Trucksong (6 page)

‘I’ve been hearin the wordin on the Wotcher for a long time. There’s raidin mobs out there, mate I seen em meself. Them brumbies has been after me for me link before and doubtless will again. There’s nothin I can do for youse in this camp. I just road from place to place, earnin me meat and smoke and interpertin the Wotcher’s signs,’ said Smoov.

‘Don’t be coy, Smoov Ra. You got sway with yer shows. And there’s more to interpreting trancemissions than gettin stoned and playing pictures.’

‘I don’t see what I can do,’ said Smoov

‘You’re one of the blokes who’s got an in with the camps. You got the ears of some of them who makes the calls. If you could work some politics into yer tells, the camps would be able to make a go of it, pullin together and actin as one against the brumbies.’

‘I don’t got no say on what I’m telled by the Wotcher,’ said Smoov.

‘Waddya know of the Wotcher’s program, but? What’s the Wotcher doin sendin messages down to earth?’

‘Wotcher’s gunna give us the secrets of the old time, give us secrets of the tech times and the runnin of them gigacity machines.’

‘Folks wanna be saved right now. There’s brumbies massin. The people is not gunna stick round if the Wotcher can’t give some help against the brumby trucks. Just think on it Smoov. Just think on what yer showin and think on what’s best for the camps to be seein.’

‘I never do and I won’t start. I don’t have no say on the trancemission. I’m not beholden to any camp boy, neither. I run me own show.’

The bloke got dark then.

‘Well, Smoov, there’s other showmans. There’s other tellers who can see what’s best for the camps is best for them. There’s brumby forces gatherin, and a mood for changin.’

The bloke wasn’t gunna get much farther with Smoov. Smoov were proud. He’d been threatened before. It was always a dicey game being a showman. You had to keep lots of different things in your head at once and you had to be true to what came in the trancemission and in the world as you saw it on the ground in front of your eyes, too.

Isa came back then and we were ready to start getting the show set for another night, but she was away somewhere else inside her head. Maybe her thoughts were with the show, maybe the other bloke. We came around the camps often enough, I knew I weren’t the only one. What were playing on me own thoughts was another thing but then she saw me looking and she smiled and I felt the lock of her eyes and the thrill of the connection we had, no matter if there were another bloke. I was a fool and I almost threw away that shiv that the old bloke gave me, but I kept it in me tote and the words he said all tied up tight in me head.

There were plenty of talk in the camp that day of brumbies gathering in the east and later on when it was all quiet while the storm front brewed up before showtime, me and Isa went out on top of a rocky cliff to see. Clouds stacked high on top of each other up in the sky out west. All was ready with the gear, the darkness gloaming closer as we crept out of camp around the cliftop to spend some time while Smoov was making his moves and doing politics with the camp folk. Down on the plain just below we could see a mob of brumby trucks was daisychaining in the lee of the hill, windswept scrub not quite hiding them and nothing could hide the sound of that roar they made, the beating of their soundsystems louder than me heart in booming in me ears as I watched.

‘What’s goin on?’ I said.

‘They’re truckruttin. I’ve heard the stories, but this is the first time I’ve seen em doin it.’

She came closer to me, the warmth of her body next to mine. In the distance I saw the hunkering form of the big Brumby King, fat and black as night. It was circling a Silver Peterbilt. The sound was like wildfire roaring, and a screech like no human throat has ever passed. Blast of air horn. I snuggled into Isa and she was there too. The Brumby King crashed up against the silver, which bucked, wheels spinning as it slid around. The Silver whined and fishtailed away. It didn’t want it just yet and the Brumby King couldn’t force it. They tracked around each other in a slow circling dance, the booming beats rising up from the Brumby King’s sound system. Silver wasn’t gunna let the King in so easy, but the King was used to this game it seemed. It closed fast and sudden, they were right beneath us and Silver didn’t have nowhere to go. We saw everything as the Brumby King jammed itself against Silver, sparks flying from the panels. Silver was ready now, it scooted out from the side of the Brumby King, but then stood still. I could almost see the quivering and the shaking through the chassis. The King made a run up to a rocky ledge to get some air and mount up on Silver’s back axle. Silver bucked and revved its donk but the King crashed home. The two trucks was locked together now and the fierce gunning of donks settled slower as they moved as one in the smokey desert air. Silver were ready to receive the King now and with a grunt of its donk it cummed out its load into the dust. Even far away I smelt it sharp and clean as the smell of solvents and diesel fuel on the breeze.

Something happened to Isa, she was softer then. She was turned on by the truckrutting. A skew of little droans scampered out to where the Brumby King pumped its seed to gather it up and take it inside. Of course the trucks couldn’t mate like animals, so they’d got some helpers along to carry the parts. I put me arm around Isa and me face into her neck, smelling her earthy scent, it made me high. By this time Silver calmed down. It had come back in closer while the Brumby King took off now that it’d spent its load. The droans skittered around and with their feelers they gathered up the King’s issue and carried it inside the Silver. They were making a babby truck, mechin together their separate parts into a newmint truckmind for a substrate that would find a truckbody one day. But I was lost in the moment, feeling Isa up close, reaching inside her trucksuit and me mouth searching for hers, pressing closer and she closed her eyes and yielded. I felt her small teats and reaching further down, pulled the suit down and ripped at me own zippers too and the roar of the brumbies fell into the background as I fell into Isa. I was hard as stone and she was sopping wet between her legs and I slid in all of a rush of blood going to me head, blood storming through me veins. Isa’s voice caught in her throat as she took me and I bucked like that Brumby King till I cummed me load out inside her and the colours flared behind me eyes.

We laid together in the afterglow and this is the yarn Isa told: ‘The folks what lived in the gigacity, they had everythin any one could want. They had all the knowin of machines and truckin lanes and their world was a massive system what ran almost by itself. It became almost its own livin thing until the real livin things started on dyin all around them. Somethin happened to the system and it stopped workin in some places and then more and more the machines was breakin down and leavin the slave grid to look after them selfs. And the ground poisoned the machines and they started doin their own thing with no thoughts of the system of the gigacities. And the gigacities was poisoned too and now there’s no one that goes there. That’s how the people came to live in the scattered camps in the backroads lookin to the Wotcher for answers and a way to get back to the past.’

I was just lying there looking into her eyes as she spoke. I didn’t want it to end. Her voice was soft and flowing like the sounds of a creek. She went on.

‘The Wotcher’s got its place in two worlds. It’s from the world of the past and the knowin system of seedin the gigacities but it speaks into the world of the backroads and the machines like flapples and robodogs. It’s a bridge. That’s why it’s so important and I wunna crack the Wotcher’s secret. Coz it’s got the knowin in there somewhere of how to reseed the system of them buildins what talk to each other grow together and generate the power of the world. Underneath all the bullshit, there’s the truth in the Wotcher of the past and if we can figure out the knowin we can find our way back to balance. Not like now where it’s all down to muscle and how much weight you can pull. But Smoov ain’t gunna give me the codes till he thinks I’ve earnt the right. Well I got a different idea coz there’s new kinds of life comin up outta the ground, you seen it in the slinky snake what bit me. It’s changed me, I can feel it. There’s a cracklin in the air whenever Smoov hits the linkmaker. I can almost hear the Wotcher in me own head now. I’m seein things more clear. Once I get the last codes of the Wotcher and I can hook with the right roadin crowd, hybrid animal or machine and I know it’s only a matter of time before I can lead the backroads folks to return to the gigacities. Smoov don’t like them thoughts though. Plus he never trucked with no notions of the Wotcher as a saver, he never thought the Wotcher were anythin but a messenger sent to message us with ways to make our lives better. It’s things everyone knowed all ready any way, he would just put them so as to be new and understandable.’

I was taken in by her voice and thoughts formed up in me mind.

I said, ‘Why don’t we go see the gigacities? We could find them and live a new life with them. Anyway we would have better chances by our selfs.’

‘Gigacities is poisoned ground now. No one goes there. And I still gotta lot to learn from Smoov for showin.’

‘He’s gunna go too far one time and I’m gunna get too hurt to road. If I stay I’m gunna die.’

‘I’m gunna be showman some day. I like you, Jon Ra, but if you’re gunna leave, I won’t stop you.’

I let her talk on a bit but inside I was dying. I knew then she was never gunna leave while Smoov was alive, no matter what she thought of a life with me. I dragged me feet in the sand behind as we trudged back to the camp for the show.

When we got back, there was a bloke dressed in rags with a horse’s mane sewed into his cowl. He was chanting to the crowds. They were listening to him, he was calling them. We stood and heard as he told a story about a man with a horse’s head and black holes for eyes.

‘The prophet come in to town walkin talkin wonderment and the folks that seen him ran in fright from his fearsome head and his strange talk. He was a prophet spreadin the word. He said, “There’s gunna come a hand of fate to wash the sand from yer eyes and lift yer up outta the dust. You don’t hafta wait for patterns to form or listen to the showmans no more.” The horse’s head said it came to tell of a saver from the Wotcher that will save the backroads folks out from the brumbies and the disorder.’

One fella piped up from the crowd, ‘How come he got a horse’s head?’

‘He got the horse’s head coz horses is strong and faifull, he were a strong and faifull bloke. He had a mate ship too and he sailed the desert backroads with his mates, they was lookin for the Wotcher’s word from where it crackled. They heard the Wotcher was gunna come down to earth, it’d land like a flapple on a carcass and out would step a bloke who’d be a saver for us all from the brumby trucks.’

Smoov came on the scene then. He said, ‘Wotcher’s not somethin to be a saver. Wotcher’s got messages in patterns and lessons for us all to make a better life, that’s all. There’s no saver. Theres no bloke with a horse’s head, no mate ship in the desert, just a bloke tellin porky pies to serve himself.’

‘You think you’re a truth sayin servant of the Wotcher? Whaddaya know of it?’ said the preacher.

The crowd grumbled and mumbled, faces showing dark at Smoov.

‘I listen the Wotcher every night. I been puttin together the Wotcher’s signs and meanins for twenty-six wet and twenty-six dry and mate I tell you, the Wotcher’s no saver. It’s a link to the past but it don’t care what goes on. It’s just spinnin high up above and sendin down messages to show a way of livin that’s better than all this, that’s all.’

The preacher shook his horsey mane and said, ‘There’s a mob of brumby trucks massin on the outside. They’re gunna come in and ride over everythin inside. All they want is death and destruction. We don’t need no truth nor lies nor messages. We need a saver from the brumbies.’

There were more murmurings from the camp folks. They were getting restless now. They’d been listening to Smoov a long time but their grumblings were for the idea of a saver. Smoov weren’t having no part of it.

He turned and said, ‘Wotcher’s the one thing left from them as what come before, it’s a key but we don’t know the right door to open. If you listen the Wotcher, you can see there’s something to take away, you can see the message. There’s patterns that form in the trancemissions, and there’s truth in them patterns.’

I looked at Isa.

‘What you reckon?’ I whispered.

‘The preacher bloke’s runnin his own program. He’s tryin to get the folks to believe in a saver to lift himself in their eyes and become more powerful. There’s many truths to the Wotcher and we’ve gotta make up our own minds about it. We gotta be our own savers, or maybe it’s me what can be the saver if I can crack the Wotcher’s code. I reckon the horse’s head bloke is a sign the high breds are comin into the world.’

Right then there was some wrestling and wrangling going on. People were getting rowdy, they didn’t like that Smoov were disrupting the show. They’d got a new showman in who was giving them something they wanted to hear. They were sick of Smoov and the other showmans who wouldn’t ever give them nothing they could understand. Someone called: ‘Git outta here, Smoov. Yer not welcome tonight.’

I thought Smoov was gunna chuck a wobbly, but he stood up straight and said, ‘I been comin for years. Youse know my comin and goins, I always do a good show for yer needs, show for meat and smoke and cactusflower grog. I know the ways of the truck and the road and I’ve been givin youse suckle on the Wotcher’s teat all this time.’

One of the camp blokes pushed forward. He was long scraggly hair and beard hanging down over hessian coat. ‘Smoov, there’s more to the Wotcher than what you can show. This bloke with the horse’s head, what word come into the camps around two months ago, he’s got a different story to tell. We wunna hear it. You can’t stop it, even if you don’t like it.’

‘Be careful of this horse’s head bloke, he’s sick, he’s crook with a evil virus. He’s given you tell what you wanna hear, not the hard work of the roadin highways.’