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Copyright © 2012 by Shane
Tourtellotte
First published in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, December 2012
"All clear this morning, Your Honor." Captain Hoch's shout carried over the crackling and spitting of Tom Brown's telephone earpiece. "We had just one contact at the
north sentry post. A small wagon team, about half an hour ago."
"North?" Brown asked, raising his gravelly voice. "Were they traders?" Browntown got a fair number of those, usually from the north, coming down what once had been
Interstate 10.
"Not our usual merchants. Said they meant to do some trading, but the fellow in charge ..." Hoch chuckled, or maybe the line just burbled. "He said they were
scientists."
Brown sniffed, thought for a second, then snorted. "That's sure different. Okay, Captain. I'll see you in town later."
He hung the receiving horn back on its hook. A few steps returned him to the kitchen, where he skirted absent-mindedly around Joan the housekeeper. Scientists, huh?
Sounded like it might be a scam: some confidence gang coming to fleece his citizens. Or it might be a cover story for bandits, dumping their stolen wares.
He'd put a Guardsman in plain clothes on them. If they were con artists or thieves, they'd give themselves away soon enough. The Browntown Guard would arrest them, and of
course their goods would be confiscated. Too bad for them.
He finished the remnants of his bread-and-butter breakfast, and grabbed his familiar broad-brimmed hat. He gave the garden in the back a few minutes, picking a few obvious
pests out of his lettuce and spinach beds. Soon enough, it was time to straighten his aching back and walk into town for work.
It was the best part of a mile to Town Hall, no casual thing at his age. Not that many people made it to seventy-six any more. Still, it was a point of more than pride.
The day he couldn't make the walk there and back would be the day he'd let someone else run his town -- but that day hadn't arrived yet.
He picked up his pace, ignoring the old throb from the wound in his right calf. The day wasn't that close, either.
Today's walk was easy: it was a cool January morning in the south of Arizona, temperature still shy of sixty. Neighbors were at work in their fields, a few waving in
friendship, or at least by rote. He rode easily over the buckled stretches in the sidewalk, and made the west gate of Browntown still fresh.
The town's streets already had a bustle to them, the flow of walkers and the odd carriage already moving toward the market square. On a hunch, Brown joined the stream,
giving out polite "Good mornings" to everyone who recognized him -- and who here didn't?
As he had suspected, Hoch's wagons were there, three of them separated from the usual stalls. Brown detached himself from the townsfolk while still a fair distance away,
and approached obliquely. If nobody gave him away, he might learn a good deal.
The travelers themselves caught his notice early. A couple were white, but the one carrying boxes was definitely black, or maybe a mix, and there was a young Asian woman
next to the bespectacled man. That alone showed they weren't from nearby. The long fighting after The Crash often fell out along ethnic lines, and there hadn't been much
mixing since.
Another one passed behind one of their hitched mules, keeping low. She was small and black-haired, and if Tom's guess was right, she was Hispanic, even Mexican. That
could spook some locals, and she looked like she knew that.
Brown drifted toward the rearmost wagon, angling for a look through the canvas flap in back. Machinery filled his view. He thought he recognized a pump, definitely a
bellows, and maybe pieces of a forge. A larger cabinet with empty round sockets rang no bells for him. No bandits would have taken something so bulky and apparently
pointless. Maybe they were scientists after all.
"Looking for anything particular, sir?"
Brown turned, slowly enough that he looked unconcerned about being spotted. It was the bespectacled man, only now with his glasses off. He was short but thin enough to
look gangly, his face thin and pale beneath a wide hat, his Adam's apple prominent. Some old story about a headless horseman bubbled up in Brown's mind.
"Looking." Brown offered his hand. "Name's Tom."
"Lem. Lem Fonseca." Lem gave Brown a gentle shake, until he winced from Tom's own grip. "We've got goods to offer, but none of that's for sale."
"Suits me. Here long?"
"A few days, maybe more, then on south."
"South?" Brown's eyes narrowed. "Gets dangerous south. Bandit country. Mexican country."
"We're prepared," Lem said, a little too lightly. "We've got business down in the mountains. We'll chance it."
"Oh. Mind telling an old-timer what that bus--"
"Morning, Mayor Brown!"
Brown managed not to curse. "Morning, Miz Micelli," Brown called back, lifting his hat to the woman waving from her cobbler's stall across the square. "Anyway, what
might--"
"Are there any local trading regulations we ought to know about, sir?"
Faced with Lem's raised guard, Brown gave up the pretense. "Nothing much that's not good common sense. Square closes for business at sundown. Keep your nose clean, and
you folks'll be fine." He touched his hat brim. "See you around."
There was a knock at the office door. Brown glanced at the clock and smiled. "Come in, Dave," he said, pushing some papers aside.
Captain Hoch of the Browntown Guard entered, carrying the usual two lunchpails. He had started bringing food with his daily report sometime in the seventies, and now it
was a rare workday they didn't eat lunch together. The meal was still business, but for half an hour they wouldn't be "Your Honor" and "Captain Hoch," but "Tom" and "Dave."
"Hello, Tom. Getting that mess straightened out?"
"Not too well," Brown replied. Dave didn't mean the papers, but the work they contained. Brown was struggling to split the town's work-crews between the irrigation canals
from the Santa Cruz River and the roads to neighboring towns. Their farmland needed water, but he had agreements with three other mayors to share work on repairing and
improving their connecting roads, and his side of those bargains was coming due.
He was going to have to put off most of the water work. He had had a fantasy about getting some running water into Browntown, even as far as his house. The notion of
getting those ancient sinks and tubs -- and the toilets -- working again would have to wait, likely past the time he'd be around to see it. Well, he had given up thoughts of
seeing lots of old conveniences, long years ago.
Forty years officially running this town, and the troubles never seemed to lessen.
Lunch gave him some relief from that. Not the actual meal -- sandwiches of dark bread holding vegetables and a sliver of cheese, edible enough -- but the cool bottle of
beer tucked next to it inside the pail. A man had to have a few indulgences, even in this age, and this was one.
They spread their cloths over clear spaces on the plastic surface of Brown's desk, another of his indulgences. The desktop was rare junk: an old television screen, fitted
into a custom-built table. There weren't many of them still around, even in the condition of this one, with decades of scratches and spills wearing all the old gloss off the
surface. This was as much practical use as any of them got.
Brown munched on his sandwich a while, grumbling about the compromise he was making with the road building. A swig of beer seemed to clear his mind as well as his mouth.
"You still monitoring those newcomers, Dave?"
"Oh, yeah. I changed observers already, got a good report from the first man. They look legit, but they've still got me suspicious."
"What's the problem?"
"Their 'mission,'" Hoch said with an ironic twist. "They talk about it pretty freely, too freely I think." He leaned toward his boss. "They claim they're going to prove
that people once walked on the Moon."
Brown straightened up, his bottle clacking against the tabletop. "Prove it? How? And why are they coming here to do it?"
"Not here. Kitt Peak, down south. The old observatories there: bunch of big telescopes." Hoch began to smile, going along momentarily with the story. "Big enough that
pictures they took of the Moon would show the landing ships, tracks made by the rovers, even the footprints of the men themselves."
He downed some beer to let Brown swallow that. "That's what they're gonna find. If not the actual photos, the old computer files where they were stored."
"Well, that's useless," Brown said. "Those all got burned out."
"I know, but they say that's only the processes, processors, whatever, and not the memory itself. They've got some machine they say will extract those, if they're still
any good."
Brown frowned in thought. "Your guardsman didn't keep his cover well, if he was pumping them this hard."
"Oh, they were saying this to everyone, Tom. They're proud of this mission of theirs -- or that's the impression they're giving, to sucker people into whatever their
scheme is."
He looked at the mayor's pensive face, and grabbed his bottle. "It's all nonsense, of course. Nobody believes we went to the Moon. All fakery and propaganda. They're
trying to awe us, maybe to run some big con, maybe just to pass themselves off as important and get a little edge in their trading." He tipped the bottle Brown's way. "I can
break them up now, if you like."
"No." Brown appeared to regret the snap of his word. "Not yet, Dave. If they pull some tangible fraud, they're all yours. Until then, they've got a right to tell
tales."
Dave said a leery "Okay," then shrugged. "Suppose they could just be misguided, on some fool's errand. Scientists were like that. And they do look young enough to be
that naive. Maybe you oughta set them straight."
"Me?"
"No offense, Tom, but you were around before The Crash. You probably know the facts better than they do."
That brought out a melancholy grin. "Yeah, Dave. I do."
Brown left Town Hall as dusk was settling. Most folks were already off the streets, but one figure picked up speed as he emerged. "Mayor Brown?"
He turned to find one of the newcomers running up, a small case in one hand, her boots kicking up dust. "Afternoon," he said, touching his hat. "What can I do for you,
Miz ...?"
"Rachel Hsiung," she said, putting on her most pleasant look, which was pleasant indeed. "Mayor, can you use some vacuum tubes?"
Brown's eyebrows hiked up. "Me personally, or the town?"
"The town. Everyone said the town government would be the only buyer for radio parts. That meant you, sir."
Brown took a longer look at Rachel. Her short hair was glossy black under a hat that complemented her round face and high cheekbones. By the shade of her skin and the
cast of her eyes, she might be mixed-race, same as the black fellow. She was very pretty, and that made him self-conscious of his own flaws -- the craggy face, the stump of
his left pinky, the puckered scars at calf and armpit -- in a way he rarely was with visitors, and never was with townsfolk.
"We have a supplier," he told Rachel, "up in Grand House. If we need tubes, we get them."
"What size, and how much are they charging you?"
Brown gave her the numbers, and Rachel unsnapped the latch on her case. "We can beat that." She pulled out an abacus, and played the beads like a piano scherzo. One
cheek went hollow, pulled in with her concentration.
Once her fingers stopped moving, Brown got in a small dig. "Shouldn't you scientists have some mechanical adding machine?"
"We do, back at the wagons. But it isn't very portable," she said with a revealing smile. Brown spotted the dark spaces, the teeth missing on one side of her mouth. His
self-consciousness vanished as though it had never existed.
Rachel tipped the abacus his way. "We can make you twenty tubes for twelve silver ounces, or three quarter gold ounces. We can produce as many as a couple hundred, though
only about fifty a day."
"Make? You manufacture them yourselves?" Rachel nodded in reply. "Not in the market square, you can't."
"We know. We negotiated to set up shop on the McDuffs' empty lot."
"All right, then." The lady struck him as capable, and he decided to test that notion. "What guarantee would I have of your work?"
"About as much as with your other supplier. Maybe more."
"But you'll be moving on. Grand House isn't going anywhere."
"Grand House is eighty kilometers away, Mayor Brown. We'll be right here, where you can watch us working -- which your folks already do."
Very capable indeed. He scratched the stubble on his chin, contemplating the state of the town's few radios. "All right, we'll take twenty, and if the quality's
satisfactory, you can expect a further order. Now, I don't have the money right with me--"
"Payment on delivery is fine."
"All right." Brown disliked being in debt even briefly, a common attitude, but he ignored the prickle of discomfort. Making another test, he added, "Does that help you
along on your grand project?"
His tone had been lightly gibing, but Rachel's smile reflected none of his skepticism. "Your Honor, you've just done your part in helping to restore civilization."
"How can digging up some old photographs -- if they even exist, and if they're not forgeries -- bring back the golden age, Red? Tell me that."
There was a middling lunch crowd at the Rombola Diner, and the Moonies -- Widow Rombola's term -- were the topic of conversation. Brown had nudged talk that way, but now
that the wagon was rolling, he was keeping clear of its path.
Dick Boelke's challenge goaded Red McDuff to a higher pitch of eloquence. "The Crash came because we stopped believing in ourselves. We thought we were worthless wretches
who deserved to be knocked bloody -- and then we were."
"Everyone was."
"That's true, Dick, but it began with us. We heaped ashes on our heads, until we looked up and found everything in ashes."
One of the Rombola girls weaved between tables, bringing the mayor's sandwich and beer. Brown would miss Dave's company today, but he had needed to hear what townsfolk
were thinking. He was getting plenty of that.
"We're capable of great things," Red said, almost pleading, "but instead we're reduced to scratching a bare living out of dry ground." The serving girl flinched, and
hurried back to the kitchen, bare feet slapping on the chipped tile floor.
"We're not meant to be dirt farmers," Red continued, and Dick Boelke sniggered through his nose. "Someone needs to remind us, to convince us, of that. Fonseca's people
can do that. Show us that the legends are true, that human beings really did accomplish this, and we could finally believe in ourselves again. We could rebuild the country,
rebuild the world, make it into something better and lasting."
"If it really happened," Bess McDuff said.
Red wheeled on his wife, cut to the quick. Boelke guffawed. "Looks like your wife's smarter than you, Red -- but I think we knew that."
A few people in scattered corners laughed, drawing Red's quick-darting eye. "Scoff all you want."
"Oh, don't worry, we will." Even Brown smothered a laugh. "Did you memorize Fonseca's whole recruitment speech there, or did you have him write it out for you?"
As the mayor's ears perked up, Red glared at Boelke. "I happen to believe it. All they've done is told me things I already knew deep down."
"Those 'scientists' have duped you," Boelke said, "like they duped everyone over a century ago. They made themselves into tin-god authorities, told all manner of whoppers
to make themselves look good and smart and important, and nobody could challenge them because they had the monopoly on brains. Or so they told everybody. Now they're back to
fooling people for their own ends. Looks like it's working again, at least a little. I'll bet you gave them use of your lot free. Bet they made you think it was your idea,
too."
Widow Rombola came bustling out of the kitchen. "Dick Boelke, this is a diner, not a meeting hall. If you want to have a debate, have it somewhere else." There was a
chorus of groans and pleas from other customers who had been enjoying the lunchtime entertainment.
Red's face was matching his nickname. "If they were such obvious con-men, Dick, Mayor Brown would have run them out of town already." Ignoring the tug on his sleeve, he
turned toward Brown's table. "You must believe in them, Your Honor, or at least give them benefit of the doubt. Tell them."
Tom put on his best approximation of a humble smile. "Sorry, Red. I try to keep myself out of religious arguments." Red sat down to a round of jeers, the arm around his
shoulder deflecting none of them.
Widow Rombola slid over to Tom's table, ostensibly to wipe it off. "You know, Mayor Brown, that's just what I had been thinking. Those Moonies remind me of traveling
preachers. Remember that woman last summer, speaking half in babble no one could understand?" Brown nodded, picking up his beer to dodge the rag. "They're the same type:
their babble's just different. You oughta run them out, before they make something worse than a nuisance."
Brown tipped his head. "Why, Sally? They taking away your business?"
"Oh, fine. Don't listen to me. I only vote for you, is all." Her huff lasted one second. "Bring you anything else?"
"I'm fine, thanks." He fished out some coppers to pay his bill, sending Sally off in a good mood. His wasn't as good, but at least he had some peace in which to do his
thinking.
Widow Rombola was right about the Moonies, in her way. Her solution was tempting, too, but only for a moment. Being a tough leader didn't make him an arbitrary one. Lem
and his folks had the right to talk, even to recruit.
And anybody who wanted to follow them had the right to be foolish.
He reconsidered this attitude the next morning.
His daughter, nearly frantic, was waiting in the street outside Town Hall when he walked up. "Please, Father," she said before Brown could open his mouth, "talk to my boy.
He's getting ready to run off with those slick-talking California hucksters. They've got him all mixed up. Please, will you come?"
"Take it easy, Cherry. Now, I've got a meeting with officials from Grand House and Eloy in just over an hour. Once that's finished--"
"That might be too late. Ed won't stop talking about them. I'm afraid, Pa," she said, gripping his arm. "I'm afraid he's going to do something he won't be able to undo."
"All right, child, all right. If we can do it in an hour."
"Of course you can. Just lay down the law, hard." She barely gave him time to climb into the rickety one-horse wagon before applying the whip.
"Mark wouldn't listen," Cherry said as they weaved through the early traffic. "He says it's a passing fancy with the boy. I told him I know it is, but what if Ed hares
off with those fools before the fancy passes? And Mark just chewed that toothpick, like he does--"
Thus it went most of the way to the farm, leaving Brown decidedly unsympathetic to his grandson by the time they arrived.
Ed didn't suspect, or didn't care. He came running over from the barn, a lanky adolescent still growing into himself. "Grandpa, sir," he said, remembering his respect in
time. "Good to see you. I'd been meaning to come talk to you."
"I'll bet you have, Ed," Brown said, taking the boy's hand as he descended from the wagon. "But the answer's going to be no."
Ed's pained expression vanished fast, with the briefest glance toward his frowning mother. "They can use me, Grandfather. They don't have a good groom for their horses
and mules: I can tell. I saw sore spots where the harnesses chafe them. I can hitch any animal better than that. They'll need different shoes when they get off the roads
and into open country, and their blacksmith didn't have any of them that I could see. I can even steer them toward different fodder, that they can stretch out better and not
need to haul as much. I'd be useful, I would."
"I don't doubt it, boy," Brown allowed.
"Then why--"
"Because you're only seventeen next month. Age of majority is eighteen in Browntown--"
"That's your law, Grandpa. You could make an exception. There's nothing stopping--"
"Edwin Joseph Welker!" Ed reflexively snapped to. "This is not some royal family that just serves itself and doesn't live by its own rules. I thought you understood
that."
The shock held on Ed's face this time. Toward the house there was a soft titter: Ed's sister, amused at the hiding her brother was getting. His mother was coming up
behind, ready to offer comfort, but he didn't care to be comforted.
"I only want to be of use," he said without quite pleading, "to help a good cause."
"You're of use here, son," said Cherry. "We need you." Brown nodded along.
Ed wouldn't yet surrender. "Don't you want to get back to what we once had, Grandfather? Wouldn't you like me to have a chance at that, instead of this?"
Brown shook his head slowly, sadly. "They're not going to do that, son. They're misguided. They're grasping for things that aren't ours to take any more. I hope you'll
accept my word on that, but either way, you're not going with them." Seeing Ed deflate wordlessly, Brown thought he had gotten through. "Drive me back now, Cherry. Time's
wasting."
Cherry nudged past her son, and the slight contact jolted him into a last flare of defiance. "I guess some people don't mind lousy conditions, as long as they're the ones
on top."
Brown rounded on the boy, but it was Cherry who caught him hard with a slap across the face. A girl's distant gasp was the only reaction, until Tom tugged Cherry along
toward the wagon. Ed backed away, almost staggering, as the horses turned and started pulling toward town.
A third of the way back, a small, forlorn voice beside Brown said, "I thought he had grown too big to strike him anymore." She didn't say anything else, and Brown didn't
intrude on the quiet. He needed the time for his own thoughts.
He reached his office with nearly ten minutes to spare, and called immediately for a messenger boy. "You know the visitors on Red McDuff's town lot, Jerry?" The lad
nodded, his thick hair flopping around. "Take them this message: 'The mayor sends his compliments, and invites Lem Fonseca and his companions to dinner at his house, tonight
at six.' You need that written down?"
"No, sir," Jerry said, and recited the message back, letter-perfect.
"Good. Deliver that message, and bring back their reply." The boy tromped down the stairs, as Brown went into his office. He still had a few minutes to call Joan and
notify her. Not only would she be cooking for more than two tonight, he'd need a warm bath ready when he got home. For guests, he really couldn't neglect that.
"Come right in," he said, meeting everyone at the door. "Use those hooks. Don't worry about dripping: that's what the mud room's for."
Brown gave them space to remove their rain-soaked coats and hats, and peeked into the dining room. Joan had just finished laying out the opening courses.
He shook hands with Lem and Rachel, and let Lem handle introductions with the rest. The pale, reedy man walking with a cane was Arnold Rossi, a glassblower according to
Captain Hoch's reports. The reclusive Hispanic was Vera Escobar, their electrical expert. She surprised Brown with her near-lack of Spanish inflection. The black
metalworker was Smith: just Smith. His brief greeting left the impression he didn't speak often, and his handshake grip left the impression that he was taking it easy on an
old man.
None of them was impolite, but they were all reserved to greater or lesser extents. Brown couldn't fault them much for that. "Let's go in, folks."
Neat while linen covered the dining room table, and his best tableware, prime salvage and only slightly mismatched, covered the linen. Bowls sat at all six places, with a
small breadbasket in the center. Two lamps burning olive oil glowed serenely on the table, and in an overhead fixture, a lone incandescent bulb got rare work.
It was grand style, a taste of the old days. Brown caught a tangy scent of the main course, barbecued chicken with pinto beans, that would crown the meal. He might even
break out the beer, depending how the evening went.
"Were the tubes satisfactory, your Honor?" Rachel asked, wearing her business-like smile as they walked in.
"Oh, absolutely, Miz Hsiung."
"Might we expect a further order?"
"I should know by the end of the night." He pulled out the chair to his left, but it was Vera who slipped into with a murmur of gratitude.
"Thank you, Mayor," said Rachel, "but I always sit next to Jerry--I mean, Lem." She walked around the table, where Lem had drawn out her chair in perfect emulation. That
was one small question answered for Brown, though it raised the further one of whether "Jerry" indicated a pseudonym or merely a lover's pet name.
Rolls got passed around, and soon the air was filled with gustatory crunching from fresh crusts and spinach salads. Brown gauged when they had reached a sufficient level
of contentment before commencing to draw them out.
"Where do you hail from, Lem," he interjected. "Any place I'd know?"
"Do you know East Newsom?" Lem said. Brown freely confessed he didn't. "It's in the Central Valley, close to the Bay. I spent a good portion of my childhood there, but
we did a lot of travelling around. Always some new town," he said, a smile blooming, "with new books. New to me, I mean."
Lem had done a lot of reading in his peripatetic youth, giving himself a broad if scattered education. When his scavenging of old libraries turned up photos of the Moon
landings, showing not just the tracks across that dead world but the humans and machines that made them, his imagination caught fire. People invariably told him those
pictures were hoaxes, products of a corrupted nation that perpetrated fraud upon the world to buttress its inflated self-importance, now shattered forever and good riddance.
Lem decided they were wrong, but knew mere argument would not suffice to prove this. He needed evidence better than the photographs nobody believed. He needed it from a
source that couldn't have been falsified -- and that source was the telescopes. He set off on his quest, delaying only to seek out someone he'd met several times in his
travels.
He began his quest prosaically, turning up people with the component skills for making rudimentary electronics, skills fairly few people had, himself included. He provided
the vision, the inspiration that moved them to abandon their old lives and form the core of his group. He also took the time to locate one particular woman he'd met several
times in his travels.
"I had thought him an interesting young man before," Rachel said, her hand reaching for his. "But when he told me his vision, I realized he was a special man. Of course I
went with him."
Brown watched the mooning looks they traded, and kept an indulgent smile plastered on his face, hiding his dismay.
"We tried the Lick Observatory first off, being so close by. It was mostly stripped, probably right after The Crash. Then we traveled down to Palomar. That was totally
stripped."
"Demolished," Arnold chimed in, then coughed into his napkin.
Lem nodded. "But it wasn't a wasted trip. We gained new members all along the way."
"And we lost Norris."
Smith's curt statement stopped talk cold. All the visitors turned downcast, and nobody would say why. Luckily, Joan entered with the chicken before the silence became
unbearable, and Lem was back to talking before his first bite.
"The problem was obvious. Both those observatories were in highly populated regions: of course they were going to be plundered. So we set out for more sparsely settled
lands. That meant Arizona. We tried Lowell outside Flagstaff first--" He caught Brown shaking his head. "And no, that wasn't remote enough.
"That's what brought us down here, that and the heavy concentration of large telescopes. Kitt Peak's got maybe five that could have what we need. Then there's Mount
Hopkins and Mount Graham. Moving on east, there'll be Apache Point and Starfire, even Mount Foulkes in west Tejas."
"That one may not be an optical," Rachel gently reminded Lem. "Your sources didn't specify--"
"The point is," Lem said right over Rachel, "there are so many. Some of them had to have taken photos of the tracks we left on the Moon. Some of those photos must still
be stored in the hard drives on-site, and some of those drives must still be sufficiently intact that Vera can sift them out."
He was intent on Brown, his eyes aglow with sure and certain hope. "They can't all be dry holes, Mayor Brown. We're going to find the proof. Next year -- maybe this
year, but surely by next -- the news will be spreading across the continent, even the world.
"I can see you don't believe me." That stopped Brown in mid-carve, but he didn't change his expression to hide what had already been discovered. "That's all right. If
everyone did believe me, there'd be no point to our mission. It's to change people's minds, to awaken them, that we're doing this. And when we find the concrete evidence and
lay it before you, I hope you'll be ready to accept it. It'll be bringing a whole new world with it."
Lem's face still shone, and his companions reflected the radiance. They made it sound almost believable -- but that was what the best charlatans did. The only difference
was that Lem believed his own patter.
This night was not going to end well. Brown almost started with the direct challenge he was aching to make, but he didn't quite have that cruelty in him, not for honest
dupes. He'd give the oblique approach one shot.
"I hope you don't think I dislike you," he said to Lem, "or your associates. You're obviously dedicated folk, and you do good work." He nodded toward Rachel. "Bob Byner
tells me he's never seen better vacuum tubes, and he's been building radios for twenty years. Your skills are awfully useful -- which is why I think it such a waste that
you're expending them on this fantasy."
He ignored the affronted looks he knew he was drawing. "You could be doing so much more practical good with your talents. Settle down here, or in any town, and you'd be a
real strength. You could build good lives for yourselves, and for others."
"We have a good life," said Vera Escobar, speaking almost for the first time since she was introduced. "An aspiring life. We mean to build up more than one little town
lost in the desert."
"Vera!" came a chorus. Rachel's tone was shocked, while Arnold's was more cautioning.
"It's true," Vera shot back. "Poor and ignorant. You heard how they talked about me, about Smith. Your people, Mayor."
"Ah," Brown said calmly, "racial animus, was it? Memories are long here, but they shouldn't have offended you, and I am sorry. Is there more you need to say, ma'am?" The
gaze held between them, Vera's anger balked but not diminished.
"I don't think the town's so bad," Smith said, and Vera's heat swung his way.
"No offense to you, Mayor," said Lem preemptively, "but we won't be settling here."
"That's final?"
Lem read his companions' faces, his confidence validated. "It is."
"All right," Brown said. "Then I'll have to ask the five of you to be on your way. Tomorrow. Early."
A ripple of consternation crossed the table, but a motion of Lem's hand calmed it. "Any particular reason why?"
Brown grimaced. "There is the matter of your recruiting. That's fine up to a point, but when you start enticing kids, I have to draw a line."
"Kids?" Lem looked around at his companions again, this time in puzzlement. "What kids?" Arnold shook his head. Smith shrugged.
"The Welker fellow, maybe?" Rachel said. "Interested in our animals. But he's sixteen, seventeen. That's of age."
"Maybe where you come from," said Brown. "Not here."
"I see." Lem's lips pressed in swift thought. "If we were to agree not to accept any new members, could we have a day to finish up our business in Browntown?"
"He's not interested in negotiating, Lem," Vera said.
"I was," said Brown, nettled. "I made you a good-faith offer to accept you as new residents."
"But you had to know," Rachel said, "that we wouldn't accept it. You were asking us to take the commitment we made and casually discard it. Is that the kind of resident
you want?"
Brown faltered momentarily. "No. I was after the kind that could figure out they were making a mistake, and stop making it."
"That describes you," Vera grumbled, "better than us." Arnold winced at the sharpness of the reply, and shoveled in some beans to cover his reaction.
"Not that that's really your fault," said Lem, still trying to conciliate. "All your life, you've been told the Lunar landings were an infamous hoax, and if you never see
or hear--"
"That's not the point!" snapped Brown, his patience finally gone. "I know full well they went to the Moon."
Five faces went rigid with shock. A fork clattered.
"I watched the videos when I was a boy, saw all your pictures. I even saw the photos of the rover tracks taken by telescopes -- but they weren't taken from Earth! There
were satellites sent to orbit the Moon, and they took the shots. I don't think there was a telescope on Earth that could make out the landers, or the tracks, or the
footprints. Ever."
His short tirade seemed to have the desired effect: they were thinking, or re-thinking. Smith was staring levelly at Lem. "I always thought those aperture numbers were
screwy," Arnold admitted.
"Unaugmented, yes," said Rachel, "but computers had been cancelling out atmospheric effects for decades."
"Fine, but even through vacuum at that distance--"
"Wait a minute. Wait a minute!" Lem Fonseca looked at Tom Brown in something like betrayal. "All along, you've known we're right. You should be our ally, not our
antagonist. Why did you reject us, reject our mission?"
"Because none of that matters now. It's done, finished. The Crash didn't just end that era ..."
Old, unbidden images flashed before his eyes. He watched the Empire State Building collapse to earth, in the dreadful certainty that Americans were bringing it down. He
watched the increasingly sporadic broadcasts and Net videos of madness pandemic, leaping borders as easily as a child bounded over sidewalk cracks. Then suddenly one day,
there was no more TV, or computers, or anything else.
Brown snapped back to the present and his guests. "The Crash severed that era from us, in a matter of months or hours or seconds."
"Seconds," Lem said. "The EMP's were global--"
"That doesn't matter! The knowledge doesn't do us any good. It doesn't help build an irrigation canal, doesn't fight off bandits or Mexican raiders, doesn't fight an
outbreak of typhoid or tuberculosis." Arnold went a little paler at the last word.
"I suppose you're right about that," Lem said. "What it does is highlight what we had, and give us a reason to aspire to regain it. I think it's wrong to be reconciled to
what we have today."
"Who's reconciled? I'd love to have the old luxuries back -- and I had them. I know what we've lost better than any of you. But there aren't any magic words we can speak
to invoke all that again. It's gonna be a lot of toil getting back to those heights. It takes lots longer climbing back up the mountain than it did falling off of it." He
smiled wryly. "And it's liable to be just as painful."
Lem strained to find an effective reply. "But even you admit it's worthwhile to regain it all."
"Sure. Maybe what you're digging up, if you could find it, would be meaningful in a few centuries, when we could do something with it. But the work you're expending for
the far future is work that doesn't go into today. And we've got big problems today even holding onto what little we've been able to preserve from those times. We need your
skills here and now."
"But you don't," Rachel said, "not really. Five people working on mundane matters aren't going to make a big practical difference to humanity, or America, or even
California or Arizona. What we can do in summoning a rebuilt civilization dwarfs that. There's no guarantee, but it's a risk we know is worth taking. Hopefully, future
generations will be glad we did."
Brown nodded. "Well, that might be a risk worth taking. If you had calculated your odds correctly."
Lem and Rachel stood steadfast against his thrust, but he did reach someone. "Tell us more about these satellites," Arnold asked. "Do you remember how close they orbited
the Moon? You probably wouldn't remember aperture size, but--"
"Arnold!" Lem snapped. "This is one data point. And you know how fallible human memory is. This disproves nothing!" Only when Rachel caressed his arm and whispered his
pet name did Lem think of how Brown might take his outburst. "I'm sorry, Mayor," he said, eyes downcast. "I'm not looking for a fight."
Brown snorted. "Son, I was in the wars at sixteen, and for a good twenty years after that. This isn't a fight, it's a friendly discussion." He looked at the five doleful
faces around the table. "Let me prove it. I'm offering you a squad of the Browntown Guard as armed escort, out as far as Kitt Peak if you want it. That territory's
dangerous. You can use the help."
"No," Lem said quickly. "We've imposed on your hospitality enough already. And we can handle ourselves, if the need arises."
Brown didn't argue that point. "Well, don't follow old Interstate 10 too far. Tucson is a ruin and a deathtrap. You're better off cutting south early, even if the roads
are bad. Even if there aren't any."
Lem received this with a cool caution, and a quick look at Rachel, that suggested he hadn't known there was anything wrong with Tucson. "Are you sure you won't accept an
escort?" Brown asked, but Lem's answer didn't change. He was growing stubborn. There was no point trying any further.
"All right, then. Now please, don't neglect your meals on my account. The least you folks deserve is a solid dinner to send you on your way."
Tom watched them vanish into the rainy night, their wagons carrying them back toward the town walls. He returned to the dining room in time to help Joan move the last of
the dishes to the kitchen, then let her be. Household duties were jealously guarded prerogatives with her.
He walked to the living room, his leg wound pulsing from the wet weather, and got on the telephone. Dave Hoch was expecting the call. "Any luck, Your Honor?" he shouted
on his end.
"About what I expected, Captain."
"Yeah. Kinda figured that."
"They'll be heading out early tomorrow morning. Southeast, then turning south somewhere shy of Tucson."
"Glad to know they've got that much sense," said Hoch, eliciting a silent smirk from Brown. "Did they accept an escort?"
"Nope."
"Understood. We'll get moving before sunrise. How long do you want us shadowing them?"
"Three days," Brown said. "Can't afford to have your detachment out of town more than a week. Good luck, Dave."
Lem held his whole band together through whatever debates they had among themselves that night, and they were gone the next morning. Life in Browntown quickly got back to
normal. Brown did hear at second hand that Ed intended never to speak to him again. He expected that would return to normal as well, in good time.
And if it didn't, it was just another trade-off in a life full of them.
He hadn't forgotten about the travelers in five days, not with a quarter of the Browntown Guard over the horizon, but they weren't in the forefront of his mind when the
call came in from the southeast sentries. "We've spotted Captain Hoch's unit coming in," the guardsman said, his voice cracking as much as the line. "Looks like they've got
casualties."
Brown was off in seconds. It had been three years since he had ridden a horse, but he commandeered one from the town hall stable. By the time he reached the east gate,
his backside was reminding him why he had stopped riding. He gritted his teeth, prodded his mount, and kept up speed all the way to the southeast post.
Hoch had pulled up next to the sentry tower. Despite a number of riderless horses, his detachment was larger than when it set out. Brown recognized the two new wagons,
one with its wood scored and the canvas cover ripped down the side. Hoch broke away from talking to the sentry as Brown rode up.
"What happened, Captain? Did you lose anyone?" His eyeball count had only reached seven of the original ten, but he had to let Hoch deliver the news.
"No, sir. Larsen took a bullet, but he's recovering well. The Moonies, though ..."
Brown's eyes fixed on the damaged wagon. "Who did it?"
"Mexicans. Bandits, not regular troops." Brown started dismounting, making the concession of not refusing Hoch's help. "They set up a good ambush. We were well ahead of
the wagons, keeping out of sight through some arroyo country. We never spotted their ambuscade when we passed, and they were smart enough not to try springing it on us."
Brown got down with a final grunt. "They weren't smart enough," said Hoch, "to watch the path ahead when they attacked Fonseca's band. We caught them still in the act,
killed them all." Hoch looked back at the wagons. "But the damage was done."
"Any of them survive, Dave?"
Brown's gentle tone was scarce comfort. "The black one, he's still alive, but he's gonna lose that right leg. Gangrene's already set in. The Oriental woman held on 'til
last night, longer than I expected. We buried everyone else at the ambush site. Too many to carry home."
A tight frown was the extent of Brown's mourning. "How much did you salvage?"
"We saved some of their hardware, what wasn't wrecked with an overturned wagon and the bandits smashing stuff. Guess it's been a while since they've seen vacuum tubes, for
one."
They walked toward the back wagon. "Did Smith's forge survive?"
"Mostly. He'll be able to work again, assuming he survives. And assuming he gets possession."
"He will. I think that much is fair."
He poked his head inside the wagon, and immediately found Larsen, being tended by two fellow troopers. Brown gave some encouraging words, and Larsen was gratifyingly
upbeat. Farther forward, in the shadows, a darker figure tossed in either delirium or fevered sleep. Brown didn't try saying anything to Smith. What was there to say?
He checked inside the other wagon before everyone headed back to town. A pretty decent amount of salvage: a little more margin against hard times. And there were always
hard times, sooner or later. It would have been a waste to lose those goods.
His eyes caught the blanket-wrapped bundle in a corner, its size and shape unmistakably human, unmistakably her. What a shame. And those vacuum tubes had turned out so
fine.
Mayor Brown wasn't much good for work the rest of the day, and left town as dusk gathered. He told Joan not to bother cooking, having to snap at her before she'd let him
scavenge his odds and ends. He dragged a rickety chair outside his front door, and sat with his plate and two drinks. One was beer; the other was a half-full bottle of
cactus hooch he hadn't touched in nearly two years. This night, he knew he'd be needing the chaser.
He picked at dinner, without looking at what he ate. His eyes were on the star-flecked heavens, as he waited for the Moon to rise over Browntown.
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