Joanna sat back. “Are you sure?”
Pouncey glanced at her. “I told you. You listen to me now. I know what I’m doin’.”
“She knows what she’s doing,” Manfred sighed.
Pouncey nodded, glancing at them. Tears ran down Manfred’s cheeks, and Jo’s too.
~
Midnight, and they sided the soltruck into a verge cutaway, screened from the road by a stand of birch trees; not that any solcars were in the vicinity. Beneath the pullout rainshield they set up a meagre picnic: mouldy bread, tomatoes and rainwater. The bis were crated up in the back, and had been since leaving Philly.
“Four thousand kilometres or thereabouts,” Pouncey said. “Reckon we can do it in ten days. If we’re lucky. Most of what lies between the east coast and the west is Outlaw.”
“Do you think we’ve lost the pursuit?” Manfred asked.
Pouncey nodded. “They can’t have any idea what we’re doin’ now. We wriggled outa their golden opportunity. Wonder if it was Aritomo? ’Course, no more nexus for us now.”
Manfred nodded. “What about food?”
Pouncey shrugged. “I kept your cash, but it’s useless out here. Food’s gonna be our problem. Water, we can catch rain. But it don’t rain food.”
Manfred sighed, gazing out into the drizzle.
“The Outlaw is pretty much nexus-free,” Pouncey said. “So, hide everythin’ tech. Joanna, take your jewellery off. Aye – and that fancy scarf. People see that, they’ll have you.”
Manfred said, “The population reduced from three fifty million to fifty million in five years after the Depression hit. Most of that fifty million lives on the eastern or western seaboard. Surely the Outlaw’s almost empty?”
Pouncey chuckled. “It’s not the population density you need to worry about. It’s their attitude.”
“What about the soltruck?”
“One spare tyre. Okay, another weak point there. But the engine’s good, and the photovoltaics.”
Joanna said, “What are we going to do about food?”
Pouncey glanced at her. “Hope for roadkill in the heart of darkness.”
~
Later, alone outside, Joanna and Manfred discussed the bis.
“They are going to need to see the sun soon,” Joanna said.
He nodded. “Charge up. Maybe we should test Indigo in the morning, put it on a leash… see what it does.”
Joanna agreed. “We cannot keep them in the back of the soltruck for the whole ten days, they will lose power. Also, I want to watch Indigo. It sensed that glitched fly.”
Manfred picked up a length of muddy bale rope from the edge of the cutaway and began fashioning a harness. “Okay,” he said. “But we gotta be ultra careful. If one of the bis goes awol here, that’s the end of it. We can’t send out a search party.”
He paused. Howling echoed across the freeway.
“Wolves?” Joanna asked.
He stood up, looked, listened. “More likely feral dogs,” he said. “We better get inside.”
Pouncey lay asleep across the three seats in the front comp.
“Looks like we’re in the back with the bis.”
~
By the time they entered Missouri, Pouncey was starving. St Louis had been a no-go city, its entire southern circumference stockaded, set piecemeal with biohazard, electricity and nuke signs. She got the point.
The roads further on were passable. Half way across the state on the freeway between St Louis and Kansas City she halted the soltruck. Sunset had been and gone, and the batts were low.
“We need food,” she said. “There’s a place called Boonville just ahead.”
“Yeah?” Manfred said.
“I’m gonna strike out, see if I can find food in the suburbs.”
“I’m coming with you then.”
She looked at him, weighing up options. “I oughta go on my own.”
“In the Outlaw? You gotta be joking.”
She hesitated. He had a point. “But that’d leave Jo alone with the bis.”
“She can lock the soltruck. We can give her the other pistol.”
Pouncey sighed. “Let’s do a deal,” she said. “Aye, come with me – as far as it’s green. When we get to inhabited areas I go in alone. You cover me.”
Now Manfred hesitated. His stomach gurgled. “Okay,” he said, reluctantly.
“Why do you need to go in alone, Pouncey?” Joanna asked.
“Make it simple. Don’t have to look after anybody. Just little ol’ me.”
She opened the comp door and jumped out, shrugging her backpack on, arming her hi-vel, then walking around to Manfred’s side.
“Joanna,” she said, “turn everythin’ off. Just sit tight.” To Manfred she added, “Use your gun as a last resort. Gunshots’ll attract every crazy lowlife around. Animals, too.”
“Hmm, okay,” Manfred muttered. He shut the door. There was a click as Joanna locked it. Then the sidelights switched off and they were plunged into darkness.
True darkness had been rare when Pouncey was a kid, but now it was the norm. No power for mass-scale sodium lamps. She walked up to the top of the escarpment off which they had parked and gazed out over Boonville, but saw only blackness on and on, with just a hint, maybe, of yellow lamps a few kilometres away. There was a crescent moon setting, and the stars.
She turned to Manfred and said, “No lights. Obviously. So watch where I’m goin’ and follow me.” She put on her spare spex.
He frowned.
She shook her head. “Standalones, Manfred, modified like night vision goggles. Not very good, but better than eyes alone. Follow me.”
A cow path led down from the escarpment, not steep except for one slippy section, and little used judging by old prints in the half dry mud. She saw mostly hoof prints, but also boot marks, and once the prints of small shoes. Over a few fields, across the remains of a golf course, then she stopped. Buildings ahead: straight roads.
She pointed at a collection of overgrown bushes. “Hide in there and watch,” she said. “Won’t be long. If you do hear me fire, run back to the van. If I don’t turn up I’m dead. But don’t worry. Ain’t gonna die just yet.”
“You better not,” he grunted.
She crept along the street: reconnoitre, check, listen and smell. Nothing. Didn’t look like people lived here. She cursed under her breath. Larger conurbations had community shops, plenty of them. She had to find the nearest stores.
A few hundred metres down she came upon a main street lined with buildings barred up and bolted. Signs stood above doors, the third of which read, General Stores. She slunk around the back and examined the security, to find, as she had expected, that it was heavy – no joke living in the Outlaw. With a jemmy from her toolkit she loosened the back window furniture until all that was left was the window frame; then a quick tap and it fell free. She caught it before it smashed, put it down, clambered into the shop.
Some kind of stock room. She surveyed the tins and packets. Nothing new, all pre-Depression, but plenty of indications that folks around here were growing their own; out of desperation, doubtless, but growing their own. Packets of seeds, for instance. She grabbed tins of meat, dry biscuits, chocolate sweets for energy. Nothing else was worth bothering with, and her haul would last a few more days, so she put the goods in her rucksack then departed.
Back in the street nothing moved. She paused, listened, smelled the air. Ghost town. Happy with her raid, she took out her real spex and put them on.
Nexus-augmented reality looked identical to reality.
She swung around, surveying the suburb. In Philly this would be a scene of frantic semantic activity, as the nexus flung info at her: GPS data, ID’s, commercial gen, prices, dates, and much, much more. But here the spec lenses were empty. The nexus found nothing to tell her about. Boonville was an e-vacuum.
She turned back, saw something glow in left-leaning distance. A single sigil. A z.
She froze. That was weird
. She’d never seen a z before. It signified the lowest level of significance attributable by the nexus, something so trivial it would normally never appear above the frothing tide of more important info; but here the semantic silence made it stand out. And it seemed to be roughly where the soltruck was parked.
She ran back to the bushes, saw Manfred appear.
“You got anything?” he asked.
She nodded, putting her spex in her top pocket. “Hurry,” she said, running on.
At the bottom of the cow path Manfred took her by the shoulder and pointed into a weed-wrecked field. “Vines,” he said. “They might have grapes. Vitamins and all that.”
“Aye, hurry up then. I wanna get back.”
“Why?”
She shrugged. “You don’t wanna hear about itchy fingers again. Get your grapes, if there’s any.”
There were some, though not many. Pouncey led the way up the path then stopped atop the escarpment, putting on her spex. The z floated at the side of the soltruck. Joanna looked at her, an expression of puzzlement on her face.
“What you doing?” Manfred asked.
“The nexus can sense somethin’ inside the soltruck. It doesn’t know what it is though – z sig. Weird…”
Joanna opened the door and stepped down, smiling. Manfred took his own spex from the glove compartment and put them on, then walked to the back of the soltruck and unlocked the doors. From inside came rustling and what sounded like whining.
“It’s Indigo,” he said.
Pouncey took off her rucksack and handed it to Joanna. “Fetch its crate inside the comp,” she told Manfred.
All three of them sat inside, Indigo’s crate between Manfred and Joanna.
“Listen,” Pouncey said, “I don’t see why we shouldn’t let Indigo out in here. It ain’t gonna run off even if it escapes.”
Joanna nodded. “You are right. All the bis need as much stimulation as possible. We could have a rotation of crates up the front comp as you drive.”
“Sure, agreed,” Manfred said. “But Indigo… why?”
Pouncey watched as Joanna studied the bi. Half a metre tall, deep blue and rubbery, it looked like an exotic toy Nippandroid. Joanna said, “Suppose its other senses are compensating for its blindness? All the bis are sensitive to electromagnetic radiation. Indigo’s heuristic sensory networks will be working overtime as it tries to build up a picture of its environment.”
“Yeah, by any means possible,” Manfred said. “And even places this remote will be full of electromagnetics. Radio waves from the sun… random wi-fi. You name it.”
“I have an idea,” Joanna said. “Let’s use Indigo as our channel into the bi group. Let’s keep it with us as much as possible, so that it has to model us. You never know, Indigo could end up being our interpreter… if the bis are communicating.”
“Which you think they are?” Pouncey said.
Joanna nodded, putting Indigo on her lap. “It’ll be like having…”
“A child?” Pouncey said.
“No… a cat. You can never tell what cats are thinking. With a child, you can at least make an educated guess.”
Manfred said, “You realise then that Indigo must be aware of the nexus?”
Pouncey nodded. “Two way traffic. Makes sense.”
“A lot of the nexus is wireless,” Manfred mused. “A symbiotic relationship might be growing.” Excitement lit up his face. “This is a huge advance – a nexus cognisant species.”
They all looked at Indigo. Moisture-preserving lids covered its sightless eyes, but its ears twitched and the fronds beneath Joanna’s hands rippled.
~
Denver and Salt Lake City they avoided, but Boise in Idaho was a city like Philadelphia: crowded, busy, a place of law and ninety percent order. Pouncey was able to use her last remaining cash to buy good food, water, toothpaste and soap. They drove on into the Steens Mountains.
Half way up, Pouncey saw a flash to her left. She braked, turned her head to look. “Think that was a dyin’ electricity sub station,” she remarked.
Joanna laughed. “Did you see that? Indigo turned to face it.”
Pouncey halted the soltruck. “You sure about that?”
“Certain. There must have been an electromagnetic flash too.”
Pouncey drove on. “Good news, I guess,” she said.
Joanna petted Indigo as if the bi was an animal. Which, Pouncey thought, it was… in a way.
After Baker and La Grande they were well into the Blue Mountains, only four hundred kilometres east of Portland. The road worsened, forcing Pouncey to dodge potholes and debris, including many ruined telegraph poles. Her pace slowed. They kept two crates in the front comp at all times, allowing the bis plenty of opportunity to watch and listen. Manfred tried to locate local stations on the radio, but all he found was static.
Night fell as they approached Arlington, but Pouncey didn’t like the look of it. “Too many watch posts for my likin’,” she said, pointing. “See that dome? There’s a barrel pokin’ out of it.” She took a pair of binoculars and scanned the Arlington roofscape. “Let’s get outa here before someone shoots.”
Twenty kilometres on they halted, parking on the side of the road. Pouncey wandered across the ruined tarmac but saw no tread marks.
“This’ll do,” she said.
~
They slept without break until dawn, Manfred and Joanna shivering in the back, though they lay together wrapped in blankets: clear night and frost. After breakfast they sat outside the soltruck, waiting for the sun to clear the mountain peaks. Pouncey took tissues and vanished behind some bushes.
Manfred and Joanna locked seven of the bi crates in the back, then put the other two in the comp, alongside Indigo. Manfred strolled to the crest of the road, from where he saw what looked like a carcass just a few metres away. Meat. He walked on, waving Joanna to follow.
It was a calf, freshly killed. “Reckon we could butcher and cook this?” he said.
There was a click. A dark figure appeared from behind a tree.
“Reckon you fell right into my trap, mister.”
An old man, armed with a rifle, pointing at him.
“Hey, we’re just passing through,” Manfred said. “We didn’t know this was yours.”
“Ain’t nobody passes through here these days,” the old man replied. “What you doing here? That your truck over there?”
Manfred glanced over his shoulder. “Er…”
The old man walked on. “Reckon you better show me,” he said.
He hurried them along. No sign of Pouncey.
“What you got in there?” the old man asked, indicating the front of the truck with his rifle.
“Just toys.”
“And the back? Unlock it.”
The old man pointed his rifle at Manfred as he unlocked the back doors. “Just more toys, you see? We don’t mean you any harm.”
“That’s what they all say. Move back. Now!”
Manfred moved away. The old man peered into the crates, then undid the catches on the front three and popped open the lids.
Before Manfred had time to react the bis jumped free and leaped out of the van. He yelled and tried to catch the nearest. The old man fired at one. Missed. Manfred screamed, “No!” and ran at the old man, but at once the rifle turned on him. He skidded to a halt.
“Eh, eh?” said the old man.
“Don’t shoot them!” Manfred implored. “They’re valuable.”
“To me? Maybe. What are they, boy?”
“Just toys. Expensive toys, yeah? For rich people in Portland.” Manfred raised his hands to his head and turned, shouting, “Jo! We’ve got to catch them!”
“You two!” the old man shouted. “You don’t do anything without my say so. Stand still.”
Manfred turned. “You shoot any of them and…”
“I’ll do what the hell I like, mister. This is my land.”
With that the old man walked around the soltruck and peered
into the scrubby land beside the road. Manfred listened. Surely Pouncey would be alert to the danger by now? Five minutes had passed since she had gone. She must have heard their voices.
“Okay!” he called out, in a voice loud, but not so loud the old man would be suspicious. “We’ll stand still. But we need to get our toys back.”
There was a rustle from the bushes. The old man span, rifle raised. Manfred knew that could not be Pouncey. It must be a bi. He looked, one hand raised to his forehead to shield his eyes from the rising sun, but saw only thick bushes and trees.
The old man crept along the road. More rustling. Manfred watched. It was creepily like a hunting scene in a film.
The old man glanced over his shoulder to check on Manfred and Joanna, then turned back and raised his rifle, aiming low into the bushes. Yet more rustling. He crept on into the shadow of a tree, then stopped. Froze: his rifle raised. Waited. Not breathing.
A shot.
Manfred screamed and leaped forward.
The old man fell, blood fountaining out of his head.
Pouncey jumped down from the tree.
Then the bis appeared: Red, Violet and White. “Jo!” Manfred yelled.
He approached the bis. They stared at him, mesmerised it seemed. He knelt and they approached. Five seconds later Joanna clutched two and he had the other one.
Pouncey swore. “You see what they did?” she said.
Manfred ignored her, running back to the soltruck to put the bis into their crates, then taking the third one from Joanna and crating it. He sobbed, knelt down to lean against the back of the soltruck.
Pouncey ran up and tapped him on the shoulder. He span around, stood up.
“You see what they did?” she repeated.
“No?”
“They teamed up! They lured him on. They knew I was in the fuckin’ tree!”
“What?”
“Manfred, let her tell us,” Joanna said, taking his hand in hers and stroking it.
Pouncey stood a handsbreadth away from him, only shock in her face: no anger. “I watched them, Manfred. They teamed up. They knew where the old guy was. They knew where I was. They drew him on to me.” She shook her head, turning to look at the old man’s body. “They didn’t know what I’d do, but they must’ve known I’d do somethin’.”
Beautiful Intelligence Page 10