Kirk Lander sat in his seat in the train to New York and looked at the dismal landscape flowing past his window. The train was in the process of leaving Cleveland, Ohio: from what he could see, it was an almost completely lifeless city covered in dirty snow. During the train's passage through the urban area, Kirk had counted a grand total of twelve moving vehicles, half of which he saw when the train stopped at the station in Cleveland.
He was in the fifth day of his train journey to New York. The aged Baldwin steam engine was surprisingly fast; however, there were plenty of short stops along the way. The train had just two passenger cars; the other twenty carried cargo - food and fuel. At each stop, some of the cargo was unloaded, or a car uncoupled from the train; occasionally, new cargo was loaded. Just past Omaha, several cars full of livestock had been added to the train. For some obscure reason, they were inserted right behind the passenger cars. A day later, whenever the train stopped or slowed down to a crawl, the stink of the manure that had accumulated in the livestock cars made Kirk gag.
He had wanted to travel by air or at least by road, in a military vehicle, but that was ruled out by his boss: Carlton Brock, the man who ruled all American territories in both worlds.
"Sorry, Kirk, but you'll have to tough it out," Carlton Brock had said. "Anything that can move and carry a load is delivering food and aid. And bringing back a lot of corpses, Kirk. People are dying all over the country. It's a real tragedy. Mostly the elderly, it could've been worse, but a life is still a life. The train you'll be on will be hauling food and stuff, too."
"But it's going to take days!"
"Don't let it stop you from taking care of your responsibilities in the New World. Take frequent naps, Kirk. Make sure things are going well there. I want a strong California, a wealthy California, and you're the guy in charge of making that happen. Got it?
"Yes, sir," said Kirk.
"Excellent. By the way, it will do you good to travel coast to coast and see with your own eyes what's happening along the way. It's going to be grim. I want you to think of possible solutions while you'll be traveling, Kirk. I want everyone to think of solutions. That is why I have called a conference of state governors here in New York. We have to think of a good plan, because heavy shit will be hitting the fan on March first."
"Yes, sir," Kirk said again.
He had to say it a few times more before Brock was finished. Carlton Brock loved delivering little lectures, making breaks now then expressly to hear the two words he loved to hear: yes, sir! When the required amount of yes, sirs had been spoken, Brock ended the conversation, sometimes abruptly. The amount of yes, sirs needed to stroke his ego varied with his mood: when Brock was in excellent spirits, just a couple did the trick. When his mood was foul, the number required often exceeded a dozen.
Kirk knew Brock was very pleased to have become the governor of all U.S. territories in both worlds. At the same time, he couldn't be happy to hear about people dying in droves from illness, hunger, and cold. That made six yes, sirs, give or take one either way.
The train clanked and rattled as it ran over switches, changing tracks: it was passing an abandoned construction site, littered with snow-capped mounds of soil and haphazardly parked vehicles. A man stood next to the wire fence surrounding the lot. As the train passed, he raised a clenched fist and held it high. It was hard to tell whether this was a salute or an act of defiance.
Kirk checked the time: he was due in the New World in half an hour. Adam would be expecting him. Kirk had appointed his elder son the deputy governor of California in both worlds. This move greatly angered Libby Placek, the other California senator before everything got turned upside down by the catastrophe. She'd kicked up such a fuss that Brock very nearly reneged on his earlier promise that gave Kirk freedom to appoint whomever he wanted to. Kirk resolved the problem by making Libby Placek governor of the Southern California region, with a boundary running just north of Fresno. Adam Lander became governor of Northern California while remaining Kirk's deputy. In Kirk's book, that was an acceptable trade.
The Lander colony was being run by Kirk's younger son Bernard, with assistance from Karen, Debbie, Hank Vorner, and nearly three hundred colonists they'd recruited so far. They'd stepped up recruitment the moment Kirk had accepted his post.
"Adam and I are the ones who are supposed to report any existing colonies, so you have nothing to fear," he'd told them. "But be discreet. It's just two more weeks and everything will be made legal."
He didn't feel any guilt about concealing the existence of the illegal colony he had founded himself. He was sure his traveling companions - State Governors of Omaha and Illinois - were guilty of the same sin. All three of them seemed to share a dislike for talking about illegal colonies, and Kirk and the Illinois governor also shared a dislike for the guy from Omaha.
The Illinois governor was, like Kirk, a former senator. He had hated Kirk's guts in the US senate, and he continued to do so now. The Omaha governor was a Mister Nobody - Omaha's senator had died in the week following the catastrophe. He was a local politician and businessman of some sort, and had made it obvious he considered himself equal in standing to the senatorial governors. They both snubbed him.
In consequence, the three of them had spent most of the journey ensconced in their compartments, pretending that their governor's duties made them too busy to engage in socializing. The remaining occupants of Kirk's car changed frequently, often on a station-to-station basis: they consisted exclusively of government and military officials. They all looked worried and weren't given much to talking.
The other passenger carriage, between the engine and Kirk's car, was occupied by relief crews and the soldiers comprising the train's escort: young men with haunted eyes that walked back and forth along the station platform, guns at the ready, whenever the train stopped - to load, unload, take on water, sand, coal, or firewood. Yes, firewood, like in the fucking nineteenth century! Kirk had actually seen it being loaded onto the engine tender and this, more than anything else, convinced him things were really bad and getting worse.
He was also worried by the fact that Randy Trueman had been forced to abandon the colony: he had received orders over the phone to report immediately to his unit based in San Diego. This had forced Randy to remove his implant, killing his second self in the New World. As Kirk had feared, Randy's absence in the New World caused an immediate drop in the colonists' efficiency. It also disrupted the military training program Randy had put in place.
"It's temporary," Randy had told Kirk before he left for San Diego in the scout car that had been sent for him. "I'm going to apply for an immediate discharge when I get there."
Kirk doubted whether Randy's application would be accepted. He suspected that once Randy rejoined his unit, he would receive a new implant in order to join Libby Placek's garrison in the New World. But there was a silver lining in this particular cloud: he would have a spy in the enemy camp. Randy had agreed to gather as much information as possible. They didn't quite work out how he would pass it on - phone calls were sure to be monitored - but Randy was confident he would find a way.
"They can't forbid me to keep in touch with my wife, can they?" he'd said. "Karen can visit me, and she'll tell you what I'd found out in the meantime."
The train was passing a complex of apartment blocks. The building nearest to the tracks had been gutted by a fire. All of its windows had been blown out: soot stained the concrete walls. There was a mound of salvaged items near the entrance. As Kirk watched, a couple of men emerged from the building, carrying a sofa and struggling to get it through the doorway. A cop stood nearby, leaning on a bicycle and watching the proceedings while smoking a cigarette. Everyone seemed to be taking up smoking these days. People were no longer afraid of getting lung cancer.
It made perfect sense, Kirk reflected. Why worry about developing a deadly illness in the future when everyone's future was a big question mark?
He shuddered, and told himself to get a grip. He was the governor of California in both worlds! He had a future, and a good one at that. He was going places! He glanced at his watch, an old Rolex that had belonged to his father. It was running perfectly in spite of its ancient wind-up mechanism, a testimony to the craftsmanship of a bygone era, when things were made to last as long possible.
He had just ten minutes left to his meeting with Adam in the New World. He made sure that his compartment was locked; then he kicked off his shoes and lay down on the silvery mat spread over his bunk.
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