An Exchange in the Wasteland

by Rudi Dornemann

The camel-car sway-legged across an industrial wreckscape. A rider occupied the middle of its three cockpit domes. The other two were packed to the glass with spinmenders, implosive engines, and tangle-nets of aerophonic wire.

Beside a leaning but not yet fallen smokestack, it locked both upper and lower knees in all six legs. A rope ladder let the rider down from the car’s belly.

A man in a ragged pigeon-feather poncho came up out of the rubble to watch.

“Morning,” he said.

She looked at him over the top of her rebreather, then shot a grappling line to the top of the smokestack.

“Careful now,” said the man. “Might bring it all down.”

She pushed her voice through the mask, “It should hold.” She didn’t mention the stressline analysis she–or rather the car–had done.

The man settled with a ruffling of feathers. “Certain about that?”

She began to climb or, rather, the rope began to pull her up.

“I’ve got water,” said the ragged man.

“Oh,” said the rider, halfway up. He must have seen the condensation scoop spirals on the sides of the car.

He wasn’t offering because he thought she needed it.

She busied herself prying open the corroded lump that had once been a cleaning door in the stack’s side.

He might not be offering at all.

“Care for some?”

The car had taught her to recognize the question as a test: to refuse would insult by implying her water was better. To accept insulted by the implied comparison–he offered what was large portion of his reserves, but only a small fraction of her own. The car hadn’t taught her how to answer.

“You’re generous to offer,” she said.

“I’m sure no more generous than you,” said the man.

This did not track at all to what the car had coached her to expect. She was sure it must mean something.

“You’re prospecting carbon,” said the man. “You’ll find more and better over there,” he pointed to a hill of tumbled brick. “That was a warehouse, full of wooden things that burned before the walls fell in.”

“You are generous,” she said. She put the retrieval beacon back in her pocket.

“I am not the only one,” said the man, pursing parched lips.

She nodded.

She’d plant the beacon on the brick-mound as soon as she’d given him all the water he wanted.