The Waste Lands (Page 156)
“Oy!” the humbler agreed, but after one look between his paws at the city park currently unrolling beneath them, he attempted to crawl onto Jake’s feet and sit on his moccasins.
Jake looked forward and saw the broad gray stroke of the monorail track ahead of them, rising slowly but steadily through the buildings and disappearing into the rain. He looked down again and saw nothing but the street and floating membranes of low cloud.
“How come I can’t see the track underneath us, Blaine?” “THE IMAGES YOU SEE ARE COMPUTER-GENERATED,” Blaine replied. “THE COMPUTER ERASES THE TRACK FROM THE LOWER-QUADRANT IMAGE IN ORDER TO PRESENT A MORE PLEASING VIEW, AND ALSO TO REINFORCE THE ILLU-SION THAT THE PASSENGERS ARE FLYING.”
“It’s incredible,” Susannah murmured. Her initial fear had passed and she was looking around eagerly. “It’s like being on a flying carpet. I keep expecting the wind to blow back my hair—“
“I CAN PROVIDE THAT SENSATION, IF YOU LIKE,” Blaine said. “ALSO A LITTLE MOISTURE, WHICH WILL MATCH CUR-RENT OUTSIDE CONDITIONS. IT MIGHT NECESSITATE A CHANGE OF CLOTHES, HOWEVER.”
“That’s all right, Blaine. There’s such a thing as taking an illusion too far.” The track slipped through a tall cluster of buildings which reminded Jake a little of the Wall Street area in New York. When they cleared these, the track dipped to pass under what looked like an elevated road. That was when they saw the purple cloud, and the crowd of people fleeing before it.
“BLAINE, WHAT’S THAT?” JAKE asked, but he already knew. Blaine laughed . . . but made no other reply. The purple vapor drifted from gratings in the sidewalk and the smashed windows of deserted buildings, but most of it seemed to be coming from manholes like the one Gasher had used to get into the tunnels below the streets. Their iron covers had been blown clear by the explosion they had felt as they were boarding the mono. They watched in silent horror as the bruise-colored gas crept down the avenues and spread into the debris-lit-tered side-streets. It drove those inhabitants of Lud still interested in survival before it like cattle. Most were Pubes, judging from their scarves, but Jake could see a few splashes of bright yellow, as well. Old animosities had been forgotten now that the end was finally upon them.
The purple cloud began to catch up with the stragglers—mostly old people who were unable to run. They fell down, clawing at their throats and screaming soundlessly, the instant the gas touched them. Jake saw an agonized face staring up at him in disbelief as they passed over, saw the eyesockets suddenly fill up with blood, and closed his eyes.
Ahead, the monorail track disappeared into the oncoming purple fog. Eddie winced and held his breath as they plunged in, but of course it parted around them, and no whiff of the death engulfing the city came to them. Looking into the streets below was like looking through a stained-glass window into hell. Susannah put her face against his chest. “Make the walls come back, Blaine,” Eddie said. “We don’t want to see that.” Blaine made no reply, and the transparency around and below them remained. The cloud was already disintegrating into ragged purple streamers. Beyond it, the buildings of the city grew smaller and closer together. The streets of this section were tangled alleyways, seemingly without order or coherence. In some places, whole blocks appeared to have burned flat . . . and a long time ago, for the plains were reclaiming these areas, burying the rubble in the grasses which would some day swallow all of Lud. The way the jungle swallowed the great civilizations of the Incas and Mayas, Eddie thought. The wheel of ka turns and the world moves on,
Beyond the slums—that, Eddie felt sure, was what they had been even before the evil days came—was a gleaming wall. Blaine was moving slowly in that direction. They could see a deep square notch cut in the white stone. The monorail track passed through it.
“LOOK TOWARD THE FRONT OF THE CABIN, PLEASE,” Blaine invited. They did, and the forward wall reappeared—a blue-upholstered cir-cle that seemed to float in empty space. It was unmarked by a door; if there was a way to get into the operator’s room from the Barony Cabin, Eddie couldn’t see it. As they watched, a rectangular area of this front wall darkened, going from blue to violet to black. A moment later, a bright red line appeared on the rectangle, squiggling across its surface. Violet dots appeared at irregular intervals along the line, and even before names appeared beside the dots, Eddie realized he was looking at a route-map, one not much different from those which were mounted in
New York subway stations and on the trains themselves. A flashing green dot appeared at Lud, which was Blaine’s base of operations as well as his terminating point.
“YOU ARE LOOKING AT OUR ROUTE OF TRAVEL. ALTHOUGH THERE ARE SOME TWISTS AND TURNS ALONG THE BUNNY-TRAIL, YOU WILL NOTE THAT OUR COURSE KEEPS FIRMLY TO THE SOUTHWEST—ALONG THE PATH OF THE BEAM. THE TOTAL DISTANCE IS JUST OVER EIGHT THOUSAND WHEELS—OR SEVEN THOUSAND MILES, IF YOU PREFER THAT UNIT OF MEASURE. IT WAS ONCE MUCH LESS, BUT THAT WAS BEFORE ALL TEMPORAL SYNAPSES BEGAN TO MELT DOWN.”
“What do you mean, temporal synapses?” Susannah asked. Blaine laughed his nasty laugh . . . but did not answer her question. “AT MY TOP SPEED, WE WILL REACH THE TERMINATING POINT OF MY RUN IN EIGHT HOURS AND FORTY-FIVE MINUTES.”
“Eight hundred-plus miles an hour over the ground,” Susannah said. Her voice was soft with awe. “Jesus-God.”
“I AM, OF COURSE, MAKING THE ASSUMPTION THAT ALL TRACKAGE ALONG MY ROUTE REMAINS INTACT. IT HAS BEEN NINE YEARS AND FIVE MONTHS SINCE I’VE BOTHERED TO MAKE THE RUN, SO I CAN’T SAY FOR SURE.”