The rest were of a soldier in Boise’s hoop-armor and big shield, advancing forward with only his eyes showing over the rim and his sword held down for the thrusting stroke; behind him were a stolid-looking farmer or laborer hoeing, and a woman carrying a child and wearing an ankle-length skirt with her eyes cast down beneath a kerchief. The words read:

FIGHT! WORK! BELIEVE! OBEY!

“Now, tell me. Is this the viewpoint of the good side or the bad side?” Ritva murmured very quietly.

“Well, it’s not so different from what the PPA puts out, sometimes.”

“Oh . . . well, they’re not that bad. Not anymore.”

They turned into a side street, past a mouth-watering display of fruit and vegetable shops that extended back into the low buildings like Aladdin’s cave of treasures: baskets of blackberries glistening like dark jewels, raspberries red as blood with cherries a darker color, golden apricots and orange pumpkins and red-yellow blushing peaches and nectarines, vividly colored peppers and aubergines, lettuces and radishes and more. Boise ate well from the intensively worked small farms in the rich irrigated country round about. That gave way to a stretch of leatherworkers specializing in saddles—everyone there seemed grimly busy on government contracts—and then a series of two-, three-, and four-story buildings that had been linked together and reworked with more chimneys and other modern improvements including automatic-valve watering troughs along the pavement outside. A newbuilt wall surrounded what had been a big parking lot, now courtyard and stables, and wrought-iron letters above the gate proclaimed:

DROVER’S DELIGHT INN
COWBOYS WELCOME
FIGHTS ARE NOT
CLEAN FACILITIES FOR ALL BUDGETS
MEALS REASONABLE
HOT WATER FREE

“This is where we stay. Or get arrested for torture and death, if anyone blabbed,” Ritva said cheerfully.

Privately she was prickly aware of all her weapons; she didn’t intend to be taken alive.

Am I getting more nervous as I get older? Or is it just getting more real to me. I remember how Mary and I used to go whooping in having a high old time and being excited and everything . . . says the crone of twenty-two. Oh, well.