Red Limit Freeway

by John Dechancie

  “Depends on the bear.”

  “Let’s see what these animals do.”

  The cutoff swept in a lazy arc to the right; the Roadbug had already lost itself in the smog. I watched as Sean and Carl made the turn, also noting that our new soi-disant friend was following, then got on the horn.

  “Okay, crew, let’s squeeze hydrogen.” I tromped the power pedal.

  “Won’t we be tipping our hand?” Carl wanted to know.

  “I got a plan,” I said.

  “You’re the general.”

  “Don’t you forget it, soldier.”

  “Yes sir, General MacArthur.”

  “McCarthy? Who’s that?”

  “No, not McCarthy… Aw, never mind.”

  I thought a moment. “First World War?” I asked.

  “Second,” Carl said.

  “Right. Knew I’d heard the name.” I decided that now was as good a time as any. “Carl, when were you born?”

  “August third, 1946.”

  After a moment, I said, “Serious?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Right. Carl, I think I believe you.”

  “Why should I lie?”

  Indeed.

  “What about what’s-his-name … Yuri?”

  “What’s he doing?”

  “Looks like he doesn’t know what to do. Probably thinks we’re trying to ditch him.”

  “We are, in a way. Actually, I’m really interested in what he does.”

  “Got you.”

  Sam said, “He’s not calling us on the skyband, if that means anything.”

  “It might,” I said. “Are you scanning back there for any pursuit?”

  “Yup. Nothing so far.”

  “Want to send up a drone?”

  “The terrain’s pretty flat. Probably won’t need it. Just what is your plan, if I may ask?”

  “Don’t really have one,” I answered, “unless we can find a place to pull off-road and lay low.”

  “That might be a problem. Nowhere to hide out there—no hills or big rocks to speak of.”

  “I was thinking, though,” I went on, “maybe we could go off-road far enough to lose ourselves visually in the smog, then power down and sit. Maybe just listen for passing traffic. If we hear anything go by, we wait a little and double back to the main road, take another portal.”

  “Damn good idea,” Sam said. “Damn good idea. Son, you show half a brain now and then. Let’s do that thing.”

  About five klicks down the road, we did that thing. Nothing showed on the scanners as we turned off, and the screens stayed clear until we shut everything down. We couldn’t see the road, but the outside directional mike would betray anything passing. Yuri had silently followed us, driving what we now saw to be a blue and white Omnivan, a good double-threat road/offroad vehicle. It looked battered and travel-weary, though still serviceable. The ports were caked with dust, but we could see two dim figures in the front seats.

  We sat, listening to the low moan of the wind. Everyone was quiet.

  About ten minutes went by. Then Sam said, “Ask Carl who he thinks will win the National League pennant this year.”

  “Hmph.” I reached forward and tapped the main screen. “Juice up the scanners. Make one sweep uproad on low power.” Sam did so.

  “Nothing,” I said. “Not a ding-blasted thing. I thought for sure…”

  “So did I,” Sam said. “I’m also sure they would have scanned us taking the cutoff, if they were interested.”

  “Can’t figure it. Maybe they were what Yuri thought they were—aliens in salvaged Terran vehicles.”

  “Looks that way.”

  I got on the horn. “Carl, who’s going to win the National League Pennant this year?”

  “Well, I’m a Dodger fan.” He laughed. “Are you kidding? Baseball’s one with the dodo, isn’t it?”

  “Last time I heard, they were restarting major-league play back in North America.”

  “Really? I hadn’t heard.”

  “1946, huh?”

  “Nineteen hundred and forty-six, A.D.”

  “I take it you were born on Earth.”

  “Yeah. Los Angeles, California.”

  “How did you get out here, one hundred fifty odd years later?”

  “I was kidnapped by a flying saucer.”

  16

  Ask a stupid question.

  Language is strange in what it carries as baggage through the centuries and what it lets drop by the wayside. Though the phrase “flying saucer” hasn’t fallen into desuetude, its original meaning has fallen through the bottom. In contemporary usage, you get conked on the head and “see flying saucers,” i.e. suffer temporary visual disturbances. “Get off your flying saucer” means quit deluding yourself and come back to reality. Ask anyone what a flying saucer actually is and you’ll probably get a blank look, as you would if you asked what buck refers to in the phrase “pass the buck.” (A hint: buck, in this instance, is not slang for dollar, a unit of defunct currency.)

  Originally, “flying saucer” meant only one thing: an extraterrestrial spacecraft. If you believe the accounts of the period, Earth’s skies virtually crawled with them from about the middle of the twentieth century to about the third decade of the twenty-first, when the section of Skyway on Pluto was discovered. After that, reports of sightings tapered off. Officially and generically, these phenomena were termed “UFOs”—Unidentified Flying Objects. “Saucer” arose from the fact that many of the objects took the shape of airborne crockery. I know all this because I once prepared a term paper on popular delusions for a college course entitled “The Masses and Collective Consciousness.” (I don’t remember anything about the course itself, which I suspect is no great loss.)

  Out here on the road between the worlds, people don’t see flying saucers. They see all kinds of things: time-tripping doppelgängers of loved ones who have recently died, vehicles that are modern-day versions of the Flying Dutchman complete with spectral occupants, vehicles driven variously by Jesus Christ, Buddah, Zoroaster, Lao-tse, Krishna, John Lennon (I remember passing a beery evening in a road house a while ago, buzzing with a gaggle of Lennonites—a very interesting little sect), and assorted other chimeras, but not spaceships. Who needs spaceships when you can climb in your buggy and drive a hundred light-years?

  Who needs spaceships, or rather starships? Answer: a race that does not have access to the Skyway.

  “Carl, we have to talk,” I said, “but we’d best defer it, much as I hate to.”

  “Right.”

  “Sam, give me the skyband, channel nineteen, on low power.”

  Sam did so and I said, “Yuri? This is Jake.”

  “Hello!”

  “I suppose you’re wondering what the hell we’re doing.”

  “I take it you think there’s reason to be cautious.”

  “Good guess. Sorry we didn’t warn you, but I thought it best to maintain radio silence, at least on the skyband. Yuri, do you have random-shift multifrequency decoding gear?”

  “Yes, we do.”

  “Good. Sam will set you up to receive on our security channel. Stand by.”

  When that was done we all started up and headed back over the ice toward the Skyway, following our own trace through the slush. The ground was flat and it was easy going. But when we had the road in sight, Sam suddenly yelled.

  “Got something on the scanners!”

  “We have time to double back?”

  “No, it’s doing Mach one-point-three. Must be a Roadbug.”

  “Another one?”

  Sure enough, it was. We watched the silver beetlelike vehicle streak past, punching its way into the bank of smog downroad.

  “Hey,” Sam said, surprised. “He transmitted something at us. I’ve got it on ten-second delay playback. Wait a sec … here it is.”

  “ACCESS TO THE NEXT SECTION IS FORBIDDEN. TURN BACK AT ONCE.”

  The voice spoke in Intersystem. It has long been thought that Roadbugs can
scan for life-readings of vehicle occupants to determine the appropriate language to use. (How do they learn the languages in the first place? No one’s been able to figure that out.)

  “Well,” I said, “I am not about to argue with a Roadbug. Troop, left face.”

  I hung a left, got over onto the double-back track and brought the rig up to cruising speed, checking back to see if everyone had followed. They had.

  But soon the scanners were painting oncoming traffic. Five blips, none of them in any hurry but keeping formation. They had an air of deadly business about them. I knew who they were.

  “To the rear, march,” Sam said.

  “Didn’t Yuri say he spotted four Terran buggies?” I said as I swung the rig into a wide U-turn.

  “He did.”

  “It may mean one of ‘em is alien.”

  “Now, I wonder who they could be.” Sam knew as well as I. Reticulans.

  “What’ll we do?” Sam asked. “Can’t shoot the portal. Go off-road again?”

  “Yeah. Looks like they don’t want to close with us. If we can lose them off the screen—do they have a drone up?”

  “Don’t see one.”

  “Good. Let’s get off the road and make like rocks again. Maybe we can fool them.”

  “We’ll be the most prominent feature of the landscape, should they be looking for us.”

  “I dunno,” I said. “I thought I saw some large rock formations off to our right when we were parked. Maybe the lay of the land changes farther down.”

  It didn’t, and our pursuers kept pace with us as we raced toward the tollbooths. We were doing top speed. There was no way we could outrun them and our alternatives were dwindling to a very few.

  “Should we turn and fight?” Sean asked. “Liam and I are game if you are.”

  Carl said, “Are they really following us, or are we just getting paranoid? Maybe they’re not the same vehicles Yuri saw.”

  “The thought has occurred to me,” I said. “Could be we’re just a little too jumpy. Want to pull over and see if they pass us by?”

  A moment’s deliberation. Then, “Not really,” Carl said.

  “Another blip. Holy hell,” Sam interjected.

  “What?”

  “Another Roadbug.”

  “Now that’s a first,” I marveled. “Don’t recall ever seeing three Bugs this close together. I wonder what’s up.”

  I rolled over onto the shoulder lane as the Bug whooshed by, then steered out toward the fast track again.

  “There’s gotta be something unusual on the other side of that portal,” Sam ventured. “What, though?”

  “A new fast food joint,” I said.

  “Yeah, and the Bugs want it all to themselves. That one shouted the same warning at us.”

  “Play it back,” I told him. Sam did so. The message was identical. “Why are they just warning us? Why don’t they stop us?”

  The answer came about twenty minutes later. We had been cruising along while keeping a wary eye on our pursuers, who had faded back to the edge of scanner range. Suddenly, weird pulses of light flashed in the mist ahead. I braked hard and pulled over to the shoulder lane.

  A shimmering, diaphanous tunnel of blue fire covered the roadway ahead, extending for as far as we could see. Crackling discharges snaked through it and dazzling starbursts of energy appeared within. The phenomenon straddled the roadway like an arched canopy, its walls formed by flaming prominences and rainbows of pale luminescence. There was something almost biblical about it—like a manifestation of the wrath of Yahweh. I half expected a booming voice to say, “BEYOND THIS POINT THOU SHALT NOT GO.” But words were unnecessary; the message was clear.

  “No wonder the Bugs didn’t bother to shoo us away,” Sam said. “No one in his right mind would drive through that.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” I said airily. “It could be a car wash.”

  “Where’s the slot for the fifty-credit piece?”

  I came to a complete stop about three truck-lengths away. The rest of the squadron had kept formation but now were edging back into the fast-lane to get a better look.

  “What the bloody hell is it?” Sean was first to ask. “I mean it’s obvious what it is, but what’s it made of?”

  I sat watching the dancing plumes of fire for a few seconds before answering. “I don’t know. Plasma, pure force, maybe. Who knows. But can someone come up with a convincing argument that this thing doesn’t extend all the way to the portal?”

  “Not I,” Sean said.

  “Doubt if we can go around it,” Carl said.

  “I should think,” Yuri offered, “that to be an effective barrier it would have to extend all the way to the commit markers. Don’t you agree?”

  “Unfortunately, yes,” I said.

  “Our ‘friends’ have stopped,” Sam announced. “Wonder if they can see it through the smog.”

  “Well, if they can’t, what they’re seeing on the scanners is probably puzzling the hell out of them. Which is good.” I took a deep breath. “Okay, gang, what are we gonna do?”

  “I say we turn and have it out with ‘em,” Carl voted. “No way do I want them chasing us off-road.”

  “We’d be tangling with five vehicles, four of them we know to be heavily armored and possibly heavily armed,” I said. “What chance would we stand?”

  “With what I’ve got? Come on. Let’s take ‘em.”

  “Carl, I have no doubt you and Lori would be able to get through, but I’m thinking of the rest of the members of this expedition. We’re out of missiles, Sean and Liam’s buggy is unarmed. If it were just me and Sam—”

  “Jake.”

  I turned around to look at Susan. Her eyes were red and puffy, but she had stopped crying. She regarded me now with a kind of grim determination that was almost disturbing in the way it transformed her basically pleasant features. It was a Susan I had not seen before.

  “Don’t let those bastards take us,” she said. “Do anything you have to.”

  I nodded. “That’s all I wanted to hear.” Flicking the mike back on, I said, “Right. Let’s get ‘em.”

  “Hooray!”

  “Tell you what we’re going to do,” I continued. “Carl, you take the vanguard, and I’ll lead the infantry behind you. Sean and Yuri, I want you right up against my starboard beam all the way, and if you see anything parked off-road on that side, drop back and hug my tail. Got it?”

  “Affirmative.”

  “Right you are.”

  “Carl?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Can you conjure up a Green Balloon?”

  “Sure can.”

  “Shoot one at ‘em. Without scanners, they won’t see us until we’re on top of them.”

  “We’ll have to hang back a while,” Carl said. “We can’t follow too close or it’ll knock our gear out—not mine, just yours. The Chevy’s immune to it.”

  “Can you regulate the speed of that thing?”

  “Yeah, but even at maximum it’s pretty slow.”

  “Well, give it all it’s got.”

  “Right.”

  “We’ll have to time it just right,” Sam told me. “I’ll track it and tell you when to go.”

  “Good. Are we all ready?”

  “Set,” Carl reported as he turned the Chevy around and began rolling slowly back uproad.

  I did another U-turn and got in behind him.

  After everyone was in position, I said, “Okay, Carl, let her go.”

  “Remember, it’s gonna blank you guys out until it gets out of range. Even your engines.”

  “It can suppress nuclear reactions?” Sam asked wonderingly.

  “That’s right. Maybe it’d be better to shut ‘em down.”

  With Sam’s help, I scrammed the engine and did a quick power-down, but left the screens up on auxiliary power. “Ready,” I said. Sean and Yuri reported the same. “Okay, here goes,” Carl said evenly.

  A sparkling, translucent, chromate-green sphe
re, about a meter and a half in diameter, sprang full-blown from the roof of Carl’s automobile. Our screens instantly went down, along with the rest of the instruments that had been left on. The auxiliary motor died with a whine. The globe hovered above the roof for a split second, then took off directly over the rig.

  “Hey!” I yelled, though Carl couldn’t hear me. “Wrong direction!”

  Through the back window of the Chevy, I saw him throw up his hands in exasperation. Apparently, he had aimed the thing when the car had been turned the other way, and he’d forgotten. He stabbed at the dashboard to set up another launch, but before he could fire again the area to our rear let up with a series of quick, brilliant flashes. The ports polarized, but the ice-flats threw back a dazzling light. I couldn’t see much through the rearview mirror.

  The source of the flashing began to recede and auxiliary power returned. The communications board lit up.

  “I’m back,” Sam said. “That thing knocked me right out. What’s happening?”

  “Wow!” Carl shouted. “It’s shorting out the barrier!”

  “Shorting out” was as good a way to put it as any. Gliding over the road, the sphere was cancelling the barrier phenomenon as it went, drawing tendrils of fire to itself, absorbing them. The barrier was breaking apart, disintegrating in a wild display of pyrotechnics. Walls of incandescence wavered and tumbled, wraiths of lambent flame leaped skyward, then exploded into multicolored shards. Fountains of sparks poured from midair to cascade onto the roadway. Geysers of energy erupted, arched prominences arose and dissipated. The show was accompanied by sharp cracks of thunder and the sizzle of powerful electrical discharges.

  Transfixed, I watched. When the disturbance disappeared into the smog I looked ahead to find that Carl was moving forward. I looked at the forward scanner screen. The five blips were still holding position. The Chevy scooted down the road. When it was just about to fade into the smog, another Green Balloon birthed itself from the roof. Carl swung the car into a hasty U-turn, tires screeching, and roared back. I fired up the engine.

  “Let’s go, gang!” Carl yelled as he tore by. “That balloon was trying to tell us something!”

  “Just follow the bouncing ball, folks,” Sam said merrily.

  I said, “These kinds of things really don’t happen to other people, do they?”