“This is where I blacksmith.” He gestured at a couple of large vents, one in one wall near the floor and another in the ceiling. “Battery drives fans behind those. I’ll show you that sometime when I’m working. Gets hot in here, then.”
Jeebee could believe it. There was barely room for both of them in the small room as it was. But he was intrigued by the idea of blacksmithing. It had been one of his dreams as a child, to hammer together pieces of white-hot metal and make things with them.
They left and Jeebee was turned loose to study his list. It included a number of car batteries. Two of these were up and working at any given time, two were live and ready to be put to use, and eight others were brand new, had no acid in them, and were waiting to act as replacements for the present working batteries.
These on-duty batteries were charged by a generator hooked to the wheels, as Merry had said, and produced light when the bulbs were turned on, in each of the rooms of the wagon.
Later on they stopped for lunch and Nick took him around the outside of the wagon. On the far side of it, which was why Jeebee had not seen it before, there was a long pipe built into the body of the wagon, so from outside it showed merely as a slight bulge at the base of the box body, its outside painted black so that it resembled a decoration strip about eight inches wide. The pipe held water, which was purified after it was put in by being run through what was essentially a distilling apparatus. It was warmed by the heat of the sun absorbed by the black paint, to the point where it was hot enough that it came to the boil almost immediately, if put in a pot over the stove that was built into the wagon. That stove could cook things either with electricity or with ordinary fuel like wood.
“The only things you don’t have to worry about,” Nick said as they finished the tour of inspection, “are the wagons and the driving. The driving’s Paul’s responsibility—and he’ll be teaching you how to do that, because you’ll take your turn at that eventually, although he likes doing most of the driving himself. Then there’s the horses, and the horses are all Merry’s responsibility. How well can you shoot?”
Jeebee had gotten a little tired of being deprecating about what he could do.
“I’m not the world’s best marksman—” he began.
“That’s all I need to hear,” Nick cut him off. “Anyone who tells me he’s not the world’s best marksman can’t hit a barrel at five feet. Well, Merry will teach you shooting as well as how to ride. She’s a natural shot; even better than I am—and that’s saying a lot.”
“Oh?” said Jeebee.
“That’s right. You’ll see,” said Nick. “Now, that’s enough of that. It’s time for the wagon to quit pretty soon for the day. We always stop well short of sunset, so anybody around where we are will have a chance to see us in place for a while and spread the word. Brings customers. I’ll be cooking tonight. You can come help me.”
CHAPTER 9
The dinner Nick put together was essentially a stew made of beef and vegetables. To Jeebee’s surprise, the other man opened an apparently heavily insulated and tightly fitting locker in the room containing trade goods, in which there was a good deal of bacon and smoked meat, as well as what looked to Jeebee like a quarter from an obviously recently butchered, cow-sized animal.
He puzzled silently to himself as he watched and helped Nick in the preparation of the meal, as to how they could have fresh meat like this when they showed no signs of taking time out to hunt for it. Then it woke in him that of course the meat had come from the same place the vegetables had. Paul would have customers with such things to trade along their route. At a guess, the smoked meats and the bacon were for a time when such fresh meat was not available.
The wagon had a small metal stove, ingeniously designed to be easily detached from its flue and carried outside by insulated handles.
Nick carried it outside this evening after the wagon stopped and did the cooking. It had a firebox underneath its solid metal top that was fed with chunks of already burning wood from the fire he had lit immediately beside the wagon when they had finished moving for the day.
With the stew they had bread, produced from another locker, and which also must have been traded for. Both foods were served up on a sort of compartmental tray like those Jeebee had occasionally seen in school lunchrooms. Folding lawn chairs were brought out from the wagon and they all ate with their trays on their knees, sitting around the fire. After they were done, everybody gave their trays and utensils to Jeebee, and Nick took him around to show him how to get hot water from the solar-heated tank on the far side of the wagon. The water flowed from a spigot at one end of the tank, into a washbasin that opened out like a swinging compartment table from the side of the wagon, forward of the tank.
“Wash your hands before you wash the dishes,” said Merry.
Jeebee felt a moment’s irritation at the tone of her voice. However, he was surprised to notice, it was not as much irritation as he might once have felt; and it went away in a moment. There was something about these new times that allowed for peremptory orders, and for a lack of resentment on the part of those who had to take them.
He was at the bottom of the chain of command, here at this wagon. It seemed natural, therefore, that everybody should give him orders. Besides, he realized, looking at his hands, they were indeed dirty. He used the basin’s soap and some water from the tank to wash at the spigot. The water was, remarkably, not merely warm, but hot. He wet his hands, then turned the water off while he soaped up. It was a shipboard trick to conserve water, which he had read about. When he had scrubbed his soapy hands together thoroughly, he turned the spigot on again, briefly, and rinsed them clean.
He was slightly ashamed to realize he had forgotten to notice how dirty they were. Now, with clean hands, he filled the pan with water and washed the dishes.
Nick appeared in time to show him where to put them away, then led him back to the fire, where they found Paul and Merry simply sitting, talking and enjoying the colors and heat of the fire as the sunset faded and the day cooled. Nick took one of the two empty chairs. Jeebee hesitated, not taking the other one.
He turned to Paul, and waited until he and Merry paused in their conversation. Paul looked at him questioningly.
“Wolf won’t come down to the wagon,” Jeebee said, “but he’s used to getting together with me most nights just at twilight and at dawn. If you don’t mind, I’m going up into the woods where he can come up to me and feel safe.”
Paul nodded. He got to his feet and went into the wagon, coming out a few minutes later with something that looked like a very large fishing reel loaded with line. Its base was welded to a block of metal, so that it could be set upright. He carried this back to his chair, sat back down with it beside him and pulled the end of the line out, handing it to Jeebee.
“Just hang on to that when you go up into the woods,” Paul said. “Have you got a watch?”
Jeebee nodded and pulled back the cuff of his leather jacket to show the digital watch he had strapped to his right wrist.
“Right here,” he said to Paul. Consciously, he lied to them. The fact was that the watch was an experimental model with a hundred-year battery, the first and only one of its kind. It had no more been available on the market at the time when the world had fallen apart than the electric bike. But, since the others were not going out of their way to give him any unnecessary information about themselves and their possessions, Jeebee felt no need to give them information it was not immediately necessary for them to know.
“As I say, hang on to the line then,” said Paul, “and give a yank on it every five minutes or so. If you don’t feel a yank back, wait a bit then yank again. When you feel a single yank back, you’re good to stay up there for another five minutes. If you get three quick yanks, then stop whatever you’re doing and come back. If you don’t feel anything, use your own judgment about what you want to do. On that basis, go ahead.”
“Fine,” said Jeebee. He took the end of the fishing line in his grasp, wrapped it several times around his left hand and then started across the fairly level land toward some trees that here were only about fifty yards away.
The line was light, and the reel ran freely. He was hardly conscious of the pull of it against his hand as he
