A man walks alone down the shoulder of a cracked, dusty road. He is bent with weariness, his face hidden beneath the brim of a battered slouch hat, a scarf wrapped over his mouth and nose to keep out the dust and a pair of shaded goggles over his eyes. Right now the dust isn't too bad, though. The storm is mostly over. He wears a long coat - the kind that was called a duster a century ago, a thought that makes his mouth twitch into something brief and faint and smile-like under the scarf. The coat is missing most of its buttons and flutters in the wind. Under it he wears heavy canvas trousers - work pants with many patches - and a long-sleeved turtleneck with a vest over it. Gloves - three of the fingers missing, the palms patched with metal plating. And boots: high, thick, thick-soled leather boots scuffed a dull dusty brown, the same color as the drifting sands. They are held shut with many wide buckles and with laces under those. At his hip, in various holsters or tied to one of two belts: a large steel wrench, a screwdriver, a serrated hunting knife, heavy-duty cutters, and a silver revolver. Across his back: a rusted Kalashnikov rifle, a radio with an antenna twice its length, something in a makeshift scabbard that might well be a sword. But despite this arsenal, the lonely traveller along this empty Wasteland road seems vulnerable, exposed to the elements and - approaching in a cloud of dust from the east - to humans who are not exposed. Without a vehicle, he is as if naked. The enemy is coming for him.
He both sees and hears their approach, the rev of the diesel and the hazed sun flashing off the windshield. A Ranchero with a gun mounted in the back and a cowcatcher on the front. For a moment he almost can convince himself they'll pass him by, but then the car brakes in a volcano of dust and stops with the back left wheel six inches from his toes. He stops walking.
"Hey, hey!" one of the riders crows. He wears football shoulderpads, a spiked codpiece, and a headdress of human scalps. "Where ya trampin', oldboy?"
"East," says the man.
A chorus of cackles rises from the automobile. A couple of men get out, and the scalp-wearer hops down from the back, leaving another to guard the gun. He has tall boots and a tail of more scalps on, but nothing else. The three surround the walker, chirping and hooting. Probably high off something, he hopes. He wants to give them an excuse for this.
"What's east, Wastelander?" The car's driver: gruff, his face stubbled and misshapen, his head hacked and scarred and his chin tattooed.
"Dunno. That's why I'm trampin' there."
"Cheeky," the driver spits. He advances on the stranger, but the man in the dust doesn't flinch.
"Take off ya hat," sneers the scalp-wearer. He bats it off in a quick slap, and the stranger catches it midair and replaces it. His hair is short, unkempt, uneven - but brown, a good clear brown, not dusty or greyed, and the scalp-wearer pops the catch on his scalper holster. "Cheeky!" he hisses, echoing the leader as he leans in.
"Wait!" the driver snaps. "Future says bring 'em in kickin'. No scalps." He motions the third, who came out the backseat, who moves for the stranger. His arms are massive, popping with veins and sinews, and his body tall, but his face is hidden beneath a half-mask, and the bits of covered half peeking out of the grille over his mouth and right eye are scarred with radiation and disease. He wears nothing but a black leather thong, and cuffs and boots made of old tire rubber. The stranger puts up a hand.
"I'll come peaceful, but none lays a hand on my kit, fair?" he says coolly.
The driver's eyes narrow. "So long's ya keep ya paws up, you can trust it, tramper. One move, barter's off. Fair."
The stranger nods. He gets into the car's backseat, the big one climbing in behind him, and the scalper growls and springs back up to the gunbed while the driver gets back behind the wheel. He turns around east and drives. They have gone but a mile or so when the road plunges. They go through a barricade, beneath the wary eyes of sentries. This is why the man didn't see the city the car came from: it lies in a steep-walled defile, so steep the road ends at a pulley rig where the driver exchanges words with another guard and they drive onto a rickety wooden platform to be lowered to their destination. And the advantage is clear. Not only is the place hidden and protected by its natural walls, but as they descend, silent, the man sees little tough grasses spotted along the canyon walls. So there are plants here, too. And where plants, there water. Where water, humans.
At the bottom there is a gun crew waiting, a gun that was trained on them the whole way down. Another exchange with another guard. The car revs and speeds away down the canyon. A few gutchurning turns and the city gate is before them. The doors open. The car crawls inside, parks in a motorpool of gunrigs, and everyone gets out. They push the stranger out with them. Scalper follows at a near distance, rubbing his knife.
The man does not ask where they are going. They enter a fortress welded together out of scrap metal. He sees the spiked autobodyparts of the Buzzards, the skull-encrusted decal of the Warboys, the horns and bones of the Rock Riders, the ribbed metal and wild paint of the Mutilators, the pounded chains of the Rollcage tribe, and many sorts he doesn't recognize. They have built this place from the smashed vehicles of those that tried to assail them - or maybe just didn't see the canyon. For all he knows, these people drove their opponents over the edge on purpose.
Inside, some ways above the ground level, the driver bows and salutes to a guard in a white shroud. A woman, the man realises, though her face is almost hidden. In his experience, female warlords are more reasonable than their male counterparts, if not always benevolent. Then again, the woman's headdress is a human head impaled on a spiked helmet, so he can't really assume.
"Whatcha brung the Future, driver?" the woman growls. "Meat? Slaves? Bodyparts?"
"Any or all, gatewoman. Tramper from the road. Came peaceful on account we left his kit."
The woman nods. "Tramper. Keep ya paws up and go before the Future." She turns a lever and a door opens. He goes through, hands up and visible as requested, and the door thunks shut behind him. It is very dark for a moment, especially after an age of desert sun; then a door retracts before him and he walks forward again before it, too, thuds shut.
"Desert nomad," sniffs another gatewoman, a tall thing with short, very pale hair, pale yellow eyes, sharp white teeth with the missing ones replaced by sharpened shell casings. "Who cares he came peaceful? Good meat. Organs for the parts man. Slave if he's pretty, replace one of the half-lifed ones-"
"Silent, Inevita. He's not your choice," says another woman. This one is clearly the leader. There is something about her that draws the eye instantly, that chills the blood, that arrests the heart. She wears a cloak of rusted maille, a collar of black feathers, a tank top made from an old canvas bag, with real buttons that gleam under the steel-stitched car-windows of the skylight roof. She has black hair that shines, freckles and pale skin that makes him wonder how she has avoided the sun-damage worn by every other human of the Wasteland. There is something genteel about her that he has not encountered in all the years of his travels. He puts a word to it: civilization. More: culture. And there is a danger, too, an undercurrent of danger that he cannot ignore. These things are present even in the way she talks. She beckons him forward. "Come up, tramper. Take off that dustgear and show us your face."
Almost unwillingly, the stranger approaches. He takes off the hat, then the scarf, then pushes the goggles up on his brow. Inevita, the woman with the yellow eyes, is surprised: he is young, a mere pup, and without the blemishes of the halflife. But he carries himself like an old man, weary with the decline of the world he knew when it was green. His eyes are that same green, the green of growing things, of life without the poison. The woman with the freckles, who is reclined upon a sofa in the midst of the room, smiles and rises.
"He's the one," she says softly. "Inevita. Get the other girls."
Suddenly the man thinks it might have been better to fight off the scalper and his cohorts in the desert. He generally keeps his face hidden as a rule, since, in this world, beauty isn't an asset, and he doesn't like being the target of sexual violence - not to mention youth attracts slavers, and health, beauty not being a factor. There are too many animals in the Wasteland. He can't help wondering if he's standing in a den of them right now.
"You wonder who I am, tramper," the woman says.
"The question had occurred to me, yes."
"I am the Future," she says with a bright smile: no teeth missing. "Who are you, raggedyman?"
"I'm not anyone. Just a desert nomad."
"Without a rig?"
He sniffs. "Oh, I've got a rig. Just no guzzlelene. Had to ditch it and go afoot."
"You got a radio."
"Yup."
"You got a name, desert nomad?"
He takes a slow breath. "I don't like to give out my name."
"I got a feeling about you, tramper," says the woman softly. "A feeling like you could be the future too. You get my meaning?"
"No, ma'am, and I'd like to be off on my way."
She laughs. "No, sorry. But don't fret on your precious kit. None'll gank it. I got real safekeeping for it while you wait."
Before he can get the sword drawn something hits him - something that goes through his coat and vest and two shirts and stabs him in the small of the back. Suddenly he goes rigid and falls to the floor, shuddering and jerking, his mind afire with confusion and pain. His head is swimming and his body paralysed as Inevita and many other women appear and strip him of his gear, his coat, his boots more precious than oil. He gasps for breath but can barely seem to get enough to keep alive. The Future stands over him, smiling, as one of the women locks his wrists in a duomanacle. They blindfold him, and he hears her voice: "A little treasure of the oldworld. Lightning in a bottle. Don't fear, tramper - we're just keeping you guest. Your kit's just hid, and you'll get it back when the wait's done. If you come out kickin', that is. Otherways you'll come out dead, and then you won't care on your kit, so either way it's not to fret on. Enjoy your stay!"
The women drag him away, still twitching from the oldworld weapon - electricity, a thing he knows of but has rarely witnessed. He is held up against a wall and the manacle is hooked onto something so that he is mostly hanging; there is wide metal grating beneath his toes, but the grate spacing is broad. The edges of the grate bruise when he tries to put weight on his feet, once the weapon wears off - and it is a long time before then. He struggles a little, trying to get free, only to realise it's impossible. No use in calling for help, either - no attention is good attention in a place like this. Not much more to do than, as the Future said, wait. He can only hope it won't be too long.
It is long, however. Weeks long. Long enough that he begins to question reality, even to hallucinate. Once in a while he hears sounds and then he listens with the ravenous focus with which a starving man consumes food: people walking below, chatting on the rigs or a raid. They left his gloves on, and these insulate somewhat from the manacle digging into his wrists, but he bruises from the constant pressure, and his feet get blistered, then raw from the grating. He tries to rub off the blindfold, several times, but it will not be loosened or slipped. He can only see, through the dark material, a small difference in light between night and day. He only knows he's hallucinating, when it happens, because the voices he hears, quite close by, are those of his wife and sisters, now long gone - but the voices make him start. He wonders, as he hears them more and more often, if perhaps the Future has granted him something impossible, the ability to rewind. He is travelling back in time, hanging here, and one day the door he heard the women lock after they hung him will open and his wife will undo the chains and smooth back the blindfold and be there before him, smiling at him, and they will embrace and tenderly kiss, and all around will be green and wholesome and lush, back in their little valley by the Boolarong River. No fire will scorch the air this time, no poison turn their orchard to sand, no raiders come to steal his sisters, torch his home and leave him for dead. This time, things will be different.
The door does open. By then the tramper is semiconscious, mumbling dreamwords to someone invisible. They unhook his hands and drag him back to the Future's office, under the dimmed filtered light through the glass roof. There was a large duststorm earlier which lasted a week, and no one's been up to sweep the windows yet. When Nell, one of the gatewomen, unlocks the manacle, the tramper reaches for her as for a lover, and calls her by another's name. She recoils. He pulls off the blindfold himself and blinks, lost and dazzled by the light after months of forced darkness. Bewilderment sweeps over his face. The women in their shrouds and bones and armor stand back, watching him with a look very different than Inevita's when he first came into this room. It's as though they fear him now. He looks to the Future.
"Two months," she says.
"What?"
"Two months in the cage, without food or water. You are of the future, tramper. No one yet has done more than two days without hollering for relief, and no one more than a week without dying. You did it two months, and here you are kickin' and whole. You are the one I sought. Girls, get him his precious kit."
He struggles to his feet, staring at the woman who calls herself the Future. "How did you know?" he says at last.
"You were born after the oldworld poxeclipse, weren't you?"
"How could you know that?"
"Didn't know. I guessed. You had a radio. You got an old look in your young green eyes. I guessed it."
He hesitates before he asks the next question, but he cannot stop it. "And you? Are you like me?"
She smiles broadly and nods, just once. As the women return, piling the stranger's confiscated things in the center of the room, the Future says, "We're the new kind, born of the poison. We're the mutant good-to-come. I knew I couldn't be alone like this. And there'll be others, too - whole ones, pure ones who need not struggle and vie for the things the weak kind need for survival. We're the strong new kind, meant to remake the world when the last of the green's gone and the last of the water's poisoned and halflifed. I and you, tramper - we're the future."
A flash of memory moves through his mind, a thing his wife said. You'll survive. Wasting away from the halflife, bleeding in the yard she said it. Dying in his arms. I'm not important, but you'll survive, you'll come out of this still strong, still ready to make and heal and fix. The world made you for itself, for the healing-time to come. For the future. He shudders.
"I'll gather up my kit and go now, if it's fair by you," he says.
The Future is still a moment. Her eyes go strange and sad, but she nods once. "All right," she says, "you can head on for now, tramper. But don't ever forget what you've been made for."
He puts his things back on in silence - his boots, his dustgear, his stupid worthless radio. He is shaking. As he moves for the doorlock, he pauses just before it and says, without turning, "Future."
"Yes, tramperman?"
"Silver. My name's Silver."
"I'll remember it."
Then he's gone, and the Future stands on the balcony and watches him leave her city. And wonders when - if - she'll ever see him again. If he'll come back here when the rest all die, to make the world anew - to grow things in the poison and thrive. She prays she won't regret letting him walk away like this, but something in her promises her that he'll be back. She doesn't know when or how, but he will be.