“It's been years since the last evacuations,” Nick said. “How do they survive?”
“Scrounging. Luck. Theft.”
Theft from whom? Children played around the tents. He captured images using his minds-eye camera—integrated into his com implants behind his ear—but when he tried to upload them to storage, the network was unavailable. None of his hosts showed avatars. Holes in the com net coverage were uncommon, but not unheard of.
The gravel road widened at a large house as old and weathered as the store, if more structurally stable and well-maintained, to Nick’s untrained eye. Huge Douglass-fir trees loomed over the house, as if guarding it. Flowers in planters pushed their way through last year's decay. A thin, older woman stuck her head out the building’s door and jumped back in.
A second later, several people of various ages scrambled out to greet Georgia and Janicks, scattering a flock of chickens as they ran. It was like the reunion of an extended family. Nick was the outsider.
The woman, whose given name was Jessica Santorini, embraced Nick warmly. About the same age as Bobcat, she was wiry with sun-baked skin on her arms and face. Flyaway hair gave her a wild air. The apron over the front of her ankle-length dress was dusted with flour. Her eyes were the color of purple irises.
A girl of five tugged at Georgia’s pants leg. She scooped up the child and perched her on her hip, as if she took care of children all day long. “I can smell the apple pie,” Georgia said to the child. “Do you want some?” The child nodded vigorously. She walked up the hotel’s steps with the child, leaving Nick gaping again. It was impossible for him not to think of Angela and his son, Jason.
“Are you coming in?” Georgia said.
The hotel was an old bunkhouse for miners and loggers. Momma Jess arrived decades ago and fixed up the abandoned building. “I've been here 30 years, and we've built a tight little community. We don't take more from the land than she can give, but things can get a little tense sometimes, especially with the refugees.”
A hunting rifle was set in a case near the door. To discourage theft, Nick guessed.
Georgia and Janicks took places at a table big enough for a dozen adults. The five-year-old sat between them. Nick found a corner. Momma Jess set plates and a pair of pies on the table.
“Why do they call you ‘Momma’?” Nick said.
“I have a bad habit of taking in strays,” she said, winking at him.
The agent bit into the still-warm pie. Thoughts of past missions, refugees from the Warming, and a failed marriage fell away.
“Well now, Nick,” Momma said, “how are you with a splitting maul?”
“A what?” Nick wasn't sure what Momma meant, though her question drove away the seductive mood encouraged by the pie and coffee.
“You didn't think I just hand out food to my foundlings, did you?”
Nick was soon behind the hotel, turning a pile of fresh-sawn alder logs into firewood. He felt as if he'd been maneuvered into buying a car that he didn't want. Around him, the wood smoke hung in the air like a diaphanous shroud. It seemed the Bureau hadn't sent any enforcers to Takilma.
Keeping faith with his undercover role, he blended in. His dismay at the refugees' situation melted into the satisfaction of hard work. He thought of his Special Forces fitness training, and how good he felt after a 5K run. After one evening run, a few weeks after he and Angela were married, he'd found her home early from school. They made love as only military spouses do, as if it were the last time. Five weeks later, he was on his second deployment. The mission precluded communication with Angela.
Nick shook his head to dismiss the memory. He tried to access the network again, with no luck.
“Anything wrong?” Georgia held out a glass of water.
“Nothing, thanks.” Nick sipped, noticing how Georgia's eyes scanned his soldier's frame.
The next morning, the group gathered around the table again. Everyone seemed rested and talkative, with the Takilma children rambunctiously hungry. Momma Jess set out plates of blueberry pancakes, fried eggs, and bacon. A new arrival sat at the table, a 20ish man with blond dreads who introduced himself as “Squirrel.” He wore the circle-A of the anarcho-punk tattooed over his right bicep. Patches and repairs crisscrossed his clothes, marking him as one of the refugees, unlike the neat, if recycled clothes of the Takilmans, who tolerated him. Nick suspected he was also on the run.
“Today,” Momma announced, “we’re going to take down the tree that’s giving us some trouble.”
Bobcat came to the door with a six-foot, two-handled crosscut saw. He also carried a large, double-bladed ax, a sledgehammer, and some wooden wedges. “Squirrel, I’ll need your help,” Bobcat said. “Nick, Momma says you can swing an ax, so I’d appreciate you coming along too.”
Nick looked up and down the table. “Where's Jon?” Had he muffed his job to run down the Insurgency's targets?
“Errands.” Georgia had put her hair up. The style framed an oval face. “He's the only one among us with a valid license for renting public cars.”
Everyone followed Bobcat to a thinly wooded area behind the barn where the milk cow lived. A few puffy clouds decorated the sky and the temperature was already climbing. Bobcat regarded a fir tree that Nick guessed was fifteen meters tall with a trunk a half-meter in diameter near the base. He saw the problem: The tree had a perceptible lean toward the barn. Dirt was lifted around its roots, as if something had pushed on the trunk in an attempt to bring it down.
“We had a windstorm a few weeks ago,” Momma explained. “Another good wind and it’ll fall over and destroy the barn. We can't have that.”
Bobcat studied every inch of the trunk, the ground around the roots, and the lower branches. He addressed his two recruits, gesturing to the tools. “Have you ever done this before?”
Nick and Squirrel shook their heads.
“It’s not hard, but you have to be very careful. Many a logger’s been killed up here by carelessness. Follow my instructions and direction exactly, okay? I’ll do the thinkin’ and you’ll do the sawing. My arthritis won’t let me help with the heavy work.”
Bobcat laid out his plan in several steps. “Now before you start working, plan your escape route, just in case something goes wrong.”
“Escape?” Nick said.
“It's where you'll run if the tree falls in your direction.” Squirrel had the smooth voice of a singer who had just finished his warm-up exercises.
“This thing weighs two or three tons, and the big branches weigh 50 kilos or more,” Bobcat said. “They'll crush you like a bug.”
“Thus the hardhats.” Nick nodded at the three yellow hats Georgia held.
Bobcat picked up an ax.
“Bob, wait, please,” Momma said. “We need to pay our respects.”
“Yes, of course.”
“Gather round,” Momma said. The small group drew close and held hands. Momma held Nick’s left hand, while his right hand was in Georgia’s left. He worried his was damp. She grinned at him.
Momma Jess closed her eyes. “I would like us all to thank this beautiful piece of Mother Earth’s creation for growing here and giving shelter and food to the animals and birds for so many years. We are sorry to have to bring it down to protect our home and our family. But we want the tree and the earth to know that we respect it and that its wood will warm our house for many months to come. And we say thank-you to it.”
With that, Momma squeezed Nick’s hand, and he found himself squeezing Georgia’s.
Bobcat put on his hard hat. Nick and Squirrel followed suit. “Now let’s move everyone back about ten meters for safety.”
Bobcat swung the double-bladed ax and carefully removed the bark at a spot on the trunk about waist high on the side opposite the tree’s lean. Squirrel took one end of the crosscut saw and Bobcat the other. The elder man positioned it, and the two slowly drew the saw back and forth until it had bitten tightly into the trunk. The saw was razor sharp and it cut deep with each
draw. Bobcat switched places with Nick, and the two younger men drew the saw in tandem, slowly at first, then more quickly as they found a rhythm. After about fifteen minutes, Bobcat called a halt to the cutting and the younger men pulled out the saw.
The elder man marked an imaginary line slicing down at a 45-degree angle to the first cut. Again with Squirrel’s help, he started the second cut. After a few draws, Nick's crosscut dance with Squirrel began again. A perfectly formed wedge fell away from the trunk.
“Alright, Nick,” Bobcat said, wiping his brow with a handkerchief and flexing his rheumatic fingers. “I’ll start one of these wedges into this third cut behind the wedge. You’ll know what to do next.”
Nick picked up the sledge. It had a five-kilo head. He understood what would happen, and the excitement stoked his energy. Taking aim, he hit the wedge square, driving it about a half-inch into the third cut. With a will and wide sweep with the hammer, Nick drove the wedge further and further into the tree. His mind drifted with the repetitions. His controller's instructions echoed as the sledge pounded: The intel is too fragmented. What's Janicks' target? Get in there and...
A crack punctured Nick's thoughts.
Bobcat barked, “Shit! Scatter, boys!”
Nick dropped the hammer and ran perpendicular to the trunk’s slant. He heard a thump behind him. The tree was still up, but a five-centimeter dead branch had broken off and landed near the place he’d been standing.
He stared at the spot as nonchalantly as he could, frightened that he would've been killed if he hadn't moved. His eye caught Georgia's. She watched him as if through a sniper's scope.
“Good,” Bobcat said. “I’m hoping that’s the weakest branch and we’ll be safe from falling branches for a while.”
Nick took up his position and attacked the wedge again. His arms trembled, as much from scare as the hard labor. He heard another, louder crack. It came from the trunk.
“Out of the way, boys!”
A final moan from the stressed wood signaled the tree’s death. Bending toward the removed wedge, the trunk landed with a whump between two other firs of similar height, bringing down some of its companions’ branches. Broken twigs, fir needles, and bits of lichen drifted down like heavy snow.
The group around Momma Jess raised a cheer. Nick took off his hard hat and bowed.
A middle-aged stranger in rags stood near Bobcat. “You gonna use that wood?”
The elder regarded the evacuee. “Not sure yet.”
“We'll cut it up for firewood. Winter is long up here. For everyone.”
Another man and a teenage boy came up. Bobcat turned to face them. “The deadfall in the hills is better. This wood is green. It'll need to dry.”
“We've already used most of the dead trees nearby.” The man waved at the log. “It's more than you could burn in a year. We just want some of it.”
Jess stood next to Bobcat. “We don't want any trouble.” The Takilmans with kids moved back.
“You've got more than enough. Our legal fuel aid from the UN is almost gone.”
The tension rose with each sentence, like a call and response. Nick saw no weapons, although the ax in Bobcat's hand reeked of menace. The standoff brought back another scene on Nick's first deployment, when an extended family approached his patrol, begging for food. The captain was nervous; another group of refugees had attacked the patrol the day before. As tensions rose, a local cleric intervened, suggesting tea. They reached an agreement…
“We all want the same thing,” Nick said, echoing the remembered cleric. “We all want to keep warm this winter.”
All eyes turned to Nick. “Maybe our friends”—he gestured at the newcomers—“would be willing to lend a few men in trade for half the wood. Many hands and all that.”
Jess nodded. “I'm for that.”
Bobcat agreed.
Nick offered a spare ax to the middle-aged man, and with Bobcat, they discussed the best approach to sectioning the log.
The tension diffused, but Nick wondered if he'd made a mistake. His mission was observe and report, not prevent an altercation in a remote village not that different from another mountain village far away that didn't survive the fight over dying land.
“Nice work, Sorrows, for a first-timer.” Jon Janicks stood by himself, gazing directly at Nick. He checked his feeling of pleasure at Janicks' words, which were tinged with criticism. It was a classic whipsaw technique to gain control; offer praise, then snatch it away, leaving the victim wanting it even more.
The butt of a shotgun rested on Janick's hip, the gun's long barrel pointing skyward, a more concrete threat. Nick swallowed. Had he been discovered? Or was Janicks a threat that kept the refugees in line?
The terrorist reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a box of shells. “Here you go, Bobcat. Bring us back a duck or two this time.” He handed the old man the gun and the shells, though his eye never left Nick.
Georgia brushed against the BES agent. “Jon likes you.”
The thrill of her touch took twenty minutes to dissipate.
◆◆◆
Nick bathed at Bobcat's place, and he luxuriated in the hot water. The anxieties of the tree felling sloughed off his psyche. He had never felt so fit. In the unlikely event that Janicks had guessed his true purpose, he had scoped out escape routes while he, Squirrel, and the refugees cut up the log.
The network was still down. Nick wondered if the Takilmans' back-to-nature attitude encouraged more active ways to keep the outside world at arm's length.
After an evening supper of rice, beans, and home-canned vegetables, the group took up residence in the hotel’s parlor, a large room with a high ceiling covered in painted tin tiles. None of the thrift-shop upholstered furnishings had so much as a thread out of place. An old boombox played reggae.
Bobcat reached into his pocket and removed a worn tin box. Inside were home-made mist sticks. Strictly speaking, only the government could sell the narcotic, but home-brewers were rampant. Nick demurred, but Janicks took a hit. He was fidgety. Squirrel offered him a beer. He sipped it like a man itching to speak his mind.
“What’s wrong, Jon?” Redolent of a painter's model, Georgia relaxed on the Persian carpet.
“He’s restless,” Bobcat stroked the long braid that hung from his chin. “We’re boring him.”
Momma Jess studied Janicks from an easy chair. “Spit it out, son.”
“I’m not bored. I'm restless.”
“What's on your mind?” Bobcat said.
“The problem with ideas is that they’re pointless unless they are followed by action.” Janicks’ voiced rose in pitch. “Talk is cheap. If the energy corporations understood ideas, the consolidations would've stopped. People would have direct control over their energy resources.”
That's what the demonstration in Seattle was about. They hated concentration of energy resources in the hands of a few, just like the old oil companies.
Squirrel nodded in the way you agree with something you've believed in since childhood.
Bobcat chewed on his mist stick. “Before the Carbon Laws, people tried to persuade folks to stop using fossil fuels because they were harming the planet. It took three or four seasons of man-killing Cat 5 hurricanes and months of deep freezes to finally convince the majority. It was hard not to shout, 'We warned you!'”
“I read the history, but the dream died,” Janicks said. “Back when fossil fuels were king, you could have a wind generator on your property, or solar panels on your roof. You could be independent. What if the refugees were given the tools to survive, instead of told to leave their homes?”
It startled Nick how much he agreed with Janicks.
“You can't win every argument,” Bobcat said. “People decided to give up such things to a corporation. At least we're not burning coal or oil any longer.”
“It's just wrong,” Georgia said. “Just a few people and corporations have all the power. We don't need CEOs and presidents. And there's the spac
e launch tower. It's just for rich people who don't care about poor people who are left behind. They'd rather go into orbit than do the right thing on Earth. Average people always suffer. Look at the refugees on our front yard.”
The mention of SpaceLift took Nick by surprise. His ex-wife Angela was on the project, and she'd been offered an apartment on one of the residential levels below the launch platform. The Consortium financiers were selling square-footage as luxury residences, like vacation homes near a cruise ship dock at 65,000 feet. She'd brought Jason with her. The boy loved the idea, and Nick had okayed it. What did Georgia have in mind?
Janicks got up from his creaky chair. “When fossil fuels were finally banned, people dreamed of an energy grid with human beings at the center, not mega-corporations. The wind generators and the solar farms were once a blessing. Now they're a blight. It's turned into another way to concentrate wealth in the hands of a few. The government is just as bad. It's never been for the people. I’m tired of the corrupts giving more away to the corporates. It needs to stop and it needs to stop now.”
Nick wanted to say, What are you going to do about it, Jon Janicks? That's why he was in Takilma. He waited for an answer.
“I know what to do. I can make change happen. Who's with me?”
Georgia's face was reverential, as if she were gazing on a larger-than-life work of art.
“Easy, Jon,” Momma Jess was more skeptical. “You argue passionately. I'll bet you were this way when you were a lawyer. But you need to be careful where you’re going.”
“Have you heard of Dave Foreman?” Janicks said, addressing no one in particular.
Squirrel nodded.
Bobcat sniffed. “I’ve heard of him. My granddad knew him.”
“Then you know about Earth First! and monkey-wrenching.”
“Yes, I do,” the old man said. “I may have, uh, observed the practice once or twice, a long time ago.”
“It’s time we took down a wind generator, like we took down that tree today, or sank a tender for the tidal stations.”
Georgia put her hand in her lover's, as if to stop him from saying too much.
The Mother Earth Insurgency Page 2
