ODD MAN SEARCH

CHERRY WILDER

A hot wind blows in from the desert and the witch in the end room is crying for water. Brick fills up the blue dipper and heads for the little visitors’ lounge. The office block is dilapidated. There are gaping holes in the interior walls that he can’t explain and others that he kicked and gouged himself to make a kind of covered way between his rooms and the lounge. There was too much glass; little shatterproof turds of the stuff are crunching under his feet. The sky has forced itself in through the gaping frames and at night great sheets of moonlight fall and shatter on the sandy floor.

Shreds of paper cling to his legs as he clears admin and comes to the edge of the typing pool. Last week he wheeled the desks into a phalanx and covered the Selectrics with drapes. The pool is quiet: a rock in the corner, a sandy bottom, darting fish shadows, a can Brick flung into the pool.

The lounge is intact and dim; Brick remembers - he surely was not told - the jokes about ‘little visitors’. The main visitors’ lounge across the street shares a fake western storefront with the canteen, labelled Saloon and Barbershop. Both places make him queasy; the one-armed bandits are horrifying, with all their arms outstretched, one or two marked with a scarf or a handkerchief. Sturdy and staunch they stand. There are the tables in the canteen and he recalls how the girls and men stood in line, sliding along their pink trays.

The witch Arada is lying on the couch in the lounge, her eyes fever-bright in the gloom. She drinks greedily from the dipper.

‘Thanks!’

She rests her hand on his arm and it is burning hot: a square, unkept, childish hand, scratched and scarred from her fight with the desert. She was the only one who came and for three days Brick thought she was going to die.

Twink had sensed her on the perimeter and when they crept up she was sprawled on the burning sand in her black weeds, scrawling a last desperate pentacle. Her name was written on the bosom of her black gown: ARADA; she had been forty kilometres away with two ring-pull cans of diet cola. She travelled by pentacle all the way to the centre. The rest of the coven were lost; they had cast lots on which direction to drive the dune-buggy and had picked wrong. Arada wouldn’t go along. She sat in a pentacle - what else? - and watched all day and all night turned into day. Those poor mothers had pulled down some heavy working.

Now, on moonlit nights, she sings for thanksgiving. She has had Brick put out pentacles in blue masking tape all over the centre. They are inside one now, laid out on the carpet of the little visitors’ lounge.

‘Feeling better?’

‘Sure. This is just some crazy reaction, you know ...’

‘I know.’

‘In this dream the sand gets in my throat and I scream out for water.’

‘And I bring it along.’

‘Brick, where’s Twink?’

‘Isn’t he around?’

His alarm bells are ringing and flashing already. More people coming?

‘I think he got a call.’

He feels hope; his heart is ready to burst with hope and he cannot conceal it from Arada.

‘No!’ she says in exasperation. ‘No, honey, none of your folks checked in.’

Brick turns aside in embarrassment and confronts his own reflection in the mirror behind the bar. Sees a young red-haired man in jeans and a disposable T-shirt peering out anxiously from behind antique gold lettering. A thin-faced girl with seaweed hair floats in the depths of the mirror; Arada waves to him behind the ‘a’ of Salem.

The old-time tobacco ads on the glass are as phoney as the anodised brass rail below the bar; the decor is late dude ranch. Brick gazes sadly at his reflection: some late dude. Ms Todd, the director, has left instructions - explicit, brutal - for handling survivors. In his dream she comes back again, with the department heads, right up to the wire. The counters scream and the strips in Twink’s housing turn black: deadly contamination. Brick shoots them all with a six-gun and cannot ask the question: why was this red-haired specimen left behind to do the dirty work?

He drags aside drapes and a slat blind over the empty window frame and looks for Twink in the street. Tumbleweed and tumbling Coke cans. Twink will have to go on clean-up detail. Brick remembers the lumber they disposed of in Block A, beyond the canteen, and shudders. Arada is watching him.

‘Did you look at your file yet?’

‘No,’ says Brick, ‘I told you. Ms Todd had it locked away.’

‘I’m sick of hearing about that Boss Lady!’

Brick clutches a handful of fibreglass drape so hard that it squeaks.

‘Lay off!’

‘It was a routine evacuation!’ cried Arada, ‘Everyone cut out ... everywhere ...’

He catches a gleam of metal in sunlight at the end of the street. Arada is leafing through a promotional pamphlet on Todd-Gorman Research Enterprises.

‘Cybernetics ...’ she jeers. ‘They thought they had it made.’

There is a familiar tapping, followed by a bleep.

‘Hey, he’s back!’ she cries joyfully.

Brick smiles too. He cannot help smiling; he is programmed for Joy as Twink comes tapping and bleeping and dancing down the broad street.

‘What’s he say? What’s he say?’

‘Nothing,’ says Brick, ‘he’s just happy.’

He shouts: ‘Hey Twink, over here! LVL topside, pronto!’

Twink pirouettes, taps ‘wilco’, and Brick holds aside the blind so that he can scramble in through the window frame. The lounge is dark after the street, so Twink puts on two upper lights; he finds a clear space and starts reporting.

‘You’re sure?’ says Brick. ‘He says there’s another.’

He watches Arada in case she comes down with an attack of hope for her coven. But Arada is immune.

‘Only one?’ she asks Twink.

‘Tap-tap.’

‘Like me? Female, human and all?’

‘Tap. Tap-tap.’

‘Well, not-female, but human. A man.’

‘Tap-tap.’

Twink adds a whole slew of information so fast that only Brick can interpret.

‘One man with vehicle. Man in bad shape. Unarmed.’

‘He said that?’

‘Sure. Say “unarmed”. Twink. Repeat.’

Twink draws in the two flexible upper limbs on his central housing and taps once for No, with colour code lights flashing for emphatic and peaceful.

‘That’s a pretty spooky thing to program him to say,’ says Arada. ‘Unless ...’

‘I told you,’ says Brick, ‘it was a planned withdrawal.’

‘Okay, okay. Ms Todd knew what she was doing.’

Twink, a prototype Todd-Gorman Sensor Terpsichorean reacts sadly to the name with a blue light and a fluid movement of the lower limbs.

‘Come on,’ says Brick, ‘we’ll take a look.’

‘Can I ...?’ Arada sits up, hacking fingers through her hair.

‘Better not.’

‘Are you going to be armed?’

‘Twink is prepared,’ he says. ‘It’s a precaution, that’s all.’

They are trailing warily through the broken rooms, eyes on the street.

‘Go down to the Rebus,’ he says, ‘and put this into the tapes ... report of man with vehicle. You know, just type, the way I showed you. And get the bed ready. The one you were in.’

‘Brick ...’ - she takes his arm as they swim through the typing pool - ‘does Twink have a counter?’

‘Sure,’ he says, ‘and a test strip and all. Show Arada your radiation test strip, Twink.’

Before she goes down the stairs Brick says, casually as possible, ‘You can watch through the periscope.’

He catches sight of her witch face, taut and afraid; she scrawls a pentacle in the dust on the stair rail. He wishes, in case there is bad trouble, that they had made it, even once, in the moonlight, the way Arada swore they would do, once he got his head right.

Brick takes one side of the street and Twink the other; they move towards the west. It is long past high noon; every cactus casts a shadow as long as a man. Brick comes to the perimeter. The high wire had been flattened and twisted by windstorms until it resembles a barbed-wire entanglement. The gatehouse is an empty pillbox; he strolls across and takes his place in the slot between the two lanes where Velma, the gate-person, used to stand.

He can see in every direction: the level sands stretch far away. The Todd-Gorman Research Centre has become part of the desert, a handful of ruined, weathered structures, grown into the wilderness. You could not even tell there was water; as an oasis it makes a great ghost town. Brick thinks there should be palm trees and some more green, more shade.

Twink bleeps off to the southwest behind the tall shattered billboard that reads, ... ODD- ... MAN ... SEARCH. Brick sees a man in ragged clothes inching his way around the perimeter; he is exhausted but he comes on, grips the sagging wire, and half-crawls the last few metres. Brick lets the man come by himself; he cannot touch or assist him, although Twink has signalled ‘Test strip clear’. You can’t drag a marathon runner over the line.

When the man reaches the slot of the gatehouse, Brick comes out holding his canteen of water. The man is dried up, desiccated: there is sand caked on his sunburnt lips; from his throat comes a grating sound. He clutches at Brick and the canteen; they sink down together in slow motion. Brick feeds him water, very slowly. It is Arada all over again, and he is afraid the man will die. The man gulps, his limbs twitch; he comes alive at the touch of water, like a brine shrimp or a Japanese water flower. As Brick pours in another few drops, the dry mask changes to the bony, ordinary face of a middle-aged male Caucasian. The man opens bright, blood-shot blue eyes.

‘Cook ...’ he croaks between sips, ‘Harry Cook ...’

‘Brick Kennedy.’

Brick hates and disbelieves his own name but he is willing to oblige the man.

‘Thanks. Saved m’life.’

There is something strange about the man’s speech; perhaps the sand has stiffened his upper lip. Brick, still feeding him water, begins to smile.

‘Hey ... You’re a Limey ... an Englishman!’

‘Bullseye!’ says Cook.

He stays Brick’s hand with the canteen and hoists himself into a sitting position. His eyes widen in terror and he scrunches back against the wall of the gatehouse.

‘Relax!’ says Brick, ‘It’s only Twink. He’s a robot.’

‘Jesus!’ breathes Cook.

He takes another small snort from the canteen.

‘Sorry. Not m’self.’

Twink, all solicitude, bleeps, taps, flashes a series of questions.

‘Sure he’s okay. You did fine, Twink,’ says Brick. ‘This is Harry Cook. Got it? Give him a few seconds, then break out the transporter.’

Cook peers out from under eyebrows thick with sand; his laughter is dry.

‘The dancing language, eh?’

‘Yeah,’ says Brick, ‘and a whole range of electronic response. See the light bands? He’s very smart. Say something ... Ask him a question.’

‘Why is he ... er ... why are you called Twink?’ enquires Cook indulgently.

The reply is cheerful and succinct.

‘Afraid you’ll have to translate,’ says Cook.

‘He says, “It’s short for Twinkletoes.”‘

‘Of course.’ Cook raises the canteen feebly, saluting Twink. ‘I should have known.’

Twink begins to extrude the silvery framework from his central housing; Cook squints at it uncertainly.

‘This is his transporter,’ explains Brick, ‘kind of a mobile stretcher. You can ride on it back to ...’

He gestures vaguely up the main drag, unable to find a word for the places where he lives. Rooms? Quarters? Home?

‘Back to base,’ he decides.

The exchange of pleasantries has exhausted Cook; he is in a watery coma, just smiling, as Brick rolls him onto the transporter. Twink offers more data.

‘The vehicle!’ says Brick. ‘Okay, I’ll buy it. A Rolls-Royce?’

Tap. Bleep?

Brick steps outside the wire and looks along the curve of the perimeter. He experiences a mirage; it comes towards him, lifting the ungainly pads of its feet. Slowly Brick extends his arms in a shooing movement. The camel marches stiff-legged through the gateway and proceeds at a jerky trot down the street. It waits, knowing, smelling the water, outside the shell of the admin, footsore and a little thirsty. By the time Twink has wheeled Cook back to base, Arada has abandoned her periscope; she comes rushing out with a plastic bucket. The camel, bewitched, allows her to stroke its neck while it is drinking. When Twink and Brick come too close with the inert form of its rider, the beast coughs angrily. Arada is weeping and trembling; she clings to Brick.

‘Alive! A man and a camel! Too much!’

Twink wheels the transporter into the admin lobby and they all go down in the freight elevator. It is very clean and quiet under the ground. The sweet-smelling greenish rooms are spotless; you could eat your meals off Ms Todd’s floors.

Arada and Brick seldom pass beyond the third bulkhead; behind it lie the dismantled workrooms. Once in a while, according to the schedule, Brick passes through and checks the generator, throbbing in its cell. The place they use most is a utility room with a sink, tool cupboard, and the food dispenser. Brick still dials all his meals from the dispenser, but Arada explores the huge cold-store, and tries to tempt him with apples from the crisper bins.

There is a dormitory with four bunks and they roll Cook tenderly onto the bottom bunk by the door. Twink enfolds the transporter and Brick gives him the high sign for the medi-reckoner. He wheels the unit across and they check out Cook.

‘How is he doing?’ whispers Arada.

‘Your readings were a lot worse. This guy had transport.’

All three of them set to work to clean up Cook with wet towels and a fresh-up blower from the admin washroom. Then they set up the glucose drip.

‘It’s funny,’ says Arada, gazing at the clean, creased face of the sleeping Englishman, ‘he looks a little like Harry Cook.’

‘That’s his name! That’s Harry Cook!’ Brick is nervous. ‘How did you know?’

For the first time Arada gives Brick a very curious sidelong look: as if he might have been born yesterday.

‘Where you been, boy? Harry Cook is in pictures.’

She rattles off a string of titles, and one rings a bell.

‘Yeah ...’ says Brick. ‘I saw him as Philby.’

Brick recalls Cook in action in what must have been a definitive portrayal of that sad cad, the twentieth-century master spy. Cook, like Philby, is a first-rate actor whose cover is completely blown. His occupation’s gone.

‘They must have been on location,’ says Arada. ‘Only reason anyone would bring a camel into the desert.’

Brick sees again what he alone did not see, and hears the crack of doom that he did not hear. The cameraman toppled and the expensive sets turned to chaff. The last picture show. In the last reel Cook, clinging to the camel’s neck, rides off through the light of setting suns while the fringes of the desert sand are fused into glass.

Brick stares unseeing at Harry Cook, and experiences the guilt of a survivor. He envies Nero, fiddling while Rome burned ... participating. Not sleeping, not tranquillised in the green shade of the bunker, with a mind curiously blank and only Twink and the Rebus for company.

Abruptly he turns aside and blunders into the computer room. The Rebus is dreaming on half power; the room in which the system is housed is warmer than the rest of the underground installation. Brick goes to the nearest keyboard and types:

WHAT DO WE FEED THE CAMEL?

There is a brief alteration in the timbre of the background noises; the Rebus prints out:

COWCAKE FREEZLOCKER ZP349, CEREAL MIX CAN124, VTTAMAL ADDIT CAN130B, REFER ADTP709.

THANK YOU. PLEASE PRINT OUT THE REFERENCE.

There is an inward riffle on the other side of the narrow room and a card drops into the AD slot.

UTILITY BOX. ASSORTED GRASSES, FERTILISER, GROWTH TRAYS.

Brick grins. They will have that oasis after all.

While Cook is mending, Arada spends more time underground. Brick has a big program going topside; he circles the perimeter in person at dawn and sends Twink out during the heat of the day. He tries to stable the camel in the canteen, the main visitors’ lounge, the garage, but it will not cooperate. The skittish beast lurks in patches of shade, and erupts from between the buildings. The centre is full of camels going thataway.

He keeps the eight silvery growth trays by him in his own pad, Ms Todd’s executive suite, monitoring the green grass. He flakes out in the long afternoons when the hot wind blows from the desert, and half-wishes Arada would holler for water. The monotony is so enormous and safe and deadly that it carries him along like a warm wave. Who would, who will ever lift a finger to switch on a cassette book or even scrawl a pentacle?

On one of these long afternoons he flops a hand clumsily across the intercom trying to call Arada in the bunker. Before he can ask a question Harry Cook’s voice comes in loud and clear: the channels are open.

‘... Won’t read his own file?’

‘No ...’ Arada has a faint, scratching voice. ‘He’s afraid.’

‘ ‘Strordinary!’

‘... Can’t remember very much.’

‘And he thinks this suggests ...?’

Brick can feel Cook considering his odd case.

‘Of course.’ Arada sounds harsh and distant. ‘Cybernetics ... big thing around here ... Ms Todd…’

‘I’ve heard of that lady.’

Brick is rigid, unable to speak or switch off. He curses Cook for a spy, an infiltrator.

‘... Other possibilities ...’ says Arada softly.

Before she can explore them, Cook’s voice cuts in: ‘Don’t believe it! Boy’s deluded. Dammit all... He has a name ... Kennedy ... His name is Kennedy ...’

‘He thought it might be a phoney,’ admits Arada, and Brick finds himself nodding in agreement. ‘You see, it’s a president’s name ... Lincoln, Washington, Roosevelt...’

‘I see,’ says Cook, still considering, like Holmes on his third pipe. ‘But what about bodily functions ... surely he couldn’t...?’

‘Ms Todd could build anything,’ says Arada. ‘And there are the heavy trauma cyborgs ... wiped right out... then rebuilt.’

‘I still don’t believe it!’

‘Brick had a bad time,’ she whispers, ‘waking up, all alone, programmed ...’

‘You’re sure?’

‘Seemed like it. He had to complete certain tasks. Burning up ...’ - her voice fades like static - ‘... incinerating the remains of Ms Todd’s projects.’

‘Let’s get this straight,’ says Cook briskly. ‘He was instructed to burn ...?’

‘A whole mess of humanoid robots,’ says Arada flatly, ‘half-complete ...’ - her voice dwindles again - ‘life-like ...’

It sounds like nothing; Brick and Twink on clean-up detail. But Arada comes in again, to the heart of the matter.

‘What really burns him up,’ she is saying, ‘is that he missed everything. He didn’t share.’

‘Bloody fool!’ growls Cook. ‘Can’t he see it’s what we count on every time? Someone has to miss the end of the world.’

Brick beats a retreat; leaves the lines open and tiptoes away through the drifting paper and sand and grains of shatterproof glass. He goes down later for his meal and talks with Harry Cook about planting out the grass. For two days all hands tear up the floor of Block A and prepare a roofed enclosure, camel-proof. They bring in topsoil by the cupful from the indoor planter boxes and the ruined garden beds. Arada brews a cauldron of vile mulch from the fertiliser - blood and bone - laced with fruit peel and camel dung.

The camel draws closer and closer to Arada as they sit out of doors in the evening, and finally muzzles her boldly, asking to be groomed.

‘Put a spell on him?’ asks Brick.

‘Poor beggar had a girl trainer,’ says Cook.

Brick and Cook loll in the shade while she currycombs the beast with a scrub brush from the broom closet. Then it kneels meekly before her; she climbs on its back and rides down mainstreet.

‘Rides a sight better than I did,’ says Cook.

Arada, firmly erect, with black rags over her ragged hair, is a tuareg, a weird desert creature. The sight of her leaves Brick blinking, dry-eyed, as if he wants to shed tears. All of us. All. The thought leaves him faint and empty.

The sun begins to settle into a bank of cloud that rides forever above the western horizon. Twink comes tintinabulating through the red sunset light and Brick knows there will be some action.

‘More survivors?’ demands Harry Cook.

The signal Twink has picked up is ‘distant’, on the limits of his equipment.

‘Fifty, sixty kilometres,’ explains Brick, ‘depending on the transmitter. It’s a repeater ... That’s right, Twink, play back ... You see there? I’m pretty sure it’s a rescue beacon ... type used on planes or small boats.’

Arada has persuaded the camel to let her down.

‘How do we get them?’

She looks at Brick and looks down at the sandy street, clearing her throat. Her big toe starts to draw a circle in the sand. Brick is ahead of her. Arada cannot be spared; Harry Cook is in precarious shape.

‘My turn,’ Brick says.

‘Twink ...?’ pleads Arada.

Brick shakes his head; Twink is a function of the Centre; he cannot leave.

Once he has made the decision Brick is seized with impatience; he has to go now, right away. As they fuel the Safari DE and check the supplies, he trots out all sorts of good reasons, from the cool of the evening to the possible condition of the survivors. He cannot bear to spend the night with his friends, knowing he must leave them. He is already gone, burning up the desert, and then in less than two hours he is gone. Arada has kissed him on the lips, Harry Cook has thumped him on the back, he and Twink have exchanged a last bow. He is burning across the sand, watching the heading on the beamfinder.

Brick remembers Cook’s last words: ‘I’ll take good care of her.’ He sniffs at his own diesel fumes, polluting the wasteland, and feels an extraordinary emotion. He is jealous.

The desert night is cold and brown beyond his searchlights. He strikes out across the sand directly to the southwest, then follows an empty desert road. The intensity of the signal scarcely increases ... thirty kilometres, forty, forty-five. Brick sees the road ahead turn downhill. The signal fades; rock shapes are thrusting at his lights.

He parks the wagon and steps out, drinking the silence, staring back at the stars. There is something in the unchanged landscape much stranger than all the routines evolved at the Centre. If he could stay here, leaning on the gritty hood of the wagon, he could remember everything. He can see the lights of the instrument panel through the windshield. He climbs back into the cabin and swivels the finder until the signal comes in, much stronger than before. The land falls away from this point; roads lead down into the canyon. Brick breaks the silence with a laugh like a coyote; he has come to the badlands.

The air seems warmer as he follows a turn-off into the ravine. This might be an illusion but it is so persistent that Brick runs a finger round his neckband, and glances at the wagon’s detection gear. The radiation levels have risen since he left the Centre but are holding safe and steady. The signal fades, wavers, then blares out; he rounds a ragged butte and sees a single light ahead.

His instinct is to bring up the searchlights onto full beam, but this is not part of the drill. In any case it is not necessary; the mid-beam quickly discovers a light source ... a one-eyed combivan. It is drawn up close to the wall of the canyon with its front fender almost touching a rock. Brick, afraid and excited, sends the wagon sweeping round to the blind side of the van. He thinks of the two vehicles as animals, meeting at night in the desert.

The van looks brand new in contrast to the dusty wagon, and at the same time shockingly mutilated. A gouged furrow, deep in the metal, reaches down the exposed flank to the shattered headlight. The windshields are out and there is an odd blistered burn spilling over the roof of the van. Brick stands on his brakes. There is more light: a blinking light above the gaping rear doors. It is the signal... Like he said, a rescue beacon of the type used on smaller boats. A scatter of dark objects on the sand. Suitcase. Carton. The body of a young girl, flimsily dressed, almost naked, lying on her back. The body of a child not far away.

Brick goes through his security drill inside the van, clumsy with haste; he snatches up the emergency packs and the geiger. He runs to the girl and has time to reach for her pulse before they jump him on all sides. A heavy-weight sits on his back; he is rabbit-punched and roughly frisked by more pairs of hands. He tries to talk and gets a salty mouthful of sand. He feels the decoy girl slip her live hand out of his grasp as she leaps to her feet.

‘Please ...’

He lashes out with his left arm and feels contact with a human midriff. He cannot hit again.

‘Help you ...’

Words are squeezed out of him; adhesive, thick as a retread, is clamped over mouth and wrists. He lies like a rock, listening. Five maybe, all ages, at least two women. Brick aches for a confrontation; he longs to see their faces. They keep up a steady flow of work phrases.

‘Key ...’

‘...Gotit...’

‘Over here. Johnny ...’

‘Put the ... sure ...’

‘Ruth?’

There will be no confrontation. All they want is the wagon. Not one of them will look into his face, ask a question, kick or kill him. Some are hurt, panting, limping.

‘Okay?’

‘Yeah, sure ...’

‘I can manage ...’

‘Hey, Dad...’

Their attack is impersonal; he might be in the hands of automata. Brick feels hot tears stinging his cheeks; he chokes behind the gag. There is a light slap on the sand inches from his nose; then they start the wagon with the searchlights on full beam.

Brick is surprised by his burst of energy. He vaults upright and charges at the wagon. He slithers dangerously along the hood, grunting like a madman, and hooks his bound wrists into the open window on the driver’s side. He clings backward, half-running; over his shoulder he sees blurred faces, eyes in the darkness. The driver shoves him between the shoulder blades. Brick is falling away; he feels a tearing, like the adhesive, then more painful. He falls; some heavy object falls after him; the dust cloud is yellow from the searchlights. The wagon drives off, unwavering, down the canyon. Brick finds that his right arm is free and rips off the gag.

He lies where he has fallen and moves into an uneasy dreaming state, full of faces. A family, were they? Dad, Johnny, Ruth. One time they went on a camping trip ... Pick-up broke down and they called the highway patrol. His mother said, Andy, stand off the road.

Or maybe they were a Family. Marked, half-naked girls, hey Ruthie, Squeaky, driving helter-skelter into a death valley. None of the electronic equipment in the wagon was any use to them, even if they understood it; there was the automatic locking device.

I have to report the loss of one Safari DE tracker, Ms Todd. Lieutenant, your leave is cancelled forever. You must tend the Centre. It is in your hand. Ms Todd, the thing won’t work. Tush, Andy, it works ... See how you grasp the tennis ball. Brick tries to flex the fingers of his left hand, fails completely, and falls asleep until the dawn comes up like thunder.

He is cold and thirsty but clear-headed. He has remembered enough. He turns his head and sees the scarred van, still in deep shade; a thread of sun is reaching down over the rim of the canyon. Maybe this is part of the conditioning - a little at a time, nothing too harsh. The conditioning came first, then the accident in the shuttle, and Ms Todd undertook repairs. No loss to the taxpayers. He might have gone back into space but the program ... terminated. He cannot look at the sky above the canyon. It is too bright, with a few trailing wisps of reddish cloud. He hears Arada’s voice - ‘Some crazy reaction’; he smiles; time to get home. No one better conditioned, better qualified to inherit the Centre.

He is still unwilling to sit up; he exhorts himself in the person of Harry Cook, ‘Bear up, old man.’ He wonders, holding up his good right hand against the light, if Arada has read his file yet. He laughs and sits up, lop-sided, thinking of his name, Andrew Jackson Kennedy. His right hand is scratched across the knuckles and the blood has dried. His left arm has been torn off, disarticulated at the shoulder joint; it lies on the sand, still and perfect, Ms Todd’s finest work, with only a wire trailing. He scrambles to his feet and goes after it, feeling only an urgent desire to salvage and protect a precious object. He even knows, suddenly, how to replace it... Better check the Rebus for diagrams of the refit.

He rescues his arm and sees with a thumb of fear and gratitude that the poor bastards last night left him his canteen of water. The only thing left behind, besides the van, is a small pile of sand and plastic sheeting, half covered with stones. He lifts the corner and finds the body of the child, lying where he saw it, not far from the girl decoy, in a shallow trench in the sand. The child has a burn on its cheek. Brick kneels down and finishes the heap of stones. He sees it for a moment as a kind of ordeal, a choice ... Maybe if he had gone to the child first, instead of the girl, they would have made contact with him. He discards this as fantasy. They were burying the child and they had the beacon out in the hope of a hijack. They were ordinary people turned into something else, between survivors and predators.

He figures the van must still have some life in it, but there is no way he can make it run. It is a Duo, with trannies removed and gas cylinders. He faces a fifty-kilometre walk home; maybe Twink will pick him up sooner if they’re monitoring the area. Brick looks at the sky light-hearted; he could run there, he could fly. He has a canteen of water and he recalls shade rocks at a bend in the road. Hell, he could make those rocks now, before noon.

He thinks better of it, through his own good sense or the good sense that has been laid on him. He climbs up awkwardly into the back of the van, placing the bionic arm and the canteen in the best shade. The van has a warm, stale smell; the doorway gapes like the mouth of a cave. He can see the child’s grave and the sky above the rock wall. He sits patiently, waiting for nightfall.

First published 1979.