Union Rock, Wyoming, July, the fifty-fourth year of the Kurian Order: David Valentine headed east again on a road even older than Route 66, escorting two of the four Lifeweavers rescued - some might say negotiated, others swindled - out of Seattle. The Oregon Trail had its posts and stops rearranged, but the old path is still much the same as it was in the nineteenth century, right down to form of conveyance, for oxen and horses have no octane requirements.
Instead of bringing pioneers west, it sees refugees plodding east and smugglers traveling in both directions. Like their forefathers of two centuries ago, the parties travel in groups for safety, guided by experienced mountain men. They travel armed and wary with good cause, for bandits and grifters hover along its length, and Reapers cover a shocking amount of distance in seven hours of hard running. All are on the prowl for the vulnerable and the careless who might be threatened or cajoled out of valuables, from transport animals to hand-cranked radios, even if they manage to hang on to their auras.
There's a small Freehold or two along the trail, sometimes filling a mountain valley, or some good ground in a river basin. Valentine, listening to stories of other wayfarers along the route, heard talk of a big celebration that always took place in the Wyoming United Grange at Union Rock-People from as far away as Denver, the Nebraska Sandhills, and the Wind River Freehold attended. Picnic tables erupted during the day on land, and fireworks burst overhead at night. News was swapped for news, knitting and quilting for items from the trader stalls, and any number of young people met and married in a whirlwind of celebration. It sounded like
the old summer festival in the Boundary Waters, and Valentine delayed his journey a week or two to linger and attend. He could go south easily enough from there, and, he hoped, reach Denver, and Southern Command's liaison, by late July.
They joined up with a bigger train, made up of old automobile chassis pulled by trail oxen. There was already talk of what each party would add to the festivities, making it sound like a potluck dinner with attendance running into the thousands.
Valentine didn't have to get to the Ozarks. The Ozarks came to him. A party of Wolves was in attendance for the Independence Day festivities, recruiting out of a tent thick with tobacco smoke, pecan pies, and Texas chilies and barbecue.
Valentine had seen such displays before, like the welcoming feast on his arrival in Missouri fifteen years ago. Good God, was it that long ago? He watched a boy clear a pie tin with two fingers like a bear dipping honey. Enjoy it, kid. It'll be brown rice and chicken twice a week with the Labor Regiments.
"Another Sioux, you think?" a sunbaked female sergeant with her stripes inked on her suspenders said to a bronze-skinned youth with a ponytail that dwarfed Valentine's. "Be a good summer for us if he joins. I'm sick of teaching kids how to stretch their canteens".
"Ya hey there, friend", the Amerind said, approaching. He raised his hand and met Valentine's palm hard enough to loosen a feeding tick, let alone trail dust. "You look like you know how to keep a scope zeroed. Thinking about using it on something bigger than antelope or wild horse?"
The Wolf at the food table hurried around it and into the crowd. "Bud above, that's Major Valentine! Tell me you ain't David Valentine, off Big Rock Hill and all". Valentine thought it an odd request. The goateed Wolf pushed forward and took off a battered slouch hat. "It's Hornsby, sir. We were in the rear guard on the march to Dallas, when the Razors were guarding the supply train. I helped you fix a bridge".
Valentine was grateful for the name. He extended his hand. "Hornsby. Red River. Good to see you again".
Hornsby made introductions to the recruiting team and guides. "I've got a couple more bodies for Southern Command. You'll want to keep an eye on these two. Meet Oberon and Titania. They're travelers like Father Wolf".
"I'll put us under your orders for the trip back, sir", the sergeant said.
"Actually, I think you're supposed to put me under arrest. But maybe I'll go with you as far as Missouri. I'll have to flake off there".
He'd let Styachowski know where to find him.
"Seen much of the celebration?" the sergeant asked.
"Just got in".
"Take a walk out to Union Rock. It's a sight to see".
Valentine saw the Lifeweavers comfortably installed in the Wolves' covered supply wagon, under constant guard thanks to the alcohol, tobacco, and firearms stored inside.
He wandered through the festival. A hundred or more separate parties seemed to be going on around a central broadway of trader stalls. Bikers congregated on their machines; black belts gave exhibitions of ice breaking for the kids. Ice cream was sold alongside bourbon and tequila. Teetotalers kept a distance from the stalls, and Valentine saw black-coated folk he guessed to be Mennonites, or maybe Amish. Games of baseball and basketball were in full swing on cleared patches of ground with equipment ranging from crude to commercial quality. Lively fiddles and bagpipes competed with accordion and tuba, but the biggest crowd was gathered around a pair of young, shaved-headed black boys creating an astonishingly complex rhythm with plastic produce buckets and drumsticks, with a few cowbells thrown in for gongs. When they finished, a preacher stepped forward and started an energetic sermon. Valentine listened to the mixture of oratory, showmanship, and gospel for a few minutes, then wandered off.
There was the profane keeping a discreet distance from the sacred. A little ways away from the rest of the camp some enterprising
prostitutes had set up their tents under a sign advertising gentlemen's entertainments, though their camp looked quiet for the moment.
Union Rock would be difficult to miss. It dominated the campsite like an unevenly risen bread loaf. A drum circle in tie-dyed shirts played, and passed around a joint, in its shade while a trio of barefoot girls festooned with beads danced.
There were any number of tourists walking around the rocks or climbing the more accessible parts. Valentine read an old pre-2022 landmark that mentioned this prominence as a popular stop on the westward-traveling Oregon Trail, which visitors often climbed to carve their names.
Someone had been hard at work since. A little path wound around the rock, traveled by families helping their children sound out the letters carved into the rock.
It was rather like a picture gallery, but the frames were shadow boxes, carved a forefinger's depth into the rock. Expertly crafted metal plaques were set into the boxes. Valentine moved down the line, reading with a little tingle running up his spine. The Ten Commandments, the Sermon on the Mount, and the Lord's Prayer, the Magna Carta, the Mayflower Compact, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and Bill of Rights, portraits of presidents and the postman Franklin, the Gettysburg Address, and an inaugural speech by Kennedy.
It wasn't limited to politicians. Valentine saw a young man busy making a rubbing of Shakespeare's Hamlet quartos, and Irving Berlin had sheets of music. Robert Frost had a poem about some woods on a snowy evening, and Valentine recognized O. Henry's "Gift of the Magi" in its terse perfection. Someone went to a lot of trouble to reproduce Whistler's Mother and a study of a troubled-looking Lincoln in bronze plate.
Above the gallery, in letters big and deep enough to be read from hundreds of feet away, some crammed between others, some in a single line and others in a block of text, there in a glorious hodgepodge stood phrases freshly whitewashed so they might even be read under a bright moon. In fact, the work continued - Valentine saw limber and energetic young boys and girls among the rocks with paint and brushes, cleaning and recoating so the words might gleam under the fireworks. Too many for Valentine to take in all at once, he had to move from quote to quote with care.
"WE MUST HANG TOGETHER OR WE SHALL SURELY HANG SEPARATELY".
"GIVE ME LIBERTY OR GIVE ME DEATH".
"I HAVE NOT YET BEGUN TO FIGHT".
"A HOUSE DIVIDED CANNOT STAND...".
"THE ONLY THING WE HAVE TO FEAR IS FEAR ITSELF".
"WE SHALL FIGHT THEM ON THE BEACHES AND IN THE FIELDS...".
"NO MAN IS AN ISLAND...".
"EVIL CAN NEVER SURVIVE, THOUGH IT MAY SEEM TO TRIUMPH.
IT IS ONLY A QUESTION OF PATIENCE AND ENDURANCE".
"I HAVE A DREAM THAT MY FOUR LITTLE CHILDREN
WILL ONE DAY LIVE IN A NATION WHERE THEY WILL NOT
BE JUDGED BY THE COLOR OF THEIR SKIN BUT BY THE CONTENT OF THEIR CHARACTER".
"DOUBT NOT YOURSELVES, ONLY THE LIES OF TYRANTS WHO HOLD BUT A PROMISE IN ONE HAND AND
A WHIP IN THE OTHER".
"NO POWER FROM OUR POOR EARTH OR ANY OTHER WORLD CAN STRIKE DOWN THE GOLDEN LADDER BETWEEN YOUR SOUL AND GOD,
WHO IS RIGHTLY CALLED THE ALMIGHTY".
"OUR GREAT TEST HAS COME. WE MELTED IN THE HEAT OF DARKNESS AND DISASTER, BUT SHALL REFORM,
AN AMALGAM GATHERED IN THE SWORD MOLD,
HARDENED LIKE STEEL HAMMERED FROM THE FURNACE".
Valentine circled the rock twice, but kept returning to the Gettysburg Address. Its handful of words renewed him like the free ice water being passed out by the young "scouts" collecting valuables for the extension of the monument.
He had a single gold coin left. He palmed it and tossed it in the old plastic bleach jug as he accepted a hard plastic cup filled from the ice jug. "Please return for reuse", a childish hand had scrawled on the cup's side.
LeHavre was right. He'd made the struggle personal. It wasn't about this or that Kurian, or even some general's ego or his career. Even his family. They were all just caught in the whirlwind, a contest of life and liberty versus tyranny akin to those the men and women who had spoken the words described, even if the stakes were higher.
The Cause wasn't found in Southern Command; it wasn't the Cascades, or even this little band of July Fourth partyers. It was behind barbed wire, in the shadow of the Kurian Towers, in ugly little killing bottles like the Bellevue gardens. In a revolt in the Appalachians, led by a familiar-sounding Golden One.
That's where he'd be too.
He let the clean, cool water pass through his lips and wash him like the baptisms the firebrand preacher was even now attending to at the creek, and read again:
...that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain - that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom - and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.