and in fact, there was something not merely foreign but alien about her. She was a small brown thing who spoke softly, made very little eye contact, and seemed to be full of private thoughts—her expression was very shy or quietly, ineffably confident. She was heavily pregnant. Morton beamed with pride throughout the dinner, while his wife smiled silently and looked down at her plate, her belly, only occasionally lifting her dark eyes to look around. . . .
Everyone who was anyone in town was there to see the Mortons’ strange, impossible visitor. Squeezed around the long wooden table were, among others, two Justices of the town’s High Court, Justice Woodbury and Justice Rutledge, silver haired and bald respectively, and very grave in their bearing; Dr. Bradley, lame and hunched, short and wild haired and scarred, who beady-eyed Liv with frank suspicion; Mr. Waite, who led the town’s Smilers in their meetings, and who was young and pretty and as earnest as befitted his position; and dour Mr. Peckham, who ran the town’s farming operations, whom the others addressed variously as Overseer, Secretary, Quartermaster, and Chief. And their wives, of course, who each explained that they were the Secretary or Chair of some Voluntary Society or Organizational Committee or Educational Association or other, or more than one. . . .
Judges and doctors and meeting leaders looked exceedingly silly in furs and hides. Not, Liv supposed, that she looked any less wild. It was hard to be sure; there was no good mirror glass in all of New Design. Probably a mercy.
They ate near-deer meat and green leaves, boiled and spiced with some unfamiliar bitter herb. The deer meat tasted slightly of fish.
Morton led them in a toast to New Design, to the Republic, and to the General’s return. The assembled gentlemen gave low growls of approval. The ladies smiled and dipped their heads.
“They are saying,” Justice Rutledge said, “that it is a providence that has restored him to us. You are much admired as the agent of that providence, Mrs. Alverhuysen.”
“Thank you, Your Honor.”
“It is an excellent irony,” Justice Woodbury offered, “that the General who fought for a Republic that taught us to disdain powers and providences and to, ah, to build, to build with our own hands. To build a world of man’s devising. Ah, if he has been restored to us by some preternatural providence. An excellent irony.” He creaked a smile and was rewarded with polite laughter, and some grave head-nodding from his colleague Rutledge.
“How is the General?” Liv asked. “Our long flight west was hard on him. Is he stronger now? Who takes care of him?”
There was an awkward silence. No one would meet Liv’s eye.
Morton coughed and spoke. “Ah, the General. The stories I could tell! I recall one day when we tented on the plains of Sarf. You were there, Rutledge, weren’t you? We were movin’ our forces southwest from Brenham—’64, ’65, it was. We were only one step ahead of the Line and . . .”
He leaned back and made wide vague scene-setting gestures.
“The plains were vast and golden; the grass was golden, too. Through our telescopes we could see them at work behind us. They built the Line as they went; we could see its smoke. The plains of Sarf throng with buffalo, as many of you know, and the Line’s thund’rin advance drove those magnificent beasts quite mad with fear. The Line scattered them like a broom scatt’rin mice. Stampede was always a danger. We were only one step ahead, all the way across the plains. We’d raid at night and then withdraw. We’d played that game all over a thousand miles of Sarf. A great arc! Like a bow. Tense like a bow. You’d not think it possible, but the Line was always only one day’s work from catchin’ us. They had dreadful machines with them that could flatten a hill and drive the rails as easy as you or I might saw a log. I don’t know that we even slowed them much. The Engine—I reckon it was Dryden Engine, but how could we be sure?—pushin’ forward at the tip of that line, like poison on a speat tip. We’d dealt them a terrible defeat at Brenham, you see, Mrs. Alverhuysen, and they hungered for revenge.”
Morton was a little drunk. He paused to swig.
“And yet when I brought the General his shavin’ mirror that evening in his tent, he was quite calm. Quite calm. Half the camp wakin’ from