* * *
Three weeks later, on a hot summer night, Bob Campbell, Tom Horakova, Jason Stockdale, and Allura Campbell sat around a desk in the Shack. Air conditioners rumbled in the windows and sheet lightning flickered in the black sky outside. They were looking at a small, sealed box of clear plastic, about the size of a cigar box. Inside lay an object about the size and shape of a stick of chewing gum, black with age, yet with a few silvery threads visible running through it. “We found it in the main burial chamber in the mound,” Allura told them softly, looking at it in fascination.
“Along with the human remains?” asked Tom.
“Yes,” she said. “With the four ceremonially laid out skeletons. Two males and two females. Two couples, one Cro-Magnon and one modern Caucasian. Buried together, in the same tomb at the same time, between twelve and thirteen thousand years ago. In the center of the chamber was a slab of crudely cut, pure white marble. We’ve no idea where that came from, but the only major sources for marble in North America are in the south, Georgia and Alabama, and scattered deposits in Colorado. How it got to Montana is anybody’s guess right now. The marble slab was clearly an altar. There were skeletal remains of doves and eagles and owls on the altar, sacrificial animals, as well as worked jewelry of gold and jade, copper and silver. And this.”
“And no one has any idea what the hell it is?”
“Doctor Haskins and Doctor Wyrick did a field spectroscope on it,” said Jason quietly. “It’s metal of some kind, but we can’t figure out what. The two knife blades also found in the tomb on the male skeletons appear to be cold-rolled steel, in the Solutrean shape of course, and the implications of that fact alone are earth-shaking. Someone was trading things to these primitive people that simply could not have existed anywhere on earth at that time, in any version of the past that we have ever imagined. But this object? The metal can’t be identified, but Alvin Fortis and Ralph Tarricone were the first to whisper the suggestion that it may be part of a circuit board of some kind.”
“I don’t know what to say,” said Bob, shaking his head.
“Right now there isn’t anything to say,” said Jason. “The hell of it is, that whole Scorpius thing may prove to be unnecessary. The liberals may carry the day by default. This is just too fantastic. I just don’t think anybody in the scientific world will believe us now, no matter what.”
“Then we keep on plugging away with the truth until they do,” said Bob. “It’s what we did with race and the Jewish question, and what we’ll do with this. We’re not alone and isolated and helpless any more, Jason. We found our courage, we freed ourselves with weapons in our hands, and we seized state power from the evil people who held it. Now we can use that state power for truth.”
“Any developments regarding our more modern mystery?” asked Jason. “Any idea why that—whatever it was murdered Bella Sutcliffe?”
“The BOSS technical bureau carefully dissected the faux Wingard’s phone byte by byte of software and filament by filament of hardware, and they found the electronic and cyber-equivalent of a false bottom where he kept his real data. Including his e-mails and texts,” Tom told them. “We still don’t know what his real name was, but we know he was CSIS. General Capshaw called that one right. His handler was a code name, Carlotta, whom we believe to be an ex-Israeli named Yair Zalman. One of their baddest and maddest dogs. As to the murder, we’ve had to piece that together and there’s a lot of guesswork still, and we may never know it all unless he filed some kind of report with his bosses which our techno-geeks can hack, but judging from the texts he apparently picked up on Bella Sutcliffe’s liberalism and attitude, and he started a subtle phone-flirting thing with her almost from the moment she got off the plane, in the guise of Arne Wingard. She found the idea that she could add the head of the Northwest Republic’s archaeological team to her list of conquests amusing. That night he lured her out to the pool after hours, where she expected some hanky-panky, but instead he made some kind of pitch to her for information or assistance. I guess like all Jews, he wasn’t quite as slick as he thought he was. Maybe Bella was too professional and dedicated to her work, or maybe she just didn’t like men trying to use her, since it was usually the other way around. But Scorpius got a bad vibe off her and realized he had made a potentially deadly mistake by revealing himself, and so without thinking twice, he corrected the mistake. He whipped out his trusty noose and strangled her.
“Then he kept his cool. He had been planning on using the crude X-ray machine to contaminate the Lost Creek artifacts in some way and ruin their carbon-dating, but now he knew there would be police attention focused on the Fairmont, and he would be caught with it in his possession. It wasn’t something he could flush down the toilet, and simply hiding it would have raised more questions had it been found. Given the likelihood of its discovery anyway, he decided to put it to good use. He took Bella’s room key, went up and let himself in, and hid the machine where it was sure to be found. Either he wore gloves or wiped everything clean, then he calmly went back down to the pool where he had hidden Bella’s body somewhere, put the room key back into her pocket, and dumped her in the pool. Bob called it, almost from the first. It was largely done as a distraction.”
“I figure the X-ray thing was only a Plan B he was diddling around with in his mind anyway,” said Bob. “He would have had to set it up and use it twice, once here in the Shack and once in the lab and the lab storage area at the university. He might have managed one, but probably not both, No, he had to destroy this site completely, to prevent any further embarrassing discoveries. The Americans must have had that missile launcher moved into place at least a couple of days beforehand, before he killed Bella Sutcliffe. I think he always intended to obliterate the site. I’d like to think that he somehow let this slip to Bella and despite her distaste for us racist whiteboys, she refused to go along with a murder plot.”
“You’ve told Amanda this?” asked Ally.
“I did,” said Tom. “I didn’t have any trouble convincing her. Like most Americans, she has no doubt in her mind that her government would murder another American for virtually no reason as part of one of their vicious little schemes. We may be barbarians in her eyes, but barbarians at least are honest.”
The thunder began rolling down from the hills, and it grew louder. Bob went to the door and opened it onto the hot night outside. “That’s the minor mystery” he said. “The big mystery is out there. You guys are finding more of it every day. Who the hell were these people? Where did they come from? What were their lives like? Who was rolling around trading them steel blades and giving them circuit boards to worship on their altars? Why did they disappear for millennia until the Vikings rocked up in Vinland?”
“We’ll know one day,” said Ally confidently. “Did I mention the bark and wooden tablets we found?”
“The ones that seem to contain unknown writing?” asked Bob. “Yes, you did. But how the hell will we ever be able to translate it? There can be no Rosetta Stone that old. Computers can analyze patterns and so on, but so long as we don’t know what one single word or symbol means, I don’t see how we can ever make any sense of it.”
“We will, one day,” said Allura. “I don’t know how, but we will. We’re Aryans. We can accomplish anything we want.”
“Well, at least now we know for certain that we were here first,” said Bob. “The Indians must have wiped us out eventually. But why were there so few of us? That’s always been the problem. We’re quality, but seldom quantity. Always so few white men and so damned many muds. I guess that’s why we didn’t make it stick the last time around.”
“We will this time,” Jason Stockdale told them.
PART FOUR
BORDERTOWNS
The Foggy Dew
Down a misty street one autumn morn, in Coeur d’Alene drove I,
When arméd lines of marching men in squadrons passed me by.
No pipes did hum, no battle drum
did sound its loud
tattoo.
But a lone ship’s bell on the lake’s dark swell rang out in the foggy dew.
Right proudly high over Coeur d’Alene they hung out a flag of war.
’Twas better to die ’neath a Northwest sky than on some Mideastern shore.
And from the plains and forests round, strong men came hurrying through;
While America’s sons on their bombing runs flew in through the foggy dew.
Oh the night grew black and the rifles’ crack made Zion’s hirelings reel.
As the moon rose higher seven tongues of fire did shine o’er the lines of steel.
As each round did fly came a battle cry that the whole of the world once knew,
And when morning broke still the war flag shook out its fold in the foggy dew
’Twas America stole our sons away
that Israel might be free.
Now their lonely graves lie in endless waves on the fringe of the Persian sea.
But had they died by Pierce’s side, or fought with Winston true,
Their graves we’d keep where the heroes sleep, ’neath the shroud of the foggy dew.
The bravest fell, and a solemn bell
rang mournfully and clear,
For those who died in Coeur d’Alene in the autumn of the year.
And the world it gazed with deep amaze at those fearless men, but few
Who bore the fight that freedom’s light might shine through the foggy dew.
’Twas down the street I drove again, and my heart with grief was sore,
For I parted then with valiant men whom I never shall see more.
But to and fro in my dreams I go, and I kneel and pray for you.
For slavery fled! O glorious dead! When you fell in the foggy dew.
—The Second Generation, Songs of Freedom album
©Bifrost Music, Seattle
XXX
RUNNING THE CAT ROADS
(40 years and ten months after Longview)
Man is born to live, not prepare for life.
—Boris Pasternak
On a hot and dusty afternoon in August, Civil Guard Lieutenant Robert Campbell the Third—Allura’s husband, Bobby Three—sat behind a sturdy wooden desk in his office, staring up at a huge map that covered almost one entire wall of the room. It was a topographical chart that showed his detachment’s entire sector in every detail that was possible to put onto paper: every back road, every creek, every ridge and wash, every ranch or farmstead, every building larger than a chicken coop, and most of the chicken coops as well. Old Interstate 15, as it was still known in the United States—the Border Highway as it was known in the Northwest American Republic—ran through the map like a burning crimson scar.
Bobby, aged 33, was now the Guard’s station commander for the Basin, Montana border police detachment. His father, the 54-year-old Colonel Robert Campbell Junior, was now commanding officer of the CG’s entire Border Division, which included all the units and districts abutting the Border Highway on the NAR side to a depth of thirty miles inland. Bobby was only three months into his tour as station commander in Basin, and so he hadn’t yet become completely familiar with his turf. He studied the map as much as he could in his spare moments in the office, trying to translate the lines and colors into a solid landscape in his mind, matching it with what he’d seen out in the area.
His office was housed in the older and more picturesque part of the station, a two-story red brick structure fronting onto the small town’s single street. It had once been the local firehouse. Basin, Montana was perched in a high, narrow canyon among scrubby, rocky hills along the Border Highway, 27 miles north of Butte and 35 miles south of Helena, and about ten miles from the Continental Divide. Bobby Campbell could go to the window at the end of the corridor and look eastward into the Elkhorn Mountains in the United States. Somewhat to the south, visible if he were to stick his head out the same window, was Basin Creek, which flowed through the center of the little town to its confluence with a larger stream, the Boulder River, which in turn flowed eastward Across The Road, as the local saying went, and past Basin’s opposite number on the American side, the border town of Boulder.
Suddenly Corporal Mike Sweeney, a brawny young red-haired man in Guardsman green, stuck his head in the door. “Lieutenant? Just got a call on the sub frequency down in the commo room. Johnny’s made it Across The Road.”
“Outstanding!” said Bobby. “His load’s okay?”
“Yes sir, the load is intact. Hatch is right behind him in the truck. Looks like they had no problem at all on this run, other than some greedy cops in St. Paul trying to shake them down, but Johnny sorted them out.”
“He didn’t shoot them, did he?” asked Campbell.
“No, sir. At least he didn’t mention it if he did.”
“Any problems with the Montana National Guard patrols?” asked Bobby.
“No, sir,” replied Sweeney. “I guess they were all on their lunch break or whatever when the boys rolled on through. Jefferson County deputies didn’t even chase them this time.”
“They must be really getting sloppy Over The Road, there,” said Campbell. “Or else the Selkirk boys are that good.”
“The Selkirks are good, sir,” confirmed Sweeney, who had been in Basin for two years and knew the gentlemen in question. “But County’s not really the problem. Ben Lomax over in Boulder doesn’t really give a damn. He’s the live and let live type. Likes to do a quiet shift and go home on time at night. The Selkirks are local boys, or they were before independence, anyway. Their grandfather’s an Old Fighter, and so they ended up on our side of the line after Longview, but they’ve still got friends and family all over, on both sides. I think the boys spend half their time in Boulder. Ben knows them, and he knows they’re not bringing anything dangerous through his county, or taking out anything more dangerous than untaxed weed. Once a runner makes it into Jefferson County, they’re usually home free, so long as they don’t run down people’s livestock or drive right down Main Street in Boulder and honk their horns at him. Which is what precipitated that last chase incident.”
“Bet that jackass in Billings isn’t okay with it,” said Campbell. “Keeps running off at the mouth about those in what’s left of his fair state doing business with the devil, and all.”
Sweeney shrugged. “Yeah, well, Governor Wellman’s a tub-thumper who owes his election to the evangelicals, and yeah, he probably does think we’re the devil, and he gins up a big anti-smuggling campaign every couple of years or so. But he knows as well as everybody that half his state’s income is related to moonlight merchandising in some way, or some other dealing with the Republic. Hell, Longview did give us the best part of the state, as that shower in Billings never ceases to complain. Ever since the United States went all funny about beef, Montana people have had two ways to make a living: they can get hold of a government check of some kind, or they can smuggle stuff in and out of the Republic. The lazy drunks go for the welfare, the lazy crooks get a state job, and the crooks with initiative and a sense of adventure run the cat roads.”
“They coming in soon?”
“Yes, sir,” said Sweeney. “About ten minutes, Johnny said.”
“Their connections here already?” asked Bobby.
“Yes, sir, since about ten this morning. The courier from the Health Service is here to pick up the medical stuff, the revenue guy from Olympia is here for his cut and Ed Jones, the buyer from Nordstroms, got in about an hour ago. They’re all down in the diner drinking coffee and stuffing themselves with Shirley’s cherry pie. They always do when they’re here.”
“How often is that?” asked Bobby. “I thought the Selkirks only went out every three months or so?”
“They meet other runners here, every couple of weeks,” said Sweeney. “Nordstroms gets a lot of their specialty items through Basin. Lots of fancy booze, champagne and imported beer, electronics and parts for electronics we don’t make equivalencies for here in the Republic for one reason or ano
ther. Swiss and Belgian chocolate, high-end ladies’ shoes and evening gowns and perfume, fancy menswear, luxury items we don’t have the time or inclination to make here in the Republic but which people still want to buy. When somebody wants to buy something, somebody’s gonna sell it to them, and if we don’t make it here they’re gonna smuggle it in. We’re a popular destination for international entrepreneurs.”
“I haven’t met the Selkirk brothers yet. I’ll go down and wait for them and introduce myself. Professional courtesy, them being a criminal element and all,” said Lieutenant Campbell, rising from the desk. He had just enough of a policeman’s mindset so that conniving in a smuggling operation felt odd to him, but in actual fact, as far as the Guard was concerned, none of this was illegal. The Northwest American Republic was a free country, and if a citizen wanted to butcher a steer and drive over to Boulder and sell it off the back of a truck for New American dollars, or trade it for whatever he wanted so long as it wasn’t Zionist crap or dirty videos, then it was his perfect right to do so. Or if he wanted to drive a trunk full, or for that matter a whole truck full of marijuana cigarettes purchased in bulk from the local co-op store at twenty cents a pack, and sell them over the border for 24 New American or 30 East Canadian dollars per pack, then that was his business as well, so long as the Revenue Commissioners’ tax was paid on the purchasing end, which could easily be done while still making a huge profit. The Republic could always use the foreign exchange. The Northwest was very much a free enterprise-based society; it was capitalism that had always been the problem, and the two were by no means the same thing.
The NAR had very few laws. No one was allowed to kill or abuse a child, or kill an unarmed person with premeditation or with poison. You weren’t allowed to hold up liquor stores, or burn down people’s houses just to watch the glow. No one was allowed to advocate Zionism or agitate for the return of the Northwest to the U.S.A., or spy for a foreign government. Boys and girls graduating high school went into the Labor Service, and after that boys went into the army for two years, no exceptions. Beyond that, the law didn’t take too much interest in how people lived their lives.
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