make the best of what you’ve got.”
“But wouldn’t you like to escape?”
He stared at her, smoke from the cigarette drifting across his blind eye so it
did not cause him discomfort, and he thought to himself, very odd question.
“Escape what?” he said. “What else is there? We know a little of what’s going
on—” he made a vague gesture that took in the entire world, “—though not that
much, communications being what they are. Even so, it seems that out there is
much the same as it is around here. Pretty shitty. Listen.” He leaned forward,
jabbing the tip of his cigarette in her direction. “I’ll tell you. A person gets
around with the Trader. I’ve been with him for maybe ten years, and we’ve been
all over. We’ve been as far west as you can get without falling off the edge, up
through the mountains and down to the Hot Seas. There used to be a wide coastal
plain there—cities, highways, millions of people, but it sank. Plain sank. Seems
there was a fault or something in the earth and it was a number-one target and
they hit it and it just tore the earth’s crust apart and the whole deal just
slid into the sea. Goodbye, that particular part of civilization.”
She said, “California. That’s what it was, that’s what they called it.”
“Well, there’s no such place anymore. Hasn’t been for a hundred years or more.
Not since the Nuke. We thought of trying to salvage something from the
seabed—there must be riches down there! A lost world! But it’s too far and we
don’t have the gear. And the sea is hot and bubbling and scummy, and there’s
things down there only a crazy man would dream up.”
“You could say that about everywhere.”
“Sure. Doesn’t alter my argument, though. Which is— the West? Forget it. Okay—”
he warmed to his theme, “—the Southwest. Maybe you know this, maybe you don’t.
There used to be desert down there, out of everyone’s way. They were doing
things they didn’t want people to know about. Only snag was, the other side did
know about it—they must have known about it because they pounded it, flattened
it. Took it out. There’s only the wind there now, and sometimes that just
literally sears what’s left. And where there’s no wind, there’s nuclear garbage
floating in the sky in great clouds as thick as mountains. Sometimes it flares
up and sets the night on fire. I’ve seen it. The sky burns.” His voice was
softer now, his eye unfocused. “Burns for days and nights on end. And then—” he
snapped his fingers, “—it stops. Just like that. You don’t know why, and you’ll
never know why. But it just stops, the fire dies, and all you have left is
floating nuclear junk.” He cocked an eyebrow at her. “You figure that’s
paradise?”
“No, that’s not what I’m—”
“So what about the North? It’s cold up there. Hellish cold. There’s guys up
there, they don’t take their furs off more than once a year. If that. Didn’t
used to be so all-fired warm before, so it’s said, except for plains where wheat
grew, but it’s cold all over now. It could be that the ice from the far north
has shifted south, and maybe it’s still on the move, maybe it won’t stop until
the whole world is covered with it—a new ice age. Not in our lifetime, I guess.
But it’s a frozen hell up there, believe me. I’ve seen it, I’ve tried to trek
through it. The guys who live there, the Franchies, they’d love to trade, but we
don’t have the means, the proper equipment. You go up there and your gas freezes
in the tanks and gets like jelly.”
“So let’s try South. I’m easy. Like this, just you and me, we can go anywhere.
So—South. Deep down south.” His tone darkened. “Now that’s a place, let me tell
you. A dark locale. Far as I can tell it used to be an area of mainly
grasslands, woodlands, all over. But now it’s jungle, swamp and rot. There’s
more mutants per acre down there than any place I’ve seen. I don’t know why.