Car Sinister

by Robert Silverberg

  “One moment, sir.”

  George fretted behind the wheel. “Now what the hell’s holding her up? Whenever you want service, they’ve got problems. But boy, when it comes tax time—”

  The Operator came back and smiled. “I’ve checked our master Sector grid, sir, and I find authorization may be permitted, but I am required by law to inform you that your proposed opponent is more heavily armed than yourself.”

  George licked his lips. “What’s he running?”

  “Our records indicate 7.6 mm Spandau equipment, bulletproof screens and coded optionals.”

  George sat silently. His speed dropped. The tachometer fluttered, settled.

  “Let him go, George,” Jessica said. “You know he’d take you.”

  Two blotches of anger spread on George’s cheeks. “Oh, yeah!?!” He howled at the Operator, “Get me a confirm on that Mercury, Operator!”

  She blurred off, and George decked the Piranha; it leaped forward. Jessica sighed with resignation and pulled the drawer out from beneath her bucket. She unfolded the g-suit and began stretching into it. She said nothing, but continued to shake her head.

  “We’ll see!” George said.

  “Oh, George, when will you ever grow up?”

  He did not answer, but his nostrils flared with barely restrained anger.

  The Operator smeared back and said, “Opponent confirms, sir. Freeway Underwriters have already cross-filed you as mutual beneficiaries. Please observe standard traffic regulations, and good luck, sir.”

  She vanished, and George set the Piranha on sleepwalker as he donned his own g-suit. He overrode the sleeper and was back on manual in moments.

  “Now, you stuffer, now let’s see!” 100, 110, 120.

  He was gaining rapidly on the Merc now. As the Chevy hit 120, the mastercomp flashed red and suggested crossover. George punched the selector and the telescoping arms of the buzzsaws retracted into the axles, even as the buzzsaws stopped whirling. In a moment they had been drawn back in, now merely fancy decorations in the hubcaps. The wheels retracted into the underbody of the Chevy and the air-cushion took over. Now the Chevy skimmed along, two inches above the roadbed of the Freeway.

  Ahead, George could see the Merc also crossing over to air-cushion. 120. 135. 150.

  “George, this is crazy!” Jessica said, her face in that characteristic shrike expression. “You’re no hotrodder, George. You’re a family man, and this is the family car!”

  George chuckled nastily. “I’ve had it with these fuzz-faces. Last year . . . you remember last year? . . . you remember when that punk stuffer ran us into the abutment?

  I swore I’d never put up with that kind of thing again. Why’d’you think I had all the optionals installed?”

  Jessica opened the tambour doors of the glove compartment and slid out the service tray. She unplugged the jar of anti-flash salve and began spreading it on her face and hands. “I knew I shouldn’t have let you put that laser thing in this car!” George chuckled again. Fuzzfaces, punks, rodders!

  George felt the Piranha surge forward, the big reliable Stirling engine reveling the hot air for more and more efficient thrust. Unlike the Merc’s inefficient kerosene system, there was no exhaust emission from the nuclear power plant, the external combustion engine almost noiseless, the big radiator tailfin in the rear dissipating the tremendous heat, stabilizing the car as it swooshed along, two inches off the roadbed.

  George knew he would catch the blood-red Mercury. Then one smartass punk was going to learn he couldn’t flout law and order by running decent citizens off the freeways!

  “Get me my gun,” George said.

  Jessica shook her head with exasperation, reached under George’s bucket, pulled out his drawer and handed him the bulky .45 automatic in its breakaway upside-down shoulder rig. George studded in the sleeper, worked his arms into the rig, tested the oiled leather of the holster, and when he was satisfied, returned the Piranha to manual.

  “Oh, God,” Jessica said, “John Dillinger rides again.”

  “Listen!” George shouted, getting more furious with each stupidity she offered. “If you can’t be of some help to me, just shut your damned mouth. I’d put you out and come back for you, but I’m in a duel . . . can you understand that? I’m in a duel!” She murmured a yes, George, and fell silent.

  There was a transmission queep from the transceiver. George studded it on. No picture. Just vocal. It had to be the driver of the Mercury, up ahead of them. Beaming directly at one another’s antennae, using a tight-beam directional, they could keep in touch: it was a standard trick used by rods to rattle their opponents.

  “Hey, Boze, you not really gonna custer me, are you? Back’m, Boze. No bad trips, true. The kid’ll drop back, hang a couple of biggies on ya, just to teach ya little lesson, letcha swimaway.” The voice of the driver was hard, mirthless, the ugly sound of a driver used to being challenged.

  “Listen, you young snot,” George said, grating his words, trying to sound more menacing than he felt, “I’m going to teach you the lesson!”

  The Merc’s driver laughed raucously.

  “Boze, you de-mote me, true!”

  “And stop calling me a bozo, you lousy little degenerate!”

  “Ooooo-weeee, got me a thrasher this time out. Okay, Boze, you be custer an’ I’ll play arrow. Good shells, baby Boze!”

  The finalizing queep sounded, and George gripped the wheel with hands that went knuckle-white. The Merc suddenly shot away from him. He had been steadily gaining, but now as though it had been spring-loaded, the Mercury burst forward, spraying gook and water on both sides of the forty-foot lanes they were using. “Cut in his afterburner,” George snarled. The driver of the Mercury had injected water into the exhaust for added thrust through the jet nozzle. The boom of the Merc’s big, noisy engine hit him, and George studded in the rear-mounted propellers to give him more speed. 175. 185. 195.

  He was crawling up the line toward the Merc. Gaining, gaining. Jessica pulled out her drawer and unfolded her crash-suit. It went on over the g-suit, and she let George know what she thought of his turning their Sunday Drive into a kamikaze duel.

  He told her to stuff, and did a sleeper, donned his own crash-suit, applied flash salve, and lowered the bangup helmet onto his head.

  Back on manual he crawled, crawled, till he was only fifty yards behind the Mercury, the gas-turbine vehicle sharp in his tinted windshield. “Put on your goggles . . . I’m going to show that punk who’s a bozo . . .”

  He pressed the stud to open the laser louvers. The needle-nosed glass tube peered out from its bay in the Chevy’s hood. George read the power drain on his dash. The MHD power generator used to drive the laser was charging. He remembered what the salesman at Chick Williams Chevrolet had told him, pridefully, about the laser gun, when George had inquired about the optional.

  Dynamite feature, Mr. Jackson. Absolutely sensational.

  Works off a magneto hydro dynamic power generator. Latest thing in defense armament. You know, to achieve sufficient potency from a CO2 laser, you’d need a glass tube a mile long. Well, sir, we both know that’s impractical, to say the least, so the project engineers at Chevy’s big Bombay plant developed the “stack” method. Glass rods baffled with mirrors—360 feet of stack, the length of a football field . . . plus end zones. Use it three ways. Punch a hole right through their tires at any speed under a hundred and twenty. If they’re running a GT, you can put that hole right into the kerosene fuel tank, blow them off the road. Or, if they’re running a Stirling, just heat the radiator. When the radiator gets hotter than the engine, the whole works shuts down. Dynamite. Also . . . and this is with proper CC authorization, you can go straight for the old jugular. Use the beam on the driver. Make a neat hole. Dynamite!

  “I’ll take it,” George murmured.

  “What did you say?” Jessica asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “George, you’re a family man, not a rodder!”

  �
��Stuff it!”

  Then he was sorry he’d said it. She meant well. It was simply that . . . well, a man had to work hard to keep his balls. He looked sidewise at her. Wearing the Armadillo crash-suit, with its overlapping disks of ceramic material, she looked like a ferryflight pilot. The hangup hat hid her face. He wanted to apologize, but the moment had arrived. He locked the laser on the Merc, depressed the fire stud, and a beam of blinding light flashed from the bonnet of the Piranha. With the Merc on air-cushion, he had gone straight for the fuel tank.

  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 slowed 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 wind-blast 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 pink, 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.
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  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 break-wall of the lane-divider, 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 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’ll 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.