“He’s up,” I said to Natoma.
She nodded silently. She knew who and what I meant, and it hurt her.
“The Extro network is in action again,” I said.
“But how does it know where we are?”
“The freighter probably snitched. Now the network is gunning for us.”
“We’re being attacked?”
“Y. All out.”
“What do we do?”
“Stay away from machines and electronics. Go north on foot.”
“A thousand miles?”
“Maybe we can dig up some silent transport on the way.”
“But won’t Mexas City report where we’re going?”
“N. Only that we’re leaving. They won’t know where we’re going and we’re not going to let them know. This is going to be a tough ordeal for us. From here on we don’t talk, not a word. Hic will lead us; the Extro can’t pick up anything from him, and I’ll instruct him with signs.” I got out a slip of paper (a banknote, actually) and wrote: And any time we pass a piece of electronics we smash it.
She nodded again and we moved it out of Mexas City, me silently and patiently instructing Hic-Haec-Hoc. He finally got the idea, took the lead, and we became a lost army of three. I didn’t count Twink.
It was v. interesting. I could tell when we were approaching a town of any size when its broadcasts appeared, flickering before us like a mirage. We hoofed it to Queretaro where our Fearful Leader was sent in and picked up three horses. I’d given him cash along with my instructions but he probably didn’t know what it was for, and most assuredly stole the nags. We rode bareback until San Luis Potosi where Hic stole a small wagon. Nat plaited makeshift cords for a makeshift harness. In Durango the Fearful Leader didn’t do so well. I’d granted and signed “knives” to him. Apparently he didn’t get the message. He brought us two hammers and a shingling hatchet, but at least that made the destruction easier.
The army was spreading a trail of electronic demolition like Sherman’s March to the Sea, but the network couldn’t know it was us; machines are always breaking down for the sake of deserving Repair Syndicates. We camped nights with a sagebrush fire and roasted everything Hic and I could forage. It was tough. We had no cooking or eating utensils. We got water by crashing cactuses, century plants, and prickly pears between flat stones, but we had nothing to store it in.
Then we got a break. We passed an abandoned dump. I explored the rusting, moldering rubbish and, hallelujah! produced cooking and eating tools from forgotten automobile parts; two deep old fenders, eight hubcaps (for plates), and a gasoline tank which I had to hammer loose from the remains of a chassis. That was for water storage. I hammered one of the fenders flattish for a frypan, and raised the sides of the other for a stewpot. We were in business.
Now we really foraged. Natoma taught me how to catch rabbits, Indian-style. When she spotted a big jack sitting up and surveying the terrain, she’d give me the sign and I’d sort of meander past, not getting within spooking distance. The jack would keep his eyes on me suspiciously while I wandered about aimlessly. Meanwhile Nat was creeping up on him from behind. A quick grab and she had him. Not always, but often enough.
We had a windfall once. We’d just crossed a dry arroyo when I noticed black clouds laced with lightning many miles to our left. I stopped the party, pointed to the distant storm, then to the arroyo, and lastly to the gas tank. We waited. We waited. We waited. Then there was a distant ramble followed by a growing roar, and a foaming flash flood torrented down the arroyo. I washed the gas tank repeatedly and finally filled it. The water was full of sediment but it was potable. Then came the windfall; a thrashing, kicking sheep was borne down to us by the tumbling water. I grabbed a leg. Natoma grabbed the other. We hauled it out. I now draw the curtain on the godawful business of butchering and skinning a sheep with a shingling hatchet.
Curiously enough, Twink didn’t seem to need any food, and that’s when I first began to suspect that it was feeding on something outlandish like high-tension wires. It had intelligence. After a week of watching Hic and me foraging it got a piece of the idea. It would blink at Fearful Leader — I wish I knew what language they were speaking — and take off. It would return with all sorts of junk clutched to its plasm; rocks, sage, dead branches, bleached bones, a bottle turned purple by the sun… But one glorious evening it brought back a thirty-pound peccary. More hatchetwork.
Ozymandias crashed in on us the night we’d caught a twenty-pound armadillo and were wondering how to cook it. I don’t exaggerate his advent. It was heralded by approaching bangs, crunches, breakage, flounderings; it sounded like a blind brontosaurus blundering through a jungle. Then he appeared in the firelight, threw his arms wide, knocking over a cactus, and nearly tripped into the fire.
Merlin nicknamed him Ozymandias, from the last sentence of Shelley’s poem: Round the decay of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare the lone and level sands stretch far away. Oz was colossal. He stood two meters high and weighted 150 kilos. (That’s 6'8" × 330 lbs.) He was a wreck. He’s eaten and drunk his way around the entire system hundreds of times, leaving lone and level sands where once fine food flourished. He was also a wrecker. Oz can’t go anywhere or do anything without breaking something, including himself. Hardly an asset for our expedition, but I was grateful to him for rallying ‘round.
He’s strictly a metropnik — you never find him outside of a Center City — and his idea of action clothes for the wilderness was hilarious: heavy mountaineering boots, tasseled wool stockings, leather shorts, canvas safari coat, and a Tyrolean hat, including the shaving brush. But the dear maladroit had an impressive hunting knife hung from his hip, and that would come in handy. He had a rucksack slung over one shoulder, and from the bulges I could tell it was filled with wine bottles. From the spreading stain and steady red drip I could also tell that at least one of them had been wrecked already.
Ozymandias opened his mouth for a hearty roar of greeting but I signed him off. He shut his mouth, winced, and felt his tongue. Bit it, no doubt. From then on our conversation was conducted written on banknotes, like a couple of deaf Beethovens. I won’t reproduce our shorthand, and anyway Oz broke my stylus. What it got down to was this: The Group knew I was fetching Hic-Haec-Hoc, and Pepys told them Hic was on Titan. Oz did something v. brilliant, he thought. He sent a reply-paid telex to the Titan authorities requesting the return date and destination of Edward Curzon and wife. But — clever, clever — Oz used an alias. The information was sent, and that’s how the network knew. Oz picked up our trail of smashed electronics — he’s not altogether a nudnik — and followed. He surmised that others might do the same.
He greeted us all the same way; hugged, kissed, and tossed us into the air. Oz is a tosser. You have to be prepared to land on your feet; he misses his catch as often as not. He fell in love with Natoma at first sight; he’s always falling in love at first sight. He was taken aback by Twink but tossed it anyway. No kissing. When I asked his advice about the armadillo he was assured and brief. Roast it in the shell, he wrote. Then he inspected the rucksack, pulled out a broken bottle, and wept, pointing to the label. Vosne-Romanée Conti, the finest and rarest of burgundies. However, he cheered up the next moment, shrugged, laughed, tossed the broken bottle in the air, and threw it away, cutting himself in the process.
We had a transport difficulty with Ozymandias. He couldn’t ride a horse; he’d break its back. Natoma got out of the wagon to ride the horse I’d been on (the other two were hitched to the wagon) and Oz got in. He overturned it, scattering our gear. We put it all together and Oz tried again. This time I made him crawl over the tail and sit. It worked. We were now a lost army of four, on the march.