Adina sat in the passenger seat of the bearcat, enjoying the breeze coming through the open armored window as they rolled across the blank plain, heading westward into what, according to Asher's maps, was emptiness. There were hummocks of tough grass that created mounds that small animals that lived out here found shelter in. But other than that, it was a barren plain, scorched by the sun to a forty-five-degree celsius flatiron of dirt, scoured by dancing dust devils and grit-laden winds.
Caravans, and 'normal' folks avoided these areas. There just wasn't anything in them that warranted anyone's time to explore. Except apparently the longhunters. She drifted, dozing in the thirty-mile-an-hour wind created as the bearcat rolled over the open ground, glad to be out of the stifling heat of the urban landscape where they'd spent the last few days.
Asher was still as friendly and kind to her as he'd been in the rift, and the sex continued to be great, but the crease had reappeared between his eyebrows as soon as they'd left the rift. The hardness she'd all but forgotten that had scared her when they first met was back. It had slid effortlessly into place like him pulling on his armored long coat. He was once again as armored internally and externally as the bearcat they were riding in.
He'd led them to another cityruin in the quarantine zone. It was bigger than the one the rift had torn the heart out. Being in the quarantine zones still made her nervous, but Asher's confidence was infectious.
He'd said, "Besides, you're immune now to most things now. Any of the biological agents that might still be viable after this long don't stand a chance against what's running around in your bloodstream."
"What about 'survivors'?" Images of the deranged, terrifying hordes of radiation or toxin-twisted cannibals sent shivers up her back.
He smiled at her. It was playful, but felt half-hearted, held in check by the crease between his eyebrows, his returned armor. "If there are any," he gestured to the towering ruins around them, "there aren't many. They still need food and water to survive. Have you seen any rats? Rats are usually a good warning sign that people might be around. Dogs are even better, but rats are a stable source of protein. If rats can live there, that means there's some kind of water. No rats - no people." He grinned. "Usually. I've been surprised once or twice though."
She'd sat up straighter, looking for indications of rats and any other telltale signs there might be human inhabitants.
"Don't worry about it. I've been through here numerous times. There's no one home."
They'd climbed up into groaning towers of rotting metal wandering through ancient rooms. He led her through some without even stopping to look for useful salvage, others he systematically searched, marking the locations with arcane-looking glyphs.
"What are you looking for?"
He checked a sign on a door and moved on. "Data nodes. Places where they used to store information on computers."'
She'd heard of computers - machines that stored information. She'd even seen pictures of the sleek devices.
"Data?"
"Data is sort of the ingredients that make up useful information. If you find a history, say of a place or time, the individual people it talks about and individual events that were going on would be the data that make up the history." He looked back over his shoulder. "Does that make sense?"
She nodded, warily scanning the environment. Buildings like the one they were in were deathtraps. Entire floors would collapse from the lightest step and there was always the concern that there might be something or someone living inside, no matter what Asher said.
They'd been quietly searching a giant room filled with dusty, partially collapsed desks and rows of file and storage cabinets when she finally came back around to the subject.
"What kind of 'information' are you looking for?" She knew what the word meant in the most general sense, but she'd learned that assuming she understood what he was saying was usually the wrong thing to do. Everything in her chest warmed at the way he explained things to her. He never treated her like she was stupid for asking questions.
He'd shrugged. It was a resigned sort of gesture that spoke of a lot of searching with little to show for it. "Sometimes, I don't know; information about the world before. Things that might help us fix what's broken. Science, technical information, even farming tips that can help the city states."
"Not just Cosanti? But I thought you said the city states fight each other. If you fight, why do you help each other?"
He nodded, sorting through stacks of the shiny silver disks that she only knew as common decorations.
"We do fight sometimes. But it's not like it is out here in the wastes with raiders and tribes just going after each other like packs of dogs." As he looked at disks, he sent them soaring out the open side of the building one after another with a playful flick of his wrist. They floated, spinning and glittering for a moment before turning and falling away toward the ground several hundred feet below. "There's an understanding all the city states share. It isn't something that's written down or talked about in so many words. Everyone understands that we're all that's left. We don't have to like each other or agree. Sure, sometimes disagreements boil over into fighting, we even go to war. But everyone knows there's a bigger picture. We - the city states, exist to help humanity thrive again. That understanding changes things. We share what we know with each other whenever we can because we've seen what happens when information or skills are horded. It only takes one plague or catastrophe for those things to be lost, potentially forever. Disagreements or not, all the city states know that we need each other." He gestured out the open side of the building at the cityruin. It seemed to shift and dance, the heat waves coming off the oven-hot buildings bending the air between them into shimmering curtains. "There are a lot of people out there in the world." He pointed as if beyond the cityruin. "Or people that
will
be out there; that need us to work together. 'Wise is the man who plants a tree knowing he will never sit in its shade.'"
Adina screwed up her face trying to figure out the analogy. "What's that mean?"
Asher smiled and looked up from the disks. "You know the old saying about not putting all your eggs in one basket?"
"Yes."
"It's kind of like that. What we do now will have lasting effects that we may never live see, but they can change the world." Shifting topics, he held up a disk. "These store information if you have a machine that can read them." He handed it to her. "That one played music."
"How? It's just a piece of plastic." She read the barely legible label.
D...eche M...de - Antholo...
She'd cut up or broken disks like this to make shiny, reflective decorations her whole life. They were common around gardens, used to scare away birds.
"The shiny surface is covered with little indentations that the player reads as it spins. Disks like this survive much better than magnetic tape or disks. The bombs destroyed most magnetic storage."
"By blowing them up?"
Asher dropped the stack he was looking at, letting them clatter to the debris covered floor and looked around. "Nothing here." He turned to her. "When a bomb like those that wiped out the world goes off, it puts out a pulse of energy. It's like when you feel heat from the sun or a fire, but it's a different kind of energy. It disrupts the magnetic alignment or destroys it, depending on what the data is stored on."
She narrowed her eyes. "Like the way magnets attract and repel."
He nodded, still scanning around. "Yeah. That's probably an easier way to think of it." He stepped close, watching her eyes and gave her a kiss. "You're so smart."
He'd done that a lot since her breakdown in the open hatch of the bearcat, telling her she was smart, complimenting her on her intelligence, and helping her navigate through so many things she didn't understand. Where he'd found them still intact, he'd picked up books. Most of them crumbled to powder as soon as they were disturbed. The filing cabinets in this office were full of thick dust that had once been paper.
She could read, but it was only enough to read a ledger or the label on a crate, not pages on pages of words strung together. She'd heard about books and had seen a few which were always delicate and jealously guarded. Some were supposed to be nothing but stories, filled with descriptions and 'painting with words' as the man who'd owned some called it.
Asher was teaching her about
physics
