Showeitat! (01)

There is nothing remotely sexual in Chapter 1 or Chapter 3. If you only read the naughty bits, you will have to wait for chapters 2 and 4. If you only want to read stuff with actual cutting scenes, then that starts with Chapter 5.

This is the first part of another long series. I won't say a "new" series, as I started writing this one before I started Last Night Day or Two Sides to Every Story. Most of this was written way back in 1996 or '97 but I got stuck (as I so often do) on part 6 or 7, and there it sat, almost untouched, for five years or so. Like LND and Two Sides it's sort of sci-fi flavoured, but this one takes place in a very different world, a post-nuclear war world with more savagery and less small-town domesticity. I've tidied up the expression here and there in the last few weeks, but the first five chapters are little changed from the original 1997 version. They are at least finished, more or less, so you will get to see them within a reasonable time frame. Chapters 6 and up might take longer. But not another five years, I hope!

I don't think it's as good as LND, but I hope you all find it worth the trouble of reading. Enjoy!

PB.

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I had saved for a long time to take the South-West Caravan.

I'd always had a thing about history, even as a little kid, and I had dreamed of visiting the old places since I was eight or ten years old. More than anything, I wanted to cross the Great South glass desert and see the dead cities from before the Fire War. I wanted to walk around some of those legendary places with names so full of mystery and secret power, places like Houston and Austin, and mighty LA. Most of all I wanted to see the ruins of the one particular pre-Fire city that had become my special passion; a smaller and lesser known place than LA or Vegas, a place that was all but forgotten now, one that even the ancients themselves wrote songs and stories about. In the old days they called it San Francisco and it had been very beautiful.

Of course, I knew a trip across more than half a continent would mean hardship and a little danger, as well as the expense. That only encouraged me. I would have to pass through tribal country, and that is not to be taken lightly, even in a large and well-armed party like the one I was travelling with. Our route was to take us through the southwestern part of Central Province (what I had grown to think of, in my bookish way, as old Oklahoma), and then due south to Porterville.

If you don't have an atlas handy, Porterville is the capital of Gordon Free State. It used to be inland, but that was before the Fire War. It's supposed to govern all the area between Central Province and the Western glass desert, but it's really just an overgrown fishing village, and the "governing" amounts to sending heavily armed patrols out every now and then to raid the slave states. Sometimes they rescue a few captives - poor creatures - but they are really more interested in simple plunder: gold, metals, some of the more valuable plastics, and most of all, electronics.

Some of my friends said I was crazy to be going on the caravan. But, as I pointed out to them, people can get robbed and slave-raided sitting in their lounge-rooms. And I'd be safer in a large, well-armed mobile party than they were in their villages. (This wasn't completely true, but it's what I told them.) Actually, it was the radiation that worried me the most. I knew we'd be passing through some pretty hot places and I spent all I could afford on a pretty fancy isolation suit.

It would be early summer before I could quit school for the last time (my parents had insisted I finish school before they'd let me travel) and take the Central Province steamer. From there it was going to be on foot all the way. The CP-Porterville leg was nothing too unusual, but the next leg was going to be a bit tougher: out from Porterville through the South-Western desert to hit the coast near old San Diego. If I was going to strike trouble, this was where it would be. Or maybe trouble with radiation after I found another caravan to take me north along the mountainous fringes of the Western glass desert, up past the still hot ruins of mighty LA.

The caravan assembled on a Saturday afternoon on the big grassy flat down near the river, just out of Kansas City. (It's not much more than a big village these days, but it was never bombed and it still keeps the old name.) Not counting well-wishers, hawkers, sticky-beaks and people just come to wave goodbye, there were 97 people on the manifest: 87 travellers and just ten guides. If that seems like a low ratio to you, remember that most of us travellers were armed too, so all together we rated about 65 rifles, and the Caravan Master made it pretty plain to us at the pre-departure briefing: everybody was expected to contribute to the journey. We'd paid our money but we still had to cook, clean, stand sentry, repack the wagons, mind children, and anything else that was needed to get us all to Porterville.

I was surprised at how many family groups there were. At 17 I was the youngest one travelling alone, but there were 15 or 20 kids ranging from my own age down to a six-month old baby. All in all, it was a happy gathering and I think we were all keen to get started. I pitched my tent at the end of the last row nearest the river, and lay with my head outside looking at the stars for ages, too excited to sleep. By the time I eventually dropped off there were only half a dozen people left awake and the evening's big bonfires had burnt down to dull red embers.

I'd thought I would have trouble getting up in time (I hate mornings) but I was wide awake and keen to be off almost before my eyes were open. It was barely light. Soon the guides were walking about banging on pots and saucepans and calling everyone to get up and get ready to roll. I was to get very used to this morning routine. There was no breakfast, we just rolled up the tents and started off. There were two ten minute breaks and almost an hour for lunch, but other than that we walked all day. If you wanted breakfast you had to get up before dawn and cook it yourself.

Most of us were really tired by the end of that first day, and the campfire conversations were punctuated by yawns and complaints about sore feet. I let on that I suspected the Caravan Master was taking it easy for the first few days and we'd be expected to do a lot better than that once we got used to the trail. I was right, but I should have kept my big mouth shut, as one of the guides promptly said:

"Well you seem pretty wide-awake young fella, maybe you can stand a watch tonight."

He was serious too. I had to walk half a mile up a rocky slope and stand lookout till I was relieved by one of the older travellers sometime after midnight.

At first I felt happy and proud to be treated like an adult and given a man's job. Later on I figured that they were letting me stand watch because there was no danger this close to civilization and it was a waste of a grown-up's time to be doing it. Later on still, I was just bored and cold and sleepy, but I stuck it out and I'm glad I did, because they watch you on your first few days and pick out the ones they think are useful.

By the time we were four or five days into the trail, I had been accepted as an adult member of the caravan. I was happy and proud to do my share of the work, to help guide the animals during the day, stand extra watches every second or third night, just generally make myself useful. I was starting to wonder if I should forget my dream of being a historian (I mean, who makes a living out of history anyway?) and go in for being a caravan guide.