"A paradise beyond the Deathlands," said Krysty. She was rolling her own cigarette from the tobacco supply, her long fingers dealing nimbly with its creation. She was so fast that they seemed almost to flicker. Ryan watched, fascinated.
She had cleaned herself up, now wore a green jump suit taken from Stores. It fitted her in all the right places yet was loose and comfortable looking. She had even polished her boots; the interior lights reflected off the buffed leather. Her hair was just as lustrous, a shining flame-red cascade over her shoulders and halfway down her back. To Ryan, when she moved her head, even if gently, her hair seemed to be wildly alive, to shimmer with a restless motion.
"There is no paradise beyond the Deathlands," he intoned mock-judiciously, sucking smoke. The ancient, preserved tobacco was faintly sweet-smelling as it burned. He wasn't entirely sure what it was, although it wasn't a relaxant like happyweed. Ryan left that kind of thing for off-duty periods. "Only death. This is a world of death. There is no other world."
"Too pessimistic," she said.
"I'm a realist. It's the way it is, the way it'll always be. There's no escape. They screwed us a century ago, and we're left with the pieces. That's it. You make the best of what you've got."
"But wouldn't you like to escape?"
He stared at her, smoke from the cigarette drifting across his blind eye so it did not cause him discomfort, and he thought to himself, very odd question.
"Escape what?" he said. "What else is there? We know a little of what's going on..." he made a vague gesture that took in the entire world, "...though not that much, communications being what they are. Even so, it seems that out there is much the same as it is around here. Pretty shitty. Listen." He leaned forward, jabbing the tip of his cigarette in her direction. "I'll tell you. A person gets around with the Trader. I've been with him for maybe ten years, and we've been all over. We've been as far west as you can get without falling off the edge, up through the mountains and down to the Hot Seas. There used to be a wide coastal plain there — cities, highways, millions of people, but it sank. Plain sank. Seems there was a fault or something in the earth and it was a number-one target and they hit it and it just tore the earth's crust apart and the whole deal just slid into the sea. Goodbye, that particular part of civilization."
She said, "California. That's what it was, that's what they called it."
"Well, there's no such place anymore. Hasn't been for a hundred years or more. Not since the Nuke. We thought of trying to salvage something from the seabed — there must be riches down there! A lost world! But it's too far and we don't have the gear. And the sea is hot and bubbling and scummy, and there's things down there only a crazy man would dream up."
"You could say that about everywhere."
"Sure. Doesn't alter my argument, though. Which is — the West? Forget it. Okay..." he warmed to his theme, "...the Southwest. Maybe you know this, maybe you don't. There used to be desert down there, out of everyone's way. They were doing things they didn't want people to know about. Only snag was, the other side didknow about it — they must have known about it because they pounded it, flattened it. Took it out. There's only the wind there now, and sometimes that just literally sears what's left. And where there's no wind, there's nuclear garbage floating in the sky in great clouds as thick as mountains. Sometimes it flares up and sets the night on fire. I've seen it. The sky burns." His voice was softer now, his eye unfocused. "Burns for days and nights on end. And then..." he snapped his fingers, "...it stops. Just like that. You don't know why, and you'll never know why. But it just stops, the fire dies, and all you have left is floating nuclear junk." He cocked an eyebrow at her. "You figure that's paradise?"
"No, that's not what I'm..."
"So what about the North? It's cold up there. Hellish cold. There's guys up there, they don't take their furs off more than once a year. If that. Didn't used to be so all-fired warm before, so it's said, except for plains where wheat grew, but it's cold all over now. It could be that the ice from the far north has shifted south, and maybe it's still on the move, maybe it won't stop until the whole world is covered with it — a new ice age. Not in our lifetime, I guess. But it's a frozen hell up there, believe me. I've seen it, I've tried to trek through it. The guys who live there, the Franchies, they'd love to trade, but we don't have the means, the proper equipment. You go up there and your gas freezes in the tanks and gets like jelly."
"So let's try South. I'm easy. Like this, just you and me, we can go anywhere. So — South. Deep down south." His tone darkened. "Now that's a place, let me tell you. A dark locale. Far as I can tell it used to be an area of mainly grasslands, woodlands, all over. But now it's jungle, swamp and rot. There's more mutants per acre down there than any place I've seen. I don't know why. Maybe the chem stuff got out of hand, maybe the opposition went over the top, dumped too many toxins down there. Or maybe it just got hotter anyhow, the climate — something to do with the sea. Who the nuke knows. All I can tell you is that it's a poisoned land and I can do without it. Paradise it ain't."
"Hey, now. You don't seem to..."
"And then we shift to the East. Well, sure. That's civilized, I guess. Parts of it." He paused, took a final drag on the cigarette, butted it. "I guess it's civilized because everyone there says it is. And sure, they got industry of a kind, and they know how to produce electric power better than anywhere else I know, and they got lines of communication that don't break down every three hours, and they can grow their own food, and they read and write, and..." He stopped, stared down at the floor as though a memory had twitched at the outer edges of his mind. He looked up again, his one eye suddenly bleak. "But it's uncoordinated, lady. And beneath a thin skin of culture it's as much of a hell as it is out here. There's maybe a dozen families in the Southern Enclave in an uneasy truce, all secretly lusting after what the others have got, all about ready to swoop in and grab any territory that looks to be weaker than they are."
"I read once about a country out there," he continued, almost wistfully. "Hundreds of years ago. It was a large slice of land split up into little territories, all ruled over by individual princes and barons or dukes or whatever. All feuding with one another, greedy for land. Everyone else's land. And if they weren't fighting one another, they were figuring out how to stab one another in the back in the smartest way possible so some other guy would get the blame. And at the same time as all this is going on, they're busy inventing and creating and painting pictures and writing books and fashioning crazy models or castles out of pure gold with all the towers and turrets and drawbridges and even arrow slits in the walls, all in proportion, and when you lifted the roof of the tallest tower, inside was a little glass jar for putting the salt in. Now thatwas civilization. Sure, I guess the peasants were treated like shit on the rich man's boots, but even so it was a busy time, everything going on, an upward surge. They had ambition. There was always something beyond the next horizon, and the next, and the next."