Grand Junction (53 page)

“I stocked up on ammunition at Powder Station; we were almost out. They took almost everything I had of the stuff from the battlefield. The weapons traffickers had never seen so much at once.”

Yuri smiles very slightly. There must still be thousands and thousands of shell casings on that mountain in L’Amiante County.

Thousands of shell casings, and forty bodies rotting in the sun.

“The latest compilation of data is processing. Do we have confirmation for tonight?” asks Yuri, his mind once again connected to the machines of daily life.

“Everything’s been in order since early this morning. Don’t worry; everything is under control. We should be there for the sunset. Link will tell the sheriff. Simple as that.”

“I hope our data is usable, Chrysler. I hope we didn’t do all this work for nothing.”

“It will be usable, Yuri, and no work is ever done for nothing; that’s a fundamental law in any society, any situation. Even slaves don’t work for free, because they work for their lives.”

“For the Thing, slavery is a superior condition of life, because it’s better to be human furniture than simply fuel for the fire. I’m not sure, though, that it would be in favor of unionized freedom, Chrysler.”

“It’s wrong. We are the Territory Union. And to make a sort of historical comparison, I’m afraid that for it we will be Soviet revolutionaries!”

“No,” says Yuri, who knows the history of his family’s mother country very well. “It’s more like the Thing is the Supreme Soviet, with the Territory as its Gulag, and we are nothing but dissidents—alone and unarmed.”

“You really think we’re going to lose?” asks Campbell with a shade of anxiety in his voice.

“No,” says Yuri again. “The Supreme Soviet ended up in the sewers of history, and the unarmed dissidents won.”

Campbell knits his brow. “Oh, yes—a little like aikido. Use your enemy’s strength against him.”

“No. The Thing contains its own principle of destruction; it just keeps it hidden. There is no strength to turn against it. The Thing is not ‘strength’; it’s the exact opposite. It is a hole, an active vacuum that sucks up anything human, the biological and the mechanical, and even the symbolic.”

“Why does it do that? If we knew that, it would answer a lot of our questions. Does it feed on us, do you think?”

“Yes, but not in the classical sense, not in the
animal
sense. The Thing is an entirely digital entity, much more than the Metastructure ever was; it acts like a machine in some ways—or, rather, like a program.”

“A program?”

“Yes. It is reprogramming the world. It’s not that we feed it, so much as that we have become replacement parts for the world it is building from what it can scavenge of the former world. It doesn’t feed on us; it does what everyone in Junkville does.
It recycles us.”

Maybe the world will end by resembling a giant replica of Junkville, the city where nothing is created or destroyed, but where everything is constantly transforming.

In fact, thinks Yuri, since it is still acting according to the basic plan of inversion and ontic intensification, we should probably try to imagine not only a planetary version of Junkville but an inverted version, a negative version.

What could that be? What image to give it? Where to start?

Because everything would be infinitely recyclable, everything would equalize. Maybe that’s what the desert is: the future topology of the world; equalizing horizontality, monodesic, unidimensional. And in the middle of the desert—what? Nothing? Nothing human?

The Thing needs us. It will recycle us indefinitely, in order to have basic livestock available to it with which to make its digital sacrifice.

Destruction itself is only one phase of recycling.

That means that this destruction, even carried out on a huge scale as now seems to be the case, is only a stage—worse, only a
preliminary
stage.

This destruction, or rather this huge recycling, is the harbinger of a change. A much worse change.

What could be worse than the packaging of human beings in the form of recyclable material? To answer that question would be to answer the one posed earlier by Campbell: Why is the Thing doing all this?

And, surprised by such clarity, Yuri takes only a few seconds to come face-to-face with the blinding crystal of truth:

If the Thing is doing this, it is because it must do it. Just as we breathe or drink water. If the Thing is doing this, it is because it can’t do anything else. It is its “soul.”

Toward the end of the day, the crow detects new movement near the human shelter from its treetop perch. The humans are spending their time expanding their activities; they are like phenomena bent on disturbing the natural order of things, like particles of pure chaos launched across the cosmos, and they don’t even seem to realize it.

Birds like the crow know the whole Territory and the men that live here, and die here.

But birds like the crow are not bent on disturbing the natural order of things. They subsist on the natural order of things. They are the radical plan that plunges its rhizomes deep into the earth and stretches its canopy high into the clouds, higher than any bird can go.

Humans act, and they affect the world around them. They do what they were made to do.

So the diurnal bird of prey of the Territory, integrated into the very
heart of this ever-expanding neonature, also does what it was made to do. The sun is setting, and its instinct, the complex machinery that affects its entire metabolism, commands it to spread its wings and take flight again. Full south this time, toward its original position.

It soars above the Territory again as orange light touches the landscape in slanting rays. Again it passes over townships, woods, tundra, and savannas until it reaches the great city of coal and plastic. It crosses the old highway and heads immediately for the concrete posts at the summit of the butte, studded with metal boxes, where humans live.

The butte where, too, humans act and affect the world around them.

In life, there are situations that closely resemble gambits.

That very evening, while Belfond and his little entourage search the Territory for Vegas Orlando’s trail, one of Jade Silverskin’s friends from Autostrada visits him.

Sometimes it is necessary for a man to die so that victory can be assured. Vegas Orlando showed the way and blazed the trail; now someone is needed to follow through. To put death on his side. And his friend from Autostrada is in contact with just such a someone. It is so extraordinary, so unusual, that Silverskin instinctively senses that a new opportunity, a bearer of true hope, has come to replace what the vanished man represented.

His friend doesn’t come free, certainly. He is leaving the Territory to try to return to the west coast of Canada. He needs a lot of gasoline and working fuel cells. Silverskin immediately writes him a certified voucher for two hundred liters of octane from Reservoir Can, and promises him formally that hybrid technology will be provided to him within forty-eight hours.

That is what is called a
deal
. An act of willpower. A miracle. His friend from Autostrada is leaving Grand Junction, but in exchange he is sending in the future. Silverskin’s future.

Vegas Orlando is the past, in every sense of the word.

Maybe the old bastard simply double-crossed me and fled the Territory, immunized against mutations of the virus. Maybe he’s dead, buried somewhere. Maybe someone’s forcing him to talk at this exact moment, just like we tried to force Pluto Saint-Clair
.

What counts is that I have enemies in the Territory, people protecting the boy
and the Professor. And if I have enemies, not only do I need allies, I need to become the pitiless enemy of anyone keeping me from being immunized
.

And what the man from Autostrada has brought with him is of inestimable value. It is from New Arizona, from the Midwestern desert, from even farther away than that. It is rare. Incredibly rare. And as such, it is worth a veritable fortune. But its value comes from its very nature. It is a holdover from the Metastructure. A holdover from the Metamachine. It is a being from the World Before the Fall.

It is a machine.

Even better, it is an android.

“Very few androids survived the Death of the Metamachine. You’re a sort of miracle, if I understand correctly, Mr. Alan Cortek-Cybion 3222,” Jade Silverskin says.

“Call me Alan. Humans didn’t do much better; there were just more of you to begin with, that’s all, and it’s true that as bioartificial machines we were connected to the Metastructure.”

“How have you survived, then?”

“Like some of you. I don’t know. For now, other than a few minor problems, I haven’t been affected at all, and it’s been more than twelve years now.”

“You really don’t know why? Or how? You must realize that the answer to this question is valuable. It could command the very highest price.”

“I know that very well, which is why I’m here.”

“In Junkville? The rare androids that survived the First Fall all died during the Second. You can still find some of their biocomponents in Vortex Townships; that’s all that’s left of them.”

“No.”

“What do you mean? If there was a living android in Junkville I’d be the first to know about it. The Triads go in for some of their organs. The necros are very patient; they can wait for months, once they’ve scoped out a potential target. …”

“Maybe not in Junkville itself, but somewhere else in the Territory. Latest-generation androids like me are capable of ‘sensing’ at a distance the presence and location of their fellows; it’s a quantum correlation effect.”

“In plain language, what does that mean?”

“That there is at least one other surviving android in the Territory. And that I need to find it.

“As you know, all first-generation androids were destroyed in the space of a few weeks after October ’57. The second generation, from the ’30s, suffered pretty much the same fate. Only third-generation and especially fourth-generation androids—like me, and we’re very rare—had a somewhat acceptable survival rate, lower than that of humans, but still …”

“When does the fourth generation date from?”

“You won’t believe it, but it was one of the Metastructure’s last projects. At Cortek, the first Cybion models were created in 2052. I’m the very last one.”

“The very last android?”

“Yes—at least, the last one produced in the biotech labs of the Cortek Corporation.”

“You were manufactured in the Ring?”

“Yes. Well … until the final shaping, which was done here on Earth. That was common procedure for the Cortek Corporation. Can you guess?”

“Guess what?”

“My place and date of birth.”

“You were born in Grand Junction?”

“No; no, not at all. There weren’t any android builders in the Territory, if I recall correctly. You’re missing the important point.”

“I’m listening.”

“I was born in Hong Kong, in one of Cortek’s main final-assembly centers, near a huge health safety camp, called Health Containment Camp 77.”

“Okay, and …?”

“Some people think the ‘entity’ that destroyed the Metastructure came from that camp.”

“That’s just one rumor among thousands. Other people say it happened here in Grand Junction.”

“All right; we’ll talk about it again later. The date might interest you, though.”

“Your birth date?”

“I was born on October 4, 2057, Mr. Silverskin. I was conceived at the very moment the Cataclysm happened, or very nearly. Have I made myself clear?”

“You’re the very last artificial human. Is that what you’re telling me?”

“Probably, but that’s not the most important part.”

“You’re immunized? Naturally immunized?”

“If the word
naturally
can apply to me, then yes, that’s it.”

“And do you think there are other androids in the same situation? Other fourth-generation androids among the last to be created?”

“Now you’ve got it exactly, Mr. Silverskin.”

“And this android, that you think lives in the Territory—you think it’s like you, is that it?”

“Yes.”

“And you want to find it. Right?”

“Yes, Mr. Silverskin.”

Silverskin gazes his world-weary entomologist’s gaze at the artificial man.

“I’d like to help you, but on one condition.”

“What’s that, Mr. Silverskin?”

“There aren’t many people with my network of influence and information in Junkville, I warn you. To be honest, there aren’t any.”

“I know; otherwise I wouldn’t have come to see you. But I have much to offer you in exchange; you’ll see. What is your condition, Mr. Silverskin?”

Silverskin does not blink. He simply says: “If you want me to help you find this android, you’ll have to tell me why you want to kill it.”

Link tears his gaze away from Judith to look at the sky. The young woman points her telescope confidently toward a region in the northeast.

“I’ve got them,” she says after a moment. “The orange speck they told me about. They’ve entered the high atmosphere; there will be several hours now when communication is totally cut off.”

“It isn’t like they communicate much anyway. How long before they land?” he adds quickly, before Judith can respond to the first remark.

“They told me it would be variable according to weather and how the flight goes. They’re going to execute a complete revolution before entering the stratosphere. Oh—I didn’t tell you; the sheriff decided that the cosmodrome is out of the question, because the landing would be seen by the whole population of Grand Junction. So he told me to send them another GPS location.”

“Where?”

“Napierville, in the extreme north of the Territory. The sheriff is gathering some men to welcome the orbiter.”

“The north?”

“Yes, a low plain in the former Quebecois county of the Gardens of Napierville; it’s still called that. It’s near an abandoned city called Hem-mingford.”

Link does not reply. As always, the sheriff knows what to do. As far as the Law of Bronze goes, it is impeccable. But as far as the Shield, as far as what will soon be directly in the line of fire, there is no doubt, but a deep, parallel certainty.