All along the bridge she ranSwifter than any deer;A grenade launcher in her hand,And in her heart no fear.All along the bridge she ran,Swifter than any doe;Behind her her two fastest friends,Great-hearted, ran also.

There are several more stanzas, detailing the destruction of the android army on the far bank of the Cheyenne, praising Dakota’s valor, Maggie’s, Tacoma’s, her own. The cold around her heart is back, glacial cold, and with it panic. Only the prospect of disgrace in Maggie’s eyes and Dakota’s keeps her rooted to the concrete floor of the auditorium, a smile on her face that seems to her as rigid as a corpse’s.

God help me, these people think I’m a hero. A real one, like Dakota and Maggie. What will I do? How can I ever measure up to that?

After what seems like an eternity, the song comes to an end.

God prosper now our President,Our lives and safeties all.And her companions in the fightLet honor bright befall.

Kirsten claps with the rest of the crowd, her face burning. “Harry,” someone cries, “do you know who you’re singin’ to?”

“I’m singin’ to you, you bastard!” the musician rejoins; “Only you’re too cheap to stand me to a beer, Todd Rico!”

“This should stand you to a beer or two.” The soft voice is Maggie’s, behind her, and Kirsten watches as she removes the bobcat earcuff and drops it into the hat on the floor beside Harry. Kirsten’s heart clinches; she has no jewelry, and money is useless. The only thing she has of value is the gun she is wearing underneath her jacket. Slowly she unstraps it and lays it, too, at the singer’s feet. “Thank you for a fine song, Harry,” she says. “Perhaps you can sing it again when Dakota Rivers can hear it, too.”

The singer’s head comes sharply round. “Wait. I know your voice.”

She makes a small, deprecatory gesture, halted abruptly. What was not evident before is now; the man cannot see. “Probably not,” she says quietly.

“You’re King,” he says, equally quietly. “I’ve heard you on the TV.”

She nods, then, feeling foolish, “You have a good ear. That must have been months ago.”

“Nah, I remember voices. I lost my sight back in ’03, in Baghdad, along with my leg. Implants wouldn’t take.”

She wants to stop and talk to him, to ask whether he has always been a singer and how he survived the uprising, but the Captain at her elbow is urging her forward, into the huge emptiness of the auditorium. “Ma’am. The people are lining up.”

Instead she thanks Harry again, shaking his hand, and moves on. Behind her she hears the sound of small items dropping into his hat; he has earned his beer and more this afternoon. She says, “That was generous of you, Maggie. I know that cuff means a lot to you.”

Maggie just shrugs. “I have another; I never wear the pair. That gun, though, should feed him for a month or more—way more, if he throws in the story of how he got it. You’re becoming a legend.”

“You, too,” Kirsten retorts. “And I don’t think you like it any better than I do. Dakota will be—“ She pauses, searching for a word. “Embarrassed,” she finishes lamely.

“Try ‘really pissed’,” says Maggie.

Inside, the room has been cordoned into aisles with rope and stanchions. Huge signs with letters march across the walls: A-B, C-E, all the way to XYZ at the opposite side. Uniformed soldiers, all officers from the bean-counting division, sit behind long tables with stacks of legal pads and note cards. Slowly the people sifting in find their initials and form into lines, all talking at once, many pointing at Kirsten where she stands with Maggie and Boudreaux, back in his normal incarnation, at the front of the room. There must be, she estimates, a couple thousand actually on the floor, with more outside.

“Are you going to talk to them?” Boudreaux asks.

“No, I hadn’t planned—“

“You really should, you know.” Maggie says. “Call it winning hearts and minds. We’ll get a lot better cooperation if the folks think they’re doing their President a personal favor.”

She shoots Maggie a withering glare, but accepts the bullhorn from Boudreaux. “All right. Clear me a spot on the table. They all thought I’d be taller.”

Slowly the crowd quiets. From her perch on the center table, Kirsten can make out faces watchful, eager, annoyed. One young mother bounces her crying baby; a man with a bored expression slaps his hat impatiently against his thigh. Hearts and minds.

“Good afternoon,” she says, her voice echoing from the high walls, distorted and tinny in her own ears. “As most of you know, I’m Kirsten King, and as far as we know, I’m the only survivor from the President’s Cabinet in Washington.

“I need your help. We’ve fought off a major attack by the androids and their allies, but we haven’t defeated them yet. There’s lots more out there where those came from, and there’s humans cooperating with them. We still don’t know what they want or who is responsible for the uprising. Those are things we’re going to have to deal with.

“The people of Rapid City and the troops of Ellsworth Air Base shed their blood at the Cheyenne to keep us alive and free. Our duty now is to keep our laws and our Constitution alive and free, too, to make sure we don’t fall into anarchy or the rule of force. That means we need to do such things as have elections for Mayor and Council of Rapid City. It means we need lawyers and judges. We need free commerce, with fair prices, and we need peace officers to make sure that it doesn’t become profiteering. If you have special skills, if you’d like to serve in office, please let the census-takers know.”

Kirsten pauses, and the quiet lies thick about her. Not a word, not a shuffling foot breaks the silence. The faces turned to her are serious, some clearly worried, all resolute. Hearts and minds.

“You are the free people of the United States. You live in a country founded on law and the idea that every person is valuable. The need for law has never been greater; each person has never been more valuable. I ask today for your help in restoring our nation. We can never go back to what we had; too much has been lost. Too many have been lost.

But we can begin today to reaffirm our Constitution and our laws. And with them, we can be a nation again that can stand against any enemy.

“I ask for your help in that work. Long live freedom! And long live the free people of the United States!”

She lowers the bullhorn, looking out over the sea of faces, dazed. My God, where did that come from? She barely has time for the thought before the wave of sound breaks over her, shouts of “Free-dom! Free-dom! FREE-DOM!” mixed with “Kir-sten!” and “Ells-worth!” tumbling over her in a roar. Then, from amid the shouting, she hears the clear chords of blind Harry’s twelve-string, strumming out a rhythm. Gradually the crowd quiets, and he begins to sing.

As I was walking that ribbon of highway,I saw above me the endless skyway.I saw below me a golden valley.This land was made for you and me.

As he goes into the chorus, the crowd joins him, clapping and stomping.

This land is your land, this land is my land,From California to the New York Island,From the redwood forest, to the Gulf Stream water,This land was made for you and me.

The verses go on and on, to end with:

Nobody living can ever stop meAs I go walking my Freedom Highway.Nobody living can make me turn back,This land was made for you and me.

The last chorus ends with a crescendo of whoops and rebel yells, the pounding of hands and feet shaking the floor like an earthquake. As the music fades Kirsten stands for a moment silent, then turns to step down. Her knees shake so hard she nearly falls as she escapes the crowd of admiring officers, all talking at once. It is too much. The noise of the cheering crowd batters at her, at her ears, at her mind.

Too much.

Brushing past the officers and her startled guard, she makes for the emergency exit and the privacy of the open air.

CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

SOUTH DAKOTA SPRING has come decked out in her Sunday finest, seemingly overnight. Between the setting of one day and the dawning of the next, trees which had previously shown the sky their brittle bones are budded out in verdant greens and purples and pinks and whites. The air is a perfumed delicacy and the breeze bears the warm promise of summer on its breath.

Sitting on the small porch in front of Maggie’s house, Kirsten takes it all in with peaceful pleasure, thanking any god currently in residence that she’s finally free—if only for the moment—of the dreadful Atlas-weight of her position within this newly ripening society. The trip back from Rapid City had been a silent one, and Kirsten extends her silent thanks to Maggie, who knew enough to know that Kirsten needed the silence to decompress.

The trip had been a mixed blessing. As far as the census went, they had succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. Unfortunately, however, they hadn’t encountered a judge or lawyer in the bunch. Or at least that anyone wanted to admit, anyway. Three paralegals had been the best they could come up with, and Kirsten was seriously considering promoting them to a judgeship, Bar Association be damned.

“Someone’s coming,” Maggie remarks from her place on the lawn, directing Kirsten’s attention toward a perfectly maintained—if decades old—truck currently headed in their direction. Squinting, the young scientist can just make out Dakota’s dark form riding shotgun, and her heart accelerates of its own accord, spreading a warm, welcoming tingle throughout her body. A smile curves her lips, though she dutifully ignores the smirk thrown her way by the watching Air Force colonel.

The driver appears to be an elderly male with a hawk-like profile and eyes to match, from what she can see behind the reflection of the setting sun on his thick glasses. She briefly wonders if this man is Dakota’s father, or even grandfather, but dismisses the notion out of hand when the truck turns up the short driveway. His features, hawk-like though they may be, scream Anglo-Saxon from a mile away.