"But can we be sure of that?" Sean asked. "And can we be sure that someone at some point didn't manage to blow a portal to smithereens?"
"Yuri's our newly resident Skyway expert," Susan pointed out.
Yuri thought a moment, then said, "So far as I know, Jake is right. Any damage we encountered was due to geological forces… damage to the roadway, that is. I can't imagine what would damage a portal."
"But geological forces don't really destroy the road," I argued. "Do they? I mean, they just sometimes make the road impassable."
"True. Now, I have heard of stretches of Skyway where the portal is missing."
"We've run into that," I said. "A planet named Splash in the Consolidated Outworlds."
"I'd be very interested in visiting it someday."
"If you ever do, don't go near the water."
"A low-landmass planet?"
"Yeah. Parts of the Skyway are submerged, and one spur, I was told, is a dead end. No portal."
"Is the spur submerged?"
"I believe so."
"I see. Very interesting indeed."
"Very," I said. "The seas rose, and… What happened? Did the portal short out? Explode?"
"Well, if the machinery that suspends the cylinders were to fail…" Yuri smiled and chuckled. "Well, according to conventional thinking, the cylinders would drop and burrow themselves to the center of the planet, where they would do some very nasty things."
"Scratch one planet," I said.
"Eh? Yes, absolutely. But I have my own theories on what would happen."
"I'd love to hear them, maybe later. But to get back on the main track, let me ask you this: Can the roadbed be damaged, or is it impervious to any known force? Everyone knows the road surface doesn't seem ever to wear."
"Not impervious," Yuri said. "There have been some experiments…"
"Results classified, I suppose," Susan said.
Yuri grunted. "Of course. I have seen them, however, and I somehow don't feel constrained to maintain security, under the circumstances. A small fusion device could do considerable damage to a Skyway roadbed."
"Then vandalism is possible," John said.
"Nonsense," Susan scoffed. "Who'd do it, and for what reason?"
"You have a point, Susan," John said.
"I rest my case," I said, "if you can call it that. Which brings us back to what Carl's Green Balloon did to the barrier."
We all turned to face Carl. Lori was asleep in his arms, resting her head on his chest.
Carl grinned. "Lori's last comment was, 'These people sure talk a lot.' "
"Let's talk a little more," I said. "Carl, who built your car?"
"I don't know."
"You don't? But you said―"
"I never saw them. They never showed themselves to me, never told me who they were or why they were doing what they were doing to me… which was to abduct me―kidnap me, dig?" Carl's jaw muscles tensed. "Y'understand what that means? Have you ever been kidnapped, taken against your will? Do you know what it's like to be so scared…" He stopped and lowered his head, nestling his face in Lori's short blond hair. Lori stirred but didn't awake.
"Yes, Carl," I said gently, "I do know what it's like."
Carl raised his head and looked sheepish. "You're right. You do, don't you? I completely forgot. Sorry."
"It's okay. Go ahead, Carl."
"It's hard."
"I know, but it could help. Us as well as you."
I got off the metal canister and sat on the floor, stretching my legs and crossing them, propping my back against a crate of freshwater jugs.
"You said something before about a flying saucer. Did you mean an alien spaceship?"
"I guess that's what it was," Carl answered. "It was night, and I couldn't really see it. All I really remember is this huge thing in the sky blotting out the stars, coming down on us."
"You weren't alone?"
"No. My girlfriend and I were out in my car… up on Mulholland. You know, messing around."
"Uh-huh."
He threw his head back and gave a sudden forced laugh. "God, it was like right out of some monster flick. Teenage couple necking, and this slimy thing comes creeping out of the darkness. The girl screams." After a short bout of giggling he shook his head back and forth. "Jesus, Jesus, it was weird. So weird."
"You said you could see the ship's outline against the sky. Was it saucer-shaped?"
"Nah. It was irregular, and it was big. Had this really complex structure. I couldn't describe it."
"It didn't have any running lights, markings, anything like that"
"Nope. It was just this huge dark shape. The part of it that got near the car was this big rounded thing that opened up to look like the neck of a soda bottle. That's what sucked us up."
"Your girlfriend was abducted with you?"
He shook his head sharply. "Nah. She―" He sighed. "They didn't take her. I mean―" He leaned his head back against the bulkhead and gazed upward. "I pushed her out of the car. I think I might have killed her in doing it. Hard to explain exactly what happened. I guess I'll never really know if she made it."
"Sounds like you tried to do the right thing," I said.
"Maybe," he said dully.
"Was there any sound? Did the ship make a noise?"
"That was the weirdest part. It all happened in complete silence, except for Debbie's screaming." His face contorted with the pain of the memory. "God, I'll never forget her screaming. Never."
I paused before I continued probing. "Now, you said you were in your car."
"Yeah, my Chevy got sucked up with me in it."
"That Chevy?" I asked, pointing to the burgundy-colored oddity parked between the stacks of supplies.
"No, the original from which this copy was made." He shrugged. "I think. This thing looks exactly the same, down to the little nicks and scratches in the paint. But it can't be the same car I was driving that night. Right? So…"
"I doubt it," I said. "Okay, now, you're inside the ship."
Carl drew his lips together, pursing them into a thin line.
"What's the matter?" I said.
"I don't want to talk about it any more."
"Why, Carl"
"Because I'll go crazy if I do."
"It was bad?"
He considered it a while before he answered, "Not bad physically. They didn't do anything to me. But inside the ship, it was… I dunno, strange. I was disoriented. Scared. I couldn't figure out what was going on."
"That's not surprising," I said. "Did they communicate with you at all?"
"Yeah, they talked to me. Somebody did. Some guy. I never saw him. I'll never forget his voice, though."
We were all surprised. "The voice was human?" I asked.
"Yeah. He had kind of an accent. English, maybe. A little like the way John talks―but not exactly. Actually, he sounded like a fag."
" 'Fag'?"
"Yeah. Sorry, I mean… you know, a homo. Er, homosexual."
"Oh."
"Hell, I don't know. He just sounded strange." Carl looked at John. "Sorry, John. I didn't mean to imply that you were strange or anything."
"Quite all right," John said affably.
"Okay," I said, "so this guy was talking to you. What did he say?"
"Not too damn much that made sense. He didn't say much except that I shouldn't get upset and that everything would be all right and that they weren't going to hurt me in any way. I remember I was pretty hysterical at first. I mean, I thought Debbie was dead. They told me she wasn't, but I didn't believe them. I still more or less don't."
I nodded, waiting for him to go on.
Presently, he did: "I guess I can talk about it to a degree. But I don't want to go into what went on in the ship. It was like a dream. I have trouble remembering most of it. Next thing I knew… I mean, when things got a little clearer and it wasn't like a dream anymore, I was driving my car down this strange road… and I saw a portal for the first time. But I kn
ew what it was! Boy, it was weird. I'd never seen one in my life, but I knew exactly what it was and what I should do. Stay in the guide lane, maintain constant speed, all that stuff. And I knew where I was―out in space somewhere. I didn't find out when I was until later." Carl took a deep breath and looked down at Lori's face. He smiled. "She looks like Debbie. A little bit anyway."
"Maybe Lori would like to hear this," I said.
"I've told her a little of what I've told you." He looked up and grinned. "For some reason it was easier to talk to her."
Lori's eyes fluttered and opened; then she sat up suddenly and said, "Huh?" She looked around at everybody, frowned disapprovingly, and yawned. "You people still jawing?" she said huskily.
"I was telling them about, you know, the crazy stuff that happened to me, about how I got out here and all that," Carl told her.
"Oh, that." She looked at us. "I think he's fibbing."
"You should try out the whole story on Lori first," I said, "then spill it to us. If she believes you, you know we will."
"Oh, I was only kidding," Lori said, snaking a possessive arm about Carl's neck. "I don't really think you're lying, Carl. It's just that it's so hard to believe."
Carl nodded. "Sometimes I think I'm dreaming this all up."
Lori yawned again, then complained, "I'm tired."
"So are we all," John said. "Perhaps we should turn in."
"I'm for that," Roland seconded.
So we did; rather everybody did but me, after we had stowed all the comestibles back into their, pressurized packing crates and had generally cleaned up. We also had to work Zoya and Yuri into the sleeping arrangements, split up the bedding and such, but we got it all squared away, and I took Susan forward with me, tucking her into the bunk in the aft cabin. I would take first watch, she the second.
I went out to the cab, slid the shotgun seat over in front of the keyboard console, and sat down to have a good look at what was going on with Sam. I had run a cursory check before the Voloshins had boarded, making sure the life-support monitors were working. Everything had seemed okay. Rechecking now, I found all systems functioning normally. I coded some diagnostic programs and went into main memory to see what was up, though I had a strong hunch what had happened. More than a hunch. Entity X had come out from hiding and had done his dirty work, that much was clear. I just wanted to know exactly what dirt had been done. Sam's Vlathusian Entelechy Matrix, that semimysterious thumb-sized Read-Only Memory component which was the seat of Sam's intellect and personality, had been completely bypassed. The phantom Artificial Intelligence program was in complete control. Hunched over the keyboard for two migraine-provoking hours, I tried and tried to alter that situation.
And failed miserably. There was little I could do but shut down the CPU―but you can't run and monitor a nuclear fusion truck engine without a computer, at least not very well.
Entity X was calling the shots.
I folded up the console, slid the seat back, sat down on it, and put my feet on the dash.
"Okay," I said, addressing the unseen malevolence that hung in the cab like a bad odor, "who are you and what do you want?"
"What have you got, Jake?" Corey Wilkes said.
Chapter 19
Corey Wilkes.
He and Sam had been friends and business partners once. Together, they had founded TATOO, the Transcolonial Association of Truck Owner-Operators. Years later, shortly after I started driving, Corey engineered a power grab that installed him as president more or less for life. Sam resigned from the board of directors and eventually from the organization itself. I followed suit. Sam wanted to retire to the farm, but I persuaded him to help me start the Starriggers' Guild, which he did. And that was the start of our troubles with Corey Wilkes. Wilkes harassed us, off and on, for the next ten years. Guild drivers kept disappearing. There were numerous suspicious mishaps, hijackings, and the like. It got so that some manufacturers refused to contract with Guild drivers, and most, while they would hire an occasional Guild member during peak periods, would not become signatories to the Guild's Basic Agreement, which had been the organization's raison d' etre in the first place. TATOO had become a combination private trucking company and labor union, run for the express purpose of lining the pockets of Wilkes and his friends in the Authority bureaucracy. Five years ago, Sam had died in an apparently unrelated Skyway accident. A few weeks ago I had learned from Wilkes himself that he had hired stunt drivers to stage the incident. I may have been the intended victim. Sam had been on his way to see a grain futures broker on Einstein, a meeting I had arranged and had intended to keep, but a job I couldn't refuse―times being what they were―had come up and Sam had gone instead.
"I thought you were dead, Corey," I said.
A faint chuckle came from the speaker on the instrument panel. "You know, Jake, I don't believe I'll tell you one way or the other. Right now I can't think of a good reason not to level with you, but you never know when a little datum like that could come in handy if held in reserve."
"I'd say you were dead. You took that.44 slug in the chest, as I recall. Looked like it hit near the heart if it didn't hit dead center."
"That very well may be. But let me preface this whole conversation by saying that you aren't talking to Corey Wilkes. I am an Artificial Intelligence program imbued with the personality and some, but not all, of the accumulated life memories of Corey Wilkes'. I have been updated on recent events, but not in detail. I have also been programmed with instructions."
"Which are…?"
"You'll forgive me if I'm not too specific, but generally I have been charged with the task of keeping an eye on you."
"And with leaving a trail of radioactive wastes," I added, "so we could be easily tracked."
Again, a chuckle. "Hard to put anything over on you, Jake. I don't know why I try."
I exhaled noisily and crossed my arms. "Cut the merte. What do you want?"
A sound like a sigh came from the speaker. "Yes, what in the world do I want? A very good question. Unfortunately, as a mere Personality Analog I lack the psychic underpinnings to answer that with any depth―I don't have the complete backlog of memory, the Freudian substrata, if you will. Something drives me; I don't know quite what."
I scowled. "The question wasn't philosophical. What do you want specifically? Now."
"Oh, of course. Sorry. Well, what with the facts that have recently come to light, I suppose I want the Cube."
"You can have it."
A short silence. Then, "That was easy."
"I mean it. Take the punking thing. It's yours."
"Well, that's settled." Another pause. Then the voice said cautiously and a little wonderingly, "You'd really hand it over with no fuss?"
"Absolutely. It's worth nothing to me. In fact, it's been nothing but a liability. Besides, no one has any idea what the thing is. Odds are it's not a Roadmap."
"Yes, there's no telling what it is. But it's worth a great deal. To me, anyway."
"Why?"
"Well, my original deal with the Colonial Authority still stands, I suppose, which is that I deliver you or the Roadmap or both to them in exchange for immunity from unpersonhood. But seeing as how the Authority wasn't entirely straight with me, I don't feel entirely obliged to hold up my end of the bargain."
"How did they doublecross you?"
"It wasn't a doublecross per se. More a matter of withholding pertinent information. They didn't tell me anything about the Black Cube."
"Maybe they didn't know about it," I suggested.
"I'm pretty sure they did. If Darla's story about getting the Cube through the dissident network is true, and if key people within the network have been subjected to Delphi scans, they'd have to know about it. Mind you, I've pieced this together from snippets of conversation I've overhead since I came on board. I'm fairly sure you think they know about it."
I saw no use in denying it. "You're right."
"And when the deal was struck, it was empha
sized that they wanted you alive. And they wanted your truck, too. That tells me they were very interested in searching for something hidden on board or on your person. What I don't understand is why they didn't tell me about the Cube. I was ready to hand Winnie over to them, which of course would have elicited gales of laughter."
"It might be a question of timing, Corey," I said. "When did you cut your deal with the CA?"
"Several months ago. Two or three. There was a prolonged period of negotiation."
"Uh-huh. Well, according to Darla's timetable, they ran the Delphi on Assemblywoman Marcia Miller only a month or so ago. They could have found out about the Cube then."
"Yes, there is a time element to be considered here. Hmm." A long pause. "I think you may be right; Jake. When I bargained with them, they may only have had rumors to go on. Rumor had it that you were in possession of a Roadbuilder artifact, a Roadmap. They knew it wasn't Winnie―of course they neglected to tell me―"
"No one knew or could have predicted that Winnie would come along on this trip. Our picking her up was a total fluke."
"So I gather. As I was saying, at the time the deal was cut, the Authority may only have known that you had a Roadmap, nature unspecified. A few months later, they find out about the Cube."
"And naturally enough," I said, "they thought the Cube was the map."
"Naturally enough. But they should have told me, dammit." He sounded hurt.
I laughed. "And have you wind up with it? Tell me you wouldn't have demanded that your deal be renegotiated just a tad.
"I'm truly embarrassed: You're right, of course."
"You should be, you sneaky son of a bitch. When you had us aboard the Laputa, even I didn't know that Darla had the Cube. She seemed to have thrown in with you guys then."
"Yes, the cunt. I'd be wary of her, Jake."
"I am."
"But…" The voice did an imitation of a weary sigh. "But wouldn't I have wound up with the Cube anyway?" A thoughtful interlude. "No, I guess not. I never suspected for a moment that Darla had it."
"No, you didn't, and you wouldn't have as long as you had to string Darla's father along in believing that all the brouhaha was for the purpose of protecting your little drug-running scheme."
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