Desolation Road

by Ian McDonald

  They had not. They had rather liked what up till then they had been doing with their lives. But they promised their mother and fathers that within five days they would know what they wanted to do with their lives. So they asked their school career advisor, they asked their friends, they asked the girls they had met at the Saturday night socials, they asked their neighbours, they asked priests, politicians, policemen and prostitutes and at the end of five days they knew what they wanted to do with their lives.

  “We want to be pilots like you, Ma,” they said.

  “What?” said Umberto, who had wanted them to go into real estate with him.

  “What?” said Louie, who had wanted them to go into law with him.

  “We want to fly,” said Sevriano and Batisto, thinking of wind, wires, sunlight on wings, and the sensual roar of Yamaguchi and Jones aero-engines in push/pull configuration, remembering their own mother blissful and glowing after long afternoons thundering down desert canyons and skimming the rim rocks of haunted mesas. To them the earth held nothing more fair than the sky.

  “If you wish to fly, you shall fly,” said Ed, who alone understood how the wind could blow through the blood. “Have you thought about how you're going to go about this?”

  “We talked to Mr. Wong, the career officer at school,” said Sevriano.

  “He said to join the Company as commercial ’lighter pilots,” said Batisto.

  “And you are sure this is what you want to do?” asked Persis Tatterdemalion, secretly delighted that her sons, at least, would follow her dreams.

  “We are.” The twins produced application forms.

  “Then you must follow your hearts’ desire,” she said, signing the consents at the bottom. For some reason she kept seeing Limaal Mandella's face in the paper, like an ancient watermark.

  And last of all on that day of beginnings, the sirens’ shout called a man onto a high balcony fronted with a black and gold Company banner. The man watched the torrents of workers, the busy-bee-bustling managers, the machines blossoming into life and motion. He watched the animating spark spread throughout Steeltown, lighting flames of empire and industry wherever it touched. The North West Quartersphere Projects and Developments Manager/Director watched the very first day dawn on Steeltown and was well pleased. Very well pleased indeed.

  May 27, 06:13, seven ten-kiloton nuclear devices detonated simultaneously aboard the Praesidium SailShip Jonathon Byrde preparing to offload passengers, crew and cargo at the ROTECH orbital docking facility for transfer to the Skywheel space elevator. Three hundred and fifty-five thousand people were instantly vaporized in the blast. A further hundred and fifty thousand exploded bodies were recovered by ROTECH blitches and sheddles from lonely funeral orbits. Fifty-eight thousand survived the explosion in remote sections of the vessel or in cargo pods blown clear from the ship mainframe. Of these, twelve thousand five hundred died from exposure to intense radiation. A further seventeen hundred perished when their spinning ship-section burned to slag in the atmosphere before all could be transmatted to safety. Sixteen hundred ROTECH personnel, including the Jonathon Byrde's service crew of twenty-eight and nineteen Skywheel shuttle pilots leaving the drop-off end of the cable were killed. Ninety-seven thousand immigrants had already been transported to the surface when the Jonathon Byrde was destroyed. One shuttle with fifteen hundred passengers was knocked out of orbit into the path of the spinning cable and cleaved in half. A further two hundred and thirty-eight casualties resulted when the town of Dolencias Cui was bombarded by a hail of debris falling from orbit. A five hundred ton section of ship mainframe travelling at eight kilometres per second hit the Dolencias Cui school and in a nanosecond rendered the town childless. Seventy-two thousand were never accounted for, among whom must have been the fanatic seven who smuggled the warheads aboard the SailShip.

  The number of the casualties from the Jonathon Byrde was 589,545. A group calling itself the Whole Earth Army Tactical Group claimed responsibility for the bombing. In a tent under an oak tree on the utmost northern edge of the holy Forest of Chryse, where the land lifts up and tears like a folded chapati into the Hallsbeck Palisades, Arnie Tenebrae sat by her radio listening to the special news bulletin. She nodded, she smiled, she twiddled the tuner so she could hear it told again in a different voice. Her name would live forever now.

  Marya Quinsana paused to take a sip of water and assess the situation. They were a good crowd: straightforward, uncomplicated talk. Wave the flag, beat the drum, let them think they have won you to their cause when you are winning them to yours; humiliate the bumpkin heckler, hammer the nail between the eyes and keep hammering, pound pound pound. Local elections were quite fun. She smiled to the local candidate, that sallow, clever young man, and took up hammer in hand.

  “Citizens of Jabalpur! Do I really have to tell you these things? Do I really have to tell you that murdering thugs roam your country, burning factories and businesses, setting crops to the torch, driving settlers from their homesteads; do I have to tell you good citizens of the innocent folk slaughtered like animals in bomb attacks, shot down on their own doorsteps? No!”

  The audience brayed its approval.

  “No! I do not need to tell you these things, good citizens! You know it only too well! And you may ask yourselves, where are the armed constables patrolling your streets? Where are the Local Defence Units, where are the regular troops? Yes, where are the Jabalpur Volunteers, the First Oxiana Division, the Twenty-second Airmobile? I will tell you where they are!”

  She treated them to a few seconds calculated pause.

  “Sitting on their hands in their barracks, that's where! And why? Why? Because your local opposition-dominated assembly doesn't think the situation warrants that kind of intervention! So: three million dollars worth of finest military technology gathers dust and the local defence forces have neither arms nor uniforms to drill in because Campbell Mukajee doesn't think the situation warrants that kind of intervention! Let him tell that to the Garbosacchi family! Let him tell that to the Bannerjees, the Chungs, the MacAlpines, the Ambanis, the Cuestas, and they will tell him whether or not the situation warrants that kind of intervention!”

  She let them howl while she nodded to the candidate, then palms-downed them into simmering calm.

  “But best of all…best of all, my friends, the constables; your constables, your guardians of law and order, routinely escort Whole Earth Army demonstrators through the streets of this city! ‘Preservation of the right of political expression’ says Campbell Mukajee. Really, Mr. Mukajee? And what of the rights of Constantine Garbosacchi, Katia Bannerjee, Roi MacAlpine, Abram Ambani; Ignacio, Mavda, Annunciato and Dominic Cuesta, all butchered this past week by the murder squads of the Whole Earth Army?” The audience drew breath to thunder a condemnation, but Marya Quinsana played them like Blue Mountain tilapia on the line. “Escorting them? They should be arresting them!” She smelled frenzy-sweat and hysteria in the hall but still she did not release them. “There are Whole Earth Army representatives sitting in each of the three houses of this regional assembly who openly condone murder and violence and Mr. Campbell Mukajee has never once tabled a motion for their dismissal! He openly consorts with murderers and terrorists, he and his party: because of his bleeding-heart liberalism hundreds of your fellow countrymen have been butchered; he refuses to mobilize the security forces because he does not think the situation warrants that kind of intervention: his own words, ladies and gentlemen! And now…now…now he asks you to re-elect him and his party for another three years!

  “And I know, I know in my heart of hearts that the people of Jabalpur District are going to say no, no, a thousand, ten thousand, a hundred, a million times no on Thursday to another three years of Liberal misrule and say yes, yes, a million times yes to the New Party, the party with the will, the party with the determination, the party with the power and your mandate, citizens, to sweep the Whole Earth Army from the face of the globe; on Thursday you will say yes to the New Party, yes
to Pranh Kaikoribetseng, your local candidate, yes to victory and strength!”

  And now she released them As one the audience rose; audience, party nominees, party members, party workers, a storm of applauding hands. Marya Quinsana smiled, bowed. But her performance had not pleased her. She preferred subtlety to tub-thumping and welkin-ringing. Clumsy, unsophisticated, unsubtle. A dirty night's work. Unseen and unheard in the tumult, a messenger slipped onto the platform and handed her a piece of paper: a telegram.

  RETURN WISDOM IMMEDIATELY COMMA EMERGENCY MEETING

  RE JONATHON BYRDE OUTRAGE COLON KAROLAITIS STOP.

  Jonathon Byrde? Jonathon Byrde?

  She only learned that Jonathon Byrde was not an assassinated dignitary when the cabin attendant on the Jabalpur-Syrtia Night Mail brought her the morning papers with breakfast and banner headlines toppled over each other in plumbing the thesaural depths of outrage and horror.

  She met First Minister the Honourable Vangelis Karolaitis on the veranda of his town house overlooking the Syrtic Sea. He was a fine old gentleman, honourable as his title, and wise, and Marya Quinsana hoped he would die in his bed before it became necessary for her to depose him. A butler served mint tea. The breeze carried the scent of jasmine and wisteria from the gardens that reached down to the sea.

  “Well,” said the First Minister.

  “I've said it all along. Get me out of Science and Education into Security and I'll have the Whole Earth Army on its knees in six months.”

  “I'll be announcing the ministerial reshuffle this afternoon. I'll also introduce the emergency bill outlawing the Whole Earth Army per se; shouldn't have any trouble getting it passed, the Liberals aren't sounding quite so liberal this morning. So: the army's yours. Remember, they've never fought a proper war, so try and bring it all back in one piece, but that aside, do whatever you have to do to rid these lands of this…cancer of terrorism.”

  “One question: who destroyed the Jonathon Byrde? I want him first.”

  “Some faction calling itself the Whole Earth Army Tactical Group. The Parliamentary Group's issued blanket denial of any involvement with this group: personally I don't believe them. Leader's called…yes, Arnie Nicolodea Tenebrae.”

  The world had lost its sense of wonder. The marvels that seven, six, five years ago excited gasps and sighs of amazement today prompted contemptuous yawns of tedium. Only one hundred and fifty years old, the world was already middle-aged and cynical, consigning its cast of wonder-workers, tellers of tales, showmen, miracle men, medicine men, and carnival touts to the rusted sidings of forgotten stations.

  “Old train, the world has lost its sense of wonder!” cried Adam Black. He poured himself another liberal brandy and stood in the centre of his once-opulent now-shabby showmaster's carriage, glass raised high in an ironic toast. “The world has grown weary of Chautauquas and Educational ’Stravaganzas, my friend. What shall Adam Black do now?”

  “Might I suggest pooling your resources with those of the Immam of Bey and his Circus of Glass?”

  Adam Black hurled his brandy glass at the wall.

  “That charlatan! That mountebank! That money-spinning titillator of public fancy! Adam Black is a man of education and learning, his mission is that of teacher and preacher, not hustler and whore!”

  “Still, I maintain that his is the sole remaining carnival of wonders in this hemisphere.” The train's voice was calm and patient, almost unbearably so.

  “Maintain what you will. Adam Black will not stride the same midway as the Immam of Bey.”

  Two days later the locomotive and three coaches pulled away from the freight sidings of Ahuallpa Station and headed onto the main southbound line, eight tracks wide. The Great South Line was buzzing that day with the rolling stock and haulers of the world's great railroads: Bethlehem Ares, Great Southern, Great Eastern, Grand Valley, Argyre Express, Transpolaris Traction, Llangonnedd and Northeastern, Trans-Borealis, and among their jewel-bright flashing liveries was the chipped and pimpled paintwork of Adam Black's Travelling Chautauqua and Educational ’Stravaganza. In his managerial car Adam Black stormed and hurled things.

  Smash.

  “Turn this train around immediately.”

  “You know as well as I that that is physically impossible.” The train's voice was a model of imperturbability as it took a set of points at two hundred.

  Smash crash.

  “Don't be clever. You know what I mean. I forbid you to take me to Beysbad, I forbid you to go to the Immam of Bey.” Adam Black pounded on the sealed doors. The carriage rocked and bounced, the train was piling on more speed. Adam Black feared for the tokamaks. It had been a long time since he could afford a service.

  “May I clarify one small point?” said the train. “You are a passenger. I am not taking you to Beysbad. I am taking myself. I am sure that the Immam of Bey will have a proud and honored position in his Glass Circus for a unique, computerized, thinking train!”

  “Ingrate!” roared Adam Black. Smash crash smash went his bottles of Belladonna brandy against the camera-eye. “To betray the one who made you, gave you life and awareness!”

  “Don't be so melodramatic,” said the train, and Adam Black thought he heard a strange tone of menace in its perfect diction. “I am not your son anyway.”

  “We shall see!” shouted Adam Black. He reeled across the swaying carriage and unlocked a strong metal cabinet. He removed an antennae-feathery headpiece.

  “I would not advise the use of the cyberhat,” said the train, and now the menace was unmistakable.

  “Oh, would you not?” said Adam Black. Fighting for balance, he jammed the helmet on his head. “Now you will turn back.”

  “Don't,” said the train.

  “I will.”

  “Don't…I reversed the polarity so you can't…”

  Adam Black pressed his fingers to his temples. All at once senses one two three four five and six shut down. Hallucinations bubbled up in his imagination: pushing against a glowing wind, star-hot fires burning in his belly, tireless legs, tireless arms, a wall of stout brick.

  —So the train resists me. He gathered his mental strength and hurled his imagination at the bricks. It flew apart, no stronger than tissue, and Adam Black went falling falling into the abyss of preconsciousness.

  “Reversed polarity, reversed polarity, reversed polarity.” The words circled around him like condors as he fell. He felt his body changing, growing, expanding, taking on new textures and surfaces, new hard planes, new alignments of power.

  —No! howled Adam Black as his consciousness merged with the metal and oil and steam of the train. No no no no no no no nonono noooooo; like a train building up steam, his denial lost its words and became a whistle, a steam whistle, whistling out across the paddy fields of the Great Oxus.

  In the managerial car the body of Adam Black gave a convulsive death-jerk as if a million volts of electricity had coursed through it, which indeed it had, for the computer personality of the train was too strong for the delicate synapses of Adam Black's brain and they fused one by one, cracking, snapping, smoking, swinging. In a flash his eyeballs burned out and smoke trickled from the empty sockets and open mouth. The dissolved brain ran out of his empty eyes onto his lap to lie like clotted soup and with a desperate cry the train realized it was dead dead dead and Adam Black its erstwhile father was trapped inside the steel body of a Great Southern Class 27 locomotive.

  Listen now.

  Once there was a man who lived in a house with a buff-coloured front door. He did not much like the colour buff. He thought it characterless and insipid. But every door in every street in the town was buff-coloured and to change the colour would have brought him to the attention of those people who liked buff-coloured doors. Every morning he would lock his buff-coloured front door behind him and walk to work, where he would drive a steel-pouring crane until the evening whistle, when he would walk home again and open his buff-coloured door and every evening he would feel depressed by the dreariness of
the buff. Every day he opened and closed the buff-coloured door and he grew more and more miserable, for the buff-coloured door came to symbolize everything that was dreary and monotonous and characterless about his life.

  One Sunday morning he went to the Company commissary and bought a brush and a big bucket of green door paint. He did not really know why he went and bought a brush and a big bucket of green door paint, but he had woken up that morning with an insistent vision of green in his head. Green green green. Green was a restful, meditative colour, easy on eye and soul, serene; green was the colour of green and growing things, green was God's favourite colour: after all, He had made an awful lot of it. So he put on his old old clothes and set to work. Soon people were gathering to watch. Some wanted a go at it, so the man who liked green gave them a brush and let them paint a bit of his door. With all the help it was not very long before the door was finished and all the people who watched agreed that green was a very good colour for a front door. Then the man thanked his helpers, hung a sign reading “Wet Paint,” and went indoors to have his lunch. All afternoon Sunday, walkers came past his house to look at the green front door and pay their compliments because in street after street of buff-coloured front doors there was only one that was green.

  The next day being Monday, the man who liked green put on his vest and his pants and his hard hat and walked out of his green front door to join the stream of workers all pouring into the factory. He poured steel all morning, ate his lunch, drank some beer with his friends, went to the toilet, then poured steel again until seventeen o'clock, when the siren blew and he went home again.

  And he could not find his house.

  Every house in the street had a buff-coloured door.

  Wrong turn perhaps: he checked the street name. Adam Smith Gardens. He lived in Adam Smith Gardens. Where was his house with the green door? He counted along the rows of buff-coloured doors until he reached number seventeen. Number 17 was his house, the house with the green front door. Except the door was buff once again.