Book: The Postman
Quotes of Book: The Postman
A new legend swept Oregon, from Roseburg all the way north to the Columbia, from the mountains to the sea. It traveled by letter and by word of mouth, growing with each telling.It was a sadder story than the two that had come before it--those speaking of a wise, benevolent machine and of a reborn nation. It was more disturbing than those. And yet this new fable had one important element its predecessors lacked.It was true.The story told of a band of forty women--crazy women, many contended--who had shared among themselves a secret vow; to do anything and everything to end a terrible war, and end it before all the good men died trying to save them.They acted out of love, some explained. Others said they did it for their country.There was even a rumor that the women had looked on their odyssey to Hell as a form of penance, in order to make up for some past failing of womankind.Interpretations varied, but the overall moral was always the same, whether spread by word of mouth or by U.S. Mail. From hamlet to village to farmstead, mothers and daughter and wives read the letters and listened to the words--and passed them on. book-quoteHe approached the great glass barrier dividing the room, and the speaker at the end of the table. "Cyclops?" he whispered, stepping closer, clearing his tight throat, "Cyclops, it's me, Gordon."The glow in the pearly lens was subdued. But the row of little lights still flashed--a complex pattern that repeated over and over like an urgent message from a distant ship in some lost code--ever, hypnotically, the same.Gordon felt a frantic dread rise within him, as when, during his boyhood, he had encountered his grandfather lying perfectly still on the porch swing, and feared to find that the beloved old man had died.The pattern of lights repeated, over and over.Gordon wondered. How many people would recall, after the hell of the last seventeen years, that the parity displays of a great supercomputer never repeated themselves? Gordon remembered a cyberneticist friend telling him the patterns of light were like snowflakes, none ever the same as any other."Cyclops," he said evenly, "Answer me! I demand you answer--in the name of decency! In the name of the United St--"He stopped. He couldn't bring himself to meet this lie with another. Here, the only living mind he would fool would be himself.The room was warmer than it had seemed during his interview. He looked for, and found, the little vents through which cool air could be directed at a visitor seated in the guest chair, giving an impression of great cold just beyond the glass wall."Dry ice," he muttered, "to fool the citizens of Oz. book-quoteSnow and soot covered the ancient tree's broken branches and seared bark. It wasn't dead, not quite yet. Here and there tiny shoots of green struggled to emerge, but they weren't doing well. The end was near.A shadow loomed, and a creature settled into the drifts, and old, wounded thing of the skies, as near death as the tree.Pinions drooping, it laboriously began building a nest--a place of dying. Stick by stick, it pecked among the ruined wood on the ground, piling the bits higher until it was clear that it was not a nest at all.It was a pyre.The bloody, dying thing settled in atop the kindling, and crooned soft music unlike anything ever heard before. A glow began to build, surrounding the beast soon in a rich purple lambience. Blue flames burst forth.And the tree seemed to respond. Aged, ruined branches curled forward toward the heat, like an old man warming his hands. Snow shivered and fell, the green patches grew and began to fill the air with the fragrance of renewalIt was not the creature on the pyre that was reborn, and even in sleep, that surprised Gordon. The great bird was consumed, leaving only bones.But the tree blossomed, and from its flowering branches things uncurled and drifted off into the air.He stared in wonderment when he saw that they were balloons, airplanes, and rocket ships. Dreams.They floated away in all directions, and the air was filled with hope. book-quote
