“This is as far as I’ve gone south,” she told him.
He drank some water and made her drink too, and they went on. The road began to wind, rising and falling gently. When he next glanced back the station was gone. The extraordinary luminous clarity of the world was still delighting him.
When noon came he judged they were well over halfway to the landing. They sat down on some rubble under the palms to eat and drink, and Peachthief fed the moondogs. Then she took out the fertility-pill box. They each took theirs in silence, oddly solemn. Then she grinned.
“I’ll give you something for dessert.”
She unhitched a crooked knife from her belt and went searching around in the rocks, to come back with a big yellow-brown palm nut. Jakko watched her attack it with rather alarming vigor; she husked it and then used a rock to drive the point home.
“Here.” She handed it to him. “Drink out of that hole.” He felt a sloshing inside; when he lifted it and drank, it tasted hairy and gritty and nothing in particular. But sharp too, like the day. Peachthief was methodically striking the thing around and around its middle. Suddenly it fell apart, revealing vividly white meat. She pried out a piece.
“Eat this. It’s full of protein.”
The nutmeat was sweet and sharply organic.
“This is a coconut!” he suddenly remembered.
“Yes. I won’t starve, coming back.”
He refused to argue, but only got up to go on. Peachthief holstered her knife and followed, munching on a coconut piece. They went on so in silence a long time, letting the rhythm carry them. Once when a lizard waddled across the road Peachthief said to the moondog at her heels, “Tycho, you’ll have to learn to catch and eat those one day soon.” The moondogs all looked dubiously at the lizard but said nothing. Jakko felt shocked and pushed the thought away.
They were now walking with the sun westering slowly to their right. A flight of big orange birds with blue beaks flapped squawking out of a roadside tree, where they were apparently building some structure. Cloud shadows fled across the world, making blue-and-bronze reflections in the sea. Jakko still felt his sensory impressions almost painfully keen; a sunray made the surf line into a chain of diamonds, and the translucent green of the near shallows below them seemed to enchant his eyes. Every vista ached with light, as if to utter some silent meaning.
He was walking in a trance, only aware that the road had been sound and level for some time, when Peachthief uttered a sharp cry.
“My bicycle! There’s my bicycle!” She began to run; Jakko saw shiny metal sticking out of a narrow gulch in the roadway. When he came up to her she was pulling a machine out from beside the roadwall.
“The front wheel—Oh, he bent it! He must have been going too fast and wrecked it here. That Ferrocil! But I’ll fix it, I’m sure I can fix it at the station. I’ll push it back with me on the way home.”
While she was mourning her machine Jakko looked around and over the low coping of the roadwall. Sheer cliff down there, with the sun just touching a rocky beach below. Something was stuck among the rocks—a tangle of whitish sticks, cloth, a round thing. Feeling his stomach knot, Jakko stared down at it, unwillingly discovering that the round thing had eyeholes, a U-shaped open mouth, blowing strands of hair. He had never seen a dead body before (nobody had), but he had seen pictures of human bones. Shakenly he realized what this had to be: Ferrocil. He must have been thrown over the coping when he hit that crack. Now he was dead, long dead. He would never go on the River. All that had been in that head was perished, gone forever.
Scarcely knowing what he was doing, Jakko grabbed Peachthief by the shoulders, saying roughly, “Come on! Come on!” When she resisted confusedly, he took her by the arm and began forcibly pulling her away from where she might look down. Her flesh felt burning hot and vibrant, the whole world was blasting colors and sounds and smells at him. Images of dead Ferrocil mingled with the piercing scent of some flowers on the roadway. Suddenly an idea struck him; he stopped.
“Listen. Are you sure those pills aren’t hallucinaids? I’ve only had two and everything feels crazy.”
“Three,” Peachthief said abstractedly. She took his hand and pressed it on her back. “Do that again, run your hand down my back.”
Bewildered, he obeyed. As his hand passed her silk shirt onto her thin shorts he felt her body move under it in a way that made him jerk away.
“Feel? Did you feel it? The lordotic reflex,” she said proudly. “Female sexuality. It’s starting.”
“What do you mean, three?”
“You had three pills. I gave you one the first night, in the honey.”
“What? But—but—” He struggled to voice the enormity of her violation, pure fury welling up in him. Choking, he lifted his hand and struck her buttocks the hardest blow he could, sending her staggering. It was the first time he had ever struck a person. A moondog growled, but he didn’t care.
“Don’t you ever—never—play a trick like—” He yanked at her shoulders, meaning to slap her face. His hand clutched a breast instead; he saw her hair blowing like dead Ferrocil’s. A frightening sense of mortality combined with pride surged through him, lighting a fire in his loins. The deadness of Ferrocil suddenly seemed violently exciting. He, Jakko, was alive! Ignoring all sanity he flung himself on Peachthief, bearing her down on the road among the flowers. As he struggled to tear open their shorts he was dimly aware that she was helping him. His engorged penis was all reality; he fought past obstructions and then was suddenly, crookedly, in her, fierce pleasure building. It exploded through him and then had burst out into her vitals, leaving him spent.
Blinking, fighting for clarity, he raised himself up and off her body. She lay wide-legged and disheveled, sobbing or gasping in a strange way, but smiling, too. Revulsion sent a sick taste in his throat.
“There’s your baby,” he said roughly. He found his canteen and drank. The three moondogs had retreated and were sitting in a row, staring solemnly.
“May I have some, please?” Her voice was very low; she sat up, began fixing her clothes. He passed her the water and they got up.
“It’s sundown,” she said. “Should we camp here?”
“No!” Savagely he started on, not caring that she had to run to catch up. Was this the way the ancients lived? Whirled by violent passions, indecent, uncaring? His doing sex so close to the poor dead person seemed unbelievable. And the world was still assaulting all his senses; when she stumbled against him he could feel again the thrilling pull of her flesh, and shuddered. They walked in silence awhile; he sensed that she was more tired than he, but he wanted only to get as far away as possible.
“I’m not taking any more of those pills,” he broke silence at last.
“But you have to! It takes a month to be sure.”
“I don’t care.”
“But, ohhh—”
He said nothing more. They were walking across a twilit headland now. Suddenly the road turned, and they came out above a great bay.
The waters below were crowded with boats of all kinds, bobbing emptily where they had been abandoned. Some still had lights that made faint jewels in the opalescent air. Somewhere among them must be Gojack. The last light from the west gleamed on the rails of a moveway running down to the landing.
“Look, there’s the seatrain.” Peachthief pointed. “I hope the dog or whatever got ashore. . . . I can find a sailboat down there, there’s lots.”
Jakko shrugged. Then he noticed movement among the shadows of the landing station and forgot his anger long enough to say, “See there! Is that a live man?”
They peered hard. Presently the figure crossed a light place, and they could see it was a person going slowly among the stalled waycars. He would stop with one awhile and then waver on.
“There’s something wrong with him,” Peachthief, said.
Presently the stranger’s shadow merged with a car, and they saw it begin to move. It went slowly at first, and then accelerated ou
t to the center lanes, slid up the gleaming rails and passed beyond them to disappear into the western hills.
“The way’s working!” Jakko exclaimed. “We’ll camp up here and go over to the way station in the morning, it’s closer.”
He was feeling so pleased with the moveway that he talked easily with Peachthief over their foodbar dinner, telling her about the cities and asking her what places her tribe had seen. But when she wanted to put their blankets down together he said no, and took his away to a ledge farther up. The three moondogs lay down by her with their noses on their paws, facing him.
His mood turned to self-disgust again; remorse mingled with queasy surges of half-enjoyable animality. He put his arm over his head to shut out the brilliant moonlight and longed to forget everything, wishing the sky held only cold quiet stars. When he finally slept he didn’t dream at all, but woke with ominous tollings in his inner ear. The Horse is hungry, deep voices chanted. The Woman is bad!
He roused Peachthief before sunrise. They ate and set off overland to the hill station; it was rough going until they stumbled onto an old limerock path. The moondogs ranged wide around them, appearing pleased. When they came out at the station shunt they found it crowded with cars.
The power pack of the first one was dead. So was the next, and the next. Jakko understood what the stranger at the landing had been doing; looking for a live car. The dead cars here stretched away out of sight up the siding; a miserable sight.
“We should go back to the landing,” Peachthief said. “He found a good one there.”
Jakko privately agreed, but irrationality smoldered in him. He squinted into the hazy distance.
“I’m going up to the switch end.”
“But it’s so far, we’ll have to come all the way back—”
He only strode off; she followed. It was a long way, round a curve and over a rise, dead cars beside them all the way. They were almost at the main tracks when Jakko saw what he had been hoping for: a slight jolting motion in the line. New cars were still coming in ahead, butting the dead ones.
“Oh, fine!”
They went on down to the newest-arrived car and all climbed in, the moondogs taking up position on the opposite seat. When Jakko began to work the controls that would take them out to the main line, the car bleated an automatic alarm. A voder voice threatened to report him to Central. Despite its protests, Jakko swerved the car across the switches, where it fell silent and began to accelerate smoothly onto the outbound express lane.
“You really do know how to work these things,” Peachthief said admiringly.
“You should learn.”
“Why? They’ll all be dead soon. I know how to bicycle.”
He clamped his lips, thinking of Ferrocil’s white bones. They fled on silently into the hills, passing a few more station jams. Jakko’s perceptions still seemed too sharp, the sensory world too meaning-filled.
Presently they felt hungry, and found that the car’s automatics were all working well. They had a protein drink and a pleasantly fruity bar, and Peachthief found bars for the dogs. The track was rising into mountains now; the car whirled smoothly through tunnels and came out in passes, offering wonderful views. Now and then they had glimpses of a great plain far ahead. The familiar knot of sadness gathered inside Jakko, stronger than usual. To think that all this wonderful system would run down and die in a jumble of rust. . . . He had a fantasy of himself somehow maintaining it, but the memory of Peachthief’s pathetic woven cloth mocked at him. Everything was a mistake, a terrible mistake. He wanted only to leave, to escape to rationality and peace. If she had drugged him he wasn’t responsible for what he’d promised. He wasn’t bound. Yet the sadness redoubled, wouldn’t let him go.
When she got out the pillbox and offered it he shook his head violently. “No!”
“But you promised—”
“No. I hate what it does.”
She stared at him in silence, swallowing hers defiantly. “Maybe there’ll be some other men by the River,” she said after a while. “We saw one.”
He shrugged and pretended to fall asleep.
Just as he was really drowsing, the car’s warning alarm trilled and they braked smoothly to a halt.
“Oh, look ahead—the way’s gone! What is it?”
“A rockslide. An avalanche from the mountains, I think.”
They got out among other empty cars that were waiting their prescribed pause before returning. Beyond the last one the way ended in an endless tumble of rocks and shale. Jakko made out a faint footpath leading on.
“Well, we walk. Let’s get the packs, and some food and water.”
While they were back in the car working the synthesizer, Peachthief looked out the window and frowned. After Jakko finished she punched a different code and some brownish lumps rolled into her hand.
“What’s that?”
“You’ll see.” She winked at him.
As they started on the trail a small herd of horses appeared, coming toward them. The two humans politely scrambled up out of their way. The lead horse was a large yellow male. When he came to Peachthief he stopped and thrust his big head up at her.
“Zhu-gar, zhu-gar,” he said sloppily. At this all the other horses crowded up and began saying “zhu-ga, zu-cah,” in varying degrees of clarity.
“This I know,” said Peachthief to Jakko. She turned to the yellow stallion. “Take us on your backs around these rocks. Then we’ll give you sugar.”
“Zhu-gar,” insisted the horse, looking mean.
“Yes, sugar. After you take us around the rocks to the rails.” The horse rolled his eyes unpleasantly, but he turned back down. There was some commotion, and two mares were pushed forward.
“Riding horseback is done by means of a saddle and bridle,” protested Jakko.
“Also this way. Come on.” Peachthief vaulted nimbly onto the back of the smaller mare.
Jakko reluctantly struggled onto the fat round back of the other mare. To his horror, as he got himself astride she put up her head and screamed shrilly.
“You’ll get sugar, too,” Peachthief told her. The animal subsided, and they started off along the rocky trail, single file. Jakko had to admit it was much faster than afoot, but he kept sliding backward.
“Hang on to her mane, that hairy place there,” Peachthief called back to him, laughing. “I know how to run a few things too, see?”
When the path widened the yellow stallion trotted up alongside Peachthief.
“I thinking,” he said importantly.
“Yes, what?”
“I push you down and eat zhugar now.”
“All horses think that,” Peachthief told him. “No good. It doesn’t work.”
The yellow horse dropped back, and Jakko heard him making horse-talk with an old gray-roan animal at the rear. Then he shouldered by to Peachthief again and said, “Why no good I push you down?”
“Two reasons,” said Peachthief. “First, if you knock me down you’ll never get any more sugar. All the humans will know you’re bad and they won’t ride on you anymore. So no more sugar, never again.”
“No more hoomans,” the big yellow horse said scornfully. “Hoomans finish.”
“You’re wrong there, too. There’ll be a lot more humans. I am making them, see?” She patted her stomach.
The trail narrowed again, and the yellow horse dropped back. When he could come alongside he sidled by Jakko’s mare.
“I think I push you down now.”
Peachthief turned around.
“You didn’t hear my other reason,” she called to him.
The horse grunted evilly.
“The other reason is that my three friends there will bite your stomach open if you try.” She pointed up to where the three moondogs had appeared on a rock as if by magic, grinning toothily.
Jakko’s mare screamed again even louder, and the gray roan in back made a haw-haw sound. The yellow horse lifted his tail and trotted forward to the head of the line, e
xtruding manure as he passed Peachthief.
They went on around the great rockslide without further talk. Jakko was becoming increasingly uncomfortable; he would gladly have got off and gone slower on his own two legs. Now and then they broke into a jog-trot, which was so painful he longed to yell to Peachthief to make them stop. But he kept silent. As they rounded some huge boulders he was rewarded by a distant view of the unmistakable towers of an airpark, to their left on the plain below.
At long last the rockslide ended, quite near a station. They stopped among a line of stalled cars. Jakko slid off gratefully, remembering to say “Thank you” to the mare. Walking proved to be uncomfortable, too.
“See if there’s a good car before I get off!” Peachthief yelled.
The second one he came to was live. He shouted at her.
Next moment he saw trouble among the horses. The big yellow beast charged in, neighing and kicking. Peachthief came darting out of the melée with the moondogs, and fell into the car beside him, laughing.
“I gave our mares all the sugar,” she chuckled. Then she sobered. “I think mares are good for milk. I told them to come to the station with me when I come back. If that big bully will let them.”
“How will they get in a car?” he asked stupidly.
“Why, I’ll be walking, I can’t run these things.”
“But I’ll be with you.” He didn’t feel convinced.
“What for, if you don’t want to make babies? You won’t be here.”
“Well then, why are you coming with me?”
“I’m looking for a cow,” she said scornfully. “Or a goat. Or a man.”
They said no more until the car turned into the airpark station. Jakko counted over twenty apparently live ships floating at their towers. Many more hung sagging, and some towers had toppled. The field moveways were obviously dead.
Her Smoke Rose Up Forever (S.F. MASTERWORKS) Page 59
