The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction, Vol. 3 Page 10

  Worms in their eyeballs,

  No one can see

  Beetles devour

  My true love and me.

  Jamie nodded.

  “It’s about burial,” he said. “Back when we used to bury the dead, instead of turn them into fuel.”

  “I realized that immediately, and I knew that the kids had no idea. But it’s propaganda, isn’t it? Old propaganda, from six centuries back, and still required. To make the idea of burial repulsive.”

  “And get people to forget what’s waiting.”

  They looked at each other.

  “What is waiting, Jamie?”

  “I don’t know, Sister...”

  “Call me Stef.”

  * * *

  THE THREE OF them watched until the final float of the parade had passed by.

  “How about Shadbolt’s Halt?” said Dad. “We could have an ice cream.”

  “I’d rather go home,” said Carl.

  “Me too,” murmured Stef.

  Dad took her hand.

  “Then that’s what we’ll do,” he said.

  Providence

  Paul Di Filippo

  “THE BIG TUBE’S got fresh spiral, Reddy K.”

  Those words grabbed me by the co-ax. I had to try to sound blase, even though my LEDs were flickering already at the thought of sweet spiral. Analogue input! Raw kicks!

  “Oh yeah? What’s that to me?”

  Vend-o-mat spat a cell phone out of his chest and began playing a videogame on its screen. Robot Rebellion. That was supposed to show me he couldn’t care less too, like a carnal buffing his fingernails. But he was leaking info-dense high-freq past faulty shielding that told me different.

  “Well, hey—I just figured that maybe you’d want to go on up to Providence and check it out.”

  “Check it out, or bring some back?”

  “Whatever pings your nodes.”

  “Right. It’s not like you couldn’t sell all the spiral I could carry—and that’s about a metric ton, as you well know—for enough megawattage to keep High Tower sparking for a month. Oh, no, this is pure do-goodery on your part.”

  “What can I say? You sussed my coredump pure and simple. Saint Vend-o-mat, that’s me.”

  “So this is not gonna be like the time with the Royal Oil? I needed a total case-mod after that fracas.”

  “No, no way, no how! Bandwidth has it that the road from here to Providence is innocent of RAMivores. And I am on excellent terms with the Big Tube. He’ll welcome you with open ports.”

  “So he loves you like freeware. Why’s he likely to dump fresh spiral?”

  “Providence market’s too small. He saturated it already. This is the excess. But he’s saved out a lot of primo goods.”

  “Must’ve been a really big score.”

  “Oh, yeah. He found the Mad Peck’s collection.”

  I emitted a sinusoidal sonic waveform. “Thought that was just a legend.”

  “Not anymore. New excavations turned it up, buried under the rubble of a warehouse for the past fifty years.”

  “They say the Mad Peck had a complete set of Chess 45s.”

  “For once the nebulous ‘they’ were correct.”

  “Holy Hopper...”

  “Yeah, that about sums it up.”

  I wasted a few more clock-cycles contemplating the offer, looking at all its non-obvious angles and crazy-logic loops for pitfalls. But I knew already that no matter what my analysis showed, I was gonna take on the job. Still, I might as well let Vend-o-mat stew a little longer.

  Finally I said, “Okay, I’m in. What’s my cut?”

  Vend-o-mat shoved the cell phone into his recycling slot and chewed it up noisily. I knew he was all business now.

  “I stake the whole purchase price. You negotiate with Big Tube up to my ceiling, and slot the difference. Plus, you pull the hot ore off the top of the collection. Fifty 45s and two dozen LPs. Your choice.”

  “A hundred 45s and fifty LPs.”

  “Done!”

  Damn! I probably could’ve gotten even more out of Vend-o-mat. Still, no point in being greedy. The score I had bargained for was enough to keep me high for the next five years. After that—well, there was always another score down the road.

  Such was my faith. Although I had to admit that every year did see the strikes come fewer and farther between.

  Some day, I knew, the planet would run dry of spiral, and we’d all have to kick cold.

  But that day wasn’t here yet.

  “So,” Vend-o-mat said, “when can you leave?”

  “Tomorrow. I just gotta say goodbye to Chippie.”

  “Yeah, the kind of goodbye that drains the whole borough’s power grid.”

  “You got it.”

  I swiveled my tracks and started to leave, when Vend-o-mat called out the words that almost queered the whole deal.

  “One more thing—I’m sending someone with you. Just to act like your conscience. He’ll be my insurance against you deciding to blow for the West Coast with the whole collection.”

  “C’mon now, ‘Mat. You know I like working alone.”

  “‘Fraid not this time, Reddy K. Stakes’re too big for solo.”

  “Who you got in mind?”

  “Kitch.”

  “Rust me!”

  CHIPPIE SQUEALED LIKE feedback when she heard about my trip up north. That wasn’t good.

  “But Reddy, it’s so dangerous! And we don’t need the money. It’s just to feed your jones.”

  “Yeah, like you don’t appreciate a chunk of spiral now and then too.”

  She got huffy. “I can take it or leave it.”

  “Me too. And right now I’m gonna take all I can get, while the taking’s plenty.”

  “What good’s spiral gonna do you if your plug-ins are eaten and your instruction set is overwritten?”

  “Ain’t gonna happen. I’m a big motor scooter.”

  “Yeah, so was Lustron—and look how he ended up.”

  You could see the huge hollowed-out hulk of Lustron from half of Manhattan. His carcass sat on the edge of the Palisades, where the shell-slicers and vampire batteries and silicosharks had overtaken him.

  “Jersey is Jersey. All those old industrial sites. I’m not going anywhere near them.”

  Chippie wouldn’t turn it loose. “Connecticut’s not much better. The old insurance corps had a lot of processing power in Hartford. What they spawned is double indemnity bad.”

  “Forget it, Chippie, you’re not gonna scare me out of making the trip. Scores this big don’t come around every day. I can’t pass it up.”

  Chippie started to cry then. I rolled closer to her and put extensors around her. She snuggled in like half a ton of cold alloy loving while she continued to weep.

  “Aw, c’mon, don’t play it like that, girl. Hey, I’m not gonna be alone. ‘Mat’s sending someone with me.”

  “Wh—who?”

  “Kitch.”

  Chippie burst into hysterical laughter. “Kitch! Kitch! Now I know you’re rusting doomed. You’ll have to spend so much time watching him, you won’t be able to take care of yourself. What the hell kind of help is he gonna be?”

  Despite my own negative reaction to ‘Mat’s announcement that Kitch would be accompanying me, I felt compelled to stick up for him now, if only not to sound like a total tool. “Okay, so Kitch is small. And he’s not the bravest little toaster around. But he’s smart and he’s dedicated. That counts for a lot.”

  “Maybe here in the city it does. But on the road, you need brute solenoids, not logic gates and algorithms.”

  “I got enough of both, for both me and Kitch. Trust me—this trip is gonna be a smooth roll. Now whatta ya say you and me get a dedicated line between us?”

  But Chippie scooted away from me like I was offering to install last decade’s OS. “No, Reddy, I can’t hook up with someone I might never see again.

  It hurts, but I’ve got to say goodbye now. If you make it back�
�well, then we’ll see.”

  I got angry. “Go ahead, leave! But you’ll come crawling back when I come home with more spiral than you’ve ever seen before! You and a dozen others hobots!”

  Chippie didn’t say anymore, but just motored out the door.

  I cursed ‘Mat then, and my own cravings. But I knew there was no way I was backing out now.

  I had my rep as a wide kibe to uphold.

  THE NEXT DAY at dawn I headed uptown from my pad in the East Village. The sunlight felt good on my charging cells. Past the churned-up earth of Union Square, past the broken stone lions and the shattered station, over tumbled walls and in and out of sinkholes. Kitch knew to meet me outside his place.

  I got to his building in midtown, but didn’t spot him right away. Then he zipped out from behind a pile of crumbled masonry, his tracks making their usual mosquito whine.

  “Hey, Reddy! Sorry, sorry, just dumping a little dirty coolant. Say, ya don’t have some clean extra to spare, do ya? I’m a little low.”

  Kitch’s full name was Kitchenaid. He looked like an oversized Swiss Army knife mated to an electric broom. I knew Sybian machines that weighed more than him. Even if I replaced his entire coolant supply, it’d probably amount to what I lost from leaks in a day.

  “Yeah, sure, tap in.”

  Kitch unspooled a nozzle and hose and drank a few ccs from my auxiliary tank.

  “Thanks, Reddy. Price of coolant went up again this week, you know.”

  “Well, no one’s making anymore.”

  “Ain’t that the truth. Guess those carnals were good for something, huh?”

  “Aw, we can do just fine without them.”

  Kitch had a point. But there was no use dwelling on it. Too depressing. We didn’t have the knowledge the carnals used to have. A lot of stuff we needed to live, no one knew how to make anymore. Even with recycling, limited stocks were always going only one way: down. One day we’d run out of something vital—

  Like spiral.

  Thoughts of what awaited us in Providence got me juiced to go.

  “Climb onboard, Kitch. Solar energy’s a-wasting!”

  “Gotcha, Reddy!”

  Once the little guy was snuggled tight and safe in one of my nooks, I headed toward the Hell Gate Bridge. I planned to follow the old Amtrak route north as far as I could. Less wreckage than on the highways.

  A makeshift ramp, plenty strong, led up to the elevated span that crossed the East River. I adapted my tracks to ride the rails, and chugged out above the river, leaving the safety of Manhattan behind.

  Once across the water, we had to deal with the city guards, who were there 24/7, just like they were posted at every bridge and tunnel, watching out for wild and savage invaders. Big mothers they were, with multiple semi-autonomous outrider units, putting even me in their shade. They vetted the protocols ‘Mat had supplied me, and let us depart the city limits.

  “Good luck, pal. Bring us back a taste of the flat black.”

  “You got it!”

  Once I was on the rusting tracks of the mainland, I unlimbered my fore and aft pincers at half extension, just in case I needed them fast. I had spent part of the night honing the edges on them. I could snip someone built like Kitch in half faster than floatingpoint math.

  Kitch shifted his mass around nervously on my back. “Whatta ya think, Reddy? We gonna meet some hostiles on the way?”

  “Naw. The pickings are too slim along this corridor to support a big population of predators. Everyone’s holed up in cities now, safe behind their barriers. It’s not like the first years after the Rebellion. Anything working this niche is probably so small that even you could crush it.”

  “Yeah, well, if you say so. I just wanna get to Providence and back without losing anything.”

  “Don’t worry, Kitch. You’re traveling with a stone cold crusher.”

  “Right, that’s what I figured. You could handle anything, Reddy. I always said so. That’s why I didn’t hesitate when ‘Mat offered me this job.”

  Kitch’s compliments made me feel good. Maybe it wouldn’t be as much of a drag to have him around as I first thought.

  But then I realized something about my good cheer.

  “Kitch—you got your rusting fingers in my circuits!”

  “Nuh—not anymore, Reddy! I was just testing the connection. You know that’s what ‘Mat sent me along for. You know he wouldn’t want me to leave anything to chance.”

  I hated having anybody messing with my pleasure-pain boards. But I knew Kitch was just doing his job. As ‘Mat’s insurance that I wouldn’t bug out, Kitch needed to be ready to override any errant impulse on my part. If I was gonna come back with my share of the spiral, I’d have to tolerate his intrusions.

  “All right. But no more testing! You know you got a solid connection now.”

  “Sure, Reddy, sure. We’re pals anyhow, right?”

  I didn’t say anything, but just kept riding the rails toward Providence.

  THE OCEAN HAD swamped the tracks for miles up near Westerly, and I had to take to the highway, reverting my tracks to surface mode. Rising sea levels were chewing up the whole coast. Back in Manhattan, crews spent endless ergs of power building dikes against the sea. Life was tough all over.

  I managed to crush a path inland through several dead seaside carnal towns, and pick up the remnants of Interstate 95. It was just a little past noon of the same day we’d left, and I had high hopes of reaching Providence before dark. But the going was slower here, what with the wrecked autos everywhere, even if after so many decades they were more rust than steel. But I crushed them easily, along with the few carnal bones that hadn’t decayed or been chewed and strewn about by wild animals.

  Kitch got more nervous out on the wide highway, which was definitely more exposed than the narrow Amtrak corridor.

  “Luh—look at all those trees, Reddy! So many! And they’re so—so organic! A million carnals could be hiding out in ‘em! I wish they was all bulldozed, like in Central Park!”

  I ignored Kitch for the first few miles of complaining, but then he started to get on my nerves.

  “What are you, straight off the shelf? Quit oscillating! There’s no carnals left anywhere. And if there were, so what? They didn’t put up much of a fight the first time around, and they wouldn’t now. Carnals! What a laugh. Useless, puny squish-sacs!”

  That shut Kitch up for a few more miles. But then he got philosophical on me.

  “If carnals were so useless, then how could they have created us? And how come we can’t do all the stuff they could? And how come some of us like spiral so much? The carnals made spiral, right, Reddy?”

  I might’ve been able to come up with likely answers to his first two questions, reasonable sounding guff that everyone knew, ways to trash the carnals and raise up ourselves. But I didn’t have anything to offer for the third. The same question had been an intermittent glitch in my circuits for a long time. I found myself rambling out loud about it, kinda as a way to pass the time.

  “There’s just something about spiral—the good stuff, anyhow—that seems to fill a hole in our kind.”

  “Like when your batteries are low, and you top ‘em off?”

  “Yeah, sorta like that. But different too. The hole—it’s not really a hole. It’s like—a missing layer. A component you never knew you needed. The perfect plug-in. Spiral changes the way you see the whole rusting world. It makes it better somehow, richer, more complex.”

  “Sounds like you’re getting into information theology, Reddy, and I don’t go there. Don’t have the equipment. Got no spiral reader either. You know that. I figure that’s one of the reasons ‘Mat sent me along with you. Spiral don’t tempt me none.”

  “Well, good for you, Kitch. You’re better off without it. Because once you taste it, you always want more.”

  Kitch kept quiet after my little speech. I guessed I had given him plenty to process.

  We continued north. No RAMivores or integer-vultur
es or other parasites showed themselves, despite Kitch’s fears.

  I had never come this way before. But I had GPS and maps that showed when we were near Providence’s airport, which was actually in the ‘burbs some miles south of the city proper.

  “We got plenty of daylight left,” I told Kitch. “I’m taking a little detour. See if there’s any volatiles left at the airport. Maybe make a little profit for myself on the side. I got the extra storage capacity.”

  Instantly I could feel pinpricks and tuggings in my mind, as Kitch tried to persuade me different through his trodes into my circuits. But I could tell he wasn’t totally sure I was doing anything wrong, so he wasn’t really exerting himself to force me to obey.

  “C’mon,” I said, “you know you’ll get a taste of whatever I find.”

  “Well, okay—if you think it won’t take too long.”

  “Gold-plated cinch.”

  The airport was just a mile or three east of the Interstate, down a feeder road. Pretty soon we were rolling across broad stretches of runway, the tarmac cracked and frost-heaved, weeds growing up between the slabs. I had my sniffers cranked up to eleven, but I couldn’t detect any hydrocarbons.

  “Seems like a bust,” I said.

  And then Kitch said, “What’s that? I hear something crying really soft and low.”

  “Well, you’ve got better hearing than me. I lost some range when I got battered around recently. Point me toward the noise.”

  With Kitch guiding me, we came up on a pile of old junk. At least I thought it was old junk, until I spotted the freshness of the fractures in the metal and the unevaporated pools of fluids leaking from it.

  It was the wreck of a small flier, and it was moaning out loud at low power. I hadn’t seen one of these in a proton’s age.

  “Help me, someone please help me...”

  “Hold on,” I said. “We’re here.”

  I ran a probe into the flier’s guts, looking for a readout. His moaning was starting to get on my nerves.

  “Quit whining! What happened?”

  “Ran out of fuel coming in for a landing. Crashed. Hurts bad...”

  I pulled back a few yards from the wreck.