Authors: Harlan Ellison
But the Merc suddenly wasn’t in front of him. Even as he had fired, the driver had sheered left into the next forty-foot-wide lane, and cut speed drastically. The Merc dropped back past them as the Piranha swooshed ahead.
“He’s on my back!” George shouted.
The next moment Spandau slugs tore at the hide of the Chevy. George slapped the studs, and the bulletproof screens went up. But not before pingholes had appeared in the beryllium hide of the Chevy, exposing the boron fiber filaments that gave the car its lightweight maneuverability. “Stuffer!” George breathed, terribly frightened. The driver was on his back, could ride him into the ground.
He swerved, dropping flaps and skimming the Piranha back and forth in wide arcs, across the two lanes. The Merc hung on. The Spandaus chattered heavily. The screens would hold, but what else was the driver running? What were the “coded optionals” the CC Operator had mentioned?
“Now see what you’ve gotten us into!”
“Jess, shut up, shut up!”
The transceiver queeped. He studded it on, still swerving. This time the driver of the Merc was sending via microwave video. The face blurred in.
He was a young boy. In his teens. Acne.
“Punk! Stinking punk!” George screamed, trying to swerve, drop back, accelerate. Nothing. The blood-red Merc hung on his tailfin, pounding at him. If one of those bullets struck the radiator tailfin, ricocheted, pierced to the engine, got through the lead shielding around the reactor. Jessica was crying, huddled inside her Armadillo.
He was silently glad she was in the g-suit. He would try something illegal in a moment.
“Hey, Boze. What’s your slit look like? If she’s creamy’n’nice I might letcha drop her at the next getty, and come back for her later. With your insurance, baby, and my pickle, I can keep her creamy’n’nice.”
“Fuzzfaced punk! I’ll see you dead first!”
“You’re a real thrasher, old dad. Wish you well, but it’s soon over. Say bye-bye to the nice rodder. You gonna die, old dad!”
George was shrieking inarticulately.
The boy laughed wildly. He was up on something. Ferro-coke, perhaps. Or D4. Or merryloo. His eyes glistened blue and young and deadly as a snake.
“Just wanted you to know the name of your piledriver, old dad.
You
can call me Billy....”
And he was gone. The Merc slipped forward, closer, and George had only a moment to realize that this Billy could not possibly have the money to equip his car with a laser, and that was a godsend. But the Spandaus were hacking away at the bulletproof screens. They weren’t meant for extended punishment like this. Damn that Detroit iron!
He had to make the illegal move
now.
Thank God for the g-suits. A tight turn, across the lanes, in direct contravention of the authorization. And in a tight turn, without the g-suits, doing—he checked the speedometer and tach—250 mph, the blood slams up against one side of the body. The g-suits would squeeze the side of the body where the blood tried to pool up. They would live. If...
He spun the wheel hard, slamming down on the accelerator. The Merc slewed sidewise and caught the turn. He never had a chance. He pulled out of the illegal turn, and their positions were the same. But the Merc had dropped back several car-lengths. Then from the transceiver there was a queep and he did not even stud-in as the Police Copter overhead tightbeamed him in an authoritative voice:
“XUPD 88321. Warning! You will be in contravention of your dueling authorization if you try another maneuver of that sort! You are warned to keep to your lanes and the standard rules of road courtesy!”
Then it queeped, and George felt the universe settling like silt over him. He was being killed by the system.
He’d have to eject. The seats would save him and Jessica. He tried to tell her, but she had fainted.
How did I get into this?
he pleaded with himself.
Dear God, I swear if you get me out of this alive I’ll never never never go mad like this again. Please God.
Then the Merc was up on him again, pulling up
alongside!
The window went down on the passenger side of the Mercury, and George whipped a glance across to see Billy with his lips skinned back from his teeth under the windblast and acceleration, aiming a.45 at him. Barely thinking, George studded the bumpers.
The super-conducting magnetic bumpers took hold, sucked Billy into his magnetic field, and they collided with a crash that shook the.45 out of the rodder’s hand. In the instant of collision, George realized he had made his chance, and dropped back. In a moment he was riding the Merc’s tail again.
Naked barbarism took hold. He wanted to kill now. Not crash the other, not wound the other, not stop the other
—kill the other!
Messages to God were forgotten.
He locked-in the laser and aimed for the windshield bubble. His sights caught the rear of the bubble, fastened to the outline of Billy’s head, and George fired.
As the bolt of light struck the bubble, a black spot appeared, and remained for the seconds the laser touched. When the light cut off, the black spot vanished. George cursed, screamed, cried, in fear and helplessness.
The Merc was equipped with a frequency-sensitive laserproof windshield. Chemicals in the windshield would “go black,” opaque at certain frequencies, momentarily, anywhere a laser light touched them. He should have known. A duelist like this Billy, trained in weaponry, equipped for whatever might chance down a Freeway. Another coded optional. George found he was crying, piteously, within the cavern of his bangup hat.
Then the Merc was swerving again, executing a roll and dip that George could not understand, could not predict. Then the Merc dropped speed suddenly, and George found himself almost running up the jet nozzle of the blood-red vehicle.
He spun out and around, and Billy was behind him once more, closing in for the kill. He sent the propellers to full spin and reached for eternity. 270. 280. 290.
Then he heard the sizzling, and jerked his head around to see the back wall of the car rippling.
Oh my God.
he thought, in terror,
he can’t afford a laser, but he’s got an inductor beam!
The beam was setting up strong local eddy currents in the beryllium hide of the Chevy. He’d rip a hole in the skin, the air would whip through, the car would go out of control.
George knew he was dead.
And Jessica.
And all because of this punk, this rodder fuzzface!
The Merc closed in confidently.
George thought wildly. There was no time for anything but the blind plunging panic of random thought. The speedometer and the tach agreed. They were doing 300 mph.
Riding on air-cushions.
The thought slipped through his panic.
It was the only possibility. He ripped off his bangup hat, and fumbled Jessica’s loose. He hugged them in his lap with his free hand, and managed to stud down the window on the driver’s side. Instantly, a blast of wind and accelerated air skinned back his lips, plastered his cheeks hollowly, made a death’s head of Jessica’s features. He fought to keep the Chevy stable, gyro’d.
Then, holding the bangup hats by their straps, he forced them around the edge of the window where the force of his speed jammed them against the side of the Chevy. Then he let go. And studded up the window. And braked sharply.
The bulky bangup hats dropped away, hit the roadbed, rolled directly into the path of the Merc. They disappeared underneath the blood-red car, and instantly the vehicle hit the Freeway. George swerved out of the way, dropping speed quickly.
The Merc hit with a crash, bounced, hit again, bounced and hit, bounced and hit. As it went past the Piranha, George saw Billy caroming off the insides of the car.
He watched the vehicle skid, wheelless, for a quarter of a mile down the Freeway before it caught the inner breakwall of the lanedivider, shot high in the air, and came down turning over. It landed on the bubble, which burst, and exploded in a flash of fire and smoke that rocked the Chevy.
At three hundred miles per hour, two inches above the Freeway, riding on air, anything that broke up the air bubble would be a lethal weapon. He had won the duel. That Billy was dead.
George pulled in at the next getty, and sat in the lot. Jessica came around finally. He was slumped over the wheel, shaking, unable to speak.
She looked over at him, then reached out a trembling hand to touch his shoulder. He jumped at the infinitesimal pressure, felt through the g-and crash-suits. She started to speak, but the peek queeped, and she studded it on.
“Sector Control, sir.” The Operator smiled.
He did not look up.
“Congratulations, sir. Despite one possible infraction, your duel has been logged as legal and binding. You ‘II be pleased to know that the occupant of the car you challenged was rated number one in the entire Central and Eastern Freeway circuit. Now that Mr. Bonney has been finalized, we are entering your name on the dueling records. Underwriters have asked us to inform you that a check will be in the mails to you within twenty-four hours.
“ Again, sir, congratulations. “
The peek went dead, and George tried to focus on the parking lot of the neon and silver getty. It had been a terrible experience. He never wanted to use a car that way again. It had been some other George, certainly not him.
“I’m a family man,” he repeated Jessica’s words. “And this is just a family car...I...”
She was smiling gently at him. Then they were in each other’s arms, and he was crying, and she was saying that’s all right, George, you had to do it, it’s all right.
And the peek queeped.
She studded it on and the face of the Operator smiled back at her. “Congratulations, sir, you’ll be pleased to know that Sector Control already has fifteen duel challenges for you.
“Mr. Ronnie Lee Hauptman of Dallas has asked for first challenge, and is, at this moment, speeding toward you with an ET A of 6:15 this evening. In the event Mr. Hauptman does not survive, you have waiting challenges from Mr. Fred Bull of Chatsworth, California...Mr. Leo Fowler of Philadelphia...Mr. Emil Zalenko of...”
George did not hear the list. He was trying desperately, with clubbed fingers, to extricate himself from the strangling folds of the g-and crash-suits. But he knew it was no good. He would have to fight.
In the world of the Freeway, there was no place for a walking man.
The Author wishes to thank Mr. Ben Bova, formerly of Avco Everett Research Laboratory (Everett, Massachusetts), for his assistance in preparing the extrapolative technical background of this story.
Posing the question: does the god of love
use underarm deodorant, vaginal spray
and fluoride toothpaste?
“In love, there is always one who kisses and one who offers the cheek.”
—
French proverb
I knew she was a virgin because she was able to
ruffle
the silken mane of my unicorn. Named Lizette, she was a Grecian temple in which no sacrifice had ever been made. Vestal virgin of New Orleans, found walking without shadow in the thankgod coolness of cockroach-crawling Louisiana night. My unicorn whinnied, inclined his head, and she stroked the ivory spiral of his horn.
Much of this took place in what is called the Irish Channel, a strip of street in old New Orleans where the lace curtain micks had settled decades before; now the Irish were gone and the Cubans had taken over the Channel. Now the Cubans were sleeping, recovering from the muggy today that held within its hours the
déjà vu
of muggy yesterday, the
déjà rêvé
of intolerable tomorrow. Now the crippled bricks of side streets off Magazine had given up their nightly ghosts, and one such phantom had come to me, calling my unicorn to her—thus, clearly, a virgin—and I stood waiting.