Trucksong (16 page)

Something clicked. ‘You been to the gigacity, haven’t you?’ I said.

‘If we was to road together, I could share this book to cook a plan.’

‘Mate you’re off yer tree.’

‘See, the trucks was once all slaved to the grid mastermind what were located in a high flyin flapple. I seen many pictures of all kinds of different trucks and machines what were workin in different ways and styles. Some was used for carting earth and rocks and some was graders and diggers and some was even the little boxes what runned the belts that drove the mined stones and other data into trucks what carted it away. I’m guessin that some was also the kinds of machines what musta looked through the data they was diggin for, but I didn’t think there’d be much of them left after all this time, or maybe they was still lurkin in the mastermind if I could find it. See in this picture?’

In the book he showed me a picture. It was barely reckonisible from what I could see, but if in me mind’s eye I added up the years of dust and sorrow there was the shape of the Brumby King. The wheel arches, the snub nose and snarling look to the grill.

‘Smoov always said there were…’ I said.

Right then the sun shined through a crack in the cockpit canopy and caught on the horse’s head eye and I saw a crack like a splinter in the light, glinting dead and dry, and really it was made from glass. Looking closer I could see there was a line where the skin flap from his head met his body.

‘What’s wrong with yer throat there?’ I said.

He put his hand up to his throat.

‘Nuthin, waddya mean?’

I put me hand out to touch him and he shied away further.

‘You’re not real.’

‘I’m real.’

I took a step in closer and pushed him. The head came unbalanced.

‘You’re just wearin a mask,’ I said.

I pushed him again. The mask sort of fell to one side. He quickly tried to set it right.

‘Ow, that’s me head,’ he said.

‘It’s not, it’s a mask.’

I grabbed him with both hands and shook him. He throwed up his arms to protect himself but he couldn’t stop the mask from coming off. It took a line of skin and hairs with it and flopped to the grimy floor like a mop head. There was a white line where his skin was saved from the sun, he had black eyes and thick eyebrows underneath a head of thick black hair. He tried to put the head back on again but I’d already seen inside. It was just a scared little bloke with frightened eyes. It was like all the puff went out of him. He lost his air like a sail when the wind drops.

‘What’s the point of tryin to be somethin you’re not?’ I said.

‘We is all wearin our masks.’

‘Yeah but you’re tryin to act like some kind of prophet.’

‘Whatever’s under the mask don’t make no difference to me prophetsy.’

‘Makes a difference to how people see you. You’re tryin to be a innerface for the Wotcher.’

Smoov was right in a way, the Wotcher wasn’t ever gunna make innerference. That wasn’t what it did. It just sent down its messages and it was up to the folks on the ground to make of them what they could. I didn’t truck with this bloke who thought there’d be a saver come down out of the Wotcher to lift us all up and restart the gigacities and banish the trucks and make the world whole again. But one thing I wanted and that was that textfile manual. Me mood settled calm and quiet. I wasn’t angered, I just felt sorry for him and I shook me head.

‘Give it up, chief. It’s not gunna play any more. Best be givin the manual to me and scamperin back to yer pasture and find a mare.’

‘What, you’re gunna go up there all by yerself? No truck, nuthin? Ha.’

‘Yeah, I’m goin. And I’m gunna take that manual, too.’

I lent in closer to him, angling for the book. He held it back. I said: ‘Lissen, if you give me the manual and give up on the King right now, I’ll not tell anyone what’s under yer mask, nor that you been tellin lies. I just want the manual and I want to go it alone.’

I could see the hope in his eyes, it was sickening really. I’d got him right there with a promise that everything could be made right again by burying a lie.

‘All right, you can have it,’ he said.

He handed it over and I was awash with the rush of it, flipping the pages and soaking it up behind me eyes as horse’s head sat there in front of me gatherning up his costume. He went on: ‘But don’t worry, you won’t be comin back from the King’s lair.’

‘Old mate, I’ve got a better chance without you and now I’ve got the manual too,’ I said.

It was a giddy feeling shuffling through those diagrams of all the buried secrets of the Brumby King from its past. I couldn’t make hide nor hair of it but it didn’t matter. I was sure I could come up with something if had time to look through it. Either way he would win. If I killed the Brumby King he’d have his revenge and if the Brumby King killed me there’d be more time borrowed to live out his lies.

I left him there with his mask and dreads and walked back up to the camp thinking on the meaning of his ravings even if they were false prophetsy. It was all churning in me head. Wotcher and mining trucks and slinky snakes that had eaten of the poison and become poison and were showing the way to a link between rider and machine without an IV link. It was like that when I was with Sinnerman, we were one part of the same system, blood mixed with trucksong haze.

Back in the valley with me head wheeling from all these thoughts and me body wracked by these feelings. It felt like it was all coming together, the Brumby King and the Wotcher and the showmans. The Wotcher musta been the mastermine that looked after the operating of it all. It musta kept all the trucks in line and it musta knowed everything to know from all the learnings it done and dug up from the ground. It were all there, all in the archive and in the Lie Bury. I just needed to figure out how stealing Isa would fit in with the Brumby King’s program. The sun gone down and the fire smoked up and the manual burned in me hand with glowing fury as I scanned and talked at the dumb text what couldn’t answer back but I was gunna get it to yield its secrets yet. A plan was forming and I’d make an assault on the mountain lair.

More days in the shack. I ate up that manual. Flipping through the diagrams and puzzling words from the past time. I started to think on the beginnings of a plan. I studied the shapes of the King’s circuits and the patterning of its form. It didn’t make much sense, it were like a lotta things from back then, it’d got its own meaning lost and now it was just markings in the file. Still if you look at something long enough you can start to see the patterns forming like with Smoov’s notes, if there’s stuff that comes up again and again, shapes and pictures, it starts to build its own thing. I thought I could recognise something from the markings and how the King looked those times when I’d seen it and I started to think I’d found something I could exploit. For three days me head swam with all the inner circuits and buried secrets of the Brumby King’s insides scrolling behind me eyes. Shapes of truckforms and designs and things I couldn’t of had a chance at knowing, maps of lost times, dead end diagrams sketching out the darkness inside of the King’s dark heart. If such a thing as the King could be said to have a heart at all.

Then I seen something. A line from the donk, a power line that run the length of the King’s chassis, a feedline that all the other circuits was drawn to like moths to a campfire lamp. I followed that line through the designs, doubling back when a branch run to its end, but then I thought I seen something I could use. There was a place right underneath the truckcab where the line poked its head near the King’s metal skin, where the armour wasn’t so thick on the underbelly. I reckoned if I could cut the line, the King would be crippled.

Flushed with the knowing, I gathered me last possessions, packed up me tote and me typewriter and some last of the roady for the climb back up the mountain towards the lair of the Brumby King. I’d got no truck no more. All I had was me wits. Sinnerman was gunna be up there as well, made me feel sad and angered, plus I was gunna face down a whole Brumby mob. There was the Left Tenant and Storm and all manner of robos and droans slaved to the King. There was a mob of about six wild indie trucks that would be decalled and painted in shimmering glyphs and smiling colors and signs from the Wotcher. If the manual weren’t right, I could try to wrangle them with a custom patch if I needed to, at least it would mess with their program. Just getting in there would be hard but I had to do it to save Isa and then everything would be ok. We could go roading together and she could show and I could wrangle trucks. So it was that I gone up the track to the mountain, step after step.

The slope was steep but there was a track carved by little wallabies through the brush. Hunkered down on me knees sometimes and sometimes walking tall. I sweated and skanked me way up the hillside over damp gullies and rocky ridges on me way up to where I would find the lair. By the time I come up close to the treeline the landscape was desolate and wearied and worried by fallen timbers and bent rain from oldtime chemicals that was spat up outta the ground. Passed a twisted tree trunk muted and barren. I walked through the ash like it was fallen snow, up through the grey rocks and stones towards the Brumby King. What would the inside of a real life brumby lair be like? Would there be burning fires of trucktyres or would it be black as night coz they would use sensors to see in the dark? On and on I climbed up through them strange trees in that strange time of broken light.

At first there was no sign of anything living or dead, machine or animal. Then I come up on a track that wound up the mountain and it was recent used, heavy tracks and indeed even I could make out the tracks of the Brumby King itself, wide tyres bitten into the ground with strong metal teeth. I skirted out the other side of the road, I didn’t wanna leave any tracks of me own. Wandering up and up I came to a plain of fresh downed trees and it was hefty trunks and a tangle of branches and leaves everywhere. I sweated and sweated the cool air damp and me heart pumping. When you see a tree growing in the ground, you think when it’s down it’s just a matter of stepping over the trunk and on you go. But it’s not like that. There’s branches up high what when they’re on the ground they’re all tangled and when there’s a whole bunch of them together there’s almost no way through. It was slow going. Though I was a lot stronger since last I past this way when Sinnerman betrayed me, I still was not in the best shape. I tried to find a different path around the wreckage of the trees but it took me out across the top of a cliff face, wind howling, whipped up by some demon of the sky. Scattered rain and clouds and ice drumming down, the mist closed in. I lost the path. There was whiteness below and whiteness above and whiteness on the inside of me head where I tried not to think what lay up ahead for me.

Down below on the bottom of that cliff there were mountain shapes shifting in the mist. I kept moving one foot in front of the other across the top of the lip and pretty soon I was around and on the wrong side of the mountain and lost all together. The wind blowed and I shivered in me trucksuit that was not warm enough for this clime. I hunkered down and ate some roady and waited for the storm to pass. Night come on and me mind started to fill. It were the old fears come lurching back, Smoov’s face the face of Crow and above it all there was Isa. She was so close now, I could almost feel her thoughts and feelings. She would be in pain and she would be in need of being freed and I wondered and I fretted on the time we would first lay eyes on each other again but I couldn’t picture the moment in me head. I had a shock, I couldn’t quite remember her face but I had memories of her eyes and her smiles and her hair and her smell and the way her skin feeled under me touch that time we did it and how wet she was where I touched her before I slid it in. I didn’t want to sleep but I needed me wits. There was strange creatures from the dream land groaning in the hollows of rock and stone, creatures with hearts made from bleached bone. The wind sung a trucksong in me ears like the whine of a trancemission like the beating of a donk and I woke in the freezing cold dark and the stars were out shining so bright like millions of points of white light so cold and far and I realised the sound I could hear was a donk, a brumby donk rumbling off in the darkness below. I wasn’t as far off beam as what maybe I’d thought. I crept off in that way looking for whatever signs as could be found.

Circling to the edge of the road I saw the gaping mouth of the brumby lair and a sensor clipped sweet and not yet tripped. I didn’t want them to know I was coming so I steered clear, watching out for any others as I might come across them. It was a long way up and the day was coming on. Still mountain air rang in me ears with a silent high pitch whine and that big burning sun rose over the mountains in the easterling. The light shifted from soft gold to harsh yeller as it got its fire on. I couldn’t rely on force to get through. I just had to go on me own two feet and try for the sneek so I steered clear of the road and skirted to the top. I figured them brumbies was too smart to have not left a hatch at the back, even if it were only small enough to take a meched truckmind in a telly presents droan. So thats how I spent me next day under the harsh light so close up to the sun’s firey eye, scouting round and staying well clear of any sensors I could find, looking for a backdoor hatch.

Birds scattered all around and I went up and up on that lonely mountain. Again I heard the rumbling of brumby donks and I skirted to where I could see and not be seen over the road. A line of trucks coming up to the summit from the entrance. They were led by the Left Tenant and I wondered what they were doing up there. Next come Storm, Sinnerman’s treacherous partner. Then there was others from the brumby mob. I read their names in glyphs as they come on, Silverfish with sparkling silver paints. Gelgoogle and Bauntaun and Little Cab and Ashsmash the last one, all of them decked out and working on through the dragline of the morning sun. Ashmash was all in yeller and black stripes, a towtruck, only the yeller were dirty from years of soot and the black was pock marked with rust and bullet holes old and recent too, lined with silver not rusted yet. It towed the truckbody of a fallen brothertruck on the surface of that mountain. They looked sad as bandicoots on a burnt out ridge, slow and mournfull trucksong booming out in the still air. And pretty soon the flapples come down out of the sky and scavenging droans come to pick the parts off of the dead truck bodies carried up by Ashsmash. Then I looked closer and I recognised some of the panels on the truckbody.