Edward Llewellyn

by Prelude to Chaos

  “For your sake?” I shook my head. “What the hell’s going on?” Then I realized what was going on. I had been about to act as a human missile. A missile targeted on Gerald Futrell.

  I still hated the man. I would still kill him if I could. But not at the cost of my own life—or Judith’s. I looked around, snatched up my body-belt and buckled it on. In it were my badge and my money. “We’ve got to get out of here. Together. But we’ll have to wait till it’s dark.”

  “We can’t wait! Futrell recognized you. They’re coming after you now.”

  There were heavy steps on the stairs and the door was flung open. In the doorway stood two of Anslinger’s cronies; both Elders and both armed. Men who had previously shown me respect. Their attitude held no respect for me now.

  But they were still uncertain. One stepped forward to glare at Judith. “What are you doing in the Bachelor Cloister, woman?”

  “Let her go, Jason!” said the other. “Mister Knox, Deacon Anslinger wants to see you at once. Come with Us!” He looked at Judith. “You’d better get out of this buHding quickly. A woman can get into bad trouble for being found in bachelor quarters.”

  She glanced at me and I caught her quick nod. We were back in unison. I shrugged and started down the stairs, the two Elders behind me. Judith came last, sobbing for the benefit of Jason.

  At the foot of the stairs I swung around, grabbed Jason’s shirt, and pitched him forward, adding a neck-chop as he fell. Judith had thrown her arms round the second Elder, preventing him from drawing his gun. I hit him twice and flung him on top of Jason. Then I glanced out of the front door. The agents who had been in the limousine with Futrell were standing around it, waiting for us.

  “Out back!” I called to Judith. We went through the ground-floor lounge, out of the window, and away into the maze of narrow streets among the boxlike married quarters.

  There I stopped, recovering my full sanity. There was now no hope of my getting close enough to Futrell to shoot him. He must have recognized me. Anslinger had sent his thugs after me. What was going on between Sherando and the Attorney General? And how was I going to get Judith out of the mess I’d landed her in? The Elders hadn’t come for her. But if she was caught with me she’d suffer with me.

  She tugged my arm. “Gav—wait here! Trust me.” And she darted away up the alley.

  There was nothing else I could do. The whole Settlement would soon be isolated and searched. There was nowhere we could hide. And what the hell was Judy up to?

  The lane was strewn with bags of garbage waiting collection. A biker appeared round the comer and came weaving among them like a skier running the gates in a grand slalom. I jumped back into, the shelter of a yard as it skidded to a halt. The visor went up. It was Judith.

  A black jacket, full helmet, and opaque visor had made her as anonymous and menacing as any other biker. She reached back to unhook another dark-visored helmet and thrust it at me. “Ram this on!”

  I stared at the bike. “What’s this thing?”

  “A Yama Five Hundred. Hide your face in that pot!”

  I got the helmet over my head and tried to unbend my ears. “Can you drive it?”

  “No—but I can ride it! Put on those leathers. Fasten your chin strap. Now go split-assed behind me. Feet on the pegs. Clamp on to me. Tight! I don’t want to dump you balls-up on the Plaza. Haven’t you ever been on a bike?”

  “When I was a kid.” This was oscillating between nightmare and farce.

  “Thank Christ for that!” Judy had adopted a speech-mode to match her rig. “Now—hang on. I may have to take evasive action.”

  The prospect of being aboard a motorcycle taking evasive action froze me. I clutched Judy’s waist as she swerved down the lane, across an open lot, and onto a side road. She was riding with skill if not with caution as she raced through a narrow gap between houses and shot out onto the plaza. A bike can go where a car cannot.

  And provided a disguise. Who would expect Doctor Judith Grenfell to be riding a motorcycle? Bikers are the best-disguised creatures on the highway. When the weather is cool one cannot tell the girls from the boys. With visors down we circled the plaza, then drove past the Council Chamber and the waiting limousine. The agents, who were starting to walk toward the Bachelor Cloister, hardly glanced at us.

  We roared through the main gates of the Settlement as shouts rose from behind us. I glanced back and saw the agents running for the limousine. I clutched Judy tighter and yelled, “They’re after us!”

  “I’ll drop ’em. Don’t worry!” She swerved to avoid a truck coming toward Sherando and I glimpsed the open mouth of the cursing driver. Then the road plunged down the hill and into the trees. We skidded around a curve and skidded again so we were broadside across the road. For a moment I thought Judy had lost control, then I realized it was her way of making a right-angled turn. We shot forward off the hardtop and down a horse trail among the trees.

  The limousine roared past, brakes screeched, I heard it backing up at full throttle, and then we were deep in the woods, skidding and slewing in showers of mud and leaves.

  “For God’s sake—take it easy!” I yelled. “They’re way back but they’ll catch up if you dump us.”

  She slowed somewhat but we still had a breathtaking ride until we reached a dirt road running beside the river. “With luck we may make it!” said Judy as she turned in the direction of Waynesboro.

  I started to breath easier and Judy started to drive more sensibly when we reached the outskirts of the town. There were more motorcyles weaving through the traffic than I remembered from the past and when we stopped for gas I realized this was one effect of the fuel restrictions. Hydrides for some unknown reason were becoming short and gasoline was back in fashion. And bikes had always used gasoline.

  She parked among a bunch of bikes at a shopping center, and we dismounted. Judy in black biking gear and helmet was a different person from the earlier Judiths I had got to know. She was letting her suppressed delight in theatrics have full rein. “I knew they wouldn’t let me out of that place. An-slinger’s turning it into a Jonesville-in-Virginia! So I got hold of this Yama and loaded the panniers, ready for takeoff.” “Where are you going now?”

  “Sutton Cove.”

  “You plan to go to Maine on that thing? Disguised as a biker?”

  “That’s how I’ve always gone. Part-way at least. That’s why nobody ever trailed me. But not disguised—I am a biker. It’s the fastest, most exciting, and least obvious way to travel.” She laughed, as though delighted at my expression. “Want to come along?”

  “Riding pillion? For a thousand kilometers?”

  “I’d rather have a sore ass than a sore back! Let me give you a lift to somewhere safe anyway.”

  “Nowhere’s safe for me now!”

  She snapped down her visor, as though irritated by my pessimism. “I know one place where we can merge with the natives. If it’s still going. You said you were a biker once?”

  “I had a trail bike as a kid.”

  “Good enough. Climb aboard!”

  “Where are we going?” I asked as she took off with a roar, leaving a plume of dust astern.

  “Like I said. To merge with some of the native fauna. If it’s not been destroyed by the new austerity. Now hang on!” By the time we reached the thruway I had no breath left to ask anything, and once we were on it Judy began riding too fast for conversation. She headed north and I rode pressed tightly against her for the next hour, enjoying the body contact too much to be concerned about the speed. She slowed as we approached the outskirts of Frederick, and turned off the thruway onto a secondary road where there were more motorcycles than automobiles, then onto a dirt road, joining a stream of bikers, riding singly or paired like ourselves. The road wound through vacant lots, wrecking yards, and dilapidated factories until it finally spewed us out onto a wasteland of disused sandpits; a breeding ground for mosquitoes and bikers.

  The bikers were out in force; mating, in
specting machines, and riding in, out, and around the sandpits. Judy wove her way through the mob of men, women, and bikes until she reached the far side where she stopped and said, “Here we are!”

  “Which is where?” I dismounted and stared at the biker hordes.

  “The Bikers Bi-monthly Bargain Boozeup! The best buys in bikes, booze, and broads. Also grass, spares, customizing— babes or bikes. The last hold-out of unadulterated male chauvinism. Gross in the extreme!” She looked around with evident relish. “It’s nice to find some remnants of the old barbarism still exist.”

  “This isn’t the kind of crowd I expected you to—”

  “Cram your expectations, Gavin! This gang are totally irresponsible! They don’t give a damn about the President’s pleas, about prophets of doom, about the probability there’ll be no tomorrow. This is the swansong of a civilization. And these are people who have the guts to sing!”

  “Judy, that’s nonsense. Anyway, why did you come here?” “Because nobody except a biker would dare to come searching through this mob. And most cops are too tight-assed these days to ride bikes. You can dehelmet now. Nobody recognizes anybody without an invitation. Like Sanctuary—or Saturnalia! I used to come here when I was a med student. Too seldom since then!” She had the satisfied air of an old grad at a homecoming. “Let’s go buy you a bike. That Slada’s about your speed. Light enough to go cross-country but fast enough if you wind her up to outrun most things on the road.”

  Of all possible futures, becoming a biker again had never entered my prevision. I eyed a gleaming Slada while Judy haggled with its owner. Presently she asked, “Like to try it out on the track? It’s supposed to have only three thousand clicks on the clock. Or maybe you want me to test-ride it before I close with this crook?”

  “I’ll test it myself if I’ve got to ride it!” I sat astride and touched the starter.

  The Slada started sweetly and went well. Almost too well, for after a few cautious turns around the impromptu test track I opened the throttle as I had in the past and my front wheel climbed into the air. I completed part of the circuit with it still up, steering with desperate body-English in a controlled panic reaction. After that near miss I made several cautious circuits, trying to look as if I was listening for pis-ton-slap but actually gaining time for my pulse to drop back to near normal before I returned to Judy.

  The design of motorbikes had plateaued in the last decade of the twentieth century. There was not much left to be done. A good bike had the best power-weight ratio of any roadworthy vehicle. If there had been tires to grip a bike could have raced up a vertical wall. Japanese engineers had produced a near-perfect machine, a superb example of engineering elegance, unmatched efficiency, and with the lethal potential of a ground-to-ground missile.

  When my heart and breathing had steadied I coasted the Slada back to where Judy was watching with an expression of mixed approval, surprise, and chagrin. “Gavin—that was an unnecessary bit of showoffery. This is no time for risk-taking!”

  I had been about to apologize for letting the bike get away from me, but sank in a surge of adolescent pride. “Just seeing what she’ll do!”

  A bearded beer-bellied brute who had been adjusting the triple carbs on a machine that looked like several generations of Guzzi-DKW-Harley cross-breeding, joined the conversation. “That was as pretty a wheel-up as I’ve seen today.” He scowled at Judy. “Slap that chick back if she’s uppity. It’s what she really wants. They like it!” And he returned to adjusting his carburetors with the care of a first-violinist tuning his instrument.

  I moved back from the expected explosion and winced when Judy laughed. “See what I mean? Last hold-out of the hogs this side Georgia! But they care about what they’re doing and they want to do things right. That’s enough to make me love ’em.” She pulled on her helmet and went astride her Yama. “Now—let’s go!” She roared her motor and was away across the rough ground, standing up on her rests and waving me to follow.

  Beer-belly yelled, “Slap her down when you catch her!” I grinned despite myself, got the Slada started, and took off after the bouncing seat of Judy’s tight jumpsuit. God knows what role she was playing now or where she was leading me. For the moment I was happy to admire and be led.

  When she reached the hardtop she waited for me and waved toward a cluster of bikers warming up before taking off. “We’ll join that squadron!” she yelled. “Now we’re criminals we might as well get the benefits!” And the whole gang roared away before she had time to explain.

  About twenty kilometers outside Frederick I realized the reason for her maneuver. There was a police roadblock and at least a hundred automobiles were lined up with the cops checking the papers of the occupants in each car. The leading bikers simply swooped over onto the shoulder or out into the opposite lane, weaving among cursing drivers and shouting policemen. One bike skidded and the rider went sprawling. The cops rushed to grab him. The rest of the gang swerved past the roadblock and then, without any apparent order, half a dozen, including Judy, circled back to harrass the police while the fallen biker grabbed his machine and got away to yells of triumph.

  Criminal behavior, antisocial in the extreme. Why so exhilarating when it represented everything decadent about our society? I had no answer by the time dusk came, the mob split up, and Judy turned off the highway to park behind a barn.

  I joined her as she took off her helmet and shook out her glorious hair. “Those cops were after us,” she said. “They’ll probably have stake-outs on all motels. We’re pretty important people apparently. But they’ll be looking for two crooks on one bike—though I’ll bet they’ll assume we’re acting our age and have got ourselves an automobile.”

  She was probably right. Even if I had been hunting us I doubt I would have considered that we might have acquired a second bike and were riding together. Riding to where?

  She waved toward the bam. “Want to join me in the hay?” “It’s a warm night,” I agreed.

  “Then bring in your bike. No lights. I’ve got some iron rations in my panniers.”

  We wheeled the bikes into the sweet-smelling warmth of the bam and sat side by side in the darkness chewing hardtack. Presently she put her head on my shoulder. “Gavin.” “Yes?”

  “Today should have been the worst of my life. I thought we’d had it half-a-dozen times. I thought you’d gone crazy and about to get yourself killed and me flogged. I discovered that those bastards who control Sherando are making a deal with the devil. I’ve behaved like the worst kind of hooligan. But I’ve felt more alive than I have in years.”

  I put my arm round her. “My crazy spell is gone for good. Sherando can have Futrell, and he can have Sherando. He can have the whole goddamn United States for all I care. He’ll go to hell with the rest of us.”

  “But we’re not going to hell,” said Judith. “We’re going to Sutton Settlement. At least I hope you are.” She reached up to touch my cheek. “Gav, I would have married you if only that sanctimonious bastard Anslinger hadn’t ordered me to.” “Judy, I wouldn’t have married you anyway.” I kissed her. The kiss turned into an embrace. Horses and motorbikes are powerful aphrodisiacs and Judy had felt the effect as much as I had. Presently she whispered, “Gav—remember my promise? Any time, any way?”

  “To hell with thatl What matters is your time, your way!” “Is it?” She kissed me. “Then how about now?” And she began to unzip her jumpsuit.

  A hay loft on a warm summer night is a magic place to make love. Something that a thousand generations of farmgirls and farmboys have known but which most men and women of my generation have never discovered.

  I discovered it that night and later I slept the sweetest sleep I had slept in years. An outlaw, being hunted across a nation going down into chaos, I awoke as refreshed as if I was a young man without a worry to Ms name. If such a freak exists!

  The sunlight was streaming in through the open door and Judy was sitting up naked, pulling bits of hay from her hair. I starte
d to stroke her back, and then, in default of anything better to say, I asked, “What’s all this stuff about Impermease?”

  “Impermease?” She turned to look at me. That’s not the kind of subject to bring up on the morning after our marriage. But I guess you’d better know.”

  “Not if it makes you serious!” I objected.

  “Gavin—we’ve got to be serious again. So I’ll start by telling you what I’ve found out about why everything’s breaking down.”

  I lay back in the hay. “Okay! If you must!”

  She raised herself on one elbow and started to deliver a lecture on female reproductive physiology. “Every month my ovaries release an egg that was formed and stored in me six months before I was bom.”

  I studied her stomach, trying to decide where her ovaries were. Then I started stroking it.

  She pushed my hand away. “I was bom with every fertile sgg I’ll ever have already inside me.”

  “But you weren’t bom looking like you do now. So it’s only been during the last few years that anybody’s wanted to fertilize one of ’em.”

  She didn’t smile. “Ever heard of a drug called thalidomide?”

  “Vaguely. It damaged babies, didn’t it? Way back in the last century.”

  “It was the safest sedative known at the time, except for one terrible side effect If a woman took it during her first three months of pregnancy her baby might be bom without arms or legs. Thalidomide checked the development of the limb buds in the fetus.”

  I sat up, feeling sick. This was not the kind of thing I like to discuss with a naked woman.

  She rammed her point home. “What do you think would have happened if thalidomide had checked the development of the Fallopian tubes? The tubes that take the eggs from the ovary to the uterus?”

  I didn’t want to think about such unpleasant possibilities, but Judith’s expression demanded an answer. “I guess it would have the same effect as tying ’em. The girl would grow up sterile.”