第13节

er

Federation high-flyers regarded the A-Levels as the absolute pits hence

the perjorative term 'Zed-heads'.

As was customary, the base had been assigned the name of the nearest

important pre-Holocaust centre as its overground marker, in this case

that of the ancient state capital of New Mexico. Perched five thousand

feet up on the high ground east of the Rio Grande, the original Santa

Fe was now nothing more than an untidy maze of low, jagged, broken

walls overshadowed by a profusion of red bushes and trees. Here and

there, where fragments of decaying facades rose ten, sometimes twenty

feet into the air, a frameless window gaped hollowly, like the eyeless

socket in a shattered, sun-bleached skull. Albuquerque, like so many

of the larger urban centres, had suffered a more violent fate.

The sprawling site it had once occupied was now cratered like the

surface of the moon. The act of obliteration had altered the course of

the Rio Grande, which now flowed sideways into a chain of circular

lakes before emptying back into the snaking riverbed that ran

southwards to the sea.

Despite the fact that he had flown patrols from The Lady for three

months before being shot down, Steve had never seen the Roosevelt/Santa

Fe interface from the air. As they approached, it gave him a curious

feeling. Roosevelt Field - to quote its official designation - was not

only the nearest shuttle stop to Pueblo; it also happened to be Steve's

home base and with which he was permanently identified by his middle,

divisional name. It was here that he and his younger kin-sister Roz

had been reared by his guardians, Jack and Annie Brickman.

Following the usual practice, his given name - Steven - was the name of

one of their own guard-fathers - in this case, Annie's. Roz had been

named after Jack's guard-mother. Annie had been reared at Nixon/Fort

Worth. Before pairing off with Jack, her kin-folk name had been

Bradlee. The Bradlees were well connected what was known as 'being

wired in' - and several, like Annie's kin-brother Bart, who was State

Provost-Marshal for New Mexico, had won promotion to similar positions

of power.

Brickman was a less illustrious kin-folk name but both could be traced

back through the generations to the Four Hundred; the very first

Trackers who, under the leadership of the First Family, had formed the

nucleus of the Federation and whose names were now enshrined on the

Roll of Honour. The list had, in fact, originally contained five

hundred and eighteen names but, like so much of the Federation's

history, such minor details had been glossed over in order not to mar

the general presentation. Just as the Old America of the pre-Holocaust

era had been created by a group of pioneers known as the First Four

Hundred, so would the descendants of the second Four Hundred build the

New.

Just before they banked eastwards, Steve took a last look at the chain

of circular lakes occupying the point on his map labelled

Albuquerque.

The sight caused him to reflect on what Mr Snow had told him about the

War of a Thousand Suns. What he had learned had shaken his previous

unquestioning belief in the Federation's account of the Holocaust. How

could the Mutes who, despite their mysterious powers, were at best

untutored savages with a primitive life-style, have wrought such

changes in the earth? Where could they have gotten such destructive

power? Steve was becoming increasingly convinced that the War of a

Thousand Suns and the Holocaust were two irreconcilable interpretations

of the same event. If so, what had really happened? And who was to

blame?

Lundkwist's voice interrupted his train of thought.

'Gonna have to black you out. We'll be landing in a few minutes." She

banked the Skyrider over to port and began to lose altitude. As they

dropped down towards the final approach and landing, Steve drank in one

last deep draft of the overground through his eyes, drawing its image

hungrily down into his memory like a defaulter gulping in his last

breath as he stands against the wall.

Below, the great sweep of the earth, its hills and hollows, peaks and