Trucksong (12 page)

There came a rumbling on the road just then, and I seen Crow’s eyes flicker, his face fallen downcast even at the same time as me own heart raced at the prospect of another truck on the horizon. I climbed to me feet and rested one arm on Sinner’s dusty under carriage and with the other I flicked me linkmaker on and scanned the freeks for the new comer. I was seasoned as a truck rider now, I’d gotten a good idea of what patches would entice an indie to stop and take a listen. I blinked a few and up popped a truck, coming fast but starting to slow at the sign of a rider on the road. Crow packed another cone and watched from the side. It was an indie coming all right, it came in to view shining in the sun like the promise of a new day. A second chance. Slowing up even further when it saw what I’d got to offer but it was wary too at the site of a freshrolled truck by the roadside.

Yeller Mackdog, pulling a trailer full of parts from the Midden Dump. Liked the sounds of what me linkmaker was making, pumped a happy tune. Sinner too sick from the rollover to make a sound. I held the linkmaker and blinked through a new patch and the truck was a bright one, it knew right away what was required. Its signal went weak then strong as the patch worked its way through its system. Even in my sickened state I was able to fix a rope from Sinners tool box and tie it high up on to the Mackdog’s body. Crow just sat there the whole time, smoking up and silent now it looked like there weren’t gunna be nothing to pick from the wreck after all. I spent some time scouting for sticks and wedged them in under Sinner’s six wheels on the ground to give some leverage when the pull came on, so it wouldn’t just slide in the dust. When it was all ready, I gave the Mackdog another little taste of the patch it wanted and it went the old heave ho. Slowly, slowly till it reached the tipping point of balance where if you find it you can do magic, that place that’s there but not there. It’s still even though it’s moving. And then the fall and creaky crash as Sinner rocked on its shocks.

Sinner was rebooted by then and hauled back on to its wheels. It flashed its lights groggily in silent thanks to the Mackdog which was happy it’d gotten its patches for hardly any work at all and it took off down the road as I climbed into the cab once more and hooked myself into Sinnerman. Leaving Crow by the roadside, we moved along through the slow day, sunlight flowing thick like golden syrup from a can but Sinner wasn’t the same truck. It was cruising with a limp, its heart wasn’t in it. It was all scratched up and scarred and blackened and while I thought the new wounds made it look tough, I knew that for a proud indie it was the worst thing that could happen ever so I pushed it gently along looking to find somewhere to get fixed up. Camp after camp we roaded until two days after the crash and off track from the gigacity we came on a truckstop that had a shop there for detailing. Them indies were mad for the truckskin art that the detailers marked out on metal. Marks made by the detailers who interpreted messages they saw from the Wotcher and etched on the indies that would come from miles around for the latest bit of flash. For their part, the detailers were happy to transact for truckdream haze and Wotcher clips from the wild indies.

Pulled over and while our dust caught up with us I sat in the cab and checked the scene. There was a bloke with welding goggles pushed up on his white skull, looked like he knew what was what. Four indies crowded around him. I thought for sure he was chief truck detailer at this truckstop. Hustle bustle in the shop with detailers moving between the trucks cutting deals, lighting stencils, marking up trucks, leading them in for the enamel bin, those creatures, those amazing wild creatures made of steel and darkness and light. Just looking at them massing like that filled me with wonder. Who knew what they thought? The only way you could guess at what they wanted was by looking at their acts and most times what they did didn’t make any sense at all. Who could of guessed they’d be into the tricks of the skin, hooking themselves into the linked mirror cams set up around the spraybooth that gave them three-sixties over their bodies. Blasting out fat tunes between them when the mood took. Some of the designs were unreal and many I thought were just ugly mess but the trucks themselves didn’t, no way. They rolled around proud as punch. Smokestacks blarting and the smell of them, always the smell, it got me high and it got the detailers high, you could see it in their eyes, they were as hooked on the trucks as we riders were, hooked as the trucks were on them. Moving among them, making marks on the gentle metal skin, just to touch them, to feel them up close. It’s what I wanted too but I was a roader, I couldn’t make no artwork, and anyway I had me own path to tread. There were always new things coming through the pipeline between the trucks and the Wotcher, like one week it would be scrollwork and lace and the next fluro lights and bright shining things and then symbols that pattern and shift as how you look on them.

I pulled out the IV feedline from me arm. It came with a sting and a pucking of flesh up around the spike. Didn’t much like being disconnected but it was the only way I could negotiate and anyway I’d have to leave Sinnerman while it was getting meched. Me boots clanged on the rungs as I climbed out of the cab. Shaky feet on the ground. It felt like I was still moving on the highway with Sinnerman rumbling underneath me but really it was just me and me meatsuit now. Wobbling through the detailers I found the bloke I’d seen at the start, with the goggs on his head, and I went to him and asked, ‘Can you fix me rig?’

His eyes were spaced, the grin on his mouth was wide and careless.

‘What’s that, mate?’ he said.

‘Me rig, Sinnerman. We been messed up pretty bad in a rollover.’

‘Oh yeah? How’d that happen?’

‘It was brumbies.’

‘You know which mob?’

‘I call them the Brumby King mob, run by a big black barstid that don’t take no care for its appearances.’

‘I know em. They don’t come here for mechs, but I know em.’

‘Well they ran us off the road and left us for flapple snack in the backroads. Managed to get righted, but Sinner’s not feelin the best and I’m wonderin if you could fix it and make it right again, cuz we is both roadin after the mob and now we want revenge,’ I said.

‘Nah, mate. Not up to me. You better aks the boss.’

He pointed over to where there was a woman in overalls, round hips and pear chest. She sat quietly crosslegged and zoned out in the busy space, work happening around her but somehow also within her. Looking at her now, I couldn’t work out how come I’d missed her to start with. The other detailers bowed their heads to her as they passed and the trucks were ordered in deference to her, at the centre of her own daisychain of one and everyone.

I went up to her but I was blocked by her offside, a hardbitten bloke with lead for eyes.

‘What do I have to do to get me rig looked at,’ I said.

‘Just wait your turn, mate. There’s no system or plan here except as what’s laid out by the boss.’

I walked back to where Sinnerman was lowing, looking real down since the crash, all bashed and burnt, and grass and sticks caught up under the wheel arches and in between the panels.

I went back to the bloke with the goggs. It looked like it were gunna take a while so I settled in by his side as he worked. He said his name was Lam. After a while I asked, ‘So waddya know of the Brumby King’s mob?’

Lam’s face was greased in creasemarks when he smiled his brokentooth grin. He said, ‘Theyre causin all sorts of trubbil aroun the backroads. Our indies is all antsy coz they’re feared the brumbies will slave new trucks for their mob. The Brumby King is after breedin stock, tryin to build up its follerin.’

‘Any idea where they is holed up?’

‘Na, mate, they come and go. I think they got a few diffrint hidey holes about the place. I heard one of them is in the Warby Ranges — they got a cave there — but they shift round so much its hard to say and they is always on the move, carryin everythin they they need and raidin whatever else. I also seen in the gigacity, searchin in the ruins for signs of the Wotcher’s passin.’

‘They’d stop for foragin fuel sometime, but.’

‘Dunno, maybe not. I heard the black one runs nuke, but thats just rumour.’ He paused then said, ‘Mate, it’s not gunna be a easy wrangle.’

‘I don’t think so neither. The Brumby King took somethin of mine and I want to get it back, thats all.’

He was right, it was a few days before the patternings of trucks around the boss fell into place and Sinnerman could get seen to. Meantime I hung around with the detailers, trading yarns and writing me thoughts down in me typewriter. I saved them together where all the trancecrypts of Smoov’s rants were kept, clipped up in the lid of the HERMES case. I thought maybe I were getting the beginnings of a trancecryption of me own, and if not I were at least getting things straight in me head.

The first night in the truckstop I watched as the detailers gathered after darkness come down. It was time for the Wotcher’s passing and the boss had got her decks together and the detailers and their camp followers that hung on like skinny yeller dogs pushed in closer to the show. Behind the screen Sheila tuned in with the Wotcher like a showman would, except instead of making meanings with truckshows, what she pulled out were pictures from the Wotcher’s feed. Different designs came out of the staticky waves, spirals and shapes, hard blocks or soft edges. Pictures of different trucks through the ages, trucks from the past time that the Wotcher beamed down. I realised they were the markings that were gunna be etched onto the trucks they were working on.

Next day I walked through the camp watching the detailers and seeing how the trucks come in from the backroads looking for the patterns from the night before. Thinking on how the trucks loved that stuff from the Wotcher, it was like they were looking to find their own image in the static that got beamed down from on high each night. Those indies looked to the Wotcher for answers just like the showmans and the camps did, except for the trucks there was something real at stake. Maybe they thought the Wotcher could give them some secret codes in mechin their new hybrid forms, like maybe the Wotcher had the knowing of their first codes from before things went all bad with the gigacity system. Maybe they needed the codes to be everything that they wanted to be, not having to mech new parts all the time from herding up spare trucks but something that could heal itself like a wound would scar up, not break down.

When the sun got too hot I went off down the gully to wash me own wounds and took some haze like I was growing accustomed to it. The sky was dotted with shapes hanging in the air and riding the breeze. At first I thought they were some new kind of flapple but then I seen they were tethered to the ground and rode on strings by kids that were floating them up there in the sky. They made an eerie sound like frogs or angered insects as the wind shook through their cloth feathers. I ate off of a grill the camp followers set up under a blue tarp beside a trickling creek and watched the kids float their flying things. Some of the flyers were real skilled, could make the things on strings do dips and loops and fight against each other. As well as the detailers there was another cult there sharing the camp, a goannaman looking after a big lizard that was all painted up with signs and symbols. Seemed that everyone had their own kind of creature outside of themselves that was gunna bind them together into a whole. I could tell the goannaman were well thought of in the truckstop, he got the best cuts off the grill. His goanna crunched up the bones and maybe it were how they kept out the flapples and robodroans, by having the goannaman around to clean up all the carrion. There wasn’t nothing left there for them to scrounge. It also made me feel safe from Crow too even though I’d only seen him a few days ago. Where there were too many scavengers already, Crow wasn’t likely to show up.

Another night came on down again and I started to get itchy to be roadin after Isa. I’d gotten some good leads on the brumby mob and wanted to get to the gigacity to start the search there. Sinnerman was being worked on but wasn’t ready yet. But there was no hurrying along the detailers. They had their own time marked out, and it wasn’t set by the rising and falling of the sun. They’d go on for three solid days on a job and then crash and sleep right through for a day. It was set by the timing and motion of the Wotcher, but also it come down to what was being broadcast in the trancemission. If there wasn’t anything they could use in there, they’d just get tanked up some more and fight with each other round the fireplace. All the while that goannaman’s reptile monster crunched on bones. It got me nerves jangled and I was getting itchy for Sinnerman’s IV again too. I sneaked up inside Sinnerman’s cab and loaded up, even though it wasn’t ridgey didge to do it while there wasn’t no roading happening. It kept me going and I kept Sinner going with a splay of new patches I’d been working on, and I could feel we was both rebuilding our strengths from the battle with the Left Tenant, and who knew what else was coming round the bend for us.

Two days later the boss got done with Sinnerman and Lam came out and he shook me hand and said, ‘Where you headed now?’

‘Gunna road towards the gigacity I reckon.’

‘Fair enuff. The Wotcher’s signal’s strong there. There’s a place called the Lie Bury where them from the past times is buried all the lies, it’s somewhere near the centre of where the Wotcher’s freek can be tuned. Keep yer eyes out for it.’

I shook his hand.

‘Hooroo,’ I said.

I turned and walked to Sinner’s fresh mint truck skin glistening with sparkling new glyphs, still red and white and with a western look but new designs and new tweaks to its running gear. I almost didn’t wanna dusty up its steps with me boots as I swung up in to the cab. Slotted home the spike and Sinner gunned up again and the flow of the haze met me own blood flowing pounding into me heart and the machine of me dreams. Slowly we roaded back out into the bright sunlight, so blinding and strange after that dark shed of truck magic and the long campfire nights. The gigacity loomed large on the horizon ahead.