Trucksong (14 page)

At the top of the stairs the space opened out to a massive round room, spokes drawing inwards to a centre platform. Muddy light came in from windows at the top of a dome ceiling. The sound were hushed inside, I could hear the currents moving in the air filling up a space that stetched as I stretched me neck up to the top, past the balconies jammed with shelving and bound books fallen to the floor in piles of tumbled pages yellered and eaten up with age. It was the Lie Bury. I shuffled through the dust, feeling the power of that space, it were a holy place I could tell. I almost were holding me breath and a creepy feeling crawled up the hairs of me back as I walked up to the centrepiece with five sides and I felt like there were someone watching me.

Inside a black hole stretched on downwards into the dark. It were a entry hatch fetched up by something on a long line of robo arm and track what pulled up from beneath. Down in there a whirring sound were happening and a swift grind; there was light coming up from down in there too. So down I went, on down in to the black towards the light. Me beard was scraggy from no washing. I was the heatsink on an overclocked donk, a patchfile change log, a speck of grease spat from the hot frying pan ready to sizzle. The show reel unwinding in me head as I lurched in towards where we were coming up on the centre of things, feeling the weight of history and the wording of the past.

I went up closer and saw the bristling centipede of a hundred legs crawling and the voice of a crow cawing and the scraping of the weight of me own body over the rusted metal of the hatchway. Down into the well, where I knew the end was waiting. The shaft ended and opened out onto a wide-open space splayed with patterns of light and shadow. A robo arm whirled backwards and forwards, there were stacks and stacks of all them books and papers. The arm was being fed by what were left of the electricity trickling trickery from the roof. It whined on its tracks, hissing as it shuffled the books in the stacks. I walked towards it, seeing what it was doing. It danced around in the hole, ordering the books in some way, coding the spines of them all what were black in one part and all what were red in another. Then it did them again. Standing back in the dim light I could see there were shapes coming out from the patterns and shifting into forms that I could reckonise. This was the place where all the lies come to be buried.

A pattern formed up in the black against the red, an image of a crow, wings spread. I just stood there as the shape of black wings flicked in to being by that spinning arm what started to move faster as it got closer towards the end and then it stopped. There was no sound but the dust falling. I stared at the shape of the crow there for the longest time. The black stain shaped like wings that didn’t go away when I closed me eyes. Crow was always there, waiting for me, singing me to do his work.

Watching the arm doing its work, I seen there wasn’t no easy way to ask the past what it was about. There wasn’t no way of knowing what it was like back then. Their systems were a mystery, and who knew what they made of, the work on the shoulders of the world that come before even them?

I could ask the Lie Bury of books to fetch its arm and call one up for me, but I’d got Buckley’s of making any sense out of it. All I could do would be guessing.

Inside that crow that were made by machine and etched behind me eyes, I seen a blank space. A missing book. The arm kept trying to reach for it, but there was nothing there so it had to work around the hole like a tongue on a broken tooth. I kneeled down on the ground and saw the footprints in the dust, too, and a long hair what weren’t from any human. It shook me out of a trance. Even in this place where the signal was strong from the Wotcher, it was still all messed up out of place, but someone had taken that book from the Lie Bury. It made me think. There were someone who had come before, and I realised Isa’s dreams of reseeding the gigacities was as lost as the dust fallen to the floor. The only hope in the world would not come from the patterns of the old. It were there, out east, where the Warby Ranges called like a crow.

Out in the sun it was real bright and hot. Me eyes were dazed. I picked me way back through the ruins to where I’d hobbled Sinnerman by linkmade rope and patch, tethered under a tree what had growed into the wall with its roots all twisting through the bricks and cracks. Popped the hatch and climbed back into the rider’s cab with Sinnerman. The homey smell of it hit and I felt the rumbling of power and light as Sinner fired up and I slotted the IV. Through the link were a mix of colour and sound joined with me blood. It came on hard. I was jonesing for the feed and Sinner itched to be on the prowl again and for me it was good to be back teamed with that massive truck. The connexion growed between us and I felt the particules from Sinners synth mod feed coming through the IV again and me own flesh closing around the spike. Using just me mind I could mod the patches through the link now. They were like coloured lines of light behind me eyes and I could put em together now so that Sinnerman would feel what I wanted to do and it would do it.

Out from all them slinky snakes, just a hankering then for an open road and some space around me and the image of Isa and how we could be together. Trick of the light threw sunflash of bright truckskin in a space between the buildings. Tantalising, a glimpse of brumby headed north. I fed Sinner some files and it swung around and we rolled back up to the overpass but there wasn’t nothing there except a brumby skitter shooting off towards the Warby Ranges green and looming in the north and I knew then that was where I needed to road and the doubts fell off like dust in our tracks.

So I turned me mind to the Warby Ranges and we started grinding through the broken streets, heading for the north of the gigacity towards the mountains. In the distance I could see the foothills out of the viewscreen. It wasn’t that far by crow flight, and it had to be the same place I’d been told about by Bushy in the western ranges and so off we went. It was like the same trip we came in on, but in reverse. The centre was glittering buildings and canyons of steel, ash and broken glass and streets blocked with rubbish and rubble piled on piles of busted brick and shattered roadway. Downed poles and wires snaking out from under them, hissing in the ill wind that blowed through the empty roads. Moving outwards we came in to thinning buildings, shorter and further apart from each other. Road still choked by lots of rubble, it was slow going to get to where it would be even more slow going when we hit the mountains. Further and furtherer out we rolled into the dense packed burbs with green creepers growing all through the buildings, blocked out and broken down petrol stations and truckstops and the crumbling walls of concrete malls a thick crust on the ground and all around. It was getting dark now and I wanted to be out of there quick smart but there was no speeding up, any mistake there and we would be stuffed. Who knew what creatures lived in those ruins that only came out at night. I’d heard many tales and I didn’t want to see for me own eyes. Just being there was enough, where the peeling paint on the walls of the warped houses and the grain silos cracked and crumbled next to where the bodies of railway carriages laid spilling all their secrets of hydraulics and wiring into the earth and the slinky snakes that darted underneath and around glistening in the light from the setting sun.

Pretty soon we were down the gears through that long slow climb being pulled towards the lair of the Brumby King so high in the mountains in the dark. Sinner put on its running lights and lit up the night with greens and blues of sparkling colour that was reflected back from the trees and rocks and the black surface of the road. The way was narrow but good, recent signs of passing vehicles. We were on the right trail all right. All night running under lights. My control with Sinnerman was ingrown now, we could innerface, there wasn’t much gap between thought and movement. Sometimes when I just let go I could feel it in the trancemission. I opened me mind and Sinnerman opened the throttle, engines gunning, exhaust pumping, heart beat pounding and the whine of the whirling diff. The road lies where time is tied to a place, and round and round the mountainside it unwound like a watchspring. I wanted it to go on forever, sucked into the vortex of runninglight reflection smeared in the viewscreen, but I had to face down me own fears because the Brumby King was up ahead and that was the key to finding Isa, even if she couldn’t be found I had to try.

Night passed on into daytime grey and a gentle rain fell. I popped the hatch and the cool fresh air blowed in, pushed past the stink of the feed link and me crusted reeking body with its aching bones and tight gristle. Walking around in the gigacity made me realise how weak I’d got, even just from the time I’d been hooked in with Sinnerman. The thought wafted that I had to keep in shape, had to get out of the cab more and on me own two legs if I was gunna stand any sort of chance in the end, but I pushed it away because it was too easy just to roll. Best not get too far in front of yourself, you might trip and I couldn’t see as how any action with the Brumby King would be faced any different to how I was rolling now with big Sinnerman at me back. Up and up into the mountains we rode. The air was getting cooler all the time, wafts of forest smell came through the hatch and the babbling warble of magpies and the bright cold lash of a whipbird. The road sighed past the viewscreen ahead round long slow curves and tight deep bends with treegreens on both sides and a long drop down off to the right into ferny gullies and misty creek beds gurgling with mossy water. Track rutted and tough but passable. Each new turn brought us closer to the lair. I could feel it coming up from inside. We were deep in the Warby Ranges now, going up slow and even slower down muddy hillslide, mud patterning up outside on Sinner’s newly painted body, and it wasn’t so happy that was happening but there wasn’t no other way. Them hills were sitting on the centre of all the highway action, they were working in towards the gigacity on one side and the coast on the other, then past that, the dusty backroads off in the westerling. Definite signs of brumby tweeks on the trucking freek. Caught up in the breath of cold crisp air but it couldn’t go on forever.

We came up near a curve in the road and there were two trucks blocking the way, two brumbies that I’d seen before. The Left Tenant and its pal, a brumby pink and grey writhing with black patterned glyphs, and behind them a bit another truck lurked. I tried to get Sinner to slam into reverse and fishtail out of there but there was nothing.

I’d got so used to the new level of innerface that it caught me off guard when Sinnerman kept rolling on. I didn’t want to close too early. I struggled with all my will power but I couldn’t do it.

Something was up, a different tone coming through the innerface with Sinner, and I started to track the brumbies’ freek to see if I could pickup stray chitchatter but Sinnerman weren’t having it, I couldn’t get no signal out nor in. And then there was a new wave through the feed, some kind of haze I’d not felt before it hit, it given me a dirty grimy feeling and I zoned in and out.

Woozy head as Sinner roaded closer to where the brumbies was stood and behind them a little bit was a third truck which I knew then was Sinnerman’s partner Storm, purple and yeller painted patternings I’d seen right back during the raid on the camp when I lost Isa.

‘What you doin to me Sinner?’ I said, even though they were airbreathed words that Sinnerman couldn’t understand.

Sinner seemed to hear or at least it felt me anger in the mix of our blood and truckjuice joined together in song through the IV. There was a shudder, its last feelings of kinship towards me and then it just powered on through. It was as determined to get to Storm as I were to Isa and the sight of its lost partner so close given it a extra boost.

Time was short we were almost up on them and it was getting clearer to me what was going on, another wave of that woozy haze hit me and I knowed I had to pull the IV feed out of me arm and split from the truckcab. Even though me whole body was screaming for me to stay in, I yanked that feedline. It didn’t come all the way out, it was growed in to me almost down to the bone. I could see the runners where Sinner’s own metal parts had been eating into me flesh, we were both part of the same system now. Pain bit through the haze. I kept pulling with bloodslick hands and popped me harness, tore me trucksuit, pushed through nervefired agony. Me linkmaker was hot with messages firing between Sinner and the brumbies and also Storm was piping up now and pushing forwards to be closer to Sinnerman.

I realised then why the Left Tenant didn’t finish us off in the backroads. It wanted to draw us up into the mountains and then it would offer Sinner a swap — give me over for Storm. And what they wanted with me wasn’t certain but the brumbies knew we was on their trail since Midden Dump at least and all I could think of was the Brumby King wanted to take me alive for some reason, and well I wasn’t ready to go along on them terms. Sinnerman be damned. It’d got what it wanted now, got closer to Storm.

I sprung the latch and swung the hatch and out of the cab with me tote and the typewriter. The IV came free then I was alone again in me soft body and broken and rolling at the side of the road as another two brumbies closed off behind and Sinnerman stopped at last and waited with its new brumby mates. There were plenty of messages flying on the link too fast for me to make sense and even if I could I doubt I would of known what them trucks were saying to each other.

Sinnerman just wanted to be close to Storm but the Left Tenant screamed forwards towards where I was crouched roadside. It wanted to take me for sure and I wasn’t gunna get took. The other brumby though, I saw it in back, swinging round to corner Sinnerman even as I was turning to get off the track and into the bush where they couldn’t follow. The Left Tenant come at me hard as it could but it wasn’t enough. I was already gone over the lip. A tongue of flame shot out and singed me hind as I rolled off into a damp gully and it didn’t do much other than speed me away.

And as I tumbled down the mountain crashing through ferns and trees, me thoughts were bitter on how I’d been sold out by me own fucken truck.