The Age Atomic

ELEVEN

It was cold, and getting colder.

The man on the bridge frowned, his breath steaming in a huge cloud before him as he peered ahead. Behind him, the wall of fog was as dense and impenetrable as ever, but ahead the view was clear.

But… he wasn’t sure.

The night was quiet, like it wasn’t just the bridge and the water beneath it that was frozen solid. It was like the air itself was too cold even to allow sound to pass.

A moment later the ice beneath the bridge cracked, the sound like a muffled gunshot echoing around and around. The man shuffled, the knob of his wooden leg scraping the roadway, as the bridge shook, the tremor strong enough to knock him over. The man grabbed the rail next to him and clung on, pressing his chest against it, ignoring the way the cold of the metal cut through his thick jacket. The tremor stopped, but the man held on a moment longer, just to be sure. He glanced over the edge. The ice had cracked, a great zigzag fissure opening directly below the bridge.

The tremors worried him. They were getting stronger and more frequent, far more so than when he had left the city.

He straightened up. And how long ago had that been? How many years had he been traveling, lost in the fog? Too many, and somehow far more than had apparently passed here.

If this was the same place, the right place.

He had to admit, he wasn’t sure. The buildings on the other side of the bridge were dark and apparently empty. The sky was clear but completely black. The fog bank behind the man cast a dirty orange glow over the bridge.

The bridge was the problem. The city was alone, isolated, surrounded by a wall of fog. Beyond the fog was nothing but the lands of the Enemy.

Or so he had thought. He knew, now, that his knowledge of the universe was incomplete. There was plenty beyond the fog. The Pocket was larger than he had ever dreamed, stretching far beyond the reach of his instruments.

But the bridge, that was different. He hadn’t known about it before. But as the cold had gotten worse the fog had receded, exposing the structure at the very northern tip of the island. It provided the perfect watch point, the airship anchored to it quite securely, hidden just behind the fog bank. It wouldn’t pay to take any chances and leave themselves exposed, if the city was the wrong place.

And the bridge was the one thing that made him pause to consider whether this really was the right place.

He dared not go any further across it. Not yet. There were still tests to do and measurements to make. He stared ahead, trying to judge distance, to recognize any part of the cityscape before him.

There, perhaps, due south, where the air was a little misty, where the glow was captured, the lights of something big, the lights of civilizations, of something more substantial than the collection of empty shells that crowded the end of the island, on the other side of the bridge.

Perhaps it was the right place. Perhaps he had found home.

Perhaps.

The man on the bridge slapped his cheeks to get the feeling back into them, rubbed his thick mustache to get the ice out of it, and turned carefully on the frozen bridge. Looking down, he stepped forward slowly so as not to slide on the ice, and vanished into the fog.

The interior of the airship was silent until the man returned, his wooden leg tapping loudly on the floor as he made his way to the pilot’s seat on the flight deck. He fell into it, and began pulling his gloves off. In front of him, the windows of the craft were opaque with frost.

“Have you come to a decision?”

The man paused and looked up at the ceiling, then shook his head as he dropped his gloves onto the control board.

“No. I can’t be sure. We need something else.”

A shadow flickered in the room. “We could fly in and investigate.”

The man chuckled. “And look what happened last time,” he said, banging the end of his wooden leg against the floor. “No, we need to wait. We need to be sure.”

“We cannot wait here forever.”

That was true. The man sniffed and tugged at his beard. “If only there was a signal of some kind, something we could home in on.”

“You only found me because I activated the ship’s beacon. It is unlikely we will find such a signal out there.”

The man hrmmed, and scanned the controls. It was worth a try.

“A distress beacon, no,” he said, flicking a series of switches. On the control board a row of orange lights came on. “But maybe there will be something else. See if you can boost the output of the number two power cell. Perhaps we’ll be able to pick something up from the city — radio, perhaps, anything that might give us the information we need.”

The shadow moved again. “Very good, sir” said the voice, this time nearer the door.

The man sat back in the pilot’s seat, and looked at the frosted windows.

Perhaps it was the right place. Perhaps it was home.

But he had to be sure.