Chrysler prepares a simple meal of nutritional rations and canned food scrounged in Neo Pepsico, Junkville’s supermarket. They eat in silence amid the deafening silence that has replaced the din of climatic chaos, until Chrysler Campbell decides to resume the conversation they began that very morning.
There is still information to be collected, Yuri tells himself, but the Professor is also here to receive his share of the data. The exchange will happen soon. It will be in the ninth inning, when at some random moment Chrysler will have to drop a few crumbs. The important thing, Yuri knows, is to learn as much as possible before giving out the information that Zarkovsky is looking for. They have to exploit both his trust and their own power, however temporary. The Professor’s entire memory must be drawn out. His entire confession. His entire crime.
In exchange for which they will open the doors of Heavy Metal Valley to him.
The Professor doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell against Campbell, and Pluto Saint-Clair won’t be able to provide much recourse for him at all.
And the Professor is visibly aware of all this. He allows a bitter smile to curl his lips as Chrysler nonchalantly picks up the thread of his interrogation as if only a few seconds have passed since he asked the last question.
“You were talking about Christian Scholasticism this morning. You told us it contributed greatly to the design of your update. I need to know more.”
Yuri is flabbergasted. As always, Chrysler’s surprise attacks come when they are least expected.
“What do you know about the major Christian heresies of the early centuries? What do you really know about what you call Scholasticism? Do the names of Saint Thomas Aquinas, Saint Bonaventure, Saint Irene, Saint Bernard, Duns Scotus, Jean Cassien, or Nicolas de Cues mean anything to any of you?”
Zarkovsky has a point, Yuri thinks. A serious point. Chrysler is venturing into unexplored terrain. And neither he nor Pluto will be able to help Campbell here. He ventured into unknown territory—first mistake—and alone—second mistake. But this time, Chrysler proves that on occasion, to conquer, you can’t worry about your adversary’s maneuvers. You have to persist, to hang on, to cede nothing. Go in headfirst. Destroy everything in your way.
“You can give us a theology lesson later, Professor. What I want to know is if you were in contact with Christian communities—here in America or in Europe, it doesn’t matter—before and after the Fall of the Metastructure. And I want to know what these Christian communities have to say about what is on its way. I also want to know if you and your Balkan friend are of the same opinion on this subject, and if he helped you, and how, in designing your program. I’ll take a refresher course on Saint Thomas Aquinas and the others one of these days, I promise.”
“Too bad,” returns the Professor. “You’re right about one thing, and wrong about all the others.”
“I can’t be right or wrong yet, because all I’ve done is ask you questions.”
“Questions can be wrong, too. Especially these days.”
“So give me the answers that are the right ones.”
For the first time, Yuri senses a bit of defensiveness in his partner’s voice. Maybe the Professor has it in him to cause even this human computer a few seconds of uncertainty. …
“The main problem lies in what none of you know about this phenomenology of the invisible. You don’t know what was begun by the Fall of the Metastructure in terms of an eschatological process.”
“Eschatological?”
The Professor doesn’t need to give a sigh of resignation; they all hear it in their heads. Yes, Yuri says to himself. Paul Zarkovsky is a worthy match for Chrysler Campbell. Maybe the two of them will end up in a sort of tie game.
“You really don’t know enough. I have no idea where to start. I mean it. What do you know of the Old or New Testaments? Or the Apocryphal writings? The Jewish pseudo-epigraphic texts? What do you know about Genesis, or the Apocalypse? Or the nature of the Holy Scriptures themselves?”
Then, after a good ten seconds of absolute, bothered silence: “I think the best thing, Mr. Campbell, would be for you to take me to my friend Milan Djordjevic. He is a doctor of theology and could undoubtedly explain things to you much better than I. Or, let’s say, having both of us would make it much easier.”
Yuri and Chrysler exchange a glance of utter complicity. Yes. They are facing a time game. The time to deliver the goods has come. Chrysler held down his position until the very last possible moment. And there are secrets here that hide other secrets, which in turn …
Both of them know the exact location of the Professor’s Balkan friend. And now they will tell him.
But the Professor probably knows nothing about any of the Catholic communities, Reformed and Orthodox, that have gathered in HMV County. He is far from suspecting the exact nature of the “sanctuary.”
Nor does he know about the very important existence of his friend Djordjevic’s son.
He is even unaware of the recent emergence of the “second mutation.”
On the other hand, and each of them has read it in the other’s face, it is obvious that Pluto Saint-Clair is also hiding a secret. A secret that has something to do with the Fall. A secret he probably doesn’t know what to do with, but one that he undoubtedly hopes to sell one day at a very high price.
* * *
They are on the road at dawn. It’s becoming a habit, thinks Yuri. Chrysler is at the wheel; each of them takes the same place as yesterday. Habits have a way of taking root; what remains of humanity strives to maintain its few pockets of resistance in the midst of the Post-Machine desert.
The transaction has been planned in several successive phases of approach. Campbell has told the Professor and Pluto Saint-Clair that in exchange for their information, they desire a reasonable share of the books that will soon arrive from Europe. The Professor was strongly opposed to this, but Campbell would hear nothing of it. It was Pluto Saint-Clair who had managed to convince him that the library contained nothing of much value in itself. “But Yuri said something about instruction manuals,” Chrysler had said. Zarkovsky had laughed. Pluto had explained wearily that the library contained theoretical scientific and ancient Scholastic literature—nothing at all that would find buyers in the Territory. “So how do you propose to pay us?” Chrysler had asked. With a note of credit signed by Sheriff Langlois for a good store of munitions, to be presented to the Powder Station traffickers, and another for a hundred gallons of gasoline in Reservoir Can; would that do? They would begin escorting the merchandise as soon as it arrived in Quebec.
Yuri had thought immediately that the sheriff of HMV wouldn’t let anyone escort anything through his territory without his permission.
Campbell takes the rutted road toward Deadlink before turning north on the old Nexus Road, which runs, full of dust and light, toward the heights of Monolith Hills. A thin sliver of moon still gleams faintly in the cloudless sky like a mercury slipstream, curving amid emerald-tinted azure. There is no trace to be seen in the heavens of the previous day’s storm—but here on Earth the sand has won even more terrain, creating new islands of sand scattered over the Territory or linking existing ones in a fresh expanse of dunes. No matter what type of landscape they pass through, they can see the desert infiltrating it like a virus.
Yuri and Chrysler know that the area around HMV is honeycombed with military sensors of all kinds that Sheriff Wilbur Langlois scavenged after the Fall, somewhere in the cosmodrome’s technological-activity zones. The Valley of Heavy Metal is under high surveillance; everyone in the Territory knows it, Yuri and Chrysler better than most. HMV is a fortress. No one enters it without a valid pass—that is, one signed by the sheriff himself.
Their arrival in the vicinity will be detected, signaled, and identified.
As soon as they cross the intersection with North Junction Road, an old street that descends through the hills toward the site of the cosmodrome, the alert will be sounded.
By the tim
e they come into view of Xenon Ridge, the sheriff will have a patrol waiting for them.
Wilbur Langlois gazes fixedly at the young man he has just woken up with great difficulty as the sun sheds its first rays, pale as lily petals, over the Territory.
“Your friends are coming to visit you, Gabriel, and this time they aren’t alone.”
What does he mean, “not alone”? Gabriel Link de Nova asks himself, as he sits up in bed. If it is true that Yuri and Chrysler have brought one of their clients inside the very borders of Heavy Metal Valley, then they are breaking rule number one of the contract: never in HMV; always outside the county, no matter where the actual business is taking place.
It seems inconceivable. Yuri and Chrysler would never imperil their secret association this way. They would never sabotage such a profitable venture.
“They’re waiting at the south entry, near Bulldozer Park. You’ll need to wake up your parents, young man.”
“My parents? Why?”
“I’ll explain things in good time. To your father. Tell them it’s urgent. Your father will have to come with us. And tell them that’s a legal order from the sheriff.”
There are two sure things in the Territory, two intangible things, solid as a rock. Two things that are connected in a mysterious way that Link de Nova cannot quite understand; two things that are somehow one while being utterly irreconcilable at the same time. There is the Law of the World, the World of the Post-Machine, the World After the World, the World of the Encroaching Desert, ever stronger, farther, larger.
And there is the Law of this tiny Territory, constantly attacked by the desert, and in particular the Law of Heavy Metal Valley, the Law of the Sanctuary, the Law of the Fortress. The Law of Sheriff Wilbur Langlois.
Neither of which has even the tiniest sense of humor.
* * *
“I need to know the exact reason for your coming here, Professor. The fact that you are a friend of Milan Djordjevic means nothing. But let’s say that I have some a priori knowledge that isn’t completely unfavorable. Take advantage of it.”
The seven men are standing under the cone of orange light cast by a sodium streetlamp the sheriff took from one of the large tunnels under the city’s periphery. The sun is rising, its soft, oblique light mingling with the cold, hard, sharp illumination cast by the single naked bulb. Bulldozer Park sparkles in the combined glare of photons, electric light, and starlight. The morning looks like a never-ending twilight.
They form a somewhat-lopsided semicircle in the center of the tarmacked area where the community of HMV parks its construction vehicles—scrapers, bulldozers, tanker trucks, garbage trucks.
They are truly inside HMV, says Yuri to himself. This entryway to the Valley of Heavy Metal is a miniature version of the city itself: its layout, its architecture, its presence, and especially its spirit. Heavy Metal Valley is like a living vestige of the world not only before the Fall but even before the Metastructure, and one might almost imagine, quite easily, that it retained traces of both the world before the World-Machine and the world that the World-Machine created in its own image, and even of the world before that. In a way, Yuri muses, it is as if traces of all the previous worlds have been superimposed on one another, going all the way back to Christian antiquity.
Yes, they are in HMV. The city of Wilbur Langlois, the man of the Law of Bronze.
Yuri and Chrysler see Milan Djordjevic, stammering and fumbling his words, trying unsuccessfully to influence the sheriff’s decision. But they know all too well that nobody can ever influence any of Sheriff Langlois’ decisions.
The Professor needs to spit it out. Now, Yuri thinks to himself, it’s his turn to face the Law of the Territory.
“It is a long story, Sheriff Langlois. Very long.”
“I’ve received criminal confessions that lasted hours. I’m listening.”
“Well, first there are the books, aren’t there?”
“The books?”
“Don’t act innocent with me, Sheriff; you’re a man of the law. I’m talking about the Italian library.”
Milan Djordjevic suddenly finds his tongue. “But … how can you know about that? It’s a secret Vatican operation.”
“There were leaks in the Curia, and I ran into one of your old friends in Mexico. The Yucatan.”
“Father Ortiz? What did he tell you?”
“The details don’t matter. I learned that you were going to bring your library from Europe to America, but I didn’t know where in America. Neither did Father Ortiz. And there’s a lot of America between Tierra del Fuego and Alaska.”
“How did you track me down?”
“A combination of chance, luck, and Providence, or whatever you want to call it, and a little common sense toward the end. And I had help, even here.”
Paul Zarkovsky indicates Pluto Saint-Clair, standing next to him, and glances at Yuri and Chrysler.
The sheriff steps in. “We know these two. They have a more or less permanent entry pass. They’re friends of Gabriel here. But the other one there, your friend from Junkville; nobody knows him here, Professor, especially me, and that makes me suspicious of him. He won’t get past Bulldozer Park, if you want my opinion, and he won’t soon be back here, either.”
Chrysler decides to intervene on behalf of his Midnight Oil informant. Yuri guesses this is to make good with Pluto Saint-Clair. He knows perfectly well that no one changes the sheriff’s mind, especially in conditions like these.
“Sheriff Langlois, without this man the Professor would never have made it here.”
“That’s not how I understand it. You’re the ones that knew of Milan Djordjevic’s existence, and where he lives. Not this gentleman.”
“That’s right, Sheriff, but this gentleman, as you call him, has been the Professor’s guide. He arranged for a desert taxi to pick him up in Ohio.”
“Ohio isn’t part of my jurisdiction, Campbell. The answer is no. He won’t come any further into HMV, and he won’t be here in the park much longer, either. I’ve already done him a huge favor just by letting him get past Xenon Ridge.”
“Sheriff Langlois, sir,” breaks in the Professor, almost dryly. “I’m going to speak plainly with you. I’ve come practically five thousand miles nonstop from the Mexican border, urgently seeking my friend Milan Djordjevic. And this isn’t about some sweet reunion between two old college friends. If I’m here, it is because—and Milan can confirm this—we developed this library together, not to mention the fact that I collaborated in much of his scientific activity.”
“That’s true,” Djordjevic agrees energetically. “I hope you don’t hold it against me, Paul, but I didn’t know where you were, whether you were dead or alive, and with what happened in southern Europe … I thought it was probably the former. And then it became urgent.”
“I know. Even more so since Rome was put back in the stranglehold. Besides, I thought the same thing about you when I learned you had vanished from Italy.”
“You went all the way to Rome?”
“I was working in Ukraine at the time of the Fall. I couldn’t get into the Vatican, which is a veritable fortress, but I followed your traces through several monasteries—I went back to the Trieste valley from where your family disappeared, which had just been liberated by the Lombard army, then the other way, toward Turin, where your seminars were. In that area, the combat with the neo-Islamist French was very violent, as you know. I finally went back to Croatia, where you taught, before going to Mexico by way of Argentina, where you also taught. In Mexico, they told me I could pick up the trail again in Corpus Christi, in southern Texas. And then …”
“Sheriff,” Djordjevic sighs, “the Professor’s arrival at almost the exact same time as that of the library is a sign, another sign from Providence. Someone is taking it upon himself to send us the weapons necessary to fight evil. A man doesn’t cross the Atlantic and thousands of kilometers of desert to play games.”
“I haven’t disagreed with you, Dj
ordjevic. I haven’t yet made a definite decision with regard to your friend from Texas, whose motivation seems important. I’m talking about his friend, this man we don’t know. And for him the answer is no. Period. On the other hand, as you might well imagine, Djordjevic, I need to know a little more so I can get a firm handle on what all of this involves, or might involve.”
And there it is, thinks Yuri. Zarkovsky will have to type it all down, tell it all again, explain it all again.
But this time the Professor wouldn’t be dealing with Chrysler Campbell, the human computer. This time he would be having the conversation with Sheriff Wilbur Langlois, the man of the Law of Bronze, the man who acts to ensure that secrets are kept—kept, sometimes, in the graves of people who know too much.
* * *
If HMV County is the natural sanctuary of Wilbur Langlois, for the rest of the Territory’s residents, and especially those of the city of Grand Junction, this role has fallen to the cosmodrome itself.
This was very quickly established as a given, a tacit agreement, a certainty, a sort of “patriotism.” A Faith. First, after the Fall of the Metastructure, in ’58 and ’59, several barely organized looters often ransacked the Territory in an attempt to attack the cosmodrome facilities. Security officers, supported by what remained of the police forces—specifically, Langlois himself and his small squadron of patrol cars—had exterminated the few operating bands of renegades.
It was later, during the mutation of the “virus” six years later, when the city of Grand Junction had already been emptied of half its population, that the true problems started.
The Territory had until then been subdivided into five counties: Langlois’ own, Heavy Metal Valley, occupied the north-central part. Champlain Banks, long a desert, stretched to the east along the Vermont border, from Quebec to the old city of Neon Park. The central west, the northwest, and the whole south-central portion of the Territory were contained in the county of Grand Junction, the largest and most heavily populated of all of them. To the southwest was the county of Junkville, which now included the township of Deadlink. To the west, in Ontario, and farther south, the county of Grand Funk Railroad was established, through which the old railroad tracks of Canadian National intersected the magnetic-suspension line built in 2025. But of all the counties, only HMV continued to operate in a politically functional manner. Langlois was the last sheriff in the Territory. The last bulwark of liberty against chaos. He was the last legal killer in a place where the only law was that there were no laws. The authority in charge of the cosmodrome, the Metropolitan Consortium of Grand Junction, and its holding firm, Cosmos, Inc., no longer existed, like most of the planet’s industries and institutions. Organized gangs, hordes of bandits from who knew where, and post-Islamist raiders from Ontario—all had tried anew to overtake the cosmodrome facilities. Groups of armed men ransacked launchpad number three, at the bottom of Monolith Hills; others went after launchpad number two. The rocket-assembly hangars were hermetically sealed with magnetic locks; they were not connected to the network and thus remained intact. The buildings were constructed to withstand an explosion of ten kilotons of TNT. But the communications center was easily taken by a few bands seeking to grab the hundreds of computers, radar surveillance equipment, spectrographs, radio antennae, contaminated and inoperable as they were, with no real idea of what they might do with this booty but with a certainty that in these troubled times they would at least be gaining something, even if it was virtual.
Grand Junction Page 14