Nothing, of course. It was quiescent, slumbering, a dreaming demon. She hadn’t turned it on.
With both thumbs at once, Harrie flicked up the latches and opened the case.
It was cool inside, cool enough that she could feel the difference on her face when she bent over it. She kept the lid at half-mast, trying to block that cool air with her body so it wouldn’t drift away. She tipped her head to see inside: blue foam threaded through with cooling elements, shaped to hold the contents without rattling. Papers in a plastic folder, and something in sealed culture plates, clear jelly daubed with ragged polka dots.
There was a sticky note tacked on the plastic folder. She reached into the cool case and flicked the sticky note out, bringing it into the light. Patch’s handwriting. She blinked.
“Sacramento next, if these don’t get there,” it said, thick black definite lines. “Like Faustus, we all get one good chance to change our minds.”
If you meet the Buddha on the road—
“I always thought there was more to that son of a bitch than met the eye,” she said, and closed the case, and stuffed the note into her pocket beside the pen. She jammed her helmet back on, double-checking the filter that had maybe started leaking a little around the edges in Tonopah, slung her leg over the Kawasaki’s saddle, and closed the choke.
It gasped dry when she clutched and thumbed the start button, shaking between her legs like an asthmatic pony. She gave it a little throttle, then eased up on it like easing up on a virgin lover. Coaxing, pleading under her breath. Gasoline fumes from her mouth made her eyes tear inside the helmet; the tears or something else washed the grit away. One cylinder hiccuped. A second one caught.
She eased the choke as the Kawasaki coughed and purred, shivering, ready to run.
Both dosimeters kicked hard as she rolled across the flat, open plain toward Fallon, a deadly oasis in its own right. Apparently Nick hadn’t been satisfied with a leukemia cluster and perchlorate and arsenic tainting the ground water; the trees Harrie saw as she rolled up on the startling green of the farming town weren’t desert cottonwoods but towering giants of the European forest, and something grey and massive, shimmering with lovely crawling blue Cherenkov radiation, gleamed behind them. The signs she passed were in an alphabet she didn’t understand, but she knew the name of this place.
A light rain was falling as she passed through Chernobyl.
It drove down harder as she turned west on the 50, toward Reno and Sparks and a crack under the edge of the clouds that glowed a toxic, sallow color with evening coming on. Her tires skittered on slick, greasy asphalt.
Where the cities should have been, stinking piles of garbage crouched against the yellowing evening sky, and nearly naked, starvation-slender people picked their way over slumped rubbish, calling the names of loved ones buried under the avalanche. Water sluiced down her helmet, soaked her saddle, plastered her leathers to her body. She wished she dared drink the rain. It didn’t make her cool. It only made her wet.
She didn’t turn her head to watch the wretched victims of the garbage slide. She was one hour out of Sacramento, and in Manila of fifty years ago.
Donner Pass was green and pleasant, sunset staining the sky ahead as red as meat. She was in plenty of time. It was all downhill from here.
Nick wasn’t about to let her get away without a fight.
The big one had rerouted the Sacramento River too, and Harrie turned back at the edge because the bridge was down and the water was on fire. She motored away, a hundred meters, two hundred, until the heat of the burning river faded against her back. “What’s that?” she asked the slim man in the pinstriped suit who waited for her by the roadside.
“Cuyahoga river fire,” he said. “1969. Count your blessings. It could have been Bhopal.”
“Blessings?” She spared him a sardonic smile, invisible behind her helmet. He tilted the brim of his hat with a grey-gloved finger. “I suppose you could say that. What is it really?”
“Phlegethon.”
She raised her visor and peeked over her shoulder, watching the river burn. Even here, it was hot enough that her sodden leathers steamed against her back. The back of her hand pressed her breast pocket. The paper from Patch’s note crinkled; her Cross poked her in the tit.
She looked at Nick, and Nick looked at her. “So that’s it.”
“That’s all she wrote. It’s too far to jump.”
“I can see that.”
“Give me the case and I’ll let you go home. I’ll give you the Kawasaki and I’ll give you your freedom. We’ll call it even.”
She eyed him, tension up her right leg, toe resting on the ground. The great purring bike shifted heavily between her legs, lithe as a cat, ready to turn and spit gravel from whirring tires. “Too far to jump.”
“That’s what I said.”
Too far to jump. Maybe. And maybe if she gave him what was in the case, and doomed Sacramento like Bhopal, like Chernobyl, like Las Vegas… Maybe she’d be damning herself even if he gave it back to her. And even if she wasn’t, she wasn’t sure she and the Kawasaki could live with that answer.
If he wanted to keep her, he had to let her make the jump, and she could save Sacramento. If he was willing to lose her, she might die on the way over, and Sacramento might die with her, but they would die free.
Either way, Nick lost. And that was good enough for her.
“Devil take the hindmost,” she said under her breath, and touched the throttle one more time.
SPEECH SOUNDS
by Octavia E. Butler
Octavia E. Butler was the author of a dozen novels and several short stories—a giant of the field who died long before her time. She was the first science fiction writer to be receive the MacArthur Foundation’s prestigious “genius” grant, and also received a lifetime achievement award for her writing from the PEN American Center. In the speculative fiction field, she was also well-appreciated, having won two Hugos, two Nebulas, and a Locus Award—with her novelette “Bloodchild,” winning all three. She died in February 2006.
Butler’s work frequently explored the subject of life after apocalypse. Though none of her novel-length works would be classified primarily as post-apocalyptic, her three multi-book series—the
This story, which won the Hugo Award in 1984, was conceived by Butler after witnessing a bloody, senseless fight while riding the bus. In her story collection,
There was trouble aboard the Washington Boulevard bus. Rye had expected trouble sooner or later in her journey. She had put off going until loneliness and hopelessness drove her out. She believed she might have one group of relatives left alive—a brother and his two children twenty miles away in Pasadena. That was a day’s journey one-way, if she were lucky. The unexpected arrival of the bus as she left her Virginia Road home had seemed to be a piece of luck—until the trouble began.
Two young men were involved in a disagreement of some kind, or, more likely, a misunderstanding. They stood in the aisle, grunting and gesturing at each other, each in his own uncertain T-stance as the bus lurched over the potholes. The driver seemed to be putting some effort into keeping them off balance. Still, their gestures stopped just short of contact—mock punches, hand games of intimidation to replace lost curses.
