He smiled a sad smile. “Great question. The answer is twofold. First, we still had scientists but their workshops were all funded and maintained by the countries and large corporations. You don't find a scientist or an engineer making a fusion reactor in his basement. Those sorts of efforts take money, and lots of it, and mostly only the governments and corporations had that kind of money. When the technology broke down, and chaos descended upon the lands, with panic, starvation and disease, without the means of transporting large amounts of food or medicine around, governments fell and countries splintered into city-states and kingdoms. The paper and 'electronic' money they were using became useless without the governments to back it up, and the Fall kept falling. Lot of people died. Without large populations to tax, what remained in the way of local governments were poor. A poor government doesn't support much in the way of research and development. It concentrates on defending itself from other gangs.
“The only dependable transportation was horses, and so blacksmiths became important again, but the factories, the laboratories, and the schools that trained specialists for them all vanished like the big countries. Instead of huge and great, all we had was a lot of small and simple. We survived as a species, at the cost of going backwards into the way of life we'd had centuries before.
“I lay there thinking about these things, and I thought about what little I'd learned about the Gifts, like how to make a swizzle and control it without touching it, and suddenly I realized that if I could learn this, if I could learn how to make and maintain the Gifts, then I, and anyone who could learn what I knew, was what we needed to build our civilization. I didn't see anyone else doing it, so it appeared that it all depended on me.”
Aria smiled. “Sounds like a lot for a twenty-year old to be taking on.”
“Oh, it was. I knew that one man, wandering about making a swizzle here and there, wasn't enough to get the momentum going. It was going to take dozens, hundreds, thousands of people like me. That's when I first had the idea of setting up a school to train them.”
“Just one school? For the entire world?”
“No, you're right. Even a whole school full of us wouldn't be enough. But it would be a start. And some of the people I trained could go off and start their own schools. It might take a hundred years, maybe two hundred. But even that would be better than the two thousand years it took us the first time, going from horse-drawn carts to automobiles and airplanes. So then and there, that starry night, I dedicated myself to it. Well, to two things, actually. To founding a school, and staying near your mother and the General.”
He laughed at the folly of youth. “The next day I finished walking to the next town and found the local blacksmith. He was rolling some pipe for a well a local farmer needed to sink. I showed him how I could make a swizzle for his forge that was better than a hand-pumped bellows, and in return for that and a few hours work helping him with his work, I got a short length of pipe. And I waited.
“Sure enough, the General and his men and Kristana came riding into Panning that afternoon. They hadn't started out as early as I thought they would. He'd bought a few too rounds too many, and he was probably slower setting out than he would have preferred. But he got there, and when he did, I was waiting for him. When he swung down off his horse, I was there by the watering trough. “General,” I said, “you don't know it yet, but you need my help and I need yours.”
Xander shook his head. “If I had any more sense, I might have been afraid to say anything. But I was young, in love, and now I had my own Dream, different from his, maybe, but not incompatible with it.
“He just stared at me with a little smile. 'Colorado needs good men,' he said. 'Do you have a horse and a bow?' No, I said, but I have something none of your men have. He looked like he was about to laugh. 'And what's that?' he asked me. Magic, I said.
“I showed him the length of pipe I had, maybe a foot long, barely wide enough to stick your thumb in it. I stuck it in the watering trough and nothing happened. 'Son,' he said to me, 'I've seen metal pipe before. Blacksmithing might seem like magic, but it isn't.”
“I know, I said. But have you ever seen anyone do this before? And I concentrated on the pipe in my hand, made it into a swizzle, and stuck one end of it into the water again. This time the water shot up out of it making a little fountain. It splashed me, of course, but I didn't care, because by then I really had his attention. He looked at that little fountain I was holding. Then he looked a me. His eyes were a little wider now. 'Now that is magic,' he said. 'What else can you do?'
“I don't know, I told him. But I know I can can learn more, and I can probably teach others, too. For that I need a patron, someone to help me build a school. I've heard your dream, and I'm ready to tell you mine. Want to have magic working for you?”
“He was still staring at the swizzle, but he heard me. So were his men. 'Let's go inside and talk about it, wizard,' he said.
“Sitting around a table, we did. 'What do you want, for pay, a bag of gold? I have to warn you, I'm not a rich man,' he said.
“Fresh from the commune, knowing little of money, I told him no, I didn't need any gold. All I need, I told him, is a roof over my head, food to stay alive, and time to myself to learn as much as I can about this magic. And when I'm ready, a school to teach it to others.
“He smiled at that and looked at his men. 'Anything else?'
“Yes, I told him, after a moment's thought. Any bits of the old magic that your men find, that I might be able to learn from, and any of the old books they run across, I want those. Deal?
“I'll never forget his handshake. I could feel the strength he still had then, long before the consumption took him. 'Son,' he said, 'I think you'd better come with me to Denver.'”
Xander sighed. “And that's when two dreams came together, and I became the court wizard to the government of Rado. I still haven't built my school, though I got everything else that I wanted.”
“Like being with my mother.”
He dropped his gaze. “Yes,” he whispered. “That too.” He raised his head, then, and stared into her eyes. “Which is why you are here, and why we are going to beat the Honcho.”
“With the tanks he has? How?”
“I'm still working on it,” he said.
Chapter 86
Peter: “Those who walk in darkness”
By mid-November they were finally ready. The tanks were gassed up, the refueling trucks were topped off, the last rounds of new ammunition loaded, and the crews assembled. There was no ceremony that spies might have observed. They all climbed in and on the vehicles and set out at dawn.
Brutus tried to talk him out of going, of course, but Martinez had overruled him. “I want to see it happen,” he'd told Glock, as he climbed aboard the leading tank. “You can't expect me to set this all up and then just sit back in Dallas waiting for a report.”
Ludlow was on the tank already in his new uniform. Peter had to smile at that. The crossed wrenches on the man's shoulder patches identified him as belonging to the new Corps of Engineers, a cover story they'd agreed upon for the wizard. He was sitting just forward of the turret, cradling in his arms the lie they'd built for him: a metal box covered with gemstones that seems to glow in the early morning sunlight, and enough dials and switches set in the top of it to make it look like some ancient piece of arcane technology.
Some of the men had been a little nervous about being spotted on the move, even in the heavily armored vehicles. They'd been told that Ludlow had found and fixed up an ancient cloaking device that would hide them from observers long enough to get them into striking distance. As far as he knew, they'd believed it. They must have, since no complaints had reached him from the Pope about using a 'demon-trafficking' wizard in his little army. 'Captain Ludlow' had been presented to the troops as a tireless researcher whom they'd had no need to know of, until now.
“Ready when you are, sir,” said Glock.
Peter settled himself with his back against the steel of t
he turret and look at Brutus. A quote from Shakespeare came to him, from Julius Caesar, written using The Life of Marcus Brutus from Plutarch's Lives. A smile came to his lips. “Cry 'Havoc!',” he said, “and let slip the dogs of war.'”
“Forward!” Brutus called down to the driver, who threw the already-humming motor into gear and the ancient weapon surged forward, treads grinding the dust of the road.
Once the convoy was underway, he thought back to the conversation earlier regarding the Governor's stronghold. Perhaps he should reconsider his decision to spare the old skyscraper. Did he have enough men to mount a thorough sweep of all the floors and rooms in so massive a structure? He could do no less, he knew, because even a small force hidden on one of the floors could undermine his establishing a regional overseer. It would never do to have gone to all this trouble only to have the building, once it was under new management, fall to assault from within.
The more he thought about it, the more it seemed that his original idea was the better one. Bringing down Kristana's symbol of power and authority would go a long way toward convincing the citizens of Rado that they belonged to the Lone Star Empire now. Surely there were plenty of other abandoned buildings in downtown Denver. It would be far easier for his mis soldiers to empty one of any squatters than to root our determined fighters in the Governor's fortress.
His breath fogged in the chilly morning air. Winter was here. Doubtless it was even colder in Denver. Would there be any problems operating their vehicles in the colder air there? He recalled his chief engineer shaking his head. These ancient engines, according to what the man had read in the old manuals, could operate almost anywhere on the planet. The only significant difference between Abilene and Denver, he'd been told, was the elevation. In Denver, the air would be a little thinner, which could affect the fuel-air mixture exploding in then cylinders that drove these eldritch machines. But according to the manuals the ancient designers had planned for even such situations as this. The mechanisms in the engines were built to compensate automatically for differences in air pressure to ensure that there was enough oxygen in the mixture the cylinders received. That is, provided those systems still worked.
He was second-guessing himself, he knew, but it was hard not to keep going over the plan of attack in his mind, looking for things that could go wrong. One real problem was the inability to bring as many troops as he would have liked. Without stationing groups of fresh mounts, there was no way mounted men and their horses could hope to keep up with the motor-driven vehicles. That would have been too hard to hide from spies, and would have cost him the element of surprise.
He could, of course, had ordered that they move at a more sedate pace, to allow the cavalry to keep up without exhausting the animals. But that would have slowed his invasion to a crawl. What was the point of having tanks that could sweep northward at upwards of fifty miles per hour, if he held them to a mere five so that horses could trot alongside mile after mile? And moving that slowly would, itself, have cost him the element of surprise.
Denver was, by the old maps, over seven hundred miles away. At a mere five miles per hour that would have taken him 140 hours – nearly a week! At their current speed, however, they would be there in lest than a day. Perhaps a little more, if they had to refuel en route. He grinned to himself, envisioning Kristana's astonishment when his forces just appeared outside her door.
That reminded him. He leaned over to Ludlow, who was still cradling his piece of make-believe equipment. “Are you going to be able to hold the invisibility shield all the way to Denver?” He knew he had asked this question before, but now that they were on their way, he couldn't stop wondering about that.
Ludlow peered at him from beneath his Stetson, still looking uncomfortable in the blue-and red uniform they'd provided him with. “Not if I fall asleep for too long. I've been practicing, and the spell should hold for up to an hour or two, but no more, before it will need refreshing. I'll need to rest sometime, but I guess I'll have to do that in short naps rather than a decent night's sleep.”
The drivers would have the same problem, but whereas they'd set up a rotation to ensure someone rested was always at the wheel while other snoozed (or as well as they could given the noise and vibration of the motors), there was no one to relieve Ludlow at his post as the maintainer of their invisibility. He'd just have to catnap as best he could until this was over.
They continued on. In a few minutes they'd be turning from the old 84 W onto 87 N, which would take the most of the way until they joined what was left of 25 N just below the border of Rado. A couple of his advisors had wondered whether the weight of the tanks bearing down on the road surface with metal treads would do irreparable damage to the ancient surfaces. But other advisors had disagreed. According to their research, older and smaller roads would have suffered, but the main highways had been resurfaced with composite materials that could easily handle the loads involved. You could even tell the difference by sight, they had argued. The older, smaller roads had faded to light gray and succumbed to innumerable cracks and potholes from subsidence of the underlying ground, they maintained, whereas the more modern roads were still a uniform dark gray and had held up might better than the simple asphalt-and-grit surfaces they had replaced. Apparently the newer roads had cost more but were built to last.
Peter studied the road ahead of them and saw the yea-sayers had been right. The road was dark and smooth. Only the occasional crack betrayed its antiquity. He was glad he had listened to the second group of advisors and not the worriers. Sure, he could have directed the convoy to drive on the shoulder of the road . . . but they would have kicked up a lot of dust, and that would have attracted the attention of observers even if 'Captain' Ludlow's magicking was successful in blocking sight and sound of the actual vehicles.
So far, everything was going according to plan. Part of him was not happy with the idea of using a wizard. Not because of the Church; he wasn't worried about so-called demons. It was, rather, the inconsistency in policy that Ludlow's presence implied.
Hell, if he was going to worry about that, all he had to do was remember where his fuel came from. Here he was trying to build a new civilization without magic, without the “Gifts” of the Tourists . . . but to do that he was using fuel sucked out of the ground with swizzles and cooked with everflames.
He wasn't troubled by it. The old quote from Emerson came to him: “a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.” We deal with such wise inconsistencies all the time, he thought. We know fire is deadly. It destroys forests, eats houses and roasts the incautious. But we heat our homes with it and survive the winter.
So too with magic. I won't have a civilization based on it, but when there is no other way, not in the short term, I'll use whatever works.
Speaking of magic, that wizard of Kristana's would undoubtedly be at the battle. Should he be worried about that? He might be pulling the same invisibility trick. But my invisible tanks beat your invisible horses or archers, he thought.
He was actually more worried about the wizard or his apprentice escaping. Or Ludlow! He glanced at the man beside him out of the corner of his eye. The thought of someone who could walk up to you unseen, with a knife or even a big stick, was enough to make his skin crawl. Kristana's wizards had to die, and he was going to have to dispose with Ludlow himself soon. Just how soon was a tricky decision. If Ludlow thought it was going to happen soon he might try to slip away in the confusion of a battle.
Chapter 87
Kristana: “I too awaited the expected guest”
Her daughter passed her on the stairwell, going down as she went up. Or do I have that backward? Is she ascending into the noble (if impractical) ruminations of philosophy from the idealism of her youth, while I descend once more into the practical (if bloody) business of defending my land, my citizens, and those I love?
Enough. Aria seemed less troubled, for whatever reason, so Kristana left
it at that and didn't speak as they passed. Pushing the door to the rooftop open, she was surprised to see Xander seated out there. Aria must have been speaking with him, and from her untroubled countenance one could infer that at least they had not argued. She tried to imagine the shock of it. Bad enough to be a young woman expected to put aside all other ambitions to assume the mantle of leadership for a country. That she knew, herself, from experience. But add to that the disconcerting revelation that you are the child of the court wizard, the odd man none seemed to know well, whose main furnishings and possessions were old books and bits of alien technology. Imagine discovering that some feared sorcerer were your father, rather than the beloved General.
She left her guard at the door and moved closer to him. He seemed oblivious, and yet when she was within a couple of paces of his position he let he know he was aware of her.
“What can I do for you, your Excellency?”
Rather than get right to it, she decided on an indirect approach. “I passed Aria on her way down. Were the two of you speaking? She seemed calmer than before.”
“Yes. She was asking how we met. Dustfall seems a thousand years ago. But she does seem to be coming to terms with her unexpected lineage.”
Dustfall? She tried to remember it. One of the stops on her husband's recruiting trips. She, a young woman barely into her adulthood, still barely believing the older man could actually love a nothing like her, watching the faces of the people in the inn as they listened to the General dream out loud for them. “Were you there?”
He glanced at her. “It was where I first saw both of you. I'm not surprised you don't remember. I didn't speak to you, not then, though we passed each other in the moonlight behind the inn.” He fell silent for a bit, then resumed. “After hearing him, and seeing you, I walked most of the night toward Panning, to meet up with you again there the next night.”
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