The Protector's War by S. M. Stirling Page B

lump of black ash; a gust of wind swept it out in feathery bits to scatter across grass and clothes and faces.
    â€œWell, shit ,” Mike Havel murmured softly under his breath.
    They did this every year on the anniversary of the Change, just to make formally and publicly sure that it hadn’t reversed itself; it had grown into something of a public holiday, too—more in the nature of a wake than a celebration in the strict sense, but boisterous enough for all that.
    The watching crowd sighed. Some of the adults—men and women who’d been adult that March day nine years ago—burst into tears; many more looked as if they’d like to cry. The children and youngsters were just excited at the official beginning of the holiday; to them the time before the Change was fading memories, or tales of wonders.
    Though by now we wouldn’t get the old world back even if the Change reversed itself, he thought grimly. Too many dead, too much wrecked and burned. And would we dare depend on those machines again, if we knew the whole thing could be taken away in an instant?
    He felt a sudden surge of rage—at whoever, Whoever, or whatever had kicked the work of ages into wreck, and at the sheer unfairness of not even knowing why. Then he pushed the feeling aside with a practiced effort of will; brooding on it was a short route to madness. That hadn’t killed as many as hunger and the plagues, but it came a close third, and a lot of the people still breathing weren’t what you could call tightly wrapped.
    â€œSorry, no guns or cars or TV, folks,” he said, making his voice cheerful. “Not this ninth year of the Change, at least. But a pancake breakfast we can still manage. Let’s go!”
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    â€œYou’re supposed to eat it, my heart, not smear it all over your face,” Juniper Mackenzie said to her son; she spoke in Gaelic, as she often did with him, something to keep her mother’s language alive a little longer.
    Alive in Oregon, at least, she thought. On the other side of the world…who knows?
    She suspected and hoped Ireland had done better than most places, un-crowded as it was and protected by the sea. And Achill Island…it was likely lonely places in the Gaeltacht had done better still than Dublin, but who could tell for certain?
    â€œWas it your face you put in the dish, instead of your fork? What would the Mother-of-All say, to see you wasting it so?” she went on, plying the cloth as the boy wiggled and squirmed.
    She was only half serious as she wiped sticky butter and syrup from around Rudi Mackenzie’s mouth, but the serious half was there too. Nobody who’d lived through the Dying Time right after the Change would ever be entirely casual about food again; plague had taken millions, fighting there had been in plenty, but sheer raw starvation had killed the most. Some survivors were gluttons when they could be, more were compulsive hoarders, but hardly anyone took where the next meal was coming from lightly. Nobody decent took the work involved in producing food now lightly, either.
    â€œThe Lady? She’d laugh an’ tell me to lick my fingers,” Rudi said, also an Gaeilge, and did so.
    Then he grinned an eight-year-old’s grin at her, and stuck out his tongue. “So there.”
    â€œI expect She would,” Juniper said. “And yes, you can go play.”
    The boy’s smile grew dazzling, and Juniper felt her heart turn over as he threw his arms around her neck.
    â€œGraim thu, maime!”
    â€œI love you too, son of my heart. Scoot!”
    Most of the Willamette communities had envoys sitting along the high table. There was her friend Luther Finney, a whipcord-tough old man who’d been a farmer near the town of Corvallis and still was—and sat on the University Council as well, since the ag faculty of Oregon’s Moo U had ended up taking over that area. Captain Jones of the university’s