(no subject)

[calmhrtprevails]

The Capital Wasteland is a difficult place for people from other worlds to acclimate to. Fawkes hasn't brought many people to visit, but he's been there when his friend's done as much, and he's seen the looks on new arrivals' faces. It's only fair, he thinks, to make it gradual for Feuilly; he's managed to reach the Bar through a door northwest of Springvale and Megaton, in what's left of a barn. It provides a broad view and an opportunity to turn around and go back before it's too late.

Now he just has to find the Frenchman before opening the door back to the Wastes again.

Comments

[tu_vas_triompher]

"Chickens, they can live any place."

Fawkes has rather a longer stride than Feuilly, but he manages to keep up. As they go, he keeps his eyes open, trying to think what it would be like to grow up in this place. How would it shape a person? What would move a person to nostalgia if they left it?

[calmhrtprevails]

They're heading mostly southward. Ahead of them, on the left, there's the glittering remains of a partly-dried-up lake; it's broad enough and deep enough that no one in their right mind would attempt to cross it on foot, and indeed, a road once arched over it. There's only about half that arch left now. Most of the rest's visible sticking out of the water, or just under the surface, worn down by time. There's a haze of green along the shores of the lake, as of plants that've only been growing in a place a little while. No trees to speak of, save for the burnt, stubby trunks of trees that gave up a very long time ago. Bushes, though- low scrubby ones here and there, hay-tinged amongst what green leaves they have. This place has been a desert for a long time, and it's only starting to put on green again.

[tu_vas_triompher]

It's too harsh a landscape for him to do justice to, Feuilly thinks. You'd need a real artist to convey the feeling of that broken bridge and the ruins all around. But still, he takes in the rare hints of green and gold and blue as best he can as they go along, pauses once to pocket a sprig that has broken off from one of the scrubby bushes. Now that he's out of work, he finds himself wanting to paint again. He'd like to try to convey some of this scenery--when he has a chance.

[calmhrtprevails]

The wind shifts a little; Fawkes sniffs the air. "I don't think they're remaking any paper today," he says. "Normally you could smell that even this far away. All I can smell right now is the Brahmin herd."

Which is to say, for those who recognize such things through experience, that there's a distinct whiff of cattle on the wind.

"Ah, but we're very close. Do you see that brick building, there, on the left?"

('Brick' may be too kind a term. Building may be too kind a term. But at least someone's been starting to repair things, or at least put up tarpaulins and assemble bricks and the like in such a way that later comers will be better able to repair the visible parts of the building.)

"That would be the Springvale school."

[tu_vas_triompher]

Cattle farm smells better than paper mill, any day.

"Is it--is it now a school? One builds again for it to be a school?"

[calmhrtprevails]

"Some rooms are used for classrooms," says Fawkes. "The children live in the others, mostly. They spent most of their lives in caves, living in groups. This is how they get used to living in proper buildings before joining the adults in the rest of the world."

[tu_vas_triompher]

"The children live apart--not with--the adults?" He wants to be sure he's understanding. "This is always how one lives here? Or this is a, a thing, that is singular? They are orphans, maybe?"

[calmhrtprevails]

"These are orphans," Fawkes says. "They've been apart from adults a long time. Most Wasteland communities aren't like this. Lamplight, where they used to live, was... very different. I haven't traveled much, but I don't think you'll find anywhere quite like it anywhere else in the Wasteland."

[tu_vas_triompher]

"'Lamp light,'" Feuilly repeats carefully. He knows so little about this particular place that he's hardly sure how to think of comparisons. "How did the children come here?"

[calmhrtprevails]

"The Lamplight caves where they lived," Fawkes says, "turned out to be connected to the Vault where my more savage kin are created. I was part of a mission to destroy that place, once and for all. Unfortunately, destroying the Vault meant the children's caves began to collapse. It was my responsibility, with assistance from Milliways, to get the children safely out of Lamplight and bring them to somewhere else they could live."

He imagines it must be a hard thing to lose the only home you've ever known. At least when it's not an isolation cell run by easily amused monsters.

[tu_vas_triompher]

There's a lot to take in from the story, and Feuilly isn't confident that he's understood it all. He nods slowly. "And now they have a school. It is very good, that. And they have teachers? --Children, they can teach themselves so much. But a teacher is important. A teacher means--if there is a teacher, a school, it tells the children that the ideas, what they think, those have value to another person."

His ears go a bit red.

[calmhrtprevails]

"They have one of their own," Fawkes says, "a girl of about fifteen, who's studied their old texts and notes and teaches them to the other children. And they have me. I don't stand guard all the time, after all. The ones who're patient enough to pay attention attend my classroom."

[tu_vas_triompher]

"What subjects do you teach, Monsieur?"

[calmhrtprevails]

"Any that come to hand," says Fawkes. "Whatever books the school had that can still be read, and whatever books Moira's managed to reprint, all count as fair game. There's not enough of them left to discriminate."

[tu_vas_triompher]

"Oh, yes." He smiles a little. "I know, when every book is--rare. Is there a, a journal, a paper, news paper?"

[calmhrtprevails]

"No, not that I know of," says Fawkes. "But there's another way of spreading news around the Wasteland. Do you know what the word 'radio' means?"

[tu_vas_triompher]

"I have read about it! We did not yet have them at home. --I had thought of journals because at home, a book is very costly, but people can buy journals and read together. But here maybe the printing is too hard."

[calmhrtprevails]

"There's only the one printing press," Fawkes admits, "or at least only one that's working, just now. Paper's hard to come by as well, I'm afraid. Moira's books are printed on paper that was already made. It's just been bleached so it can be re-used. There are people who make money by scrounging books and papers that can be re-used, though. And the Brotherhood of Steel pays a bounty for every readable book someone brings them, so that the books can be re-printed or added to libraries."

[tu_vas_triompher]

"Libraries." He has to remind himself: bibliothèque, not librairie. "Who keeps the libraries? This brotherhood?"

(He also has to remind himself, somewhat belatedly, that there are giant ants and hairless giant dog creatures that are dangerous, if not ferocious; he glances around hastily. But Fawkes clearly knows what he's doing when it comes to the local dangers.)

[calmhrtprevails]

"For the moment, the are two," says Fawkes. "One is the archives of the Brotherhood, at the Citadel. You can't see that building from here. The other library is in Megaton. The woman who runs it is named Moira Brown. She also runs the printing works in Springvale, and the paper works."

He scans the rubble-strewn street ahead of them and points to a heap of metal sheeting rearing skyward at the end of it.

"Those are the town walls of Megaton. Our destination is very nearby."

[tu_vas_triompher]

He nods. "And it is to the Megaton library that we go? You said--it dates from two hundred years past?"

[calmhrtprevails]

"It's mostly reprinted books from two hundred years ago," says Fawkes. "All of the ones in French are that old. The people around here don't have any trade with people who speak French, but there used to be a library in Arlington that had a collection of foreign language books. That's mostly what people are hoping to get translated."

[tu_vas_triompher]

"I will do all that I can," Feuilly says with great enthusiasm. "On what subjects are they? They are histories, romances, scientific books--?"

[calmhrtprevails]

"My friend had a man from Milliways identify them for us some time back, although he couldn't serve as a translator," Fawkes says. "The ones we'd like to see translated first are scientific and medical material. There's also some histories. Actually, there are other kinds, too, but Moira hasn't printed them yet. You'd have to read them on a computer screen."

[tu_vas_triompher]

Feuilly frowns thoughtfully. "I ought to have asked before this, so that I should bring a dictionary, ah, most correct for the subject. But if I can bring back the books to Milliways I can--consult correctly."

He blushes. "I promise, I do read and write in English better than I speak."