Desolation Road dru-1

by Ian McDonald

  —God rot ROTECH! it cried. Dr. Alimantando hurried through the pitch-black caves to see what was happening. The night air hummed with power, searchlight beams lanced the darkness, and sections of the orph’s mighty body slid in and out, open and shut. The orph sensed Dr. Alimantando shivering in his nightshirt, and transfixed him like a martyred saint with its search-lights.

  —Help me, man! This dying thing is not as easy as I had imagined.

  “That’s because you are a machine and not a human,” shouted Dr. Alimantando, shielding his eyes against the search-lights’ glare. “Humans die very easily indeed.”

  —Why can one not die when one wants to? Help me, man, help me, come down to me and I will show you how you can be merciful to me, for this creeping debility, this mechanical incontinence, is intolerable. Come down to me, man. Help me!

  So Dr. Alimantando scrambled barefoot down the rough trail up which he had portaged that morning. He realized that he must have sailed over the buried orph without ever knowing. Strange things, strange things. He hur ried over the yet-warm sand to the humming face of the behemoth. A dark spot appeared on the smooth metal about the size of a twenty centavo piece.

  —This is my systems termination activator. Touch it and I will cease to be. All my systems will shut down, all my circuits will fuse and I will die. Do it, man.

  “I don’t know…”

  —Man, I am seven hundred years old, as old as this earth that you walk upon; does old age no longer command respect among you humans in these degenerate days? Respect my wishes, I desire nothing more than to be gone. Touch the spot. Do it, man. Help me.

  Dr. Alimantando touched the dark spot and at once it faded into the warm orange metal. Then very slowly, very gradually, the life-hum of the orph dwindled and faded and died and was gone into the silence of the Great Desert. As the great machine relaxed into death, its multitudinous panels, hatches and sections opened, revealing the marvellous mechanisms of its interior. When he was quite sure that the orph was dead, Dr. Alimantando crept back to his bed, troubled and guilty over what he had done.

  In the morning he went to pick the body of the orph he had killed. From it he built, over five days of furious, driving and utterly enjoyable labour, a lozenge-shaped solar collector five times as tall as himself and mounted it, with some difficulty, on a wind-pump gantry. Energy and hot water secured, he went on to knock windows in the walls of his caves and glazed the unparalleled view of the Great Desert with plastic from the orph’s polymerization plant. He dismembered the corpse and carried it piece by piece up the bluffs to his new home. He rooted through the bowels of the machine to carve out chunks of machinery that might make good automatic cultivators, irrigation pumps, electrical heating plates, lighting panels, methane digesters, sprinkler systems, all with just a little bit of work and inventiveness. Dr. Alimantando worshipped inventiveness, particularly his own. Every new improved device delighted him for days on end until he built the next one. Day by day the orph was reduced to a pitiful shell, and then to sections a Dr. Alimantando built new solar collectors, then to plates, and then one night the storm wind blew really hard, so hard that Dr. Alimantando, upon his homemade bed, shivered and curled up inside his quiltbag. In the morning the bones of the dead machine had vanished like an ancient city beneath the drifting sands.

  But through its death Dr. Alimantando had transformed the waiting oasis into an actual, comfortable, technological hermitage, a private world unknown even to those who had built the world, where a man might ponder long and deep upon destiny, and density, time, space and the meaning of life. All this Dr. Alimantando did, and paper being scarce, he wrote his speculations on the walls of his caves in black charcoal. For a year and a day he covered his walls with algebraic expressions and theorems in symbolic logic, and then one afternoon he saw the steam of a train plume on the western horizon and knew that the orph’s promise had come true, and all of seven months early. He waited until the train was close enough for him to read the name Bethlehem Ares Railroads, and then went up the topmost chamber in his house, his weather-room, and sat looking out at the great desert until the train had passed over the eastern horizon. For he realized that destiny is a numinous, quicksilver thing; from his studies he knew that it took many paths through the landscapes of time and paradox to reach its destination, for were not destiny and destination the same word spelled with different letters? This was his destiny, to live a life of fruitful solitude atop a desert pinnacle. He could think of worse things. So one morning, shortly after the first train in history passed through Dr. Alimantando’s universe, he took himself and a bottle of peapod wine to the weather-room. The topmost cave, with its four windows pointing out in each direction of the compass, was of such fascination to him that he visited it only rarely, so that it would remain special. He looked out upon each preview for a long time. Then he poured a glass of peapod wine, and another, and another, and another, and with the last drop from the bottle he raised his glass and gave a name to everything he could see.

  “Desolation Road,” he slurred, drinking down the final glass of peapod wine. “You are Desolation Road.” And Desolation Road it remained, even though Dr. Alimantando realized when he sobered up that he had not meant Desolation Road at all, but Destination Road.

  2

  Mr. Jericho had pumped the rail-bogie through forests and plains. He had pumped it through meadows and metropolises. He had pumped it through paddy-fields and orchards, marshes and mountains. Now he was pumping it through the Great Desert. He was patient. He was obdurate. He was a small gnarled man, tough and black as the polished root of some desert tree, ageless and adamant. He would pump that hand-crank off the edge of the world if it would hide him from the men who wanted to kill him. They had found him in Telpherson, they had found him in Namanga Loop, they had found him in Xipotle and even he had had difficulty in finding Xipotle. For five days he had looked over his shoulder and then on the sixth day it was no longer necessary, for the city-dressed killers had stepped off the train, drawing every eye to them, and Mr. Jericho left that same hour.

  It had been a move of desperation, striking out across the Great Desert, but desperation and desert was all that was left to Mr. Jericho. There were blisters on his hands from the hot thrust-bar and his water was running low, but he kept pumping pumping pumping that ridiculous hand-crank railbogie across kilometres and kilometres and kilometres of stone and blazing red sand. He did not relish dying in the stone and blazing red sand. It was no way for a Paternoster of the Exalted Families to die. So said Jim Jericho. So said the collected wisdom of his Exalted Ancestors tumbling in the limbo chip embedded in his hypothalamus. Perhaps an assassin’s needle was preferable. And perhaps not. Mr. Jericho grasped the thrust-bar once more and slowly, painfully, creaked the bogie into motion.

  He had been the youngest Paternoster to accede to the Exalted Lines and had needed all the stored wisdom of his forefathers, including his lamented immediate predecessor, Paternoster Willem, to survive his first few months in office. It was the Exalted Ancestors who had prompted his move from Metropolis to the New World.

  —A growing economy, they’d said, a thousand and one operational niches for us to exploit. And exploit them he had, for exploitation was the purpose of the Exalted Families: crime, vice, blackmail, extortion, corruption, narcotics, gambling, computer fraud, slavery: a thousand and one economic niches. Mr. Jericho had not been the first but he had been the best. The audacity of his criminal daring may have taken the collective public breath away in gasps of outraged admiration, but it also provoked his rivals into forsaking their petty divisions and allying to destroy him and his Family. Peace restored, they could resume their internecine strife.

  Mr. Jericho paused to wipe salt sweat from his brow. Even aided by the Damantine Disciplines, his strength was nearing its end. He closed his eyes to the sun-sand glare and concentrated, trying to squeeze his adrenal gland into triggering the noradrenaline surge that would power him onward. The voices of the Exal
ted Ancestors clamoured inside him like crows in a cathedral; words of advice, words of encouragement, words of admonition, words of contempt.

  “Shut up!” he roared at the ion-blue sky. And it was quiet. Strengthened by his denial, Mr. Jericho seized the push-bar once more. The bar went down. The bar went up. The bogie creaked into motion. The bar went down. The bar went up. As it came up Mr. Jericho caught a glimpse of a green shimmer on the close horizon. He blinked, wiped stinging sweat out of his eyes, looked harder. Green. Complementary green on red. He disciplined his vision as he had been taught by Paternoster Augustine, focusing on the boundaries between objects where differences became apparent. Thus aided, he could distinguish tiny pinpricks of light: sunlight glinting from solar panels, deduced the massed wisdoms of the Exalted Ancestors. Green on red and solar panels. Habitation. Mr. Jericho seized the thrust-bar with renewed vigour.

  Between his feet were two items. One was a silk paisley-pattern scarf. Wrapped in it was a manbone-handled needle-pistol, traditional weapon-ofhonour among the Exalted Families. The other was a deceptively small leather bag, of the type once called Gladstone. It held three-and-a-quarter million New Dollars in United Bank of Solstice Landing bills of large denomination. These two items, along with the clothes on his back and the shoes on his feet, were the only things Mr. Jericho had been able to take with him on the Eve of Destruction.

  His enemies had struck all at once, everywhere. Even as his empire collapsed around him in an orgy of bombings, burnings and murder, Mr. Jericho had paused for a moment to admire his adversaries’ efficiency. Such was the path of honour. He had sadly underestimated them, they were not the bumpkins and petty parochial warlords he had mistaken them for. He would know better next time. And they in their turn had underestimated Jameson Jericho if they thought that he would fall to them. His staff was dying around him: very well, he would work alone then. He activated his escape contingency. In the fractional instant before the virus programs dissolved his data-net into protein soup Jameson Jericho had a new identity. In the split-split-splitsecond before the government audit programs battered into his creditmatrix, Jameson Jericho funnelled seven million dollars into false company deposit accounts in bank branches in fifty small towns across the northern hemisphere of the planet. He had debited only what lay in his black Gladstone bag by the time the Paternosters penetrated his falsified death (poor dupe of a doppelganger, but business was business) and sent assassins and tracer programs out after him. Jameson Jericho left behind his home, wife, children, everything he had ever loved and everything he had ever created. Now he was running across the Great Desert on a stolen Bethlehem Ares Railroads pump-bogie in search of the last place in the world anyone would think of looking for him.

  It was drawing on evening when Mr. Jericho arrived at the settlement. It was not impressive, not to a man accustomed to the grand architectural vistas of the ancient cities of the Grand Valley, who grew up on Metropolis, the ring city, the mightiest city of all. There was one house, a rough adobe shack propped against an outcrop of window-pocked red rock, one microwave relay tower, a handful of solar collectors and wind-pumps, and a lot of slightly unkempt green garden. Yet, the very isolation of this place impressed Mr. Jericho greatly. No one would ever look for him here. He climbed down from the creaking bogie to soak his blisters in the water-butt beside the house. He dampened his red handkerchief and dabbed the base of his neck with the warm water while mentally cataloguing the market garden. Corn, beans, matoke, onions, carrots, potatoes, white and sweet; yams, spinach, various herbs. Water trickled redly through irrigation channels between allotments.

  “Should do nicely,” said Mr. Jericho to himselves. The Exalted Ancestors agreed. A desert hawk croaked from the top of the microwave tower.

  “Hello!” shouted Mr. Jericho at the top of his voice. “Helloooooooo…”

  There was no echo. There was nothing for his voice to echo from, save the red hills on the southern horizon. “Hellooooo…” After a time a figure emerged from the low adobe shack; a tall, thin man, very brown, like leather. He had long twirling moustachioes.

  “Jericho’s the name,” said Mr. Jericho, eager to gain the advantage.

  “Alimantando,” said the tall, thin leatherman. He had a doubtful look. “Doctor.” The two men bowed to each other rather stiffly, rather uncertainly.

  “Pleased to meet you,” said Mr. Jericho. Alimantando was a Deuteronomy name: touchy people, the folk from Deuteronomy. Among the very first settlers, they tended to think the whole planet was theirs and were rather intolerant of newcomers. “Listen, I’m just passing through, but I need a place for the night: some water, some food, a roof over my head. Can you help me?”

  Dr. Alimantando studied the uninvited guest. He shrugged.

  “Look, I’m a very busy man, I’m in the middle of important research and I do appreciate not having my peace of mind disturbed.”

  “What is it you’re researching?”

  “Compiling a compendium of chronodynamic theories.”

  The Exalted Ancestors threw the appropriate response to the surface of Mr. Jericho’s mind.

  “Ah, like Webener’s Synchronicity Postulates and the Chen Tsu TripleParadox.”

  Dr. Alimantando’s suspicious glance held a twinkle of respect.

  “How long are you staying?”

  “Just one night.”

  “Sure?”

  “Pretty sure. I’m only passing through. Just one night.”

  And Mr. Jericho stayed just one night, but it lasted for twenty years.

  3

  The storm was close now and the rail-schooner ran before it full-sailed to steal every kilometre of distance from the boiling brown dustcloud. For three days it had run before the storm, three days since the morning Grandfather Haran turned his left eye, his weather-eye, to the western horizon and noticed the dirty ochre rim to the sky. “Dirty weather coming,” he had said, and dirty weather came, and was coming closer all the time, now so close upon the pioneers that even Rael Mandella, cursed with the gift of pragmatism, realized there was no outrunning it and that his family’s only hope lay in finding some place of refuge before they were engulfed in dust.

  “More speed, more speed!” he cried, and Grandfather Haran and dear, beautiful Eva Mandella, mystical wife, heavily pregnant, hung out every last handkerchief of sail until the railschooner hummed and sang along the straight steel tracks. Spars creaked, hawsers twanged and shrieked, the windbogie rocked and swayed. In the equipment trailer the goats and llamas bleated fearfully and the pigs scrabbled at the bars of their cages. Behind, rollers of brown dust spilled across the land in ever-closing pursuit.

  Again Rael Mandella lashed himself for the rash decision to bring wife, father and unborn child across the Great Desert. Four days ago, at Murcheson Flats, the choice had been simple. Throwing the points lever one way would send his family south into the settled lands of Deuteronomy and the Great Oxus, throwing it the other would send them out across the Great Desert to the empty places of Northern Argyre and Transpolaris. He had not hesitated then. It had pleased him to think of himself as a bold pioneer breaking new ground, building his own land with his own hands. He had been proud. This then was the punishment for it. His charts and maps were relentless, the ROTECH surveyors marked no habitation for a thousand kilometres along this line.

  A crack of wind caught the mainsail and ripped it down the middle. Rael Mandella stared dumbfounded at the flapping rags of sailcloth. Then he gave the order to close-haul. Even as he did so, three more sails split with cracks like gunshots. The railschooner shuddered and lost some of its headlong momentum. Then Eva Mandella stood up, swaying, clutching a humming hawser. Her belly heaved in imminent labour, but her eyes had the far look and her nostrils were wide as startled deer’s.

  “There’s something out there,” she said in a voice that slipped under the shriek of the wind and the wires. “I can smell it; something’s green and growing out there. Haran, you’ve got the eye for it, what ca
n you see?” Grandfather Haran pointed his weather-eye down the geometrically perfect line and in the swirling dust and haze that presaged the storm he saw what Eva Mandella had smelled: a blob of green growingness, and more besides; a tall metal tower and some lozenge-shaped solar collectors.

  “Habitation!” he cried. “A settlement! We’re saved.”

  “More sail!” roared Rael Mandella, the shreds of sailcloth flapping around his ears. “More sail!” Grandfather Haran sacrificed the ancient family banner of finest New Merionedd silk, with which he would have proudly proclaimed his son’s kingdom in the land beyond the desert, and Eva Mandella her cream organdie wedding dress and finest petticoats. Rael Mandella sacrificed six sheets of irreplaceable plastic solar sheeting, and together they were all hoisted up the mast. The wind caught the rail-schooner and it gave a little shudder and a little jump, and looking more like a travelling carnival caught up in a waterspout than pioneers intent on the new lands, the frontier-family Mandella spun down the line to sanctuary.

  Dr. Alimantando and Mr. Jericho had seen the rail-schooner while still far off, a scrap of many-coloured cloth flying before the front of the storm. They had braved the first tugs and gusts of the dust-devils to fold up the delicate petals of the solar collectors into tight buds and retract the feathery antennae and dish aerials into the relay tower. While they worked, heads and hands wrapped in thick turbans of cloth, the wind rose to a shout-defying shriek and filled the air with flying needles of dust. As the rail-schooner braked furiously in a shower of shrieks, screeches and sparks, Dr. Alimantando and Mr. Jericho ran up to help unload the caboose. They worked with the silent, selfless synchronization of men who have known only each other for a long and solitary time. Eva Mandella found their tireless, mechanical lifting and carrying rather frightening: livestock, rootstock, seedstock, tools, machinery, materials, fabrics, domestic items, nails, screws, pins and paints; carry and set, carry and set, all without a word being spoken.