Peace Is Better

Peace Is Better by Harry Turtledove

“Here we go again, Barbara,” Bill Williamson said. “Ready to roll?”

Barbara Rasmussen nodded. From the left rear seat of the Mighty Mo, the sasquatch Governor of Jefferson watched his publicist’s blond curls bob up and down above the back of the right front seat. “I sure am,” she said. PR people never lacked for enthusiasm. That sometimes made them scary, but they needed it.

“Then we’ll do it.” Bill stepped on the gas. He stood nine feet two in his stocking feet, though he was much too hairy ever to have put on stockings. The back seat of a car as humongous as his ‘74 Caddy with the extra-long steering column let him drive for himself, which he enjoyed.

Yreka had been a state capital for sixty years now, but it was still a sleepy little place. Anyway, the government office building lay only a couple of blocks from the onramps to the I-5: Jefferson’s backbone and, when you got right down to it, the whole Pacific Coast’s.

He put pedal to the metal as soon as he swung onto the northbound Interstate. He didn’t worry about 55, or about saving gas. Even at 55, the Mighty Mo’s mileage was a joke. The Eldorado’s engine was only a little smaller than a World War II fighter’s. The beast weighed as much as a Messerschmitt-109, too, especially with him in it.

Fifteen minutes out of Yreka, he and Barbara rolled through Hilt, which was two gas stations and a Burger King. A moment later, Barbara said, “The old border between California and Oregon was somewhere right around here.”

“Sure was.” As if on cue, they passed a road sign that said WELCOME TO JACKSON COUNTY. Bill went on, “That was Oregon. Siskiyou, where we were, used to be in California. We don’t miss Sacramento—”

“Or Salem,” Barbara put in.

“Or Salem,” Bill agreed. “And they don’t miss us.”

Another hour put them at Wolf Creek, where they got off the Interstate and onto Jefferson State Highway 71. No one ever called it that, though, not even to make Highway 71 Revisited jokes. “Here we are,” Barbara said as they headed toward the ocean, “on the Gable Memorial Highway.”

Now Bill was the one who nodded his big, shaggy head. Unless in the rear-view mirror, Barbara couldn’t see that, so he said, “You betcha. If ever a politician delivered for his home town, Gilbert Gable was the guy. Without him, Port Orford wouldn’t be much bigger than Hilt back there.”

If not for Gilbert Gable, who became Governor of Jefferson in 1934, miles of the road across the mountains to Port Orford probably would still remain unpaved. If not for Gilbert Gable, the railroad probably wouldn’t have gone through. If not for Gilbert Gable, the big breakwater that turned Port Orford probably would never have been built. If not for Gable and FDR and the WPA and the CCC and the other half-forgotten thickets of Depression-era initials ….

He died in the saddle, three days before Pearl Harbor. The papers called it acute indigestion. Bill had heard from Yreka old-timers that he drank like a fish. Drunk or sober, what he did lived after him. The highway and the railroad and the breakwater let Port Orford play its part in shipping men and weapons across the Pacific to fight Japan.

Thinking about that, Bill chuckled. “If not for Gilbert Gable,” he said, “chances are we wouldn’t be doing this photo op at the Port Orford Datsun dealership.”

“Well, no,” Barbara said. “If not for Gilbert Gable, chances are that Datsun dealership wouldn’t be there. But it’s a good photo op — and Mr. Fujita will be so proud for you to recognize him for all he’s done.”

“This is Jefferson. Everybody gets along here,” Bill said. “That’s what I told the Yeti Lama a month ago, and it’s the truth. Even if we have to work at it sometimes, it is.”

“He knew that before you told him. He wouldn’t have wanted to visit Jefferson if he didn’t.” Barbara paused a moment, then went on in a smaller voice: “He’s impressive, isn’t he?”

“Yeah.” Bill nodded again. He hadn’t wanted to admit, even to himself, just how much the holy yeti exiled from Tibet had impressed him. “Me, I sold houses, I got a law degree, I went into politics. I shake hands, I slap backs, I twist arms, I make speeches. I’ve got a knack for it, like.”

“You do a lot of good. I wouldn’t want to work for you if you didn’t.”

“Thanks,” Bill said, more because she sounded as if she meant it than for her words themselves. “But the Yeti Lama . . . When he says something, he means it. He means it all the way down. He’s not a politician, talking to hear himself talk. You have to take him seriously. I don’t know that I ever met anybody like that before.”

“Gravitas,” Barbara said.

“Huh?”

“Gravitas,” she repeated. “It’s a Latin word that means what you just said. I learned it a few years ago, watching the Nixon impeachment hearings. Barbara Jordan has it, too, and I’m not saying so because we’ve got the same name.”

“No, you’re not. And you’re right. She does,” Bill said.