Grand Junction (21 page)

The man mutters something incomprehensible, his head bobbing endlessly up and down.

Yuri is already preparing the various analytical instruments.

There are orange suits at the city’s gate. Yuri recognizes them instantly as necro Triads. Clockwork Orange County, from the color of them. A half dozen men are busily occupied around two bodies laid out side by side on the public street. The rear hatch of an old ambulance painted in the township’s colors is open, ready to swallow up the crude stretchers on which the necros place the corpses with no more care than a farmer for his slaughtered livestock.

X-15 is the main township in the north of the Territory, located in Ontario. It is on the peripheries of the counties of Grand Junction and Grand Funk Railroad, just on the other side of the hills abutted by Surveyor Plateau. The road leading to it is in a pathetic state of disrepair; Chrysler has to switch into 4×4 mode for most of the drive there, using up precious liters of gasoline. The spiny ghosts of tumbleweeds roll ahead of them on the path like vegetal advance men.

But now, gasoline doesn’t matter much. Nor does the state of the roads. Or even the sandstorms.

Yuri, maybe for the first time in his life, can see a shadow of worry on his colleague’s face. Chrysler doesn’t like this, this conjunction of events, and Yuri cannot blame him, even if he sees things with a certain degree of fatalism. The “second mutation,” the “Third Fall,” whatever you want to call it—
the digitalization of human language
seems to be happening in concert with a new attack on electrical technology. This time, its threat reaches down to the simplest current modulator, the smallest alternator, the most archaic battery, a simple neon tube. Down to the tiniest spark.

And more worrisome still, this new attack seems to coincide with the upcoming arrival of a precious library in the Territory. And with the recent one of a man who presided over the design of the final version of the Metastructure.

It is clear that a lot is going on. Much too much. Much too much to take it as any kind of coincidence.

It is clear that the Post-Machine is taking the lead. It seems to know their resistance points, their plans, in advance.

Eventually, Chrysler must admit that his young friend Yuri is right. It is like a game.

A game on a global scale.

A game that they have to win, at any price, to avoid complete extinction.

The X-15 victim was indeed a woman. Nora wasn’t lying, muses Yuri to himself, almost disappointedly. It was a woman. Is
still
a woman, he mentally corrects himself. Which means that the moment when she will no longer be a woman is getting closer every second.

A young woman a few years older than him; twenty-five or twenty-six at most. She is a Mohawk mixed-blood named Lucie Lebois-Davenport. She lives in a small makeshift hut built of various scavenged materials. Nora Network’s contact, a former cop with the Vermont State Police, has explained to them that she arrived in the area shortly after the “Second Fall” of ’63, from what remains of Montreal.

Pretty, thinks Yuri, contemplating the nearly nude body stretched out on the helium bed.

The neighbors are aware of what is happening, but they have no idea what to do, and they make no attempt to hide their mistrust of strangers—especially strangers like Chrysler and Yuri. Chrysler, however, immediately sets them straight:

“We aren’t members of a necro Triad from Junkville, I promise you. If men like the ones you described to us have been lurking around this area, they weren’t us.”

“Men in green uniforms with a white snake on the back,” one of the neighbors elaborates.

Snake Zone Triads
, both of them think immediately. The telepathic bond that connects them at such moments vibrates between their brains.

The competition is getting fiercer; the race is tightening. The death benefits are increasing in value.

“We want to try to understand what is happening, and to save this young woman,” Yuri says. “If you don’t believe us, go talk to Diamond-back Curtiss here in X-15, or ask Nora Network on Surveyor Plateau.”

Chrysler takes advantage of the shock that Nora’s name still provokes in these parts.

“In two days, three at most, this young woman will be dead. We want to take samples and conduct biotests. One of you can stay as a witness if you like. When we have the results of the first tests, we’ll tell you what we can do.”

Yuri understands why his friend is lying to them. Of course they’re going to take the girl away! At any price—meaning, of course, as cheaply as possible. They will take her to Surveyor Plateau, where they will pick up the man in phase three, and then get everyone to the north of the Territory and Link de Nova. To the one that might be able to save them. To the one who needs to know—to let them all know—if he can do anything to help or not.

The man and the girl are going to serve as guinea pigs for Link de Nova
, Yuri thinks.
And for us all
.

Young Lebois-Davenport is in the middle of phase four. She recites endless lists of binary numbers at a still-comprehensible but very rapid speed, something Yuri has already seen during his investigation in Junkville. But the juxtaposition of the two cases—the man on Surveyor and the girl here, so close in time and space—has ignited a spark of new understanding in his mind.

As long as they are in the alphanumeric phase, they can still interact with the world, the outside, other men. With difficulty, certainly, but at least it is still possible.

As soon as phase four begins, it will be over. Communication will not be cut or cloven, it will be saturated.

And when they move into phase five, which is no longer really a “phase,” communication will be neither cut nor cloven nor saturated. It will become the body of language itself, in its entirety, transforming the body into a digital map of itself.

They proceed with their tests and biopsies, and with the initial analysis.

Chrysler turns his head toward the witness and asks him to go and fetch the authorities for the residential block; when they arrive, full of sympathy and interest in the “doctors” at work, he requests permission to take the “patient” to their “private clinic” in Aircrash Circle.

The men and women of the neighborhood council deliberate for long minutes; then the spokesman announces, fatalistically, that they agree to Chrysler’s request. There is probably nothing else left to do, the man sighs.

Chrysler thanks them as a humanitarian doctor would—if any still existed.

Then they load the girl onto the military stretcher Chrysler inherited from his father, which can fit into any vehicle—helicopter, plane, tank, armored truck, warship.

Or a Ford F-150 pickup.

They leave X-15 and drive toward the center of the Territory as the sun is reaching its zenith. The sky is the color of the Atlantic Ocean at this time of year—a deep, cold blue containing the white-gold disk of the sun.

Then, later, the black vehicle stops a few minutes away from the former border of the state of New York, just long enough for a fourth passenger to take his place in the backseat next to the Recyclo particleboard box. This man does not speak as they cross the west of the county toward Aircrash Circle. Their “private clinic,” thinks Yuri, smiling.

In the bed of the pickup, under the Atlantic sky and the white-gold sun, lying on a military stretcher dating from the Second Gulf War, a young woman recites an endless series of binary numbers, long sequences of ones and zeros projected toward the stars, hidden by the haze of day.

The ritual is always the same. They have been doing it for two years. Chrysler came up with it back at the very beginning.

“The virus that attacked you and the one that attacks machines are of the same type. You must realize that your days are numbered. And you’re probably also aware that there is no known antidote. Do you understand me? Say yes or no, with your head.”

There is a weak nod. The first of what will be more and more forceful confirmations, Yuri thinks.

“However, even though there is no officially recognized antidote, you may know that there are some experimental methods that may stimulate a general remission. Do you understand me? Say yes or no, with your head.”

The man nods again, a bit more firmly.

“We can treat you using secret medicine. In exchange for certain items that are of interest to us, we can make this treatment available to you. Our first treatment of you would be purely experimental, though, and we ask nothing in return. Do you understand me? Say yes or no, with your head.”

There is another nod of agreement, still fairly timid. Yuri knows the process to come by heart. Chrysler is openly acting like a pusher. First dose is free. But it won’t change anything important.

“We cannot guarantee 100 percent success. Your syndrome is new. But we are the only ones in the Territory who can even attempt to care for you. We have healed people affected by both the First and Second Falls. Your case is a little different, but we believe we represent your last chance. If you understand me, nod yes.”

There is another nod, more forceful this time, indicating the desire to know more. A recurring pattern.

“I am not going to tell you anything about the treatment we will give you, for a simple reason: once the operation begins, I will inject you with a dose of synthetic scopolamine. You will not be asleep, but within a few minutes, the five or six hours preceding the operation will be erased from your memory. You must formally accept this if you want to be treated by our secret medicine. Nod yes or shake your head no.”

The man nods yes, of course. Like they always do.

“With some patients, my synthetic scopolamine works only partially. If memories of bribes ever come back to you, and if you tell anyone about them, we will know where to find you, and I will kill you with my own hands. Is that clear? Nod yes or shake your head no.”

Yuri knows this last bit is a lie; Campbell’s programmable drug always works precisely and perfectly. But Chrysler is a man whose prudence takes the form of cold audacity. You never know. And some of the information from this afternoon, including this preliminary conversation, will not be completely erased—and this is deliberate—by the scopolamine. The man won’t remember anything except the fact that he must not, under any circumstances, remember anything at all.

The man nods, tries to speak a few words, abandons the attempt.

Beneath the noise of their conversation, Yuri can hear the muted sound of the numeric monologue of the young woman from X-15, like a mantra repeated without end. A mantra composed of two simple words. Two numbers. The mantra of the digital body.

“For security reasons we operate at night. In the meantime, this afternoon we’ll complete our tests, scans, and biopsies. We will also inject you with various tracers—neuronal nanomodules, of course. Nod yes if you understand.”

This time the affirmative response comes quickly, as usual.

“Don’t worry. Everything will go fine. Just trust us.”

The nod is automatic, like always. Like every time a person realizes that his survival is no longer in his own hands.

Chrysler begins rummaging in his steel armoires for the various biological analysis equipment, while Yuri busies himself opening one of the heavy locked boxes and extracting tubes and probes of all kinds.

Camp Doctors
, he thinks, suddenly struck by the revelation.

The day passes slowly for the guinea pigs and the researchers alike. Tests. Biopsies. Neuroprobes. Nanomodules. Injections. Scans. Tomography.
Radioactive tracers. Magnetic mapping. Recording of data. Compilation of data. Processing of data.

This is all man is now
, Yuri thinks. This is what the unknown entity has brought us to.

Even before it begins killing, the thing acts to transform you into a catalogue of numbered data. It has eradicated nearly all the technology on the planet, but it still acts as a sort of hypertechnology itself. It acts like a Metastructure for which humans are not “hardware platforms,” but rather software and programming languages. It acts like a God, seeking to
uncreate
Man.

The world order has been totally, absolutely, infinitely reversed.

The Lebois-Davenport girl is resplendently beautiful as the numeric death takes her away, hour by hour. Her amber skin, marbled by the fluorescent tracks of the radioactive tracers, glows softly silver under the beams of their examining lights.

Her blue eyes are fixed on the ceiling as if it is a heaven she has never seen before. Her black hair lies in long curls and arabesques against the whiteness of the helium bed. Her trembling, slightly parted lips issue faster and faster streams of binary numbers.

Her body is the subject of both men’s undivided attention.

Nothing sexual could ever cross through the invisible membrane that separates them from her.

She is a woman of the Camp-World. And she is probably going to die.

They are the Doctors of the Camp-World. And it has never been more certain that they will end by selling her back to some necro Triad.

One evening during the previous summer, Gabriel Link de Nova went to the cosmodrome again. As always, he had carefully prepared for his nocturnal expedition, hiding from his parents and the sheriff’s men who patrolled the area. It was almost fifteen kilometers round-trip, on foot. Not just a little stroll on the Ridge.

On that night, the moon had been full and round and a little reddish, hanging low on the horizon as he came into view of the cosmodrome. The stars were just above his head; a hot, dry wind was blowing from central Canada, propelling wandering clusters of tumbleweeds among the stone blocks and caressing his skin with the gentleness of a passing lover. The sky was deep and pure and dark, and in the midst of the star-dotted blackness he could see the metallic points, in bunches linked by long shining
cords, of the Orbital Ring, which had been spinning silently in space for twelve years.

As was his habit, he had wandered between the launchpads, standing like sand-covered pyramids hiding secrets in the process of being forgotten. He walked through the vast hangars, closed for more than six years, inside which are the hulks, invisible to the eyes of the world, of the last twelve rockets assembled in the Territory. He crossed the cosmodrome in the other direction, to the west, filled with a profound sense of melancholy, watching his feet raise puffs of dust at each step on the enormous, deserted tarmac. Then, hearing the distant approach of one of the sheriff’s foot patrols, he took refuge in Monolith Hills, taking an abandoned road whose name—North Junction Road—was by some miracle still readable on its old sign.