Grand Junction (20 page)

“A war? You mean, a war between Link de Nova and the
thing
?”

“Obviously he is the only human being still alive on this Earth that can thwart its plans. If you look at it in a strictly ecological sense, the Post-Machine isn’t doing anything but fighting for its survival. And survival, to it, means the establishment of its own world. In which we are nothing but parasites. Just material to be used and thrown away at will.”

The sun is so bright that it seems as if it could char the retinas of every person on Earth as it bounces off every object it touches. Even the shadows look full of savage light.

“I’m thinking of something else. Something that should have caught our attention a long time ago.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The rumor.”

“The rumor, Yuri? About Link de Nova, you mean?”

“Not really, but that’s part of it.”

“We both know that isn’t a rumor. We’re in a position to know it.”

“I know. Precisely.”

“Precisely what?”

“Precisely, we know it isn’t a rumor.”

“A competition between rudimentary syllogisms, nothing more.”

“Listen to me, though: as you know, this rumor isn’t the only one floating around the territory.”

“Grand Junction could export them on an industrial scale if the world still existed. And fortunately, they would have blurred the radar screens.”

“But as you said yourself, the rumor about Link isn’t a rumor.”

“The competition continues, eh? Amateurs welcome.”

“Follow my reasoning for a minute, please. I thought that was maybe the case for the other rumors, or at least some of them. Then I started cross-checking against what Zarkovsky told us. And I remembered Pluto’s bizarre attitude at the mention of certain details. And … I think the rumor that says the Metastructure’s death began here is true. I think it’s part of the Territory. I don’t know exactly where, but I think Pluto does.”

“The Fall began in Grand Junction?”

“Yes. I’m almost sure of it.”

“How?”

“Everything fits, Chrysler. But I think more than one person has a piece of the answer, though I’m not positive about it.”

“Pluto? The Professor?”

“Yes, but also Link de Nova, his parents, us, Wilbur Langlois’ old informant in Monolith Hills, our informant maybe, and people we don’t even know.”

“Are you thinking of the HMV Christians?”

“Yes. I have to say that’s very likely.”

The silence is thick, as if the landscape and the light are hanging diaphanously in the air, with the various strata of dust blowing lazily in the wind like large translucent rotors.

“Do you think this has anything to do with what the Professor told us?”

“The Professor told us a lot, Chrysler. He also kept his mouth shut a lot.”

“I mean, what he said about selection, about the first wave for the ’56 update. Grand Junction was part of the selection process; he was very clear about that.”

“He was also very clear when he said there was no link. Remember? Within thirty minutes, the phenomenon expanded over the entire surface of the globe.”

“Yes, but he also told us the first twenty minutes of the recording were missing. Nobody really knows where it spread from, and so it might have begun here.”

“Okay, but that doesn’t have anything to do with his update. I’m pretty sure of that.”

“That seems most logical to me.”

Yuri wonders if this, perhaps, is the limit for Chrysler Campbell, the human computer. Logic.

He can’t say why exactly, but he guesses that logic imposes limitations on the intimate understanding of phenomena. And this thought crystallizes what he wants to say. “No, Chrysler; the update in itself doesn’t have anything to do with it. I mean his story about the first wave. All the technical details distracted our attention from the main thing.”

“And what is the main thing?”

“The main thing is the other rumor that isn’t really a rumor. The main thing is Link de Nova.”

“Explain.”

“All the mysteries related to the Metastructure are related to one another. That’s normal. They form the ultimate network, the one of all human bodies and consciousnesses. So Link de Nova and the exact place where the Fall began are intimately connected. And that is the proof that the place is somewhere in the territory.”

“It’s also the proof that Professor Zarkovsky’s arrival has nothing to do with chance.”

“There’s no such thing as chance, Chrysler. It is proof that the end of the world started here, and proof that it will finish here, too. Even the end of the world must have an ending.”

Campbell doesn’t reply at first, concentrating on the road that climbs sharply up the steep slope of the rocky butte. Then he turns to Yuri for an instant. “The end of the world will be over when the world is, Yuri. When we’re all dead.”

“Possibly, Chrysler. But we can also look at the phenomenon another way. The death of man is a passage. So, the end of death’s endless rein will be the beginning of the reign of eternal life.”

Campbell bursts out laughing. “Shit, Yuri, you talk like the HMV Christians!”

“They might not be wrong. There is mystery in the link between life and death, and the Post-Machine entity is like a sort of life-size game that is obligated to make us discover it.”

“A game?”

“Yes—a sort of giant simulator. A simulator meant to make selections among humans. The Professor is right when he talks about a Camp-World. Except that our destruction in itself isn’t the goal. I don’t know what the goal is—not yet—but it’s like I told you; it is connected to the zero point, let’s call it, and to Link de Nova. It’s connected to what we are investigating right now.”

“The second mutation?”

“Yes. And we might as well admit that it won’t be the last.”

Surveyor Plateau juts up ahead of them, its ochre surface dotted with small glens and clumps of pine woods valiantly resisting the new climatic conditions. It is a vast expanse of rock and copses yellowed by the sun, in the center of which are blocks of mobile homes, cobbled-together shelters, and collapsible houses.

Ten square kilometers now unfarmable, on which nothing will grow except a little more than five thousand souls.

And among these “souls” is the one waiting for them. One that knows everything about everything. And above all, one that uses her tongue to make money whenever the opportunity arises.

The very spirit of the territory. The very spirit of the World.

The aluminum trailer gleams in the windshield like a chunk of diamond fallen from the sky.

The door is open. Nora Network is waiting for them. The soul of the territory in all her splendor, says Yuri to himself.

Perhaps it would have been better if she hadn’t.

“The guy you mean doesn’t live far from here; he’s at the city’s northern exit. I’ll give you his exact address if we can agree on a price. And there is another one, no doubt about it; a similar case on X-15 in Ontario. You know my contact there. If we can agree on a price, he’ll take you to the case in question. It’s a woman, as far as I know.”

It could just as well be a striped antelope or a Louis Quinze chest of drawers, Yuri thinks. This old bitch lies like breathing.

Chrysler knows how to deal with the old ex-millionaire of Surveyor Plateau. It is amazingly simple. All you have to do is “agree on a price.”

He starts out by paying, as if he is at a poker table. He pays the fee to enter the trailer and bother Madame. By acting that way he shows that he is in good faith, and then the negotiation can begin without any tension, both of them well aware of how high or low the other can go.

Pure negotiation. Business. The oldest kind of prostitution in the world. They could be selling Winchesters and doctored whiskey to the Comanche Indians, Yuri thinks, like in the twentieth-century westerns Chrysler has shown him.

They sell information for information. They sell the survival of machines and the men connected to them, for information. They sell good-condition, ready-to-use materials, for information.

They would sell the whole Territory for information. Yes, says Yuri to himself, not without amusement. They’re ready to sell the Territory for a map.

A Samsung DVD player, restored to working order and immunized by Link de Nova; more than a hundred DVDs of every type; films from the twentieth century, compilations of television shows, military biographies. Yuri isn’t sure this is what the ex-millionaire from Oregon really goes in for, but he knows that after a dozen years even the pickiest people tend to compromise. This is the starting point, and it places Nora Network in a very agreeable position, even if the word
sympathy
obviously isn’t applicable to the situation.

The second lot prepared by Chrysler is brought up after another ten minutes or so of negotiations, no more. A small microwave oven from the 2020s, in perfect working order. Yuri realizes that Chrysler, as always, has perfectly anticipated the price for which the old courtesan will sell her information. Especially after the excellent beginning.

And finally, in return for access to X-15, Chrysler asks Nora Network if she has a special preference for any product, anything they might be able to get to her within the next forty-eight or seventy-two hours.

Her appetite whetted by the newly restored antiques, Nora Network accepts this slightly unusual condition.

She thinks for a few moments; then, struck by sudden inspiration, she stands and goes toward her bedroom, separated from the rest of the trailer by a series of Japanese partitions.

She returns with several metallic objects in her hands.

A few old Braun razors. Battery-operated lightbulbs, able to work
within a mechanism or to function independently, with neon or xenon tubes. An antique portable record player for 45 rpm vinyl records. A fire-resistant ceramic miniradiator.

Chrysler stares at the old woman uncomprehendingly.

“These are just electric objects. No computer components. If they’re broken it is because they died a natural death. We can’t do anything about it.”

Nora Network fixes her black eyes on Campbell’s. “No. You’re wrong.”

“What do you mean?”

“They didn’t die a natural death. Everything worked perfectly until yesterday. Everything. Ten electric lightbulbs with all the filaments still attached in a single block. Their batteries were new. Tested. They’re drained and can’t be recharged.”

Chrysler inspects the objects one by one. “Yesterday, you said?”

“Yes. Yesterday morning they stopped working.”

“Just as the storm arrived in the Territory.”

“Right.”

“If you want me to help you with this problem, Nora, you’re going to have to give me some information absolutely free. Please understand, I’m not trying to take advantage of the situation. Necessity makes law, that’s all.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Are there other cases like yours in the area? A regression of the simplest electrical systems?”

“I hadn’t heard of any before it happened to me; I swear, Campbell.”

Yuri knows how much stock to put in one of Nora Network’s promises, especially when she isn’t bound by a real agreement, a contract, an exchange, a transaction. Business is just another form of prostitution for her.

But he also knows they have no choice but to act like they believe her, or at least to accept her version of the facts while politely making clear that she isn’t really fooling them.

They load Nora Network’s cargo into a Recyclo particleboard box that they then place on the pickup’s backseat, and bid their usual summary farewells to their old informer. The aluminum trailer shines for an instant in the windshield as Chrysler makes a half turn and pulls back onto the road that leads north from Surveyor Plateau.

Nora Network was, as usual, very useful.

Even better. For once, she didn’t just point out coordinates on a map. For once, she gave them access to a new map. One that is still indecipherable, true, but that just needs to be deciphered.

Yuri has a hunch. They might easily find a connection between the “second mutation” about which they have been gathering data for more than two weeks and this new “illness” afflicting even the simplest electrical machines.

If what Nora Network says turns out to be true, it means that the Post-Machine has kicked into a higher gear. This time it has decided not to leave any time for humans to adapt to the successive “Falls.” It seems in a hurry to finish things.

Yuri is suddenly hit with the realization that only Gabriel Link de Nova can bring them the answer. Everything is converging to bring about a new meeting, outside the county of HMV and as soon as possible.

And as soon as possible—he knows that Chrysler has arrived at the same conclusion when he parks the truck beside a collapsible house—as soon as possible means this very night.

This very night, somewhere in the north of the Territory.

The man from Surveyor Plateau is in what they have established as phase three of the process. The last alphanumeric phase before the transition to pure binary language. Phase one, syntactic dislocation of sentences. Phase two, compression into phonemes. Phase three, alphabetic atomization with systematic progressive serialization, the harbinger of purely numeric language based on the binary code that will mark the fourth phase. Then comes phase five, or the “postlinguistic phase”: total digitization of language; transformation of the body into a modem. The phases overlap slightly during transitions from one to another.

The man can produce only series of letters and numbers now. The most terrible part, thinks Yuri, is that the man can still understand what is said to him, and probably what is happening to him as well. Communication hasn’t been cut; it has been
cloven
.

They discussed their plan only a little during the drive. Yuri knows they are on the same wavelength; a handful of brief exchanges is generally enough for them to agree upon what must be done.

They, too, are kicking into a higher gear.

Chrysler immediately injects the man with a powerful anxiolytic. Then he waits a little, and explains the situation and prognosis. He explains
what they are going to do, and the procedure that must be followed. He tells the man what he must do if he is to have even a chance of survival. What they need him to do if he doesn’t want to die, leaving nothing behind but a digital map of himself.