by Jerry
Craik mugged: “That assumes you’ve left me some rights to protect, Mr. Blaire. You haven’t. You are permanently debarred from operation of any power vehicle. I can do nothing further for you.”
“Appeal! Fix it! I can pay.” And he sure can.
The old moke tightened his mouth: “I infer you made the money by methods to match your driving record, not by grasp of essentials. Ml try again. This biased, vindictive judgment was handed down by the highest court your case can reach. Can you grasp that?”
Pop came right back like the great sportsfan he is, “Well, we can contest those two-bit charges I hadn’t time to fight when they were made. I know they can’t debar me finally on uncontested stuff.”
The old guy looped down his eyelids: “If you’d ever bothered to appear in court yourself, or even read the transcripts, you would also know that all charges have been contested. Apparently you’ve been so cotton-wooled by insurance and connections and smart lawyers, you think you can brush off even child-murder.”
Pop bounced up, ready to ditch the moke: “Why, you . . .!”
“Your failure was no thanks to you. Would you have to kill children in actual fact to sober you? The community is not minded to let you try the experiment. This isn’t 1975, you know.”
The two-timing old right-laner! I’d been told to keep my muffler cut, but there’s times when you surge or burst. I surged, “And don’t we ever get to score? A bunch of mokes get him in a jam, and a fresh cop calls us Flight of the Stumblebum—because we have a yellow ’n’ black zoom. Does my Pop have to take that gravel?”
Craik looked at me like I was a parking ticket. “Well, I suppose a lad should be loyal to his father. Pity it’s not in a better cause. So, yes, my budding Big Shot, he does. On triple probation, he drove with such dashing irresponsibility that he sheared off three steel guard-posts and barely missed a group of children. He’ll take what anyone calls him, and thank them it wasn’t worse.” He swung back at Pop. “I took your case to pay off a favor to Sam Hardy. I consider I’ve paid in full. And the case is closed.”
Pop kept a manly silence. Mom took over: “But, Mr. Craik, how can my husband do business without a car? A Plutomat representative can’t walk up to a prospect’s door like a peddler. This destroys my family’s livelihood.”
“Your husband should have considered that sooner, Mrs. Blaire.”
My rad just boiled to hear her having to take the old honk-honk from minions of the law. I’ve never been much on girls because Mom is my ideal, and only my young sister Judy comes in that custom model. And I was just a skinny Teener, helpless to defend the family honor. But I sneaked a squeeze of her hand.
Pop said grimly, “Then these fanatics have ruined me. I have no place to go in this so-called Free World.”
Craik shrugged: “Then find a Parallel that will take you, and get Translated, Mr. Blaire. That would solve everybody’s problems.” Obviously he was including his own.
I perked up. Translation, switch to a parallel time, might be good.
Pop said, “That costs a fortune.”
Craik shrugged again: “It might cost less than your dauntless career here. I’ll send my account.” He froze us out like trash.
THIS record being for posterity, I better give the true facts, which are already being suppressed. Because I’ve boned up on them.
So, this LLL pest started in 75, the Golden Age of Go. A bunch called the Regular Guys had gotten the laws modernated—“safe and reasonable speed,” nationwide. They backed Bucky Kooznik, who’d been framed in a speed-trap, and won in Supreme Court. They backed Senator Smurge for Vice President—the prince who got a national speed law laughed into the wreckers by tacking on an amendment to make the limit ninety—and got him in.
Well, this low-octane third party, the Life and Limb League (Lily-Livered Lunks, we called them), tried to buck the traffic. Their candidate, Bob Green, had had a kid killed and had sort of blown his tires. Well, sure, like Pop says, it’s too bad but we can’t all live in bungalows because kids fall downstairs. Anyway, LLL got a loud boff and lost all its deposits. Only Green kept squawking about how highway deaths jumped from 87,000 in 76, to 116,000 in ’78; and he signed up relatives and friends of “victims,” and soreheads who’d got bunged up and couldn’t be sports about it, and natural-born cranks and scaredy-pants. You wouldn’t think people would vote to get themselves traffic tickets. But in ’78, LLL won seats in Congress, and more in ‘80.
So we stopped laughing and fought back. We sued a paper for a cartoon of Smurge with his arms around a goony driver and a skeleton, saying, “My Buddies!” And the court ratted on us, and it upheld disgusting photos of crashes and libels that said more than “the car went out of control.” So drivers got nervous and the “toll” climbed on.
Then, in ’84, Green got in, and showed what a fanatic at the wheel will do. Laws, laws, laws. We said “They can’t arrest everybody.” Oh, no? Fines, confiscations, jail for thousands of respectable people. And a Gestapo of Lily-white drivers’d spot you using the old elbow or boomin’ the amber, and you’d get a stinking card that you’d lost points. Twenty-five points got you a fine and a goo-talk about “mental attitudes.” Blah! What about guts and skill and all that?
Well, we figured there’d soon be enough people sore to give us a comeback. So LLL claimed they’d saved 30,000 lives in ’85. So what the heck, it wouldn’t have been you anyway. But there aren’t many real fighters like Pop, and the Old Cause was driven to the curb.
POP had to drive home real humble because if they caught him now, they’d jail him, him, a free citizen. But he was looking stem and unbowed, like a guerrilla hero in tri-di.
So presently I said, “Pop, let’s do it!”
Mom chimed in, “Yes, Gail, if you can’t work here, let’s at least ask about it.” Mom’s real practical under the hood.
Judy was keen too. At fourteen, in Ye Good Olde Daze, she’d have been a zee already. Now, she’d have to wait two years.
So Pop got into passing gear. And just a week later he came home with his hat cocked and his heels clicking, and summoned us all to the tridiroom. “Well, keeds,” he said, “they sure picked on the wrong man when they picked on ol’ Buck Blaire. Biggest favor anyone ever did us. It seems there’s a world called Jehu (some crackjaw gibberish in their language) after some old prophet. Anyway, Plutomat’s granted me planetary franchise. Izzat good or is it?
“And tape this, keeds! That planet’s set up for adults. They’re drivin’ fools, wonderful roads, most powerful zooms anywhere, and, get this, nary a traffic law or a traffic court on the planet.”
Judy puzzled: “But Daddy, they must have some laws, like which side you drive on . . .”
Pop’s always indulged Judy. “Well, honey, that’s rules; and anyone with sense knows when rules do and don’t matter. Like if I drive on the left on an empty street, whose business is it? See, Judy, put deadheads off the road, leave things to skill and experience, and you’re safe. Their accident-rate’s just about nil—naturally.”
“Well, it sounds funny to me. You be careful.” Mom said.
“You been skull-scrubbed by Triple-L, keed? Your never come out front unless you muscle into openings, like fast. That’s the secret of all big operators—Caesar, Napoleon, Buck Blaire—split-second decisions. We’ve gotta take off in a cloud of clamshells, and we can’t wait for a lecture course. But you can vote on it. Now. All in favor of saying Nay, say Aye. Nobody? Carried! Oh, by the way, old Craik ain’t such a bad old moke after all. He tipped me off on this Jehu place himself the other day.”
“Huh!” I thought. “I wouldn’t trust that pussy-schnook much.”
But Pop took off with his rubber scorchin’: Plutomat contract, Translation permit, appointment with the movers. The skids and zees in my gang were cynical; but I knew I’d get my own back, and I just sat tight and soaked up Jehuan by hypnophone.
Came the Day. A crew put up a frame around our lot, higher than the house, and into t
he ground. I asked the foreman if it marked out the block that was going to be swapped with a block of Jehu.
“You aren’t as dumb as you look, kid,” he said, “which must be a consolation to your folks. That’s what it does.”
“Thanx,” I said and strolled off. Gee, I hate a fresh guy!
Sure, a butterfly-collector could have had a field-day in my stomach, when the fresh foreman called all his gang out and began countdown. Mom and Judy were too bunny to come out, but Pop and I stood on the steps. I felt revved up, then, like beating another zoom around a curve, and at Minus Five I called to all the skids in the crowd watching, “Here go the Regulars. We will Return!” like that historical guy on tri-di. Pop just stood stern and unbowed.
WOTTA zump! Fifty light-years? Gimme a yippee-cart on Thrill-Hill! No stars streaking past, no roar, no icy chill. Just a jutter in your gizzard and there you were on a street like the old one with the houses shuffled. Even the crew to take down the frame looked the same. But not the guy who was there to welcome us; he had a lah-de-dah coat with wide skirts and lace like in Abe Washington’s time, but he was a big, hard-looking zow like a zoom-bike cop. His zoom was a weirdy, too. Whee enough like an import job and done in this novelty one-tone finish, but no jem-krust trim, no swordfish roof-crest, no flared bumpers; it wouldn’t have helped my eggo much. The only real decoration was a leaping red tiger on all panels. He said he was to be our Patron, name of Thrangar Glash.
I gave him the old Hi-de-ho and he froze my fuel-line. But when Mom and Judy came out, he swooned them with his bowing and oil-pressure. And when Mom was disappointed at the view, he explained, “This is just the Terran suburb, Madam. When I have advised you all on our, ah, driving customs, you can visit the main city.”
Pop scowled: “I was told you drove by common sense.” Glash gave him a lopsided look: “True. But common sense differs in different places, sir. Shall we go in?”
So we did, and Pal Patron Glash gave us the route-map. And had I been mucho right about old Schnooks Craik!
Sure, they had no traffic laws or cops, no penalty points, no fines, no nothing. Sure! Only just this: If you merely annoyed another driver, much less bent his tin, he could challenge you to fight him. They fought in a public arena, on a sort of yippee-cart called a whippet, with sort of bull-whips. You wore leather armor, only the defender got less, and dam little if he’d hurt or killed someone. “ ‘Course,” Glash drawled, “even for blood-guilt, the limit’s twenty minutes, and sometimes a dashing player comes off with his life.”
“His l-life?” Mom said. “With whips?”
“Oh, a very spirited weapon, ma’am. I’ve dueled little, having been bred to courtesy, but”—he touched his left cheek, which was all scarred—“one keeps in practice with one-cheek affairs, in case one becomes seriously involved.” So he gave us the layout, and they had it set up like some game. Kids, gals, old gaffers, if you drove you were liable. No subs, not for wives or kids or sweeties. Only a Court of Honor appointed one if a bully had fixed a fight on somebody weaker or when an innocent guy was killed or disabled. A woman bashed a man’s zoom, she fought. Fair enough. Like pal Thrangar said, “We’re all equal, eh? Well, there’s no chivalry between equals, only courtesy.” And if you didn’t play up you were outlaw, and they’d ram you, or run you off the road and you had no comeback. All tied up tighter ’n a sales contract.
Finally Pop said, “I’ve been framed. I was lied into this.”
“Really, sir? Our embassy provided no literature?” Well, who reads literature? The real dope they’ll shove in your face, Pop always says. And they hadn’t. So it was same as lying. Huh?
Pop said, “I was told this was a free society.”
“My dear Blaire, a society is free only to choose its rules. An aggressive race like yours, or mine, craves to domineer. You’ve got to control that itch from running wild in millions of free spirits.”
“Yeh-yeh, sure. By common sense. Now me . . .”
“Ah, yours, naturally. Mine too, I trust. But—everyone’s? No, you’ve just three systems that work: Public law, which irked you; posse law to hunt down pests, which”—he flicked an eyebrow—“irked you even more; or a code of honor.”
Pop scowled. He always says, the first freedom oughta be freedom from preach. Then he hit back: “O-kay! Anything you jokers can do, I can pass you.”
And I felt proud again.
“True sporting spirit, sir. So, study our code and our manners in practice. Get your whippet and join a school of arms. Then I’ll introduce you to our Arena.” And he flourished himself out.
Back in the hall, Pop said “Hullo!” and picked up a letter that must have come before we left Earth. Inside was a sheet of letterhead, “Craik, Creak, Croak and Crock,” and on it, in quotes:
“When insolence outrunneth law, men customarily arm themselves to chastise offense on the body of the offender. As the proverb saith: No courtesy sans valor.”
Leon da Milhâo.
The old speed-trap! He was giving us the razz. But we’ll show him.
II
Oct 3, 1987
WELL, we’ve started. At first Pop was sore all the time, like he was stuck behind a squad-car. At dinner he’d burst out, “Ahhh, what yokels! Yap-yap with the horns every move you make, yap-yap. Back-seat driving from other people’s back seats—it’s going to rattle even me into fender-denting. It’s a good thing our Thunderbolt Twelve can accelerate out of anything these lunks can mess up.”
“Ahh, you’ve been skull-scrubbed by Triple-L. Let ’em try.”
As for us, this town’s got nothing for Teeners. Whippet-school could be fun. Whippets are like a yippee-cart with a saddle instead of a seat, to give you free action; not real fast because you fight in a half-mile arena, but they turn like squirrels. But the teacher red-lights any fun. He has moustaches like wind-swept fenders, and he’s worse than the hom-yappers: “Do that over, young fool. Recover, recover, you’ll get your face opened. With little-stuff brains don’t try to be big stuff.” Spoils your nerve. I’m beginning to catch on. Mom’s slower, and she won’t drive on the street nohow, even with the novice plates. Judy’s real sharp, but Mom won’t let her out either, in spite of her having natural-born driving rights here.
But Pop’s a wham, a natural. After Lesson 3, he came striding out: “See me clip the pro, keeds? I think I’m gonna like this.”
“You’ll feel different if you were risking a real cut, Gail.”
“Nyahhh! Steady nerve and educated reflexes, that’s real safety.”
Well, on the way home, there’s this traffic signal down past our house. You don’t have to stop, just yield right-of-way, which Pop says makes sense, though the other zoom’s gotta be half across for Pop to yield, but Jehuans threat them real bunny. So, this native zoom ahead of us dragged down slow to make the comer just as it changed, like mokes do. Well, we should linger while he played games? Pop whipped the Stumblebum past and across the guy’s front into our drive, sprayin’ gravel, and pulled the foaming steeds to their haunches. Ye Olde High Style!
So here comes this Jehuan stalking across the lawn, a skinny guy in floppy green. He makes a bow to Mom and Ju and a stiff inch to Pop: “Sir, you drive with novice plates.”
“A blind cop could see that.” Pop said, “What about it?”
“Just this, sir. When you can no longer hide behind them, you will put your hog’s elbow in my face again, and I will bleed your insolence. I will watch for you, believe me.”
“Don’t bother,” Pop said. “Gimme your address, and I’ll drive up and down your block till you come out—if you do.”
So the guy gave him a card and bowed himself off. Pop looked after him, jingling his pockets. “He’ll do to start on.”
THEN Glash took us to the Arena, in his zoom. I’ll say this for Jehuans, when they go, they Go; so when they do tangle, it’s a dilly. We went down the main drag in a stream of zooms at sixty steady, with Glash giving exhaust about the average being twice the speed
in any Earth city, and how he never needed to use his brakes. Sure, but in two blocks I was antsy-pantsy with that old bull-man urge-to-surge, while Glash defaulted chance after chance to Score.
So, out where you’d expect a ball-park, was this Arena like the Colossus of Rome. It wasn’t a tenth full, but two guys were looping and lashing, like at the school only more exciting because they had open left cheeks. But neither scored, and another pair took over.
Glash looked bored and I lost interest too after five of these quickies and only one guy cut. But people kept trickling in, and Glash said, “Ah! About time for the main event. This high-ridin’ ass, y’know, ran down a child on a back street. City’s been debatin’ how much leather he should get for challenger’s parental negligence. I hear it’s only a collar. Minimum. A cut to the larynx or big neck vessels ends a bout without a sportin’ chance.”
Pop said real cool, “Well, what chance does that give him?”
“Say fifty to one. Challenger’s a tough whip and deadly angry.”
Mom and Ju looked green. They’ve stopped more than once to view a crash but maybe they figured deliberate gore was something else.
Mom said, “Well, I don’t think the little girl should see this.”
Glash made a fish-mouth: “I cannot agree, madam. If a child isn’t blooded young, it’ll play the fool in emergencies.”
Just then, a referee came out on a platform halfway down the arena and the duellers appeared at opposite ends with their seconds and doctors, which they have for serious fights.
People were piling in till there wasn’t standing room.
My heart was going bu-bop bu-bop.
Glash drawled, “Ha! They’ve made challenger bare his right arm. That narrows the odds somewhat. This should be a notable Drive.”
Yeh, and he’d fixed to have us see the execution. Thanx!
Came a pistol-shot that yanked the props out from my stomach.
