Red Limit Freeway s-2 Page 9

  "Right."

  "Sean, does this jibe with what you know?"

  Sean nodded. "Seems to, though Winnie's descriptions of the planets are rather sketchy."

  "The inevitable difficulties," Darla said, "inherent in secondhand translations. The poem is in Winnie's language, which is very different structurally from most human languages. I know only a few word-clusters-there really are no 'words' per se―so Winnie helps by giving me a running translation in English, which she doesn't know as well as Spanish, which she doesn't know well at all. Then I have to make some sense out of it." She took a sip of dark beer and shook her head ruefully. "I'm probably making plenty of mistakes. It's mostly guesswork."

  "Under the circumstances," John said, "you're doing a fine job, Darla."

  "Thank you."

  I reached over and patted Winnie's head. "Smart girl," I said.

  Winnie took my hand, jumped up, walked across the table, and plopped down in my lap. She threw her arms around me and hugged, grimace-grinning with her eyes shut tight.

  "Affectionate little darling, isn't she?" Sean said.

  "Yes, she is," I said. I nuzzled her long floppy ear. "Have you ever noticed that she smells good all the time? Like she's wearing perfume."

  "Which is more than you can say for most sentient beings," Sean said.

  "Yeah. Anyway, getting back to this…"

  "Look here, Jake," Roland said. "This is the Galactic Beltway running through the Orion arm of the galaxy. You see where it cuts across here to the Perseus arm? That's where we have to pick it up."

  "How do we know when we reach that point?"

  "Well, we won't know." Roland put down his pencil and scratched his head, then smoothed his shock of straight black hair. "That's what's hard about all this. There really is no way of closely correlating the maps and the Itinerary Poem. The Poem is just a long set of directions. Go ten kilometers, turn Ieft, you can't miss it―that sort of thing. By following the itinerary, we'll have a hard time knowing exactly where we are on the galactic map, unless we can make astronomical observations."

  "Well," I said, "there's a load of astronomical equipment in the truck, if somebody knows or can figure out how to use the stuff."

  "Unfortunately," Roland said, "my knowledge of astronomy is largely theoretical." He tapped the pencil against the waxedwood tabletop. "And spotty at best."

  "Did you find anything in that crate of book-pipettes?"

  "Not a whole lot. They're mostly monographs and journals. Rarified stuff, pages and pages of equations. But I did find one useful bit of information. The Local Group is associated with a metacluster, and the Milky Way is on the outskirts of it. The nucleus is a galactic cluster in the constellation Virgo."

  "So," I said, scratching the fur, over the bony knot between Winnie's ears, which she loved to have done, "that may mean that the big road coming into Andromeda is Red Limit Freeway."

  "I don't think so, Jake. If so, it means that the Local Group is isolated from the rest of the metacluster, with no access to the Intercluster Thruway. No, this has to be the Thruway going into Andromeda."

  "Why don't we ask Winnie and make sure?" I said.

  "Huh?"

  "Instead of everybody trying to second-guess her, why don't we come right out and ask?"

  Winnie looked at me expectantly.

  "Winnie," I said, "can you draw more for us on this map?"

  I took the drawing of the Local Group over and put it in front of us. "This one here. Can you show us something that's missing?"

  She looked the map over for a moment, then reached out toward Roland. Roland handed her the pencil. Grasping it awkwardly, she scored a line coming in from the right, ending at the Greater Magellenic Cloud. She looked at it, chewing the end of the pencil thoughtfully. Then she continued the line through the cloud and beyond, ending it at the exact point where the "Transgalactic Extension" left the rim of the Milky Way.

  "There's the Thruway," I said. "The Transgalactic Extension is part of it."

  "Why did she leave it out?" Roland wondered.

  "Not important," I said. "And I think I'm beginning to understand why it wasn't important. As John said the other night, this is a tourist itinerary. We're at the edge of the metacluster. We want to leave it, not go into it, so we won't need to bother with the Thruway." I reached out with one arm and gathered in all the papers. "All of this, this whole thing, is definitely not a road atlas of the universe. It's much too incomplete. These maps provide the traveler with a specific route to get to a specific place."

  "And where is that?" John asked.

  "Winnie?" I asked. "Where are we going?"

  "Home."

  "Yes, she keeps saying that." Roland frowned and crossed his arms. "What could she possibly mean?"

  We left at dawn.

  But not before I had the shock of seeing what Sean and Liam had been referring to as their "Skyway-worthy vehicle." Liam towed it out of a shed with the tractor.

  It was a tiny roadster, beaten, dented, splotched with emulsicoat patching, and looking for all the world like an overgrown child's toy.

  "Where's the key to wind it up?" I said.

  "Very funny," Sean sneered. "But not very original."

  "And what color is that?"

  "Magenta."

  I rolled my eyes heavenward.

  It took a half-hour to start the thing. Then it ran at 25 percent of its rated power. Liam fiddled with the engine for another twenty minutes and coaxed it up to seventy-five.

  "Good enough," Sean said. "We can stop somewhere and have it looked at."

  "Yeah," I said.

  Finally, we got going. It felt good to get back on the Skyway again. Give me the road any day, I thought. That black band rolling under me was freedom. I wanted no fetters, no encumbrances, no obligations. But of course I had them. My present situation was a trap, and the more I struggled, the more ensnared I became. I was acquiring people like an old wool sweater picks up lint. What did they want of me? What was my irresistible appeal? I didn't know about anyone else, but I was looking for a way home. I wanted to do nothing more than deliver my load and go back to the farm. Wouldn't see a soul for a year. I'd even sell my flat in town. Contrary to popular opinion, this starrigger had absolutely no intention to drive to the "beginning" of the universe or to the "end" of it either equally absurd notions. I wanted to tear up Winnie's maps, chuck the Black Cube out the port, and say to hell with it all. Then I'd go my own way, just me and Sam. Leave everyone to starhike it home.

  Sure. Sure, Jake. You go ahead and do that.

  I swore under my breath for two kilometers and felt better.

  So preoccupied with my thoughts was I that I didn't notice the forest had given way to rolling plains in rather short order. The tops of the cylinders were edging over the horizon.

  Suddenly, I thought of something, and slammed on the brakes. I pulled off the road and came to a sudden stop. The Chevy overshot me, pulling off to the shoulder a good distance ahead. As I climbed out of the cab, much to everyone's puzzlement, I saw Carl sticking his head out the window and looking back, equally baffled.

  I walked back to the roaster, into which our beefy logger friends were packed like… like… well, like two beefy loggers inside a ridiculously small vehicle.

  Sean slid back the dubiously air-tight port. "Trouble, Jake?"

  "I have to ask this before I repress the event entirely. Just what the hell was that thing I saw in the woods… that Boojum or whatever you call it?"

  Sean tugged at his anfractuous mustache. "Hard to say. Did it talk to you?"

  "Yeah, it―" I straightened up. "Yeah, it sure did!"

  "What did it say?"

  "Well… it said, 'Good Gracious, dearie me!' Then it took off into the woods."

  "I see." He stroked his beard, ruminating. Shaking his head slowly, he said, "Then that was no Boojum."

  I would have strangled him right then if I had thought my hands would've fit around his fat neck.

/>   Chapter 8

  When climbed back into the cab, a yellow warning light leered at me from the instrumentation.

  "The spare," I said. "Right?"

  "Right," Sam said.

  I expressed my displeasure in colorful terms. At some length.

  "Curb your tongue, lad. There're ladies present."

  "My apologies, Suzie, Darla." I looked back. "Winnie," I added.

  "Oh, you should be proud," Susan said. "That approached the status of a work of art."

  "Thank you."

  I felt even better than I had after the previous tirade. I goosed the plasma flow and peeled out onto the Skyway.

  The next few planets were wasteballs, barely habitable, but even here, human settlements clung, like lichen, to the rocks. Various odd-colored suns hung in lowering skies. On the third mudball, I decided we needed a palaver.

  "Sam, see if you can raise Sean and Carl."

  "Right."

  I put on the headset while Sam put out a call on the special frequency we had decided upon beforehand. I prefer an old fashioned headset; why, I don't know, but I've always had this odd affinity for outmoded technology. Besides, I keep losing those 'stickum things you put on your earlobe and throat. I considered the bone-conduction transducer, implanted in my mastoid bone, a necessity despite my aversion to biointerface gadgets. I never used it for general communications; it was reserved for the hush frequency alone.

  "Fitzgore here. Can you read me, Jake?"

  "Sure enough. Carl?"

  "Yeah."

  "Okay, we're going to take the left fork up ahead. Right?"

  "Affirmative."

  "Roger-dodger."

  "Roger-dodger?" I echoed.

  "Affirmative, " Carl amended.

  "Right. The next planet up is Schlagwasser. Carl, can you ask Lori―"

  "I'm here, Jake. And I told you I don't want to see those people again."

  "Lori, what you do after I drop you off is your business. It would've been dangerous to send you back to Seahome, and in good conscience I couldn't have put you out on that planet of alcoholic perverts-present company excluded, Sean and Liam-"

  "On behalf of all perverts, alcoholic or not, I thank you."

  "Sorry. Lori, you're much too young, and―"

  "punk you!"

  "―and I… Lori? Lorelei, honey, listen to me, please. I know you're not more than fifteen years old"

  "I'm eighteen!"

  "Sweet sixteen at the very most. I just can't take the responsibility of letting you come with us. We don't exactly know where we're going, and we really don't have the vaguest idea of how to get there. I have enough worries, honey, and I'm simply not going to―"

  "Jake, please take me along. Please? I won't be any trouble. I promise! I can take care of myself, and I won't―"

  "Lori, darling, it's not a question of that. Listen to me. You should be in school and going to proms and having boys pick you up in their roadsters… all that sort of stuff. Now, I don't know what Schlagwasser's like―right off, the name doesn't recommend it―but the fact that you had a foster family there speaks of at least a… Lori? Are you listening?"

  Over the two-way hookup, I could hear her crying.

  "Oh, great. Typical female tactics."

  "Jake!" Susan was indignant. "That was uncalled for, and not true. She's a child. You said so yourself."

  "Sorry. Sorry. Looks like I'm offending every sex and gender today. Lori, honey? Don't cry, please."

  "You're forgetting the Reticulans, Jake," Roland said.

  "No," I said. "If those nightmares pick up the trail again, they'll be after me. I can't believe they'd waste time and effort going after Lori."

  "But wasn't she strapped to their cutting table? Doesn't that make her sacred quarry? They'll be after her, Jake."

  "They're after me. It's hard to believe they'd want to hunt rabbit when there's bigger game."

  "I agree with Roland," John said. "We don't know enough about the Reticulans' habits and customs to take the chance. They seem to be driven by these ceremonial obligations. It seems hideous to us, but in the context of their culture… after all, they're not human."

  "Yeah, but that's neither here nor there. The point is, they're after me. And if she stays with me, it'll be more of a risk than if she hides out on her home planet, where her family can protect her. Reticulans won't go snooping around on a human world."

  "They've been known to," Roland countered.

  I had to admit to myself that Roland was right. And that knocked a few props out from under my argument.

  "Jake?" It was Carl.

  "Yeah."

  "Lori can't go back there, to her foster parents."

  "Why not?"

  "I'd rather not say just now. She just can't."

  "I want to know, Carl."

  A pause. "Lori says to tell you." I heard him take a breath. "Her foster father raped her."

  After a moment, I said, "Right. Um… Lori? I'm very sorry."

  "It's okay."

  "Yeah. Uh… over and out."

  Rape seemed to be the national pastime of the Outworlds. Charming.

  I replaced the headset in its rack on the dash. "Sam, take over for me, will you?"

  "Sure, son. Don't feel too bad. You couldn't have known."

  "I should have known that when a child cries, it usually means something hurts. I'm going into the aft-cabin. Raise the seat up for me. Hard for a two-inch-tall driver to see out the Port."

  I went back and dumped myself, pile of rags that I was, into the bunk.

  * * *

  As it happened, we wound up stopping on Schlagwasser so Sean and Liam could fuel up. Sam was showing three-quarters of a tank, but we topped off anyway. This could be the last service station till the Big Bang, for all we knew.

  "Don't need any gas," Carl averred. "I'm okay."

  "Gas?" I said.

  "I mean, whaddycallit. Deuterium."

  "What's this thing run on, air?"

  Sitting at the wheel of his 1957 Chevrolet Impala, Carl knitted his brow and shook his head. "Y'know, to tell the honest-to-God truth, I really don't know what the hell it runs on."

  "Then what are all those fusion-monitoring readouts-the ones under the dash board?"

  "Oh, those? They're dummies."

  All I could do was grunt and scratch my face. Carl and Lori got out and walked over with me to the edge of the lot, where everyone was stretching their legs. Schlagwasser―this part of it―was a planet of marshlands and swamp, over which the starslab was borne by a causeway. The sky was a dome of slate. The world smelled of brackish water and wet, fetid things. In a pond of goo a few meters away, something sucked and gurgled. The undergrowth was a jumble of orange and purple, overhung by great brooding, purple-leaved trees.

  "These planets are getting less and less Earthlike," I said. "And what happens when we get out of human-occupied territory?"

  "According to Winnie," Darla said, "there'll always be earthnormal planets along the way. There may be stretches where they'll be few and far between, but we'll be able to get out every now and then to move around a bit. Maybe even camp."

  "But we should be prepared for hostile enviornments. Sean, did you guys pack full-pressure suits?"

  "Yes, they're in the trailer."

  "Fine. Now, I have two… Carl?"

  "Yeah, I got one in the trunk."

  "The what?" John asked.

  "Storage compartment, in the rear, there."

  "Oh, the boot."

  "Boot?"

  "Boot."

  "Boot," Carl repeated. "You people sure talk funny."

  Everyone looked at Carl for a moment.

  "Okay," I said. "Maybe we can make do with five. And if you guys have to exit your vehicles in an airless environment, we can use the trailer as an air lock."

  "Maybe we should blow all our cash and outfit everybody," Carl suggested, "just to be safe."

  "A good idea," Roland seconded.

  "How're y
ou fixed for money, Carl?"

  "Me? I got plenty of consols left. Might as well shoot the whole wad, since they won't be worth anything outside the Outworlds."

  "'Well," I said, "you could convert them back to gold."

  "Oh, I've got loads of that, too. Really, I'm bankrolled pretty well. Let's get everyone outfitted and squared away, so there won't be any problems downroad."

  "Well, maybe we should look for a general store, just to make sure we haven't forgotten―"

  Sam's key was beeping in my pocket.

  "Yeah, Sam?"

  "Jake, I' m painting three fast-moving objects coming from uproad."

  "Aren't you getting too much ground clutter? Oh, I see."

  I hadn't noticed, but Sam had launched an earlybird. It was hovering about a hundred meters above.

  "I don't like the looks of 'em. Maybe it's best we skedaddled."

  The service people were finishing up with the vehicles. The station sat on a slender finger of dry land in the middle of a vast marsh. There was no possibility of going off road and hiding.

  "Right, Sam. Let's move." I turned around and faced my fellow voyagers. "You heard 'im, people. We scramble."

  We scrambled. We had the attendants disconnect immediately, and to save time, I paid Sean's minuscule bill along with my own.

  "Thanks, Jake."

  "You owe me a couple beers. Whoa, there!"

  I caught Lori by the sleeve of her pretty, but rumpled, redstriped sailor suit.

  "Jake, please let me go with Carl."

  "Into the cab, hon," I said firmly.

  Her attitude seemed to have changed. She gave me no lip, and started clambering up the ladder to the cab. But suddenly I remembered the Chevy's astonishing capacity to absorb punishment and its stunning ability to inflict it. I grabbed Lori and yanked her down.

  "Sorry, hon. You were right. Go with Carl." I swatted her skinny rump (though as rumps go, it was coming along rather nicely) and sent her on her way.

  "What made you send up the bird, Sam?" I asked when I was inside the cab.

  "Oh, a hunch. Thought I saw something sneaking around back there for the last hour or so. Seemed to be deliberately staying out of ground-scanner range. I'm painting a tiny airborne blip that could be their drone."

  "Good work. Certainly sounds suspicious." I put on the headset as I vectored the rig out onto the Skyway.