"Will, d'ye think that what's out here may help me to know more about what happened to my da?"
"I don't know. It's possible, I suppose, but not likely. All I know for sure is that I finally have a chance to count something that matters and not be seen doing it." His blood had cooled enough for him to hold out his hand to her; Susan's had cooled enough for her to take it in good confidence. She had put her glove back on again, however. Better safe than sorry.
"Come on," she said. "I know a path."
12
In the moon's pale half-light, Susan led him out of the orange grove and toward the thump and squeak of the oilpatch. Those sounds made Roland's back prickle; made him wish for one of the guns hidden under the bunk-house floorboards back at the Bar K.
"Ye can trust me, Will, but that doesn't mean I'll be much help to ye," she said in a voice just a notch above a whisper. "I've been within hearing distance of Citgo my whole life, but I could count the number of times I've actually been in it on the fingers of both hands, so I could. The first two or three were on dares from my friends."
"And then?"
"With my da. He were always interested in the Old People, and my Aunt Cord always said he'd come to a bad end, meddling in their leavings." She swallowed hard. "And he did come to a bad end, although I doubt it were the Old People responsible. Poor Da."
They had reached a smoothwire fence. Beyond it, the gantries of the oil wells stood against the sky like sentinels the size of Lord Perth. How many had she said were still working? Nineteen, he thought. The sound of them was ghastly - the sound of monsters being choked to death. Of course it was the kind of place that kids dared each other to go into; a kind of open-air haunted house.
He held two of the wires apart so she could slip between them, and she did the same for him. As he passed through, he saw a line of white porcelain cylinders marching down the post closest to him. A fencewire went through each.
"You understand what these are? Were?" he asked Susan, tapping one of the cylinders.
"Aye. When there was electricity, some went through here." She paused, then added shyly: "It's how I feel when you touch me."
He kissed her cheek just below her ear. She shivered and pressed a hand briefly against his check before drawing away. "I hope your friends will watch well." "They will." "Is there a signal?"
"The whistle of the nighthawk. Let's hope we don't hear it." "Aye, be it so." She took his hand and drew him into the oilpatch.
13
The first time the gas-jet flared ahead of them, Will spat a curse under his breath (an obscenely energetic one she hadn't heard since her father died) and dropped the hand not holding hers to his belt.
"Be easy! It's only the candle! The gas-pipe!"
He relaxed slowly. "That they use, don't they?"
"Aye. To run a few machines - little more than toys, they are. To make ice, mostly."
"I had some the day we met the Sheriff."
When the flare licked out again - bright yellow with a bluish core - he didn't jump. He glanced at the three gas-storage tanks behind what Hambry-folk called "the candle" without much interest. Nearby was a stack of rusty canisters in which the gas could be bottled and carried.
"You've seen such before?" she asked.
He nodded.
"The Inner Baronies must be very strange and wonderful," Susan said. ?
"I'm beginning to think they're no stranger than those of the Outer Arc," he said, turning slowly. He pointed. "What's yon building down there? Left over from the Old People?"
"Aye."
To the east of Citgo, the ground dropped sharply down a thickly wooded slope with a lane cut through the middle of it - this lane was as clear in the moonlight as a part in hair. Not far from the bottom of the slope was a crumbling building surrounded by rubble. The tumble-and-strew was the detritus of many fallen smokestacks - that much could be extrapolated from the one which still stood. Whatever else the Old People had done, they had made lots of smoke.
"There were useful things in there when my da was a child," she said.
"Paper and such - even a few ink-writers that would still work ... for a little while, at least. If you shook them hard." She pointed to the left of the building, where there was a vast square of crumbled paving, and a few rusting hulks that had been the Old People's weird, horseless mode of travel. "Once there were things over there that looked like the gas-storage tanks, only much, much larger. Like huge silver cans, they were. They didn't rust like those that are left. I can't think what became of them, unless someone hauled them off for water storage. I never would. 'Twould be unlucky, even if they weren't contaminated."
She turned her face up to his, and he kissed her mouth in the moonlight.
"Oh, Will. What a pity this is for you."