We sat there for a good while longer until I felt a throb of feeling return and a tiny bit of strength begin to trickle back. Then I put my hands back on the wheel. It took time to get the car into reverse, but I finally figured it out, backed up, turned around, and headed back to land.
No one spoke.
The island was packed with vehicles of every kind, parked and waiting. We reached the end of the beach and I hung a right, going off-road over sand and scrubby rust-colored beach grass, threading through the crowd of parked vehicles. Beings of every sort were represented here, none of which I’d ever seen before. There were humans here too, sitting in their buggies with doors open or standing in groups outside, smoking cigarettes, talking. Others were picnicking on the sand.
Somewhere underneath the blanket of fatigue that covered me I was surprised to see them, but didn’t dwell on the implications. Everyone seemed to be waiting for something. I could guess what it was, but I didn’t give much thought to that either. I kept driving around. The island was narrow but long and crescent-shaped, little more than a sandbar dotted with some suitably odd vegetation, clumps of scraggly brush that looked like land-colonizing seaweed; and a few tall shaggy trees with dull red foliage. There wasn’t much else to the place. No other land was in sight.
Near one end of the island, which I arbitrarily designated as north, another spur of the Skyway came in over the causeway from the northwest. It crossed the island diagonally and plunged beneath the waterline as well, its junction with the Goliath spur submerged farther out. Traffic from the ingress point was substantial, backed up along the causeway for half a klick or so. If we had ingressed here, at our speed … well, no use to dwell on that either.
Things got congested up there, so I turned around and went back, hugging the western shore until we found a spot that was relatively free of traffic, vehicles, and people, a little knoll above the beach topped with a lone tall tree. Before stopping we passed a middle-aged man in an electric-blue jumpsuit standing by his roadster, smoking, looking at us curiously. As I drove by he tapped his nose with an index finger, signing that the air was okay here. Thank you.
I rolled down the window and Goliath’s syrupy stuff whooshed out and let in tangy salt air and sea smells, very Earthlike. From long experience I could tell by the sound of the rushing air that there wasn’t any pressure differential to worry about. The atmosphere was fairly heavy here too. I’ve had a touch of the bends once or twice, and I should have checked it out first, if I could have found the readouts. But I was dreaming along, not caring, barely there at all.
I stopped the car at the edge of the gentle slope down to the beach, put it in neutral and jerked up on the hand brake. I didn’t shut the engine off. Then I opened the door. Took me time to get my legs moving—pure homemade jelly. Then I got out, staggered down the hill to the flat, and sank to my knees. I fell forward and stretched out in the warm sand.
Darla came down and lay on her back beside me. She’d taken off her suit and was down to halter and briefs, golden skin exposed to whatever passed for solar radiation here. Darla could have been a blonde easily. The downy stuff on her arms and body was very light. And on the side of one shoulder, a heart-shaped port-wine mark, tiny one.
I shut my eyes and stopped thinking. Seabirds, or whatever they were, croaked above. I wasn’t looking, wasn’t thinking of looking. I just listened to their calls, heard combers wash the beach, an occasional engine sound, the distant rumble of the Skyway. My closed eyelids glowed red-orange. Gradually, I started to feel very warm in my leather jacket. I lay there for as long as I could stand it, then sat up and shed the jacket, took off my shoes (I still had no shirt), then turned around to lie down with my head next to Darla’s.
The sky was hazy, very light blue, hung with streamers of soft gauze. I saw the flying things. They were fish. Looked like fish, anyway, with flat silvery bodies and huge winglike pectoral fins made of thin translucent membrane stretched over a frame of sharp spines. They were soaring, really, not flying. I watched one ride an air current directly above, unmoving with respect to the ground, gliding on the stiff ocean breeze. It hung there for a minute or so, then lost lift and started a dive toward the water. Halfway down it folded its wings and stooped, plunging head first into the depths beyond the breakers. I heard the splash and lifted my head. Not far from where it went in another one launched itself from the water straight into the air, shooting up a good ten meters before it unfolded its wings with the sound of a parasol suddenly opening. It caught a good updraft and began to rise.
Then I noticed the wrecks. Hulks of abandoned vehicles awash in the breakers, all kinds, some with Terran Maze markings. More of them up and down the beach half sunk in the sand, some so covered-over and sprouting with beach grass that I’d mistaken them for dunes. Apparently this planet had been a dead end for some time. Those without flying vehicles had been stranded here, left either to swim for it, bum a ride, or die. Surely there was some way off now. Or was there?
I let my head fall back. Of course there is. What’s all this traffic about then? Everybody doomed? Stop thinking.
But I didn’t stop thinking, and wondered about Sam. He was an hour behind us, at least. Would he shoot the potluck portal? Did he know I had? We might have been well out of scanner range, but then he must have tracked us to the Ryxx Maze cutoff and seen us go beyond it. I lifted my head again. I could see the ingress causeway from Goliath. We’d wait and see. I lay back again. I had fussed over everything of immediate concern, seen all there was to see, and right then I didn’t care about Reticulans or cops or treasure hunts or even Teelies. Not at the moment, because a breeze was carrying cool salt air to lift some of the heat from my baking skin, Darla was beside me; things were quiet, and I didn’t give a merte.
A shadow fell over my face, and I opened my eyes. It was Darla, looking at me. She smiled, and I smiled. Then she giggled, and I did too.
“Let George do it,” she said. It was like repeating the punchline to a very funny joke. We couldn’t stop giggling.
“Sic ‘im, Fido,” I managed to say between waves of mirth. We broke out laughing, all the tension exploding away in an instant. Darla collapsed over me, helpless as I was, convulsed, two complete idiots on the shore. We were like that for five minutes. It was overreaction, an undertone of hysteria to it, the terror of it all hitting us, tearing out shrieks of laughter. And when it was all gone it left us spent, breathless, and sober. We looked at each other, and for the first time I saw a hairline crack in that smooth, cool shell, saw vulnerability in Darla’s face. Her mouth was half open, her lower lip quivering the slightest bit, eyes widened and searching for something in mine, looking for a cue. I’m afraid. Is it okay? Will you let me?
I wanted to say, Yes, love, it’s okay, you can let go, don’t be afraid to feel fear when it’s justified, and, yes, I’ll be strong for you, just so that next time you let me have a turn … but suddenly she was wrapped up safe in my arms and there was nothing more to say.
Very quickly we were naked, her briefs and halter materializing in my hand somehow. Flimsy things they were, scraps of soft cloth, and the next thing I knew we were making love without a thought as to who was around. It was sudden, a little desperate, and more than a physical bonding. We needed to tell each other that we were still alive, still here, still able to feel, to touch, needed proof that we still had bodies all of a piece, warm and pulsing, bodies that lived and moved and tingled and glowed, that could feel pleasure and pain, exhilaration and fatigue. We had to convince ourselves that we weren’t bits of lifeless stuff squashed up against some unimaginable object, that we weren’t plain dead. And as it is after all brushes with death, there was a sense of the preciousness of every moment, of every sensation, an awareness of the miraculous nature of life. We celebrated that, and celebrated ourselves.
Afterward, there was deep calm. Birdfish croaked their soaring song above. With my head on Darla’s breast, I watched little crustacean things scuttle across the sand
—didn’t look anything like crabs, more like tiny pink mushroom caps up on tripods. Not far from us, an animal with a brightly colored spiral shell popped partway out of the sand, shot a stream of water into the air in a neat arc once—spritz!—and screwed itself back into the beach. I noticed for the first time that the white sand under us had sparkling elements in it, millions of little glassy beads. Pure silicon tektites, probably, products of meteor hits long ago. Or maybe not so long ago. Something had altered the geology of this planet since the Roadbuilders had laid their highway here.
I heard a hum and looked up. An alien aircraft, climbing from its takeoff from the northern spur. Lucky bastard. Then I hoped for him that he knew where the egress portal was, and that the road to it was landable. Otherwise, he’d have to double back all the way here and go slumming among the groundsuckers. He probably wouldn’t run out of fuel. With fusion, it’s a rarity, but you do see some very primitive equipment on the Skyway now and then, belonging to races that you’d have to call overachievers.
After a long while I got up and stood over Darla, looking at her slim golden body. She opened her eyes and smiled. Then I looked up the knoll. The man in the loud blue jumpsuit was looking down at us, standing far enough away so that I couldn’t tell if the curl to his lip was a smirk or a friendly grin. I didn’t care if he’d been there for the whole performance. Glad to oblige.
“How’s the water?” I yelled up at him. “Safe?”
“Yeah, sure!” he shouted back. “Go ahead!”
Darla stood up, unashamed. I took her hand and we ran down to the surf, splashed in on foot a ways, then dove into the first breaker. The water was piss-warm but it was good to wash the sweat and sand off. My first bath in—how long? Darla’s too, I supposed, unless she managed to get one while I was … but of course she had—at the Teelies’ motel. Wait a minute. Had she gone there? She hadn’t said. In fact, she hadn’t gone into what had happened after she avoided getting fried out in the bush. I had assumed she went into town with the Teelies after the cops left with me, but I didn’t know. She would tell me sooner or later, I guess. I ducked my head, came up sputtering, and rubbed myself down briskly, trying to get the jail smell off me. Institutional stink. The water was a buoyant, rich saline solution with a slightly slimy quality. It was like swimming in thin chicken broth. Darla was out beyond me in deeper water, backstroking lazily. Behind her and out a good distance, another birdfish rocketed from the water and took wing.
All right, let’s face the question. Exactly how the hell did Darla wind up in the Militia station with Petrovsky? Did they come and get her? Did she come down to try to arrange my release? She said that Petrovsky wanted her for questioning, but Petrovsky said …
Something large and dark was moving in the deep water behind Darla. I stood up and peered out. I didn’t like it, and Darla was out too far. I called to her and told her to come in. She asked why with a questioning grin.
“Now, Darla.”
She got the message and shot forward into an Australian crawl, making it to shallow water in no time. Her stroke was very strong. Then a breaker took her straight in to me. I pulled her to her feet and pointed seaward. Just then something broke water out there with a boiling splash. I saw only a huge dark mass and a gaping mouth stuffed with more teeth than could possibly fit. Then the mouth sank, closing on something below the surface. The sea churned with the struggle, fins and flipperlike appendages thrashing up from the water over a wide area. Two very large animals were going at it.
Darla hadn’t really been in danger, but had she been out a bit farther …
“That bastard!” Darla said bitterly, turning toward the beach. “He said it was—”
I looked. The man was gone.
She turned to me and wrapped her arms around her ribcage, suddenly chilled. “Weird,” she muttered with a sour look. God preserve us from smirking weird bastards.
Chapter 11
WHEN WE GOT back to the car, John was sitting in the front seat with his legs hanging out the door, grinning at us. Winnie was playing in the sand very near, drawing figures with a piece of shell. I grinned back, welcoming his change of mood. “Where’re your two kamradas?” I asked.
He pointed to the nearby tree, in the shade of which Roland and Susan lay wrapped up into a ball.
“They seemed to’ve patched things up,” I said.
“Yes, they have,” he said approvingly. There wasn’t the least hint of jealousy. “How was the water?”
“Fine, but the sea life is a little too interesting.”
“Trouble?”
“No, not really.” I sat down on the front seat, wishing I had a cigarette. I tried to forget about it, looked up the beach to the causeway. No traffic as yet. I took the key from the dash and tried calling Sam. No answer. What if he didn’t come through? I’d miss him, but we did have a vehicle. But no food… hmmm. And no money. What passed for coin-of-the-realm outside the known mazes? No doubt we’d find out. Food. God, was I hungry. How long? Supper last night, nothing since then. I sighed, then slipped the key into my pants pocket.
After a while, Roland and Susan gathered themselves together and walked over.
“Hi,” Susan said to me, smiling a little sheepishly.
“Hello, Susan.”
She seemed calm, even content. It was quite a change. “Well,” she said brightly, “we seem to have … to’ve gone and done it, haven’t we?”
“Yes, we have. I’m sorry.”
She shook her head. “No need. I pretty much understand it all now. Roland is right about you. You’re definitely a nexus for us.” She laughed and crinkled her nose. “More Teelie talk. What it means is—”
“I think I understand,” I said. Then, realizing I’d interrupted her again, I said, “Sorry, you were explaining. Go ahead.”
“It doesn’t matter. I get interrupted a lot mainly because I talk too damn much. I’ll tell you later.”
“Okay, but again, I’m sorry.”
She drew near me and put her hand behind my neck, bent down, and was about to kiss me, but looked first toward Darla, as if to see if it was okay. Darla was crouching beside Winnie, watching her draw. Then Susan kissed me sweetly.
“You did what you had to do, Jake,” she said. “It wasn’t your fault. You have a Plan too.”
“I do? And here I thought I was improvising so brilliantly.”
“No, no. Your task is to discover the Plan first, then go with it, accept it.”
“Uh-huh. Karma.”
“No, not karma. Karma is another word for fate, predestination. A Plan is just that. A scheme, a plot, something to follow. Plans can be changed, but only if they have linkage with the overall design of things.”
“I see. Okay, I’ll try.” What could I say?
She kissed me again, then went over to see what Winnie and Darla were up to.
“Hmmmm.” Roland’s voice came from behind me.
I turned on the seat. He was studying the instrument panel again.
He looked at me. “I think I’ve finally figured out the beam weapon, if that’s what this is all about,” he said, indicating an area of readouts on the fire-control board. “By the way, did you notice that this whole business disappeared after we got through the portal?”
“No,” I said, not oversurprised that Roland had had the presence of mind to notice anything amidst all the excitement.
“Must be automatic. Pops out when the defensive systems detect a threat—that missile, for instance. But the driver can make it come out anytime. Here.” He showed me a small button on the steering column. “Don’t fret. Everyone was well away from the vehicle when I pushed it. That’ll make the board appear when the driver perceives a danger that the car doesn’t.” He pointed to the beam-weapon controls.
“Anyway, this thing…” He broke off and shook his head. “ ‘Sic ‘im, Fido’,” he repeated. He turned to me with a bemused smile. “Isn’t that the strangest thing?”
“Well, not really,” I said
. “The owner obviously wanted to confuse anyone who stole the car. Like us. Me.”
“Then why label anything?”
“A good point. Poor memory?” Actually, the fact that the owner clearly had a sense of humor might explain it better, I thought.
“Well, who knows. At any rate, you choose a target simply by doing this.” He touched a finger to the scanner screen, covering a blip with his fingertip, then withdrew it. Lines on the screen converged and the blip was centered in a flashing red circle. “That locks the system on target. And the fire switch is here.”
“What have you got there?”
“The tree, I think. The thing’s probably calibrated to ignore ground clutter, but that tree’s a bit tall.”
I looked around the immediate area. A few vehicles were parked a good distance behind us. The Weird Bastard’s roadster was gone, and everyone in our party was toward the rear of the car. Then I looked at the tree. It was a shaggy, scrubby thing, not what you’d call attractive. The car was angled a little to the left of it.
“I take it the car’s orientation doesn’t matter.”
“Doubt it,” Roland said.
“Okay. Well, hold your fire for just a minute.”
I got out, went over to the tree and took the grandest pee of my life. I’d been lucky to keep it in so long. Back on the Skyway there had been moments …
I walked back to the car and slid behind the wheel again. “Okay, Gunnery Sergeant. Fire when ready.”
“Right.” He hit the switch.
Something left the right underside of the car, something big and glowing, a writhing shape of swirling red fire, screeching like a hellbeast on the loose. The sound sent a cold twinge down my spine. The shape was vague, but there was something alive in there, a suggestion of a living form, limbs churning, legs moving over the ground, but the shape changed as it moved and parts of the phenomenon spun like a dust devil. It was big, at least three times as high as the car, and moved quickly, catlike, taking only a second or so to cover the distance from the car to its target. Furious flames enveloped the tree, then fiery arms surrounded it and tore it from the ground by the roots, flinging it up into the whirlwind where it was tossed and battered about as it burned. Flaming limbs flew in every direction. And all the while the shape of the cloud was shifting, changing, and the sound was like nothing you’d want to hear ever again. The tree was thrashed and ripped apart, tumbling in a vortex of demonic combustion. It went on for some time.
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