Unknown - The_Growing_589064

Harcourt’s eyes are sad. “Dakota….”

“You won’t have to move there, Fenton. We’ll set something up so it’ll be like the old west. Have all the cases lumped together once or twice a month. I’ll even have a driver come down and pick you up and drop you off back home.” She’s perfectly aware that she’s begging, but knows as well that this is much more important than her pride.

The sudden silence is long and sharp as a shadow-blade dividing the space between them. Dakota relaxes, knowing she’s done the best she can and can only accept his decision, whatever it might be.

His hands clench in tightly made fists, but a reluctant nod is pulled from him, like a confession pulled from a lawbreaker when he realizes the consequences of remaining silent.

“I have conditions,” he remarks in a soft voice.

“Name them.”

“I’ll reserve that right until I set my eyes upon this new Xanadu, if you don’t mind.”

“Fine.”

He nods again. “Store that death trap of yours behind the house. We’ll leave in my truck.”

“Thank you, Fenton,” she says with real emotion.

“Save those for my final decision. Now let’s go.”

*

“It reminds me of the Warsaw ghetto.”

Maggie, sitting beside her in the back of the APC, raises a quizzical eyebrow, and Kirsten falls silent. The convoy of armored vehicles moves slowly through the streets of Rapid City, strung out the length of a city block to allow maneuvering room in the event of attack. Their shadows, spiked with the bristling shapes of automatic weapons, glide along the asphalt beside the trucks, sharp-edged as spilled paint in the noon sun. After a moment Kirsten adds, “I don’t mean the buildings are similar. I mean. . .” she pauses again, searching for the precise word. “They feel. . .robbed.”

Maggie, her hand resting on the M-16 in her lap, does not reply immediately. Then she says, “It’s not just the emptiness. It’s the devastation.”

“Exactly.”

The weeks she has spent on the Base have spoiled her, Kirsten reflects. Even in the first days of the uprising, with bodies frozen or rotting where they lay at the whim of the weather, she has seen nothing like the urban landscape that scrolls across the small rectangle of the vehicle’s armored glass. Houses still stand, for the most part, though here and there blackened beams thrust up out of yet-unmelted snow covering the burnt- out rubble. Some, their windows boarded up, might have been purposefully abandoned when the inhabitants fled. Like others suddenly emptied, though, their doors stand open on broken hinges, odd bits of furniture and clothing scattered across dead lawns sodden with snowmelt. Brightly painted ceramic shards litter the sidewalk where the convoy pauses to turn, the wire frame of a lampshade jammed into the hollow of a tree root; the remains of sofa cushions tumble across a porch where a washing machine lies toppled beside them. Shards of glass cling to the frame of broken-out windows. Here and there a line of holes in splintered siding or gouged brick testifies to automatic weapons fire. There is no way to tell how much of the damage has been done by androids, how much by the looters and two-footed predators who have followed in their wake.

As they move toward the center of the city, signs of life begin to appear. In the abandoned parking lot of an apartment complex, a pair of ten-year-old boys and a cocker spaniel are chasing a Frisbee under the watchful eye of a grey-haired woman with pistol strapped to her hip. Above them, laundry festoons a cobweb of ropes strung between balconies, children’s sweaters in bright pink and yellow, work shirts, a woman’s nightgown in faded black satin and lace. Across the side of one of the buildings, red paint proclaims, JESUS IS COMING BACK!! under a crudely drawn image of a bearded man in a robe. The figure brandishes a sword with one hand, an open book in the other.

“You know, the fanatics scare me as badly as the androids,” Maggie says softly. “The damned metalheads might push us back to the Middle Ages, but it’ll be the schizos who hear God talking to them from the toaster that’ll keep us there.”

“They’re beginning to dig in. We may have to fight them, too.”

“Ironic, isn’t it? First we put down the slave rebellion; next we’re going to have to feed the fanatics and the self-appointed prophets to the lions.”

“Poor lions.” Kirsten’s mouth quirks up in an involuntary smile. “You know Dakota would never let us do that to innocent animals.”

“Or Tacoma. He’s the one with the affinity for cats.” Maggie leans forward and taps the driver on the shoulder. “We’re getting to people. Start the tape.”

Kirsten knows what to expect, but the sound of her own amplified voice is still a shock. The truck’s external speakers sputter and crackle for a moment, then boom out, “Attention! Attention please! This is Kirsten King, speaking for the United States Government. A census will be taken today and tomorrow at the City Auditorium. All citizens are asked to cooperate in determining the needs of the civilian population and in the re-establishment of civil institutions. Thank you for your assistance.” The recording plays over and over again.

As they approach the intersection of suburbia and the business district, signs of habitation become more common. Here and there they pass a pedestrian or a bicyclist. A man on a mule, a double pannier of winter apples suspended across its withers, becomes an unofficial roadblock when his mount halts suddenly in the middle of an intersection, apparently frightened by the strange, square metal things bearing down on it. The lead driver manages to swerve in time, and for an instant Kirsten finds herself face to face with a wall-eyed, bucking beast, its braying clearly audible even through the bulletproof glass and steel walls of the APC. Then her convoy sweeps past, leaving the rider tugging frantically at the creature’s reins.

“There’s a prophecy for you,” Maggie observes wryly. “The Jeep of the future.”

Their route carries them past the block-long remains of a Wal-Mart. The store itself stands back from the street, its massive bulk dark through the steel frames of shattered doors. Its parking lot, though, has been transformed into an open marketplace, with a hundred or so booths of timber studs and plywood crowded onto the asphalt. Many of them stand empty, and Kirsten takes that as a hopeful sign that the proprietors have reported as requested to the City Auditorium to be counted and identified. Others are still open for business. A pen on one side holds animal with long, shaggy coats, whether sheep or wool goats she cannot be sure. Another offers stacks of canned goods, looted from the Wal-Mart itself or other grocery chains; still a third displays a double rank of bicycles, a heavy chain run through their rear wheels into a staple pounded into the pavement at each end of the line. Under a sign that proclaims the occupant a “Taylor,” a woman sits at an old-fashioned treadle sewing machine, steadily feeding a garment of plaid flannel under the needle while a man, evidently her customer, stands by in his pants and undershirt. He holds a chicken firmly tucked under one arm. No prices are posted anywhere.

Kirsten has seen marketplaces like this in North Africa and in parts of Latin America.

Most were at least in part tourist traps, designed to bring in American dollars and German d-marks, attracting local business only incidentally and in small volume. And here, in a deserted parking lot, is the wealthiest, most vigorous economy in the history of the world, reduced to trading eggs for a stolen blanket or the mending of a torn sleeve.

A cold lump of fear congeals in her stomach. With it comes the realization that until now she has acknowledged only two possibilities: either they would all die, which has seemed by far the more likely outcome; or they would survive, pass through a rough patch of perhaps a year or so, until society could be restored to something like normality. Of course, some things would be different, with the numbers of men drastically reduced for a generation or two. Power balances would shift. But she has never truly doubted that enough technology, and the technicians to run it, could survive to make the world a reasonably comfortable place once again.