The Scourge of God c-2

by S. M. Stirling

  Children and dogs were playing in the lanes, or working at chores with the chickens and turkeys and gardens and homes. Field workers were walking in, or riding bicycles home, or dropping off from a couple of wagons fitted with benches, and he could see a woman putting pies to cool on the ledge of a kitchen window. Smoke rose from chimneys, and a smell of cooking food filled the air along with the homey scents of any village; his stomach growled-it had been a long time since a not-very-good lunch. The folk he could see looked well fed, well if roughly clothed, and not overworked; they greeted their lord's son with easy courtesy

  But less of bowing and forelock-knuckling than yo u 'd see in, say, Barony Gervais, he thought dryly, as the wagons headed off towards the storage sheds and the guardsmen to their homes.

  Besides the homes the village had a schoolhouse shuttered for the summer and flanked by a small reading-room-cum-library, a bakery, a butcher's, a tavern and two small shops selling sundries, a smithy, a leatherworkers' shop and a carpenter's, a clinic and doctor's office, two churches with spires, a baseball diamond with bleachers, and a drill field with an armory attached where the local militia's gear was stowed. It had a sign that read NATIONAL GUARD SPECIAL RESERVE.

  "And we've got piped water to all the vaki houses now," Heuisink said, pointing to a row of great three-story windmills that turned briskly with a metallic groaning noise and poured their yield into earth-walled water tanks. "Plus hydraulic power for grinders and so forth. And a swimming pool for the vakis, not just one for the house."

  He spurred ahead to carry the news of their arrival. "Vakis?" Rudi asked Ingolf when he'd gone.

  "What they call the work-folk here," Ingolf said. "From evacuee; you know, city folk moved out to the farms, what they call refugees most places. Though the Heuisinks treat theirs well-they all get a share in the crop and what the Colonel sells of the farm, and they can run stock of their own on the pastures. A lot of these Iowa farmers still just give vakis their rations and a little pocket money, the way they did when all they could do was hoe a row if they were pointed at it and shown how."

  Odard and Mathilda nodded-the Portland Protective Association had done something much like that before the War of the Eye forced reforms on them, although under the newfound aristocracy that Norman Arminger had created from his Society cronies and gangster allies, rather than the pre-Change owners of land. Edain snorted quietly, voicing his feelings on that matter, but then the Mackenzies-meaning mainly Juniper Mackenzie and her friends-had split up their land into family units as fast as the refugees had learned the skills they needed. Sam Aylward had been a farmer's son in England, too.

  Ingolf shrugged. "Don't use the word in front of the Colonel, by the way; he doesn't like it. They're bigger than most even here in Iowa, of course. Back home in Richland, the Farmers and the Sheriffs need their refugees to back 'em up come a fight, of which we've had a fair number, so they rent them land of their own and don't try to make them work full-time on the Farmer's fields. Here…"

  "You'd be pretty silly to try and treat cowboys bad. You wouldn't see 'em for dust, if they didn't just shoot you," Virginia Kane said. "In the Powder River country we never allowed any of that slavery nonsense the Cutters have. Though I've got to admit, some refugees did end up doing chores on foot around the ranch house all their lives, if they couldn't learn to be useful with the stock. Not most of 'em, though, and surely not most of their kids."

  "Yeah," Fred Thurston said. "But a ranch isn't like a farm, Virginia. Dad left the Ranchers pretty much alone back home in Boise, but he made people who owned big crop farms split up their land as soon as people could handle it-had to use troops to make 'em do it, sometimes. And he used the army to bring land under the furrow, then settled guys on it after they'd done their three years. He wanted to keep hired workers expensive and scarce, and for everyone to serve in the army and then the militia."

  "I don't think your brother, Martin, will necessarily continue those policies," Father Ignatius said thoughtfully.

  "No," Fred replied, his lips compressed. "But I will."

  "We Dunedain don't do much farming at all," Ritva said with satisfaction. "Something I've never regretted. We do Rangers' work, and we hunt."

  Mathilda sighed. "We Armingers don't farm either," she said dryly. "But we need the peasants or we don't eat-and neither would you Rangers, unless you didn't mind no spuds and bread with the venison, and nothing but buckskin to wear. You just do it at second remove."

  "One more thing," Ingolf said, his voice dropping as much as it could and still carry to ten riders. "Colonel Heuisink's first wife and the kids he had with her were in New York on a visit when the Change hit. He gets sort of out-of-sorts if it's mentioned, even now. Or at least he did when I met him before, and I doubt he's changed."

  They all nodded; that sort of thing was common enough among their elders. The pain of never knowing what happened to your kin was made worse by the grisly knowledge of what had probably happened to anyone caught in the big cities, which started with quick death by fire and violence for the lucky and went downhill from there. The stories brought back by explorers from Oregon who'd probed into California were still enough to chill the blood, and they'd heard Ingolf's tales of what lay in the death zones of the East Coast, where scattered wild-man bands still lived out their grisly game of hunt and dreadful feasting.

  Grooms came to take their horses when they drew up on the curved graveled driveway before the house; Rudi had the usual minute's trouble persuading Epona that the stranger wasn't someone she should hammer and bite. When he looked up, Colonel Abel Heuisink was walking down from the veranda.

  The master of Victrix Farm was about the same height as his son, but older than Rudi had expected-in his sixties, with only a fringe of cropped white hair around a bald dome. His spare frame was erect and vigorous, though, and his eyes bright as turquoise in a seamed, tanned face; he wore the usual bib overalls and cap of a Hawkeye gentleman.

  "A pleasure to see you again, sir," Ingolf said.

  "Always a pleasure to see the man who hammered some sense into my boy Jack, Captain Vogeler," the older man said. "It was more than I could ever do."

  "You couldn't put him on the latrine detail for a month. That helped."

  The master of Victrix turned to take in the rest of the party, blinking a little at Rudi's kilted height. When he shook hands it was a brisk no-nonsense gesture.

  "Come on in," he said. "Plenty of room at dinner."

  Showered and in his set of clean clothes, Rudi felt much more human. The room he'd been given was larger than his at home in Dun Juniper, with a window that overlooked the gardens behind the house; it smelled pleasantly of rose sachets, and there was even a shelf of books above the desk, and the luxury of a private bathroom. The floor was interesting; he recognized broad heart-of-pine planks, worn but beautifully fitted-they must have been there since the house was built a century or more ago.

  Our host's kin are old in this land, he thought. Good for folk to have roots.

  A servant girl knocked at the door. "Dinner, sir," she said, poking her head around it and smiling with her yellow-brown braids swinging on either side of a freckled face.

  "In a moment," Rudi replied, made a last adjustment to the lie of his plaid, and walked out.

  Dinner was to be served on a screened-in veranda at the rear of the house, pleasantly open to the breeze as the sun set on this hot summer's day, with a view of a rose garden blossoming with white and crimson, and a stretch of lawn with a swinging chair. Garbh was out there beneath a huge oak that had a tractor tire slung from one branch by a rope, gnawing on a bone and surrounded by several cautiously curious local dogs.

  Rudi's nose told him what awaited the humans just before his eyes could.

  Now, don't be drooling down your plaid, Rudi Mackenzie, he told himself. You must do the Clan credit among strangers!

  A cold roast suckling pig lay at one end of the long table in brown-glazed glory on a slab of carved oak, with a
n apple in its mouth; a sirloin of beef rested at the other, pink at the center where a thin slice had been shaved away. Between them were breads and hot biscuits and yellow butter, salads of greens and cherry tomatoes and onions and peppers and radishes dressed with oil and vinegar, potato salad with its creamy whiteness flecked with bits of red, deviled hard-boiled eggs with their yolks replaced by minced ham forcemeat, platters of fresh boiled asparagus, cauliflower and eggplant baked with cheese, sauteed mushrooms, glazed carrots…

  Well, so much for being afraid we'd impose, Rudi thought, and wrenched his attention away for the introduction to his host's wife, Alexandra, and his daughter-in-law, Cecilia.

  "Padre, will you do the honors?" Abel Heuisink said to Ignatius; from the crucifixes, Rudi assumed the family were Catholics.

  They all bowed their heads, and then the pagans murmured their own graces, which got them startled glances.

  Mrs. Alexandra Heuisink must have been around twenty at the Change; in her early forties she was still very attractive, in a full-figured way which her cotton dress showed to advantage, and it was obvious where Jack had gotten his reddish brown hair. Jack's wife, Cecilia, was dark-haired and quietly pretty with very pale blue eyes; her children were apparently too young to sit at table. Besides the married daughter off towards Dubuque, the other children were Jack's twelve-year-old younger brother, George, agog for the travelers' tales, and sisters, Andrea and Dorothy, quiet and grave at first with so many strangers present; they were about two years apart, alike enough with their russet ponytails to be twins at first glance.

  Rudi gave them an account of the buffalo hunt with the Sioux, and got wide-eyed wonder; Virginia Kane told a story of Coyote Old Man, and got a laugh.

  "I wish I'd been with you!" George burst out, when he'd heard a bit more of the band's passage.

  His father gave him a stern glance, and his elder brother an exasperated one; obviously having run away to soldier in a free company himself undermined any prospective words of wisdom to a youngster with his head fermenting full of romantic yeast. Rudi grinned at the boy.

  Time to deflate his enthusiasm a wee bit, he thought. No danger of doing it too much, not with a spirited lad like him. Heroing is something fate and duty inflict on you, boyo, not a grand game you seek out for the fun of it.

  "Not while we were holed up in that cave, and my sister"-he nodded towards Mary-"and I were like to die."

  "Did it hurt?" the boy asked with ghoulish enthusiasm; no normal lad that age really believed in agony and death.

  I did, Rudi thought. But then, I met them earlier than most. Aloud he went on with malice aforethought:

  "It wasn't that so much, as not being able to go to the latrine by myself, and having to be swaddled and cleaned like a baby."

  The two younger girls made disgusted faces, and George looked as if he'd like to; he also went thoughtful for a while.

  " This hurt," Mary added, tapping her eye patch. "But that wasn't as bad as knowing I'd never get it back."

  Jack winked at Rudi behind his sibling's back, and the two elder Heuisinks gave him slight, silent, grateful nods.

  He didn't let conversation interrupt his eating more than he had to until well into the meal. It concluded with apple and cherry pies and ice cream with walnuts, and then the children were sent off; Cecilia shepherded them away. The two blond maidservants cleared the table, and everyone moved to softer chairs around a low settee where they set out a pear brandy much better than the indifferent wine which had accompanied the meal, and real coffee in an old-looking silver service and bone-china cups.

  "Thank you, Francine, Marian," Alexandra Heuisink said. "That'll be all."

  The girls looked a little startled, but went. Alex went on to the group:

  "They're perfectly trustworthy, but what you don't know, you can't blab."

  Abel nodded: "I'm not in as good odor with the current Bossman as I was with his father."

  "Dad's head of the Progressives," Jack explained, nibbling a biscuit. "He's the Vakis' Friend-sorry, Dad, but that's the word people use. Anthony Heasleroad's a Ruralist."

  "Anthony Heasleroad is a Heasleroadist first, last and always," his mother said, as she poured the coffee. "And his father was a strong-arm artist who got into office by what amounted to a coup d'etat. And murder, in my opinion."

  "We did what had to be done, 'Zandra," her husband said. "I know your father was a good man-"

  "-who had a convenient accident," she replied. "He was also the legitimate Governor, and he wouldn't have tried to make the position hereditary."

  "Yeah. But he would have let us be swamped instead of closing the Mississippi bridges. We certainly couldn't afford a civil war then, things were too close to the edge. We all saw what happened in Illinois. And we don't want one now."

  "Maybe Tom Heasleroad was a necessary evil, but damned if I can see why Tony's necessary at all."

  "He's got the State Police and the Ruralist Party on his side, Mom," Jack pointed out. "It's necessary not to get sent to the mines for sedition and violating the Emergency Legislation."

  "True," his father said. He turned to the travelers. "Sorry, but if you're going East, some of this local politics is relevant."

  "Some of it sounds unpleasantly familiar," Fred Thurston said. Virginia Kane nodded beside him.

  "Do have some coffee. We get a little these days," Mrs. Heuisink said, taking some knitting out from a basket beneath her chair. "Just recently."

  "The coffee's the only thing we've had that didn't come from Victrix Farm, apart from some of the spices," her husband said proudly, relaxing from the tension of a moment before.

  "It's a fine estate, sir," Rudi said. "I've come all the way from the Pacific Coast and haven't seen better, and few to equal it. Though of course it must have been finer still, before the Change."

  "You folks still use farm for the holding a man who works the soil cultivates, don't you?" Abel Heuisink said.

  "Yes. Well, we Mackenzies say croft; they say farm in Corvallis and the Bearkiller territory and virgate in the Portland Protective Association."

  Abel Heuisink smiled a little sourly. "Before the Change, Victrix Farm actually was just a farm in that sense of the word, though a pretty big one-a lot more of it was cultivated, too. Cash grain, mostly. My family and six or seven men handled it all with some contract work now and then, and I could have done with fewer if I hadn't bred show stock as a hobby. Then it turned into a refugee camp. And now it's more like a town than a lot of Iowa towns were, back then."

  Rudi nodded wisely; he knew that folk had been thin on the ground outside the cities before the Change.

  It seems unnatural, but then, things were unnatural in the old times.

  "All that machinery," he said. "With so few hands to eat the produce, it must have been a gold mine!"

  "I kept it as a loss leader," Heuisink said. When Rudi's eyebrows went up: "As a tax write-off. That meant… in those days, we were taxed on our incomes. If you had a business that was making a loss, you could balance that against other income and pay less."

  Baffled, Rudi blinked, thinking of the rich fields outside.

  "How could land like this not pay? People had to eat then too, and to be sure there were so many of them! And with machines to do the work, you could sell nearly all of it."

  His host chuckled. "Farmers used to ask themselves that question all the time. The short answer is that there were a lot of people between us and the hungry mouths, and they made the profit."

  As a nobleman used to paying levies and to making them on his vassals, Odard's thoughts were a little different:

  "How could the Crown know your income to tax it, my lord Heuisink?" he said. "I mean, the old American government. Did they send clerks around to assess your fields?"

  "You told the government what your income was," he replied. "And I'm not a lord, young man."

  Odard gave a charming smile and spread his hands. "You are by the way we'd reckon things in the Portland Prote
ctive Association's territories, sir. I'm a Baron myself back home; perhaps you'd say Farmer here. But about that… income tax, did you call it?"

  "Most of my family's income came from stocks and bonds, investments."

  The travelers nodded; all of them at least knew what those were, in theory, except perhaps Virginia Kane. Seeing that they'd followed him that far, Heuisink went on:

  "The law required you to report your total income every year."

  "And people actually told what they had, Lord Heuisink?" Mathilda said, her cup halfway to her mouth. "That's more power than my mother has as Regent of the Association, by Saint Dismas! It's hard enough to collect the mesne tithes and the tallage and corvee and the salt tax!"

  "You had to tell, or the IRS would get on your case, young lady. Believe me, you didn't want that to happen."

  "Ah," Odard said wisely. "Rack? The steel boot? Pincers? Not," he added piously, "that we Associates do that sort of thing anymore. Not much."

  Their host looked at him sharply, obviously wondering if he was being mocked and then looking even more startled when he realized the younger man was perfectly serious.

  "Worse than that," he said. "Audits. But as you say, Mr. Mackenzie, it's good land… and that's what matters now. Thank God I didn't let my accountant talk me into selling it and putting all the money in Intel stock! His son actually keeps my books here now."

  He poured himself a brandy and leaned forward. "But it's your story I'd like to hear." A glance around. "From the introductions, you can all tell me things about parts of the country we hardly hear rumors from these days. So, Mr. Mackenzie… Unless you'd like to start, Captain Vogeler?"

  Ingolf looked at Rudi, who gave a fractional nod.

  This all started with you riding into Sutterdown, with the Prophet's men waiting for you and everyone all unknowing, he thought. Unless it really started with that prophecy Mother made at my Wiccanning… or with the Change… or the creation of the universe, so!

  Ingolf knotted his big hands for a moment, considering, and then began: