They were down from the low rolling heights, cutting eastward across open fields. There had been farms in the hills-undulating country you could call hills only by contrast to the flat alluvial Valley floor-and even more orchards and vineyards, but more forest than anything else. The lowland was all cleared except for the banks of the odd stream and small woodlots, or had been before the Change; and this close to the high ground it was all naturally well drained, unlike the bottomland farther east. Right now it was tall green grassland getting shaggy with brush, spots half blue with May's camas flowers. Ready for the plow, but the trees were starting to encroach and the orchards to degenerate into pathless thickets. In a few decades it'd be twenty-foot trees and heavy brush laced together with feral grapevines as thick as your thigh; in fifty, dense mixed woods. He'd grown up working-class of a deeply rural sort in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, and he knew what it was like to take down a big tree with ax or a crosscut saw, and to get the roots out without dynamite or a powered winch.
The problem is that there just aren't enough people around-to do that, or anything else. So my grandchildren will have to bust their asses: or:
"Signe?" he said. She glanced over and he went on: "Didn't you tell me once most of the Willamette was grassland when the pioneers arrived? Looks like it's growing up in forest pretty quick now."
She nodded. "That was the Indians. They used to set fires in the autumn to kill off brush and saplings, so there was a lot of prairie and oak meadow. Grazing for deer and elk, and plenty of camas root in the prairies. This would all be solid forest otherwise."
"We might do some burning," Havel said. "Be sort of dangerous, though: have to do it after wheat harvest and be real careful the fires didn't get out of controclass="underline" "
He made an exasperated sound between his teeth. Running a country, even a little one, turned out to be a lot like being a juggler, only you couldn't help dropping an egg now and then-if you were lucky, you got to pick which one went ker-splat.
And eggs don't scream when you fumble them. And to think I wanted this job: OK, let's be honest in here where it's private: I still want this job. I like making things happen instead of having them happen to me, and I'm pretty good at it, which is good for everyone. And I will purely and surely do whatever it takes to win a fight, which is just what we need with Arminger around. I just don't like some parts of it much.
Signe loped her mount back a little west and waved her coiled lariat at a horse visibly thinking of straying, helping to keep the herd bunched until they crossed an overgrown ditch and swung onto Webfoot Road, turning north. The beasts saw no particular reason not to stop and take a drink from a pond or eat a little of the succulent new grass now and then, but they were reasonably used to doing unreasonable things because humans told them to, and the lead mare was well trained.
Still, I get daydreams about just being a rancher or a farmer myself, he thought. Just honest work to put food on the table and lay something by for the kids. But someone has to run things, or Momma-threw-away-the-baby-and-raised-the-afterbirth types like Arminger and Crusher Bailey will do it.
He glanced eastward; about half a mile thataway you could see why the little county two-lane called Webfoot had gotten its name, but big parts of the swamp looked new, too. There were dead trees in it, their roots killed out by standing water.
"That must have happened when the Keene Reservoir broke," he said. "Damn, but I hate to see things get run down that way."
"Hey, Mike, remember you're not Lord Bear today, and staggering along carrying the Outfit on your shoulders," Signe said, reading his mind with disconcerting ease; that happened more and more often as their marriage accumulated years. "You're Mr. Brown from Cottonwood Ranch, and it's a fine spring day with the sun shining and no cares in this world-except getting our skulls crushed by Crusher Bailey, or our bodies shot full of arrows, but Mr. Brown wouldn't know about that."
"Yeah, life is good for Mr. Brown," he said, grinning back.
There really was a John Brown of Cottonwood Ranch, and they'd met fairly often at conferences. He was one of CORA's movers and shakers, and the Central Oregon Ranchers' Association was as close as the country east of the Cascades had to a government nowadays, not that that was saying much.
"Not that the poor man would appreciate it," Signe replied, and they both laughed.
The rancher was also a serious chill-dill-pickle-up-the-butt worrier, which made Signe's comment sly as well as to the point. He'd always liked her sense of humor.
We get along pretty good most of the time, he thought. Which makes it more of a contrast when we don't.
He relaxed a little and took a deep breath; it was only slightly seasoned with the dust and smell of the horses.
Under the rumble of their hooves was a deep quiet; the sough of wind though the grass and an occasional roadside tree, a rookery of pigeons sitting on a section of telephone wire still standing, small animals flashing across the road; once he glimpsed the flicker of something bigger along a field boundary. He guessed at a buck from the brief glimpse of a black-tipped tail, but possibly a feral cow. Wild game was coming back nicely the last few years with all this rich edge-habitat land to feed off. In a way the ghastly outbreak of plague in the refugee camps back in Change Year One had been fortunate-there hadn't been time to strip every living thing from the Valley lands before the Black Death finished what starvation began, with assists from cholera and typhus.
And keep focused. This isn't like riding out to find some deer or wild pigs. We might get attacked before we reach the tavern.
The land went by slowly; you didn't push horses past walking pace when you were taking them to sell and wanted them in prime condition at the end of the trip. Distances that had been a quick run to the mall before the Change meant hours of walking, now.
I wonder when we'll stop comparing things to how they were before the Change? he thought idly.
Then, with wry honesty. Never. I was a man grown by then and I'm always going to be a stranger in this world. Signe and Luanne do it less than I do-they were teenagers-and Ken does it more-he was past fifty. Astrid less than any of them, but then, she was just fourteen and never really touched down much on Planet Consensus Reality anyhow. Our kids will probably think we're lying through our teeth about the old world and get bored as hell with our stories.
The sun crept by overhead, getting on towards afternoon. Two big carts went by them southbound drawn by eight yoke of oxen each-car-wheeled, but with new-made frames of timber and metal, both loaded with tall pyramids of PCB pipe lashed down with rope; no doubt the tubing was ripped out of a derelict town or Portland itself and was headed out to repair someone's plumbing system. The oxen were red-and-white Herefords, not the best for the work but passable, plodding along with splay-footed patience along the cracked and potholed asphalt. The drivers walked beside the wagons, spears in their hands, and not looking too badly off-even a sadistic son of a bitch like Arminger couldn't afford to make everyone in his territory miserable. The wagoneers weren't looking too worried, either; but then nobody was likely to pick a fight over half a ton of plastic pipe.
Only governments stole on that scale, and Crusher Bailey hadn't quite gotten up to the robber-baron level.
Two lighter carts came by, each drawn by a pair of mules; Signe called a question, which was in character, and the driver told them what they carried: shelled filberts, nut oil and smoked salmon-the runs were improving on the Columbia since the dams at Bonneville and The Dalles broke, but not very far up the Willamette as yet. The rest of the cargo was salvaged goods from the dead cities, fine fabric and cutlery and edge tools, plus aspirin, antiseptic ointment and Turns, things you rarely saw anymore. Not surprisingly, that wagon had more guards, mounted ones. They looked more alert than the spearmen guarding the load of pipe, and also looked like they were Protectorate men-at-arms; gleaming oiled chain or scale hauberks covering them neck to knees, big kite-shaped shields slung over their backs, conical nose-guarded helmets over mail coifs on their heads and long double-edged swords at their belts, lances in their hands with the butts resting in rings riveted to their right stirrups. The morning sun shone liquidly on the metal of their armor, and their eyes were hard and wary, constantly moving.