“Then wake them up.”
“That would be quite a project.”
“Don’t you think that the fate of a race is worth the effort? Especially since we’re the ones who forced intelligence upon them? We’re the ones who made them evolve, cursed them with intellect.”
“Enough! They were right at the threshold. They might have become intelligent had we not come along—”
“But you can’t say for certain! You don’t really know! And it doesn’t really matter how it happened. They’re here and we’re here, and they think we’re gods—maybe because we do nothing for them but make them miserable. We have some responsibility to an intelligent race, though. At least to the extent of not murdering it.”
“Perhaps we could do a long-range study… “
“They could be dead by then. I formally move, in my capacity as Treasurer, that we awaken the full membership and put the matter to a vote.”
“I don’t hear any second to your motion.”
“Selda?” he said.
She looked away.
“Tarebell? Clond? Bondici?”
There was silence in the cavern that was high and wide about him.
“All right. I can see when I’m beaten. We will be our own serpents when we come into our Eden. I’m going now, back to Deadland, to finish my tour of duty.”
“You don’t have to. In fact, it might be better if you sleep the whole thing out… “
“No. If it’s going to be this way, the guilt will be mine also. I want to watch, to share it fully.”
“So be it,” said Turl.
Two weeks later, when Installation Nineteen tried to raise the Deadland Station on the radio, there was no response.
After a time, a flier was dispatched.
The Deadland Station was a shapeless lump of melted metal.
Jarry Dark was nowhere to be found.
Later that afternoon, Installation Eight went dead.
A flier was immediately dispatched.
Installation Eight no longer existed. Its attendants were found several miles away, walking. They told how Jarry Dark had forced them from the station at gunpoint. Then he had burnt it to the ground, with the fire-cannons mounted upon his flier.
At about the time they were telling this story, Installation Six became silent.
The order went out: MAINTAIN CONTINUOUS RADIO CONTACT WITH TWO OTHER STATIONS AT ALL TIMES.
The other order went out: GO ARMED AT ALL TIMES. TAKE ANY VISITOR PRISONER.
Jarry waited. At the bottom of a chasm, parked beneath a shelf of rock, Jarry waited. An opened bottle stood upon the control board of his flier. Next to it was a small case of white metal.
Jarry took a long, last drink from the bottle as he waited for the broadcast he knew would come.
When it did, he stretched out on the seat and took a nap.
When he awakened, the light of day was waning.
The broadcast was still going on…
“… Jarry. They will be awakened and a referendum will be held. Come back to the main cavern. This is Yan Turl. Please do not destroy any more installations. This action is not necessary. We agree with your proposal that a vote be held. Please contact us immediately. We are waiting for your reply, Jarry… “
He tossed the empty bottle through the window and raised the flier out of the purple shadow into the air and up.
When he descended upon the landing stage within the main cavern, of course they were waiting for him. A dozen rifles were trained upon him as he stepped down from the flier.
“Remove your weapons, Jarry,” came the voice of Yan Turl.
“I’m not wearing any weapons,” said Jarry. “Neither is my flier,” he added; and this was true, for the fire-cannons no longer rested within their mountings.
Yan Turl approached, looked up at him.
“Then you may step down.”
“Thank you, but I like it right where I am.”
“You are a prisoner.”
“What do you intend to do with me?”
“Put you back to sleep until the end of the Wait. Come down here!”
“No. And don’t try shooting—or using a stun charge or gas, either. If you do, we’re all of us dead the second it hits.”
“What do you mean?” asked Turl, gesturing gently to the riflemen.
“My flier,” said Jarry, “is a bomb, and I’m holding the fuse in my right hand.” He raised the white metal box. “So long as I keep the lever on the side of this box depressed, we live. If my grip relaxes, even for an instant, the explosion which ensues will doubtless destroy this entire cavern.”
“I think you’re bluffing.”
“You know how you can find out for certain.”
“You’ll die too, Jarry.”
“At the moment, I don’t really care. Don’t try burning my hand off either, to destroy the fuse,” he cautioned, “because it doesn’t really matter. Even if you should succeed, it will cost you at least two installations.”
“Why is that?”
“What do you think I did with the fire-cannons? I taught the Redforms how to use them. At the moment, these weapons are manned by Redforms and aimed at two installations. If I do not personally visit my gunners by dawn, they will open fire. After destroying their objectives, they will move on and try for two more.”
“You trusted those beasts with laser projectors?”
“That is correct. Now, will you begin awakening the others for the voting?”
Turl crouched, as if to spring at him, appeared to think better of it, relaxed.
“Why did you do it, Jarry?” he asked. “What are they to you that you would make your own people suffer for them?”
“Since you do not feel as I feel,” said Jarry, “my reasons would mean nothing to you. After all, they are only based upon my feelings, which are different than your own—for mine are based upon sorrow and loneliness. Try this one, though: I am their god. My form is to be found in their every camp. I am the Slayer of Bears from the Desert of the Dead. They have told my story for two and a half centuries, and I have been changed by it. I am powerful and wise and good, so far as they are concerned. In this capacity, I owe them some consideration. If I do not give them their lives, who will there be to honor me in snow and chant my story around the fires and cut for me the best portions of the woolly caterpillar? None, Turl. And these things are all that my life is worth now. Awaken the others. You have no choice.”
“Very well,” said Turl. “And if their decision should go against you?”
“Then I’ll retire, and you can be god,” said Jarry.
Now every day when the sun goes down out of the purple sky, Jarry Dark watches it in its passing, for he shall sleep no more the sleep of ice and of stone, wherein there is no dreaming. He has elected to live out the span of his days in a tiny instant of the Wait, never to look upon the New Alyonal of his people. Every morning, at the new Deadland installation, he is awakened by sounds like the cracking of ice, the trembling of tin, the snapping of steel strands, before they come to him with their offerings, singing and making marks upon the snow. They praise him and he smiles upon them. Sometimes he coughs.
Born of man and woman, in accordance with Catform Y7 requirements, Coldworld Class, Jarry Dark was not suited for existence anywhere in the universe which had guaranteed him a niche. This was either a blessing or a curse, depending on how you looked at it. So look at it however you would, that was the story. Thus does life repay those who would serve her fully.
DEVIL CAR
Murdock sped across the Great Western Road Plain.
High above him the sun was a fiery yo-yo as he took the innumerable hillocks and rises of the Plain at better than a hundred-sixty miles an hour. He did not slow for anything, and Jenny’s hidden eyes spotted all the rocks and potholes before they came to them, and she carefully adjusted their course, sometimes without his even detecting the subtle movements of the steering column beneath his hands.
Even t
hrough the dark-tinted windshield and the thick goggles he wore, the glare from the fused Plain burnt into his eyes, so that at times it seemed as if he were steering a very fast boat through night, beneath a brilliant alien moon, and that he was cutting his way across a lake of silver fire. Tall dust waves rose in his wake, hung in the air, and after a time settled once more.
“You are wearing yourself out,” said the radio, “sitting there clutching the wheel that way, squinting ahead. Why don’t you try to get some rest? Let me fog the shields. Go to sleep and leave the driving to me.”
“No,” he said. “I want it this way.”
“All right,” said Jenny. “I just thought I would ask.”
“Thanks.”
About a minute later the radio began playing—it was a soft, stringy sort of music.
“Cut that out!”
“Sorry, boss. Thought it might relax you.”
“When I need relaxing, I’ll tell you.”
“Check, Sam. Sorry.”
The silence seemed oppressive after its brief interruption. She was a good car though, Murdock knew that. She was always concerned with his welfare, and she was anxious to get on with his quest.
She was made to look like a carefree Swinger sedan: bright red, gaudy, fast. But there were rockets under the bulges of her hood, and two fifty-caliber muzzles lurked just out of sight in the recesses beneath her headlamps; she wore a belt of five and ten-second timed grenades across her belly; and in her trunk was a spray-tank containing a highly volatile naphthalic.
… For his Jenny was a specially designed deathcar, built for him by the Archengineer of the Geeyem Dynasty, far to the East, and all the cunning of that great artificer had gone into her construction.
“We’ll find it this time, Jenny,” he said, “and I didn’t mean to snap at you like I did.”
“That’s all right, Sam,” said the delicate voice. “I am programmed to understand you.”
They roared on across the Great Plain and the sun fell away to the west. All night and all day they had searched, and Murdock was tired. The last Fuel Stop/Rest Stop Fortress seemed so long ago, so far back…
Murdock leaned forward and his eyes closed.
The windows slowly darkened into complete opacity. The seat belt crept higher and drew him back away from the wheel. Then the seat gradually leaned backwards until he was reclining on a level plane. The heater came on as the night approached, later.
The seat shook him awake a little before five in the morning.
“Wake up, Sam! Wake up!”
“What is it?” he mumbled.
“I picked up a broadcast twenty minutes ago. There was a recent car-raid out this way. I changed course immediately, and we are almost there.”
“Why didn’t you get me up right away?”
“You needed the sleep, and there was nothing you could do but get tense and nervous.”
“Okay, you’re probably right. Tell me about the raid.”
“Six vehicles, proceeding westward, were apparently ambushed by an undetermined number of wild cars sometime last night. The Patrol Copter was reporting it from above the scene and I listened in. All the vehicles were stripped and drained and their brains were smashed, and their passengers were all apparently killed too. There were no signs of movement.”
“How far is it now?”
“Another two or three minutes.”
The windshields came clear once more, and Murdock stared as far ahead through the night as the powerful lamps could cut.
“I see something,” he said, after a few moments.
“This is the place,” said Jenny, and she began to slow down.
They drew up beside the ravaged cars. His seat belt unsnapped and the door sprang open on his side.
“Circle around, Jenny,” he said, “and look for heat tracks. I won’t be long.”
The door slammed and Jenny moved away from him. He snapped on his pocket torch and moved toward the wrecked vehicles.
The Plain was like a sand-strewn dance floor—hard and gritty—beneath his feet. There were many skid-marks, and a spaghetti-work of tire tracks lay all about the area.
A dead man sat behind the wheel of the first car. His neck was obviously broken. The smashed watch on his wrist said 2:24. There were three persons—two women and a young man—lying about forty feet away. They had been run down as they tried to flee from their assaulted vehicles.
Murdock moved on, inspected the others. All six cars were upright. Most of the damage was to their bodies. The tires and wheels had been removed from all of them, as well as essential portions of their engines; the gas tanks stood open, siphoned empty; the spare tires were gone from the sprung trunks. There were no living passengers.
Jenny pulled up beside him and her door opened.
“Sam,” she said, “pull the brain leads on that blue car, the third one back. It’s still drawing some energy from an auxiliary battery, and I can hear it broadcasting.”
“Okay.”
Murdock went back and tore the leads free. He returned to Jenny and climbed into the driver’s seat.
“Did you find anything?”
“Some traces, heading northwest.”
“Follow them.”
“Go.”
The door slammed and Jenny turned in that direction.
They drove for about five minutes in silence. Then Jenny said: “There were eight cars in that convoy.”
“What?”
“I just heard it on the news. Apparently two of the cars communicated with the wild ones on an off-band. They threw in with them. They gave away their location and turned on the others at the time of the attack.”
“What about their passengers?”
“They probably monoed them before they joined the pack.”
Murdock lit a cigarette, his hands shaking.
“Jenny, what makes a car run wild?” he asked. “Never kno’ where it will get its next fueling—or being sure of finding spare part for its auto-repair unit? Why do they do it?”
“I do not know, Sam. I have never thought about it.”
“Ten years ago the Devil Car, their leader, killed my brother in a raid on his Gas Fortress,” said Murdock, “and I’ve hunted that black Caddy ever since. I’ve searched for it from the air and I’ve searched on foot. I’ve used other cars. I’ve carried heat trackers and missiles. I even laid mines. But always it’s been too fast or too smart or too strong for me. Then I had you built.”
“I knew you hated it very much. I always wondered why,” Jenny said.
Murdock drew on his cigarette.
“I had you specially programmed and armored and armed to be the toughest, fastest, smartest thing on wheels, Jenny. You’re the Scarlet Lady. You’re the one car can take the Caddy and his whole pack. You’ve got fangs and claws of the kind they’ve never met before. This time I’m going to get them.”
“You could have stayed home, Sam, and let me do the hunting.”
“No. I know I could have, but I want to be there. I want to give the orders, to press some of the buttons myself, to watch that Devil Car burn away to a metal skeleton. How many people, how many cars has it smashed? We’ve lost count. I’ve got to get it, Jenny!”
“I’ll find it for you, Sam.”
They sped on, at around two hundred miles an hour.
“How’s the fuel level, Jenny?”
“Plenty there, and I have not yet drawn upon the auxiliary tanks. Do not worry.”
“—The track is getting stronger,” she added.
“Good. How’s the weapons system?”
“Red light, all around. Ready to go.”
Murdock snubbed out his cigarette and lit another.
“… Some of them carry dead people strapped inside,” said Murdock, “so they’ll look like decent cars with passengers. The black Caddy does it all the time, and it changes them pretty regularly. It keeps its interior refrigerated—so they’ll last.”
“You know a lot about it, Sam
.”
“It fooled my brother with phoney passengers and phoney plates. Got him to open his Gas Fortress to it that way. Then the whole pack attacked. It’s painted itself red and green and blue and white, on different occasions, but it always goes back to black, sooner or later. It doesn’t like yellow or brown or two-tone. I’ve a list of almost every phoney plate it’s ever used. It’s even driven the big freeways right into towns and fueled up at regular gas stops. They often get its number as it tears away from them, just as the attendant goes up on the driver’s side for his money. It can fake dozens of human voices. They can never catch it afterwards though, because it’s souped itself up too well. It always makes it back here to the Plain and loses them. It’s even raided used car lots—”
Jenny turned sharply in her course.
“Sam! The trail is quite strong now. This way! It goes off in the direction of those mountains.”
“Follow!” said Murdock.
For a long time then Murdock was silent. The first inklings of morning began in the east. The pale morning star was a white thumbtack on a blueboard behind them. They began to climb a gentle slope.
“Get it, Jenny. Go get it,” urged Murdock.
“I think we will,” she said.
The angle of the slope increased. Jenny slowed her pace to match the terrain, which was becoming somewhat bumpy.
“What’s the matter?” asked Murdock.
“It’s harder going here,” she said, “also, the trail is getting more difficult to follow.”
“Why is that?”
“There is still a lot of background radiation in these parts,” she told him, “and it is throwing off my tracking system.”
“Keep trying, Jenny.”
“The track seems to go straight toward the mountains.”
“Follow it, follow it!”
They slowed some more.
“I am all fouled up now, Sam,” she said. “I have just lost the trail.”
“It must have a stronghold somewhere around here—a cave or something like that—where it can be sheltered overhead. It’s the only way it could have escaped aerial detection all these years.”
“What should I do?”
“Go as far forward as you can and scan for low openings in the rock. Be wary. Be ready to attack in an instant.”
The Doors Of His Face, The Lamps Of His Mouth Page 7
