As I Walk These Broken Roads br-1 Page 24

  “Oh, you couldn’t wait ten minutes!” Maria asked, looking up at the sky, “Dinner was almost done.”

  “Guess we’re eating it cold,” said Wentworth. He opened the bag which lay at his feet and started pulling out dry-rations, while the others removed their exterior layers of clothing. He handed them out, and for the next fifteen minutes they ate in silence. The rain drummed on the roof overhead and a small waterfall flowed over the windscreen. An annoying leak began by the rear view mirror, splattering the two in the front seat as tiny droplets fell and hit the dashboard. A shallow stream had started on the road, pulling bits of detritus with it and deepening the central ditch, while on either side the trees’ branches hung low from the weight of the water. By the time they were finished eating the dried out riverbed was roaring with life once more.

  “Oh, Iain!” said Maria, putting down an empty tin can of tuna, “Is your bike going to be okay?” She almost had to shout to be heard over the drumming on the roof.

  “Yeah, the bike should be fine,” he chewed on a piece of jerky, “not that I can drive her in this weather.”

  Vince grimaced, “So we’re stuck here, then?”

  “Well… I suppose it would be alright to leave it here overnight.”

  “I hate to break it to you…” interjected Raxx, “but, well…” he switched on the wipers and after a momentary pause and groan they started stuttering inconsistently across the windshield. The waterfall barely noticed. “Huh. I’ll be damned. I was going to show you that they’re broken. They were last time I checked. But even with them working, it doesn’t matter; just look at it, there’s just too much rain for them to cope with.”

  They lapsed into silence. The rain continued drumming on the roof and the darkness was growing. Raxx started the engine and turned on the heaters, but the humid air coming through the vents did little to dry them. The light continued to dim until there was nothing but the silver flash of rain drops striking, and the occasional blast of lighting. They arranged their wet clothes so they were hanging off of the seats and handles inside the truck’s cab. From the back came the sound of a match striking, and the sweet smoke from Vince’s pipe. Raxx leaned forward and pushed in the console lighter, then fumbled around for his pack, lost somewhere on the dashboard. A second later there was a click as the lighter popped out. As Raxx pulled it out of its housing all that could be seen was the deep orange glow of its coils, and the reflection off his face as he lit two cigarillos. He handed one to Wentworth.

  “Thanks,” he said, rubbing his hand on the seat to try and dry it, then feeling for Raxx’s hand with the offered cigarillo, careful not to burn himself on the heater.

  They smoked in silence, the glow of the cherries arcing back and forth from mouth to ashtray, blowing the smoke out the cracked windows. In the backseat there was a ruckus as Vince adjusted one of the bags lying between the seats, and he and Maria cuddled into a comfortable position.

  “See you in the morning, boys” said Maria, as cheerfully as she could muster.

  “G’nite,” said Vince. The two in the front responded in kind.

  They finished smoking then slowly tilted their seats back, trying to get comfortable without discomforting the others. Then they lay back, in the dark, with the drum of rain and thunder rolling over them, staring at the abstract patterns formed by the silver rain. Raxx killed the vehicle. Then they closed their eyes and slept.

  Chapter 28

  Raxx stirred restlessly. He was exhausted from the day’s drive, but he could only sleep in fits. His long legs felt trapped under the steering wheel, and paradoxically the monotony of the night’s rain kept drawing his attention. Finally he relented. Putting the truck in accessory mode, he turned on the vents and cracked the window open another notch. Then he lit a cigarillo.

  The situation with Slayer and the Mennites was still bothering him. Staring out at the silvery darkness offered no catharsis. His mind coasted, settling into the moment but going nowhere.

  Shifting his cigarillo to his left hand he turned on the radio. He kept the volume low and the fade forward, so as not to disturb the others, keeping it just loud enough to hear over the rain which was beginning to slacken.

  He shifted frequencies one click at the time. The interface was digital, one of the few non-analog devices to survive the war. He’d click the button, moving up by 0.2 MHz each time, and spend a few seconds listening. The hiss of background radiation came from the speakers mounted on the inside of the doors, random and meaningless. Sometimes a high pitched oscillating hum would play on one of the bands. Whether it was the side-effect of some powerful generator, the fingerprint of a binary system, or even something else entirely, he couldn’t say. Other times he would think that he heard human voices in the background, but he couldn’t be sure if it was just his imagination playing tricks on him.

  He had cycled through the upper limit of the commercial bands, 107.9, as high as his receiver went, and was just beginning to cycle back up through the low frequencies when a faint voice came out of the speakers. Surprised at finding something, he turned up the volume to try and make it out.

  “Two-one-india, this is niner-one-charlie. Message, over.”

  Several seconds passed before the same voice came back on.

  “Niner-one-charlie is the sunray at your position, over?”

  Once again there were a few moments of silence. Whoever was receiving the messages must have been or a different frequency or they had a weak transmitter.

  “Niner-one-charlie, tell him that figures two foxhounds have arrived with the papa-oscar-whiskeys. We require his presence at our position, over.”

  “Niner-one-charlie, Rodger, wait out.”

  “Niner-one-charlie, figures two kilometres north of your present position. Inbound on MSR niner-alpha-zulu. Niner-one-charlie out.”

  Raxx waited, but nothing more came on. He pondered the cryptic jargon they’d been using but couldn’t decipher it.

  “That’s what’s known as Radio Voice Procedure.” Wentworth lay unmoving, but awake. He’d forgotten to take his goggles off; they were two silver pools in the darkness.

  “Oh, hey, Wentworth; sorry for waking you,” said Raxx in a muted voice.

  “No, don’t worry about it. I couldn’t sleep either.”

  “So do you know what they were talking about?”

  Wentworth shrugged; Raxx could hear the motion even if he couldn’t see it. “The boss is trying to talk to some of the guys lower on the totem pole. They captured some prisoners. Oh, and they’re two kilometres apart. That’s the genius behind voice procedure — if you’re the one doing it, it’s both fast and specific — no wasted words. But if you’re eavesdropping and you don’t know what context it’s coming form it’s cryptic as all hell.”

  “Do you think that might have been your people?”

  “Maybe. Doubt they’d be using these frequencies, though. It’s not like voice procedure’s a huge secret, any more than Morse code. I’d be surprised if it was them, honestly. We’re a long distance away. I don’t figure they’d send a sunray after me.”

  “Hm. Sometimes during these rainstorms the signals do interesting things. Bouncing off of the atmosphere, so it might be them. So you really prefer Wentworth?”

  “It’s what I’ve gone by most my life. But whatever. Say, I just realized I never asked what you’re last name was. Or would that be your first name?”

  “Just Raxx. Never had another name.”

  Wentworth fumbled around for his cigarettes. He’d left them in his jacket pocket before going to sleep. He pulled them out and cursed; they were soaked through. He put them on the dashboard by one of the vents, and bummed a cigarillo off of Raxx. The shadows played across his features as he lit it, the flame flickering.

  Raxx continued cycling through the stations, spending a few seconds on each. He was leaning back in his seat as he did this, staring out towards the sky. Spears of lighting forked across it.

  “Hey, I think I heard someth
ing on the last one.”

  Raxx switched back and then he heard it too. He turned up the volume until the voice became clear. The background hiss was almost indistinguishable from the rain and he didn’t think it would wake up the two in the back.

  “…waiting until such a time as a senate majority was in place. The Ayn Rand Corporation, at the time a powerful group of…”

  “Hey,” said Raxx, “I’ve heard this guy before.”

  “Where’s he from?”

  “I don’t know, just listen.”

  “…tensions were growing around the Glass Sea, the Eastern regions continued to hold onto primitive animism, while the African nations continued to struggle for regional dominance.

  “All of this set the stage for the New Eugenics Program. The failure of democracy was self-evident; this had been noted and fought for during the twentieth century, ending in the triumph of the socialist-democrats. It was under their incumbency that the old order’s mistake came to light — deficiencies in the genome-analysis of the swarthy European races. With New Eugenics, or NEP, the focus was shifted, correctly, and analysis of each race’s deficiencies began at once…”

  The voice faded for a moment as the beep of an SOS signal took over. Its sound was cold and lonesome. After several cycles, the voice returned.

  “…the distribution of the new products was to be multi-longitudinal. Capitalism had perfected the distribution network, and this became an important tool which they fully exploited. Experiments first went underway at the beginning of the century, modifying cow-milk with hormones. This was deemed a failure due to the enhanced breast-development and sexuality of young women. Both are clearly evident from popular culture of that era.

  “The root of the problem was that they were using the biological vectors. Two weeks ago I discussed Area 51, and how ultimately it was not the militaries that resisted the invasion, but rather the aliens’ lack of immunities to our home-grown virals and pathogens. This was the lesson the socialist-democrats needed to learn, but couldn’t know because of the cover-up; biology is negative in nature, not positive. There were a few radio broadcasts about the Area 51 event, but no print media was ever released. And those that heard the broadcast were convinced by government agents that it was in fact nothing more than a fictional program.

  “So, without this knowledge, the first NEP experiments relied on biological agents. The anthrax in the water scares encouraged the drinking of bottled water, but these were all failures. Gradually they moved to more and more artificial forms of genetic implantation. In twenty-oh-seven the Kraft Corporation, in conjunction with Rand, created their individual processed cheese slices: these were just the solution that the NEP had been looking for. Individually wrapped in plastic, they each contained two litres of milk. The best of both worlds — the necessary biological vector combined with the technology of product placement. Government funding was diverted from the armed forces (as I mentioned last week, this forced the shift to mercenary armies), and was diverted to underwriting the cost of this new food item, to ensure its popularity. At first it worked as hoped, but then they found that tolerance was increasing.

  “Before I go on, I must return to the matter of the bomb, and the myth of petroleum. Multiple projections charts show that on the one hand there was — and still is — plenty of this valuable substance laying underneath the Glass Sea surrounding Mecca, enough to have held out during the development phase of synthetic generation methods, while on the other hand it goes without question that the effectiveness of an ICBM at relevant velocities and altitudes…” the voice began to fade out again, falling below the background threshold. Eventually there was nothing. The static hiss jumped, and a clicking noise appeared in the background. Raxx turned down the volume.

  “Huh,” Wentworth shook his head.

  “I wonder how much of it’s true… I pretty sure he’s right about some of it; but then other stuff is hard to believe. I want to know why he’s doing it — the guy’s gone to a lot of work just to talk about ancient history. What does he think he’s going to accomplish? How does he get the energy for the transmitter? And who does he think is listening? It’s crazy, man.”

  “You ever had processed cheese?”

  “No. What is it?”

  “The Kraft cheese he was talking about. You’re not missing much. He was wrong about the date — it was invented during the First World War. But it does taste like shit and messes up your bowels, so he had that.”

  Raxx let out a soft laugh, but neither of them said anything further. The rain’s oppressive drumming was building once more. They sat there in silence until Raxx spoke.

  “I grew up in a commune full of people just like those Mennites.”

  Wentworth looked over, eyebrow raised.

  “That’s why I had so much insight into the way they think, that’s how I knew how to talk to them. From what I gathered, back in the day my people thought the bomb was going to fall and be a judgement on the unholy. So they all packed up and headed north, starting a commune up in a place called Algonquin.

  “Anyway, I’m telling you this to explain why I was acting the way I did back in Hope. That’s the reason those Mennonites pissed me off so much — I’ve seen how that kind of arrogance, those lies, can hurt people. I don’t have much tolerance for mysticism — and yet every so often I find a bunch of it in me that I didn’t even realize was there.”

  Wentworth nodded, though Raxx couldn’t see this, and though about what he’d said. “So how’d you get out of it?”

  “You know, that’s something I ask myself. Could I have escaped if the right books and people hadn’t been there to help me? I like to think so, but I don’t really know. Maybe in the end we’re all nothing more than the products of our environment.

  “My uncle’s helped a lot — Uncle Xavier. He gave me my first non-parable book. At the time, reading wasn’t forbidden, but it wasn’t exactly encouraged either, you know what I mean? Uncle Xavier didn’t care, though. I always thought he was funny growing up. He was always cheerful, but my parents and lots of the other adults didn’t like him. When I was young I thought it was because he wasn’t serious enough for them, the way an adult is supposed to be, but looking back at it now it was because he didn’t really believe in the superstition. Not that he broke from it, like I did, he just didn’t worry that much — and he wouldn’t let it stop him from collecting his own library.

  “The man really loved books. He mostly collected fiction, and that’s what I got most of my education from. He even gave me my first copy of that book I bought you — Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance — I was probably too young at the time, I didn’t take care of it and it fell apart, but I’ve got it all down in my head, more or less.”

  “I’ve almost finished it.”

  “Oh yeah? What do you think?”

  Wentworth chewed his lip. “You know, when you picked it up I thought it was a joke — a joke about how we met. But now… I’ve got a few thoughts, but they’re not sorted out yet. Ask me again when I’ve finished.”

  “Okay. Anyway, thanks to my Uncle I started asking a lot of questions. At first my parents and the pastor were happy about it. I tried to help by figuring out better tools for harvesting the grain, or a better pulley for the well, all that stuff, but that only seemed to make it worse. They were concerned with my ‘materialism,’ they said. You know, it’s ironic, really. What they saw as my ‘materialism’ was really me trying to understand how the world works — what the underlying rules are, the theoretical; asking ‘Why?’ It was anything but materialistic. But they didn’t see it that way.”

  “That’s what drove me to start exploring. Playing with old tech lying around home just got me in trouble, so I’d walk and think. That’s how I managed to find this baby here,” he patted the dashboard.

  “The problems started when my Uncle bought this book from one of the merchants that came through occasionally, a guy who worked all the smaller communities, without an establis
hed trade route. He sold knickknacks, not hard supplies. We had most of what we needed to survive.

  “The book he sold him was called Origin of the Species, written by a guy called Darwin. I never got to read it, but my Uncle told me about some parts — that’s where I got those ideas that I was telling you about back in Blackstock. The way he described it… it was just elegant; exciting. But see, that was the problem — my Uncle got all excited, and started talking to everybody about it.”

  Raxx paused for a second and looked down at the steering wheel, a bitterness in his eyes. “All he wanted anyone to do was read it. He wasn’t even trying to argue with them, he just wanted them to share his excitement. The damned thing’s so obvious once you understand the principles… have you ever heard of it?”

  Wentworth nodded, “I never read Origin but I read some derivate works. The Regiment had a lot of stuff buried in its archives that wasn’t official curriculum. And you’re right, the theory is elegant.”

  Raxx nodded, “I’m glad to see you know what I mean. That’s what makes it so tragic. He was just trying to share something beautiful with them… but they wouldn’t even listen. They just had to keep believing…. I don’t know, whatever their myths and magic were.”

  He took a long puff on his cigarette, “My Uncle was put to death for heresy — a lot like what Slayer did to that kid, when we were watching. That was when I figured it was time to go. By then I didn’t even know who anyone was anymore. My world was growing, while they were in this tiny little box. I’d stopped believing years ago, but it was his — murder — that made me realize that.”

  He took a deep breath and pulled out another cigarillo. “Excommunicated, man… everything that I was, everyone that I knew. I’d become the polar opposite. Not even the polar opposite, I was a book written in a different language. I guess that’s why tech is so important to me. If I can start to understand that maybe I’ll be able to understand myself. ‘Cause sometimes I worry I’m going insane.”