Beautiful Intelligence (12 page)

He turned, jetted lighter fluid over the carpet, lit a match and threw it in. With a whumph it caught, and he leaped back, surprised by the intensity of the heat.

“Can you manage six crates?” he asked.

She nodded. The bis were making weird mewing noises. She wanted to stop, listen, analyse, but there was no time. Manfred pulled on his main rucksack, picked up Pouncey’s then grabbed the nylon handles of the remaining three crates so that he could lift them as a bundle.

“If Pouncey’s not about we’ll hide in the garages opposite the office block,” he said. “Best not to be in here. Aritomo’s hands will search the place from top to bottom, if that fly was his.”

They clattered down the stairs, knowing it would be impossible to stay silent, hoping nobody walked in before they got out. In the debris-strewn ground floor hall they paused, listened; heard distant bikes splashing through puddles, a car alarm, reverberated music a few streets away. No sign of people close by though. Manfred peered around the shattered doorway, looked left – two old men walking away – and right – nobody. He gave the all-clear and they ran across the street.

The garages were a tumbledown collection of steel and concrete, mostly destroyed, a few filled with mattresses and the ash-choked remains of campfires; beer cans and greasy paper fragments. Somebody’s home.

They waited. Joanna took a torn tarp from the rear of the garage in which they hid and covered the crates. The mewing subsided. Manfred peered out through a tear in the steel drop-down door.

They waited. It began to rain. No sign of Pouncey, nor of the enemy.

Ten minutes later they heard a vehicle drive up the street, saw a small soltruck with blacked-out windows stop outside the tower block. Seconds later Pouncey jumped out. Manfred nodded to Joanna then ran across the street.

“Pouncey!” he hissed.

She span, her hi-vel in her right hand, fear masking her face. “What the–”

“Get us out! Glitched fly – someone could be on the way right now.”

Joanna began loading the crates into the back of the soltruck. It looked in poor condition. Manfred ran back, grabbed the three remaining crates, handed them to Joanna in the middle of the street, then ran back for the rest of the gear. A minute later they locked the rear doors and leaped into the forward comp, Pouncey driving, Joanna in the middle, Manfred on the right.

“You stole this?” he asked.

Pouncey turned to stare at him, silent, her face set surly.

“You look–”

“I
bought
it,” she snapped. “Okay?”

Manfred sat upright. “What? With–”

“Your money. We were done for. Aritomo might know we’re here – a street gang got me into a fight. I tried to tell you, aye, I
did.
My face on PD computers and I had to blank a wristband. I would have been driving you out of Philly fly or no fly. Time here is
over,
okay?”

She started the engine, checked the batt power, and revved.

“If you shout at me Manfred,” she continued, “you’ll regret it. While we’re in this heap of junk you’ll do as you’re told.”

The soltruck lurched forward. Pouncey glanced in the rear mirror.

Joanna heard a gunshot.

Pouncey threw the vehicle into second and screeched up the street.

“If they’ve got a copter we’re fucked,” she said.

Manfred held on to the doorside armrest as Pouncey flung the soltruck around a corner. “If they’ve got a solcar we’re–”

“Manfred, I
think
I can take on a
solcar.
But aerial, they’ll win. Start prayin’.”

Joanna clung on to Manfred, leaning right, giving Pouncey more space.

“Hold tight, you two,” Pouncey warned.

Ahead stood piles of concrete debris heaped into a roadblock: local crims hoping to trap the unwary. Pouncey slammed on the brakes and forced the soltruck past in first gear, left side screeching against a brick wall; then accelerated forwards. Gunshots rang out, but Joanna couldn’t tell where from. Could be crim or pursuit. A bullet grazed the windscreen but the angle was so oblique it only left a white scar. She hoped they didn’t have target sights good enough to see the vehicle’s tyres.

“There’s an old paper map by your feet,” Pouncey told her. “I need to know the way to the Vine Street Expressway.” She glanced out of the window to her left. “This is Callowhill Street. Direct me to the nearest junction.”

Joanna tried to read the map, but it was way too dark. Manfred flicked on the white LED on his keyring.

She said, “Right turn, straight down to Vine Street, then left until you hit the junction.” She threw the map to the floor and gripped Manfred’s arm.

“Aye,” Pouncey said, “looks like those men outside the block were foot patrols. Advance guard. But we need speed, soon as poss. Or they’ll have us.”

Pouncey drove at eighty kilometres per hour down the pothole spattered street, the expressway to their right. She looked in the rearview.

“Trouble,” she said. “Solcar, big. Closing on us.”

She wrenched the steering wheel to get onto the junction roads, but braked at the top, glancing down to see the top of the pursuing solcar.

“I’m takin’ a risk,” she said, accelerating onto the westbound exit road. On the expressway ahead ragged groups of solcars whizzed by. The exit road, though – just a couple of solcars there, so she drove against them. Choosing a mini-gap in the westbound flow she flung the soltruck across the carriageway, then smashed through the central barrier and drove up the sliproad on the other side. Two cars screeched out of her way. The pursuit headed east. She braked, judged the flow, then screeched across the junction to reach the westbound entrance road. And away, at top speed.

“Never do that,” she remarked. “It damages the vehicle.”

Joanna glanced into the right hand rearview. “Will they realise?”

“Aye, maybe five minutes, ten. We’ll be off the expressway before then.”

“Where to?”

“South on the seventy-six, then south again on the ninety-five.”

“Out of Philadelphia?”

“Way out,” Pouncey confirmed. “Into the Outlaw. I’m aimin’ for the west coast – Baltimore, Cincinnati, St Louis, Kansas City, Denver, Salt Lake City, Boise, Portland Oregon. Then maybe we’ll rest.”

Joanna sat back. “Are you sure?”

Pouncey glanced at her. “I told you. You listen to me now. I know what I’m doin’.”

“She knows what she’s doing,” Manfred sighed.

Pouncey nodded, glancing at them. Tears ran down Manfred’s cheeks, and Jo’s too.

~

Midnight, and they sided the soltruck into a verge cutaway, screened from the road by a stand of birch trees; not that any solcars were in the vicinity. Beneath the pullout rainshield they set up a meagre picnic: mouldy bread, tomatoes and rainwater. The bis were crated up in the back, and had been since leaving Philly.

“Four thousand kilometres or thereabouts,” Pouncey said. “Reckon we can do it in ten days. If we’re lucky. Most of what lies between the east coast and the west is Outlaw.”

“Do you think we’ve lost the pursuit?” Manfred asked.

Pouncey nodded. “They can’t have any idea what we’re doin’ now. We wriggled outa their golden opportunity. Wonder if it was Aritomo? ’Course, no more nexus for us now.”

Manfred nodded. “What about food?”

Pouncey shrugged. “I kept your cash, but it’s useless out here. Food’s gonna be our problem. Water, we can catch rain. But it don’t rain food.”

Manfred sighed, gazing out into the drizzle.

“The Outlaw is pretty much nexus-free,” Pouncey said. “So, hide everythin’ tech. Joanna, take your jewellery off. Aye – and that fancy scarf. People see that, they’ll
have
you.”

Manfred said, “The population reduced from three fifty million to fifty million in five years after the Depression hit. Most of that fifty million lives on the eastern or western seaboard. Surely the Outlaw’s almost empty?”

Pouncey chuckled. “It’s not the population density you need to worry about. It’s their attitude.”

“What about the soltruck?”

“One spare tyre. Okay, another weak point there. But the engine’s good, and the photovoltaics.”

Joanna said, “What are we going to do about
food?
”

Pouncey glanced at her. “Hope for roadkill in the heart of darkness.”

~

Later, alone outside, Joanna and Manfred discussed the bis.

“They are going to need to see the sun soon,” Joanna said.

He nodded. “Charge up. Maybe we should test Indigo in the morning, put it on a leash... see what it does.”

Joanna agreed. “We cannot keep them in the back of the soltruck for the whole ten days, they will lose power. Also, I want to watch Indigo. It
sensed
that glitched fly.”

Manfred picked up a length of muddy bale rope from the edge of the cutaway and began fashioning a harness. “Okay,” he said. “But we gotta be ultra careful. If one of the bis goes awol here, that’s the end of it. We can’t send out a search party.”

He paused. Howling echoed across the freeway.

“Wolves?” Joanna asked.

He stood up, looked, listened. “More likely feral dogs,” he said. “We better get inside.”

Pouncey lay asleep across the three seats in the front comp.

“Looks like we’re in the back with the bis.”

~

By the time they entered Missouri, Pouncey was starving. St Louis had been a no-go city, its entire southern circumference stockaded, set piecemeal with biohazard, electricity and nuke signs. She got the point.

The roads further on were passable. Half way across the state on the freeway between St Louis and Kansas City she halted the soltruck. Sunset had been and gone, and the batts were low.

“We need food,” she said. “There’s a place called Boonville just ahead.”

“Yeah?” Manfred said.

“I’m gonna strike out, see if I can find food in the suburbs.”

“I’m coming with you then.”

She looked at him, weighing up options. “I oughta go on my own.”

“In the Outlaw? You gotta be joking.”

She hesitated. He had a point. “But that’d leave Jo alone with the bis.”

“She can lock the soltruck. We can give her the other pistol.”

Pouncey sighed. “Let’s do a deal,” she said. “Aye, come with me – as far as it’s green. When we get to inhabited areas I go in alone. You cover me.”

Now Manfred hesitated. His stomach gurgled. “Okay,” he said, reluctantly.

“Why do you need to go in alone, Pouncey?” Joanna asked.

“Make it simple. Don’t have to look after anybody. Just little ol’ me.”

She opened the comp door and jumped out, shrugging her backpack on, arming her hi-vel, then walking around to Manfred’s side.

“Joanna,” she said, “turn everythin’ off. Just sit tight.” To Manfred she added, “Use your gun as a last resort. Gunshots’ll attract every crazy lowlife around. Animals, too.”

“Hmm, okay,” Manfred muttered. He shut the door. There was a click as Joanna locked it. Then the sidelights switched off and they were plunged into darkness.

True darkness had been rare when Pouncey was a kid, but now it was the norm. No power for mass-scale sodium lamps. She walked up to the top of the escarpment off which they had parked and gazed out over Boonville, but saw only blackness on and on, with just a hint, maybe, of yellow lamps a few kilometres away. There was a crescent moon setting, and the stars.

She turned to Manfred and said, “No lights. Obviously. So watch where I’m goin’ and follow me.” She put on her spare spex.

He frowned.

She shook her head. “Standalones, Manfred, modified like night vision goggles. Not very good, but better than eyes alone. Follow me.”

A cow path led down from the escarpment, not steep except for one slippy section, and little used judging by old prints in the half dry mud. She saw mostly hoof prints, but also boot marks, and once the prints of small shoes. Over a few fields, across the remains of a golf course, then she stopped. Buildings ahead: straight roads.

She pointed at a collection of overgrown bushes. “Hide in there and watch,” she said. “Won’t be long. If you do hear me fire, run back to the van. If I don’t turn up I’m dead. But don’t worry. Ain’t gonna die just yet.”

“You better not,” he grunted.

She crept along the street: reconnoitre, check, listen and smell. Nothing. Didn’t look like people lived here. She cursed under her breath. Larger conurbations had community shops, plenty of them. She had to find the nearest stores.

A few hundred metres down she came upon a main street lined with buildings barred up and bolted. Signs stood above doors, the third of which read,
General Stores.
She slunk around the back and examined the security, to find, as she had expected, that it was heavy – no joke living in the Outlaw. With a jemmy from her toolkit she loosened the back window furniture until all that was left was the window frame; then a quick tap and it fell free. She caught it before it smashed, put it down, clambered into the shop.

Some kind of stock room. She surveyed the tins and packets. Nothing new, all pre-Depression, but plenty of indications that folks around here were growing their own; out of desperation, doubtless, but growing their own. Packets of seeds, for instance. She grabbed tins of meat, dry biscuits, chocolate sweets for energy. Nothing else was worth bothering with, and her haul would last a few more days, so she put the goods in her rucksack then departed.

Back in the street nothing moved. She paused, listened, smelled the air. Ghost town. Happy with her raid, she took out her real spex and put them on.

Nexus-augmented reality looked identical to reality.

She swung around, surveying the suburb. In Philly this would be a scene of frantic semantic activity, as the nexus flung info at her: GPS data, ID’s, commercial gen, prices, dates, and much, much more. But here the spec lenses were empty. The nexus found nothing to tell her about. Boonville was an e-vacuum.

She turned back, saw something glow in left-leaning distance. A single sigil. A z.

She froze. That was weird. She’d never seen a z before. It signified the lowest level of significance attributable by the nexus, something so trivial it would normally never appear above the frothing tide of more important info; but here the semantic silence made it stand out. And it seemed to be roughly where the soltruck was parked.