"Ask him where the others are."
But as he said it, Murdock heard the sound of many engines turning over, until the valley was filled with the thunder of their horsepower.
"They are parked on the other side of the heap," she said. "They are coming now."
"Hold back until I tell you to fire," said Murdock, ad the first oneчa sleek yellow Chryslerчnosed around the heap.
Murdock lowered his head to the steering wheel, but kept his eyes open behind his goggles.
"Tell him that you came here to join the pack and that you've monoed your driver. Try to get the black Caddy to come into range."
"He will not do it," she said. "I am talking with him now. He can broadcast just as easily from the other side of the pile, and he says he is sending the six biggest members of the pack to guard me while he decides what to do. He has ordered me to leave the tunnel and pull ahead into the valley."
"Go ahead, thenчslowly."
They crept forward.
Two Lincolns, a powerful-looking Pontiac, and two Mercs joined the Chryslerчthree cars on each side of them, in position to ram.
"Has he given you and idea how many there are on the other side?"
"No. I asked, but he will not tell me."
"Well, we'll just have to wait then."
He stayed slumped, pretending to be dead. After a time, his already tired shoulders began to ache. Finally, Jenny spoke:
"He wants me to pull around the far end of the pile," she said, "now that they have cleared the way, and to head into a gap in the rock which he will indicate. He wants to have his auto-mech go over me."
"We can't have that," said Murdock, "but head around the pile. I'll tell you what to do when I've gotten a glimpse of the other side."
The two Mercs and the Big Chief drew aside and Jenny crept past them. Murdock stared upwards from the corner of his eye, up at the towering mound of junk they were passing. A couple well-placed rockets on either end could topple it, but the auto-mech would probably clear it eventually.
They rounded the lefthand end of the pile.
Something like forty-five cars were facing them at about a hundred-twenty yard's distance, to the right and ahead. They had fanned out. They were blocking the exit around the other end of the pile, and the six guards in back of him now blocked the way behind Murdock.
On the far side of the farthest rank of the most distant cars an ancient black Caddy was parked.
It had been beaten forth from assembly during a year when the apprentice-engineers were indeed thinking big. Huge it was, and shiny, and a skeleton's face smiled from behind its wheel. Black it was, and gleaming chromium, and its headlamps were like dusky jewels or the eyes of insects. Every plane and curve shimmered with power, and its great fishtailed rear end seemed ready to slap at the sea of shadows behind it on an instant's notice, as it sprang forward for its kill.
"That's it!" whispered Murdock. "The Devil Car!"
"He is big!" said Jenny. "I have never seen a car that big!"
They continued to move forward.
"He wants me to head into that opening and park," she said.
"Head toward it, slowly. But don't go into it," said Murdock.
They turned and inched toward the opening. The other cars stood, the sounds of their engines rising and falling.
"Check all weapons systems."
"Red, all around."
The opening was twenty-five feet away.
"When I saw `now,' go into neutral steer and turn one hundred-eighty degreesчfast. They can't be expecting that. They don't have it themselves. Then open up with the fifty-calibers and fire your rockets at the Caddy, turn at a right angle and start back the way we came, and spray the naphtha as we go, and fire on the six guards...
"Now!" he cried, leaping up in his seat.
He was slammed back as they spun, and he heard the clattering of her guns before his head cleared. By then, flames were leaping up in the distance.
Jenny's guns were extruded now and turning on their mounts, spraying the line of vehicles with hundreds of leaden hammers. She shook, twice, as she discharged two rockets from beneath her partly opened hood. Then they were moving forward, and eight or nine of the cars were rushing downhill toward them.
She turned again in neutral steer and sprang back in the direction from which they had come, around the southeast corner of the pile. Her guns were hammering at the now retreating guards, and in the wide read view mirror Murdock could see that a wall of flame was towering high behind them.
"You missed it!" he cried. "You missed the black Caddy! You rockets hit the cars in front of it and it backed off!"
"I know! I'm sorry!"
"You had a clear shot!"
"I know! I missed!"
They rounded the pile just as two of the guard cars vanished into the tunnel. Three more lay in smoking ruin. The sixth had evidently preceded the other two out through the passage.
"Here it comes now!" cried Murdock. "Around the other end of the pile! Kill it! Kill it!"
The ancient guardian of the graveyardчit looked like a Ford, but he couldn't be sureчmoved forward with a dreadful chattering sound and interposed itself in the line of fire.
"My range is blocked."
"Smash that junkheap and cover the tunnel! Don't let the Caddy escape!"
"I can't!" she said.
"Who not?"
"I just _can't_!"
"That's an order! Smash it and cover the tunnel!"
Her guns swivelled and she shot out the tires beneath the ancient car.
The Caddy shot past and into the passageway.
"You let it get by!" he screamed. "Get after it!"
"All right, Sam! I'm doing it! Don't yell. _Please don't tell!_"
She headed for the tunnel. Inside, he could hear the sound of a giant engine racing away, growing softer in the distance.
"Don't fire here in the tunnel! If you hit it we may be bottled in!"
"I know. I won't."
"Drop a couple ten-second grenades and step on the gas. Maybe we can seal in whatever's left moving back there."
Suddenly they shot ahead and emerged into daylight. There was no sign of any other vehicle about.
"Find its track," he said, "and start chasing it."
There was an explosion up the hill behind him, within the mountain. The ground trembled, then it was still once more.
"There are so many tracks..." she said.
"You know the one I want. The biggest, the widest, the hottest! Find it! Run it down!"
"I think I have it, Sam."
"Okay. Proceed as rapidly as possible for this terrain."
Murdock found a squeeze bottle of bourbon and took three gulps. Then he lit a cigarette and glared into the distance.
"Why did you miss it?" he asked softly. "Why did you miss it, Jenny?"
She did not answer immediately. He waited.
Finally, "because he is not an `it' to me," she said. "He has done much damage to cars and people, and that is terrible. But there is something about him, somethingчnoble. The way he has fought the whole world for his freedom. Sam, keeping that pack of vicious machines in line, stopping at nothing to maintain himself that wayчwithout a masterчfor as long as he can remain unsmashed, unbeatenчSam, for a moment back there I wanted to join his pack, to run with him across the Gas Road Plains, to use my rockets against the gates of the Gas Forts for him...But I could not mono you, Sam. I was built for you. I am too domesticated. I am too weak. I could not shoot him though, and I misfired the rockets on purpose. But I could never mono you, Sam, really."
"Thanks," he said, "you over-programmed ashcan. Thanks a lot!"
"I am sorry, Sam."
"Shut upчNo, don't, not yet. First tell me what you're going to do if we find `him'."
"I don't know."
"Well think it over fast. You see that dust cloud ahead of us as well as I do, and you'd better speed up."
They shot forward.
"Wait til
l I call Detroit. They'll laugh themselves silly, till I claim the refund."
"I am _not_ of inferior construction or design. You know that. I am just more..."
"'Emotional'," supplied Murdock.
"...Than I thought I would be," she finished. "I had not really met many cars, except for young ones, before I was shipped to you. I did not know what a wild car was like, and I had never smashed _any_ cars beforeчjust targets and things like that. I was young and..."
"`Innocent'," said Murdock. "Yeah. Very touching. Get ready to kill the next car we meet. If it happens to be your boyfriend and you hold your fire, then he'll kill us."
"I will try, Sam."
The car ahead had stopped. It was the yellow Chrysler. Two of its tires had gone flat and it was parked, lopsided, waiting.
"Leave it!" snarled Murdock, as the hood clicked open. "Save the ammo for something that might fight back."
They sped past it.
"Did it say anything?"
"Machine profanity," she said. "I've only heard it once or twice, and it would be meaningless to you."
He chuckled. "Cars actually sweat at each other?"
"Occasionally," she said. "I imaging the lower sort indulge in it more frequently, especially on freeways and turnpikes when they become congested."
"Let me hear a swear-word."
"I will not. What kind of car do you think I am, anyway?"
"I'm sorry," said Murdock. "You're a lady. I forgot."
There was an audible click within the radio.
They raced forward on the level ground that lay before the foot of the mountains. Murdock took another drink, then switched to coffee.
"Ten years," he muttered, "ten years..."
The trail swung in a wide curve as the mountains jogged back and the foothills sprang up high beside them.
It was over almost before he knew it.
As they passed a huge, orange-colored stone massif, sculpted like an upside-down toadstool by the wind, there was a clearing to the right.
It shot forward at themчthe Devil Car. It had lain in ambush, seeing that it could not outrun the Scarlet Lady, and it rushed toward a final collision with its hunter.
Jenny skidded sideways as her brakes caught with a scream and a smell of smoke, and her fifty-calibers were firing, and her hood sprang open and her front wheels rose up off the ground as the rockets leapt wailing ahead, and she spun around three times, her rear bumper scraping the saltsand plain, and the third and last time she fired her remaining rockets into the smouldering wreckage on the hillside, and she came to a rest on all four wheels; and her fifty-calibers kept firing until they were emptied, and then a steady clicking sound came from them for a full minute afterwards, and then all lapsed into silence.
Murdock sat there shaking, watching the gutted, twisted wreck blaze against the sky.
"You did it, Jenny. You killed him. You killed me the Devil Car," he said.
But she did not answer him. Her engine started once more and she turned toward the southeast and headed for the Fuel Stop/Rest Stop Fortress that lay in that civilized direction
For two hours they drove in silence, and Murdock drank all his bourbon and all his coffee and smoked all his cigarettes.
"Jenny, say something," he said. "What's the matter? Tell me."
There was a click, and her voice was very soft:
"Samчhe talked to me as he came down the hill..." she said.
Murdock waited, but she did not say anything else.
"Well, what did he say?" he asked.
"He said, `Say you will mono your passenger and I will swerve by you'," she told him. "He said, `I want you, Scarlet Ladyчto run with me, to raid with me. Together they will never catch us,' and I killed him."
Murdock was silent.
"He only said that to delay my firing though, did he not? He said that to stop me, so that he could smash us both when he went smash himself, did he not? He could not have meant it, could he, Sam?"
"Of course not," said Murdock, "of course not. It was too late for him to swerve."
"Yes, I suppose it wasчdo you think though, that he really wanted me to run with him, to raid with himчbefore everything, I meanчback there?"
"Probably, baby. You're pretty well-equipped."
"Thanks," she said, and turned off again.
Before she did though, he heard a strange sound mechanical sound, falling into the rhythms of profanity or prayer.
Then he shook his head and lowered it, softly patting the seat beside him with his still unsteady hand.
A Rose for Ecclesiastes
I
I was busy translating one of my Madrigals Macabre into Martian on the morning I was found acceptable. The intercom had buzzed briefly, and I dropped my pencil and flipped on the toggle in a single motion.
"Mister G," piped Morton's youthful contralto, "the old man says I should `get hold of that damned conceited rhymer` right away, and send him to his cabin. Since there's only one damned conceited rhymer..."
"Let not ambition mock thy useful toil." I cut him off.
So, the Martians had finally made up their minds! I knocked an inch and a half of ash from a smoldering butt, and took my first drag since I had lit it. The entire month's anticipation tried hard to crowd itself into the moment, but could not quite make it. I was frightened to walk those forty feet and hear Emory say the words I already knew he would say; and that feeling elbowed the other one into the background.
So I finished the stanza I was translating before I got up.
It took only a moment to reach Emory's door. I knocked twice and opened it, just as he growled, "Come in."
"You wanted to see me?" I sat down quickly to save him the trouble of offering me a seat.
"That was fast. What did you do, run?"
I regarded his paternal discontent:
Little fatty flecks beneath pale eyes, thinning hair, and an Irish nose; a voice a decibel louder than anyone else's.....
Hamlet to Claudius: "I was working."
"Hah!" he snorted. "Come off it. No one's ever seen you do any of that stuff."
I shrugged my shoulders and started to rise.
"If that's what you called me down here--"
"Sit down!"
He stood up. He walked around his desk. He hovered above me and glared down. (A hard trick, even when I'm in a low chair.)
"You are undoubtably the most antagonistic bastard I've ever had to work with!" he bellowed, like a belly-stung buffalo. "Why the hell don't you act like a human being sometime and surprise everybody? I'm willing to admit you're smart, maybe even a genius, but--oh, hell!" He made a heaving gesture with both hands and walked back to his chair.
"Betty has finally talked them into letting you go in." His voice was normal again. "They'll receive you this afternoon. Draw one of the jeepsters after lunch, and get down there."
"Okay," I said.
"That's all, then."
I nodded, got to my feet. My hand was on the doorknob when he said:
"I don't have to tell you how important this is. Don't treat them the way you treat us."
I closed the door behind me.
I don't remember what I had for lunch. I was nervous, but I knew instinctively that I wouldn't muff it. My Boston publishers expected a Martian Idyll, or at least a Saint-Exupery job on space flight. The National Science Association wanted a complete report on the Rise and Fall of the Martian Empire.
They would both be pleased. I knew.
That's the reason everyone is jealous--why they hate me. I always come through, and I can come through better than anyone else.
I shoveled in a final anthill of slop, and made my way to our car barn. I drew one jeepster and headed it toward Tirellian.
Flames of sand, lousy with iron oxide, set fire to the buggy. They swarmed over the open top and bit through my scarf; they set to work pitting my goggles.
The jeepster, swaying and panting like a little donkey I once rode through the Himalayas,
kept kicking me in the seat of the pants. The Mountains of Tirellian shuffled their feet and moved toward me at a cockeyed angle.
Suddenly I was heading uphill, and I shifted gears to accommodate the engine's braying. Not like Gobi, not like the Great Southwestern Desert, I mused. Just red, just dead...without even a cactus.
I reached the crest of the hill, but I had raised too much dust to see what was ahead. It didn't matter, though; I have a head full of maps. I bore to the left and downhill, adjusting the throttle. A crosswind and solid ground beat down the fires. I felt like Ulysses in Malebolge--with a terza-rima speech in one hand and an eye out for Dante.
I rounded a rock pagoda and arrived.
Betty waved as I crunched to a halt, then jumped down.
"Hi," I choked, unwinding my scarf and shaking out a pound and a half of grit. "Like, where do I go and who do I see?"
She permitted herself a brief Germanic giggle--more at my starting a sentence with "like" than at my discomfort--then she started talking. (She is a top linguist, so a word from the Village Idiom still tickles her!)
I appreciate her precise, furry talk; informational, and all that. I had enough in the way of social pleasantries before me to last at least the rest of my life. I looked at her chocolate-bar eyes and perfect teeth, at her sun-bleached hair, close-cropped to the head (I hate blondes!), and decided that she was in love with me.
"Mr. Gallinger, the Matriarch is waiting inside for you to be introduced. She has consented to open the Temple records for your study." She paused here to pat her hair and squirm a little. Did my gaze make her nervous?
"They are religious documents, as well as their only history," she continued, "sort of like the Mahabharata. She expects you to observe certain rituals in handling them, like repeating the sacred words when you turn pages--she will teach you the system."
The Doors of His Face, The Lamps of His Mouth and Other Stories Page 8
