Deathwatch (The Faded Earth Book 1)(29)
“Parker,” the man, apparently Parker, answered. “Parker Novak. I’ve been asleep a long time, haven’t I?”
Beck glanced over at Bowers and Eshton, but the Commander only gave her a slight nod. Well, okay then. It was her show until she fucked it up. “Yeah, you have. Do you know how long?”
Parker gave the question fair consideration, taking at least ten seconds of intense concentration to think about it. “I’d say at least fifty years. Possibly two or three times that.”
Beck’s eyebrows rose. One of the warnings she’d been given was not to overwhelm him with the truth right away, should the two of them have a conversation. In retrospect she should have known that outcome was the whole purpose of bringing her. “I’m curious how you came to that conclusion,” Beck said carefully.
Parker’s eyes momentarily lost their almost waifish fear, revealing the intelligent gaze of a cold logician. “First thing was the accents. The people who took care of me when I woke up told me we’re still in America, and if I accept that as true then the accents are wrong. You all sound like someone tried to smash northerners and southerners together and mix them with a spoon made in Boston. Everyone sounds like that. Linguistic drift takes a while.”
Beck pursed her lips. “Okay, but that might just be due to a group of people all being from some place that has a strange mixture of accents.”
Parker nodded, conceding the point. “Unlikely, but possible. I admit that. What’s even less likely is that those people would have technology similar in function but totally alien in design.” He jerked a thumb toward the vid. “That TV over there is about a quarter as thick as any I’ve ever seen. It looks like it’s made of thick film more than anything.”
Beck’s own mouth twitched in amusement. “It is, as a matter of fact.”
“Then there’s the armor,” Parker said. “The first mass-produced suits were coming off the assembly lines when I was put under. They were supposed to protect people. Those were made of aluminum and plain steel. These look like they’re made of something else. That black metal looks oily, somehow.”
“It’s steel,” Eshton piped up. “Metallurgy had a bit of a craze toward the end of the Collapse, and all sorts of new formulations for old metals cropped up. This is called steel six. Light, strong, and resists corrosion.”
Parker blinked, but oddly, one eye and then the other. Then he shook his head as if realizing for the first time he was in a room with other people. “Uh, anyway. The last thing I noticed is that not one of the dozen people I’ve seen since I woke up talks the way people in my own time talked. Not how, you understand, but what. No references to the plague and what it’s doing to the world. No one talking about books or movies. Clearly we didn’t bounce back very well or quickly. Hearing you people talk is like listening to machines, a little. Like someone surgically removed your ability to chat about culture.”
Beck tilted her head at him curiously. The statement plucked a chord inside her, but she couldn’t quite understand why. It was as if Parker reached through and flicked a finger against the edges of a hole where something was missing, but Beck couldn’t even feel the loss because, well, it was gone.
But listening to him speak, she thought she could begin to see the edges.
14
“I get the feeling you’re guarding me pretty heavily,” Parker said after the conversation lulled. “It can’t be because I’m dangerous.”
Eshton had been prepared for this, drilled in what to say and how to say it. No one could know how a man from the old world would react to the enormous changes over the last century. The cultural differences between them were a terribly risky divide to bridge.
“We’re making sure you don’t try to run off,” Eshton said. “Which is for your protection. Not only would you probably die before finding your way to the surface, but even if you got there you wouldn’t survive what you find.”
Parker looked at Beck, who nodded slightly. Good. There was budding trust there. When the scientist looked back to Eshton, there was sadness on his face. “I know some of it. Things were getting bad, really bad, when they put me under. Nuclear strikes to kill the infected on the west coast. Bioweapons dropped all along the northern border. More tries with different methods than I can even remember.”
Bowers scratched his beard. “And all of them with consequences to this day.”
Parker nodded. “I’m honestly kind of surprised anyone survived this long, much less thrived.”
Beck opened her mouth to speak, but Eshton gave her the barest shake of the head. She looked at him curiously, but nodded. He would have much preferred she do this part—Beck would be better at it than him, he was sure—but there were too many facts she was unaware of. “We haven’t thrived as much as you might imagine,” Eshton admitted. “That’s why we need you.”
They had of course brought Parker up to speed on the fact that the biological sciences had taken a beating during the Collapse and in the years since. The worst of it was yet to come.
Eshton breathed deep. “The truth is, we, as in the Deathwatch, don’t have a bioscience division. We’re not allowed one. The Protectorate divides up different fields between civil service organizations. They handle biology and genetics. We handle materials science and technology. The Builders take care of pretty much everything else, but their main focus is physics. There’s always some overlap, but mostly the lines between stay sharp.”