3: Rolling Thunder
The road between Wosh-Tun and Newbegin, the two biggest cities in the country, is long and hard. It takes months to walk. If you're lucky, you can see some pretty amazing things along the way. Precities, ransacked and abandoned; clean rivers running down from the mountain ranges; sometimes even Sand-Eater communities, not that you'd want to see that too often.
But I was expecting all of that. I'd been told I might see some or all of it, depending on our caravan route.
They didn't tell me I'd see a whole new kind of caravan.
We were about halfway between the cities, coming up to a town called Waters Meet. It's in hilly country, on a raised plateau between mesas where two rivers flow down from either side and join outside the town. It's pretty isolated due to the terrain, but because of the water it's a big, well-populated place and home to a huge market — just about every caravan in the country goes through it to trade and fill up on water.
The going had been tough that day. One of the Old Roads is still above ground in that area, but it's broken and rough and in places it disappears. The goat shepherds were walking off the road, and they were no slower than the rest of us.
But if the Old Road wasn't much use to us, it was essential for someone else; as we drew closer to the mesa we saw how the road went round it, with a new track road leading off up to the town. And camped right by the junction was a sight I'll never forget.
Some of our party thought they were looking at Waters Meet, that they'd been misinformed and the town was actually at the foot of the mesa. But it only looked like a town. In fact, it was a huge caravan... one made entirely of machines.
My father had told me stories of how machines before the Big Wet could move by themselves. They still had wheels, just like carts, and someone still had to drive them. But instead of goats or dogs to pull it, the driver controlled the machine itself, and the machine went wherever they told it to. That's what these machines were, and I found out later the traders called them trucks.
The caravan was led by a man called Sultan Devvin, whose banner was a water jug and yucca. I never saw him, not even later that night when I went down to talk with them. But like any good caravan leader, he demanded — and got — absolute loyalty. There were really strict rules about what I could and couldn't see; where I could go, and where was forbidden; even who I could talk to.
They were wary when I told them what I do, and I don't think many of them believed me, because how could a woman be so well-travelled? But they humoured me just the same.
The trucks were part salvage, part new; apparently the Sultan's right-hand man was an Artisian whose family had passed down the knowledge to make and repair trucks from before the Big Wet. He was one of the men I wasn't allowed to see — too valuable to risk, I guess — and everyone else claimed they had no idea how the machines worked and couldn't tell me anything. I've met more machine caravans since, and they all say the same thing. I know it's goatshit. They're just guarding their secrets, and I suppose I can understand that.
What they could tell me was what they traded in, and the amount of goods these caravans move is amazing. One of the big covered trailers can carry five hundred weights of hemp. This one in particular was filled with food — alfalfa, carrot, parsnip, turnip, even watermelon and peanuts. Some of it was for the journey, of course, but most of it was to trade in Waters Meet and Newbegin. They preferred to sell it in Newbegin, because more people to sell to meant a higher price for them — but also because they could get paid in coin and so get a better range of supplies for themselves than if they had to barter, like in Waters Meet.
The machine caravan left three days later. I was tempted to ask if I could join them, but the whole point of my journey was to document the road between cities for myself, and that meant walking.
I didn't regret my decision, because when they switched on the machines and drove away, pumping black smoke into the air, the noise was deafening.
I don't know how anyone could even think, let alone drive a machine, with that din roaring in your ears.
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