of a task; usually he wasn't conscious of doing it, but this time he noticed: and remembered his father doing the same.

"But I'm not going to take responsibility without authority. If you want to stick with me, well, I hope I'm sensible enough never to think I know everything and don't need advice, but somebody has to be in charge until things are settled. I think I'm the best candidate. We're going to have to pool everything and work together like a military unit, and a camel is a horse designed by a committee."

He caught each pair of eyes in turn: "For? Against?"

The Larssons nodded, looked at each other, and then raised their hands.

"For!" they said in ragged unison.

Hutton puffed meditatively on his cigarette again and then raised his hand in agreement. "Count me in too. Think I can speak for Angel and Luanne."

Havel nodded. "Glad you said that," he said. "I don't deny you and your horses would be very useful; and your family were pretty impressive too, on short acquaintance. You're a horse breaker, I take it?"

"No, sir, I am not," Hutton said, with dignified seriousness. "What use is a broken horse? I am a horse wrangler and trainer. Anything a horse can do, I can train into it."

Then he laughed without much humor. "And it's a trade I took up so I could work for myself. Don't see much prospect of that here. I'm a stranger, and a black one at that. Might get a bunk and eats with some rancher or farmer, yeah, but not on good terms, I reckon. Sharecrop-ping or something like."

"We're all in that situation," Havel said. "When there just isn't enough to go around, people will look to their own kin and friends first."

He ran a thumb along the silky black stubble on his jaw. "I expect some refugees will get taken in, especially where there aren't too many, but Will pegged it. They'll be the hired help, and hire will be just their keep at that, sleeping in the barn and eating scraps. It'll be worse, some places- human life's going to be a cheap commodity."

"We could all go to our place in Montana," Eric Larsson said. "The ranch: we've got horses there, and there's the grazing-lots of cows around there. Or there's the summer farm in the Willamette. The ranch is a lot closer, though."

Ken shook his head. "I don't think Montana would be a good idea," he said slowly. "We'd be strangers there. That land used to belong to the Walkers: and with nobody to tell them no, I suspect they'll simply take back the property and the stock; the area's full of their relatives and connections. They were always polite when we did business, but I could tell they weren't too happy about needing my money."

"Yeah," Signe said. "I know I dated Will for a while, sort of, or at least hung around him, but it was me who called it quits. There's something creepy about him, and his whole family."

Her father looked at her with surprise, then shrugged. "I'd go for the farm, if it weren't for all the people in the Willamette Valley. Going on for two million: it'll get very ugly."

"What's it like?" Havel asked him. "A real farm, or just a vacation house?"

"My grandfather bought it for a country place back before the First World War, in the Eola hills northwest of Salem," Ken said.

For a moment he smiled, then winced. "Mary liked it: nice big house-Victorian, modernized-and about seven hundred acres, two-fifty of that in managed forest on the steeper parts. Gravity-flow water system, about thirty acres of pinot noir vines we've put in over the last ten years-the winery is all gravity-flow too, by the way-some old orchards, and then quite a bit of cleared land, all of it board-fenced. In grass, we ran pedigree cattle on it and raised horses, but it could grow anything. Some sheds, barns, stables. We know the neighbors well, too, and get along with most of them; the Larssons have been spending summers there for a long time."

If any of the neighbors are still alive in a couple of months, that might be an asset, Havel thought. Unless someone's simply moved in and taken over.

Ken went on: "Long-term, there's something else to think about." He waved a hand around them.

"There's a lot of farming and ranching here in the interior, yes. For a year or two, or four or five, it's going to be better-off than most places. The Larssons made their first pile trading wheat from Pendleton and the Palouse down the Columbia to Portland. But a hell of a lot of the crops here these days depend on things like center-pivot irrigation, or deep wells: and the dryland farming: well, it only yields really well with mechanization on a big scale, where one family can work thousands of acres. That way it doesn't matter if you get a low yield, or lose every fourth crop to drought, because you're handling so many acres."

"You mean quantity has a quality all its own," Havel said.

Ken nodded. "If you're doing it by hand and horse, it takes just as much labor to work an acre of twelve-bushel wheat land as it does one that gives you forty. With the sort of preindustrial setup we're being thrown back on, that's the basic constraint on your standard of living. And the lower the productivity, the harder the people on top have to squeeze to get a surplus."

Havel 's brow furrowed. You know, that makes an uncomfortable amount of sense, he thought. And Ken Larsson is no fool. Not any sort of a fighting man, but he can think, and he's got the best education of any of us here.

"All right," he said. "Unless we see a better opportunity along the way, I'd say we head for the Willamette."

"Ummm: " Eric was a lot more bashful than he'd been. "What about all the people, Mike? Dad said it. The farm's only fifty miles from Portland and a lot closer to Salem."

Havel looked away for a moment, then met Ken Lars-son's eyes. He gave a slight nod of agreement, and the younger man went on: "Eric, it's a long way to the Willamette on foot; and I don't intend to hurry. By the time we get there. overpopulation is not going to be that much of a problem."

"Ouch," Signe said with a wince. "Still: "

"Nothing we can do about it, I suppose," Eric said; they looked at each other in surprise at their agreement.

Silence fell as they moved out onto the trail. Ken Lars-son and Will Hutton were mounted, in consideration of their years and bruises; the younger members of the party were on foot, to spare the hungry, overworked horses. The only exception was Biltis the cat, who rode perched on one of the pack loads, curled up on a pile of blankets strapped across the top and looking like a puddle of insufferable aristocratic orange smugness.

Eric and Havel carried their pole arms, and Astrid her archaic recurve bow; Signe had the bandits' high-tech compound. Hutton carried a felling ax, the top of the helve against his hip and his right hand on the end of the handle.

"Right," Havel said, swinging the spear over his shoulder at the balance-point. "Let's make a few miles before dark. Thataway!"