Desolation Road dru-1

by Ian McDonald

  “Where can we put them?” screamed Rael Mandella.

  Dr. Alimantando beckoned with a cloth-wrapped finger and led them to a warm, dry cave.

  “This for you, the one connecting there for your equipment.”

  At seventeen minutes of seventeen the dust storm struck. The same moment, Eva Mandella went into labour. As her wedding dress, her petticoats, the family banner and six sheets of valuable solar sheeting were whirled up into the atmosphere on winds that might shred a man’s flesh from his bones, she squeezed and squeezed and moaned and gasped and squeezed and squeezed in the warm dry cave by the light of tallow candles; squeezed and squeezed and squeezed and squeezed until she squeezed two squawling infants into the world. Their advent wails were lost beneath the greater wailing of the storm. A little red sand trickled into the mouth of the cave. In the yellow flickering candlelight Rael Mandella picked up his son and daughter.

  “ Limaal,” he said to the child in his right hand. “Taasmin,” he said to the child in his left, and in doing so he cursed them with his curse, so that his right-handed rationalism passed into his son and his wife’s left-handed mysticism passed into his daughter. They were the first natural citizens of Desolation Road, and their citizenship bestowed citizenship upon their parents and grandparent, for they could not press on to the land beyond the desert while there were still infants at the teat. So they stayed forever and never found the land beyond the mountains for which all Mandellas have been searching ever since, for they know that Desolation Road is always one step short of paradise and they are not content with that.

  4

  Rajandra Das lived in a hole under Platform 19 of Meridian Main Station. He shared this hole with a lot of other people, and there were a lot of holes under Meridian Main Station, so there were a lot of people. They called themselves gentlemen of leisure, connoisseurs of freedom, scholars in the Universuum of Life, Blythe Spirits. The railroad managers called them gutterboys, tramps, beggars, freebooters, goondahs and bums. The passengers called them distressed gentlefolk, unfortunates, fallen souls and knights of misfortune and opened their purses to them as they squatted on the station steps, hands outstretched to receive showers of centavos, their eyes gazing milky-blind, courtesy of special cataract contact lenses manufactured by the Eastern Light Spectacle and Optics Company on East Bread Street. Rajandra Das, however, was above the largesse of the train-traveling people of Meridian. He existed wholly within the subterranean community of Main Station and lived on what the beggars could afford to pay for his services. He enjoyed a certain measure of respectability, (though what respectability might amount to in a kingdom of tramps was questionable), because he had a talent.

  Rajandra Das had been given the power of charming machinery. There was nothing mechanical, electrical, electronic or submolecular that would not work for Rajandra Das. He loved machines, he loved to take them apart, tinker with them, put them back together again and make them better than before, and the machines loved the feel of his long, dextrous fingers stroking their insides and tweaking their sensitive components. Machines would sing for him, machines would purr for him, machines would do anything for him. Machines loved him madly. Whenever any device went wrong in the holes under Meridian Main Station, it went straight to Rajandra Das, who would hum and haw and stroke his neat brown beard. Then he would produce screwdrivers from his jacket of many pockets, take the device apart and within five minutes have it fixed and running better than before. He could coax two years out of four-month light bulbs. He could tune wirelesses so fine they could pick up the cosmic chitchat between ROTECH habitats in high orbit. He could rewire prosthetic arms and legs (of which there was no shortage in Meridian Main Station) to be faster and stronger than the fleshly parts they replaced.

  Such abilities did not go unnoticed by the station authorities, and when on occasion there was a pre-fusion percolator that just wasn’t settling right or a persistent kink in the number 3 pinch bottle that had the engineers slamming their E-M field-inducer wrenches to the concrete in frustration, then the most junior subapprentice would be sent into the faeces-redolent warren of runways and tunnels to get Rajandra Das. And Rajandra Das would straighten the kink and adjust the faulty percolator and everything would be right as ninepence again, if not righter.

  So Rajandra Das led a charmed life; immune to the periodic transport police purges of the tunnels, respected and liked and comfortably off. Then one day Rajandra Das won the Great Railroad Lotto.

  This was a cunning piece of social engineering devised by a legendary bum known only as the Old Wise Fellow, and this was how it worked. Once a month the name of every subterranean beneath Meridian Main Station went into a big tombola. A name was drawn and the winner invited to leave Meridian Main Station that same night on any train of his choice. For the Old Wise Fellow had recognized Meridian Main Station for the trap it was; a comfortable, warm, dry hole, an invitation to an eternity of contented beggarhood and self-mortification. It was the denial of everything potential in a human. It was a gentle jail. Because he was Old and Wise, (old as the world, the legend went) the Old Wise Fellow made two laws to govern his game. The first was that every name without exception must go into the tombola. The second was that no winner could ever refuse his prize.

  And then the tombola in the little room with picture postcards from past winners on the walls gave a little whirr and a little cough and coughed up Rajandra Das’s name. It may have been pure luck. Then again, it may have been sheer eagerness to please on the part of the tombola machine. Either way, Rajandra Das won and while he packed his few possessions into a canvas bag word spread across Meridian Main Station, both above and below ground, from the Esterhazie Avenue Freight Siding to the office of Mr. Populescu, the station master: “Rajandra Das has won the lotto… have you heard? Rajandra Das has won the lotto… he’s leaving tonight… really? Yes, he won the lotto,” so by the time midnight came and Rajandra Das was crouching in an inspection pit beside Number Two Main Downline waiting for the signal light to change, there were over a hundred people lining the track to see him off.

  “Where you heading for?” asked Djong Pot Huahn, holemate and faithful provider.

  “Don’t know. Wisdom eventually, I think. I’ve always wanted to see Wisdom.”

  “But that’s right on the other side of the world, R.D.”

  “Makes it all the more worth reaching.”

  Then the signal light did turn green and down the line in the bright glow of Meridian Main Station there came a puffing and panting of fusionheated steam. Out of the glare and the steam came the train, a thousand and a half tons of clunking clanking Bethlehem Ares steel. The boxcars rolled ponderously past Rajandra Das’s covert, crushingly slow and heavy. Rajandra Das counted twelve, his lucky number, and made his jump. As he ran along between the train and the rows of well-wishers, hands reached out to slap him on the back and voices called out shouts of encouragement. Rajandra Das smiled and waved to them as he jogged along. The train slowly gathered speed. Rajandra Das picked his car and hopped up onto the coupling. Shouts, whoops and applause came out of the dark at him. He edged along the side of the car and tried the door. His charm had not failed him. It was unlocked. Rajandra Das slid the door open and rolled inside. He made himself comfortable on a pile of boxed mangos. The train rumbled into the night. In his fitful, fretful sleep, it seemed to Rajandra Das that the train stopped for long times at anonymous junctions while brighter, faster trains screamed past. At dawn he woke and breakfasted on mango. He slid the door open and sat with his legs dangling over the track, watching the sun rise beyond a vast red desert, eating slices of mango which he cut with his multibladed Defence Forces knife, stolen from Krishnamurthi Speciality Hardware on Water Street. There being nothing to look at except a lot of red desert, he went back to sleep again and dreamed of the towers of Wisdom glistening in the dawn light as the sun rose beyond the Syrtic Sea.

  At twelve minutes of twelve Rajandra Das was awakened by a small explosion at t
he base of his spine. Stars blazed before his eyes, he gasped and gaped for breath, winded, agonized. There was another explosion, and another. Rajandra Das was now sufficiently awake to recognize them as kicks to his kidneys. Too winded even to howl, he rolled over and a bristling, sweaty face breathed a foul miasma over him.

  “No good goddamn freeloading lazy bum of a tramp,” growled the greasy face. A foot drew back for another kick.

  “No no no no no no no no no, no no don’t kick,” wailed Rajandra Das, finding the air in some pocket of his lungs to plead, hands raised up in futile defence.

  “No good goddamn freeloading lazy bum of a tramp,” said bristle-breath again, for emphasis, and kicked the wind out of Rajandra Das. A hand grabbed Rajandra Das’s threadbare coat and lifted him.

  “Off you go,” said the face, dragging Rajandra Das to the open door. Red desert sped by beneath the wheels.

  “No no no no no,” pleased Rajandra Das. “Not here, not in the desert. It’s murder!”

  “What do I care?” grumbled the sweaty face, but some vestige of decency untouched by Bethlehem Ares Railroads must have been stroked, for he set Rajandra Das down on a heap of mango boxes and sat down to watch him, tapping his nightstick against his thigh. “Next place we so much as slow down, you going off.” Rajandra Das said nothing. He was feeling his bruises turn purple up and down his back.

  After half an hour the car jolted. Rajandra Das could tell from the pressure on his purple bruises that the train was slowing.

  “Where are we, hey? Someplace civilized?”

  The guard smiled, showing a wicket of rotting teeth. The train slowed. With a gritty grinding of brakes, the train stopped. The guard slid the door open, admitting a blaze of brilliant sunshine.

  “Hey hey hey, what is this?” said Rajandra Das, blinking and blinded. Then he found himself lying on hard dirt with the wind knocked out of him again. His canvas bag thumped painfully onto his chest. Whistles blew, steam hissed, pistons churned. A trickle of burning hot liquid ran down Rajandra Das’s face. Blood! he thought, then blinked, spat, sat up. The guard was urinating on him, laughing uproariously as he tucked his warty member back into his rancid pants. The train blew and moved off.

  “Bastards,” said Rajandra Das to the railroad company in general. He wiped his face clean with his sleeve. The urine formed a dark red stain in the dust. It might well have been blood. Rajandra Das took a long look from the sitting position at the place he had landed in. Low adobe houses, a white wall or two, some greenery, some trees, some wind-pumps, a handful of large lozenge-shaped solar collectors and a stubby microwave relay tower on top of a pile of rocks that looked as if someone lived in them.

  “It’ll do,” said Rajandra Das, beloved of tombolas and trains and boxcars but not guards, never guards of the Bethlehem Ares Railroad Company. Figures were approaching, indistinct in the noontime heat-haze. Rajandra Das picked himself up and went to meet his new hosts.

  “Hey,” he said, “there wouldn’t be any picture postcards of this place, would there?”

  5

  The Babooshka did not like trains. Their bulk intimidated her. Their weight crushed her. Their speed alarmed her and the sound of their wheels was that of doomsday approaching. She feared their steam and their spoutings and the possibility of their fusion tokamaks exploding and blasting her to loose atoms in the upper atmosphere. She hated trains. Especially trains that had to cross dreadful red deserts. Trains, they were largely indifferent to the Babooshka. Even this one that was crossing a dreadful red desert.

  “Misha, Misha, how much longer until we can get off this horrid engine?”

  Mikal Margolis, mineralogist, industrial chemist, dutiful son and young pioneer, looked away from the hypnotic red desert; clean, spare and beautiful in its geological potential, and said to his little old mother, “We shall be through it when we’re through it, and then we shall be in Paradise Valley, where it rains only at two o’clock in the morning, where, when you plant a seed, you have to stand back because it will shoot up and hit you on the chin, where tame songbirds come and sing on your finger and where you and I, Mother, will make our fortunes and see our days out in wealth, health and happiness.”

  The Babooshka was pleased by her son’s simple tale of wonder. She liked the bit about tame songbirds sitting on her fingers. The only birds in New Cosmobad had been raucous black crows.

  “But how much longer, Misha?”

  “Next stop, Mother. No towns in this desert, so we don’t stop until we are there. Next stop, then we change to the mountain railroad that will take us to Paradise Valley.”

  “Oh, changing trains, I do not like it. I do not like trains, Misha, I do not like them at all.”

  “Never worry, Mother. I’m here. Now, would you like some mint tea to soothe your nerves?”

  “That would be very nice indeed, Misha. Thank you.”

  Mikal Margolis rang for the steward, who brought mint tea in a smart pot decorated with the black and gold Bethlehem Ares Railroads livery. The Babooshka sipped her tea and smiled at her son between sips. Mikal Margolis smiled back and wondered what he was going to tell his mother when they got to Paradise Valley, for the only paradise it was was an industrial chemist’s one; where the rain fell at two o’clock in the morning because that was when the refineries vented their tail-gasses into the atmosphere, where it was ethylene in the soil that made the plants shoot up overnight, then wither, then die, and where all the birds had succumbed long ago to toxic fumes and the ones that sat upon fingers were cunning mechanical duplicates, all part of the Company’s public relations programme.

  He would worry about that nearer the time. Outside the polarized window was the thrilling red desert, a man’s landscape, a gritty wonderland of raw rocks and minerals. He imagined himself riding across it on horseback, wrapped in serape and headcloths, his leather specimens case slapping against his back. Caught up in such reverie, it was not long before the gentle rocking of the train sent him off to sleep.

  He woke in pandemonium. Not the Pandemonium that was the name of the interchange for Paradise Valley, but the other, more dreadful sort. Valves were hissing, voices shouting, metal clanking against metal, and someone was shaking him by the shoulder, calling, “Sir, your mother, sir, wake up, sir, your mother, sir, sir, sir.” He focused on the pale face of the steward. “Sir, your mother, sir.” The Babooshka was not in her seat. All the luggage was gone. Mikal Margolis dashed to the window to see his mother gliding happily down the side of the track, waving along a slender young man with a beard grinning under a pile of parcels and cases.

  “Mother!” he roared. “Mother!”

  The Babooshka looked up and waved, a tiny, happy china doll of a woman. Her voice was as doll’s.

  “Misha! Come on! Can’t waste time. Have to find the other station.”

  “Mother!” bellowed Mikal Margolis, “This is not the right stop!” But his words were lost in a billow of steam and the thunder of fusion engines powering up. Creakingly, agedly, the train began to roll. “Sir, sir!” cried the flapping steward. Mikal Margolis straight-armed him into an empty seat and dashed for the door. He jumped as the carriage passed the end of the makeshift platform.

  The Babooshka swirled up the platform in a storm of small indignation.

  “Misha, the shock you are giving me, your poor dear mother! Falling asleep on the train, no less. Come, we shall miss the mountain railroad.”

  The cheeky porter-type had to put the bags down, he was laughing so hard.

  “Mother, where are the mountains?”

  “Behind the buildings.”

  “Mother, you can see right over the buildings, they are so low. Mother, this is not the right station.”

  “Oh, no? Then where is this your poor dear mother has put you?”

  Mikal Margolis pointed to some words laid out in pretty white pebbles by the edge of the track.

  “Desolation Road, Mother.”

  “And this is the next stop, no?”

&n
bsp; “We were meant to get off at Pandemonium. The train was not supposed to stop here. This town is not supposed to be here.”

  “Then blame the railroad company, blame the town, but not your poor dear mother!” fumed the Babooshka, and lambasted, lampooned, be-jasused and generally cursed the railroad company, their trains, their tracks, their signals, their rolling stock, their drivers, their engineers, their guards and anyone even remotely connected with Bethlehem Ares Railroads down to the meanest lavatory attendant, third-class, for approximately twenty minutes.

  Finally Dr. Alimantando, nominal head of Desolation Road, pop. 7, elev. 1250 m., “one step short of Paradise,” arrived to settle the altercation so he could return to his chronokinetic studies in peace. Only the day before he had commissioned Rajandra Das, general factotum, sorcerer’s apprentice, odd-job man and station porter, to spell out the name of the town in proud white pebbles so that any train that might pass would know that the people of Desolation Road had pride in their town. As if lured by a malicious sympathetic magic, the train bearing the Babooshka and Mikal Margolis pulled over the horizon and stopped to take a look. Rajandra Das’s charm over machines was powerful, but surely not that powerful. Nevertheless, he had charmed the Babooshka and her son into being, and now Dr. Alimantando had to decide what to do with them. He offered them refuge in one of the warm dry caves that riddled the bluffs until such time as they chose to leave or had a more permanent residence constructed. Stiff with indignation, the Babooshka refused the offer of sanctuary. She would not sleep in a dirty cave with bat droppings on the floor and lizards for company; no, nor would she share it with a son who was a faithless wastrel and did not know how to treat an old lady who was his poor dear mother. Dr. Alimantando listened with what little grace he could muster and then prevailed upon the Mandellas, whose house was built with family in mind, to take in the waif. Mikal Margolis took the cave. There were bat droppings and there were lizards, but there was no mother so it was not that bad.