“Will it be all right without the full padding?” Jaantje asked, and held out a bottle of warm water from the city taps. We had a full supply in the storage wells, and a daystill for emergencies, but I drank greedily anyway.
Fortune held out her hand for the bottle. “She’ll be fine. But if it bothers you, I’ll cover her.”
There was a definite challenge in her voice, and Jaantje shook his head. “No, no problem,” he said, unconvincingly, and Fortune grinned.
“Well, it bothers me,” I said, and tugged the sleeve up again, fastening the clips over the metal shoulders. It was warm to the touch, warm as skin, from being under the day-lights. “You’re too good, Fortune.”
Fortune’s smile widened, accepting the compliment, but she made no move to uncover the karakuri. Jaantje held out his hand for the water, and we finished it together. Then Fortune and I sealed the loading ramp, wedging ropes of sand putty into the frame while Jaantje ran the last checks. The half-track had an onboard computer of its own, not very smart, but good enough to manage satellite navigaton and cabin status; it finally gave us full clearance and relayed our beacon numbers to the Highways Office.
“Where’d you file for?” I asked, leaning over Jaantje’s shoulder as he studied the control board. It’s asking for trouble not to tell the Highways Office where you’re going; on the other hand, announcing that you’re going to any out-bazaar isn’t smart, either.
Jaantje touched a sideboard, throwing the shadow of a map across the inside of the windscreen. “I told them I was ferrying a couple of hard-hackers to an out-bazaar, why?” A light flare on the map, maybe twenty kilometers beyond the point where we’d been told to look for a beacon. “Marihaut Depot. We’ll refuel there, anyway.”
I nodded and slid foward into the seat beside him. He put the half-track into gear, and it clanked slowly onto the ramp that led to the heavy traffic road that led to Cavemouth. It was jammed with heavy carriers and other half-tracks—most of the long-haul drivers travel at night, to avoid the worst of the heat—and it took us almost an hour to reach Cavemouth. Handlers in heavy sand hoods and fiberfelt masks and coveralls directed us into the line for one of the smaller locks, and we waited in line for another twenty minutes before a handler waved us into the chamber. It’s not really a lock, of course, just a two-stage door, trying to keep the heat out of the city; I watched out the rear window as the handlers shunted a last half-track into the final slot and began to close the massive doors. It was weirdly quiet, all the engines throttled down to their lowest idle, but I could still smell the exhaust gases and the bitter tang of the rock itself. Then a tree of lights lit toward the front of the lock, three orange lights that quickly turned green, and a line of paler grey appeared as the outer door began to open. All around us, engines coughed, revving back up to speed, and I saw more handlers, hoods well up over their masked faces, waiting to direct us out and onto the right ramps. Signals pinged and flickered across Jaantje’s control boards, and then a handler waved at us, blue light, then green, and the half-track shuddered as Jaantje threw it into motion. Under the handler’s guidance, we lurched onto a roadway, the drifted sand pale under the headlights.
Ahead of us, the western sky still glowed faintly orange, like embers in a furnace. The mountains of the Daymare Basin hid all but a short line of it, but the road ran true west toward the dying light. I could see the lights of The Moorings bright as day to my left, could even make out a shuttle upright on its cradle, ready for launch; I looked back, and saw the door sliding closed behind us, cutting off the last sliver of the lock’s orange light. Above and beyond it, the rocks that covered Landage were spotted with lights, warn-offs and tracking beacons flashing red and gold and blue against the almost invisible mountain. The steering computer chimed twice, and traffic glyphs flickered across the base of the windscreen, steering us to one of the feeders that would bring us into the low-speed lanes of the Whitesands Haul. Jaantje frowned in concentration, hands and feet moving on the controls, and Fortune rose from beside the karakuri to sit in the jump seat at my back.
“So, about six hours to the rendezvous?” she asked.
Jaantje grunted agreement, his fingers working on a tapboard, punching in answers to the string of codes now flashing on his secondary screen.
“The light’ll be gone by then.” Fortune nodded to the sunset line. It already seemed paler, but I knew that was psychological, a trick of the mind as much as the chill that seemed to come with the darkness. It would be genuinely cold soon enough, once we were out of the Basin, but for now the vents and the sheltered air of the Basin would keep things at a reasonable temperature.
“We’ll have the moon most of the way,” Jaantje said. A light flashed bright green on his console, and he shoved the throttle forward. The half-track bucked, then settled to a steady acceleration. “On the line—we’re on our way.”
I could see running lights ahead of us, red and then a line of orange as the road curved to reveal the carrier’s side. To our left, long-haul carriers slid past in the high-speed lanes, massive streamlined cylinders, their thermal coatings now darkened to keep in the heat. They were still running at half-speed, wouldn’t be allowed to reach their full acceleration until they were out of the Basin, but they were still going easily twice as fast as we were.
“So what’s the plan?” Fortune asked, and Jaantje tapped controls to call up a temporary map.
“We stick with the feeder for about half an hour, and then we’re on Whitesands the rest of the way.”
“Sounds good,” I said, and switched on the heater. Fortune nodded, and pulled down the other jump seat, propping her feet on it. Behind her, the hooded karakuri swayed gently against its restraints, and I wondered if it didn’t look more human inside its sleeve.
The traffic stayed steady and moderate through the Basin, but once we passed the depot at Yetter’s Fork it thinned out a lot. Most of the low-speed traffic turned off at the Fork or a little afterward; after that, it was mostly high-speed traffic, the massive, windowless cargo carriers storming past on hover-assist, heading south and west toward the main assembly lines. We could hear them almost from the minute their lights appeared on the horizon, a distant drumming that swelled to a roar that even the sound seals couldn’t muffle, throbbing in the floorboards, and then dropping in pitch as they swept past and vanished in the dark, the wind of their passage rattling us on our tracks.
Beyond the turnoff for the Winter River and Terminus and the Darksands Haul, the traffic thinned out even farther, and we were left alone for long stretches at a time. We were out of the shelter of the Daymare Basin, too, and the air was perceptibly colder despite the heater. At the next pull-off, we stopped, and all of us pulled on the thick smocks everybody wears for night driving. They had come with the half-track, part of the rental, and smelled of oil and metal and some weird musty scent that Jaantje said was the rough fabric itself, but they were warm. I traded seats with Fortune and brewed tea in the half-track’s little kitchen, and after that we all felt better.
About an hour beyond the turnoff, we reached the edge of the Whitesands desert. We were in moonlight now, just shy of full, and the blue-white radiance made our headlights look feeble, and cast weird shadows over the karakuri in its sleeve. Under the moonlight, the sand itself seemed to glow, reflecting and redoubling the moonlight, so that we seemed to be running alongside a lake of molten carbon fiber. Nothing else I’d ever seen was that peculiar white, and it seemed doubly strange to be cold, facing that white fire. Fortune murmured something under her breath, but when I looked at her, she wouldn’t repeat what she’d said.
“Salt flats,” Jaantje said, striving to sound matter-of-fact. “We run along them until the Origaia.”
The Haul followed the salt flats for about another hundred kilometers, but then curved away to the north again, avoiding the Origaia Pan. It was prone to sandstorms, Jaantje said, and, listening to the sand hiss against the half-track’s protective skirting—just ordinary sand, kic
ked up by us and the bigger carriers—I was just as glad to avoid it. On the display, the orange light that was the Marihaut Depot came into view for the first time, but Jaantje slowed, frowning first at the map and then at the barren ground caught in the cone of the headlights. This wasn’t the full desert—there were clumps of grey grass and the nest of twisted twigs that marked the body of a trapdoor lemon—but it looked very empty all the same.
“I’m switching to the contact frequency,” Jaantje said, and twisted a knob on the navigation console. A red light flared at once, warning that he was off the main channels, but he ignored it, eyes fixed on the road that ran ahead in the lights. For a long moment, there was nothing, just the sand hiss and the rattle of the treads, but then a green glyph flashed, very bright.
“Shit,” Jaantje said, and applied all the brakes, throwing me forward against the padded panel. I looked back to see if Fortune was all right, and saw her steadying herself against the shrouded karakuri.
“What the hell—?” she began, and Jaantje waved his free hand in apology.
“Sorry. It’s a real short-range transmitter, you don’t pick it up until you’re right on top of it. Fan, look for a marker, will you?”
I nodded, and leaned closer to the windscreen. The marker glyph was almost steady now, and I did my best to ignore it, watching the grey land roll past. Even so, I almost missed it, a subtle widening of the road that turned into a ramp, almost buried in the sand. A slim pole, once striped white and red but faded now to the same grey as the sand, was all that marked it in the real world. Without the beacon, we would never have found it: if there had been tracks—and there would have been, the out-bazaars are popular—the wind and sand had erased them. Janntje geared down again, and then farther still, slowing us until the sand tread could engage, and we turned off into the desert.
With the beacon and the occasional pole-marker, it was easy to stay on course, but if there had been a road, the sand had covered what was left of the paving, and most of the time we might as well have been traveling through open desert. The half-track lurched as the treads sank in a soft spot, then caught again as a stretch of pavement came clear, the cracked surface gleaming in the headlights. Jaantje nursed the controls, mouth working as rhythmically as a drummer’s; the power surged and steadied, and I saw a glow on the horizon.
“There it is.”
Jaantje nodded, too busy to respond, but Fortune leaned forward over the back of my seat, the first sign of eagerness I’d seen from her. “How much farther?”
I squinted at the glow, shrugged. “Ten klicks? Fifteen?”
“About twelve,” Jaantje said.
The sunset line had faded completely; now there was only the moonlight and the spreading light of the out-bazaar, clustered around what looked like an abandoned relay station. I could make out the familiar shapes of tents and tow-campers, gathered in twos and fours around the generators that powered their lights and environmentals. Right now, most of them would be running on stored power, or switching over to jellied fuels. I took a deep breath, and thought I could smell the sour-sweet note of the exhaust even through our own filters. On the board, the green glyph flashed twice more, and vanished, and I saw Jaantje take a deep breath.
“There’s our guide.”
Someone was standing at the perimeter of the camp, bundled in a sand suit and heavy hood. He lifted a blue guidelight, waving us off to the left, and Jaantje gave a sigh of relief as the tracks found solid ground again. He geared down, and I loosed myself from the safety harness.
“What now?” Jaantje asked.
“I tell them who we are, and who we’re here to see,” I said, and tugged on the gloves I’d found in the pocket of the smock. Jaanjte brought the half-track to a complete stop, and I wrestled the side seals open again. The cold air hit me like a blow, snatching my breath, and then Fortune slammed the door behind me. I felt suddenly very much alone, standing there in the overlapping orange lights of the out-bazaar, the half-track throbbing gently behind me, the moon a distant perfect disk, but I made myself walk toward the man with the guidelight. One thing I did know, from the one other time I’d been to an out-bazaar, was that hesitation was dangerous.
As I got closer, the man lowered his hood, and I realized she was a woman, short and stocky, a coolie scarf tied tight over her head. She pocketed the guidelight and lifted her hands in greeting. *Looking for something?*
I started to answer, but the gloves tangled my fingers, so that I had to strip them off to sign clearly. *Yeh. A man called Red told me I could find a man here named Newcat Garay.*
A familiar surprise flickered across her face—yanquis aren’t usually born deaf—but she answered promptly. *There might be someone here by that name. Who are you?*
*Fanning Jones.* I spelled it out, and added my name sign just in case. *I have a code.*
*Show me.*
I pulled out the disk, moving very slowly, and handed it across.
*Wait.* She took it, fed it into a belt reader, and turned away from me, tugging up the collar of her smock to speak into a pickup. Beyond her, I could see heavily bundled figures moving in the spaces between the bubble tents and the campers—more of them than I’d expected, and all of them intent on business. Only a few of them stopped to stare at the half-track, but I knew that everyone was very aware of our arrival.
“Haya,” the woman said to the hidden pickup, and her voice was startlingly clear. She let the collar fall back and turned to face me. *Swing on around the way you’re going, and pull in behind the last van on the left. Garay’s in toward the center, by the big generator.*
*Thanks,* I said, and turned back to the half-track. For better or worse, we’d arrived.
8
Celinde Fortune
The out-bazaar was like nothing I’d ever seen before, and I was glad Fanning was with me to act as contact. I let him out into the cold, dogging the door tightly closed behind him, and sat shivering beside Celeste, staring out at the tent-city, glowing with light and power, until he came back with instructions. Dhao brought the half-track carefully around the edge of the encampment—there was pavement all the way, it seemed, maybe from when the relay station was in service—and slid us neatly into line the regulation four meters from the last van. It was closed tight against the cold, but light glowed around the edges of the shuttered windows.
“Now what?” Dhao said, and flicked off the last of the active systems. The passive systems—heat and lights, everything that ran off the stored power—ticked softly, and I heard a swirl of sand rattle against the side panels. Fanning looked at me, then back at Dhao.
“Now I guess we go find Newcat Garay and see what he has to sell.”
“We’ll bring Celeste,” I said, and they both looked at me. Karakuri of her type are generally rich people’s toys, something you see in the underworld, or on the most expensive passenger starships; it’s not so much that they’re expensive—if they were, I couldn’t afford to build them—but that they require extra care and constant maintenance. You don’t generally see them walking around.
“Why?” Dhao asked.
“It’s windy,” Fanning warned, almost in the same moment.
I could hear the wind myself, more sand rattling against the half-track. I said, “I want to test the controls. And I want to be sure this construct—assuming he has one—really is compatible.”
“It’s good advertising, too,” Fanning said, and I smiled.
“That, too.” Having Celeste at our sides would help explain what we were doing there—help put us outside the hard-hackers’ status games—and, best of all, would remind people of who I am.
It didn’t take long to unpack Celeste—she had traveled well, cradled in the sleeve and the protective webbing—and I slipped the wires of the hand control over my fingers, nestling them against the calluses at the top of my palm. The wires have to be thin, to be as invisible as possible in performance; you can recognize people who work with them when you touch hands in greeting
. I ran quickly through the check sequences while Fanning and Dhao opened the back, then helped them lower Celeste out of the cargo door. As she straightened, swaying a little as the onboard system tried to compensate for the sand and the wind, I could feel the feedback tickling my palm, ticking in my suit beneath the skin. It was a familiar pattern, one that meant that the onboard system was well on its way to learning the body parameters: with luck, on our return, Celeste could load herself.
The wind was very cold, especially after the warmth of the half-track, and I huddled into the borrowed smock, tugging the sleeve down over my free hand. Dhao climbed back in, resealing the cargo door behind him, and Fanning turned on his heels, surveying the camp.
“She said Garay was toward the center, by a big generator. I guess that’s the one she meant.”
There were maybe half a dozen bubble tents linked to a hat-rack solar collector with a chem-fuel generator at its base—not the largest generator, but the one with the most habitats attached. Lots of people, well bundled in smocks or heavier sand jackets, moved among the tents; one of the campers had lowered part of its sidewall, and maybe a dozen people clustered around its orange light, bargaining over something out of sight on the counter. Maybe a hundred meters beyond them, well outside the perimeter of the camp, light showed above the broken wall of the relay station, a single shadow briefly silhouetted against it. I wondered what was on offer there, but knew better than to ask.
Dreaming Metal Page 13