Ill Wind (34 page)

He ignored her question. “When did you start chewing tobacco?”

“When did you start being my mother?”

Spencer lifted a brow and tried to keep an amused look from crossing his face. Ever since interacting with the local ranchers, Rita had become touchy. But she seemed to be enjoying all the new attention.

“Sorry,” she said after a moment. “Tommy, the blond-haired guy, is trying to give it up, and he’s got a couple month’s supply. So he gave it to me. The ranchers think it’s hilarious to see a woman chew.” She spat. “It’s worth putting up with this awful taste just to see the expressions on their faces.” She took another mouthful. “But you do get used to it.”

Spencer touched the hot
door jamb
and quickly pulled his fingers away. Three others besides Romero and Rita worked in the trailer inspecting the satellite equipment. The rest of the group, as well as their two ranch guides, stayed outside in the shade of useless vehicles or in the maintenance shed, resting through the heat of the day.

Rita wiped her mouth. “We can swap out the less-sophisticated equipment with stuff that isn’t oil-based, but do you really think we can replace enough to tap the satellites?”

He pondered before answering. “Seems kind of crazy, doesn’t it? Forget the delicate computer diagnostics, the mainframes, the precision switching—that’s a lost cause. We’ll just keep the beam on all the time. But we know the Seven Dwarfs are still up there, coming overhead every day, unaffected by what’s going on down here. We can probably refit the receiving system. Not much of the other equipment relies on petroleum seals or lubricants anyway. That’s the beauty of having very few moving parts.”

She grunted, unconvinced. “How long do you think it’ll take?”

Spencer met her gaze. “Does it matter? I’d rather be trying to get this damn thing working again than high-tailing it up to the mountains like Nedermyer wants to.”

He stood, feeling antsy. Rita’s questions brought out
his own
doubts about getting the microwave farm working. Maybe he should examine the antennas one more time. “I’ll be back. Call me if Romero finds anything.”

“Going to check out the antenna farm?”

He tried to look surprised. “Naw—just going for a walk.”

“Yeah, right.”

#

He returned to the cluster of trailers and buildings two hours later. The sun lowered toward the mountains in the west, diminishing its intensity. Rita stepped out of the doorway, waving her arms for him to hurry.

“Hey Spence! We’ve got something.”

He jogged the rest of the way, feeling his throat dry and clogged from the dust. Inside the stuffy, dark blockhouse, Romero gestured from the gray-painted metal workbench next to the jury-rigged radio. Spencer leaned close to the hissing speaker. “What you got?” He wiped sweat from his face.

Before Romero could open his mouth, a static-filled voice burst into the room. “—Institute of Technology, radio free Caltech, under operation by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. We can barely hear you.”

Spencer pulled a seat next to the cluttered workbench; Romero pushed the microphone to him. “This is Dr. Spencer Lockwood, calling from White Sands, New Mexico. We need to get in touch with the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena. Can you help us out?”

“If you’ve just picked us up and have not yet registered, we need to get some information from you.” The voice on the radio paused,
then
sounded indignant. “FEMA guidance is that airwaves are currently for emergencies only and not for personal calls.”

Spencer scratched his rough beard and spoke into the mike, excited and annoyed at the same time. “Okay, but right now I need to speak with someone from the solar satellite division at JPL. We are a federal installation and this is important business.”

The radio fell silent for several minutes. Spencer hoped the battery wouldn’t die before the FEMA people got back to him. He tapped his fingers on the metal bench, waiting, waiting. Romero looked at him and shrugged. Finally, the woman’s voice returned. “Hello, White Sands? Part of JPL was hit by the rioting. We should be able to get someone back to you shortly, if you’re still on the air. Can we get some information from you for our files?”

Spencer pushed the microphone over to Romero. “Go ahead and help them out,” he said.

As Romero grinned and started to answer their questions, Rita raised an eyebrow at Spencer. She cocked back her hat and let her braided hair fall down. “You’ve got more up your sleeve than just getting this microwave farm back on line.”

Spencer tried not to smile as he ducked outside to scan the desert restlessly. “If we can get this receiving station back up again, wouldn’t it be nice to increase the amount of power we beam down? Keep us on line for hours at a time. Just think of those twenty satellites sitting at JPL, all finished and waiting to be sent into orbit. If Nedermyer hadn’t deep-sixed the acquisition process, they’d be here already . . . or maybe even up there.”

Rita spat a wad of tobacco off to the side. She seemed to be aiming at a small lizard, but the glob struck a rock instead. The lizard scurried away.

“Now I know you’ve flipped a byte,” she said. “Say those satellites still work—they’ve been in a clean room and they’re vacuum sealed, so I can buy that—and just suppose we could somehow get them a thousand miles from LA to New Mexico. Then what do we do with them? We still need to get them into orbit. Are there some rocket launchers left here at White Sands that I don’t know about?”

She trailed off as Spencer looked toward the north, toward Oscura Peak. A long thin housing for the five-mile-long electromagnetic launcher ran up the side of the mountain.

She started laughing as it hit her. “I don’t believe it. You’re crazy! Absolutely nuts! It’s one thing to change parts in a simple AM radio and make it work. It’s a thousand times harder to change out every single seal and joint in our microwave farm. But to bring those satellites
cross country
and use a launcher that’s only worked
once
? They need to finish that thing before it can launch our satellites into a high enough orbit! And how the hell do you think we’re going to get those satellites out here—by wagon train?”

Spencer stopped humming to himself. He was disappointed she had guessed it so easily. “How did you know?”

Chapter 42

Clear blue but smudged with clouds, the Napa Valley sky hung over the tourist train station. But, son of a brick, the tourist trade had sure gone belly up.

Rex O’Keefe didn’t really miss the crowds, the automobiles, or the fat self-styled wine conoisseurs who hopped from one winery to the next, gulping the free samples and rolling the fancy names on their tongues. Rex liked the world better this way.
Peaceful, uncomplicated, giving him a chance to kick back and relax.
When the food ran out, he’d probably be
all uptight
again, but he tried not to think about that just yet.

Leaning back on the old wooden bench, Rex took a sip of red table wine—Gamay Beaujolais 1991, liberated from the Sandstone Crest winery, best served at room temperature (which was about all he could get these days, now that refrigeration was out of the question). He rolled the wine on his tongue, swallowed slowly to feel the warm bite, to taste the oak.

In front of him, bright in the morning sunshine, the refurbished old steam locomotive sat in front of him on the tracks.
Steam Roller.
He admired the train, wishing the day would go on forever. And because of the petroplague, it just might. Nothing much would change around here for a long time.

For the moment at least, Rex had everything he could want—plenty of wine, the run of the tourist train station, and no one to bother him now that the weekend crowds fought for survival in the big cities rather than taking a leisurely ride through wine country on an authentic turn-of-the-century steam train.

He had pulled all the dried food and snacks from the refreshment stand, adding to his own stockpile in the small home behind the station. He figured he’d stashed enough food to get by for half a year. The eating would get dull, imported water crackers and some cheese, canned vegetables to supplement whatever he could scrounge from his garden, bottled mineral water. But there was plenty of wine. He would survive.

At forty-five and without a family, Rex O’Keefe’s world extended little beyond the railroad tracks and the train station, even now after the petroplague had caused the old
Steam Roller
to gasp her last breath, unless he could find some other lubricants and gaskets.

He hadn’t cared much for the people when they came around anyway. What was the point being
boot-licking
and nice to strangers who would never come by again? The locals themselves never bothered to ride Rex’s train; they had their own tourist industry to watch over.

Rex was content to be alone with his memories. From the time he’d been old enough to own an electric Lionel until he got his first job at 14 stoking wood on the refurbished
Steam Roller
, Rex had lived for the day when he could work on the trains.

But now the damn locomotive just sat there, unable to move, stalled in place.

Rex stood on tired legs and sauntered out to the behemoth that sat frozen on the tracks. Painted a deep black, the
Steam Roller
burned wood in her furnace, heating water in the boiler to drive one of the last locomotives that had not transferred over to coal or diesel. He could smell the creosote from the railroad ties, the old deteriorating oils on the driving wheels, the caked soot from the furnace.

Even motionless,
Steam Roller
was a sight too pretty just to look at. Rex pulled a red bandanna out of his blue-and-white railroad overalls—the clichéd outfit the tourists expected him to wear—and began to polish the brass pistons.

He ran his hand along the metal siding,
then
boosted himself up to the engineer’s cab where he tried to work the controls. For a moment he imagined himself riding the tracks as the train chugged through the valleys, a throbbing rhythmic rattle as the wheels passed over crossings. The lush green vineyards extended on either side of the cab, pale vines stretched out along wires in flickering razor-straight rows that looked like optical illusions stretched out to the hills.

Blinking his eyes, Rex reached up to grab the steam release, when a low voice came from behind the cab, startling him. “Shame to let a beauty like this rust away.”

Rex whirled, opening and closing his mouth as if he expected the right words to fall automatically out. He took a second to focus on the stranger: a bearlike man, built short and stocky, with blotchy dark skin and not a hair on his head. The stranger’s scalp had been freshly shaved; even the eyebrows were gone.

Rex felt the sour taste of wine claw up his throat. He said hoarsely, “Yeah, she’s my train. What do you want?”

The bald man said nothing, only turned to look over the train, admiring it. Rex wanted to leave, to go back into the station, but he couldn’t move, couldn’t leave the locomotive unguarded. What if the strange man was a vandal or something? The bad taste in his mouth wouldn’t go away.

Rex hadn’t had much trouble in the week or so since the plague struck the wine country north of San Francisco. The train station was away from most of the town buildings, and he didn’t have anything marauders would want.

Rex waved an arm, shooing the man away. “You shouldn’t be here. This place is closed.”

The bald man hauled himself up into the engineer’s cab beside Rex and ran his hand along the wooden console, the controls. “How long since you fired her up?” His voice was confident, as if accustomed to taking charge of such a vessel.

“Uh?” Rex stopped at the question. “Started the train? Are you crazy? Nothing runs anymore.”

“Well, I probably am crazy. But this train was built long before we started using petroleum products for everything. It was designed for other alternatives, no matter what you’ve been using lately,” said the man. “With a few people to help, we could get this train running again.”

“
We
? Whose train do you think this is?” Rex cocked his head to one side. “You are a crazy man!”

The squat stranger raised the folds that used to be his eyebrows, wrinkling the shaved skin on his forehead. “You got any other plans for it?”

#

Two days later, when Rex believed the stranger meant what he said, he persuaded the Gambotti brothers and Frank Haverson and Jerry Miles to leave their vineyards and spend a few hours in the afternoon joining in the effort.

They took apart the
Steam Roller’s
gear box
, the piston shaft, the axle, and the controls. Forced by a long screwdriver and steady pressure, each item reluctantly opened up. Smelly lard and gobs of fat, skimmed off the surface of a boiling pot brought in from the Gambotti vineyards yielded enough lubricant for the first round.

The bald, dark stranger spoke little, sweating and working harder than two of them combined. Rex tried to keep up. The stranger became obsessed with getting the train working again.

Rex couldn’t pinpoint when the stranger took control of the effort, nor did he care. They worked from the first light of dawn until they could no longer see in the dark. The stranger ate his water crackers and vegetables in silence. Given the choice, he drank mineral water instead of wine.