Sunrise Lands

"Yeah, I wouldn't like to try to storm it," Ingolf said.

Rudi's eyes flicked ahead to Thurston. There wasn't much of a fuss over the ruler's arrival; he'd seen that the man didn't like pomp. As he watched, two riders came out of the gate and down the cleared lane to meet them, saluting briskly.

"Mr. President," the first said.

He was in uniform too, but a blue one with NATIONAL POLICE sewn on the shoulder, a plain-looking man in his thirties with a short-clipped mustache. The younger man beside him was in the camouflage cloth of Boise's army; his helmet hid his hair, but from the freckles and pale complexion Rudi thought it must be as red as his own mother's. The first man looked at Thurston, his eyes flicking to Rudi and the others.

"They're cleared," the ruler said. "I know they're most assuredly not out to kill me… which is more than I can say for my own guards."

That brought a wince. "I thought you should know, sir, we found out how those men were infiltrated into the guard detail. We and Military Intelligence."

"Interservice cooperation. Wonders never cease," Thurston said dryly. "Go on, Commander Lamont."

"They were supposedly rotated down by Colonel Winder in Lewiston."

"Supposedly?"

The younger man beside the officer of police spoke up. "Three men were sent. Someone intercepted them on the way here, presumably killed them, and substituted ringers. Ringers who looked fairly similar and had extremely well forged papers… well-briefed ringers, too."

"They couldn't have hoped to keep that up long," Thurston said thoughtfully. "This isn't a very big country, not yet. But it nearly worked. Get me a report on procedures to make sure this doesn't happen again by ten hundred hours tomorrow. And start working on the real question."

"Sir?" the two officers spoke almost in unison.

"Why do they want to kill me? Even if it worked, the vice president would take over-and Moore would de clare war on them immediately. Which I'm now going to do anyway. So there's no upside for them, and they didn't even try to hide the fact that they were involved. Get to work on it. Why is always more important than how, in the long run."

They saluted and turned away. Rudi cleared his throat.

"Your guards aren't with you for long, then, sir?"

The ruler of Boise nodded. "Candidates for our OCS-Officer Candidate School-spend some time in my presidential guard detail. It gives me a chance to evaluate them."

Father Ignatius spoke: "Someone knows an uncom fortable amount about your security precautions, General. Specifically, the Prophet does."

"Yeah, padre, they do," Thurston said.

His eldest son broke in. Martin, Rudi reminded himself, as the man spoke.

"Sir, perhaps it would be better if you went to the Old Prison for now. It's easier to secure the perimeter there."

Thurston chuckled. "Captain, the day I lock myself up to avoid assassins, you may move for my impeachment. Besides which, given what happened… what if I'm locking the potential assassins up in there with me?

"It's not actually a prison," he went on to the oth ers, nodding southward. "It was, once, long before the Change. Good solid stone built compound, and we've improved it since, a couple of miles south of town."

"The… guests… then, sir?" his son went on. "The sixth regiment is there-more than enough for security, and I'll vouch for them."

The general president's eyebrows went up: "You weren't commander of the sixth, last time I looked, Martin, just a junior officer." Then to his guests: "Any takers?"

Rudi shook his head. "No, thank you, sir, if it's all the same." He smiled. "I've a fancy to see this town of yours."

"I should see to the sixth myself, then, sir," Thurston's son went on.

"You're still not regimental commander."

The younger man gri

"Very well."

"Give my regards to Mother, sir."

"And mine to Juliet, Captain."

Thurston's elder son turned his horse aside, followed by a pair of others. The tall gates on the other side of the bridge were open; a squad did a neat maneuver as they rode through the gloomy thickness of the wall. Rudi looked around as they rode eastward towards what looked like an interior citadel, with a big building with a gilded dome catching the setting sun not far from it.

Much was what you'd expect from any modern city; pre Change buildings modified to new uses, or new ones built to infill empty spaces that wasted precious space within the fortifications. Ground floors were stores or workshops with their proprietors living above, though less spilled onto the sidewalks than even Corvallis's strict laws enforced. There was a public library, and a fair assortment of houses of worship: Catholic, varieties of Protestant including some he didn't recognize, a Mor mon temple of some size and a small Covenstead that had him smiling at the sign of the Triple Moon.

Thurston's younger son pointed out features-the big silo shaped granaries where blindfolded oxen turned capstans that raised barley and wheat by geared screws, the waterworks and sewage plant with the attached bio gas plant that provided illumination and purified sludge for the farms, the railroad station…

The clothes on the people were very old fashioned, though, even in new cloth: jeans and T-shirts and jack ets, knee-length skirts and even the odd collar and tie. People moved briskly, as Corvallans did, but without the animated knots of impromptu argument you always saw there. There were no street musicians or beggars as there would be in Portland or Newberg or Astoria in Association territory, and no rickshaws, though plenty of bicycles and pedicabs. And none of the street shrines and little touches Sutterdown had.

Plus there were a lot of uniforms. And big, colorful posters on four-sided hoardings at crossroads. The process was stone plate lithography; he'd seen examples in Corvallis advertising this and that, and in Portland for tournaments and saints' days and proclamations from the Regent. The themes here were quite different.. ..

One he saw nearly every time showed five figures-a muscular soldier in the harness of a Boise regular, shield and sword in hand, an equally muscular male farmer or laborer with a spade, a woman with a pruning hook, another in a white coat with a test tube and a mother holding an infant. They all glared forward with square-jawed purpose, striding together in unison, and a legend beneath read in big block letters:

We're Building America with Our Sweat!

Defending It with Our Blood!

Don't Get In Our Way!

Others exhorted people to buy Reconstruction Bonds, whatever those were, or to attend night schools, whatever those were-he suspected they weren't much like a Mackenzie Moon School-or most frequently of all to vote in the Regional Representation Referendum, whatever that was. The visual images all had that charac teristic style although they were obviously by many different hands; even the idealized farm cottages managed to look muscular and determined, somehow.

He wasn't all that surprised. Most communities he knew had their own underlying unity of style. You could tell Mackenzie artwork, even when it was something as utterly practical as a wooden lever and stump for break ing flax-there'd be a little knotwork on the end of the handle, or a Triple Moon.

"And what would a Regional Representation Refer endum be, General? I understand the three words, but put them together and it's a mystery."

Thurston was deep in thought. His younger son answered instead:

"Whether we should elect a new Congress and Senate, locally, since we can't exactly do it nationwide. Fa… the president just realized a while ago that the ones we've got are all going to die of old age pretty soon."