Tales of Downfall and Rebirth (61 page)

“'Cause he saved Topanga village's bacon, that's why.” The guy from Fernwood—Jared thought his name was Lou, but he wasn't sure—filled him in on what had been going on farther south. Jared had just enough time for a little pride. Then the fighting picked up again, and he got too busy trying to stay alive to worry about anything else.

*   *   *

Bruce Delgado's lance had blood on the iron head and on the shaft. He wasn't especially proud of the kill—he'd skewered a fleeing man from behind—but it was better than nothing. Every Topangan down was a Topangan he wouldn't have to worry about later on.

This was building up to be the biggest victory Chatsworth had won over the hippies in a hell of a long time. Maybe the biggest ever. Eddie Epstein grinned at him from behind another catcher's mask. “You ready to go surfing in the Pacific, boss?” he asked.

“That'd be something,” Bruce said. “I haven't even seen the fucking Pacific since the Change.”

“Bet it's still cold,” Eddie said.

“Ya think?” Bruce said. They both chuckled. Los Angeles, of course, got hot. The Valley, and especially the north end, got blazing hot in the summertime. Bruce had heard the ocean off places like Florida was warm as bathwater. Strangers who'd come to L.A. before the Change often figured the Pacific worked the same way.

And they'd frozen their asses off finding out it didn't. A current from the north or something kept the water cold all the time. As long as Bruce could claim a stretch of beach as his own, he didn't care if polar bears sunbathed on it.

He gulped mixed wine and water from his canteen. He wished that were cold, but it wasn't. One of the things he missed most from the pre-Change days was ice cubes. You didn't see those in Chatsworth any more.

“Come on, man!” Garth Hoskins called to him. “Let's clean these fuckers out once and for all, y'know?”

“Sounds good to me.” Bruce waved the Lancers forward. Infantry screened them. Longbows or crossbows gave even the heaviest cavalry grief. So did barricades. You wanted your horsemen out in the open and moving fast. Momentum was a big part of what made a charging knight so formidable. Yes, you had a nice, pointy lance. But you also had a ton or so of horse and man and ironmongery behind the point. Get all that moving at fifteen or twenty miles an hour . . .

And it's a medium-bad fender-bender in the old days. There were times when Bruce envied people like Garth. They didn't have memories from a dead world rising up all uneasy out of the grave.

Out in the open and moving fast was what the Chatsworth Lancers couldn't manage here. From Glenview down to the Pacific, Topanga Canyon Boulevard had always been only two lanes wide. The people who'd built it must have been proud they'd managed even that. The road wasn't quite so winding as Pacific Coast Highway or the route along the north shore of Maui, but it wasn't wide and it wasn't straight. Well, if this were ideal terrain for knights, Chatsworth would have reached the sea a long time ago.

A Topangan halfway up the hillside shot an arrow that splintered on the beat-up asphalt a few feet in front of Bruce. That it splintered meant it was post-Change work with a wooden shaft. Valley archers went to war with aluminum-shafted hunting arrows made for deer and bear. Aluminum was wonderful stuff. But they had to keep reusing what they already had. Without electricity, they'd never get more.

Some Valley men shot at the Topangan. Nobody hit him. Agile as a monkey, he scrambled out of range up the steep hillside.

A foot soldier came trotting back to the Lancers. “Little trouble up ahead,” he reported, sketching a salute to Bruce. “They've got this chickenshit barricade across the road. It's only, like chest high, but the way through is real narrow.”

“Well, let's have a look.” Bruce urged Sherman up to a trot. The rest of the Lancers followed. They were content to let him take the lead—partly because he was the leader, partly because anything bad that happened would happen to him first.

He rounded one more kink in Topanga Canyon Boulevard. Sure as the devil, there it was: a chickenshit barricade. It was enough to have stalled his infantry. Knights weren't the ideal answer to barricades. They weren't bad on foot, either, though. The Lancers' protection wasn't too heavy to move in, but it was far better than anything the Topangans had. Force them back and clear the way . . . and then do it again half a mile deeper into the canyon?

Bruce was still mulling it over when he heard something and spied motion up the slope out of the corner of his eye. “Oh, shit,” he muttered—uninspired last words, but what he came up with as the avalanche thundered down on him and the rest of the Lancers packed together on the narrow road.

Not all the rocks and rock piles up at the top of the canyon had got there by themselves, he realized now, when he couldn't do anything about it. And the Topangans hadn't set their half-assed barricade where they did by accident or happenstance, either. No, they'd known what they were up to, all right. Oh, hadn't they just? Plan A had been defending the works up at Glenview. This was Plan B.

Sherman snorted and reared. He knew those rocks rolling down on him—and, incidentally, on the man who rode him—were the worst news in the world. Knowing it didn't mean he could do thing one about it, either, though. A stone the size of a table slammed into his side. Another one, smaller but nothing like small, hit Bruce Delgado in the head. The Wehrmacht's finest manganese steel did zip against a blow like that. Bruce was mercifully unconscious as the rockslide swept him and his hopes off the road and down into the depths of the canyon.

*   *   *

Jared and Connor eyed the mess on Topanga Canyon Boulevard. The Topangans had cleared away their improvised breastwork. The avalanche still blocked the road, though. Under the watchful stares of Topangan guards with blowguns and bows, glum prisoners from the Valley's failed campaign swung picks and sledges and turned big ones into little ones.

When they got done with that, they'd repair the roadbed itself. The landslide had bitten a chunk out of it. Then the Valley men would go home. Turning them loose was cheaper and easier than feeding them. There'd been talk of putting them to work at the seaside salt pans, which wasn't a job many locals wanted. But Topanga had avoided slavery up to now, and the old farts like Jared, who felt especially hinky about it, still had enough clout to hold the beast at bay.

Kwame Curtis came up to study the prisoners at work. “Hey, it's the hippie Marine!” Jared said.

“Up yours, man,” the fighting Brain answered without heat. “I managed to get something to work, that's all. We'd've been in deep kimchi if it didn't.”

“Kimchi!” Connor grinned. He loved the stinky stuff. Jared didn't know what real Koreans would have thought of Topanga's pickled cabbage spiced with garlic and chilies, but he liked it, too. The strong flavors perked up food that was too often bland.

The breeze swung around to come from the north. Jared wrinkled his nose at a stink nothing like kimchi's. “I hate that smell,” he said. Some men and horses still lay under the rockslide.

“Oh, me, too,” Kwame Curtis said. “I smelled it in Kuwait and Iraq, and then in the Dieoff after the Change. Brings back bad memories, you know?”

“Yeah,” Jared said. “This isn't as bad as the Dieoff. Then you couldn't get it out of your clothes or out of your hair or off your skin no matter how much you washed.”

“I remember. I'm not likely to ever forget. Nobody who lived through it is,” Curtis said.

Jared nodded. “You know that Lynyrd Skynyrd song?” he asked.

“‘That Smell'?” Kwame Curtis asked. Jared nodded once more. Curtis went on, “The smell of death sure as hell surrounded us, didn't it?”

Connor looked from one of them to the other. There they went again, talking about shit from the dead world, the lost world, the world they still remembered and that still turned real for them in dreams. One of these years, the last person with memories and dreams like that would die. Then the post-Change folks, the ones who'd never known anything different from what they had now, would be able to go about their business without having to listen to Back in my day, we could do this or that or the other impossible thing.

It hadn't happened yet. Looking at his son, Jared guessed Connor wouldn't be altogether heartbroken when it did. He'd never lived in the United States, after all. His country was Topanga: a beach, a canyon, an uneasy border with the Chatsworth Lancers—who'd be having their own fun and games now that so many of them had suddenly vanished from the scene.

My canyon, 'tis of thee,

Sweet land of the hippie,

Of thee I sing!

Jared snorted. Then he wondered why.
It might not make a bad anthem for Connor's grandchildren. And they wouldn't even know what they were missing. Poor, sorry buggers,
Jared thought. He turned back to watch the Valley men swinging sledgehammers under the warm sun.

by
Jane Lindskold

Jane Lindskold is an award-winning,
New York Times
bestselling author of twenty-some novels, including the Firekeeper Saga and the Breaking the Wall novels, and more than sixty short stories.

About this story she says: In the southwest, availability of water and the many different cultures that have long shared the region mean the Change would take a very different shape. I'd like to thank Diana Northup, Kenneth Ingham, and Michael Wester for their tales and photographs of the malpais. Thanks also to Paul Dellinger who, many years ago, gave me a copy of Louis L'Amour's novel
Flint
, which inspired Brett's kipuka.

“H
a
ve you heard the news?” Nathan Tso asked almost before Brett Hawke had seated himself.

“News, Grandfather?”

Brett used the title out of habit. Nathan Tso wasn't his grandfather but, although there was no biological relationship, the old man was the closest thing to family Brett had left. The rest . . .

Memory shaded red tried to force its way up. Fiercely, Brett shoved it down, focusing hard on his surroundings. He wasn't in the Cloverleaf. He was sitting cross-legged on a handwoven rug spread over the floor of a small room in a cluster of buildings high atop Acoma mesa. Facing him was Nathan Tso: half Navajo, half Acoma Indian. Nathan's hair was iron fading into white, falling past his shoulders and bound by a faded blue bandanna.

His reddish brown skin was weathered and deeply lined. He possessed the stocky build that was the heritage of both his peoples, but not a trace of fat.

Grandfather Nathan hadn't been fat even before, when food had been more plentiful and many Indians had grown fleshy, victims of the white flour–and-lard diet that had bred the Navajo taco and related abominations: abominations that had led to disproportionate levels of diabetes, heart trouble, and related diseases among the Native peoples. Diseases that, in turn, had led to disproportionate levels of death when modern medicine was no longer available. There had been so many missing faces each time he'd visited . . .

Speaking rapidly, so that words might force memory away, Brett repeated, “News?”

“Yes. Riders came from the Double A Ranch. They wanted to know if some people had come here, if we were hiding them.”

Acoma's spiritual center was the mesa that had been popularized as Sky City by tourist promoters. It wasn't the biggest of villages, but it was arguably the most secure. Built up on a mesa that rose above the surrounding area, the village had successfully resisted attacks by the Spanish—even after some of those fiercely determined armored warriors had climbed all the way to the top.

After the End, the road that had been built to make possible a tourist shuttle had been left intact, but numerous walls and small forts built along its length assured that no one was riding up unseen and unchallenged. The only other “easy” access was a stair cut into the stone—and even though he'd been both up and down that narrow, twisting passage more times than he could remember, Brett wouldn't call the route “easy.” A single man—heck, a child with a good-sized club—could defend the top long enough for help to be summoned.

When he wanted to, Nathan Tso could talk the hind leg off a donkey, as . . . Brett forced his mind away from who used to say things like that, concentrating on what Grandfather Nathan had said. More important, on what he hadn't said.

“Some people? Hiding? You mean criminals? Did someone steal something from La Padrona?”

“In a manner of speaking.”

Grandfather Nathan nodded. Brett recognized the tiny quirk at the corner of his mouth that meant the old man was hiding a smile. A smile, Brett realized, because Brett was asking questions. Nathan Tso offered a little more information as a reward.

“She feels that they stole themselves from her.”

“Huh? Stole themselves? Did they owe her labor for shelter or something?”

“No. They were longtime members of her ranchero: a blacksmith and farrier, a talented seamstress, a mechanic and metalworker, and a nurse who had studied both at college and with the
curanderas
. Oh, and their children, six in all, the eldest a girl of fourteen.”

Brett shook his head as if a fly had landed in his ear, but it was jarring thoughts, not a bug, that were making his head buzz.

“That doesn't make sense. People with those skills would have earned their keep and more. They'd be welcome anywhere. Grants or San Rafael would take them in. Heck, even if they weren't Indian, any of the Native communities would find their way to giving them a place, maybe even adopt them into the tribe.”

“Very true.”

Silence again. Brett forced himself to puzzle through the problem as once, long ago, he might have puzzled his way back along a badger's scattered tracks for nothing other than the pleasure of finding the way to its den. This trail was hard. Brett didn't like thinking about how humans interacted, about the things they did to one another, even to those who offered only kindness. But Grandfather Nathan was looking at him, his dark eyes amid their deep lines watchful and sad. The little smile had vanished.

“Slavery!” Brett burst out at last. “No! That's not possible.”

When the world had ended, the Acoma elders had claimed to have had visions that told them that the transformation of the world was long-term. They'd immediately put people to work clearing out the cisterns, hauling tanks for additional water storage, and otherwise preparing for siege. They succeeded not only in holding the mesa and the immediate watershed, but also the associated villages of McCartys and Acomita. Both Acoma's security and its strength as a community made it a likely destination for people on the run.

Brett didn't want to believe it. “They've got to have run for some other reason. No one around here would tolerate keeping slaves.”

“Who will stop the practice once it begins?” came the reply—as once, when Brett had been nine, the old man had asked what diverted the flow of water or why a mountain lion had turned aside when tracking a deer.

“Begins? Oh . . .”

Brett understood. He didn't like understanding, but he did. In these years following what he had heard people call “the Change”—as if it were a natural thing, like a woman going through menopause, instead of a soul-ripping end of the world—the way in which people lived had, well, changed. He didn't know what had happened in other parts of the world, but here water ruled as it always had done.

Before the End, most of the local population had lived and worked in Grants, a city of some eight thousand or so, about an hour west, as I-40 flies, from Albuquerque. After the End, Grants had made a rebound of sorts—unlike much larger Albuquerque, which, except for a narrow strip along the Rio Grande, had depended on modern technology for its water. Even so, much of the region's surviving population had redistributed, so that Grants was just another village.

The Indians had formed communities in Acoma, Laguna, and Zuni. The Navajo—the largest nation, whose vast reservation lands were mostly desert—had divided into smaller groups, often seminomadic, following their sheep wherever they could find grazing.

San Rafael, a few miles southwest of Grants, which boasted a good water source from the Ojo del Gallo springs, had prospered. Indeed, where water was concerned, San Rafael was doing better than it had before, since, as the water table had recovered from excessive urban and industrial use, the springs had flowed more strongly. Farming was good and the mixed population fiercely protective of their rights.

The same pattern was true for various ranches farther south, including areas that had been the El Malpais National Conservation Area, the Cebolla Wilderness, and the plains.

La Padrona had staked her claim southeast of the malpais.

“La Padrona,” Brett said, thinking aloud. “She's Anglo, isn't she, despite the title?”

“That's right,” Nathan agreed. “Annabella Andersen. Along with her late husband, Andrew, she ran the Double A Ranch.”

“Late?”

“Drew Andersen died a bit over two years ago. From what I've heard, Annabella is determined to hold on to the ranch for their children—especially for her son, Andy. Andy's eighteen now. When his father died, he was young for grown men to take orders from—especially when his mama was a very pretty woman and might be presumed to be looking for a husband to run the ranch for her. There are those who say Andy's too inexperienced, even now.”

“I met Drew Andersen,” Brett said thoughtfully. “Worked there a couple of times when they were looking for someone to train young horses.”

“Then you might have met one of the men they're hunting,” Nathan said. “Did you meet their farrier?”

“Emilio?” Brett dredged up the name as if from a lifetime ago, rather than only three years.

“Emilio Gallardo,” Nathan replied, offering the little smile of approval. “That's right. He and his wife, Felicita, have decided they would like to leave La Padrona's employ. However, apparently, La Padrona feels this would be a mistake.”

“But Emilio and his family didn't come here?”

“No. Neither to the high pueblo or the lower villages.” Nathan leaned forward. “I dreamed you would be the one to find them and help them get away. Then you came to my door and I thought this would be so. You see, the Acoma elders have forbidden interference.”

Brett understood. “The elders don't want to stir up something with Double A. One ranch alone wouldn't be a problem, but those ranchers are all allied.”

“Yes. The elders of Acoma strongly disapprove of the Double A's actions. However, they also must think about the welfare of the rest of our community. You are an honored friend, but not a member of the tribe. Their commands do not bind you.”

Brett remembered Emilio Gallardo, remembered their long talks about whether horseshoes were necessary, about weighting shoes to achieve certain gaits, and how best to trim a hoof for different sorts of terrain. He'd learned a lot during those talks, including things he still used, things necessary. He shifted uncomfortably.

Perhaps seeing Brett's unease, knowing that pushing him would make the young man bolt, Nathan deliberately turned the conversation to other things: the new bow he was making, the promising harvest, the strong late summer monsoons. He asked little about Brett's life, letting the younger man volunteer information about the health of his animals, his battles with squash bugs, the effectiveness of the new cistern he'd built last winter. They shared a meal of squash and speckled bean stew with pork, accompanied by yellow corn tortillas and thick honey.

As soon as it was polite, Brett excused himself. He collected his horses and supplies from the lower village, then rode south. Off to the west, the black flow of the malpais stretched, a land as rough and pockmarked as the moon and—even to the majority of those who lived right alongside it—just as alien.

As he rode, Brett tried to distract himself from Nathan's news. He thought about how well his business had gone. The general store in lower Acoma had given him good value for the boots he'd made. The rabbit pelts hadn't traded for as much as last time, but that was to be expected. Rabbits were plentiful this time of year, and the boys and girls set to guard the crops kept their rabbit sticks ready. He'd bought a jar of a strain of beans said to grow well in high heat and low water. It was always best to buy seed stock early, in case the winter was harsh, and hungry folk ate their future.

Thoughts of the foals he'd been approached about training over the winter kept Brett's thoughts occupied for a while longer, as did the question of whether he could cut enough hay to support an augmented herd. Nonetheless, inevitably Brett found his thoughts turning to what had happened to Emilio Gallardo and his family.

Why did La Padrona think she could start keeping slaves? Slavery was one foulness that hadn't arisen in this region since the End. Indentured servitude, sure, and people who sold their souls to the company store, as the old saying went, but outright slavery? Not yet. Too few people and too harsh a climate to support idlers—and, unless kept after with a lash, slaves were idlers. They had no incentive to be otherwise.

“What would Leo have thought?” Brett wondered aloud, causing his buckskin's ears to twitch back in startled response. “Would he have obeyed the elders?”

Leo had been Nathan's grandson. He and Brett had been closer than brothers. Brothers only share parents. Brett and Leo had shared a passion for the wilderness and all the skills needed to survive in it. They'd met when they were eight, in a Cub Scout troop associated with their grammar school. Leo's family was Acoma, but they had lived in Grants. Leo's mom, who always seemed to be pregnant or nursing, ran a sort of informal day care. Leo's dad did whatever came to hand, mostly construction, but he was a fair hand with stock as well. He wasn't exactly lazy; nonetheless, even as a boy, Brett could tell that Leo's parents had a different attitude about making money. They wanted enough to get by, but didn't necessarily care about getting ahead.

When Brett and Leo had been nine, Nathan Tso had come to live with his Acoma kin. The old man—for so he seemed even then, although his hair was still mostly black and the lines on his skin not so deep—had seemed to know everything about what the boys thought was important. He'd taught them how to track, to ride bareback, to shear a sheep. Later, he'd taught them how to hunt and—more important—how to dress their kills, use every part, and respect the lives they were taking.

Brett and Leo dropped out of Scouts in favor of becoming Nathan Tso's acolytes. Brett, who had black hair and dark brown eyes, courtesy of his Italian-American mother and Black Irish father, grew his hair long and didn't think there was any higher compliment than being mistaken for Leo's brother—as he often was, although Brett was taller and leaner, his skin tanning with a hint of olive, rather than to red-brown. When the boys were fourteen and fancied themselves men, they had sworn an oath as blood brothers, with Grandfather Nathan as witness.

After high school, they'd both gone off to Albuquerque to attend UNM. Brett couldn't figure out what he wanted to major in, but was leaning toward something to do with animals and maybe a minor in anthropology. Leo had immediately declared a double major in accounting and computers, but then he'd always been good at math.

A soft whicker from Little Warrior, his buckskin riding horse, brought Brett back to himself. Twilight was gathering and they were nearly to where they had to turn off. Brett patted the gelding on the side of his neck. He knew the horse could probably have taken him home, but he instilled in any horse he trained a respect for the rough lands in which they lived. Horses were good people, but they also had far too much imagination. On the plains or in the forest, a runaway horse was in danger of nothing worse that wearing itself out or straining a tendon. Here, the consequences for the same moment of panic were nothing short of mutilation and death.