The Last Defender Of Camelot

by Roger Zelazny

  The next was the blue Chevrolet, and he played with it as a child plays with a kitten, tormenting it into striking, then stopping it forever. He received both headlights. The sky had clouded over by then and there was a tentative mumbling of thunder.

  The third was a black Jaguar XKE, which calls for the highest skill possible and makes for a very brief moment of truth. There was blood as well as gasoline upon thesand before he dispatched it, for its side mirrors extended further than one would think, and there was a red furrow across his rib cage before he had done with it. But he tore out its ignition system with such grace and artistry that the crowd boiled over into the ring, and the guards were called forth to beat them with clubs and herd them with cattle prods back into their seats.

  Surely, after all of this, none could say that DOS Muertos had ever known fear.

  A cool breeze arose and I bought a soft drink and waited for the last.

  His final car sped forth while the light was still yellow. It was a mustard-colored Ford convertible. As it went past him the first time, it blew its horn and turned on its windshield wipers. Everyone cheered, for they could see it had spirit.

  Then it came to a dead halt, shifted into reverse, and backed toward him at about forty miles an hour.

  He got out of the way, sacrificing grace to expediency, and it braked sharply, shifted into low gear, and sped forward again.

  He waved the cape and it was torn from his hands. If he had not thrown himself over backward, he would have been struck. "•

  Then someone cried: "It's out of alignment!"

  But he got to his feet, recovered his cape and faced it once more.

  They still tell of those five passes that followed. Never has there been such a flirting with bumper and grill 1 Never in all of the Earth has there been such an encounter between mechador and machine! The convertible roared like ten centuries of streamlined death, and the spirit of St. Detroit sat in its driver's seat, grinning, while DOS Muertos faced it with his tinfoil cape, cowed it and called for his wrench. It nursed its overheated engine and rolled its windows up and down, up and down, clearing its mumer the while with lavatory noises and much black smoke.

  By then it was raining, softly, gently, and the thunder still came about us. I finished my soft drink.

  DOS Muertos had never used his monkey wrench on the engine before, only upon the body. But this time he threw it. Some experts say he was aiming at the dis-tributor; others say he was trying to break its fuel pump.

  The crowd booed him.

  Something gooey was dripping from the Ford onto the sand. The red streak brightened on Manolo's stomach. The rain came down.

  He did not look at the crowd. He did not take his eyes from the car. He held out his right hand, palm upward, and waited.

  A panting pumper placed the screwdriver in his hand and ran back toward the fence.

  Manolo moved to the side and waited. It leaped at him and he struck. There was more booing. He had missed the kill.

  No one left, though. The Ford swept around him in a tight circle, smoke now emerging from its engine. Manolo rubbed his arm and picked up the screwdriver and cape he had dropped. There was more booing as he did so.

  By the time the car was upon him, flames were leaping forth from its engine.

  Now some say that he struck and missed again, going off balance. Others say that he began to strike, grew afraid and drew back. Still others say that, perhaps for an instant, he knew a fatal pity for his spirited adversary, and that this had stayed his hand. I say that the smoke was too thick for any of them to say for certain what bad happened.

  But it swerved and he fell forward, and he was borne upon that engine, blazing like a god's catafalque, to meet with his third death as they crashed into the fence together and went up into flames.

  There was much dispute over the final corrida, but what remained of the tailpipe and both headlights were buried with what remained of him, beneath the sands of the Plaza, and there was much weeping among women he had known. I say that he could not have been afraid or known pity, for his strength was as a river of rockets, his thighs were pistons and the fingers of his hands had the discretion of micrometers; his hair was a black halo and the angel of death rode on his right arm. Such a man, a man who has known truth, is mightier than any machine. Such a man is above anything but the holding of power and the wearing of glory.Now he is dead though, this one, for the third and final time. He is as dead as all the dead who have ever died before the bumper, under the grill, beneath the wheels. It is well that he cannot rise again, for I say that his final car was his apotheosis, and anything else would be anticlimactic. Once I saw a blade of grass growing up between the metal sheets of the world in a place where they had become loose, and I destroyed it because I felt it must be lonesome. Often have I regretted doing this, for I took away the glory of its aloneness. Thus does life the machine, I feel, consider man, sternly, then with regret, and the heavens do weep upon him through eyes that grief has opened in the sky.

  All the way home I thought of this thing, and the hoofs of my mount clicked upon the floor of the city as I rode through the rain toward evening, that spring.

  DAMNATION ALLEY

  I intended to write a nice, simple action-adventure story and I had just finished reading Hunter Thompson's Hell's Angels. I wrote this story. At my agent's suggestion, I later expanded it to book length. I like this version better than the book. But if there hadn't been a book there probably wouldn't have been a movie sale. On the other hand, I was not overjoyed with the film. On the other hand, no one has to sit up in the middle of the night to read the story....

  The gull swooped by, seemed to hover a moment on unmoving wings.

  Hell Tanner flipped his cigar butt at it and scored a lucky hit. The bird uttered a hoarse cry and beat suddenly at the air. It climbed about fifty feet, and whether it shrieked a second time, he would never know.

  It was gone.

  A single gray feather rocked in the violet sky, drifted out over the edge of the cliff and descended, swinging toward the ocean. Tanner chuckled through hisbeard, between the steady roar of the wind and the pounding of the surf. Then he took his feet down from the handlebars, kicked up the stand and gunned his bike to life.

  He took the slope slowly till he came to the trail, then picked up speed and was doing fifty when he hit the highway.

  He leaned forward and gunned it. He had the road all to himself, and he laid on the gas pedal till there was no place left for it to go. He raised his goggles and looked at the world through crap-colored glasses, which was pretty much the way be looked at it without them, too.

  All the old irons were gone from his jacket, and he missed the swastika, the hammer and sickle and the upright finger, especially. He missed his old emblem, too. Maybe he could pick up one in Tijuana and have some broad sew it on and ... No. It wouldn't do. AH that was dead and gone. It would be a giveaway, and he wouldn't last a day. What he would do was sell the Harley, work his way down the coast, clean and square and see what he could find in the other America.

  He coasted down one hill and roared up another. He tore through Laguoa Beach, Capistrano Beach, San Clemente and San Onofre. He made it down to Oceanside, where he refueled, and he passed on through Carlsbad and all those dead little beaches that fill the shore space before Solana Beach Del Mar. It was outside San Diego that they were waiting for him.

  He saw the roadblock and turned. They were not sure how he had managed it that quickly, at that speed. But now he was heading away from them. He beard the gunshots and kept going. Then he heard the sirens.

  He blew his horn twice in reply and leaned far forward. The Harley leaped ahead, and he wondered whether they were radioing to someone further on up the line.

  He ran for ten minutes and couldn't shake them. Then fifteen.

  He topped another hill, and far ahead he saw the second block. He was bottled in.

  He looked all around him for side roads, saw none. Then he bore a straig
ht course toward the second block. Might as well try to run it No good!There were cars lined up across the entire road. They were even off the road on the shoulders.

  He braked at the last possible minute, and when his speed was right he reared up on the back wheel, spun it and headed back toward his pursuers.

  There were six of them coming toward him, and at his back new siren calls arose.

  He braked again, pulled to the left, kicked the gas and leaped out of the seat. The bike kept going, and he hit the ground rolling, got to his feet and started running.

  He heard the screeching of their tires. He heard a crash. Then there were more gunshots, and he kept going. They were aiming over his head, but he didn't know it. They wanted him alive.

  After fifteen minutes he was backed against a wall of rock, and they were fanned out in front of him, and several had rifles, and they were all pointed in the wrong direction.

  He dropped the tire iron he held and raised his hands. "You got it, citizens," he said. 'Take it away."

  And they did.

  They handcuffed him and took him back to the cars. They pushed him into the rear^seat of one, and an officer got in on either side of him. Another got into the front beside the driver, and this one held a sawed-off shotgun across his knees.

  The driver started the engine and put the car into gear, heading back up 101.

  The man with the shotgun turned and stared through bifocals that made his eyes look like hourglasses filled with green sand as he lowered his head. He stared for perhaps ten seconds, then said, "That was a stupid thing to do."

  Hell Tanner stared back until the man said, "Very stupid, Tanner."

  "Oh, I didn't know you were talking to me." "I'm looking at you, son." "And I'm looking at you. Hello, there." Then the driver said, without taking his eyes off the road, "You know, its too bad we've got to deliver him in good shape—after the way he smashed up the other car with that damn bike."

  "He could still have an accident Fall and crack a couple ribs, say," said the man to Tanner's left.The man to the right didn't say anything, but the man with the shotgun shook his bead slowly. "Not unless he tries to escape," he said. "L.A. wants him in good shape.

  "Why'd you try to skip out, buddy? You might have known we'd pick you up."

  Tanner shrugged.

  "Why'd you pick'me up? I didn't do anything?"

  The driver chuckled.

  "That's why," he said. "You didn't do anything, and there's something you were supposed to do. Remember?"

  "I don't owe anybody anything. They gave me a pardon and let me go."

  "You got a lousy memory, kid. You made the nation of California a promise when they turned you loose yesterday. Now you've had more than the twenty-four hours you asked for to settle your affairs. You can tell them 'no' if you want and get your pardon revoked. Nobody's forcing you- Then you can spend the rest of your life making little rocks out of big ones. We couldn't care less. I heard they got somebody else lined up already."

  "Give me a cigarette," Tanner said.

  The man on his right lit one and passed it to him.

  He raised both hands, accepted it. As he smoked, he flicked the ashes onto the floor.

  They sped along the highway, and when they went through towns or encountered traffic the driver would hit the siren and overhead the red light would begin winking. When this occurred, the sirens of the two other patrol cars that followed behind them would also wail. The driver never touched the brake, all the way up to L.A., and be kept radioing ahead every few minutes.

  There came a sound like a sonic boom, and a cloud of dust and gravel descended upon them like hail. A tiny crack appeared in the lower right-hand corner of the bullet-proof windshield, and stones the size of marbles bounced on the hood and the roof. The tires made a crunching noise as they passed over the gravel that now lay scattered upon the road surface. The dust hung like a heavy fog, but ten seconds later they had passed out of it.

  The men in the car leaned forward and stared upward.

  The sky had become purple, and black lines crossed it, moving from west to east. These swelled, narrowed, moved from side to side, sometimes merged. The driver had turned on his lights by then."Could be a bad one coming," said the man with the shotgun.

  The driver nodded. "Looks worse further north, too," he said.

  A wailing began, high in the air above them, and the dark bands continued to widen. The sound increased in volume, lost its treble quality, became a steady roar.

  The bands consolidated, and the sky grew dark as a starless, moonless night and the dust fell about them in heavy clouds. Occasionally, there sounded a ping as a heavier fragment struck against the car.

  The driver switched on his country lights, hit the siren again and sped ahead. The roaring and the sound of the siren fought with one another above them, and far to .the north a blue aurora began to spread, pulsing.

  Tanner finished his cigarette, and the man gave him another. They were all smoking by then.

  "You know, you're lucky we picked you up, boy," said the man to his left. "How'd you like to be pushing your bike through that stuff?"

  "I'd like it," Tanner said.

  "You're nuts."

  "No. I'd make it. It wouldn't be the first time."

  By the time they reached Los Angeles, the blue aurora filled half the sky, and it was tinged with pink and shot through with smoky, yellow streaks that reached like spider legs into the south. The roar was a deafening, physical thing that beat upon their eardrums and caused their skin to tingle. As they left the car and crossed the parking lot, heading toward the big, pillared building with the frieze across its forehead, they bad to shout at one another in order to be heard.

  "Lucky we got here when we did!" said the man with the shotgun. "Step it up!" Their pace increased as they moved toward the stairway. "It could break any minute now!" screamed the driver. As they had pulled into the lot, the building had had the appearance of a piece of ice-sculpture, with the shifting lights in the sky playing upon its surfaces and casting cold shadows. Now, though, it seemed as if it were a thing out of wax, ready to melt in a instant's flash of heat.Their faces and the flesh of their hands took on a bloodless, corpse-like appearance.

  They hurried up the stairs, and a State Patrolman let them in through the small door to the right of the heavy metal double doors that were the main entrance to the building. He locked and chained the door behind them, after snapping open his holster when he saw Tanner.

  "Which way?" asked the man with the shotgun.

  "Second floor," said the troooper, nodding toward a stairway to their right, "Go straight back when you get to the top. It's the big office at the end of the hall."

  "Thanks." The roaring was considerably muffled, and objects achieved an appearance of natural existence once more in the artificial light of the building.

  They climbed the curving stairway and moved along the corridor that led back into the building. When they reached the final office, the man with the shotgun nodded to his driver. "Knock," he said.

  A woman opened the door, started to say something, then stopped and nodded when she saw Tanner. She stepped aside and held the door. "This way," she said, and they moved past her into the office, and she pressed a button on her desk and told the voice that said, "Yes, Mrs. Fiske?": "They're here, with that man, sir."

  "Send them in." She led them to the dark, paneled door in the back of the room and opened it before them.

  They entered, and the husky man behind the glasstopped desk leaned backward in his chair and wove his short fingers together in front of his chins and peered over them through eyes just a shade darker than the gray of his hair. His voice was soft and rasped Just slightly. "Have a seat," he said to Tanner, and to the others, "wait outside,"

  "You know this guy's dangerous. Mister Denton," said the man with the shotgun as Tanner seated himself in a chair situated five feet in front of the desk.

  Steel shutters covered the room's three windows,
and though the men could not see outside they could guess at the possible furies that stalked there as a sound like machine-gun fire suddenly rang through the room.

  "I know." "Well, he's handcuffed, anyway. Do you want a gun?""I've got one,"

  "Okay, then. We'll be outside."

  They left the room.

  The two men stared at one another until the door closed, then the man called Denton said, "Are all your affairs settled now?" and the other shrugged. Then, "What the hell is your first name, really? Even the records show—"

  "Hell," said Tanner. "That's my name. I was the seventh kid in our family, and when I was born the nurse held me up and said to my old man, 'What name do you want on the birth certificate?' and Dad said, 'Hell!' and walked away. So she put it down like that. That's what my brother told me. I never saw my old man to ask if that's how it was. He copped out the same day. Sounds right, though."

  "So your mother raised all seven of you?"

  "No. She croaked a couple weeks later and different relatives took us kids."

  "I see," said Denton. "You've still got a choice, you know. Do you want to try it or don't you?"

  "What's your job, anyway?" asked Tanner.

  "I'm the Secretary of Traffic for the nation of California."

  "What's that got to do with ir?"

  "I'm coordinating this thing. It could as easily have been the Surgeon General or the Postmaster General, but more of it really falls into my area of responsibility. I know the hardware best. I know the odds—"

  "What are the odds?" asked Tanner.

  For the first time, Denton dropped his eyes.

  "Well, it's risky.. .."

  "Nobody's ever done it before, except for that aut who ran it to bring the news and he's dead. How can you get odds out of that?"