Ashes of the Earth (43 page)

Bjorn
seemed relieved as he cut through the cords. "But I am still
responsible for you," he reminded Nelly, who replied with a
weary grin.

After
the first hour, Dax and Jori took the lead over the steep, icy
terrain. Most of the trail followed old roads, apparent not so much
from the concrete shards sometimes visible through the snow as from
the trees. They followed swaths of trees that were no more than
fifteen or twenty years old, twenty-foot-wide ribbons between much
taller trees of fifty, even a hundred years' growth.

They
pushed hard, not certain of their destination, staying always on the
most heavily used tracks, crossing over crude log bridges erected
where highway overpasses had once existed, passing snow-packed
campsites showing frequent use by men and horses. As they traveled,
the cold bite of the air lessened and the snow began to thin, until
finally it was present only in scattered patches.

Twice
they leapt to cover as Dax whistled warnings, watching salvage
parties ride by, their pack animals piled high with treasure. Once,
in the night, they heard the blood-curdling roar of a great beast.
Hadrian remembered the tales of zoo predators liberated a generation
earlier. At dawn one morning he caught a glimpse of what he would
have sworn was a monkey, watching them from a tree.

On
the third day, as Dax and Jori paused at a ledge that overlooked a
long, low valley, Hadrian realized their journey was over. His
companions were puzzling over a row of regularly spaced hills,
covered with plant growth but strangely angular in shape,
vine-covered mesas that rose fifty, even a hundred feet above the low
valley floor.

"Buildings,"
he said. "At least once they were buildings," he amended as
he saw the uncertainty on the faces of Jori, Bjorn, and Dax. Now the
structures were just part of the landscape, no different from the
Mayan temples long ago lost in the jungle. It was as if nature had
decided she was finished with the experiment that was mankind.

"But
it makes no sense," Jori said. "Why would buildings need to
be so tall?"

"It
was just something people did," Nelly said in a voice that was
almost a whisper, glancing at Hadrian. From long experience they knew
it was not possible to fully convey to the new generation the mass of
population, the mazes of highways, the acres of asphalt and concrete,
the transmission lines and millions of automobiles that had defined
the old world.

"It
would have been a perfect bio sink," Nelly said at his shoulder.
The steep, tall ridges on either side of the valley may have
protected the buildings from blast waves, but the deep bowl would
have trapped the biological agents that had spread across the
landscape.

"For
years," he agreed, remembering how Standish and his party had
died there two years after the settlement of Carthage. Even now he
was wary of sending any of their party into the valley. But then he
saw a thin plume of smoke rising from the opposite hillside. Although
the smoke seemed to rise up directly from the ground, with no sign of
a fire, fifty yards below it he now spied a clearing whose shadows
held several men and horses. He scanned the surrounding terrain, then
watched as several of the distant figures disappeared into a wall of
vegetation.

"Jonah
described it as one of those low-impact buildings," he
explained, referring to the environmentally self-contained buildings
that were used for new industrial operations in the years just before
the shifting. "It must be built into the hill, underground, with
a small entrance from the outside."

"It's
what Jonah meant when he wrote to me that it might have survived,"
Nelly told them. "It would not have been under attack by the
elements because it was built into the earth itself."

As
Bjorn led the others down the slope, Hadrian lingered, a vague
recollection trying to break through to his consciousness. He scanned
the valley floor once more, all the way to the low river bottom where
the structures ended, and then the memory burst through. He had been
to this town. He had taken his son to a baseball game here, sat in
the community park at the river bottom, eating a hot dog and cheering
as boys sprinted between bases. Studying the end of the valley, he
saw it as it had been then, then as it would have been when Standish
had led his salvage party there. It was the deepest point in the
valley. The little park had been the biosink where Standish had died.

Staying
off the cleared path now meant traversing the thickets that crowded
the slopes. It was late afternoon by the time they reached Hadrian's
objective, the square mountain of brush and vine directly opposite
the old pharmaceutical factory. It had been a four-or five-story
office building. Most of its windows had been blown in so that
impenetrable mats of roots and tendrils crowded inside, extending
deep into the interior space. The first-floor lobby area had been
stripped by salvagers, its walls now covered with vines. Hadrian
paced along the walls, finding a patch of new growth where vines were
reclaiming a section that had been torn away by salvagers. He probed
the vegetation, discovering a door handle, which he pulled open to
reveal a stairwell. He lit a candle and began climbing the stairs.

The
door on the third-floor landing gave way when Bjorn and Hadrian put
their combined weight against it. He quickly located an office window
in which the glass had shattered and pushed the vines aside. They
were overlooking the buried factory, only a hundred yards away.

As
the others set up a camp in a conference room, he studied the
pharmaceutical plant. He saw how the slope over the buried building
had been cleared, revealing box-shaped structures that must be
skylights and vents. Before the light faded, a large party departed,
packhorses full. Only five mounts were left.

Nelly
arrived at his side in time to watch as a big man with a rifle
appeared and took up a sentry position on the slope above the entry.

"Nelly,"
he said. "Tell me why Jonah thought this plant would provide the
answer to your problems."

"He
knew it well because it was where his wife worked as a senior
researcher, making pharmaceuticals. Cancer drugs mostly."

"He
wasn't sending you for cancer drugs."

"No.
The plant was a prototype, using simpler technologies based on
natural processes and heavy use of water. Fermentation with molds and
bacteria. It required lots of water for the vats, for washings, for
precipitation tanks. He said it would have the simple lab equipment
we needed to refine our aspirin and make permanent supplies of it. If
we were lucky, he said, we might find enough vats and other equipment
to begin making penicillin. Do you know how many in the camps and
Carthage die every year of pneumonia? Penicillin could save most of
them. His letters had more and more enthusiasm about the
possibilities. He was doing research on his own and reminded us that
in the years before the ending there had been many discoveries made
for producing medicines from fermentation. The bacteria in the vats
replaced entire factories.

"But
he warned us that a salvage team had died there long ago. And Kinzler
said there was nothing left." She paused. He saw the pain in her
eyes as she gazed out over the dead town. "We don't need
salvage. If I had my way, we'd wait another hundred years before
letting anyone into these places."

"They
would have manuals in there," Hadrian said. "Chemistry
books. A library on chemical molecules and how to make them in those
vats."

When
Nelly didn't reply he pointed to the water tower nearly obscured by
trees near the top of the ridge, still catching the light of the
setting sun. "Is that part of the operations?"

"I
have never been here," she reminded him. "But yes, I would
think so. Manufacturing plants had to be self-sufficient by the time
this one was built. It would have had its own water source to run
turbines and for all the water used in the process. The tank, and
probably a lake to feed it."

Nelly
fell silent as she stared at the entry to the plant with its armed
guard. "When he produced the first batches of aspirin, Kinzler
was elected to the Tribunal," she told him. "When he
negotiated an alliance with St. Gabriel, he was made chairman."
Then she walked away.

Hadrian
watched the stars rise over the ridge and the invisible factory
below, recalling how the weapons that had ended another world had
also been launched from subterranean bunkers.

When
he finally returned to their makeshift camp, Nelly was at the table
by Dax, explaining objects the boy had scavenged and piled before
him. He gripped a stapler like a treasure, testing it again and again
with scrap papers, then gleefully demonstrated a handheld hole punch
to Hadrian.

As
they shared a paltry meal, their supplies nearly gone, Hadrian
explained his plan. The few horses left meant there would only be a
handful of men inside. They should try to distract the sentry at
dawn, he proposed, then steal into the factory and take the others by
surprise.

"You
said they have guns," Nelly observed. When Hadrian nodded she
offered a sly smile. "Then I think we just go in conspicuously,
parading our prisoners," she declared, and explained her own
proposal.

Jori,
Bjorn, and Hadrian took two-hour shifts as sentries. Toward the end
of his shift Hadrian found a window on the opposite side where the
vines were thinner, allowing a wide view down the moonlit valley. The
landscape had been settled for centuries, with the original natives
displaced by farmers, then by industrial works as the canal to the
ocean had pierced it. For perhaps two hundred years out of millions,
it had teemed with human activity, had been a place of mule-drawn
barges and bulldozers, steam locomotives and computer-chip factories,
marching bands and shopping malls. Then in one sudden storm the
humans had been scoured from the landscape.

When
he turned at a low whistle from Bjorn, coming to relieve him, Dax was
standing at his elbow, silently staring out the window. The boy
followed Hadrian down the hall as he handed over the shotgun to the
Norger. He was about to find a place to sleep when he saw the
unsettled expression on the boy's face, and he recalled how withdrawn
the boy had seemed since entering the town. Picking up two of the lit
candles, he handed one to Dax, and gestured for the boy to follow him
down the hallway. The salvagers who had visited the building had not
been thorough. Offices seldom held much of value for the colony. They
had not touched some of the inner doors. Hadrian pulled a fire
extinguisher from its wall cabinet and smashed a rusty door handle.
The door led into another stairway.

Dax
said nothing as they walked down, then paused with wide eyes as they
entered the garage under the building. Hadrian raised his candle over
a red convertible, its tires flat, its top in mildewed tatters. Dax
approached hesitantly as Hadrian reached through the top, popped up
the lock, and opened the driver's door. After a moment Dax reached
out and touched the steering wheel, then looked up in disbelief.

Hadrian
pressed the latch for the trunk and to his surprise it popped open.
He pulled Dax, still in his silent paralysis, to the rear of the car,
then recited the names of the incongruous items arrayed before them.
A tennis racket. A chainsaw. A baseball bat. A hair dryer. He
retrieved the lug wrench and began walking along the other cars,
forcing open the trunks with the wrench as he did so. As the boy
walked from one to another, gazing at the objects they contained,
emotions swirled on his face. Confusion, anger, bitterness, and
melancholy.

"This
is the world that is behind us, Dax," he declared, "not the
one on the other side."

He
knew he
would
not find slumber, so he took the guard shift after Bjorn, letting
Jori sleep through her watch. Strange waking dreams came to him as he
surveyed the ruined landscape. In his mind's eye the vegetation
retreated and the buildings and streets emerged. He saw cars and
trucks, pedestrians entering cafes and shops, policemen directing
traffic, the neon lights of fast-food restaurants, a school bus
loaded with a high school team, an old woman walking a terrier. He
began hearing people making small talk in the corridor behind him,
the whirl of office printers, and elevator chimes. He shook his head
violently, muttering a curse. He was done with shadow people, he
wanted them to leave him alone.

Then
suddenly came a scent of licorice, and he wanted more than anything
to be with one of the shadows. He stopped breathing, fearful of
breaking the spell, as he inched around. His son was wearing the
uniform of his junior baseball team, smiling expectantly, his shaggy
blond hair jutting out from his cap, a piece of red licorice from his
pocket. As the boy raised his glove for Hadrian to toss him a ball,
tears welled in his eyes. He did not move for fear of losing the boy,
but his son pushed back his wayward hair and patted his glove, as if
expecting Hadrian to throw. He took a step forward, seizing on a
ridiculous hope that he could touch the boy. But the closer he came,
the more tenuous the specter became, until there was only an arm
extending from a shadow, still holding the glove.