The Transdyne Awakening (2 page)

It had been hard to adjust to Joey not being there. One day he just didn’t show up. In fact he hadn’t shown up for a few days. In this line of work it was healthier not to get into the habit of asking too many questions. Clay just went on about his routine drops and pickups, trying to act as though nothing had happened. He got the word from Ahab to cover on some uncollected deals. After that, he thought he knew pretty much what had gone down. You simply didn’t mess up on work you had been given by Ahab, not even if you were Joey. He wondered just what they would have done to him. His feelings surprised him. He was taken aback by how upset he was at the thought of Joey being hurt. He’d never been really close to anyone. There wasn’t much scope for friendship in the Tenacamps.

He turned it over and over in his head. Maybe Joey and he had actually become friends. They’d certainly shared some good times. As couriers it was wiser not to mess with the merchandise and neither of them had been users on any level. Apart from the odd binge on loonjuice they were both pretty straight. It was in those afterhours spent together that Joey had begun to talk to Clay about his thoughts, his views on life and all.

Joey had spent a lot more time in studylearn than he had. He’d taken in a pretty wide sweep. If he had been on the upside Joey could easily have gone to one of the State Academies. Somehow, Clay couldn’t envisage Joey jumping through their carefully contrived hoops and parroting the sort of stuff required to get a societally accepted business rating. Joey was more interested in other areas of thought. He called them ‘Science’ or ‘Philosophy’. He could get quite animated when he spoke about ‘Theology’ or ‘Religion’. Clay wasn’t too familiar with the terms, but he was pretty sure they would have been thought zones considered off limits for most citizens. There were strict codes governing human thought, behaviour and interaction. Ordinary citizens were not supposed to involve themselves in certain studylearn areas.

Clay had never even been to the elementary Government Compracamps. As soon as he was able he’d taken the opportunity his denfather had arranged and gone to work for Ahab. He’d heard from others a little of what they taught you at the Compracamps. Along with letters and numbers they instilled conformity to the social codes and respect for the prevailing order. Private thought or reflection was discouraged. Most of the time was spent in enforced social groups. Tutorlearn took up most of the day in bright, crowded rooms where you were taught acceptable behaviour and responses to life situations. You practiced nontouch and never looked directly at another for too long.

Joey, on the other hand, had always looked directly at a person when he was addressing them. That was probably one of the reasons most citizens who had been to state Compracamps found him such an intimidating presence. Clay had seen very big men lower their eyes and back away from Joey when he spoke to them. He told himself that episode was over and he had to try to forget. He needed to rest. Two drinks later he was asleep.

There was a heat haze shimmering on the deserted throughway. It looked like white fire, obliterating the horizon line. The aircon was flat out but he was still sweating. It ran down his back as he steered the terraglide out of the megazone into the outlands. Just below him, along the main drag, moss had grown thick on the bricked up offramps and exits. He could have switched to autonav but he liked to travel on manual. Not many people did that routinely any more, but he liked the feeling of controlling his own journey.

Much of the outland had been designated as forbidden zones. The state called it ‘re-wilding’. They told people that these areas had been isolated for the protection of rare species of endangered plants or animals. Clay knew better. Most people did. These regulations had been steps along the way to herding people into the megacities. If the population could be crowded into urban spaces they were much easier to control. After all, it was expensive and troublesome for the state authorities to send crews of Polibros into the outzones to quell troublesome lowbreeds. Much easier to pack them all in like those little sardine fish he’d seen as a child.

He remembered one of the oldtime phrases about ‘shooting fish in a barrel’. Yes, easier to shoot fish in a barrel. They were all r.f.i.d. chipped too. Personal data from birth date to current tick credit status was on those things. The authorities could track them, wherever they were, just by zoning in on their hand or head chip. Clay didn’t have a chip. He’d gone ‘under’ as soon as he was able. Unlike the rest of the lower orders, Clay and his fellows operated outside of the bubble most thought of as urban civil society. Another one of his denfather’s sayings ran; ‘Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.’ He thought that pretty much summed up the world he had come into. The thing about corrupt state power, he reflected, is that it usually wants to appear uncorrupted. Behind the facade, it employs and deals with those it has officially outlawed.

Ahab was a case in point. Powerfully connected and well informed, he had dirt on all the key political monkeys. They could strut and make speeches about reform and righteousness in public, but in order to maintain their ruthless control they used the Ahabs of this world. He could get certain things done efficiently, as long as those creeps cut him enough of the pie to keep him happy and quiet.

Clay remembered a timepiece he had seen in Ahab’s private collection of ancient machinery. Ahab had told him it was called a clock. He thought the State was just like that old timepiece. The hands of the clock had moved smoothly over its beautiful white face. From number to number, around and gracefully around they travelled, indicating what used to be known as minutes of day or night in old time. He had stood before that timepiece for a long while. Noticing his fascination, Ahab had opened up the casing to show him the interior mechanism. Clay was enthralled by the intricate clockwork. Out of sight behind the clock face, all that complex, delicate machinery was in constant motion: cogs turning wheels. If he had never been shown, he could never have envisaged just what was going on beneath that beautiful fascia and that quiet, ordered ticking. Behind their rhetoric and posturing, the overlords and their politicos turned a blind eye to the very existence of people like Ahab, and hence people like Clay who worked for him. They could deny any involvement as loudly as they wished to those they had managed to dupe. In reality, they were as joined as that clock face was to the mechanism it concealed.

Throughway turned to Outway and soon he was moving through the heat haze into the real Outland. The buildings became more infrequent. Off track to his nearside, the wreckage of a destroyed dronespy craft glittered in the blinding sun. The State could send their drones out here to the sand and the scrub if they wished, but as soon as the outlanders detected one it would be shot down. Machines like that were expensive to replace and in these areas they had initially lost them in great numbers. The balance between detection resulting in arrest, or termination against drone and personnel losses was no longer acceptable to the authorities. Sure, they still kept up the propaganda about anti-social factions in the outland zones. They still sent out the odd drone and occasionally dispatched Polibro squads. They would mount raids on outzone targets when they wanted heads on poles for some propaganda campaign about terror cells, but in the main this far out they were less inclined to bother you.

The hours wore on and the terraglide carried him further and deeper into this strange, unwelcoming territory. He glanced at the instrument panel and started checking for the location reference. One of the offramps to his nearside had been bricked up years before the Great Crash, but the outlanders, who had a community here now, had painstakingly dug it all clear. There was a makeshift barrier blocking the point of departure but they’d seen him coming from a long way off. He slowed the craft to a hovering crawl. Now, two sentries appeared out of the shade afforded by the concrete overhang and scrutinized him. The nearest of the two grinned in recognition and waved him through. In the shadows he picked out around twenty others, all armed with bulky pulse weapons.

This was no ordinary drug drop. This was a medical delivery. Outside the system, communities like these traded for medicines. Everything from simple analgesics to insulin and morphine could be had from Ahab’s dealers for the right price. This time the settlement was to be fifty-fifty; half in pulse weapons for Ahab’s enforcers and the other half in black market stock.

Jacob met him at the settlement boundary.

A stocky figure wearing a bush hat and shabby fatigues, he was leaning on an old, military-style terraglide.

“You look like a man who could use a cold one. Let’s go in,” he said as Clay recoiled the mechanized sidescreen. Clay followed him slowly down the track. Inside, the building was a welcome cool against the intense heat of the day. Clay took the proffered freezing drink tube and held it up against his sweating forehead before gratefully taking a gulp.

Greetings and drinks done with, the two began the transfer of containers from the rear trunk of Clay’s terraglide. Jacob sat on an empty case to complete the electronic part of the transaction. As it totalled and bleeped, he handed the comp to Clay.

“You got a lot sick?” Clay asked.

Jacob shrugged. “We’ve had some bad animal bites. That’s why we wanted more of these biomeds.”

Clay nodded. When you were as far out as this you always had to be cautious. As the re-wilding programmes had taken effect, the predators bred at a startling rate. Jacob’s tribe were armed everywhere they went. As long as the beasts weren’t infected, the settlers could supplement their meat stores by dropping a few of these would-be intruders.

There weren’t many Trans at this community. Clay had noticed that on his last drop. “Most of ‘em moved out to join another tribe. You know, that bunch they call ‘The Way’,” Jacob told him. “I wasn’t sorry to see ‘em go. They were useful and all, but the last year or so a lot of them got really strange. Most of the Trans out here were just worker types but these were different. Even the drone types started to … I don’t know, kind of reprogramme and upgrade by themselves. It was off my scanner. I mean, I’ve seen Trans uploading studylearn before, but it’s nearly always been techmanuals or schematics. This bunch - they were into serious studylearning. Strange stuff too. After a while you’d have thought that even the drone types had been to Highlearn at some Academy. We had some old collections of studylearn stuff in the store buildings. It was like they couldn’t get enough of it. Trans can process a sizeable manual in minutes as you know, but after duty some of this bunch would be over there half the night with all that old stuff.”

“That’s farside. Never seen that happen,” Clay said.

Jacob frowned. “Their behaviour started to change too. Usually you know you’re dealing with a well programmed work tool, don’t you?

These things are usually fairly predictable. As a rule you can pretty much tell which grade you’re dealing with. After this kind of thing started it was almost as if they became a tribe to themselves. I mean I’ve never seen Trans show that kind of - I dunno, sociability
.
They were communicating with each other in a way I’ve never come across. It was like they’d found some common purpose. It put me on the lookout. I’ve been around Trans for years and I’d only ever seen the odd one go rogue. I’ve never been afraid of them, but I was edgy about all this stuff. There didn’t seem to be any threat but it was all sort of ... well, sort of creepy. Anyhow, I guess you’ll get to see for yourself if you’ve got to drop any stuff out there.”

Clay nodded. He heard more of the same later, over a meal with some of the others from the settlement. He didn’t know what to make of any of it. What he did know was that he wasn’t as accommodating as Jacob. If a bunch of Trans were acting peculiar, then he’d keep his guard up.

No threat, eh? Well, he’d seen some pretty strange stuff go down and he’d just as soon retire them at the first sign of any hazard. He’d once watched a couple of Trans ‘Toxout’ at one of those bizarre orgies. They sat shaking their heads for a couple of minutes before their limbs started to go into spasm. He remembered watching the Exitox take effect, reducing these finely crafted highbreeds to bundles of involuntary kicking and squealing as they destroyed themselves. They had decided they did not want to be conscious any longer and a Toxout was their suicide route. A few minutes and they were just inanimate bundles of burnt out parts.

Yes, Trans were capable of some weird stuff all right.

It was getting late and he wasn’t going to risk a night trek in this wasteland. Here he was always offered a billet for the night. He got the thermoroll from the back of the terraglide and threw it on the slatted somacot.

He wanted to turn off completely. Taking a small container from his travel pack, he popped the lid. Two blue pills of Nevermind would take him right down for the night.

The sun was already high and the heat blistering when he stepped outside. Jacob stayed at the doorway in the shade. He raised his drinker in a farewell salute. Clay checked the horizon before pulling out over the narrow track. Under way, he pressed a button on the control panel to start a soundsheet playing. He reached for his shades against the blinding glare.

The horizon blurred into the heat haze and he settled for the journey. The track at the far edge of the settlement led even farther out into the wilderness. He was soon well clear and on the long haul between the remote settlements. Jacob’s lookouts would be tracking him as he powered away. The men took shifts in carefully spaced bunkers among the rocks. No one surprised these outlanders. Caution was their way of life.

Clay’s impression was that they just wanted to be left alone to grow their crops, raise their children, stay free and outside the system.

He was moving at low level and checked the size of the dust plume in his wake. He knew his progress was visible to those with power glasses at the settlement, but he didn’t want to show an obvious trace for others to pick up. He turned the music up and let it envelope him.