Grand Junction

by Maurice G. Dantec

  And the hotel.

  The hotel where he met Balthazar, the sheriff’s dog.

  That deserted hotel.

  That hotel rumored to be connected to the Death of the Metastructure.

  That hotel already waiting for him, at the top of the row, with all its orange capsules.

  This time, Link stops for only an instant under the entry arch leading to the vast divider strip that surrounds the building. No hesitation. Rather, the inexplicable sensation of finding himself on the edge of a sacred place, a synagogue, an invisible sanctuary.

  His naturally amplified eyes discern each detail that enters his field of vision—textures, colors, structures, shapes, surfaces, gaps, shadows, light; all is recreated within his optic nerve, in a cross-hatching of artificial shades.

  He walks, slowly, toward the building’s entry door.

  The hotel is swathed in the most complete blackness. Scavengers have removed nearly half the capsules, but all the others have remained, empty, and the hotel’s interior spaces seem abandoned as well.

  It is rare in the Territory; so much space, offering so much well-protected shelter from bad weather, containing still-operating machinery, yet utterly untouched.

  He enters the hall. With a single glance, he takes in the deserted front desk to his left. An arched opening in the vast wall to his right opens directly onto a patio covered by a composite roof with programmable transparence.

  He can see the corridors leading to the elevators. He sees the numbered orange doors and those of the service stairways, marked by their steel gray color and the lack of numbers, with just the indication of their cardinal location: west, south, north, east.

  He takes a few steps toward the patio, pausing for a few instants in front of the huge empty space. A few scattered chairs, two overturned tables, some broken dishes on the floor—this, he sees, was a community dining room.

  There can be hardly any usable objects left in the hotel, he thinks as he leaves the patio. The capsules that weren’t taken away by scavengers have probably been systematically robbed, down to the last coat hanger, the last faucet handle, the last doorknob.

  The entry hall yawns before him.

  He is facing the front desk.

  And the dog.

  There is a good minute of silence, a full minute of mutual observation, a minute that holds all the time in the universe.

  It is Link de Nova who finally breaks the ice.

  “It seems we’re destined to keep running into each other in this hotel, at night.”

  “You don’t know how right you are,” replies Balthazar.

  “I imagine we both have excellent reasons for coming here regularly.”

  “You don’t know how right you are,” the dog repeats.

  “Would you believe that I know why this place is important to you?”

  “Only if you would believe the same of me.”

  “You worked here before the Fall,” says Link de Nova, feeling like he has just played a very important card.

  “I worked here during the Fall, my young friend. I was in the vicinity when the attack against the cosmodrome took place.”

  Link hesitates. What to say? How to avoid letting on just how much he doesn’t know? “People are saying things about this hotel, and the attack. You must be aware of that.”

  “If I had to track down and quash all the rumors in the Territory, I’d drop dead of exhaustion within twenty-four hours.”

  “Fine, but why come back here so often, even though the place is totally abandoned?”

  The bionic dog looks at Gabriel with eyes black as two pieces of burning coal in a circle of powder. “Precisely because the place isn’t totally abandoned.”

  Link doesn’t blink. He continues to watch the cyberdog as calmly as if his heart wasn’t beating double time—though he doesn’t even know why.

  “What do you mean?” he asks in a murmur.

  “Want to see?”

  The dog offers him a canine smile as an invitation, a microdiode implanted in his forehead flashing incessantly from red to green and back again.

  On the upper floors of the Hotel Laika, the night has gone ultraviolet. Tangles of barbed wire fence off the universe outside the visible spectrum, luminescence in constant variations of intensity, specks of photoelectricity become perceptible like so many handfuls of sand thrown into the space in front of him.

  Ultraviolet, that viral darkness that penetrates structures just as it does the depths of masses of target cells. Ultraviolet, the residual light that falls from the stars. Ultraviolet, the silhouette of the cyborg dog trotting in front of him. Ultraviolet, all the numbered doors that stretch endlessly along the corridors.

  Ultraviolet, his own hands that push open the emergency-exit doors on each floor as they climb the service staircases.

  Ultraviolet, his own memory, a photosensitive tablet revealing a world he does not know, but which—he doesn’t know where his absolute certainty comes from—knows him intimately.

  “Does the electricity not work at all in this hotel?”

  Ten floors on foot is no small feat, but the questioning continues.

  Balthazar, walking a little in front of him, turns his head for a second in Link’s direction. “We can both see perfectly in the dark, so what does it matter?”

  “It was just a question. Not even a phosphorescent lightbulb?”

  Link is strangely reminded of the previous night, with Yuri and Chrysler, and the dead electric machines from Surveyor Plateau.

  Tenth floor. The top floor. He pushes open the security door and finds himself in a hallway with the dog.

  Balthazar sits on his haunches and stares at Link, his eyes night-black points in the ultraviolet night.

  “Gabriel,” he says in his pseudohuman voice, “I don’t believe in chance.”

  “I don’t either,” says Link de Nova, laughing. “But maybe not for the same reasons.”

  “The reasons don’t matter. It means that you don’t believe in it, or, let’s say, in its causal importance to a ‘series of accidents.’”

  “Why, Balthazar. I didn’t know dogs were so keen on academics and mathematics.”

  “I’m a little more than a dog, Gabriel. But dogs themselves don’t believe in chance.”

  “Why are you so insistent about that?”

  Link senses that they are in a place where the most profound darkness may lead to the brightest light.

  “What do you know about this place?”

  “The hotel? Not much, truthfully. Now I know you worked here until the day of the Fall, and—”

  “No. I never said that.”

  “What? I—”

  “I told you I worked here before and during the Fall. I continued to monitor the hotel for weeks, including after the death of its manager.”

  Okay, says Link de Nova to himself. The dog kept watch over the area for the whole last part of 2057, and maybe after that. He probably killed a lot of looters. Maybe he even sabotaged the electrical system himself. That would have made the hotel’s reputation, right there.

  It would explain the utter desolation of the place.

  “You come back here often, Balthazar, don’t you?”

  The dog flashes its amusing half-human, half-canine smile. “Yes, very often. More often than you. But the same amount as a third person. A third regular visitor.”

  “A third visitor?”

  “Yes, Gabriel. Another visitor. Another man interested in the Hotel Laika.”

  “But—but why? There’s nothing left here to loot!”

  “Exactly.”

  “What do you mean, ‘exactly’?”

  “If there’s nothing left to loot, you won’t be bothered by looters.”

  “So why would anyone come here regularly?”

  “Well, Gabriel, what makes you come here?”

  “Twice, Balthazar. I’ve come twice. Three times, if you count the very first time, in the summer of ’69, when I met you here. And last time I j
ust went around the outside of the place on my way back up the strip.”

  “What kept you from going inside?”

  Link feels as if he has been caught in a trap. The cyberdog maintains a trace of his ironic smile at the corner of his mouth.

  “I don’t know. What is the third man looking for?”

  The canine smile widens. The microdiode moves visibly between the pointed ears. “That’s exactly what we’re going to find out tonight,” he says, his bionic soldier dog’s face suddenly illuminated with the primitive desire of the hunt.

  “He’s coming?” asks Link, his voice filled with anxious curiosity.

  “Not exactly, Gabriel. He’s already here.”

  20 > ALL ALONG THE WATCHTOWER

  The little girl is dead. Her brother isn’t doing much better. He is going through an amphibolic phase, in which the continuing variations of his symptoms make a firm diagnosis impossible, but at least they can conduct their series of biological analyses on him.

  We are the Camp Doctors, says Yuri to himself, observing his companion’s detached attitude and knowing that it very nearly matches his own.

  The little girl is dead; they can do nothing for her now—and she can do nothing for them.

  And the worst part, thinks Yuri, is that we can’t do anything else for her brother, either, who will probably die like her in a few days, if his current phase is any indication.

  We are the Camp Doctors. For now, we observe and analyze death at work. For now, we are medical men without medicine; doctors who do not heal, who can barely soothe the mildest of sufferings.

  We are number collectors, agents of the Number; we seek to decrypt this invisible code, to understand the workings of this machine that is not a machine, the makeup of this World that is not a world, the emerging of this Camp in which we all live, and where Chrysler and I have a role to play about which we know almost nothing.

  The little girl is dead. She is pretty, even in the pallor of death. Her glassy blue-green eyes are open; Chrysler closes them. Before he does so, Yuri imagines that he can glimpse a vivid intelligence, petrified like crystal. She probably deserved to live. Chrysler motions to him discreetly, and Yuri arranges the necroscanners around the head of the young corpse.

  The parents, white and still, eyes swimming with tears, are mired in mutual stony silence. They answer with hand signals, or vague murmurs at best.

  Chrysler asks their permission to conduct biopsies and neuroanalyses on the boy. The father nods his head; the mother seems not to have even heard. With a rapid, sure motion, Chrysler injects a powerful anxiolytic into the boy, whose verbal outflow immediately tapers off. Then he attaches a number of nanomachines to the youth’s skull and attentively reads the bands of numbers that scroll across the various control screens.

  Yuri watches Chrysler, sees him hesitate for an instant. Will he do it? Does he dare? Have we come to that point?

  “We’ll come back tomorrow and do some more detailed analysis,” says Chrysler. “But I need you to answer a few questions; it’s important.”

  The father motions him to go ahead.

  “How long ago did the symptoms appear?”

  “Fifteen days for Jessica. Eleven for Jeremy.”

  “When did your daughter shift into the … numeric phase—I mean, you understand, when there was nothing more but digital noise …?”

  “Two days ago. In the morning, two days ago.”

  Chrysler takes down each detail carefully on the micropad Link de Nova restored for him.

  Little Jessica died just after dawn.

  The Driscolls were on their list of new cases, but their name didn’t come up until this morning. They are part of the first rotation of the day.

  But even eight o’clock in the morning is two hours too late for Jessica Driscoll.

  It is sixty years too early for Jessica Driscoll.

  Jessica Driscoll barely lived a scant ten years.

  During the first two Falls, a marginal but constant phenomenon was noticed: children who had not yet reached the age of puberty had survived in greater numbers than the rest of the population. There have been myriad theories on the subject since then, but interest has gradually dwindled and rival doctrines can no longer find any grounds for experimentation of any kind. So, practicality has taken priority.

  Or, rather, survival has.

  But the statistical data in their possession for the last few weeks shows that in this area as well, the Thing is changing its strategy, its modus operandi—maybe even its objective, thinks Yuri.

  “Necro Triads will probably come to see you today. If you sell her to them, ask for a high price. Don’t let those vultures screw you over, especially the ones from Vortex Townships. You would do better to deal with the guys from Clockwork Orange. Their position is less secure; they’ll negotiate.”

  The mother dissolves into wracking sobs, her face buried in her hands.

  Yuri tells himself that Chrysler has done everything possible to help this shattered family. He had wondered, a few minutes earlier, if he should ask for permission to take the dead little girl with them, to sell her himself to some Triad, but he remained silent.

  The advice Chrysler has given to the family concerning the Triads should be taken as authentic counsel from a professional Territory expert. He is sincerely offering all he can, as proof of his compassion for this family that no longer exists.

  But the only information he can give them is a choice of several organ-recycling companies.

  We are the Camp Doctors, Yuri repeats to himself over and over.

  We are the Camp Doctors.

  We are priceless, and yet we are worthless.

  We are the ones who should bring hope, and we can’t even slow things down for one minute.

  We are the ones who should have healing words, but it is precisely words that the disease attacks now.

  We are doomed to the same silence as the Driscolls and all the other families we are seeing in Deadlink, Omega Blocks, Junkville, X-15, Surveyor Plateau, and here in Dreadnought, the only township, though a little-developed one, in the county of Champlain Banks.

  There are already ten cases reported in this tiny community of fewer than five thousand souls.

  And one of the ten has already died.

  The process is following its course.

  Lake Champlain sparkles in the sun, gold light glinting off its surface like golden whirling dervishes on a lapis lazuli background. It is so beautiful, this morning sky, its blue as pure as the gaze of a little girl who has just died.

  He doesn’t know why, but he feels tears sliding slowly down his cheeks.

  Sitting in the pickup’s passenger seat, he turns his head to the east, pressing his face against the window glass.

  * * *

  Later, in the early afternoon, the sky turns a threatening purplish gray. A cold wind rises. Toward the east, far above the Atlantic, a black bar can be seen, shuddering with bloodred tremblings.

  An oceanic storm coming from south of Greenland will soon strike the coastlines of Maine, Nova Scotia, and New England.

  They arrive in view of Electra Glide in Blue, a township located just south of Grand Junction, at the very edge of their inspection zone. The particular combination of wind forces in the territory creates small armies of tumbleweeds blowing just above the ground and sometimes concatenating in giant rhizomes, studded with thorns, that often end up piled against some natural or artificial obstacle. Electra Glide is a township of Canadian motorcyclists, originally Hells Angels from Quebec, but after the two Falls the microcity was emptied of three-quarters of its population. Those that remained in their makeshift huts sold their Harley-Davidson bikes long ago to buy the necessities of life. Yuri and Chrysler know well that Sheriff Langlois wasted no time in buying up a lot of legendary Electra Glides and several lowriders from the 1960s and 1970s, as well as V-Rods from the beginning of the century, in return for electric-battery or gasoline-powered generators along with the necessary fuel
, construction materials, and even rented building vehicles. A whore from Deadlink has provided Chrysler with some descriptions of typical cases originating from this township. At the city’s southern entry, an old Hells Angel from Quebec, more than sixty years old, has been uttering unintelligible phrases for days. When they see him, with his colors still emblazoned on the back of his leather jacket, paralyzed with shame in the face of the deterioration that is growing worse and worse every hour in him, Chrysler makes a gesture of commiseration, flashes an ultracalm doctor’s smile, and injects him immediately. Hells Angels can be difficult men to deal with, he explains. He talks frankly to the man about what is happening.

  “We are going to try to cure the linguistic contamination you are suffering from, but we cannot promise anything. On the other hand, we can repair all of your electric and electronic devices. I should also tell you that we have an interest in some of your machines, and they would serve as an exchange if we are able to decontaminate you.”

  Yuri doesn’t have to wait long before the answer—positive, of course—bursts from the man’s larynx, an incomprehensible babble that both of them understand perfectly, as always.

  Two other cases live west of the township. An old “biker chick” in phase four, who emits binary numbers with a New Brunswick accent in her sidecar. A young man, a recent refugee originally from Kentucky, in the final part of phase two, who must be forcefully held down before Chrysler can inject the narcoleptic. Biopsies, scans, nanomodules, neuroscans, analyses, samples. Tiny pieces of bodies deposited into test tubes.

  Other reported cases prove impossible to find. The old hooker from Deadlink isn’t a first-class informant according to Chrysler’s strict hierarchy, but in a few days the phenomenon has grown even more intense. Everything is there for the taking.

  Yuri knows that events are completely outstripping them.

  But there is nothing else to do. Compile data and share it often with Professor Zarkovsky and Milan Djordjevic.

  Continue to take inoperative electric machines to Link de Nova. And, periodically, present the alphanumeric mutation to him, hoping that the expected phenomenon will finally happen.