Sitting beside him, clearly relieved to see Halloway regain consciousness, was the tenant of the cruiser. The left side of his face was covered by a fretwork of notches, minute cuts clearly inflicted during his childhood. At first Halloway assumed that they were some kind of tribal insignia, but later he learned that they were the scars left by a serious automobile accident.
With his intelligent face and curiously unfocused eyes, which seemed to be fixed on some point within his mind, he reminded Halloway of a circus clown without his make-up. He sat here in his land-cruiser with the same vaguely melancholy posture of the clowns whom Halloway and his friends visited in their trailers whenever they toured Garden City. As he gazed down at Halloway with his alert but neutral expression he looked as if he had been alone too long, and was unsure how to respond to the physical presence of another human being.
He touched Halloway’s shoulder, obviously convincing himself that his visitor posed no threat.
Now – are you all right?
‘I’m a lot better. I guess it was your truck I crashed.’
His rescuer waved this aside. He seemed about to speak, but checked himself. In one hand, almost hidden between his slim fingers, was a pocket calculator. With surprising swiftness, he tapped out a message, which flashed up on the alphanumeric display.
Forget it. There’s not exactly a shortage here.
As he gazed through the window of the cruiser Halloway had the distinct impression that this solitary young mute was a prisoner here, high above this museum of cars in the centre of the abandoned airport. His fingers fluttered across the keys of the calculator. As each sentence came up it was glanced at and quickly erased, fingers flicking away in this reverse Braille. Obviously he was used to holding long conversations with himself.
‘I’m sorry about the truck,’ Halloway said. Remembering the frightening violence he had witnessed that morning, he asked cautiously: ‘Do you live here? What’s your name?’
Olds.
‘Olds? What, as in –?’ Halloway laughed, despite himself, but the young Negro nodded, clearly taking no offence. Joining in the joke, he touched the scars on his scalp. Fingers flicked across the keyboard.
Yes. As in Oldsmobile. Ten years ago I renamed myself.
He stared at the illuminated message, his mind drifting away. An expression of regret hovered around his faint smile.
‘Why not?’ Halloway said encouragingly. ‘I like it, it’s a good name.’ He looked at his watch. It was after two o’clock. He felt drawn to this solitary young Negro, but it was time to be moving on.
‘Olds, I ought to be going.’
All right. But first have some food.
They left the cabin and stepped down on to the tenth floor of the car park. Four of the land-cruisers were drawn up to form a private enclosure. From the balustrade Halloway looked down at the thousands of vehicles that covered the airport.
The breakdown truck lay on its side by the pyramid of radiator grilles. He took for granted that Olds had constructed these monuments. On trestle tables beside the land-cruisers lay an extensive selection of electrical parts – dynamos and transformers, fuse-boxes and switching units. Power cables trailed across the floor, running from the generator on the roof to a barbecue in the centre of what he assumed was Olds’ dining area. Rotating on the spit was the body of a small deer. The fused flesh gleamed like polished oak. Olds beckoned Halloway to a chair, and began to cut steaks from the carcass.
An hour later Halloway had finished the most intoxicating meal of his life, and made his decision to postpone any return to Garden City for as long as possible. After the pallid vegetarian cuisine of his childhood, the flavour of venison and animal fat acted on him like adrenalin. Surrounded by the bones and meat scraps, he felt like the early pioneers who had colonized this land and built its cities.
Olds had watched him eat with obvious pleasure. At intervals, as he urged him to take second and third helpings, his right hand flicked out some brief message to himself on the calculator, as if he were transcribing a commentary on a second life going on inside his head.
During their meal he told Halloway about himself, and how as a boy of five years old during the final evacuation of the city he had been knocked down by a housewife driving her Oldsmobile to the neighbourhood scrap-yard. Thus he had become the world’s last traffic casualty. Fifteen years later, after a long and incomplete recovery from his brain injuries, he left the technical training centre at the commune hospital fifty miles to the north of the city and made his home among the thousands of cars parked on the runways of this abandoned airport. Here, moved by some profound compulsion, he spent his time putting together this museum of cars, perhaps in an attempt to find the missing sections of his mind. His ambition, he explained to Halloway, was to have a running model of every make of car ever manufactured.
Only then will I come to terms with my accident.
He flashed a self-deprecating smile and added:
After that I can learn to fly.
Halloway nodded sympathetically, unsure whether Olds was pulling his leg. This clever, shy but self-confident man seemed to be all there as far as Halloway could tell. When they had finished the meal Halloway asked Olds to take him on a tour of the museum.
‘You repaired all these yourself? It’s hard to believe – in the first place, what about the fuel?’
Olds gestured casually at the sea of vehicles that stretched to the horizon on all sides of the car park.
There are five million cars in this city alone. Almost every tank still has a little gas in it.
Halloway walked down the line of cars, gazing at his reflections in the lovingly refurbished radiator, grilles, hub-caps and chromium trim. Olds led the way, pointing out a rare Mercedes 600, a Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud, a Facel Vega. He was clearly proud to show off his collection, but at the same time Halloway noticed that he seemed slightly bored by these vehicles. His eyes were forever straying to the moss-covered airliners parked by the terminal buildings.
‘And you’re sure they all run?’ Halloway asked. He pointed to a resplendent limousine. ‘What about this one – Daimler Majestic?’
With remarkable speed, Olds leapt behind the wheel of the car. Within seconds its engine roared out, headlamps pulsed, momentarily blinding Halloway. The horn sounded imperiously.
‘Olds, it’s unbelievable!’ Halloway congratulated him. ‘Let’s see you try another – this Pontiac Firebird.’
For the next thirty minutes the two men moved through the museum, Halloway shouting and pointing to one car after another, Olds leaping like an excited faun, an automotive Ariel, from one driver’s seat to the next, switching on the ignitions and bringing the engines to life. Each car he left with its motor racing and headlamps full on. First a dozen cars came alive, then more than thirty, and finally the entire eighth and ninth decks of the car park. The roar of the engines, the exhaust swirling in the headlamp beams, the vibrating floors and balustrades, the smell of burning fuel and the noise booming out over the deserted airport, made Halloway feel that the entire city had begun to spring to life, re-starting itself under the hands of this young recluse.
Finally, out of curiosity rather than cruelty, Halloway shouted out the last name. ‘One more, Olds! What about –’ In the absence of the car, he pointed at random. ‘– Oldsmobile!’
Immediately Halloway regretted the prank. Too late, he saw the rictus on Olds’ face. Sitting behind the wheel of a white Galaxie, he began to pound the controls, angry with the car when it failed to start on its own. When Halloway reached him he had slumped back and was already moving into a deep fugue, mouth agape, the blood in his face making a livid lace-work of the scars. On the seat beside him, like some hyper-excited small animal, his right hand flicked out a desperate message on the calculator.
‘Olds . . . it doesn’t matter!’
Halloway pulled open the door and tried to calm him. Bizarre messages glimmered among the headlamps as he sank into unconsciousness, the en
gines of a hundred cars throbbing around him in the exhaust-filled air.
Teach me to fly!
Within an hour Olds had recovered. Sitting back on a car seat beside the barbecue, he touched his face and scalp, feeling the tracery of scars as if making sure that the jigsaw was once again in place. After dragging him to the elevator and taking him back to his lair, Halloway had moved among the cars, switching off the engines one by one. When the building was silent again he leaned against the balustrade, looking out at the distant towers of the city. Despite the moss-covered airliners by the terminal buildings, Halloway noticed that he was no longer thinking of his quest for his parents’ apartment. Already the elements of a far grander scheme were forming in his mind.
They sat together in the dusk, listening to the steady beat of the generator on the roof, their faces lit by the glow of the barbecue.
With the same innocent guile that he used on his grandfather, Halloway said: ‘Olds, you’re a genius with cars. But can you start up anything else?’
Olds nodded soberly at Halloway, not taken in by him for a moment. He inspected his slim hands, as if resigned to the talents multiplying from his fingertips.
Anything. I can make anything work.
‘I believe you, Olds. We’ll find my sailplane and you can put an engine and propeller on it. Then I’ll teach you how to fly.’
Early the next morning Olds and Halloway set off together from the airport. Olds selected, apparently at random, another breakdown vehicle from his stable of trucks and pick-ups on the first floor of the car park. Into the rear section, where a generator was bolted to the deck, he slung a leather tool-case and reels of power cable. He had recovered from his seizure of the previous afternoon. Something about the prospect of flying had given him back his self-confidence. As they left the airport, circling the pyramid of radiator grilles, he flicked a series of questions at Halloway.
What engine size? How many horse-power?
‘I can’t remember,’ Halloway admitted. Already he was having to pretend that he had flown a powered craft. ‘Big enough to drive a propeller. The size of this truck’s?’
Far too heavy. I’ll find an aero-engine.
They crossed the river and headed northwards through the city. At intervals Olds would check his fuel gauge, stop the truck in the centre of the street and leap out with a siphon hose. He moved around, shaking the parked cars and listening to the swish of fuel.
Once, while Olds was sucking away at his hose, Halloway strolled across the sidewalk to a small bar. A juke-box stood in the doorway, thick dust covering the extravagant plastic front. Halloway pressed the buttons at random, and then wandered off along the street.
When he returned five minutes later Olds had disappeared. The truck stood in the roadway, the engine of the power generator ticking over smoothly. The tool-bag had gone, and cables ran from the generator across the sidewalk.
‘Olds! Let’s go!’
Then he heard music coming from the bar. There was a jangle of coarse sound, a rapid beat of drums and guitars, and a rock-and-roll singer’s voice bellowed across the empty street.
When he reached the bar he found Olds crouched behind the juke-box, tool-kit open on the floor. Like a leather carpet-bag fitted with hundreds of pockets, it seemed to contain every tool ever devised. Olds’ arms were deep inside the entrails of the machine, hooking up a series of extension leads to a transformer.
When Halloway put his hands to his ears Olds switched off. He winked at Halloway.
That’s only a beginning.
He was as good as his word. As they pressed on down the endless avenues lined with office-blocks, hotels and department-stores, Olds would stop the truck, seize his tool-kit and unwind his cables across the street. In rapid succession he started up three pintables in an amusement arcade, a line of washing machines in a launderette, a telex and two ticker-tapes in the ground-floor office of a commercial business, and a complete appliance range in a home equipment store. As if in rehearsal for some lunatic household, mixers whirred, fan-heaters pumped, vacuum cleaners roared, a dozen other gadgets clattered and whistled.
Watching all this, Halloway was impressed by the casual way Olds turned on these devices. They moved northwards, animating these minuscule portions of the city, leaving behind them these happy nodes of activity.
Confused by the noise and excitement, Halloway sat limply in the truck when they reached the mirror-sheathed office block into which he had crashed. The sailplane lay among the cars, its broken wings stirring in the light air. As Olds moved around it, inspecting the inverted cockpit with his gentle but shrewd eyes, Halloway half-expected him to reassemble the glider with a few waves of his screwdriver.
Olds pointed to the humpbacked cockpit, where the strengthened fuselage frame behind the pilot’s seat formed a platform whose purpose Halloway had never understood.
This is a real aircraft. Designed to take an engine. But you built it to look like a glider?
‘I know,’ Halloway lied. ‘I couldn’t find the right power-plant.’
Olds’ quick hands were exploring the interior of the fuselage.
Runs for control lines. A fuel-tank compartment. It’s well thought out. And room for both of us.
‘What?’ Genuinely surprised, Halloway peered into the cockpit.
Behind the pilot’s bulkhead there’s space for a passenger.
As Olds pointed with the calculator, Halloway stared at what his father clearly designed to be a rear seat. Had his mother and father planned to leave him behind when they flew off? Or perhaps his father had intended to take his son with him, the two of them soaring back to the city together. Puzzled by these discoveries, he noticed Olds watching him in a shrewd but still kindly way. Did Olds really believe that Halloway had designed this powered glider himself? Was he using Halloway in exactly the same way that Halloway was trying to exploit him?
For the time being it hardly mattered. Halloway took the wheel for the return journey to the airport, after they dismantled the glider and lashed the sections to the truck. The power and noise of the engine erased all doubts. Barely controlling his excitement, he tried to hold down their speed as they raced through the streets.
‘Olds! Watch this!’
They crossed a section of the roadway planted with poppies, the vivid but sinister flowers extending in front of them for three hundred yards. The bumper of the truck scythed through the flowers, and a dense cloud of petals billowed into the air, staining the sky like a miniature sunset. Halloway turned and made a second run through the poppies, almost standing at the wheel as they hurtled through the whirling petals.
As they approached the centre of the city Halloway drove around the side-streets, hunting out any other of these floral tracts planted here in the broken asphalt by some aberrant gardener. Soon millions of leaves were drifting through the coloured air. There were white streets where they found daisies, yellow avenues filled with a mist of crushed buttercups, blue boulevards which wept a rain of forget-me-nots.
Then, as they emerged from a storm of daffodil petals, Halloway nearly collided into a large industrial tractor moving along the roadway in front of him. Pulling to a halt behind its high rear assembly, he flung Olds on to the dashboard. Halloway switched off the engine, and watched this massive tracked vehicle lumbering slowly through the haze of petals. A hydraulic ram was mounted in front of the motor, fitted with an immense claw that now held a single automobile, carried in the air fifteen feet from the ground.
In the control cabin a dark-haired man in a black plastic jacket emblazoned with silver studs was operating the steering levers. His face was barely visible through the whirling petals, and he seemed unaware of the truck stalled behind him. However, when Halloway restarted his engine, intending to overtake the tractor, the driver swung his claw to the right, blocking Halloway with the swinging automobile. Looking up at the man’s handsome face, with its hard mouth like a piece of gristle, Halloway was certain that it was this driver, and this
terrifying machine, which had destroyed the garment store mannequins the previous day.
Halloway began to reverse the truck down the street, but Olds held his arm warningly.
Follow him. Stillman needs to be given his own way.
As Halloway moved forward, following the tractor, Olds sat back. He had switched off the calculator, and seemed to have forgotten their exhilarating race through the flowers, his mind moving elsewhere, bored by the prospect of whatever was to come.
They emerged into an open square, set in the heart of one of the oldest sections of the city, an area of theatres, bars and cheap hotels. Rising from the centre of the square was the largest of the eccentric memorials to Twentieth-Century technology that Halloway had seen so far. At first glance it resembled a gothic cathedral, built entirely from rusting iron, glass and chromium. As they crossed the square, following the tractor, Halloway realized that this structure was built entirely from the bodies of automobiles. Stacked one upon the other, they formed a palisade of towers that rose two hundred feet into the air.
A group of heavy cranes and a buttress of scaffolding marked out the working face, overlooked by an observation platform reached by a simple elevator. Standing at the rail, and waiting for the tractor to carry its latest contribution to the memorial, was a small, pugnacious man of advanced age. Although well into his eighties, he was dressed like a physical education instructor in immaculate white sweater and well-creased trousers. Inspecting Halloway’s glider with a critical eye, he picked up an electric megaphone and began to call out instructions in a high voice to the driver of the tractor.
Olds was gazing up at the monument of cars, shaking his head as if ruefully aware that he and this odd old man were in the same business. He switched on the calculator.
The Complete Stories of J. G. Ballard Page 130
