Marek Huberath - Nest of Worlds

His freckled face was gray and creased, and there were bags under his eyes, because he had gone without sleep for almost twenty-four hours. He accepted the Bolyas’ invitation for the sole reason that there was no more beer in his refrigerator and the store was closed.

Suzi divided the fries up into three cardboard containers and added a spoonful of hot sauce to each.

“How was your run?” asked Spig in his too-high voice.

“The usual. Twenty days, round trip. Good work, pays well.”

“Get any black fog?”

“We always do. But this time it was only for a few hours. A few hours, that is, on the road.”

“What does it look like?” Suzi asked. At the corners of her mouth were sticky brown drops of sauce. On her first journey (from Tahian to Mougarrie) she had been too afraid to look out the window even once.

“Sort of like an ink blot. When it’s to the side, it doesn’t bother me. But when it gets on the route, then you have to drive straight into the damn thing and keep an eye on the dials so the truck won’t leave the road.”

“Doesn’t it happen that a truck or a whole caravan is lost?” Suzi ate with her mouth open, particularly when she was interested in something. It wasn’t pretty. The thought of moving filled her with anxiety, even though there had been no trouble on her previous moves.

“It happens.” Gary took a swallow of beer. He spoke slowly, for effect. “When a greenhorn is driving, there can be an accident. The fear is strong the first time you enter a blot. Some never get used to it, even after years. Daphne wakes me up every time that crap shows.”

Daphne Casali was Gary’s relief driver. They had been working together now for two years. Before that she was in journalism but without success.

“With me, there’s no fear,” Gary went on. “I never once lost my way. Seven years behind the wheel.”

“It’s good we know you,” Suzi said, spilling a little beer. “We’ll use your company when we go to Tolz, and we’ll ask for you.” Without thinking, she wiped at the beer that had got on the upholstery.

“No problem. On the back is the phone number. But make your reservation early, because they can run out of slots.” Gary handed her an Emigrant card. He always had a few in his pocket. The way he saw it, he had earned a can of beer from the Bolyas and another from the company.

Usually the rig was parked at Daphne’s house. Emboldened by his new acquaintance with the Bolyas, Gary drove it instead to his place. The truck stood in a small, private lot behind the building. Its high metal trailer gleamed with chrome and white paint. Two exhaust pipes—of nickel, symmetrical—pointed proudly at the sky, reaching far above the cabin and even above the metal screen that controlled the flow of air. When connected with its trailer, the truck took on the majesty of a monster of the road. Without the trailer, it looked incomplete, a piece of a more important whole.

Gary lay on the asphalt, making a repair under the truck, while Daphne carefully cleaned the chrome around the powerful headlights. The company required that drivers keep up on maintenance. A truck in poor condition could lose its license and, before that, customers. A change of Land was an important event, taking place only every fifteen years and two hundred days. People who moved into their new life wanted to go in a vehicle that was, if not luxurious, at least well cared for; they didn’t want mud and scratches on it.

With his thin hand Gary groped for a tool he had left in a certain spot. Daphne, without a word, placed the wrench in his seeking palm. When she spoke, she talked quickly and with gesturing. She leaned forward when she walked, keeping her hips back because they were bigger than she liked. Gary sometimes thought that, beneath the surface, she was insane, but that might have been only because her white lashes and pale eyes gave her a demented look. In the two years they worked together she had given no indication of madness; on the contrary, she was oppressively normal.

A car horn played a few bars of a stupid tune, and a brand-new red Amido rode into the little square. Gary sat up on the pavement, wiping his grease-covered hands on a rag. Daphne was now washing the hood of the truck with soap. A little trickle of sudsy water made its way to where Gary sat. He jumped up, feeling the wet on his rear.

“Watch what you’re doing, you dumb broad!”

“Get up and work a little instead of sitting on your ass,” she fired back.

From the Amido stepped a sweaty, red-faced, but happy Spig. Without a word he opened all the little doors, the hood, and the trunk. The car now resembled a red hen preparing to sit on her eggs.

Spig stuck his head in the trunk, then examined the engine. He moved from one foot to the other, glancing in Gary’s direction, in Daphne’s.

“Have pity on the jerk,” she said, throwing Gary her soap-filled rag. “Praise it.”

Gary went up to Spig. “Nice car,” he said. “Mm, it’s red inside too.” Personally he thought that Amidos were garbage.

“I got a great deal on it,” Spig said, stumbling in his speech, as if the joy made it hard for him to think. “The financing is perfect. I start making payments only in Tolz. They gave me a good trade-in for the Sitta too.”

“You paid for most of the Sitta?”

“Three-quarters.”

Daphne nodded and gave Spig and his new car an impatient look. She would have been taller than him if she stood up straight. “That should hold him, Gary,” she muttered. “We have to finish.”

“What are you doing?” Spig asked but didn’t wait for an answer.

The voice of Ra Mahleiné reached him through the dream world.

Dinner was ready. He sat down to the reheated TV-dinner pasta, as in the good old days, when he was waiting for his wife to arrive, when he didn’t know that he would find her ill, incurably ill, and when the epidemic of correlated deaths had not yet broken out. The food was the same except without the bits of cardboard that caught between his teeth. At the beginning of his stay in Davabel, life had seemed full of discomfort and tedium, and the meals were awful. Looking back, he saw that those days had held the lovely hope of happiness, a hope that now was gone.

During dinner Ra Mahleiné turned pale from a stab of pain; a cold sweat covered her forehead. It hurt her where it usually did. She had to take three pills to make the stabbing stop. Lorraine cleaned up and did the dishes. On the television news they gave the latest statistics: there were not that many recent deaths, but all were connected with David Death.

Ra Mahleiné’s pain returned.

“Read…,” she groaned, twisting in the bed. “Read that book.”

“I’ll give you some pills first.”

“No pills. Just start reading again.”

Is she delirious? he wondered. She had no fever. He looked at her carefully. Why did she insist that he read?

He wasted no time, turning to the page where he had left off.

Gary Wialic invited himself to the Bolyas, and Daphne came too. Spig’s displeasure lessened when he saw that his guests had brought a couple of six-packs with them.

“We bought a new refrigerator, a new pressure cooker, two bicycles, and a small bar cabinet,” Suzi told them. “It turns out that we get a preferential line of credit because we’re moving soon. Our bank considers us its best customers.”

“Because we owe so damn much.”

“On these new purchases we’ll make payments only once we get to Tolz,” Suzi explained cheerfully. “So now it’s like having them for free.”

Gary drank down his first beer in a few gulps and reached for the next. Daphne did the same. Her hands trembled; she was ashen. Suzi fell silent, seeing that only Spig was listening.