West of Honor

PROLOGUE

2064 A.D.

The sun was orange red and too bright, and the gravity was too low, but Kathryn Malcolm didn't know that. She had lived all of her 16 years on Arrarat, and although her grandfather talked a lot about Earth, humanity's home was not a real place to her. Earth was a place of machines and concrete roads and automobiles and great cities, where people lived crowded together far from the land. When she thought about it, Earth seemed an ugly place, not fit for people to live on.

Kathryn wondered how it smelled. Certainly it would be different from Arrarat. She inhaled deeply, filling her lungs with the smell of newly turned, black, rich soil. Arrarat's soil was good. It felt right beneath her feet. Dark and crumbly, moist enough to take hold of the seeds and nurture them, but not wet and full of clods: perfect for the late-season crop she was planting.

Kathryn walked steadily behind the plow. She used a long whip to guide the oxen, flicking it to the side of the leaders, but never hitting them. There was no reason to hit them. Horace and Star knew what she wanted. The whip guided them in the precise path that would plow the field in a spiral out from the center. The plow turned the soil inward so that the center of the field would be slightly higher than the edges. That helped drain the fields and made it easier to harvest two crops every year.

The early harvest was already in the stone barn two kilometers away. Wheat and corn, both natural strains- or so Kathryn thought, although in fact genetic engineers had developed them for Arrarat-and in another part of the barn was a room filled with breadfruit melons, which were native to Arrarat. There would be plenty to eat during the short winter, and enough left over to sell in town. Kathryn's mother had promised to buy a bolt of printed cloth so that Kathryn could make a new dress to wear for Emil.

At the moment, though, she wore coveralls and high boots, and she was glad that Emil couldn't see her. He should know that she could plow as straight a furrow as any man, and that she could ride better than her brother. He should know that, so he would realize she was not one of the useless women who do nothing but look pretty; but knowing it and seeing her with her face dirty and sweat in her hair were two different things, and she wanted him to see her only when she was dressed for him. She laughed at herself when she thought this, but it didn't stop the thoughts.

She twitched the whip to move the lead oxen slightly outward. The beasts took very little attention. They were nearly as intelligent as dogs and almost as anxious to please their mistress. She liked the way their muscles rippled in the bright sun and the way their tails twitched in unison whenever the small gnats came around. The oxen had plowed dozens of fields now and knew what was wanted. The second pair in the string had never even pulled a wagon across the plains.

Kathryn decided she couldn't put off their training. Those two would come with her when she married, and Emil might not want to live with Kathryn's grandfather. He certainly did not want to live on his father's land, although there was more than enough, 1000 hectares of land and more.

Perhaps, she thought, we will take my grandfather's extra wagon and hitch the oxen to it. If we find more settlers we can all go to a place so far away that the convicts will never find us; and the city will be a place to see once in a lifetime if anyone wants to. It was exciting, but she would hate to leave this valley and the land she had grown up on.

The field lay among low hills. A small stream meandered along one edge. It might have been on Earth except for the bright sun that was too orange. The crops and trees she could see had come from Earth as seeds. Most crop eaters preferred to leave Earth plants alone, especially if the fields were bordered with spearleaf blue and Earth marigolds, which insects did not like at all.

She thought of the things they would need if they struck out west to found a new settlement. Seeds would be no problem, and her grandfather had plenty of breeding stock they could take. Two mares and a stallion would do for horses. Six oxen, and chickens, and swine; yes, there were animals to spare, and there were her father's blacksmith tools she could have. But they would need a television, and those were rare. A television, and solar cells, and a generator for the windmill; those would take money. They had to be bought from the city.

But we will get them, she thought. We will need them. Children should not go without education. Television was not for entertainment. The programs broadcast by satellite gave weather reports and taught ecology, engineering and metalworking. They taught reading and mathematics. Most of Kathryn's neighbors despised television and wouldn't have it in their houses, but their children had to learn from others who watched the screen.

And yet, Kathryn thought, there's cause for their concern. First it's television. Then industry. Mines. She thought of Arrarat covered with cities and concrete, the animals replaced by automobiles and tractors, small villages grown into cities with people packed together the way they were in Harmony, streams dammed and lakes dirty with sewage, and she shuddered. Not in my time, or my grandchildren's. And maybe we'll be smarter than Earth's people were, and it will never happen. We know better, now. We know how to live with the land.

Her grandfather had been a volunteer colonist, an engineer with enough money to bring tools and equipment to Arrarat and he was trying to show others how to live with technology. He had a windmill for electricity. It furnished power for the television and the radio. He had radio communications with Dennisburg, 40 kilometers away, and although the neighbors said they despised all technology, they were not too proud to ask Amos Malcolm to send messages for them.

The Malcolm farm had running water and an efficient system for converting sewage to fertilizer. To Amos, technology was something to be used so long as it did not use you, and he tried to teach his neighbors that.

The phone buzzed, and Kathryn halted the team. The phone was in the center of the plowed land. It was plugged into a portable solar reflector that recharged its batteries. There were very few radio-phones in the valley. They cost a great deal and could be bought only in Harmony. Even Amos couldn't manufacture his own microcircuits, although he kept muttering about buying the proper tools and developing a method for making something as good. "After all," he kept saying, "we do not need the very latest. Only something that will do."

Before she reached the phone, Kathryn heard gunshots. They sounded far away, from the direction of her home. She looked toward the hill that hid the ranch from her, and a red trail streaked upward toward the sky. It exploded in a cloud of bright smoke. Amos had sent up a distress rocket.

"No!" Kathryn screamed. She ran for the phone, and dropped it in her haste. She scrabbled it up from the freshly plowed dirt and shouted into it. "Yes!"

"Go straight to the village, child," her grandfather's voice told her. He sounded very old and tired. "Do not come home. Go quickly."

"Grandfather-"

"Do as I say! The neighbors will come, and you cannot help."

"But-"

"Kathryn." The voice sounded very old and tired. "They are here. Many of them."

"Who?" she demanded.

"Convicts. They claim to be sheriffs, executing a writ for collection of taxes. I will not pay. My house is strong, Kathryn. They may not get in, but if they kill me it does not matter-"

"And mother!" Kathryn shouted.

"They won't take her alive," Amos Malcolm said. "We've talked about this, and you know what I'll do. Please. Don't make my whole life meaningless by letting them get you as well. Go to the village, and God go with you. I have to fight now."

There were more sounds of firing in the distance. The phone was silent. Then there was the harsh stammer of a machine gun. Amos had good defenses for his stone ranch house.

Kathryn heard grenades, sharp explosions but not loud, and prayed that she wouldn't hear the final explosion that would mean Amos had set off the dynamite under his house. He had often sworn that before anyone took his home he'd blow it and them to hell.

Kathryn ran back to the oxen and unhitched them. They would be safe enough. The sounds of firing would keep them from going home until the next day, and here on the plains there were no animals large enough to kill healthy oxen. She left them standing by the plow, their eyes puzzled because the sun was high and the field was not yet plowed, and she ran to the shade trees by the creek. A horse and dog waited patiently there. The dog jumped up playfully, then sank onto the ground and cringed as he sensed her mood.

Kathryn hurled the saddle onto the horse and fumbled with the leather straps, her hands moving so quickly that even familiar things were difficult. She tied the phone and solar reflector in place behind the saddle and mounted. There was a rifle in the saddle scabbard, and she took it out and fingered it longingly.

Then she hesitated. The guns were still firing. She still heard her grandfather's machine gun and more grenades, and that meant that Amos was alive. I should help, she thought. I should go.

Emil will be there. He was to plow the field next to our boundary, and he will have heard. He will be there. She turned the horse toward the ranch.

One rider can do no good, she realized. But she had to go, before it was too late. They had a good chance. The house was strong. She thought of the house, stone, low to the ground, much of it buried in the earth, sod roof above waterproof plastic. It would withstand raiders. It had before, many times, but there were a lot of rifles firing. She couldn't remember that large a raid before.

The phone buzzed again. "Yes, what's happening?" she said.

"Ride, girl! Ride! Do not disobey my last command. You are all I have-" The voice broke off before Amos said more, and Kathryn held the silent phone and stared at it.

"All I have," Amos had said. Her mother and brother were dead, then.

She screamed hatred and rode toward the sound of the guns. As she crossed over the creek she heard mortars firing, then louder explosions.

Two hundred riders converged on the Malcolm ranch. They rode hard, their horses lathered in sweat, and they came by families, some with their women, all with their oldest boys. Brown dogs ran ahead of them. Their panting tongues hung out over bared fangs as the dogs sensed the anger their masters projected. As the families of riders saw each other they waved and kicked their horses into an even faster pace.

The riders approached the final rise before the Malcolm ranch and slowed to a trot. There were no sounds from over the hill. Shouted commands sent the dogs ahead. When the loping brown forms went over the hill without halting the riders kicked their horses back to the gallop and rode on.

"He didn't use the dynamite," George Woodrow said. "I heard explosions, but not Amos's magazines." His neighbors didn't answer. They rode down the hill toward the ranch house.

There was the smell of explosives in the air, mixed with the bright copper smell of blood. The dogs loped among dead men who lay around the stone house. The big front door stood open, and more dead lay in front of that. A girl in bloodstained coveralls and muddy boots sat in the dirt by the open door. She cradled a boy's head in her arms. She rocked gently, not aware of the motion, and her eyes were dry and bright.

"My God!" George Woodrow said. He dismounted and knelt beside her. His hand reached out toward the boy, but he couldn't touch him. "Kathryn-"

"They're all dead," Kathryn said. "Grandfather, mother, my brother, and Emil. They're all dead." She spoke calmly, telling George Woodrow of his son's death as she might tell him that there would be a dance at the church next Saturday.

George looked at his dead son and the girl who would have borne his grandchildren. Then he stood and leaned his face against his saddle. He remained that way for a long time. Gradually he became aware that others were talking.

"-caught them all outside except Amos," Harry Seeton said. He kept his voice low, hoping that Kathryn and George Woodrow wouldn't hear. "I think Amos shot Jeannine after they'd grabbed her. How in hell did anyone sneak up on old Amos?"

"Found a dog with an arrow in him back there," Wan Loo said. "A crossbow bolt. Perhaps that is how."

"I still don't understand it," Seeton insisted.

"Go after them!" Kathryn stood beside her dead fianc?. "Ride!"

"We will ride," Wan Loo said. "When it is time."

"Ride now!" Kathryn demanded.

"No." Harry Seeton shook his head sadly. "Do you think this was the only place raided today? A dozen more. Most did not even fight. There are hundreds more raiders, and they have joined together. We cannot ride until there are more of us."

"And then what?" George Woodrow asked. His voice was bitter. "By the time there are enough of us, they will be in the hills again." He looked helplessly at the line of high foothills just at the horizon. "God! Why?"

"Do not blaspheme." The voice was strident. Roger Dornan wore dark clothing, and his face was lean and narrow. He looks like an undertaker, Kathryn thought. "The ways of the Lord are not to be questioned," Dornan intoned.

"We don't need that talk. Brother Dornan," Kathryn said. "We need revenge! I thought we had men here. George, will you ride with me, to hunt your son's murderer?"

"Put your trust in the Lord," Dornan said. "Lay this burden on His shoulders."

"I cannot allow you to ride," Wan Loo said. "You and George would be killed, and for what? You gain no revenge by throwing yourself at their guns." He motioned, and two of his sons went to hold Kathryn's horse. Another took Woodrow's and led it away. "We need all our farmers," Wan Loo said. "And what would become of George's other children? And his wife with the unborn child? You cannot go."

"Got a live one," a rider called. Two men lifted a still figure from the ground They carried him over to where the others had gathered around Kathryn and George Woodrow, then dropped him back into the dirt. Wan Loo knelt and felt for the pulse. Then he lifted the raider's head and slapped the face. His fingers left vivid red marks on the too white flesh. Smack, smack, forehand, backhand, methodically, and the raider's head rocked with each blow.

"He's about gone," Harry Seeton said.

"All the more reason he should be awakened," Wan Loo said. He ignored the spreading bloodstains on the raider's leather jacket, and turned him face down into the dirt. He seized an arm and twisted violently. The raider grunted.

The raider was no older than 20. He had a short scraggly beard, not well developed. He wore dark trousers and a leather jacket and soft leather boots much like Kathryn's. There were marks on his fingers, discolorations where rings had been, and his left earlobe was torn.

"They stripped their own dead," Woodrow grunted. "What else did they get?"

"The windmill generator," Harry Seeton reported. "And all the livestock, and some of the electronics. The phone's gone. Wonder why Ames didn't blow the place?"

"Shaped charge penetrated the wall," one of the riders said. "Killed Amos at his gun."

"Leggo. Stop," the raider said.

"He is coming awake " Wan Loo told them. "He will not last long."

"Pity," George Worow said. He bent down and slapped the boy's face. "Wake up, damn you! I want you to feel the rope around your neck! Get a rope, Harry."

"You must not," Brother Dornan said. "Vengeance is the Lord's-"

"We'll just help the Lord out a bit," Woodrow said. "Get a rope!"

"Yeah," Seeton said. "I guess. Kathryn?"

"Get it. Give it to me, I want to put it around his neck." She looked down at the raider. "Why?" she demanded. "Why?"

For a moment the boy's eyes met hers. "Why not?"

Three men dug graves on the knoll above the valley. Kathryn came up the hill silently, and they did not see her at first. When they did they stopped working, but she said nothing, and after a while they dug again. Their shovels bit into the rich soil.

"You're digging too many graves," Kathryn said. "Fill one in."

"But-"

"My grandfather will not be buried here," Kathryn said,

The men stopped digging. They looked at the girl and her bloodstained coveralls, then glanced out at the horizon where the rest of the commandos had gone. There was dust out there. The riders were coming home. They wouldn't have caught the raiders before they went into the hills. One of the gravediggers decided that next spring he would take his family and find new lands. It was better than this. But he wondered if the convicts would not follow wherever he went. When men work the earth, others will come to kill and steal.

"Where?" he asked finally.

"Bury Amos in his doorway," Kathryn said.

"That is a terrible thing, to bury a man in his own door. He will not rest-"

"I don't want him to rest," Kathryn said. "I want him to walk! I want him to walk and remind us all of what Earth has done to us!"