Thunder Road (14 page)

As the door opened, she could see the length of one wall. It was painted white. A simple bed and a tiled floor. The bed was dusty, as though it had not been used for many years. There were no decorations on the walls, no pictures to relieve the white. As the door swung wider, she could see a long-unused desk and chair, both empty for many decades.

It was only when the door opened to its full extent, back against the wall, and the whole room was revealed, that she understood what Sid had meant.

“Gaia!” she exclaimed before a string of curses escaped her lips.

H
OWARD HAD EXPECTED
many things from Krysty Wroth, but her behavior still baffled him. He had shown her respect and hospitality, and yet she had repaid him with fear. Her reluctance to touch him in case he hurt her had shown him this. It was a pity. He had a great desire to feel her skin against his as their hands touched. Human contact was painful and odd to him after this time, and he desired to rectify that.

But as he busied himself on preparing the land cruiser so that it could augment the bike, and act as a vehicle for them both, he felt more reassured than he had just a short time earlier. It was the living shadows of the old movies that had brought them together. For his own part, he knew that the records of those times before the nuclear winter never failed to entrance and inspire him. It had been that way since Jenny had showed them to him when he was young. But he had not expected the same from Krysty.

And yet she had joined him, watching the course of justice follow its natural path. She had said nothing, had not questioned…It was more than he could have expected. She knew! She instinctively understood what motivated him, as it motivated her and her traveling companions.

Ah, yes, the others. That was why he was preparing the land cruiser, after all. The idea that she should be shown the way and understand it—as he felt she did—and then help him convince the others to join him. That had been the plan, and a good one. A task force for justice. But now, it seemed to be…not so good. Why, he couldn’t quite tell. Only that there seemed an imbalance to it. The idea of Thunder Rider and Storm Girl, though, that had a certain symmetry to it that he found appealing. For that was what she should be called. All across the lawless wastes would know her name, and tremble in fear if they were wrongdoers. For she was wild, like the storm that swept over the land, cleansing the earth. That hair, a red fire that…

He shook his head. He was getting too carried away. For all he knew, she would wish to be reunited with her companions, especially the one-eyed man, Ryan Cawdor.

The nut he was tightening with a wrench sheared from its mount, spun across the floor. He watched it, aware that it was an extra turn from him that had done this, aware of the anger that had built in him with a rapid rage, boiling over into that one violent action. And he knew why that was: Ryan Cawdor. He was not worthy of one such as Storm Girl. He was a good man, admittedly, but no crusader for justice and truth.

There was only one who was right for Krysty: that was Thunder Rider. They would be the perfect team.

He had only to make her see that. He returned to his work, selecting a replacement nut to tighten on the underside of the chassis. He felt sure that she was already seeing this. That was why he had allowed her to return on her own.

He could trust her.

“S
WEET
G
AIA
, what have they done to you?”

Krysty walked closer to the metal lab table, breathing shallowly and quickly, trying to come to terms with what she could see.

“And the other workers? Are they…?”

“No. Myself and Hammill are like this. We were, perhaps, the lucky ones.”

“How can you say that?”

For the first time since she had been in the complex, the omnipotent voice of Sid showed some emotion. He laughed, a low chuckle that gave her a feeling for how he had to, at one time, have looked.

“It must seem strange for you to hear me say, Ms. Wroth. I’ll admit to that. But the others have lost far more than I. They may be ambulatory, but they have lost that vital spark.”

Krysty looked at Sid—or what was left of him—and frowned. “Say that plain. There’s a lot of words there that haven’t survived outside.”

“Ah, I see. I apologize. It must seem some time as though we speak a different language, even though it is on the surface the same. Although what you see before you is but a pale shadow of the man I once was, at least I am still myself. I have memory and character, though sometimes it fades in and out. Hammill is the same. Though we cannot leave our rooms, and serve only by remote means, we can still talk to each other, can still share, and not feel alone. The other workers were placed in moving canisters to enable them to respond physically. Somewhere along the way, something left them. They have no memory of why they are as they are. No indication that they are anything other than automatons.”

“But to exist like this—” She put out her hand, trying not to recoil at the touch, as it felt like nothing she expected.

“Is often better than no existence at all.”

The container on the lab table looked solid. Yet it yielded to her touch, the slightest amount of give. She expected it to be cold, but it was warm. It was semiopaque, but she could still see what was within. The liquid surrounding Sid was greenish in hue, though she couldn’t be sure that it wasn’t due to the membranous container. It seemed too still in there for something that was alive, and spoke to her. She’d seen old whitecoat stories from before skydark, and in them disembodied brains were attached by wires in tanks of bubbling liquid, and they pulsed in time with the rhythm of their words.

Sid did none of this. He—and it was, in truth, hard to think of that thing as a him, as the voice that had spoken so warmly to her—sat inert in the middle of the tank, suspended in the thick, viscous gloop that was contained by a tank that was not the Plexiglas she would have expected, but something that resembled a living organism.

“You have nothing to fear,” Sid said with an undertone of amusement. “As you must have guessed, I can only hurt you through the use of the complex’s facilities. But I realize how strange, and perhaps frightening, I must look. Oh, I have eyes. Not in the sense that I used to, but I have signals from all cameras fed to me. There is one in this room, as in all others. Myself and Hammill, we know what we have become.”

“But how—”

“How did this happen? How can I still be alive? And yes, I do call this alive. I still know, think, feel. But I digress. To answer the second question, it would be difficult to explain to someone like yourself, who has only known the world after nuclear winter. If I tell you that scientists before that time had developed a genetically made material that is tough and allows me to ‘breathe,’ then would you understand that?”

She nodded.

“I communicate via the liquid in which I am suspended. Workers replace it to feed me the nutrients that enables my brain tissue not to decay. In this liquid are small circuits—what we called nanotech before the war—and these are intelligent and tiny. They fulfill the function of wires and cables.” He chuckled. “I can see you are still unsure. Would it help if I said they were like mechanical insects that carry information to and from me, enabling me to operate the complex?”

Krysty sighed. “
Understand
isn’t the word I’d use, but I can see how it works, at least. Whoever your original boss was had to have had serious jack, as this is up there with the best tech we’ve ever seen in old sec redoubts.”

She could swear he was smiling as he answered. “It has been a long time since someone like yourself talked to me. You know that we have intel about you, know some of what you have experienced.”

“The way Howard talked to us, to me, was kind of a giveaway.”

“You are right in your assumptions in many ways. Howard comes from a family that wielded both great wealth and great power in the times before the holocaust. They were people who had contacts in every level of both the government and the military. He comes from a line that started with a namesake of his, a man who, in his time, had the kind of fame about which people in this new society can have no notion. He was feted—” Sid noted her growing incomprehension “—I’m sorry, it’s easy to forget that this is the same language and yet not. I should say that in the days of global videos, everyone had seen and knew the name of this ancestor. The industry he established, the money and contacts he made, these were continued after his death.

“Many people knew what was coming with the holocaust. If you have ever seen any remains of preholocaust history in book or on video, then you may know this. For the ordinary people, it was a surprise, but for those with the kinds of contacts this family had, it was something that was common knowledge and accepted as an inevitability. So they had to plan.

“Their businesses supplied arms, technology and the service industries that, in turn, supplied other sectors of these industries. How can I explain in terms that you could easily grasp?”

“I’m not that stupe,” Krysty replied wryly. “I can get the meaning of what you’re saying, even if some of the details are—”

“No, you misunderstand me,” Sid broke in, his tone seeming incongruous as he was nothing more than a brain and stem floating in a tank of gloop. “I know you can grasp the essentials, but the extent of this family’s influence in this place you now call the Deathlands, I don’t know if…Let me put it this way—imagine the man you knew as the Trader. Imagine that his trading network extended the breadth of the land. Further, imagine that all other traders relied upon him, so that if people were not bartering and buying from him, then they were doing it from traders who then had to go to him, with a percentage of their jack going into his stockpile. Imagine this, and that not another soul except Trader, perhaps yourself, and your friends knew about it. A network that was all-encompassing and also mostly a secret.”

He waited a second, pausing to see if Krysty grasped this. Finally she said, “That would make Howard’s family one of—mebbe the—most powerful on earth, and also the most private. Right?”

“Yes, I think you have it,” Sid affirmed. “Imagine that extent of power, and how you could use your contacts, those who owed you, and the technologies you had helped develop and have access to, to secure a future for your people.”

“I don’t have to imagine, do I? I’m standing in it.”

Sid chuckled. “Correct. You know of the Totality Concept. Your friend Dr. Tanner was a victim of one of its divisions. Much of the knowledge behind the execution of that concept came from people controlled in one way or another by Howard’s ancestors and their businesses. They were able to cherry-pick—ah, to choose the best parts, those that both worked best and served their purpose best—and then utilize them. They were also able to use the pressure of those contacts, what they knew, to keep this a secret.”

“So where did you fit into this?”

“I was what you call a whitecoat. My speciality was guidance and security systems. The defense technology around this complex is my work. I warn you, Ms. Wroth, that if your friends come looking for you, as I am sure they will from my knowledge of them, they will find it impossible to get near here without being fried.”

“Can’t you turn the systems off, or at least alter them so that the attacks would not be direct, give them a chance to escape.”

There was a pause. When he spoke again, Sid’s voice had changed in tone. There was a weariness of someone who had been alive longer than they wished, and felt trapped by existence itself.

“Krysty, if I could do this, I would. There are many things I would do if it were possible. But although Hammill and myself retain some essential part of ourselves, so that we have at least a semblance of something you would call a life, we do not have control over that.”

“Sid, is there anything I can do for you?”

The question remained unspoken, unfinished. But she knew that he divined her meaning.

“No, Krysty, I don’t think that it is possible. I will try to help you if you want to escape, but it will not be easy. I would advise you not to, knowing the complex as I do, and also how powerless both myself and Hammill are, ultimately. But from what I know of you, I think that will not prevent you from trying. If only I had that courage when I was able.”

“You’ve got courage. To continue as you are—”

“You know,” he said hurriedly, cutting her off, “I never really knew Hammill until this happened to us. Why we were selected for this task, I don’t know. I suspect that we were not only the right experts, but the right kind—we were both weak men, when we were men. And there were many workers down here in those days. But in the long, long years since this happened to us, I have got to know him better than anyone I ever knew when I was whole. I think I could say the same of him.”

“Where is he?”

“In another room. We talked, and I said I would face you. He is more ashamed of this than I am. I was always able to escape facing the reality of a situation,” he added wryly. “We have a pact. We are fed images from security cameras across the complex. These are always with us. But I do not look at him, and he does not look at me. We have those cameras blocked. We prefer to think of each other as we were.”

Krysty felt an overwhelming sadness washing through her. There had to be something she could do to help them both. That was even assuming that she would be able to help herself.