Grand Junction (59 page)

Four men who didn’t have the slightest chance. Four men who crossed paths with Chrysler Campbell and a couple of Territory cops.

Four men who earned the right to euthanasia improvised to perfection by a Camp Doctor.

The androids certainly found the dark side of the Earth.

Campbell looks at Link de Nova as the deep, saturated half-bass hums, nudging the limits of the Larsen effect, and fades slowly away in the static electricity-charged silence. Diodes blink on various machines; the volumeters on the mixing console drop gradually toward zero; the black Les Paul is still vibrating, held by its neck by a boy whose quasi-ecstatic expression suggests that his soul is flying in pursuit of the jets of electricity launched beyond the aluminum walls and into the twilight sky, where the first stars, summoned by the music, are surging from the depths of the Earth.

Metal Machine Music
, thinks Yuri. Link is going to become the loudspeaker for the poetry of the Camp, the secret bard of the Territory, the vector of the electric machine-turned-serious work transcending itself via the infinity of which it is secretly made, the starfire guitarist, the guitarist of the ultraviolet night. Beauty against the Beast.

“Well, I don’t know if that will help us fight the digital mutation, but at least we’ve got a true sonic weapon now. We can make eardrums explode from kilometers away.”

No one laughs at Chrysler’s joke but him.

“Campbell,” Yuri says, “don’t you understand what I told you on the
way over here? We’re going to need hundreds—thousands—of radio transmitters.”

“I get it, Yuri; I’m not an idiot. The problem is that the system hasn’t been tested. And that goes against my ethics.”

“Tested?”

“Yes, Yuri, like we did with the old Hells Angel from Electra Glide.”

“The sheriff won’t let us leave the county for that kind of operation anymore, Chrysler, and you know it. He won’t let us go very far away for any reason.”

“Of course I know it. That’s why I don’t think this solution will fly.”

“We don’t have a choice, Chrysler. It comes down to that, really. The sheriff can’t do anything, and neither can the fuckers chasing us on the outside. It isn’t about Link’s physical presence anymore—it’s his music we’re going to transmit. And I can promise you that we don’t need any more scientific tests.”

“Oh, really? So we’re proceeding in a scientific manner, but without the experimental phase. That’s new.”

“We’re beyond experimental science, Chrysler. Haven’t you said yourself that it’s through
thought
that we’re going to defeat this Thing?”

Silence, static electricity, the final infrasonic vibrations of the wall of amplifiers.

“Fine,” says Campbell finally, sighing. “Radio transmitters. We’ll ask the sheriff to get them during his next trading session with Junkville. Anything else?”

Yuri smiles, relieved. Campbell is going to help them. He will manage to convince the sheriff. He will give Link a chance to fight for real against the new Humanity.

“No,” Yuri replies. “Thank you for—”

“Yes,” interrupts the boy. “There is something else.”

With Link, Yuri thinks, there is
always
something else—best not to forget that again.

“An android? But what android are you talking about, Link?”

Campbell’s astonishment is visibly mingled with annoyance. It is rare to see him lose his cool. A product of accumulation, no doubt.

“Campbell, do you know the phenomenon called neuroquantum correlation?”

“I studied at MIT, Link. Of course I know the phenomenon.”

“Okay. Well, the android builders never managed to find out where it came from; it was never part of the program.”

“A by-product.”

“Exactly. Except that I’m starting to wonder if this by-product doesn’t have something to do with the mysteries of the fourth generation.”

“Mysteries? What mysteries?”

“Well—for example, how these androids have individual personalities that have nothing to do with the cortical parameters implanted in the embryogenesis incubators.”

“You think that’s related to correlation?” asks Yuri.

“Yes—everything is always related in machines—but also connected by disjunction. Don’t forget that every machine is a network of disconnections.”

“Right. Now, then, what did you want to tell us about this android threatening the whole Territory?”

“My mother
feels
it, Chrysler. And yesterday she told me she’s been speaking about it quite a bit with the androids from the Ring. They feel it, too. They told her they’ve felt its presence since they landed.”

“Who is this android? Where does it come from?”

“They don’t know; that’s why they’re looking all over the Territory—as best they can, anyway. They’re trying to track it down.”

Campbell cracks a smile. He is being looked for by Vegas Orlando’s and Silverskin’s gang, and the androids are looking for another artificial human, and the two chases collided in Aircrash Circle. It is a place destined for such collisions. For all collisions.

His gaze meets Yuri’s for a fraction of a second—always their instantaneous semitelepathy; evidently, they have the same gift as the androids.

Of course. It’s obvious. Yuri is right.

Campbell’s face shows the dawning of a terrible truth, an incalculable danger.

“The androids can’t be allowed to leave the county at all anymore. I’ll talk to the sheriff about it tonight.”

“Why not? They haven’t caused any problems yet, as far as I know.”

Link, in vigorous opposition, looks to Yuri for support.

But Yuri knows Campbell is right. Yuri knows why they absolutely cannot leave Heavy Metal Valley again. Yuri knows there is no other solution.

“The androids’ neuroquantum correlation works in all directions,
Link. If this artificial human is fourth-generation, as it appears to be, according to your mother and the people from the Ring, then it senses them, too. It can identify them, locate them, track them. Trace them
here.”

“I know, Yuri. My mother explained it to me last night. There’s nothing to be done about it; she told me it would inevitably end up knowing where they are. But it will be reciprocal.”

Campbell smiles his carnivorous smile. “Nothing is reciprocal in the Territory, Link. Ever. It’s the Law. Nothing can be done to prevent it from knowing where your mother and the astronauts are, but nothing can keep us from finding it and
shutting it up
, either.”

With Link, there is always something else. With Campbell, there is always a definitive conclusion.

Whatever the origins and motivations of this newly arrived android may be, it is not a man of the Territory, a Guardian of the Law of Bronze, a Camp Doctor.

And, Yuri thinks:
That makes it even more dangerous
.

Maybe even more dangerous than us
.

Which borders on the infinite
.

It is the Spring of the Thousand Radios. Sheriff Langlois has used his contacts to spread the word all over Junkville. A convoy of two dozen vehicles is descending on HMV for a huge swap, a special promotion, a huge pre-summer sale.

In exchange for Cadillacs, Pontiacs, Toyotas, Buicks, Subarus, Fords, GMCs, Oldsmobiles, Hondas, Suzukis, Chryslers, Dodges, Plymouths, Kias, and Jeeps, he is asking only radio equipment of all generations—microprocessors, transistors, vacuum tubes, galena tubes, vapor tubes, even radios that are not currently in working order, but are complete in terms of internal components. Corpses, maybe, but with all their organs.

The sheriff is displaying a caravan of twenty-four vehicles. He is asking the techno Triads for one thousand radios per car.

“We’ll never be able to find so many transistors in the whole Territory in so little time. Most of them are incomplete, recycled.”

One man shows a stock of transistors piled in several pickups. “Since your announcement we’ve been able to gather a little more than five thousand. But our townships are empty.”

“You won’t believe this,” answers Langlois, “but HMV is ready to give credit. How much time would you need?”

The head of the Union of Techno Triads consults briefly with his colleagues. “We think we can get the twenty-four thousand radios in about sixteen weeks. Frankly, to do it in any less time would be very difficult. Let’s say six thousand per month. Will that work for you?”

Langlois cracks a wide smile. “If you have six thousand radios with you in four weeks we’ll consider it a done deal. I’ll give you six complete vehicles for your first delivery, as a little present on the house. HMV
might give you credit, but not philanthropy. I hope I’m making myself perfectly clear to everyone.”

The sheriff has been so clear that a field mouse could understand him, or a stone lying on the side of the road.

The Spring of Waves, the Spring of Electric Flowers, the Spring of Living Machines.

The Community of Heavy Metal is growing its own jungle against the ever-expanding desert. Only steel can stop the sand. Only metallurgy, only the science of fire can fight the ice. Only electric waves will be able to combat neonature.

Here is the weapon. Zoo Station, as Link de Nova has nicknamed it, after an old U2 song.

Zoo Station:
I’m ready, I’m ready for the gridlock, I’m ready, to take it to the street, I’m ready for the shuffle, ready for the deal, ready to let go of the steering wheel, I’m ready, ready for the crush
.

Yes, we are ready. Ready to let the car go until the collision, ready for the great Brownian movement, ready for the global roasting, ready for the final crash. Radio Heavy Metal, Radio Territory Fortress, Radio Free Americanada, Thousand Roll-ins Radio, Grand Dynamite Audio, the Station of the Human League. Beep beep, beep beep—the royal
Sputnik
orbiting above the desolate Earth, subject to the dialectic of the desert of sand/desert of ice; yes, listen to that fuckin’ noise, listen to that beat, the squadron of sonic Stormoviks razing the tanks in flames above the horizontal/total universe of the War of the Worlds, the War of the Plans, the War of the Numbers, because we are Zoo Station, Radio Free Territory, Grand Dynamite Audio, Survivors Radio, the Radio of What Lives in the Camp, the Radio of What Is About to Kill Death.

The Black Death, Death reversed in an act of Justice, Justice that is going to lodge a bullet in the skull of the Grim Reaper.

We are ready. We are ready, dirty bitch.

Night broadcast: Here is the Resistance of the stars in the ultraviolet sky. The Living talking to the Living.

There are now more than six thousand working radios distributed throughout the Territory.

Against all expectations, Link has managed to find a unique method of individuation for the simplest electric machines; he can now heal them in blocks, by “species,” in only a day or two. All they have to do is transmit from the station on the right wavelength, and his music does the rest in a few seconds, two or three minutes at most; the radio crackles and spits out some interference, then adjusts to the frequency, and the sound miracle occurs. Now they know it, their plan of action.

It is the Strategy of the Territory, the Strategy of the Law of Bronze, the Strategy of Starfire.

Radio Free Territory, Zoo Station, has now been transmitting for almost a month. The results have exceeded all their hopes. There is talk of thousands of remissions, the alphanumeric devolution is stopping, and, even better, it appears that Radio Free Territory is able to efficiently combat the still-sensitive effects of the second mutation on programmable machines and bionic systems.

Link de Nova’s solution is working because it attacks the root of evil directly; it cuts not only the heads of the Gorgon but also what produces them; it cleanly severs the spinal cord. It does not simply strike off the heads, it slices into the spirit of the Beast; it divides the Great Divider.

Oh yes, listen to that fuckin’ noise, listen to that beat, dirty bitch.

The two androids are working as well. Their technical knowledge has been of great assistance in turning the hangar into a truly functional recording studio coupled with a radio transmitter of great power.

Judith tried weakly to argue when the two beings from Space made her part of their project, but she could not hold out long in the face of such implacable rationality come from the fiery stars, in the face of the singular economy to which they bore witness. The radio station needs to be directly coupled to the “production center” in the hangar; its antenna is placed directly on the structure’s roof.

In orbit, as in the rest of the Territory, you don’t move unless you have taken the utmost precautions and done systematic research to ensure minimal energy consumption—but in Space, there is no space.

In orbit, as in the Territory, you must constantly improvise to hold together ever-changing configurations—but in Space, the machines move.

In orbit, everything moves, all the time, and everything is constantly transforming—just as in the Territory, except for nature itself. The difference is notable.

Radio Free Territory is calling. Zoo Station is calling, do you hear me, Terra-Man?

Do you hear me, Major Tom?

Guitars-rockets/speaker-meteors/ultrasonic stridencies of imploding steel/bursting uranium at critical mass/stratospheric fissionable materials quivering in lightning-filled altocumulus/atomic light from Bikini Island launches/the twentieth century in an electric Middle Age/turboreactors at full blast. We are transmitting, thinks Yuri; we haven’t stopped transmitting, day or night, for three weeks and some change; we are radiating all over the Territory, our electromagnetic waves are reaching almost ten thousand people; they have already healed and immunized half of them, at least.

Just a few days have brought a fundamental change.

An entire era is ending.

The time of secrets, the time of mystical treaties, the time of the ultraviolet night itself.

It has come with us until this point; it has permitted us to reach the end.

We have to tell it good-bye. As one says good-bye to a dead soldier on a mountainside.