by Mick Farren
'Folksymbol.'
She/They was standing in a hot dusty street which was lined with wooden buildings. She/They was in a male structure and wearing a rough cotton shirt, denim trousers and heavy boots. Facing Her/Them was a man, similarly dressed, his eyes shaded by a wide-brimmed black hat. His arm hung loosely beside a heavy gun that was strapped to his right thigh.
'Reach, stranger!'
Her/Their hand, a man's hand, calloused and sunburned, clutched for the similar weapon that hung from Her/Their belt.
The male's gun was already in his hand, there was a roar as it fired. She/They tried desperately to rearrange Her/Their fabric as the metal projectile tore through it. The experience of pain clouded Her/Their consciousness, preventing the energy buildup needed to shift out of the collective illusion of a Folksymbol. The shift was impossible, but the wooden buildings did begin to fade, and the blue of the sky took on the swirls of chaos. The male figure that She/They had been forced into began to dissolve.
In its place, amid the pale ghost of the Western township, She/They reverted to the triple form. Two standing erect, while one lay crumpled in the dust.
Chapter 3
Billy and Reave stepped off the railroad track and started up the bare grey hillside. It was easy to see where the field of the Pleasant Gap generator stopped. All along a curved line the ground boiled and fell away into a blue-grey smoke. The clear air inside the field also became a swirling, multi-coloured mist. Billy and Reave walked up to the line and hesitated.
'Do you just step into it?'
'It's like stepping off the edge of the world.'
'I don't like it.'
'We can't go back now. The porta-pacs should hold things together.'
They turned up the gain of the machines on their belts and, side by side, stepped into the shimmering fog.
The porta-pac doesn't hold things together much beyond the area immediately around the carrier, even when it's turned up. Billy and Reave found that the fog in front of their faces turned into about a foot of clear air, and a patch of solid ground formed each time they set a foot down. They could breathe, walk and even talk to each other, although their voices sounded muffled and distant. Reave looked at Billy in alarm.
'How the hell do we know where we're going?'
Billy looked round at the shimmering fog and shrugged his shoulders.
'We don't know where we're going so we can only go on until we find something else.'
'Suppose we don't find anything?'
'Then we'll just walk round for ever.'
Reave was about to call Billy crazy, but then he thought better of it and shut his mouth.
They trudged through the bright flickering mist. There was no sense of time, and no indication that they were going anywhere. For all they knew, they might have been walking on a treadmill. The only changes in the total sameness were occasional shifts in the direction of gravity, which pitched them on their side like a sudden pile-driving wind. It was painful and annoying, but comforting in the way that the porta-pacs always seemed to be able to produce enough solid ground for them to fall on, even though it wasn't sometimes in exactly the right place.
Although they might have no sense of time, Billy and Reave realized they were progressively collecting an array of bruises and small cuts. Reave sucked his barked knuckles and spat into the haze.
'I sure wish I was leaning at the bar in Miss Ettie's. I'll tell you that for nothing.'
Billy plodded on.
'Miss Ettie's ain't even open yet.'
Reave looked at him in amazement.
'What do you mean, not open? We've got to have been walking all day. It must be about evening.'
'I don't figure we've been walking for more than an hour.'
Reave looked round bitterly at the changing colours.
'A day or an hour, what's the difference in this stuff? I don't figure there's anything else at all. Pleasant Gap's the only place left anywhere.'
Billy turned and scowled at him.
'What about Stuff Central, what about that, huh? That's got to exist somewhere.'
'Stuff Central? Is that what you're looking for?'
'Course it ain't, but it proves there's something else besides Pleasant Gap. Right?'
'It don't guarantee that we'll find it, though.'
Billy looked at Reave in disgust, and plodded on. Reave spat again, and hurried after him. They plodded on and on. The reality of their life began to look like a half-remembered dream. It was as though they'd been walking through the nothings for ever.
Just as despair was starting to edge its way into Billy's mind, he put his foot on something that was uneven. He looked down, and saw blades of green grass. He stopped and bent down. It was grass. He grinned up at Reave.
'It's grass, man! It's grass, growing on the bit of ground around my foot.'
'You've cracked up.'
'No, no, it's real.'
Billy picked one of the short blades, and passed it to Reave, who turned it over slowly between his fingers.
'Sure looks like grass.'
'It is fucking grass. Listen, here's what we do, take two more steps forward, kind of carefully, and I've got a feeling we'll find something.'
Hand in hand, they took the first step. There was more grass at their feet, extending out for maybe four feet. They took a second step, and then a third, and they came out of the coloured nothings.
They were standing on a grassy slope that rose in front of them. Billy fell to his knees and rolled on the ground.
'We made it! We made it!'
Reave sat down and pulled at the straps of his bag.
'Want a beer?'
'You got some beers?'
'Sure, I nicked a six-pack while old Eli was out back.'
'That was sharp. Yeah, I'd really like a beer.'
Reave pulled out two cans of beer, and passed one to Billy. Billy turned it over, looking at the label — Tree Frog Beer, the fat green frog squatting under the red lettering, grinning at you. For the first time Billy knew there was something called homesickness.
After a couple of moments, though, he snapped out of that particularly unique depression, pulled the ring on the can and gulped down the beer. When it was finished he wiped his mouth and flung the can at the wall of nothing. As it hit the mist the can melted, smoked and became nothing itself. Reave grunted.
'That's what'd happen to us if we didn't have no stasis generators.'
'Better not get caught without one.'
Billy stood up.
'Guess we better find out where we are.'
The sky above them was a uniform shining white without either sun or clouds. The air was warm, clear and still. The grass slope ran upwards for a matter of yards and then stopped at some kind of summit. Billy scrambled up it and, once at the top, turned and shouted down to Reave.
'It's a road, man. A goddamn road!'
'A road?'
Reave scrambled up to join him. The road ran flat and dead straight as far as they could see in either direction, a wide, six-lane highway. It was made out of a smooth composition material with a grassy central reservation. On either side were more banks of grass, like the one that Reave and Billy had stumbled upon. Beyond that there were the walls of shimmering nothing.
After prowling around for a few minutes, Billy and Reave came back to the central strip of grass.
'So what do we do? Start walking?'
Billy stared down the seemingly endless strip of highway.
'It looks a mite far to walk.'
'What do we do then?'
Billy sat down on the grass, and tilted his dark glasses forward.
'Just sit here a while, take it easy and wait. I reckon somebody's got to use this road, and when they come by, we'll try and beg a ride.'
Reave looked doubtful.
'We could wait a good long time.'
Billy shook his head lazily.
'I don't think so. Nobody builds a big old road like this,
and then doesn't use it. That stands to reason.'
'Maybe.'
Reave sat down on the grass but still looked uncomfortable. Billy punched him on the arm.
'Come on, man. Relax, it's warm, we're out of that fucking fog, what more do you want? This is an adventure and we ain't in any hurry to get anywhere.'
He rummaged in his bag and pulled out a ration bar, snapped it in half and handed one of the halves to Reave.
'Have something to eat and take it easy. Something'll come by sooner or later.'
Reave munched on the food bar and stretched out on the grass beside Billy, feeling a bit more comfortable. Just as the two men were drifting off to sleep, they heard a humming way off in the distance. Billy sat up and shook Reave by the shoulder.
'Something's coming.'
Reave rubbed his eyes and looked around.
'Which way's it coming from?'
Billy listened intently.
'I don't know, it's hard to tell. It must be a good way off.'
Gradually, the humming grew louder, and a tiny speck appeared far off in the distance. The hum became a high whine which took on more body as it came closer. From a small speck, the object got bigger until Billy and Reave saw it was a huge truck bearing down on them. They jumped about and waved frantically, but the truck sped past them in a flash of chrome exhausts and black and white paint job. Then huge red warning lights flashed at the back and it screeched to a stop, about two hundred yards down the road. Billy and Reave started running and the truck started to back up. They met each other halfway, and a skinny little guy with a shaggy crewcut, long sideburns and a face like a shifty lizard, leaned down from a small door high up in the cab.
'Wanna lift?'
The truck was a huge semi, with an immaculate matt black paint job on the cab and huge bonnet, it was trimmed in white. Huge chrome blowers reared from the top of the hood, and all the accessories, the wind horns, the military spots mounted high on the cab, the headlights on the fenders were also chrome. The sides of the trailer were of matt finish aluminium, and jetstream willie was lettered on the cab door.
Reave and Billy climbed up the steel ladder on the side of the truck and ducked inside the cab. The driver sat in a high bucket seat behind a huge steering wheel. The dash panel was a mass of instruments. A pair of rabbit's feet on a thin silver chain dangled from the top of the windscreen. There was a long bench seat, upholstered in white leather with black piping, beside the driver's seat. Reave and Billy sat down on it. Billy grinned up at the driver.
'Some truck.'
The little lizard guy threw the truck into gear.
'Sure is. Seven speed, four pod 5-0-9, blown through. Hits three hundred when I floor her.'
He went through the gears like a master, and was soon at a speed that made Billy and Reave dizzy. Billy swallowed and grinned again.
'Is that your name painted on the side?'
'Sure is. Jetstream Willie, that's me.'
He swivelled round in his seat to show them the same lettering on the back of his black leather jump suit, and the truck swerved so alarmingly that Reave and Billy grabbed for the edge of their seats. Jetstream Willie laughed and accelerated even more.
'Where you boys from?'
'Pleasant Gap.'
'I never heard of a place of that name, not on the road.'
'It's not on the road.'
'Whadda you mean it's not on the road? If it ain't on the road, then how the fuck did you get here?'
Billy pointed out to the side of the truck.
'We walked through the grey stuff.'
'Through the nothings? That ain't possible.'
Billy held up his porta-pac.
'Had these.'
'What's that?'
'Miniature generator.'
Jetstream Willie shook his head in disbelief.
'You two got to be crazy.'
Without waiting for an answer, he punched a button on the dash, and country and western music blared from concealed stereo speakers.
' "Ring of Fire" by Johnny Cash. Finest music the world ever known.'
Billy and Reave both nodded. They didn't know what the hell he was talking about. The truck seemed to be going at a suicidal speed, but Jetstream Willie held the wheel with one hand and went right on talking.
'So where are you crazy guys headed?'
'Anywhere. We're just drifting.'
'Drifting, hey? Long time since I picked up any drifters. I can take you as far as Graveyard.'
Reave looked puzzled.
'What's Graveyard?'
He found he had to shout to make himself heard abave the roar of the engine, and the country music. Jetstream Willie looked amazed.
'You don't know what Graveyard is? You must have come out of the nothings. Graveyard's the end of the road, It's the truck stop. It's the wheelfreaks' paradise. That's where I got my camper, and that's where my little woman is, just a-waiting for me to come back. A-waiting in that them transparent neglig-ay that she got from the Stuff catalogue. A-waiting to give me something hot with my dinner, or, at least, she better be, or I'll kill the bitch.'
Reave waited until the tide of poetry had stopped.
'What's a wheelfreak?'
Jetstream Willie looked shocked.
'You asking what a wheelfreak is? You don't know nothing. You're looking at one. Us wheelfreaks are the lords of creation. We're the boys who ride these rigs, we're the only ones who got the balls. We haul them from Graveyard clear down to no man's land.'
'What do you carry in these trucks?'
'Carry? We don't carry nothing. Ain't nothing in the back of here 'cept one ol' big generator. How else do you think we keep this road together, wouldn't stop turning into nothing for an hour if we weren't gunning these ol' boys up and down.'
He fumbled in the pocket of his leather jacket and produced a green plastic box, and popped a little white pill into his mouth.
'Yes sir, there wouldn't be no road or nothing if it wasn't for us, I can tell you.'
He offered the box to Reave and Billy.
'Have a benny.'
Each of them dutifully took a pill and settled back in his seat. They didn't want to ask any more fool questions, and risk upsetting a lord of creation.
Another truck flashed past in the opposite lane, going in the other direction. Briefly, as it passed, all its lights came on, and it shone like a Christmas tree. Jetstream Willie hit buttons on the dash, and his own lights came on in reply.
'That's Long Sam. He's a good ol' boy.'
Jetstream Willie cut the lights, and pointed to a set of sockets on the dash panel.
'If you want to recharge them portables of yours, you could try plugging them in there, takes power from the engine.'
Reave and Billy unclipped the pacs from their belts and did as he indicated. Willie seemed to have lost interest in them because he now stared straight in front of him, and sang along with the music. It consisted of the same song, over and over again.
After an hour of this, by the dash panel clock, he swung the truck on to a slip road. Without apparently slackening speed, he jockeyed the truck up a steep ramp and out on to a huge expanse of flat, smooth, concrete. He cut the engine and let it roll to a stop at the end of a line of about a dozen other huge baroque vehicles. They were of the same general shape and massive size, but each was unique in its elaborate design and paintwork.
Jetstream Willie caught them staring at a vast gold monster with black trim and enormous balloon tyres.
'That's Dirty Marv's, sure is a fine-looking machine, but it's all show and no go. I can shut him down with a ten minute head start before he's even hit the quarter line.'
They unplugged the porta-pacs, gathered up their bags and swung down from the cab. The truck still seemed to hum slightly, and Reave looked at it curiously. Jetstream Willie provided the answer.
'Always leave the generator on, all helps to keep things straight.'
At first sight Graveyard looked like
one huge parking lot surrounded by buildings, and that, in fact, was what it was. Far over on one side was a row of trailers, with smoke curling up from chimneys and lines of washing hanging out to dry. They were dwarfed by the odd truck that was parked among them. On the other side of the lot, right by where Jetstream Willie had parked, was an immensely long single-storey building made of glass and chrome that stretched for a whole side of the roughly square lot. On its flat roof was mounted a huge replica of an ice-cream soda, which rose into the air for sixty or seventy feet. The cherry on the top was illuminated from inside, and it flashed on and off like a beacon. Flashing in time with the cherry was a red and yellow neon sign that occupied most of the rest of the roof, and spelled out the words Vito's Cozy Drop-In in twelve-foot letters. It was towards this structure that Jetstream Willie led. As they pushed through the revolving glass door, Willie looked at them warmly.
'You better keep yourselves to yourselves in here, some of the boys might not take too kindly to the way you look.'
The Cozy Drop-In was decorated in black and orange plastic. There were lines and lines of tables and seats. A bunch of men, all with similar suits and cropped haircuts to Willie's, queued at a long counter waiting to be served by a team of blonde girls with jutting breasts and short yellow tunics. Willie pointed at a table away over in the corner.
'You best go and sit yourselves down there, and I'll bring you something over.'
Reave and Billy did as they were told, while Jetstream Willie joined the other men in a flurry of back slapping and hee-haw laughter. Like their trucks, the wheelfreaks' suits were all basically similar, but each one had its own colour and design.
While they waited for Willie to come back, Billy and Reave looked cautiously round the room. One end of it was dominated by a vast juke box, as tall as a man and maybe eight feet across. Coloured lights kept changing the patterns of reflections on its elaborate chrome face and it seemed to be playing the same 'Ring of Fire' record that Willie had had in the truck. Another wall was filled by a row of pinball machines, but again they were much larger than anything that Billy and Reave had ever seen. Instead of standing in front of it, the player sat in a kind of pilot's chair that had complex flipper controls set in the arms.
