mine.
—Yeah? Dead now. Mine now.
—You’re a crude one. A lot of the young ones are crude. These are crude times. I hear you’re a tracker.
—Yes.
—There’s work for you. The Lodge is close, here. Look into the fire, Knoll. Listen. They speak to us in the flames.
Knoll kneels by the fire, and the flames leap. There’s a bloody blackness at their pulsing core. A voice sounds from a great distance, both familiar and deeply, perversely strange.
—Knoll.
—Master?
—This is not your master. You may call me Marmion. I blaze bodiless now in our Lodge. Creedmoor bore me into your world, most recently.
—Who’s Creedmoor?
—He is not dead, Knoll. We would feel it. Thirty years he served us, sometimes well though never faithfully. We would feel it. He is not dead, and yet the months go by and he has not returned.
Jen thinks,
—He should’ve come here, Knoll. I was the contact. He should have come here if he was coming back to us.
—Who’s Creedmoor? Never heard of him.
—He has not come back to us. He has betrayed us. That woman has led him astray.
Knoll furrows his brow:
—Master?
The one that called itself Marmion said:
—We need a tracker, Knoll. We need a simple man.
—That’s me.
—I will come with you. I am angry, Knoll.
THREE: REBIRTH
Mr. Waite, leader of the Smilers of what used to be New Design, and is now New New Design, finds his faith in a sunny disposition and a positive attitude sorely tested these days. He was never suited to leadership, but the town’s handful of survivors turned to him in those dreadful cold months after the Battle, first to keep their spirits high with singsongs and improving homilies, and then, when no better candidate emerged, to be their President. No, no, he said, we must keep the secular and sacred functions of government separate; and it was pointed out to him that the people of the Republic now numbered 233, and were long past caring for matters of principle; and in the end, how could he say no?
After the winter, they numbered an even two hundred. Leadership in such times is a terrible burden.
He married Sally Morton so that her unborn child might have a father. It came out wrong—marked in utero by the Linesmen’s bombs. It came out thin, and gray, and silent, and cringing, and habituated to fear. Another child is on its way, and Waite is cautiously hopeful.
Waite’s face is no longer smooth or boyish. Leadership has hardened him. He looks a lot like the old General, now, thin and severe. He smiles only for good reason.
New New Design is built in a river valley, a few miles east of the ruins of the old town. The survivors wintered there in the caves. Now Waite goes walking, once a week, in the ruins. It’s part of his new routine.
He tells his people that he goes walking in the ruins so that he can absorb the wisdom of their dead comrades, and also so that he can scavenge for useful tools. In fact, he goes there mostly to be alone.
He stops among the razed barns on the west side to remember how rich New Design was—how finely engineered a society it was—what a remarkable and generous achievement! And then he thinks that he has no notion of how he might go about building such a thing, and he sits with his head on his hands on a heap of charred timbers.
New New Design is rebuilding again. It’s spring. New houses cut from fresh logs are going up. The children, who number ninety-eight, are being schooled. A schoolhouse was the first thing they built. It’s Waite’s job to rebuild the world. No wonder he needs to be alone sometimes.
He watches birds settle in the rafters.
On the scorched floor, trapped beneath the timbers, is the skeleton of a Linesman, wrapped in a slick gray coat that does not rot and wearing a singed gas mask.
Waite unstraps the gas mask and kicks it with all his strength. Which is not inconsiderable—he used to be a fine athlete. The mask sails, flapping its straps over the ruins of poor dead Mr. Digby’s barn, and lands with a splash in a water-logged bomb-crater.
There’s an answering crack from the earth under Waite’s feet, and he jumps and puts his hand to his gun.
The crack repeats. It sounds like a stone being broken with hammers, by roots. It repeats again. It sounds like a man cracking his knuckles, over and over. It sounds like barking; like laughter. The earth