"Hell, no!" Leaves broke in. "The Board is a C Twenty-five thing with no teeth. Just a bunch of doddering sadists who legalized it in their period so they could watch the progress of the vendettas which always occurred along the Road. If Chadwick can't get Red one way, he'll do it another. All this talk about it as a game is silly!"
"Is that true, Leila?"
"Well, yes
—
though she left out the fact that without the Board, the betting situation would be very disorganized. That's important to the structure of the thing, too. I felt you needed background information. That's why I gave it to you."
"But you think Chadwick will cheat?"
"Probably."
"Then what are we to do about helping Red get through this thing?"
"Oh, we'll help him to cheat too, of course. Just how, I don't know yet. We will have to catch up with him first. Finish eating so we can get moving."
When she had left to get her duffle bag, Randy asked Leaves, "How well did you know her? How far can we trust her?"
"I know that Red trusted her. There is some strong bond between them. I think we should trust her too."
"Good," Randy said, "because I want to. I wonder what we're getting into, though."
When Leila returned some minutes later, her duffle bag on her shoulder, cigar clenched between her teeth, she smiled, nodded and gestured with her head toward the door.
"I am all settled up and checked out," she said. "Have a cigar and let's roll."
Randy nodded, collected Leaves and followed her, unwrapping the stogie she had thrust upon him.
ONE
"Flowers?"
"Yes, Red?"
"Good driving. Thanks."
"Is that all?"
"No. How'd you know?"
"You never just compliment anybody, or thank them. It is always an afterthought or a preliminary."
"Really? I never noticed that. I guess you're right. Okay. Are you getting tired of being what you are? Would you like to move on into a new avatar, become part of a more complex computer setup? Or perhaps go the organic route and be the matrix of awareness in a body?"
"I have thought of it
—
yes."
"I'd like to reward you, for faithful service and all that. So decide what you want and pull in at the next service center. I will leave you there for pickup and delivery to the proper institution, with authorization for everything to be billed to my account."
"Wait a minute. You always were a tightwad. This isn't at all like you. What is the matter? I thought I knew everything you know. What did I miss?"
"You're more suspicious than half a dozen wives. I made you a bona fide offer
—
”
"Come off it! Why do you want to get rid of me?"
"I
—
”
"I probably know you better than half a dozen wives. So forget the shit. Get to the point. What's the matter?"
"It is just that I do not believe I will be requiring your services for much longer. You've been a good and faithful employee. The least I can do is reward you this way."
"It sounds as if you are getting ready for retirement or death. Which is it?"
"Neither. Both. I'm not sure . . . I am planning a change in status, though, and I don't want you damaged in anything that entails."
"What do you think I am
—
a pocket calculator? After all this time, you insult me by assuming I possess no curiosity. You've said enough to guarantee not being able to get rid of me until I have the whole story."
"Hm."
" . . . And if you are thinking of sending me off to my new career without my consent, bear in mind that I can turn this vehicle into a cage."
"You are persuasive. I was trying to get out of it, but I guess I do owe you some explanation. Okay. I suppose it will be difficult for you to understand what a dream is, let alone some of the peculiar ones that have always followed me . . . "
"I'm strong on theory. Go on."
"My most recurrent dream has always been of gliding, gliding on warm air currents, holding myself motionless above a rich and varied landscape, and sometimes the sea. I can do it forever, it seems, seeing into the secret hearts of everything below. It breeds in me a pleasant combination of peace and cynicism, as well as some other feelings I can no longer put a name to. Days and nights seem to roll by without special emphasis. There is a profound joy in simply being, and a species of understanding I cannot bring over to here and now. There is also a power, a terrible power in me, which I am almost too lazy to use. I drift . . . "
"Sounds like a nice head-vacation. You're fortunate."
"It's more than that, and different things happen in different dreams."
"Such as?"
"I said that I moved above different places
—
lands where there are wars, or great cities, or both, wilderness. erupting volcanoes, ships on the oceans, small towns, dizzying cityscapes where nothing natural remains in sight. I recognize many of them
—
Babylon, Athens, Rome, Carthage, New York
—
across the ages. And there are many, stranger still, which I do not recognize. I begin to move my wings. I soar above the Road. It is a toy. It is a gauge, like marks on a map. We put it there. It is funny, watching the few who have noted it as they scramble along from probability to probability. I do not know but
—
”
" 'We'? Who is this 'we,' Red?"
"The dragons of Bel'kwinith would be the best way I could say it in these words we use. I just remembered that part earlier, and
—
”
"In your dreams you are a dragon?"
"That is the best way I know of describing the feeling and the appearance, though that is not exactly it."
"Interesting if not comprehensive, Red. But what has all this got to do with your present problems and your decision to ditch me?"
"They are not just dreams. They are real. I only recently realized that more and more of them seem to return to me when my life is threatened. I seem to undergo some sort of transformation."
"Real? You are not a man dreaming you are a dragon, but the other way around?"
"Something like that. Or both. Or neither. I don't know. It
is
real, though, the more of it I recall. As real as this."
"These
—
dragons of Bel'kwinith
—
you think that they
—
you
—
whoever
—
built the Road?"
"They didn't exactly build it. They sort of composed it, or compiled it, like an index for a book."
"And we are driving down an abstraction? Or a dream?"
"I don't know what you'd call it."
"I have to stay with you now, Red. Till you get your wits back."
"This is why I would have preferred not telling you as much as I have. I foresaw this reaction. I can't convince someone else of the existence of a version of reality that is temporarily my subjective vision. But I know I am stable."
"You say 'as much as I have,' meaning that there is more to tell, and I still do not know why you want to get rid of me. Let's have it all."
"This is just what I was trying to avoid . . . "
The truck creaked loudly. To his right, the seat buckled and folded toward him. The steering wheel began to elongate and twist in his direction like a strange, dark flower. The roof pressed down upon his head. A clawed arm emerged from the glove compartment, reaching for him. Outside, a shadow on the truck's bed twisted like seaweed in a current.
"I can deliver you to the nearest human service station for a complete physical and psychiatric workup, unless you show me why I should not."
"I would like to avoid that too," Red said. "You have made your point. Okay. Ease up and I'll satisfy your circuits."
The clawed arm retreated into the glove compartment and emerged again moments later holding a lighted cigar, which it extended to him while the steering wheel resumed its normal form, the roof rose and the seat settled.
"Thank you." He accepted it, puffed upon it.
Suddenly, Flowers recited:
"Toute l'âme résumée
Quand lente nous l'expirons
Dans plusieurs ronds de fumée
Abolis en autres ronds
Atteste quelque cigare
Brûlant savament pour peu
Que la cendre se sépare
De son clair baiser de feu
Ainsi le choeur des romances
A la lèvre vole-t-il
Exclus-en si tu commences
Le réel parce que vil
Le sens trop précis rature
Ta vague littérature"
He chuckled.
"Apt, I suppose," he said. "But I thought you were programmed for Baudelaire, not Mallarmé."
"I am programmed Decadent. I am beginning to see why. No matter what you do, you are slumming."
"I never looked at it that way
—
consciously. Maybe you have a point."
"The point is in the poem. Puff your cigar and dispense with reality."
" . . . And your depths amaze me."
"Cut the flattery. Why do I have to go?"
"To put it simply, you are a sentient being whom I like. I am trying to protect you."
"I am built better than you are when it comes to taking punches."
"It is not just a matter of danger. It is a matter of almost certain destruction for you
—
”
"I repeat
—
”
"You're never going to get the information you want if you keep interrupting me."
"I wasn't getting it the other way, either."
"I don't know. Whether this is the dream, whether the other is the dream
—
I don't know. It doesn't matter. I do know that I am that other of whom I dream. A woman with whom I was once old had a notion I only today realized to be correct. Before those of my blood can reach maturity, we must be set upon the Road to grow young
—
for we are born crabbed and twisted and old and must discover our youth, which is our maturity, in this form. This may in fact be the reason for the Road, and I begin to suspect that all who can travel it must be somewhat of our blood. But this I do not know for fact."
"Save the speculations for later, okay?"
"All right. Leila became progressively more self-destructive and dangerous to be about, though our paths have a strange way of continuing to cross. It began with her sooner than it did with me
—
and I only spotted it in myself later and tried to keep it under control. She always was more sensitive than me
—
”
"Stop. Leila is the woman back at C Sixteen
—
who started the fire
—
the one to whom you referred as someone with whom you were once old?"
"Yes. There's corroboration there, if you ever meet her again. First we sought
—
together, then apart
—
for the way back to the place from which we had come. No luck. Then I decided one day that it was because things had changed from my earliest memories of dispositions along the Road itself. So I set out to alter the picture, to bring it back into accord with my recollections
—
hoping to find the lost route once everything was back in place. But the world is too messy and hard to work with. I realize now that I can't just fiddle with it here and there and get it to behave the way it used to, back when I was old. I guess I had actually begun to realize this some time ago. But I couldn't figure any other way to go about it, so I persisted. Then Chadwick declared black decade against me and things slowly began to fall into place."
"Should I begin to see how?"
"No."
Red took a puff on his cigar and stared out of the window. A small black vehicle passed. As he watched it diminish before him, he continued, "Once my life was threatened, my spells became more frequent and my dreams increased in intensity. I saw more and more clearly which dreams were true
—
and I suddenly realized that it was this threat that was causing it. I considered my past. I had experienced similar reactions to danger throughout my life. Back at the camp before the attack, when I was drowsing, it occurred to me that Chadwick was accidentally doing me a favor with this vendetta. Then, as we fled, I thought, supposing it is not an accident? Supposing
—
unconsciously, perhaps
—
he is trying to help me? It seems possible that we are of the same breed and that he somehow knows what it takes . . . "
He let his voice trail off.
"I really think that last spell messed up your thinking a bit. Red. You're not making sense. Unless there is something you are leaving out."
"Well, I have a number of friends, and the word is out as to what is going on. It is possible that someone may try to remove Chadwick so as to do me a favor. I would like to prevent that, which has now become the reason for this trip."
"Hm. A red herring. If I buy your crazy logic, I can understand your sudden desire to save the life of the man who has been trying to kill you. But that is not what I meant. You said it just then to distract me. There is something that you are not saying and I'm getting close to it. Come on!"
"Flowers, you've been with me too long. There was another unit such as yourself that I actually had to abandon because she was beginning to think too much like me."
"I guess I'll have to bear that in mind and be sure I leave you first. In the meantime . . . "
"Actually, I thought she was beginning to flip out. Now I wonder whether she might not have been more perceptive than
—
”
"You can't distract someone with a memory core like mine! What are you hiding?"
"Nothing, really. I am looking for the way back, to the existence I begin to remember more clearly. You know that. This search has been a constant thing for me. I've a feeling
—
if that's what you're after
—
that I may be finding it before much longer."
"Aha! Finally. Okay, I suspected as much. Now give me the rest of the news. How is this to happen?"
"Well, I believe that this existence has to be, ah, terminated, before the other resumes."
"You know, all along I sort of felt that you were getting at something like that. It is the most bizarrely justified death-wish I've ever heard described
—
and my Decadent programming is very thorough. Anything you'd care to add? Have you decided yet how you'll go about it?"