The First Love Of Alipang Havens

Copperfox said:
It gave the fair-haired boy something to ponder when he lay down on a narrow, odd-smelling cot: the idea, omitted from his Party-approved history courses, that nonwhite persons would have risked their lives to escape from a properly collectivized society, EVEN THOUGH there had not been one single white-supremacist Christian in that society's ruling elite.
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Imagine.:rolleyes:
 
Awakening before dawn, Daffodil correctly remembered where he was, but realized that he had not taken the trouble to find out last night where the light switch was in this mostly-storage room. Of course, this place would not have a voice-activated lighting system. He also realized--and this was why he had awakened so soon despite going to bed very tired--that he was hungry. Come to think of it, neither he, nor Alipang, had had any sit-down supper last night, there had been so much going on. Though not expected to help with the sick people beyond carrying a few objects from one place to another, Daffodil had been engrossed in watching the activity around him, and learning whatever anyone had time to tell him. So he simply had not noticed the absence of supper.

Hopefully, there would be something to eat for breakfast besides meat.

The boy lay there thinking for awhile, which included trying to remember what objects were in this room and the neighboring room, the better to minimize bumping into things if he should arise and search for a light switch. Of course, this room was windowless; he did remember the next room having windows, and there should be moonlight to help him navigate. Once he found the kitchen, for there must be a kitchen, he could hope to karma that there would be some form of non-animal food there.

The availability of moonlight in the adjoining room was suddenly proven, as the door of the storage room opened, and a female form was silhouetted in that diffused moonlight. Looking much fitter than the elderly Mrs. Cung, this silhouette could only be Dr. Stepanova, unless there had been other new arrivals even later than Daffodil's own party. For one instant, the boy tensely remembered the way Osmawani had behaved while they were fellow actors--the way he had feared that she would expect him to spend a night with her. Considering the way females _inside_ the Enclave had acted toward him, as compared with females _outside_ the Enclave, Daffodil wondered for that instant if the businesslike Russian lady now intended to show him a less businesslike side.

But the flash of dread was quelled when she spoke, her voice accented but otherwise bland. "Citizen Ford, are you awake?"

"Um, yes, Doctor, I woke up a few minutes ago. I was going to get up for the day; didn't feel as if I could sleep anymore."

"All right, let me turn on the light." The light revealed drowsiness, not lust, on the doctor's pleasant face. "Just a moment..." She took two boxes off a shelf, and held them out to Daffodil, the gesture prompting him to get to his feet. "Give these to Alipang; he's expecting them. I'm about dead, so you had good timing in waking up. Pardon my lying down for an hour or two where you were."

Going to bed still clothed, as the boy had done, Irina Stepanova was asleep almost before Daffodil cleared out of the room; but before turning off the storage-room light for her, he was able to see where to turn on a light in the larger room. Soon he placed the medications in the hands of Alipang, who along with Henry then continued various treatment actions and observations for the various patients, following the doctor's prior instructions.

Eventually there came both sunrise, and a chance for Alipang, Henry and Daffodil to eat, before Irina and Elsa woke up from their own exhausted slumber. To Daffodil's relief, there was bread available to eat, with some kind of berry preserves to spread on it. He did venture to drink a little goat's milk which Alipang offered him, saying that the Doctor had said it was all right to drink it.

Having noticed that Henry joined Alipang in giving thanks for the food in the name of Jesus, Daffodil worked up the nerve to say to the Apache, "Pardon me, but why are you a Biblical? Wasn't religious colonialism the whole reason for everything that white people did to your ancestors?"

Henry smiled. "If it had been, I expect I wouldn't be, but I am, because it wasn't. The violence my nation suffered was never _defined_ by the gospel of Jesus; and I can't say that we Apaches were _quite_ one hundred percent innocent of bloodshed ourselves. Be that as it may, my family has been Christian ever since my father's father's father accepted Jesus as his Lord, and adopted a European-type name for the family, back around the time when the United States government first granted self-rule to the Apache Nation in what is now Aztlan. We come from the White Mountain Tribe. Some Christians from California used to have fellowship with my folks on the reservation; they did a lot to humanize the white man in my people's eyes."

Alipang interjected, "Daffy, I never got around to telling you, but Henry's family actually _requested_ to settle in the Enclave, after they managed to get out of Aztlan. That was because it was even _worse_ for Christians in Aztlan, than in the Diversity States."

"How can that be?" asked the boy. "The People's Republic of Aztlan honors the traditions of Native Americans, and my care--my mother says they're highly progressive there."

"They only honor Mayan and Aztec traditions," Henry corrected him. "The Mayan, because that strain provides mystical elements they can mix into their politics for an exotic flavor; and Aztec, because they--they like some of the ancient Aztec rituals." Henry exchanged a knowing glance with Alipang, then fell silent and resumed eating.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _​

The piece of back story I have just provided for Henry was inspired by a true account of Native American ministry, which can be read at this website:

http://www.angelfire.com/blog/southchurch/ApachePrayer.html
 
Awakening to find that her husband was sleeping more or less normally, Elsa Cung joined the men in the kitchen. Alipang immediately rose to dish her out some oatmeal which he had just prepared. The woman's very presence in the room prompted a question from Daffodil:

"Citizen Cung, how is Citizen--glitches, it _does_ get silly saying 'Citizen' to everybody! How is _Mister_ Cung?"

Elsa did not look as distressed now as she had looked for most of the Saturday wagon ride. "You must not have heard the diagnosis last night. Thank God, Poc Tsan _doesn't_ have tuberculosis. He does have serious double pneumonia, but that's more easily treatable. She already suctioned his lungs once, during the night, and I can tell his breathing's better."

"I'm glad, but how could the doctor be sure of that so soon, when she has no electronic equipment here?"

Alipang supplied this answer, so that Elsa could whisper thanks over her breakfast and start eating. "Although our physicians don't have anything computerized, they are supplied--in small amounts, generally--with many of the most up-to-date pharmaceuticals. Which, in Irina's case, includes the latest biochemical test for tuberculosis, which works _very_ fast. That's why she wasn't worried for us, sleeping overnight; she already knew Poc Tsan didn't have tuberculosis before you went to bed."

With seven or eight spoonfuls of oatmeal inside her, Elsa asked Henry, "Do you know if there's a church around here? I hate to step away from Poc Tsan, even though she says he'll be all right, but, you know..."

"No worries," the tall Apache told her. "Church comes here, courtesy of the Hanleys."

Alipang's attention swerved toward Henry. "Hanleys? I don't think I've met them."

"They run a horse-breeding ranch, west of here," Henry explained. "It's really Blake Hanley's operation; he was an 'Already-Wyoming,' in the horse business years before the fence went up. Some of the Arapahoe and Cheyenne boys work for him. His wife Dorcas is an imported exile, though. Nurse practicioner, lived in Montana. Right about the time the Fairness Party took over, she assisted at a childbirth, and the new regime decided it didn't like the circumstances."

"What circumstances?" Daffodil blurted out.

Henry had been going to skip that part, but he hated to evade a direct question. "The parents had been doing what Americans used to call 'living off the grid'--that is, avoiding the precious collective. They would have been in Canada before the Fairness Party was ready to harass them, if the wife hadn't been bogged down in a very difficult labor. Dorcas saved the mother and the baby--then saved them again, by decoying the newly-organized Diversity States Marshals after her while the family escaped north."

"I don't understand," the boy objected. "The Diversity States allows people to move away if they want."

"That's true NOW, from all I hear," Elsa interjected. "But in its first months, the Fairness Party leadership put clamps on border crossing."

Henry picked the thread up again from there. "And even though that baby had been conceived while the _United_ States still existed, the Party considered her its own property, since she only came OUT of her mother after the turnover. Dorcas received four months in a prison they had only just re-labelled as a Self-Esteem Center, before they shipped her here. Montana's loss was Blake Hanley's gain; I hear he proposed to her within four days after their first meeting. Anyway, ever since Irina got to know Dorcas, she's worked part-time at this clinic, which is the main reason why Irina hasn't died of exhaustion by now. Blake rides over with her on Sundays for fellowship; he has a good handle on Scripture, and he sings like Lionel Ritchie."

Alipang raised an eyebrow. "I know who Lionel Ritchie was, but how do you know?"

"I was at their place once; they have an analog phonograph, and they played a Lionel Ritchie record."

An hour later, after checking on the child patients for Doctor Stepanova, Henry looked out a window, and announced, "Here come Dorcas and Blake now!"
 
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Blake Hanley was a very black descendant of one of the Old West's first black cowboys. He had once proudly owned a framed photograph of his adventurous ancestor; but Overseers had confiscated the picture from him, the same day as they entered him on the list of Wyoming residents not moving out as the Enclave took shape. They had not wanted to leave ANY surviving evidence, if they could help it, that ANY part of the nineteenth century had seen ANY African-Americans able to support themselves in freedom with no need of government assistance.

Fortunately, they had not prevented Blake from continuing his horse-raising business. In fact, they had allowed it to grow bigger; his was one of the exile-owned establishments to which horses were brought from outside the Enclave during those transitional months--horses that were being spared from the wholesale killing off of domestic animals in the rest of the Diversity States. The two pinto geldings on which Blake and his white wife were now riding up to Irina Stepanova's combined home and clinic had been among the very first colts born at the Hanley ranch from this "outside" stock.

The ranch was located in a valley of the Big Horn Range. The Hanleys had ridden into the Mayoworth area by way of the horse trail which had been laid out alongside a railway pass which the Chinese had blasted open when they enlarged the rail network for the Enclave.

Henry came outdoors to meet Blake and Dorcas, hurrying right up. "Let me unsaddle them and rub them down for you." He displayed an old bath towel which Irina kept for exactly this purpose...but waited until his friends had dismounted and thus were closer, before adding very softly: "My Filipino friend from Sussex is with us this morning; he's cool. But there's also a teenager in the house who's from _outside_ the Enclave; he got special permission to visit inside."

"There goes the neighborhood!" laughed Blake. More seriously, Dorcas remarked, "The oligarchy must be getting less concerned about hushing up conditions here on the reservation."

"I'm told the kid has high connections in the Party, so they probably trust him not to say anything embarrassing when he comes out again. But don't _you_ say anything embarrassing; the mirror-men are keeping track of where the young paleface goes."

"Then I'll say something casual." Blake pointed to a slender steel object, just less than two meters in length, which was leaning against the exterior wall beside the front entrance of the house. "What is that for?"

"That's my new spear. As I was getting started on a vision quest--that _isn't_ casual, but I'll tell you more after fellowship--I picked up something that could be adapted as a spearhead, then looked for a sapling to make the shaft. Never found one I really liked; but then I came on one of the sites where the Energy Department has been hiring exiles to renovate buildings for industrial use."

"More industry moving inside here?" Dorcas responded. "I guess they DO approve of our work ethic."

Henry nodded. "And they want to keep the proletarians believing that the D.S.A. is powered entirely by lilacs and rainbows. Anyway, a couple of my friends from Sussex, Peter Tomisaburo and Raoul Rochefort, were part of the reconstruction crew I met. When I told them about my little project, Raoul brought me a length of old steel pipe that nobody needed, not too light and not too heavy; Peter furnished a dab of his metal-bonding adhesive to anchor the tang of my spearhead inside one open end. I still used the wire and cord I had for additional binding, covering some bits of thin steel rod, also leftovers, which I splinted on the outside of the joining for extra reinforcement. Anything that knocks the head loose from that spear now is likely to be an explosion that blows me to bits anyway, so it won't matter."

"An all-steel spear. Sounds durable," said Blake. "Only, remember not to keep holding it if you're outdoors in a thunderstorm. Dorcas, shall we go inside?"

By the time Henry had attended to the needs of the Hanleys' horses, and also checked up on Alipang's horses, Alipang, Daffodil and Elsa were listening attentively as Blake Hanley lavishly sang out the hymn "How Great Thou Art." This woke up Irina, who was glad to get up for a worship meeting. Dorcas, once briefed by the physician on the current status of all patients, took over their care; she had already heard her husband's planned Scripture lesson as they rode over.

Irina, Alipang, Elsa and Henry listened and commented as Blake taught on the incident in Acts 23, when the Apostle Paul had diverted his Pharisee and Sadducee enemies into arguing with each other. Alipang and Henry smiled to themselves at the realization that the Spirit of God was continuing to alert His children in the Enclave to the possibilities latent in a situation where competing groups of evildoers came into conflict. Daffodil also listened, but without commenting--just trying to make some sense of what he was hearing.

The Tolerance House boy still was not understanding the message by the time the lesson ended. But when Henry, Elsa and Irina joined Blake in singing "Come, Thou Fount of Ev'ry Blessing," he really _wished_ that he understood. When they sang the words, "He, to rescue me from danger, / Interposed His precious blood," Daffodil's heart knew that it wanted _something,_ it just didn't know what.

When fellowship was over, Daffodil engaged in polite conversation with the Hanleys. They had plenty they could tell him about Wyoming and about horses, which normally would have interested him; but that feeling which had come with the closing hymn, was not going away.

Daffodil's heart wanted something undefined; he was surrounded by people who all seemed to have this elusive thing; but they were the very people whom he hesitated to ask about it directly, since as "Biblicals" they were supposed to be his social inferiors. The mystery at least had one tangible aspect the boy could point to: the exiles were alleged to be racists, but among them Daffodil was seeing interracial marriages all over the place.
 
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(Starting to resolve "what to do about Melody Vasquez")

Chapter 63: Surveying the Chessboard



Days before Alipang and Daffodil's visit to Dr. Stepanova, around the same time as Bert Randall's dependents received their Australian citizenship, the Texas Rangers held a grand funeral in Dallas for their latest honored dead: Vice-Commandant Pablo Sotero, the four other Rangers who had fallen in the shootout with infiltrators, and the two Rangers who had died when the airfield had been bombed. As a gesture of respect, President Trevette herself had ordered an energy allocation for weather-control arrays, to drive away from Dallas-Fort Worth a cloud mass which had been threatening another freezing rain. Representing the Rainbow House at the funeral, Vice-President Anselmo would share the platform not only with Ranger Commandant Pierce, but also with a Oneness Priestess of the Inexpressible Ultimate, who was to sing a Comanche chant as the only invocation, followed by an interpretive dance...and Steven Jiang, the Governor of the Texas Federal District.

This lineup was to be a subject of discussion, before the solemnities got underway, between Emilio Vasquez and Juan Riquelme of the Mexican Federales, when Juan arrived at the backup airport being used by Ranger aviation while the bombed airfield was being restored. The way that Juan arrived was as the pilot of a brand-new Great Condor attack helicopter, the first unit of a shipment of six, which was being sold by Mexico to the Texas Rangers at less than the manufacturing cost. This armored aircraft, like Russian military designs, had no tail rotor, but rather had two equal-sized, counter-rotating co-axial rotors on top, much like the propellors on the Tu-95's. At the rear end was a tail assembly like that of a fixed-wing airplane, with anti-missile countermeasures mounted near it. The Rangers had wanted armed helicopters for a long time, and their newest misfortune had come with the cold comfort that it left Washington unable to refuse this desire any longer.

When Juan made his solo landing and hopped out, his first act was to stride up to Emilio and embrace him. This gesture did not only convey affection and sympathy, with a touch of congratulation for Emilio's promotion; it also conveyed three small objects into Emilio's pockets, which Emilio pretended not to notice, realizing that the objects were for him to examine later.

"Has Governor Jiang even learned by now to tell Rangers apart from Commerce Inspectors?" asked the Mexican.

"That's easy," replied the Texican. "Commerce Inspectors aren't being targetted for murder by amazingly well-hidden assailants." The two friends locked eyes. They both knew, as their superiors knew, that such a number of armed men as had attacked Vice-Commandant Sotero and those with him, could not possibly have remained completely unnoticed by everyone right up to the time they attacked--not in a nation so obsessed with spying on itself as the Diversity States--unless they had friends among the watchers. Of course, if _everyone_ in the federal government had had it in for the Texas Rangers, the Rangers could simply have been disbanded before now, no secrecy required. So only _some_ of the oligarchs were helping the Aztlano infiltrators; but for the present, the Rangers could not try openly to find out _which_ oligarchs. It would be sedition to suggest that, in the happy and harmonious collective which America had become, there could _possibly_ be any officeholders in collusion with a hostile power. This doubtless was connected with the fact that the Rangers had never been allowed to interrogate the three captured enemy survivors of the firefight, without at least one Marshal or Overseer present.

So Juan dwelt further on a non-seditious basis for despising the governor whom both men suspected of being in on the treachery: "I hear that Jiang had never been within a hundred kilometers of any part of Texas before Jessica Trevette appointed him to this post."

"That's right. He got the job as a reward for his Party loyalty--and, some say, for being one of the President's lovers. But he doesn't have to stand for re-election anytime soon, any more than the President does."

"Quite a stunt, being a lover to one who loves only herself. But to turn to thoughts of _true_ love: is Melody going to come down to Mexico or not?" Many spouses and children of Rangers had been evacuated over the border immediately after the attacks, to be hosted by United States expatriates in Mexico. But Melody Vasquez was in a painfully distinctive situation: at this time of crisis, she happened to be the _only_ Ranger wife who was pregnant, _and_ who was a known Biblical, with Pinkshirts just looking for an excuse to find fault with her.

"So far, we've been able to keep her guarded at home," said Emilio. "Never less than two Rangers plus a bomb-sniffing robot. You understand, she hesitates to leave her primary physician, so close to the birth of her baby." What Juan _really_ understood by this was that if Melody were to give birth while being harbored in Mexico, the Campaign Against Hate might choose to pretend that she had been disloyal, slighting the wonderful health-rationing system supervised by the Department of Distribution in favor of the Mexican system which now allowed for independent physicians. This accusation could cause the Vasquezes to lose all chance of being allowed to conceive any future babies; it might even cause the one they were having to be taken away from them.

"As early as Friday," Juan told Emilio very quietly, "someone may be able to suggest an improvement in the security for Senora Vasquez. But right now, it's time to saddle up for the flyover."

Emilio made his own voice agonizingly calm and casual: "Hey, since the Great Condor can seat five, is it all right if one of my new guys comes along?" Despite now outranking Sergeant Riquelme, Emilio deferred to him because Emilio had not yet piloted a Great Condor, though he was told that the manual controls were easy and intuitive even for a pilot who was not ready to use the brainwave controls instead. Yet he already knew that Juan would say yes; thus, he beckoned to a nearby man who wore a visored flight helmet. "Come on, Bruce, it's never too soon to get introduced to the new helo. Vice-Commandant Sotero won't feel disrespected at all by our combining our flyover with a bit of training."

Emilio and Juan both knew _quite_ well that Pablo Sotero, if looking down from Heaven right now, had no objection to Bruce boarding the new helicopter with them....since "Bruce" was actually Ranger Captain Jed Brickhouse, the new Vice-Commandant.
 
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The Great Condor joined a formation of otherwise unarmed Ranger helicopters, which would orbit over Dallas less than a kilometer south of the ceremony site until the order came for the flyover. Emilio, Juan and Vice-Commandant Brickhouse talked to each other through encrypted helmet radios, just on the tiny off-chance that anyone was trying to eavesdrop on them.

"Now," said Emilio to Juan, "what did you put into my pocket?"

"New g.p.s. modules, which can be plugged into the g.p.s. on any Ranger aircraft and be compatible. You'll be able to use these three as the basis to make more copies, and pull your software ahead of anything the Aztlanos know about our having, where the g.p.s. deception is concerned."

"Now all we need is more air-defense craft that CAN practice the deception," Emilio sighed.

"But that's the point," Brickhouse told him. "We'll make it seem as if we DO already have new Bears operational."

Juan elaborated: "Down in Mexico, we already started misleading the Aztlanos. The one finished prototype of the replacement Tu-95's has been flown back and forth in Mexican airspace, with Aztlano spies allowed to see it going here and there. So they won't be able to be certain that we haven't sneaked any new planes INTO the Diversity States. And with this g.p.s. upgrade to preserve your mimicking ability, every Ranger helicopter or light plane can seem, to the satellite network, to BE another Tu-95."

"And until we actually have more Bears," added Brickhouse, "these Condors will be a meaningful supplement to the two Bears we have left. Lieutenant, you are riding in the best-armed, best-equipped helo type that can be found anyplace on Earth, outside the military arsenals of China, India, Poland, the Islamic Realm of Europe, the Egyptian Caliphate, and the Venezuelan Alliance. It can look far, shoot far, and play LOTS of electronic- and cyber-warfare tricks."

Juan laughed mirthlessly. "The Aztlanos have themselves to thank for the Hemispheric Union declining to block my country from selling you some Condors. If not for their blatant aggression against you, the Bi-Continental Assembly wouldn't have agreed to relax your arms limitations ANY more than they were already relaxed to permit using the Tu-95's."

All three men were aware that on the ground, Governor Steven Jiang, a Party hack who as nearly as possible took all his recreation outside of Texas, would be giving a Jessica Trevette-style speech about "the dream of abolishing hate and bigotry"...while paying as little honor as he could manage to the fallen heroes of Texas. But they also knew that somewhere in the crowd were Mrs. Monica Sotero and her thirteen-year-old son Miguel, surrounded by the love and watchfulness of their fellow Texans. Almost no dependents of the slain Rangers would go to cover without first having said farewell to their loved ones.

And young Miguel Sotero, they knew, had informed his Mama that there was to be no more talk of his becoming a movie-set designer. He was going to follow his Papa into the Texas Rangers.

When the time came, the helicopters made their flyover; and as arranged, it was the Condor which performed the Missing Man maneuver, breaking off to fly away to the west. This would allow Jed Brickhouse to avoid being recognized getting out of the attack helicopter later. Juan flew them westward over Fort Worth, over the suburbs, and on into the country, till they touched down at an out-of-the-way weather station that was controlled by the Rangers. Here Brickhouse would remain for some time, keeping with him one of the new g.p.s. modules Juan had given to Emilio. Trusted technicians were there, with all the materials they needed, and would assemble new copies of the module, till there were enough of them for the planned use--a larger quantity than Juan would have been able to bring on his person from Mexico without provoking too much attention from Commerce Inspectors. For the Rangers were keeping this hole card a secret from other authority structures for as long as they could.

Once away from the weather station turned workshop, Emilio and Juan made all reasonable haste to go see Melody. Several options were still on the table for her ongoing protection.
 
Vice-Commandant Brickhouse was not the only person who could hide in plain sight. Over in Nigeria, where it was now evening, Father Dunak Okigbo was on a bicycle ride with--to all appearances--a dozen of his parishioners, though two of the men in the party were not concealing the fact that they were armed church-security guards. (The Neo-Marxist guerrillas _appeared_ to have been completely cleared out of this province, but you never knew.)

The most eye-catching of the women present, though as black as the rest, was an American. Strong of arm and full in bosom, she had a combination of hard muscle and female roundness which made her at once intimidating and alluring--more the first for men unsure of themselves, more the second for men who were also strong. The effect was completed by a wide but pleasant face, tastefully surrounded by a generous mane of ebony curls that fell to her broad shoulders.

Father Okigbo always felt that the way to convince onlookers that you ARE something, is to BE that something. His public pretext for these occasional bicycle outings with churchgoers was to combine physical exercise with rosary-saying sessions; so, they actually DID recite the rosary as they rode. The American woman, an independent evangelical, didn't know the words, but succeeded in changing her characteristic mischievous grin into a reverent expression as she mouthed an approximation.

The caravan halted in front of a walled property, where the priest blessed his companions before most of them headed for home. The American woman, and one of the guards, remained. Father Okigbo presented his eyes to a hidden iris-reader, and the front gate opened for them.

Another armed Nigerian man on the porch of the house greeted them and admitted them, the church guard staying on the porch with him. The priest led his companion into the interior of the house, where there was a room shielded against surveillance technology. Pausing at the door to this room, Dunak Okigbo told the voluptuous woman, "Mother Church _cooperates_ with these people because they seek to do good, but Mother Church is not in _command_ over them. Therefore, this is as far as I go. The men inside are men I would trust with my own life, and you have my word that after this interview they will see that you are safely returned to your lodgings. May the Holy Family watch over you."

"Thanks, Father." The woman's voice was smooth as butter, and so was her physical movement as she captured the priest's face between her hands and kissed him on the mouth. "Don't worry, that's not a sin for you because you didn't ask me to do it. And may God be with you."

Father Okigbo might be pardoned if, on his way out of the house, he reflected a little on what he perhaps had missed in life.

Entering the room, the African-American woman saw two white men seated on the far edge of a table, which had a chair waiting for her along its near edge. One of these men was older, and the other taller, but both had a no-nonsense look about them. She had had her fun with the priest, who really was a nice guy; now it was time to talk seriously about the reason why she was here.

More precisely, the reason why some kind of special-ops troops had raided the slave-labor camp in Missouri and extracted HER, of all people.

"Darcie Beale?" said the older man, with what seemed a European accent of some kind. "Please have a seat. Would you like some coffee?"

"Why, thanks, that sounds good. We didn't get much coffee on the blasted Fairness Party plantation." When a simple service robot wheeled out of an alcove to serve her the coffee, Darcie suppressed her surprise, and went on talking. "After your covert agents faked that accident so it looked like I died, they told me that practically no one in America even _knows_ about those concentration camps. I was disappointed that we weren't going to blow the whistle on them worldwide, but they told me that you had to pick your battles. Father Okigbo has told me as much as he's authorized to tell about your secret army, and as you probably already know, he had me brain-scanned for my sincerity about wanting to join up. After that, he felt more at ease about admitting to me that a certain country which rhymes with 'China' is enjoying the irony of knowing that now there are _Americans_ working as political prisoners, to make toys and hairdryers to be sold in _Chinese_ stores."

"That's right," said the younger and taller of the white men. "Beijing, for the present, opposes any effort by us to overthrow the Fairness Party regime in America, OR the Aztec-Maoist regime of Aztlan for that matter. But they do not oppose other operations of ours; and we need you for one of those operations."

"Just who it is that needs me?" Darcie demanded. "The only actual _name_ I know for any of you secret agents so far is the priest's name--that is, if Dunak Okigbo IS his real name."

The older man smiled. "It's his real name, all right. You'll know more of our names eventually; but for now, call me The Accountant."

"And I'm Captain Lacrosse," the younger man told her.
 
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Darcie chose to smile rather than be annoyed; after all, she did owe her freedom to this underground resistance movement. And they had not forced her to join their army. "All right, I'll play. Call me The World's Sexiest Firefighter."

Captain Lacrosse returned her smile. "We desire you, to be sure..." Now he deliberately brought into view his left hand, which wore a wedding ring. "But we desire you for your knowledge of chemistry."

"You mean literal chemistry, right? Not the fun kind."

"Correct," replied The Accountant. "We're aware that you distinguished yourself so greatly in Hazmat handling during your fire department career, that they made you a fire-academy instructor in that specialty, just before the Fairness Party took over."

"Yeah, and then I refused to take an oath to wear the Party's leash on my neck and to treat faith in Jesus as hate speech. That was the beginning of my troubles."

"We can't promise that you've come to the end of your troubles," said Captain Lacrosse; "but you _have_ come to the end of being expected to deny your faith. A mission is being prepared, in which an expert in handling chemicals will be needed; but the same expert has to be physically tough, to keep up with everyone else."

"Which made a firefighter like you the perfect choice," The Accountant concluded.

"Let me try to give you a big-picture view of our overall situation," Captain Lacrosse went on, "in a way that doesn't prematurely disclose anything sensitive. Are you familiar with the actual sport of lacrosse?"

"I've seen a few games of the field version."

"Good. A field-lacrosse team has three types of players. 'Mid-field players' are the most flexible in the role they play; 'attackers' concentrate on offense, and are _forbidden_ to enter their own team's home defense area; 'defenders' concentrate on defense, and are forbidden to enter the opposing team's home defense area.

"If you think of our total network as a lacrosse team, you could say that the regular national governments which support us, like Nigeria and Poland, are defenders. Their countries, islands of liberty, are like goal zones; and there are limits on what they can do as direct participants in our offensive game. Then there are our attackers: people who by choice or circumstance are located full time _inside_ oppressed lands like the Diversity States and the Caliphates, and who at high risk to themselves do things to damage the tyrants' ability to tyrannize. Thus they are scoring against the enemy's goal zones. The strongest force of that nature in the former United States right now is the Texas Rangers. But what YOU, Miss Beale, are about to become, is a mid-field player, with plenty of freedom of movement."

"Then I guess I should show you my moves," Darcie told him; "in a laboratory, I mean."
 
Thanks to the little "epilogue" that Emilio Vasquez had played out with her, Gloria Cervantes--one of the "mid-field players" of whom Captain Lacrosse had spoken--had remained above suspicion in the eyes of the Aztlano government. On the same weekend as Alipang Havens' visit to Irina Stepanova's clinic in Wyoming, Gloria visited the Presidential Palace in Los Angeles. She was bringing Tonio Formentera some carefully-crafted, persuasive disinformation, to the effect that the Mexican government was only _pretending_ to delay delivery to Texas of improved air-defense aircraft. She had counterfeit evidence of large-scale use of holographic blur-projectors, enabling the large airplanes to fly into Texas as soon as there was cloudy weather, thus fooling the Venezuelan visual-imagery satellites whose information was made available to the Aztlanos by their friends in Caracas.

Having set things up for the bluff which would buy time for the "Sky Rangers," Gloria accepted the grateful dictator's invitation to another glamorous party. At this party, she explained the absence of her "boyfriend Ernando" by saying to El Presidente's son Emilio, "He went and got some Chinese woman pregnant." It always amused the secret agent when she could serve her purpose by stating plain factual truth.

In between feasting and dancing, Gloria noticed an Asian-looking man among the less-prestigious guests. Her memory-and-recognition training kicked in, calling up the files she had seen on Diversity States Marshals. This man was almost certainly Vinu Dandekar, the missing Marshal whose substitute had been arrested by Leroy Lincoln's officers. The Marshals' Service had been carefully kept from knowing anything about Gloria; so she boldly introduced herself to him. In the course of the next two hours, she cunningly milked him for clues; and based on how he answered her strategically "casual" questions, she formed her opinion:

Vinu Dandekar, if Gloria was reading the clues correctly, was the only one of those missing Marshals who had actually been a deliberate part of the switch at the Texas border, for he was a long-time plant. The switch had been his chance to come home. The other Marshals lost at the border had all died by now....on President Formentera's own Altar of Solar Influence.

When the hour was growing late enough that Mr. Dandekar might be expected to be expecting some intimate attention from Gloria, she initiated her escape maneuver. Telling her companion a few scornful things about the fictional "Ernando," she culminated with saying, "Since my boyfriend turned out to be such an amateurish clown, I might as well make love to a _professional_ clown!" Then she stood up from her seat and waved energetically to Sunki Pavatea, the dictator's koshare jester, beckoning him to her side. Sunki was high enough in El Presidente's favor, that Mr. Dandekar dared not have a confrontation with him over a woman.

For all of her time working undercover in Aztlan and Mexico, which had been for the entirety of the approximately four years that Aztlan had even existed as a separate nation, Gloria had never spoken one word to Sunki, nor he to her. Each knew that the other was an agent on the same side, but each was safer if they showed no interest in each other. Having avoided him this long, however, Gloria could allow herself to speak to him now. This was not only a matter of keeping Vinu Dandekar's hands off her; she also had cause to contact Sunki now, quite apart from her own convenience.

President Formentera had no objection to letting his jester have a good time with a woman reputed to be a fantastic lover. So it was that the Hopi Indian clown, and the pretended smuggler of Mexican and Diversity States secrets, did share a bed that night, acting their part enough to seem convincing in case any cameras were on them. But what they really were concerned to exchange, they did exchange: messenger nanobots transferring from each one's skin into the other one's skin.

The nanobots going from Sunki to Gloria, when she later had the means to read their message, would provide her with a variety of information the clown-spy had collected--including confirmation that Gloria's guess about Mr. Dandekar was exactly correct, as well as facts about Aztlan's efforts to acquire miniature drone aircraft for reconnaissance use. The latter item was a logical consequence of the fact that Aztlan possessed no space program, no spy satellites of its own.

The nanobots going from Gloria to Sunki, when he was able to read them safely, would convey an order to him from Colonel Parnescu, to prepare to be extracted. The secret army's leadership, aware of how hard it was on the kind-hearted Hopi man to see so many Aztec-style human sacrifices and be powerless to rescue the victims, had become concerned that Sunki would snap one day and kill President Formentera. Not that they would grieve at the death of that callous mass murderer; but killing Formentera might sway the opinions of Western Hemisphere nations toward greater sympathy for Aztlan. Not to mention the danger that Sunki would be taken alive, and made to reveal all he knew about persons like Senorita Cervantes.

So the secret army of justice wanted Sunki Pavatea safely out of Aztlan. But his years of espionage would not be wasted. The leadership would keep him in reserve, against the hoped-for day when the tyrant's jester could guide a large commando force in a more aggressive action against the Aztlano thug-regime.
 
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Chapter 64: A Gruelling Yuletide


On the Sunday when they met Blake and Dorcas Hanley, Alipang and Daffodil started back for Sussex less than an hour after lunch. This, because Alipang was hoping that Kim would be back home from Casper by the time they reached the Havens house on Monday morning; and because the Rochefort family might need their sleigh. As for the news that Poc Tsan Cung did not have tuberculosis, and that Irina expected to send him and Elsa back to Sussex in two or three days, this news had been passed along already by landline phone.

A gentle snowfall accompanied Alipang and Daffodil for most of that afternoon's driving. Earlier, on the way to the clinic, Alipang had shown the boy how the reins were handled; now, with no sick man in the sleigh to worry about, he invited Daffodil actually to take the reins and drive--slowly. When he felt sure that the novice was doing well, Alipang hopped out and walked on his own feet. "I'm lightening the load on Sammy and Lacey," he called back to Daffodil; then he went to each horse's head in turn and spoke reassuringly to them.

Eventually, Alipang fell back far enough to be walking alongside the boy. "You're doing just fine, Daffy. First time you ever drove a vehicle?"

"I've ridden bicycles like everybody else, and pedalled a pedicab now and then; other than those, yes, this is the first time. Is it all right if I ask you a question?"

"As long as you don't mind a truthful answer."

"That's the only kind of answer I want. Some of you Biblicals challenge the science of evolution; you make a point of saying that human beings are not animals. Well...if you think people are so superior, why are you so affectionate with your animals?--ones you don't eat, anyway."

"There's a verse in the Book of Proverbs which says, 'A righteous man has regard for the life of his beast.' That counsel was given by a meat-eating man, to meat-eating men. Even animals we raise for food, we try always to kill as painlessly as possible when their time comes. Not that all meat-eating people have always practiced this mercy, I grant you. As for domestic animals like our horses and dogs, we don't have to consider them our intellectual peers to believe in showing kindness to them.

"Consider your own conduct. You've been taught to perceive us Biblicals as unenlightened, misguided, if not worse--in any event, greatly inferior to Fairness Party leaders in understanding of the world. And yet, though having this perception of us, you have still behaved in a courteous and friendly manner with everyone you've met in the Enclave. Just so, we non-vegans can find it in our hearts to be gentle with creatures we know to be FAR inferior to us in understanding of the world. We don't accept labels of 'species bigotry,' but this doesn't mean we're sadistic torturers of little bunny rabbits."

Daffodil gazed more closely at him. "Funny you should mention species bigotry. During that hospital stay that I told you about, I was introduced to a boy named Tim Govinda, who had some _bizarre_ ideas about species relationships. He claimed he was living in multiple, _simultaneous_ incarnations as a variety of animals."

"And it's funny to me that such a character would have the first name of Tim. Back in Virginia, my family became acquainted with a man named Tim Forrestal, who was extremely knowledgeable about animals, and extremely fond of them; but his view of their place in the cosmos was the same as mine. I don't suppose you ever heard what became of him?"

"No, I didn't. But now, answer me this: if you believe that a personal God created the universe and life, why did He create living things with such vast inequalities of intelligence and lifespan? How could the Being Whom you credit with establishing justice, have chosen on purpose to make the universe so _unjust?_"

"That's a matter of semantics. If you insist that the only meaning of 'justice' IS 'universal, identical, interchangeable, distributive equality,' then I can give you no answer to satisfy you. But justice _isn't_ only about arbitrary equality, and still less is _love_ only about that. In terms of crude physical strength, for instance, I could kill my wife, she could kill our elder son, he could kill our daughter, and she could kill our younger son. But do you think we have a heirarchy of personal worth based on that? Of course not! Every one of us loves every other one, with no thought of taking a laser-measure to check for mathematical equality between one and the next."

"Don't be upset with me, Doctor Havens."

"I'm not upset, I'm just being clear. Probably a third of all human tragedies are caused by someone failing to--"

But just then, Daffodil's dataphone rang.
 
Alipang leaped up onto the driver's seat to take the reins back--not that this was nearly as urgent as if a speeding automobile had been involved. Almost as soon as Daffodil had answered the phone, he looked at Alipang with a broad smile and exclaimed, "It's Cassie!"

The boy had mentioned this name before now, as being the woman who had piloted the lighter-than-air craft which posed as a spaceship in the Churchbusters dramatization. But Alipang had no clue as to why she would be calling the young actor now. Keeping an eye on the horses, he waited for Daffodil to be done listening to whatever initial things Cassie was telling him.

Presently, Daffodil said to Alipang, "Here, because this is a call between two points _inside_ the Enclave, Captain Butello surely won't mind you being on my phone. It has no DNA-recognition lock. Anyway, your caregivers are about to be on _Cassie's_ phone; she's at their house in Casper."

Accepting the dataphone while passing the reins to Daffodil, Alipang said, "Alipang Havens here. Is that Cassie?"

"Yes, Doctor Havens, it is. But let me put your mother on."

Seconds later, Cecilia Havens was babbling out, "Al! That boy Daffy is a marvel! He got through to Chilena and Dan! You know that already, don't you? But how wonderful that he made it possible for us to hear the recording of the conversation so soon! I heard their voices! Little Cecilia and Tommy and Irene too, and even Summer with her kids! And Tommy wrote a poem! Daffy arranged for the recording to be downloaded to Cassie's phone as soon as it cleared the Overseers' inspection, and she brought her phone over for us to hear their voices as soon as she could. Your Dad is going to see if he can get the sound to re-record onto analog audiotape. I heard them talking! I heard their voices!"

Alipang leaned toward Daffodil and said quietly, "I think my mother likes you."

Daffodil could not have said what now gave him the boldness to ask: "And do you think your sister Harmony likes me too?"

Alipang showed no reaction, favorable or otherwise, to Daffodil's words. Back in Casper, he HAD noticed that the boy admired Harmony; but it wasn't as if Daffodil Ford were a predator like Nash Dockerty. "Here, I'll ask her....Mom, can Harmony get on the phone?.... Harmony, what do you think of Daffodil now?"

What Harmony said to her big brother was, "If he were here now, I'd kiss him for making Mom so happy!"

What Alipang then said to Daffodil was, "She says she really appreciates what you've done to raise our mother's spirits."

Everyone else in the Casper branch of the Havens family had a turn at expressing how grateful they were to Daffodil, though no others mentioned kissing him. Terrance graciously added a good word for Cassie. Cecilia spoke only fleetingly of wishing she could also hear Melody's voice; but the lack of _that_ blessing did not seem to be spoiling her enjoyment of what had been granted to her. Before the end of the call, Cecilia asked Alipang, "Will Daffy still be around for Christmas?" In the background, Alipang could hear his father following her words with "He would call it Solstice." He turned and said to Daffodil, equally audibly to his mother: "They want to know if you plan still to be in the Enclave at Winter Solstice time? That's only a few weeks away now"--and he gave the phone back to Daffodil.

Daffodil told Mrs. Havens, "It's fairly likely that my mother can accept not celebrating _this_ Solstice and New Year with me." His sarcasm was so diplomatically understated that it passed even over Alipang's head. He said nothing else about his mother for the rest of the conversation.

Afterwards, Alipang let the boy drive the sleigh again, while he walked again. This time, it was not only to spare the horses, but also to pick up and toss into the back of the sleigh any fuel he could find, to contribute to the fireplace of whatever farm household would give them shelter for the night. There was thus a lull in conversation between the two of them, but not at all a gloomy lull. Eventually they did find shelter as expected.

When they lay down to sleep that night in the farm family's barn, cocooned in the insulated sleeping bags Alipang had brought from home, Daffodil did talk for awhile; or rather, he made Alipang talk--telling all about Harmony Havens, who for the time being was the planet's most perfect woman in Daffodil's estimation.
 
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In the morning, Alipang awoke long before Daffodil did, then forced himself, while to all intents and purposes he was alone, to practice his kung-fu moves there in the hayloft. That is, the new moves for which Yang Sung-Kuo had left him instructions before their parting. The most intriguing to him was what Yang had labelled "the two-centimeter punch": something which Alipang knew that the famed Bruce Lee had been able to do, but which Alipang had never felt a specific need to learn. It consisted in starting with one's hand only two centimeters away from the target, but putting such sudden, total effort into a blow of hand-heel or closed fist, that the impact was no less than when punching with a wind-up. Alipang had always been accustomed, if caught unarmed at close quarters, to relying on elbow strikes, head butts, or plain furious twisting and grappling; but once offered the chance to learn the ultra-close-range hand attack, he had begun to grasp how valuable it might prove in some situations.

He stopped practicing when the husband of the host family came into the barn to milk the cows. Awakening Daffodil, he then climbed down from the loft and offered to carry the filled milk cans to where the farmer kept them. Later came breakfast with the family. Daffodil, who still had plenty of the peso coins which had been issued to him as equivalent to a certain virtual credit sum, insisted on paying their hosts; they finally accepted the money, though they would have given food and lodging free for the well-liked Alipang's sake.

When Sammy and Lacey were back in harness and the last leg of the trip home began, Daffodil had another question for the man he already respected more than he could have put into words:

"Why do you call Solstice Christmas? If your faith is meant to embrace things on a cosmic scale, why _reduce_ the scope to one alleged historical event, instead of honoring the cycles of astronomy and thus the circle of life?"

"We don't consider it a reduction, because we believe that the conception and birth of the Lord Jesus amounted to nothing less than the _Creator_ of astronomy and everything else assuming a human form. Nor is that event even _about_ the circular schedules of natural phenomena. Jesus _wasn't_ really born close to the winter solstice; that time was chosen for celebration as a convenience, for reasons we don't need to go into now. According to what I've studied, the Lord was actually born in September, and not right close to the autumn equinox either. His birth carried its own significance in itself, not dependent on the rhythms of nature..."

Finding Daffodil willing to keep listening, Alipang went on teaching, bringing in references to the books of Isaiah, Micah, Daniel and the Psalms, to show that there had been advance hints of what God would do in the Incarnation. But as on the previous day, there was an interruption, this time when they were almost in sight of Sussex.

This time they were not interrupted by a cellphone call, but by the sound and sight of two snowmobiles approaching. Sammy and Lacey had just enough experience of being near machinery that they did not panic and bolt when the snowmobiles drew near; but Alipang wondered who the riders could be. The very fact of their _having_ any powered transportation proved that they were not exiles. One seemed to be a man, one a woman; a border collie was riding behind the man, doing a remarkably humanlike job of holding on with its forelegs wrapped around the man's waist to keep from falling off. When the snowmobiles came to a stop, the one who seemed to be a woman, proved it as she removed her facemask.

She was the new female Forest Ranger, about whose coming to the Enclave Alipang had heard before now. She was new in the role of a Forest Ranger...but as a person, Dana Pickering was not so new to Alipang.
 
The Forestry Service, as constituted under the Diversity States Department of Eco-Sensitive Agriculture, was the least hierarchical of all the nation's law-enforcement bodies. Below the high leadership levels, authority derived more from a Ranger's current assignment than from paygrade. Throw in political correctness, and Dana Pickering would probably have been placed in command over Mark Terrell despite his longer total time in government service, if not for the fact that Dana's experience as a Forest Ranger specifically was to be counted in weeks. As it was, Mark was in charge of their two-person-and-one-dog detachment, in its work of setting up a Forest Ranger presence in the Enclave.

Mark, Dana and Whiplash had been flying, snowmobiling, walking, climbing and boating all over the four sectors, juggling several jobs at once. One of these jobs was to inspect what was left of buildings and property which had belonged to the United States Forestry Service, to see what locations were capable of quick reactivation at minimum expense. Another was to interview the handful of U.S. Forestry Service veterans who were still inside Enclave territory under exile status, to determine if any of these could be hired on in some non-enforcement capacity. Another was to start forming personal acquaintances with government personnel already assigned in the Enclave, with the Agriculture Department naturally getting the most attention. And then there had been the public-relations job of putting their best foot forward in contacts with Grange volunteers.

In that last connection, it had been especially heartening that the people at the Grange Hall Thanksgiving feast had welcomed the two Rangers so graciously. It really did seem, judging by that occasion, that the exiles _would_ consider Forest Rangers an improvement upon Overseers where keeping order was concerned. Just one of the really prominent Grangers for northeast Wyoming had NOT been present at that gathering: the eccentric warrior-dentist whom Dana had at one time found....attractive. Now, at last, Dana's nominal superior and full-time lover had his first sight of the legendary Alipang Havens. This, while Dana was shyly saying hello, and Alipang was blandly returning the greeting and introducing his lodger.

Mark's first thought about Alipang was: He's a lot shorter than I imagined him. The second thought was: He's travelling alone with a teenage boy who _isn't_ one of his sons. But with _this_ man, by all reports, this means _nothing_ more than that he and the boy have the same place to travel to. The third thought was: I can't very well _tell_ Whiplash, in the hearing of others, to check for smell and sound clues as to whether Dana and Doctor Havens are feeling anything for each other at this meeting.

But the enhanced border collie, hopping down from his snowmobile perch, did well on his own, passing Dana on her downwind side as if by chance, then approaching Alipang on HIS downwind side, breathing through his nose the whole time...

Mark noticed that his cohabitant girlfriend glanced at Whiplash as he passed by her. She did not glance at Mark--not that she had any cause to feel guilty, since she had told him before now about what she had felt, and Mark had likewise admitted to her that she was not the first woman in his life. But there was at least a hint of uneasiness in Dana's voice when she said, "And this is Whiplash, the real brains of our outfit."

Alipang lent a light note from his own side by giving a snappy hand-salute to the border collie. "Good morning, Captain Whiplash, sir!" The dog then succeeded in surprising both Alipang and Daffodil, by standing up expertly on his hind legs and using his right foreleg to give a very passable return salute.

"He understands a lot of what he hears," Dana explained to the pair in the sleigh--and then she herself, even after months of acquaintance with Whiplash, still was taken aback when he swung around, looked her directly in the eye, and very deliberately nodded his head. "But he can't actually talk," she concluded in a quieter voice.

Now Mark decided he had hung back long enough; any longer would be rude. So he dismounted from his snowmobile and strode up to the wagon, offering his hand to Alipang, who shook it firmly enough without making a macho squeezing contest out of it. Determined now to sow seeds of goodwill, he said, "I'm Forest Ranger Mark Terrell, the same one you exchanged letters with before I got the Enclave assignment. You remember, the man who said if he had been where that plane crashed, he would have wanted to save the MEN...ON...IT."

The sturdy Filipino gave him a hearty smile. "Yes, I did appreciate the _true_ sentiments behind your letter. Out of all the federal functionaries who could join us inside the fence, I can honestly say that I'm glad _you're_ here."

Encouraged, Mark told Alipang some of what he and Dana had been doing since their arrival inside the Enclave, leading to telling him, "Ranger Pickering and I will eventually have our permanent quarters in Rapid City; though not quite ranking equally with the triumvirate members, we will have authority over the ten or so Rangers who will be assigned to each sector."

"No more than that?" asked Alipang, looking surprised.

"No more than that," put in Dana. "We're not coming to _supplant_ you Grange workers; more like giving you top cover, while you continue to do as you did before. And yes, to have someone with you who can carry a gun, to help out if the carnivores are getting troublesome."

"We don't need a great number of Rangers here," Mark resumed, "since we're not here as doctrinaires, looking to catch you committing hate speech. Having even a few Rangers working closely with you volunteers will reflect more legitimacy on the Grange Association, letting _your_ people have a little more of a police-like aura. Anyway....we don't _have_ a great number of Rangers. Even though we absorbed the Park Service and the Fish and Wildlife Service, our total current numbers are much fewer than in the United States era."

 
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Dana Pickering had not been uneasy because of any positive desire for Alipang lingering in her emotional reservoir. Mark was proving to be near enough to everything she wanted in a man, that she did not feel as if living with him were settling for less. But she felt uneasy for Alipang's own sake, troubled by the thought that HE might feel uneasy, being inspected by the man who had taken his place in Dana's affections, even though Alipang had never _wanted_ a place in Dana's affections. It eased her worry some that the two men were talking business; she determined to keep this going.

"Part of the reason for downsizing, of course, is that eight former states plus Puerto Rico and Guam no longer ARE part of our country; that subtracted a lot of parks and wilderness, so that even with our absorbing the Park Service, fewer personnel are needed now."

"But I do wonder about something," said Alipang, growing more comfortable in this conversation although the boy with him remained silent. "Before my family was relocated from Virginia, we heard that the new administration was fencing off still more nature preserves, barred to human habitation or development. Wouldn't _those_ areas require maintaining a larger force of Rangers than you seem to be saying you have?"

"The majority of the national wilderness regions are not under our jurisdiction, though we do have a few," Mark replied. "Some are guarded by the Marshals' Service, some by the Transport Police, some by the Commerce Inspectors, and some by the Pinkshirts."

"Now, _that's_ odd. Who better than Forest Rangers to guard forests?"

Mark shrugged. "Politics is involved: the politics of labor-union connections, plus the legacy of pre-Diversity entities. Wilderness regions patrolled by the Transport Police, for instance, are ones which have important limited-access transportation corridors passing through them; the leaders of transportation-related unions get along best with Transport Police, and so the Transport Police get those postings. Wilderness regions under the eye of the Marshals' Service are the ones adjoining our national borders, because the Marshals' Service absorbed the old United States Border Patrol. And some wilderness regions are next to population centers with plenty of economic activity; thus there are Commerce Inspectors in the neighborhood anyway, and most of the unions heavily represented there favor the Commerce Inspectorate looking after those preserves."

When Mark did not continue from there, Alipang asked, "What about the Pinkshirts? What defines a nature preserve as being suited to them?"

"I confess I don't know."

"Neither do I," Dana added. "As far as Mark and I have heard of, no Forest Ranger has been allowed inside any wilderness region controlled by the Campaign Against Hate since the maps got redrawn --even though Forest Rangers _have_ on occasion been summoned into the other types to help with this or that."

Mark now changed something in his tone of voice; Alipang got the feeling that Mark _wanted_ him to notice the change in conversational direction that went with the change in vocal tone. "On the other hand, the Forest Rangers take precedence in many areas of agricultural oversight, so it isn't as if we're being left with no role to play. We pass on-the-scene judgment in environmental-impact observations, and offer motivational guidance to collective-farm workers."

Alipang put his own tone-change into a single echoed word: "Motivational?"

Mark avoided Alipang's eyes when he explained: "That's a case where we intrude on the Pinkshirts' turf. That is, we _remind_ the workers in agricultural collectives of how much depends on them."

Dana now helped Mark to stay on track to where he was steering their talk. "But Doctor Havens, you don't need to be told that workers in your transplanted population don't need motivating. Mark has been seeing for himself, since coming inside the fence, what a commendable work ethic you Biblicals have."

Mark was not even conscious of clasping Dana's hand in appreciation for her support. "She's right. And along with the work ethic, there's a high educational level. Everything I've seen and learned about the exiles here in the Enclave attests that, as a proportion of population, you have _many_ more persons here with practical university degrees, or certification in skilled trades, than is the average for the rest of the Diversity States. If you count farm management as a skilled profession, and I would, then this reservation may be intellectually the most elite neighborhood in America."

Dana nodded--with what struck Alipang, somehow, as a forced casualness. "You would almost think that no Biblicals were exiled _except_ the ones with high-value professions."

Alipang was growing more and more certain that he knew where Dana and Mark were leading him; and it had him so engrossed, that he gave no more thought to the fact that the son of a Fairness Party bigwig was listening to them. No exile was ever shown a comprehensive directory of the whole exile population; but these Forest Rangers probably had been shown some such records. Almost too softly to be heard, but in a tense voice rather than a listless one, Alipang said, "Yeah....I guess you _could_ almost imagine that no Biblicals _lacking_ high-value skills were exiled....to _this_ reservation."

Something passed from Dana's eyes to Alipang's as soon as he said this, and it was not any amorous hint. It was more like saying, You're getting warmer.

"Sure is a funny thought, isn't it?" said Mark, as lightly as he could manage.

Alipang nodded. "Yeah. Well, Mark, I think you and I will work _very_ well together when I'm on Grange duty." Here, the conversation would have safely subsided into inconsequentials, if Daffodil had not suddenly tossed a new log on the fire, opening his mouth at last to say:

"Ranger Pickering, Ranger Terrell, has either of you ever heard of people called Ku Klux Quakers?"
 
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Hearing this, Dana looked more closely at the tall boy than she had yet looked. "Daffodil, was it? Yes, I've at least heard that expression. But tell me what _you've_ heard about it."

"When I first arrived in Rapid City, I was interviewed by your former commanding officer, Nash Dockerty. That was because I was acting in a kind of show sponsored by the Department of Indoctrination..."

"Oh, that science-fiction thing?" Mark interjected. "Yes, I heard someone mentioning it in the Nebraska Sector, day before yesterday. Modest of you not to brag about being in show business, when they say show business is our country's most important economic activity."

"Thank you. Anyway, the Deputy Commander talked to me that evening about conditions in the Enclave, and he said there were dangerous Christian fanatics operating in the North Dakota Sector. He called them Ku Klux Quakers. It was funny: first he talked as if 'Ku Klux Quakers' was a clear and meaningful term, like naming a genus and species in biology...then he shifted to talking as if 'Ku Klux Quakers' was only one of many interchangeable terms, to be used loosely for almost ANY strongly religious group...and yet he still insisted that there did exist a particular segment of the exile population that was capable of mob violence."

Dana tensed up more than Alipang had earlier. For she remembered:

Very early in my assignment as an Overseer...after an inservice training session, I was at the headquarters dining facility. The Deputy Commander was showing comradeship, having lunch right there with his troops...he fondled me as he walked past my seat; at least, praise karma, that was the _only_ time he did that. But he sat within my hearing, mostly First Class Overseers sitting at his table. They were joking about the Biblicals, most of it very crude joking....then someone, it might have been his man Huddleston, actually suggested _inventing_ names for _imaginary_ Christian-fascist groups, just in _case_ they needed a dramatic-sounding label to call scapegoats by. They all got into it, came up with "Heaven's Hellhounds," "Jackals For Jesus," even "The Evangeli-Killers." But Nash Dockerty waited, he waited until all their eyes were on him....and he said, "There are Quakers in North Dakota Sector. We could call them Ku Klux Quakers."

It was entirely made up from nothing. But this boy has been lied to, that there actually ARE Ku Klux Quakers. I want to tell him; I want to tell Alipang. But I don't dare, I don't dare. Mark and I could end up in--in whatever it is that the Pinkshirts _really_ have hidden in their wilderness areas.

"So _have_ you seen them, or heard of specific cases?" Daffodil's persistent question punctured her secret thoughts.

"Why, ah, no. While I was an Overseer, I never worked up north where the Quakers are settled. Need-to-know thing...no, I don't know any particulars about them." Dana felt Alipang's eyes on her now; he probably suspected that she knew more than she was telling, but then he would also know why she dared not tell all. She hoped so; even though no longer lusting after him, she would have hated to have him think that she was _gladly_ perpetuating a lie.

Mark now came to her rescue, gaining brownie points for himself with her: "Doctor Havens, Citizen Ford, I've really enjoyed meeting you both, and I hope we'll see you again soon. But now Ranger Pickering and I should let you go on to Sussex, and get ourselves back to our own business."

The end of the meeting was far more ordinary than its beginning or its middle had been. Mark, Dana and Whiplash mounted up and scooted off toward the south. Only after the sleigh was out of sight did the collie whine to Mark, signalling that he wished to halt. When they halted, the collie struck a pose like a pointer, facing back toward where they had last seen Alipang and Daffodil. Then he faced Mark...held out his right foreleg...set it down again, the paw tapping the snowy ground forcefully...and turned in a series of tight clockwise circles, before stopping with a cheerful-sounding bark.

"If I'm doing well enough in my Whiplash-language course," Dana declared, removing her facemask once more, "he just told you that Doctor Havens is an honorable man, worthy of our trust and confidence."

Mark suddenly stepped to where Dana still sat astride her snowmobile, took her hand, lifted her into a standing posture, and kissed her. "Very good, lover! You even discerned that Whiplash and I were more worried about Doctor Havens' integrity than about that kid with him." He turned more solemn, even as she was responsively winding her parka-sleeved arms around his parka-clad waist. "But as for that boy, I hope he goes home soon. I think he means well, but he's _ignorant_ enough to get his hosts into trouble before he knows he's done it."

 
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