"Danty. And it says CowvMe in my redbook."
Rollins betrayed obvious relief. Cowville was right next door to Lakonia; in fact it was the nucleus from which Lakonia had spread like a stump of wild-rose root with a gorgeous over-blown double floribunda grafted on it. Taking a man back to his home city wasn't too bad. Danty let the idea curdle.
Then he added mildly, "But mostly I'm from all over."
"You make a habit of traveling this way?" Rollins curled his lip. It was probably in his mind to add: Because if you do, you must be a lousy rebl Everybody knows they shave and cut their hair nowadays!
"No, this is kind of a special case."
"Glad to hear it!" Rollins snapped, and fell silent. After a moment he reached for the radio buttons and snapped on an early-morning music program. Soothed by the sound of the current chart-toppers, the Male Organs, Danty dozed.
He awoke to a prod in his ribs and the sound of the gas-gauge emitting a penetrating hum.
"Got to pull in for gas," Rollins told him unnecessarily. "Now you watch how you act, hear? Don't want some radiated gas-attendant to turn me in for free-lifting!"
Danty touched the gritty mud on his face. He said, "Well, then I can get to a washroom and clean up."
"You do that! And watch yourself!" Rollins ordered.
His imitation bravado leaked away as the car slowed. His lips moved as though he were rehearsing what he would say when they stopped.
He was. Therefore it came out smoothly enough. "Fifty, please!" he called to the attendant in his overhead booth, watching the forecourt through armour-glass with his hands poised above the triggers for his guns.
"Fifty it is," the man answered, and began to haul on his waldoes. Angled, a fuel-pipe launched down from its high hook and sought the car's filler like a blind snake.
So far, so good. As Danty left his seat, Rollins breathed easier. Hell, was anyone--even a gas-attendant, in a trade that encouraged paranoia-going to turn him in for a little free-lifting? Of course not!
And then his stomach filled with ice-cubes. There was a cop rolling into the gas-station, masked and armored, like a mere extension of the single-seat racer that he rode.
Patrolman Clough yawned hugely as he dismounted. That was a slow job, involving a thorough survey of the vicinity, then the folding back of four light-alloy bullet deflectors. But finally he freed himself, stood upright, and stretched and yawned again. The quick dash of midnight had worn off, and he was having to pull in more and more often to rest up. The endless concentration tired the brain. Police racers had no governors on them, only a red line at the hundred-fifty mark that the rider was forbidden to exceed except in emergency. Something to boast about in company-"they don't turn loose any but the picked best on the superway without a governor!"-but on the job, not so much fun.
Only one car in the station. Banshee. Cheapjack make. Slick lines, sure, but inside-well, built-in obsolescence. of course. Trouble being they sometimes guessed wrong, the obsolescence progressed too quickly, and then he or someone was picking bits of people out of the wreckage.
Not this one, though. A last-month's model, red and gold.
Driver sort of nervy . . Wonder if he's disconnected his governor. Sort of thing the guy who buys a Banshee might do. Easy to short the governor circuits on one of these. Not a bad idea to have him lift the hood, take a quick squint.
He snapped back the visor of his helmet and strode towards the car.
Rollins rubbed sweaty palms inconspicuously on the sides of his thighs. "Morning officer!" he exclaimed, and damned his voice for skating up towards the treble.
The patrolman gave a neutral nod. Rollins told himself he couldn't possibly have seen the disreputable passenger, and whatever was bothering him with luck he'd guess wrong and be away before Danty emerged from the washroom. In fact it might be a good idea to get back on the road without Danty, if he could. What in the world could have possessed him to stop for a free-lifter? And a reb at that, more than likely!
The gas-pipe withdrew to its hook. A cash-drawer shot out of the side of the pump within easy reach of him. But he was so intent on the patrolman that at first he didn't notice, and the attendant had to parp on his hooter.
Damnation. Now the pig will know I'm rattled. He fumbled a credit card from his pocket and laid it in the tray. The patrolman followed every move, ,and when the drawer had clicked shut he said, "Mind lifting your hood, mister?"
"Uh . . .° Well, there was no help for it. He flipped the release and the hood ascended three feet on lazy-tongs mountings. sighing. Look, officer, l have a clean license ten years old, everyone eases the governor control a bit, it's not as though 1'd been in an accident ....
But the patrolman only glanced at the engine, nodded, and made to turn away. Rollins exhaled gratefully.
Must have thought the governor was cut out completely. Who but a damned fool-?
And Danty re-appeared.
He'd washed, and wiped the stubble of beard from his chin with Depilide, but even so he didn't match a brand-new Banshee. And here he was opening the passenger door. You could almost hear the tumblers clicking in the pig's head, like a fruit machine.
"Hah!" he said after a tense pause. "Let's see your redbook, you!"
Danty shrugged, unzipped his hip-pocket, and held out his red-covered identity papers. The silence stretched as the patrolman seemed to be reading every single word. Finally Rollins could bear it no longer.
"Is something wrong, officer?"
The cop didn't glance up. He said, "Friend of yours, mister?"
"Sure! Of course he is!"
"Tell me more." The machine-like helmet still bent over the redbook.
"Uh . . ." Rollins' mind reacted. "Why, Danty's from Cowville. Close to where I live. We just been night-riding a bit, that's all."
Though if he asks what this radiated reb's other name is . I
The patrolman slapped shut and returned the redbook. "Okay," was all he said, but under his voice, clear as shouting, he was adding: So, a couple fruits most likely. I should arrest that kind on suspicion? 1'd be at it all dory. Anyway, they'd jump bail and head for a state where it's allowed.
Frantically Rollins started the engine again, eager to get away from here.
"Your credit card," Danty said, and pointed. Rollins snarled, snatched it from the cash-drawer, and trod on the gas. Danty was amused to see that he must have worked out what the pig was thinking. He was blushing scarlet clear down to his collar.
Behind them, Patrolman Clough made a routine entry in his tape-recorded log. But, two or three minutes later, as he was emerging from the men's room, a car howled past at far above the legal limit, and he scrambled back on his racer and took out after it, yelling for assistance on his radio. In the excitement of the chase he clean forgot about Danty and Rollins.
Turpin was plainly ill at ease and could not make up his mind how to open a conversation. For the time being that suited Sheklov. He wanted to get the feel of America, hammering home on the automatic level what he had learned on the conscious. Already he had noticed a contradiction. From the radio that Turpin had switched on, as though by reflex, music was emanating of a kind that he himself had barely encountered since his teens, when his generation still thought it "progressive" and "liberal" to imitate the example of Western rock-groups. The sound was imbued with curious nostalgia. Then, between items, an announcer resolved the paradox by saying that the program was aimed at the eternally youthful and proceeding to advertise a skin-food.
For men, as well as women. He sniffed. Yes, he wasn't mistaken; Turpin was heavily perfumed with something that hadn't been detectable in the open air, but had built up in the closed metal box of the car, despite the conditioning, until it was overpowering. He thought of asking for a window to be opened, but changed his mind. He was going to have to adjust.
To things like this superway, for instance. Back home, the roads he knew were typically two or at most three lanes wide, laid with geometrical exactitude across the landscape, carrying far more trucks and hundred-passenger buses than private cars, and had control cables laid under the surface so that no mere human being should be called on to avert an accident at 200 k.p.h.
But roads weren't really important. You could use less land and shift more people with a hover train riding concrete pylons, or for long distances you would fly.
When this road, with its opulent curves, came to a rise in the ground, its builders had contrived to give the impression that it eased itself up to let the hill pass beneath. Elegant, certainly. Yet so wasteful Eight lanes in each direction, not because there was so much traffic, only because that much margin must be allowed for human error!
Thinking of speed . . . . He repressed a start as he looked at the speedometer. Oh. yes. Not k.p.h., but m.p.h; the Americans had resolutely clung to their antiquated feet. yards and miles just as they had clung to Fahrenheit when the rest of the world abandoned it. Even so, he hoped that Tuipin was a reasonably competent driver. He himself had never attempted to guide a land-vehicle at such velocity.
Now. finally, Turpin was addressing him: "Cigarette?"
"Please." It would be interesting to try American tobacco. But he found it hot, dry, and lacking in aroma.
Ahead, a lighted beacon warned traffic to merge into the left lanes, and shortly, as the car slowed, he saw something that confirmed his worst fears: a wreck involving two trucks and a private car around which a gang of black men were busy with chains, jacks, and cutting torches. On the center divide an ambulance-crew waited anxiously to be offered a cargo.
When was someone last killed on the roads, Back There?
He watched Turpin covertly as they passed the spot, and read no emotion whatever on his face.
Well, to sustain his pretense for so long, obviously he must have had to repress his natural reactions . . .
Yet Sheklov found the explanation too glib to be convincing.
Then, a little farther on, they encountered another gang of workmen, also black. being issued with tools from a truck on the hard shoulder. Some of them were setting up more beacons. That was a phenomenon Sheklov had been briefed about: a "working welfare" project Obviously they were here to repair the road; equally obviously, the road didn't need repairing. But it conformed to the American ideal: You don't work, you don't eat.
He felt a surge of pride as he reflected on the superior efficiency of a planned economy. Then, sternly, he dismissed the thought. The system must work. otherwise human beings could not tolerate it. It was not for him to say that it oughtn't to work. Enclosed isolated, offensively conceited, the Americans were still human, and what they did among themselves was ipso facto to be respected as part of the vast repertoire of human potential.
Drawing a deep breath. he closed his eyes for a moment. Words formed in memory; they said, "O Dhananjaya,
abandoning attachment and regarding success and failure alike, be steadfast in Yoga and perform thy duties."
And his duty at present was to be Donald Paton Holtzer, who had never heard of the Blessed Lord's Song.
There was considerable traffic on the move. He saw hundreds of cars, mostly as they were left behind. because Turpin had clearance for the fastest lanes, but two or three times howling monsters tore past them illegally on the inside, and once they were overtaken by a patrolman on a racer with his siren howling like a soul in torment.
The roads, while still in usable condition, were being torn up and re-made. So too the cars were destined for a short, short life. Everything about this silent limousine of Turpin's was ultra-modern, including its schedule of obsolescence. Approximately six months old, it was already as close to the scrap yard as to the factory.
And from the scrap yard its elements would go to the factory again.
Talk about taking in each other's washing .... But he slapped that down in his mind, too.
Now and then they passed-in sight of enormous housing developments, and Sheklov also studied these carefully. Apartments stacked in towering blocks. Gardens around them, or parks. Trees in neat lines, force-grown with Para gibberellins. He found them attractive, but somehow flawed-perhaps by the way they resembled one another, as though they had been mass-produced complete with occupants. They were becoming shabby. His briefings had included a thorough conspectus of the cycle of American fads and fashions, and he was able to date them as having been built about twenty-five years ago-just about the time, indeed, that Turpin was planted in the States. ,
Reminded of his companion, he turned his head. Turpin's eyes were on him.
"You're very quiet," Sheklov said.
Turpin gave a plump-jowled grin. "I figured you'd start talking in your own good time. Make the most of this ride, though. I do have a bug-free room at home, of course, but this car is even safer. And we're coming pretty close to Lakonia now."
He seemed to have recovered completely from his earlier nervousness.
"Frankly," Sheklov said, "I was expecting you to ask
what brought me here. I gather you weren't informed of the details." He spoke easily in the language he had practiced non-stop during his briefing period.
"I didn't question the decision," Turpin said stiffly. "After all, I've been thoroughly absorbed by now, and your people" He bit something back.
"Go on," Sheklov encouraged.
"All right I'll have to get around to it sooner or later. Your people don't seem to set much store by me nowadays."