Chapter Fourteen
She was now armed with purpose, and felt exhilarated at having determined her next move, but that did not make figuring out where exactly to go an easy task. She had collapsed in exhaustion not long after she discovered her father’s name, pulling the desk chair’s cushion off from its Velcro and curling up to sleep with it on the hard carpeted floor. She slept fitfully, waking several times in the night in panic, sure that she had heard someone moving in the complex around her, but once awake would find only silence. She dreamed of her father, a time he had taken her to look for edible tubers, his certainty that they were always just on the other side of the horizon, the way she clutched at his gritty hands. When she finally rose from her sleep, she felt disoriented with no visual cues to the time.
The problem was not so much a lack of information as the wrong kind of information. Big Flat’s database in fact had a fairly extensive amount of information on the Colony’s geographical location, and while it was necessarily old, she had a specific destination in mind to at least begin her search. Too specific, as it turned out: she had been provided with precise coordinate data that, while essential in the GPS era, was useless to her. The computer had helpfully provided her with a map, but this too was less useful than it might have seemed. Haojing had crawled across every inch of the landscape that was accessible to her by foot, but the sense of scale was lost in a world where powered vehicles were rare. Eventually, she pieced together a destination from a combination of maps and Big Flat’s overly precise distance estimates, using landmarks she knew to create a picture of where she would walk and for how long.
“All this power and no fucking printer,” she said to herself irritably as she sketched a crude map into her notebook.
There would be no chance to take a trip home; it was simply too far out of the way. Besides, she had no desire to give Long Fei false hope. She had no way of knowing if this group still existed, no way of knowing if the particular scientist was still alive, no way of knowing if they would help her even if she found them. All she had to offer was a tenuous connection to a father she had not seen in years. And, she was forced to admit to herself, she was running on empty. She could not imagine adding dozens of miles to her trip. She would have to scavenge for food already. No, there was no heading home. But she would make a detour.
First, though, she had to ask something of Big Flat. She had woken up filled with a vague sense of disappointment and gloom, certain that there was far more she should ask of this supercomputer but entirely unsure what exactly it was. She was there to save her brother, but on her long journey she had daydreamed about the possibilities, about Big Flat, about its potential to enable human renewal. Now she sat staring at the blinking cursor, eager to start her journey, unsure of what to say.
> What happens if there’s an intruder? If someone tries to scavenge your parts?
System self-defensive functions ensure complete hardware destruction in the event of malicious appropriation.> Specify.
In the event of breach of the physical integrity of hardware enclosures, explosive charges are automatically triggered, causing collapse of this facility and surrounding environment.She sat for a while, thinking of something else to ask, but did not type. The questions that came to her were questions of why, questions she knew even the mightiest computer was unequipped to answer. She halfheartedly tapped a few times on the keyboard, erasing each time she did, before giving up. The computer seemed at once to offer a world of possibility and a series of dead ends, just another set of foreclosed futures for someone who wanted more than could be found in a dying world.
She resisted the urge to say goodbye to a computer before rising to go. She carefully pushed the chair back where she had found it and shut the door behind her. As she made her way down the dark corridor to the entrance, she told herself that perhaps others had come and sought help from here before, and like her had left the computer as they found it.
Though she braced herself for it she was still momentarily stunned by the shock of light as she emerged from the crack in the door at the end of the tunnel. She pinned it at mid-morning, perhaps 10 AM by the sun’s position in the sky. “Use your fingers,” her father’s voice admonished her, and she held them up to the horizon, dead south, counting fractions of the sky to where the sun sat in the haze. Satisfied that she knew the time, she set about to get her bearings and determine her exact direction. She pulled up the map she had cobbled together in her notebook and stared off into the distance, frowning. The easiest thing to do was to head east, along a ridge of wooded mountains until she came to a river that hooked north. If her map was right, they would form a natural path that would lead, more or less, in the direction she had to go. The ridge, meanwhile, would allow her a degree of protection, as she could maneuver up in altitude when she needed to look out for danger. It was the most sensible plan. But her eyes were drawn somewhat farther south than the mountains, towards her detour. She nodded and headed out.
It was well past sundown when she settled in to sleep. Her destination was less than an hour away, but she needed to kill time. She needed it to be day when she arrived. First, because in the dark she would never be able to find the old farm, tucked in a hidden fold of the foothills that offered a kind of natural camouflage. And second, because she needed her approach to be as unthreatening as possible. So she wandered a couple dozen meters into the brush and settled next to an old tree, grasping about for dry leaves to cover her lower half, pulling her feet, chafed and blistered., from her damp boots.
The cottage itself was nestled up against a massive oak tree, and the thin smoke that emerged from its chimney was quickly lost in the fog that reliably spread across the landscape in the early morning. That smoke was a good sign; the condition of the farm was not. Her decade-old memory was of acres of corn and soybean, which in a world of tiny struggling gardens was extraordinary. Even accounting for the exaggerations of childhood memories, the contrast was stark. The vast sweep of what had been agriculture had become, as so much else had, the irregular regularity of wild vegetation. As she crept closer she saw a few sad tomato plants, some wild sorghum, and a modest herb garden, the mint threatening to colonize the rest of the plot. For a moment she feared that her long detour was for nothing. But as she came over a rise, she saw them, ghostly forms in the fog, a half-dozen black horses in a pen.
She fought down her natural instincts to remain out of sight and walked, standing as tall as she could, up what was once a stone path to the front door. She let her pack shake, and took deliberately loud steps as she moved.
“Hello!” she shouted out, with exaggerated cheer. She walked towards the door. The cottage seemed to be sinking into its foundation; the screen windows were full of holes. Vines crept up the side of the building, into the windows, into the roof. She walked up to the door and knocked briskly on the jam, then stood there faltering for an agonizing minute.
One never knew, in this world, how strangers might react. Isolation became the water in which everyone swam; so few people remembered what it truly meant to be social anymore. And so conversation had the affect of a play, a pantomime, as both sides tried to remember – or, if young, tried to invent – the cadence of what it meant simply to sit and talk with another. Haojing was old enough to remember when her parents had friends over, but even then there was something hushed in the way they talked, as if they felt that the world’s store of conversation was running out and that they had to spend as little of it as necessary. This house she was now standing out in front of was itself a place that she associated with the warmth of human bodies telling human stories in a human place. But now this house too had been taken by the undergrowth, creeper vines snaking lazily up its sides.
“Well, come in, then,” she heard a cracking voice say, so she did.
The cottage smelled mildewy and stale, but the scent of a bubbling root stew helped cut the odor. Light from the windows and breaks in the roof lit the space unevenly. A women in a tattered dress, patched and filthy, stood in front of an old metal trash can, tending to the fire inside of it. A metal hood had been built into the wall, and it caught and carried most of the smoke to what was left of a chimney, its brick fireplace having crumbled and fallen into a heap. Haojing admired the construction of the hood, especially the tight connections between its various metal pieces. As she did the woman turned towards her.
“Yes, it’s good craftsmanship,” she said, seeing Haojing examining it. “My late husband built it for me.”
Haojing fought down her surprise. Though it had been a decade since she had seen this woman she was still shocked by how aged she looked. She had been a young woman when Chien-yi had taken them to visit, not too many years older than Haojing was now. But she looked elderly, her face weathered and wrinkled, her eyes dim. Haojing fought down her surprise but was sure the older woman had registered it all the same.
“You could sell those bricks,” she said limply, waving towards the dusty piles.
“Sell them to who, sweetheart?” said the older woman.
She nodded, feeling stupid. Not knowing what else to say, she introduced herself.
“I’m Haojing Wang. Chien-yi’s daughter. We met, a very long time ago.”
The older woman studied her face for a while but said nothing. She gestured to Haojing to come stand by her fire. An old pot hung over the mouth of the trashcan, and she stirred her stew with a stick. The heat was intense, but Haojing didn’t mind. She snuck her feet closer and felt relief as her boots dried.
“I’m afraid the farm isn’t what it used to be. But then,” she said, as she tossed a handful of wild herbs into her pot, “you have no cart or mule, so I assume you aren’t here for crops.”
Haojing nodded.
“I’m here for a horse. I need to buy a horse.”
“And a saddle.”
Again, Haojing flushed in embarrassment. She was not quite sure why she felt so awkward.
“Yes. Yes, and a saddle.”
“Do you remember my name?”
She shook her head no. She felt bad about it, and yet the tension and anxiety left her as soon as she was asked.
“No. I’m very sorry. It’s just been so long.”
“Yes, that’s true. Hold on, I need to let this sit for a while.”
She bent over and placed her forearms, clad only in a thin dress, on either side of the pot, and lifted it from where it hung. Haojing winced to think of the heat, but she betrayed no signs of discomfort. She waddled over with the pot to the cracked linoleum counter and sat it down. She grabbed a tattered washcloth and rubbed her hands with it.
“Come on outside and let’s talk.”
Haojing followed her outside, through a back door and out to the horse pen. In contrast with the now-humble garden, the horses pasture was wide and long, many acres stretching out in front of her. For a moment she was amazed at how short the grass was, compared to the teeming vegetation all around them, then realized that horses graze on grass. The old woman walked over to a fence post and leaned against it, looking like she was born to do so.
“I have several saddles, and since I can’t ride anymore, they’re useless to me, so I’ll give you one for free. But a horse is a very different question, and I can’t see that you have much of anything to trade. That scrip they use in some of the villages is useless to me and I have no generator for electricity.”
Wordlessly, Haojing reached down into her bag and pulled out a prized possession, one she had been hoarding for years for just such a scenario. The label was dingy and peeling, but the word “IBUPROFEN” was clear and legible in dull yellow font. She gave the bottle a shake.
“37 tablets. 200 milligrams.” She held it out to the older woman, who grasped it with trembling fingers. She struggled with the childproof cap for a moment, then popped it open, peering into the plastic container. She carefully counted them out with her finger, then brought it up to her nose to smell.
“They’re real? Still potent?”
Haojing nodded emphatically.
“Yes. I swear to you. I took a couple just a year and a half ago. I promise, I’m not here to scam you.”
The older woman nodded slowly.
“Yes, I suppose there would be easier ways.” She snapped the cap back shut. “We’ll go inside, and I’ll take a couple, and if I my hands ache less in an hour, it’s a deal. And you can have soup with me while we wait. How’s that?”
Haojing agreed. She could not imagine leaving empty-handed. The older woman looked out at the horses.
“They are getting harder to feed,” she said, sighing. “I suppose we should figure out which one you’ll take.”
She whistled then, a sharp sound that passed right through Haojing and impressed her with its vigor. Out of the fog they trotted up, a small pack of beautiful black horses. Haojing could not remember the last time she had seen creatures as beautiful, or as intimidating. She silently gave thanks that she had not been asked how long ago it had been since she had ridden one, as the truth was it had been at this very farm. One of the horses strode right up to the fence, and nuzzled up against the older woman, who rubbed her mane lovingly.
“Oh, she’s such a beauty,” said Haojing.
“Yes, yes she is,” said the other woman, frowning. “And she’s the most precious thing in my world that’s left.”
She gestured, grunting, to another horse that was strolling lazily their way.
“Him, now. Him I don’t like.”
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