The Legend of Indian Stream

by Steven Landry

  “There are some professions that require more than simple knowledge or physical skills, such as Nursing. These will be taught in the fourth tier, the Professional School, and will only be available to those that graduate from High School or a full course of related study at the Vocational School, and are able to demonstrate a knack for the profession in a series of discipline-specific tests.

  “Our aim is to create the best educated population on Earth,” she concluded.

  The Assembly passed the schools bill, largely because the BLE had already promised to foot the entire cost. The Assembly moved on to pass some technical bills regarding the Republic’s banking system and roadways.

  The roads bill was the last item on the formal agenda, so when it passed Nathaniel Perkins asked if there was any new business. To everyone’s surprise, especially Dwight’s, his daughter Jenny raised her hand. Jenny was the only minor in attendance. She had insisted on accompanying her father to the Assembly meeting.

  “Yes my dear, what is it?” Perkins asked. He smiled condescendingly at the seven-year-old.

  “Hi. My name is Jennifer and I’m in second grade. The Fallon Party kids at school all have a mark on their arms. Nancy told me that it was a vacy-notion. She said that since she had it, she almost never gets sick. Why we can’t have them too?”

  Perkins turned to Corcoran Fallon.

  “’Tis true, all of our children, as well as ourselves, are given shots against a number of diseases, including smallpox, polio, and influenza. However, I’m not sure we could vaccinate all of the children…” The room exploded in a frenzy of demands from the parents that all the children be protected.

  “Mr. Fallon,” called out Sheila Flynn from the audience, “I see no reason why we can’t provide vaccinations to all the children, as well as any adults that wish to have them. We have more than enough in our stocks.”

  “Well in that case, I think it can be arranged,” Corcoran replied. “Doctor Flynn, please develop a plan to distribute the vaccinations as soon as possible.”

  “Hold on a minute,” someone said. “What’s in these so-called ‘shots’?”

  “Our nano-vaccines contain very tiny mechanisms called nanites that seek out and destroy some of the things that make people sick. They also find and fix some types of damage to the tissues in our bodies.” Dr. Flynn spoke with a self-assurance that probably worked well with her patients.

  “Mechanisms? You mean you want to put machines in our bodies?” another man asked, incredulously.

  “Very tiny machines, only about one-thousandths the width of a human hair. And as far as what I want, I believe these nanites will be of great benefit, but obviously we won’t force anyone to have them. It’ll be completely voluntary.”

  “I will say this,” Aileen Coyle added, “we’ve been here over two years – have any of you seen any of us or our children get sick with a cold or the flu?”

  Dwight couldn’t remember seeing a member of the Fallon Party cough, let alone miss work due to sickness.

  “Sheila, please set up a voluntary program for those that want to get vaccinated,” Corcoran said.

  “Yes sir, I’ll see to it,” Flynn replied. The meeting adjourned. As they were making their way out of the Assembly Building, Dwight saw Mrs. O’Shea wink at Jenny. He began to suspect the whole thing had been a set up.

  * * *

  On their way home Dwight asked Jennifer if she had spoken to Dr. Flynn about the vaccinations before the meeting.

  “No, Dad, I only talked to Mrs. O’Shea. She said she heard me talking to Nancy and Susan about it and wondered if I had any questions. I told her it wasn’t fair that they didn’t get sick and we did. She said she didn’t think it was fair either, but only the Council could decide.”

  “So you decided to ask them yourself, without asking me first?”

  “Mrs. O’Shea said that now that women can vote, we should start paying attention to grownup stuff. And I thought that if I helped get the vaccinations,” she pronounced the word very carefully, “for all the kids in class, I could get elected class president next year, instead of that stupid Lydia Wilson.”

  “Jennifer Carver, you will not call your classmate stupid!” Dwight tried to give Jenny his sternest look, but his eyes were smiling.

  Not for the first time, Dwight wondered just how different Jenny’s life was going to be in comparison to the way he and her mother had grown up.

  PART II

  17 - DWIGHT

  CV-22JEP Osprey: a JEPS-powered, tiltrotor aircraft that combines the vertical takeoff, hover, and vertical landing qualities of a helicopter with the long-range and speed characteristics of a fixed-wing aircraft. Its mission is to conduct long-range infiltration, exfiltration and resupply missions for special operations forces. The aircraft can carry up to 32 combat loaded troops or 4,500 kilos of cargo, along with a crew of four. Its maximum speed is 565 kilometers per hour and its cruising speed is 446 kilometers per hour. The aircraft is armed with one ramp-mounted .50 caliber M2 machine gun. Glossary, An Illustrated History of the Republic, Helen O’Shea, Ed.

  Republic of Indian Stream, Tuesday, February 8, 1853

  Dwight settled into his seat in the Grand Hall for the 1853 Assembly Meeting. He was to be honored for his time as Commander of Dragoons. He would pass the baton to a younger man and assume a position on the ISRM’s General Staff, retaining his Lieutenant Colonel’s rank. As always, his daughter Jennifer sat beside him.

  Jenny was the spitting image of her mother, except she had brown eyes and was six inches taller, something she had gotten from Dwight’s side of the family. She wore a bright orange flight suit, having just come off duty from the Life-flight unit at the Fire & Rescue Department. He was immensely proud of the girl, now a grown woman. She had been the star student of the Republic’s school system, finishing high school a year early, then getting graduate degrees at the Professional School in both Aviation Practice and Nursing. Additionally, she had starred on John Haines High School’s volleyball and softball teams.

  Following school, Jenny had voluntarily joined the ISRM, attended Officer Candidate School, and was now acting platoon leader of the Aero-medical Evacuation platoon in the Medical company. Soon she would be promoted to Captain and be assigned as the platoon commander.

  The Republic had grown while Jenny grew up. The Fallon Party in general, and Corcoran Fallon in particular, had maintained their grip on the levers of power in the Republic for the last twenty years. Steady improvements in the Republic’s infrastructure, along with the development of a highly efficient, environmentally responsible industrial base, had drawn an influx of immigrants attracted by the lure of good wages, safe and healthy workplaces, and better living conditions. The Irish Potato Famine, and the resulting diaspora from 1845 to 1852, provided a large percentage of the new immigrants. Twenty years after the arrival of the Fallon Party, the Republic’s population stood at just over twenty-two thousand people, and was, by far, the healthiest and best educated on the planet.

  As usual, Corcoran Fallon got the meeting started on time and moved adroitly through the limited agenda. Aside from the confirmation of Elaine Keefe as Minister of Defense & Border Protection, and approval of the new ISRM officer promotion list, the only real bill of interest was the Fiscal Year 1853 Immigration Bill.

  There was a lot of heated debate on the bill among the Assembly, some of it quite nasty. Dwight couldn’t understand what all the grousing was about. Life had gotten better each year since the Fallon Party had arrived. Every permanent residence in the Republic had water, electric, and sewer service, as well as a fiber-optic communications line. Four television channels provided news, weather, local sports, and some entertainment programming, which consisted mostly of high school plays and local theater group productions, although Helen O’Shea did slip an occasional period piece movie, such as Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, onto the schedule.

  There was also a BLE-administered Intranet that provided remote access to a lar
ge digital library collection and web access to government services, as well as email service. Every square meter of the Republic was covered by a cellular net that provided voice, text, email, and connection to the BLE Intranet. The introduction of information technology throughout the Republic greatly increased the pace of life. Knowledge and information moved between people and organizations at light speed. People made better decisions, organizations became more agile, emergency services responded quicker, and social commentary became a participatory sport.

  The Immigration bill finally passed, and Corcoran called Dwight up on the stage to receive his Meritorious Service Medal.

  * * *

  Following the ceremony, the Council, Minister Keefe, and the ISRM General Staff adjourned to a small conference room to consider the classified Intelligence Branch budget, as well as that of the active-duty Special Operations platoon.

  “Does Spec Ops really need an active duty force this large?” Nathaniel Perkins said. “That’s an awful lot of money.” Spec Ops was commanded by Captain Liam Keating, and was composed of forty-eight soldiers in three sections.

  The eighteen soldiers in the Pathfinder section were the very best in the ISRM, and Dwight believed, the very best in the world. They trained body, mind, and soul relentlessly, logging more hours in the gym, on the range, in the pool, and on the SPLMs than anybody else in the Republic. The Pathfinders operated on the ground, in the air, and on or below the water. When operating on the ground in support of the Dragoon or Motorized Infantry regiments, the Pathfinders operated in the three-man Gecko armored recon vehicles that had proved so useful against the British.

  “Spec Ops only comprises about three percent of our adult male population. They take on our most dangerous covert missions, especially rescuing our citizens outside the Republic when needed,” Elaine Keefe said. “They need to be trained and equipped to do it anywhere in the world that we have people.”

  “Spies you mean.” Perkins seemed offended by the idea.

  “Look, we all know that a civil war is brewing in the United States. We need to know what’s going on,” Corcoran said.

  “Why?” Perkins persisted. “What has a civil war in the United States got to do with us? Except of course, as an opportunity for the BLE to make a boatload of money,” he added disdainfully.

  “I’ve already told you that the BLE will never sell weapons outside the ISRM. And I mean it.” Corcoran was getting red in the face.

  “Look,” Dwight said, trying to calm things down, “all our spies do is provide information they gather as part of their civilian covah jobs. They’re mostly telegraph operators and newspapah typesetters. It’s not like they’re sneaking into government offices.” That wasn’t exactly true; ISRM Intel Branch had also inserted spies into the harbormaster offices of several southern ports, but Perkins didn’t need to know that.

  “But what about the Spec Ops helicopter and boat teams? Do we really need those?” Perkins asked. The eighteen pilots, crew chiefs and mechanics of the aviation section were as equally dedicated to their craft as the Pathfinders, training day and night on the MH-6JEP Little Bird special operations aircraft. Similarly, the twelve Special Warfare Combatant Crewman trained on the platoon’s three Special Operations Craft – Riverine, or SOC-R boats in all weather conditions.

  “Yes,” Elaine said emphatically. “We’ve already had to use Spec Ops for three rescue missions, and we needed all of their capabilities. In the first one, they pulled our man out of Montreal when his boss at the local newspaper became suspicious and alerted the Governor’s staff.” Montreal was within easy flying distance for the Little Birds, and the man had been easily retrieved in the dead of night from a cornfield near his home.

  “The other two were trickier because of the distances involved,” Elaine continued. “For the guy in New Orleans, we sling-loaded the SOC-R boats beneath three Chinook helicopters that put down in a bayou north of the city. The Pathfinders and boat crews sailed in and snatched the man from a riverbank and then returned to the helicopters for extraction.

  “And in the other case, they had to break a woman out of a French prison. The Pathfinders flew in an Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft to France and parachuted into a field near the prison at four o’clock in the morning. They managed to subdue the guards using non-lethal weapons and quickly extracted the prisoner. The Osprey then picked them up and they all flew safely back to the Republic. But you know all this.”

  “Yes,” Perkins demurred, “but that doesn’t mean I like it.”

  “Well, when they escorted my mining team on the expedition to Alder Gulch, you didn’t seem to mind,” Dwight said. Eight years earlier, the three month trip deep into American Indian territory had resulted in the excavation of more than fifty million dollars’ worth of gold, and was the funding source for most of the infrastructure improvements in the Republic.

  Perkins had to concede that Spec Ops had more than paid for itself, and the covert budget was approved.

  Dwight was glad. He expected that a lot more would be asked of Spec Ops when the real fighting began, and wondered who would be leading them when the time came. Liam Keating was getting on in years for such a physically demanding job, and while the platoon sergeant, Mitchell Keefe, was a good man, he wasn’t a disciplined enough planner to lead the unit. As it turned out, a leader would emerge from a most unexpected source.

  18 - JOSEPH

  Charles City, Virginia, USA, July 1853

  Joseph Smith’s journey to the Republic began on the west coast of Africa. Born in a village of the Yoruba people, he was a young boy when the village was attacked in 1840, by a neighboring village of the Fon. He was captured and later sold to a Spanish slave merchant in Abomey, capital of the Dahomey Kingdom.

  Packed into a ship’s hold with two hundred other slaves, he managed to survive the crossing to Charleston, South Carolina. Although the U.S. Congress had outlawed the importation of slaves in 1808, smuggling still occurred, and Joseph was among the unlucky men who ended up on a southern plantation. His new masters told him his name was now ‘Joseph Smith’ and that he would be beaten if he ever used his African name. They were true to their word.

  Joseph worked hard and kept his head down. His work ethic got him promoted from field hand to stable boy to groomsman. And that’s when he ran into trouble. The plantation owner’s sister, a kindly old women, at least as slave owners go, could no longer sit a horse, so she required the use of a buggy whenever she left the plantation. Joseph became her regular coachman.

  “Joseph! Ready Miss Abigail’s buggy, and be quick about it. She’s going to see the minister at Mount Calvary Baptist Church.” The overseer turned and left, confident that Joseph would obey without question.

  A short while later, Joseph brought the buggy to a stop in front of the church, only to find both the church and the minister’s house empty.

  “Well, we’ll just have to wait for him,” Miss Abigail said as she climbed back into the buggy next to Joseph. The buggy seat was padded, and its awning provided more shade than anywhere else about.

  Miss Abigail reached into her handbag, pulled out a book, and began to read. Bored, Joseph stole a furtive look at the book in her hands, but he had no notion of what the letters on the page said.

  “I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of anything than of a book!” Miss Abigail read aloud. “Truer words have never been written. Have you ever read Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice?” Joseph looked around to see who she was talking to, for it most certainly was not him.

  “Joseph, I asked you a question.”

  “No, ma’am,” he responded hastily. “I don’t read.”

  “No, I suppose not. That’s a great shame. As Miss Austen once said, the person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid. But I don’t think you’re stupid at all Joseph. And so I shall teach you to read, as much for the challenge of it as the rightness of it.”

>   “But Mr. Jerimiah said it’s forbidden to teach slaves to read, ma’am.” Joseph was both thrilled and terrified at the prospect.

  “Fiddlesticks. I’ll handle my brother.” But in the long run she hadn’t been able to handle her brother, and when Mr. Jerimiah found out she was teaching him to read, it was Joseph that paid the price.

  * * *

  Charles City, Virginia, USA, Saturday, January 14, 1854

  Joseph could hear Miss Abigail weeping as the overseer tied off the rope that held his hands in the air above his head. He didn’t know if the tears were for him, or for herself, but he forgot all about her when the first blow fell on his bare back. He screamed and screamed until he couldn’t scream anymore. It seemed the whipping went on forever, but eventually Mr. Jerimiah called a halt. Joseph collapsed when the overseer released the rope.

  He woke up later that night in one of the stinking shacks that the field hands lived in, having been sent back to work the crops by the master. He thought he was alone, until he heard movement in the darkness.

  “Miss Abigail said I should give you this.” He recognized the voice of one of the house slaves. The girl left a bundle by his head and fled, clearly wanting to be far away from Joseph and whatever was in the bundle. He painfully rose to a sitting position and loosened the strings that held the bundle closed. Inside, he found some bread and cheese, fruit, a set of clean clothes, and a note.

  Joseph, I can’t tell you how sorry I am for the misery I’ve caused you. But you must listen to me now. As angry as my brother is at me for teaching you to read, it is nothing compared to the rage of the overseer. I believe he plans to kill you. He is a stupid man who can’t read himself, but he is also a very dangerous man. You must run, as soon as you are able.