s [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

Three years wiping out everything east of the Mississippi, and I almost save a digital chronograph."
"Texas Instruments?" asked Heather.
"Yeah."
"That's not high technology," she said, and they all laughed. Then they fell silent, and Elouise wondered if
they were all thinking the same thing: that jokes about brand names will be dead within a generation, if
they were not already dead. They watched the Rectifier in silence, waiting for the timer to finish its delay.
Suddenly there was a shining in the air, a dazzling not-light that made them squint. They had seen this
many times before, from the air and from the ground, but this was the last time, and so they saw it as if it
were the first.
The airplane corroded as if a thousand years were passing in seconds. But it wasn't true corrosion. There
was no rust-only dissolution as molecules separated and seeped down into the loosened earth. Glass
became sand; plastic corrupted to oil; the metal also drifted down into the ground and came to rest in a
vein at the bottom of the Rectifier field. Whatever else the metal might look like to a future geologist, it
wouldn't look like an artifact. It would look like iron. And with so many similar pockets of iron and
copper and aluminum and tin spread all over the once-civilized world, it was not likely that they would
suspect human interference. Elouise was amused, thinking of the treatises that would someday be written,
about the two states of workable metals-the ore state and the pure-metal vein. She hoped it would retard
their progress a little.
The airplane shivered into nothing, and the Rectifier also died in the field. A few minutes after the Rectifier
disappeared, the field also faded.
"Amen and amen," said Bill, maudlin again. "All clean now."
Elouise only smiled. She said nothing of the other Rectifier, which was in her knapsack. Let the others
think all the work was done.
Amy poked her finger in Charlie's eye. Charlie swore and set her down. Amy started to cry and Charlie
knelt by her and hugged her. Amy's arms went tightly around his neck. "Give Daddy a kiss," Elouise said.
"Well, time to go," rasped Ugly-Bugly's voice. "Why the hell did you pick this particular spot?"
Elouise cocked her head. "Ask Charlie."
Charlie flushed. Elouise watched him grimly. "Elouise and I once came here," he said. "Before
Rectification began. Nostalgia, you know." He smiled shyly and the others laughed. Except Elouise. She
was helping Amy urinate. She felt the weight of the small Rectifier in her knapsack, and did not tell
anyone the truth: that she had never been in Virginia before in her life.
"Good a spot as any," Heather said. "Well, bye."
Well, bye. That was all, that was the end of it, and Heather walked away to the west, toward the
Shenandoah Valley.
"Seeya," Bill said.
"Like hell," Ugly-Bugly added.
Impulsively Ugly-Bugly hugged Elouise, and Bill cried, and then they took off northeast, toward the
Potomac, where they would doubtless find a community growing up along the clean and fish-filled river.
Just Charlie, Amy, and Elouise left in the empty, blackened field where the airplane had died. Elouise
tried to feel some great pain at the separation from the others, but could not. They had been together
every day for years now, going from supply dump to supply dump, wrecking city and town, destroying
and using up the artificial world. But had they been friends? If it had not been for their task, they would
never have been friends. They were not the same kind of people.
And then Elouise was ashamed of her feelings. Not her kind of people? Because Heather liked what
grass did to her and had never owned a car or had a driver's license in her life? Because Ugly-Bugly had
a face hideously deformed by cancer surgery? Because Bill always worked Jesus into the conversation,
even though half the time he was an atheist? Because they just weren't in the same social circles? There
were no social circles now. Just people trying to survive in a bitter world they weren't bred for. There
were only two classes now-those who would make it, and those who wouldn't.
Which class am I? thought Elouise.
"Where should we go?" Charlie asked.
Elouise picked up Amy and handed her to Charlie. "Where's the time capsule, Charlie?"
Charlie took Amy and said, "Hey, Amy, baby, I'll bet we find some farming community between here
and the Rappahanock."
"Doesn't matter if you tell me, Charlie. The instruments found it before we landed. You did a damn good [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]