Gabriel's Stand (43 page)

The two galloping horses left a cloud of blowing snow in the sagebrush as they ascended the rutted road. The winter sun sparkled on the layer of frost covering the burned-out trailer ahead.

“Whoa,” Gabriel said, pulling the reigns. His horse, Fool, snorted like a steam engine in the frozen air, kicking powder snow as it slowed to a walk.

“Do you see it?” Snowfeather asked.

“No,” Gabriel said as his daughter guided her horse to the yard behind the trailer.

“Here,” she said, dismounting her horse, Wind 2, in a single easy movement. She looked down at a tiny grave.

“Hah. He did it, after all,” Gabriel said grunting. His bulky form made a small spray of snow as he dismounted, matching only Snowfeather's speed, without her grace.

“It's a fine grave, don't you think?” she said, looking at the small, carved pole, and the tiny cross.

“I don't think he was much of a Christian,” Gabriel said, “but it is a fine grave. Cousin Steve did well.”

Snowfeather wiped the frost from a tiny brass plaque with her gloved hand. “See the inscription?” she asked.

Gabriel leaned down, wiped his prescription sunglasses on his vest, then squinted. “Here Lies Fat Fox. He Died Bravely in His Master's Service.”

“He sure did that,” Gabriel said, his eyes welling. He turned his face away.

Snowfeather pretended not to notice her father's tears and went over to the trailer. She tried the door and it responded with a groan of resistance. “Do you want to look inside? There isn't much left.”

“In a minute,” Gabriel said as he trudged through the tiny backyard. He could hear his daughter's footsteps inside the trailer. “They want me to run for the Senate again,” he called out.

“Will you?” Snowfeather asked, peering out the broken trailer window.

“No.”

“You're finally retiring then?”

“No. Find anything in there?”

“Look for yourself.”

Then Gabriel entered the trailer, his breath making a flickering white cloud in the shadow-streaked light. Only the steel table legs remained where he had once sat with his Fat Fox. The electronics had slagged into an unrecognizable mess. A silver coffee thermos lay in a corner, almost flat. A broken ceramic cup lay beside it, clean as new. “I'm amazed the trailer itself didn't melt,” he said.

“Me too,” Snowfeather said.

“Steel. A lot of stainless steel. It was a good trailer.”

“The modern Indian's teepee.”

“True. But all the aluminum stuff melted.” Gabriel bent over, moving a cracked bowl with the toe of his boot. “Fat Fox's dish,” he said. “I think I'll leave it.”

A moment later they stopped to contemplate the front yard. “Just what are you going to do?” Snowfeather asked.

“I think we'll keep the ranch. Maybe build a house on this spot. Alice wants to do that.”

“Good. I'll have a place to visit.”

“And bring the grandchildren, right?”

Snowfeather smiled. “I meant—what are you going to do with your free time if you are not retiring?” she said, avoiding the question.

“What are you smiling about, Princess? I know that look.”

“Let's just say that grandchildren are not out of the question. Now—no more questions, Dad. What are you going to do?”

“I am still needed, I think. This is not over. This kind of lunacy never quite is. Berker is still alive on life support. Why? I'll never quite understand white-eye's justice. Keeping a mass murderer alive long enough to be executed? But Berker is no longer a threat, except as a symbol, I suppose. Think of it: She is a vegetable…a perfect example of her cult's vision for humanity.”

“But what can you do, Dad?”

“Same question I tortured myself with—back when we were on that camp together, Princess. I hear that the G-A-N is still very active in Europe. And somebody's got to keep this administration in line, before Smith Junior paves over the remaining wilderness in his post-environmentalist zeal.”

“How do you propose to stay in the game?”

“I have a plan. Wanna see my new toy?” Gabriel trudged toward the horses. He patted Fool.

Snowfeather stroked Wind 2 while Gabriel pulled a heavy satchel from his saddlebag. “This is courtesy of NewsWeb and Edge Medical.” He set the bag in the snow. “It is my own, state-of-the art AutoCam kit. Three cameras and a real-time auto-editor. That reporter, Max Cahoon, recommended this one as the best for the price.”

Snowfeather walked over for a closer look as Gabriel zipped open the largest compartment.

“Dad, I'm not saying a word on-camera.”

“Be that way,” he said.

——

Half an hour later, they stood together with the fence at their backs, the horses just in view on the side.

Gabriel glowed with pride in his new AutoCam unit. With its built-in satellite transmitter, it stood on four black legs in the middle of the roadway, flanked by two other cameras on tripods. The whole rig looked to Gabriel like a Martian invader from an H.G. Wells' story.

The camera lights went red, and Gabriel cleared his throat. Tiny servo motors whirred. The air was still. Gabriel gripped the concealed remote in his ungloved right hand.

5, 4, 3, 2, 1…Live.

SatCom On: 12:00 Hours M.S.T.

AutoCam: Pan. Frame scene.

Viewers saw a large man in a blue parka standing next to a beautiful, younger woman with a crimson vest and scarf, sun lancing off frost on the lodgepole pine fence, two horses stamping their hooves and snorting in the icy air.

“This is Gabriel Standing Bear Lindstrom. And this is Snowfeather, my daughter—of whom I am eternally proud.

“There is good news…and a caution.

“People against the environment…and environmentalists against the people: These are both forms of madness. The very worst madness was a cult that tried to extinguish the human race in order to save the world. That dangerous idea has been defeated… For now. Those who would extinguish nature have not been defeated… For now.

The AutoCam zoomed out.

“By our relationship with nature, we define ourselves and our future. Here on this Idaho desert, far from the edge of the last bit of tilled soil, hundreds of miles from the nearest skyscraper, nature is intact. In our relationship to it we still may become whole.

“But look around you. What do you hear? The hum of machines? What do you feel? The pressure of too many people competing for too little room? Where is your peace? Where is your joy? Where does your spirit soar?”

Gabriel opened the fence and walked toward their horses followed by Snowfeather.

The AutoCam zoomed in on their figures approaching the horses.

“We all rejoice in the recent victory of brave sane men and women over deranged evil minds and their chilling agenda,” Gabriel said. “We will never forget those who died to give us this second chance. But we must never forget that it is a second chance. As my friend, Dr. John Owen, says—the political order is just in remission. The disasters that drove some evil people to attempt genocide may be allowed to happen again.”

Father and daughter mounted their horses.

Gabriel faced the camera directly as it zoomed in on his face. “Do I speak for you? I think our spirits are only as open as our link to the openness of nature. When you confine one, you imprison the other. Do I speak for you?”

“Our task, for this generation and all those who follow us, has just begun.”

The recording ended and the horses began to trot up the road. Gabriel turned to his daughter. “Hah! That was pretty darn good, don't you think?” Gabriel was very pleased with himself. “Maybe I have a career in the movies.” His horse pranced on for a moment, apparently caught up in the cinematic moment.

Snowfeather spurred Wind 2 until she was alongside her father. “Ah, Dad… Didn't you forget something?”

“What?” Gabriel said, still imagining his movie debut.

“Sorry I'm late!” Another horse and rider had appeared at the bend in the road. The figure clopped toward them, backlit against the glare of sun on snow.

Gabriel squinted at the approaching figure. It was John. Gabriel coaxed Fool into a brisk trot.

Snowfeather smiled and waved at John. “Is that your new horse?”

“Snowfeather, meet Prince!” John shouted. When Fool pulled up next to Prince, Dr. Owen added quietly. “Gabriel—maybe you should go back and pick up your fancy new broadcast equipment before somebody runs off with it. You might need it, in case you don't land that movie contract.”

The End

Author's Notes

…as long as the rivers run…
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“All Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the Supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding”. [US Constitution, Article Six]

Yes, that's what the US constitution actually says. Anyone who blithely maintains that a mere treaty can never override a free country's basic constitutional guarantees—like the right to a jury trial or the right against self-incrimination or freedom of speech or protections against unreasonable searches and seizures—should reread the original language from Article Six.

From time to time we are reminded that the US Constitution means ONLY what a majority of the Supreme Court say it means.

The use of the Treaty Clause of the US Constitution as a means to override the Bill of Rights is now a distinct possibility because the very function of international treaty relationships has been changed. Until the end of World War I, all treaties fell into three broad categories: (1) military alliances, (2) special trade arrangements, and (3) surrender conditions after defeat in war.

The first two treaty categories describe mutually beneficial agreements; the third—not so much. A surrender treaty—by that or any other name—is a wildly asymmetric outcome: The winner asserts sovereignty over the defeated nation and the defeated party just submits. If a defeated sovereign is a free country, one that has guaranteed certain rights and privileges to its citizens, those rights and privileges can be taken away as well. This is what would have happened to the Allies had we lost World War II.

Since World War II, a number of international treaty regimes have been created for altruistic reasons. This has gone on with little discussion of their most obvious feature: The signatories to these treaties have been giving up bits and pieces of sovereignty for “the greater good.” This is the voluntary surrender of sovereignty without a fight, without a defeat in war.

For example there is an International Criminal Court, (the ICC), a tribunal that was established in 2002
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by the so called Statute of Rome. This court normally sits in The Hague, but is free to hold court elsewhere. The prosecutable offenses assigned to the ICC are vaguely defined. They include “war crimes”, “crimes against humanity”, “genocide” and “aggression”. Individuals, including ordinary soldiers and citizens, can be called to account—whenever the accused is a citizen of a state party, or is in a non-party state that has accepted ICC jurisdiction.

If you are—heaven forbid—ever are brought to trial at the ICC, you will discover, as Dr. John Owen did, that you no longer have the right to a jury trial, protection from double jeopardy or even the right to confront your accusers.

China, India, Russia and the USA have so far refused to join the ICC. China's reservations were based on the vagueness of the laws being enforced, and the USA's objections were based on the failure to protect basic constitutional rights.
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This should leave little doubt in anyone's mind that a treaty like—say, The Earth Restoration Treaty—could actually override the Bill of Rights. It is fair to assert that joining such a treaty regime would be “prosecution without representation.”

How many votes does it take to get the United States of America firmly into the legal nightmare described in Gabriel's Stand? Sixty seven plus five. That is two-thirds of the US Senate (the House need not be consulted) and a five vote majority on the Supreme Court.

If we ever do something so suicidally foolish we will not have lost a war—it will just feel like it.

Native Americans tend to look at the subject of treaties with well-founded suspicion. The following line is attributed to Isaac Ingalls Stevens, the US government's lead treaty negotiator with the Pacific Northwest tribes in 1855. He eloquently promised the Indian signatories eternal access to their beloved ancestral game rights- “…this promise will be kept by the Americans as long as the sun shines, as long as the mountains stand, and as long as the rivers run…”

Looking Glass was a famous Nez Perce Chief, not a party to the negotiations. He arrived after the fact and is quoted as saying, “My people, what have you done? While I was gone you have sold my country.”

Please allow me a final word for those who think that my portrayal of the genocidal-minded Gaia cultists was based on pure fantasy. When I first researched this topic back in 1999, the cultists depicted in the Gaia Coup were just barely plausible. That has changed.

The “Gaia hypothesis” is credited to Dr. James Lovelock, who first advanced it in the late 1980's
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. Initially it described a feedback relationship between the climate, the oceans and the biosphere, a complex of interrelated systems that sustains an equilibrium-state favorable to life.

But Dr. Lovelock chose Gaia, the Greek earth-goddess, to describe a homeostatic feedback relationship. Was this romantic hyperbole? In later writings he has actually described Gaia as a “living organism.” Then, in a 2006 book, Lovelock called our current ecological troubles, Gaia's Revenge.

Unsurprisingly, in certain New Age circles Gaia is seen an actual living consciousness, even a modern deity. As of this writing, some of the ecological and psychological crises that preceded the events in Gabriel's Stand have already taken place. The ongoing trends are ominous.

Dr. Warren Hern, an American physician-anthropologist, has seriously advanced the idea that humanity is a “planetary malignancy.” When I first encountered this notion, I thought that “Surely Dr. Hern is using a shocking idea as a rhetorical device.” But then I read his early paper, published in 1989: “Why Are There So Many of Us? Description and Diagnosis of a Planetary Ecopathological Process”. This remarkable piece, written when Dr. Hern was at the University of Colorado, has never been repudiated by him. Under the subheading, MALIGNANT CHARACTERISTICS OF THE HUMAN SPECIES, Dr. Hern argued that “the malignant lesions and human communities are highly similar, even indistinguishable.”
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He predicted that “while the human species is capable of … non-cancerous activities and even occasionally displays them, it will continue to behave overall as a cancer on the planet.” Hern even proposed that our species' new name will be “homo ecophagus”, i.e., “the man who devours the ecosystem.” Dr. Hern concluded this article, now twenty-one years old, with this observation: “The idea that the human population is a planetary cancer is a profoundly disturbing conclusion, but the observations of the scientific community over the last 20 years have provided massive support for this hypothesis and little, if anything, to refute it.”

My point here is not to claim that academics like Lovelock or physicians like Hern are terrorists, but to point out just how thin the line is between views and practices like these and the Gaia ideology that animated the loosely hinged characters on my novel.

With power goes responsibility, and with intelligence goes the obligation to behave intelligently. As the earth's most powerful intelligent species, our task remains that of a good steward: we are charged to preserve, protect and defend our biosphere…but not to surrender our lives to it.

Given the bloody track record of the 20th century's murderous mass movements, we can reasonably expect some unbalanced individuals to take the perverse notion of a human malignancy to the extreme level described in this story. Lovelock and Hern may well be hailed by them, posthumously, as their heroes.

As Walking Wolf said, “Many of the ‘white eyes' are unbalanced. It has always been that way with them.” The notion that our species is an ecotumor and the New Age doctrine that Gaia is a deity—together make a truly dangerous synergy. This may yet become the 21st century's most lethal mass movement.

I believe that our optimum relationship with nature is balance. Those of us who love both the natural world and people should never give in to the unbalanced souls among us. I must believe that we will not fall into that trap…at least not while people like Gabriel are still standing.

As John Owen says, “bad ideas never die, they just go into remission.” Edmund Burke said that “the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” Unfortunately, the human capacity for doing nothing is well documented. Intelligent vigilance is warranted. I can still hear Fred Loud Owl: “Waiting and watching is the game of the hunter.”

~ Jay B Gaskill