Spencer tried to sound upbeat. “You can do it—”
Gilbert interrupted irritably, “Don’t you understand? Even if we get the railgun fixed, that doesn’t mean it’ll work again. What’s to prevent the same thing from happening?” Gilbert turned to the blockhouse. “I can’t believe I wasted the last three weeks and damaged our satellite launcher for one shot!”
Spencer started after the man, but stopped. It had been three weeks, and what did they have to show for it? The railgun worked, but it might have fired its last projectile. The citrus explosives were still not finished; and their only defense besides the Alamogordo townspeople was a medieval catapult!
It chilled him. Maybe Bayclock would laugh at them after all.
Chapter 67
The pregnant girl from Oakland gave birth to a baby boy in the middle of the afternoon. The young father hovered beside her in a panic throughout the ordeal, in deeper shock than the mother herself. He chewed the ends of his fingers and kept asking, “How long is this going to take? How long is it going to be?” The commune’s three self-proclaimed midwives tended the girl.
When they finally brought forth the baby, everyone began cheering and singing in a way that embarrassed Iris Shikozu. One woman ran out and hammered on the iron triangle that served as their dinner bell, raising such a celebratory alarm that several men came running in from the wind turbines.
While this baby was certainly not the first to be born in the Altamont settlement, it was the first since the petroplague. The midwives—all of whom had proclaimed the wonders of natural childbirth—used cool, dampened rags to wipe clean the mother and baby. The fifteen-year-old girl lay trembling and exhausted, holding the baby against her as the father stroked her forehead.
Iris sat down outside the small house and was glad no one had even asked her to boil water. She knew nothing about the birthing process.
Daphne Harris came up and extended a hand to pull Iris to her feet. “Come on, get off your butt! There’s work to do!”
“Gee, thanks for cheering me up,” Iris said and brushed dry grass from her pants.
Daphne looked so healthy and full of restless energy that she practically glowed. Upon first arriving at the commune, Iris had liked Jackson Harris’s wife immediately. Daphne appeared driven, consumed by an ongoing battle inside her; now that she had settled down, she seemed more at peace… but she still required some way to burn her restless energy.
“We need to clear some spots down by that cluster of live oak, then you can help me set up a few new tents. We got some more people showing up for the concert, even though it’s still a month away.”
Iris raised her eyebrows. “Musicians this time, or just spectators?”
Daphne shrugged. “I didn’t interview them, girl! Some of both, I guess.”
Once the announcement had gone out about their windmill-powered Labor Day rock ‘n roll concert, people started trickling into the Altamont settlement. Jackson Harris let them stay, as long as they were willing to feed themselves and do work.
And Todd had been gone only a week.
Harris and Doog and a large group of the commune dwellers worked out at the Altamont Speedway, repairing bleachers, rigging wires, fixing the metal loudspeakers. Another group set about laying cloth-wrapped cable from the windmill substations to the sound system at the racetrack.
Daphne handed Iris a shovel, then took a long rake for herself. “The new folks will think it’s romantic for about two nights to sleep out under the stars, then they’ll want a tent. We’ll need to dig a few more privies, too, but I’m not doing that. We got plenty of hands around here to help out.”
Under the live oaks at the far end of the trailers, huts, and reinforced tents, Daphne began attacking the underbrush. She yanked twigs and tore loose grass to clear a firepit and to make flat foundations for new tents. Iris set to work with her shovel, chopping out heavy roots and removing stones.
“So, do you miss him?” Daphne said after a few moments.
Iris’s instinctive reaction was to say “Who?”—but she knew that would be ridiculous. “A little,” she admitted, trying to keep her voice flat and guarded.
“You gonna wait for him? Do you think he’ll come back?”
Iris shrugged. She gripped her shovel and looked the other direction. She didn’t want to meet Daphne’s eyes.
Daphne said, “If you ever think that cowboy of yours ain’t coming back, just let me know. We’ll set you up with somebody. You notice all the other guys staring at you?”
Iris nodded. “Yes, I’ve noticed—and I don’t think I’ll need your help setting me up. Thanks, anyway.”
Daphne was silent for a moment, then giggled. “Oh, I almost forgot! I got a message for you. Todd radioed from down in Pasadena. He got on the emergency short-wave network and talked to the Lab in Livermore.”
Iris turned quickly, trying to hide her reaction, but she was too late. “What did he say?”
Daphne spoke with agonizing slowness. “Well, he sent a special message to inform you that he made it to LA just fine. They had some trouble with the train, but they’re at the JPL now, making plans to head out with the satellites. He’s gone that far—and personally, I’m surprised.”
“Was there more?” Iris asked. “Did he say anything else?”
Daphne shrugged. “Probably, but it was an unspoken hint. He was talking to that Moira Tibbett, you know. That woman wouldn’t know an emotion if it slapped her in the face!”
Feeling dizzy, her thoughts in turmoil, Iris plunged back into her work with the shovel.
The musicians making their way to the Altamont commune were a mish-mash of drummers, singers, guitarists. Each one had cobbled together musical instruments from pieces that survived the ravages of the petroplague. Many carried wooden flutes, harmonicas, metal autoharps, and expensive classical guitars with ivory instead of plastic tuning pegs and expensive gut strings instead of nylon.
Several engineers in Livermore had taken the challenge to build functional amplifiers and pickups. Two of them even hoped to build a working electric guitar to really shatter the silence.
After dark, the musicians sat around the evening fire and jammed. The crowds grew bigger and bigger as the days went by, and people rode in from the surrounding towns just to hear the evening practice sessions.
Ironically, before the petroplague, most of these people would never have gone to the same bars or the same concerts. Divided into their own little cultural subgroups, cliques had used fine divisions of music to separate themselves: classic rock, folk music, heavy metal, technopop, easy listening, country. Now though, with everything else falling apart, the music itself—regardless of brand or flavor—brought them together and they listened without the scorn or snobbery they would have shown before.
Satisfied, Iris sat on her lumpy cushion under the stars, sipping strong herb tea from a metal cup. They had stuffed themselves with a delicious stew made in a big pot: vegetables from Tracy, herbs from the gardens planted around the commune, and beef from the local ranchers.
Iris lounged back and looked at the people, thinking how strange a mix they seemed—Jackson Harris’s inner-city refugees, throwback hippies, herself a Stanford microbiologist, and redneck ranchers, cowboys, and migrant workers.
Doog started off the singing himself, accompanied by a quiet unobtrusive harmonica. He had a rich, mellow voice, and he closed his eyes as the words came from his lips. The firelight reflected from the circles of his John Lennon glasses. He seemed to be pulling the music out of his soul as he sang.