I didn't answer.
One day I walked into the cab to find Roland at his favorite post, staring out into an alien night.
"Jake, come and look at this."
I sat in the driver's seat. "What's up?"
"Look at the sky."
I did. There were very few stars, and on one side of the sky, there didn't seem to be any.
"We're on the edge of a galaxy," Roland said. He pointed to his right. "Over here is intergalactic space. Nothingness. Now look over to where the stars are. See the glowing cloud behind them? The disk-edge of the galaxy."
I saw and agreed.
"We've been hitting these planets regularly. Sometimes there are a few stars on the other side and it's hard to tell. But this planet belongs to a star right on the very edge of its galaxy."
Teleologists must cultivate a sense of destiny, I thought. Roland's face glowed with it, and he regarded me with the self-assured smile of a man who relishes his meeting with the inevitable.
"This is it, Jake," he said. "We've been on it almost the whole trip. We're on Red Limit Freeway."
I looked at him solemnly and nodded. "I know," I said. "And at this rate, it won't be long before we reach the end of the road."
Chapter 22
About four weeks into the journey, the Bugs pulled us over for a rest stop. You could call it that, but it might only have been to give the Talltree contingent an opportunity to bury Corey Wilkes. Apparently the strain had been too much for him.
They didn't bury him, though. We had to do it.
We stopped in the middle of one of the most attractive landscapes I had ever seen. It could have been Earth itself.
"Maybe it is," Roland said. "We have no idea where we are in space or in time." He pointed to a range of mountains lifting snow-capped peaks above the horizon. "Those could be the Pyrenees two million years ago. Or maybe the Appalachians."
"I'd be willing to bet," Yuri said, "that we're a bit farther back than that. Several billion, in fact. This might be a planet of a star that lived and died a billion years before Earth's sun was a gleam in the universe's eye."
"Hey, they're getting out!" Carl yelled.
Sean ran into the cab with a handful of weapons, but the men who had come out of one of Moore's vehicles weren't in a position to make a move. Chubby, Geof, and two others were carrying the limp body of Corey Wilkes. They dumped him like a load of garbage just a meter or so from the shoulder, looked around briefly, then returned to their vehicle and shut the hatch. I wondered whether they had done this on their own or at the Roadbug's behest.
I radioed and asked.
"He was beginning to smell a bit," Chubby told me. "So we requested permission to open the hatch and throw 'im out as we were going along. Instead, the Bugs stopped."
"They answered you?"
"No, they just pulled over, and we found we could open up."
"Okay, thanks."
"Right-o."
"Weren't the Bugs afraid they'd escape?" Roland wondered.
"To where, pray tell?" Sean asked, gesturing toward vast expanses of rolling pastureland dotted with stands of tall timber. It all looked friendly and inviting, but there wasn't very much to do out there.
"True."
"The patrol creatures must have had their reasons," Zoya said.
"They have orders to take care of us," Lori said, sounding as if she knew.
"Who?" I asked.
"'The Bugs. They got orders to deliver us safe and in good health. And you can't have a stinky body lying around, can you?"
"Hmmm," I said, and thought about it. Then I asked, "Who ordered them, Lori?"
She looked at me and said impatiently, "The Roadbuilders, of course." She shook her head. "Really, Jake, sometimes you're just a little bit thick. Don't you realize that we're going to meet them? Where do you think they're taking us, on a punking picnic or something?" She rolled her eyes up in exasperation. "Sheesh!"
"Ohhh, I see."
We looked out at Wilkes' pale body.
"We can't just leave him lying there for the local scavengers," Sam said. "Somehow it's just not right."
This surprised the hell out of everybody, including me, but nobody commented.
"You really think?" I asked halfheartedly.
"Look, as far as I'm concerned, Wilkes was the lowest form of life in the known universe. But he was human, dang it, and if he deserves to rot in hell, which he surely does, he also deserves a decent burial―or the best one we can give him." Sam grumbled to himself for a moment. "Besides, I think we should do it because we're better than he was."
"Well, we may be moving again any second―but let's see if the Bugs'll let us," I said.
I bent toward the dash microphone. "Hey, out there. You guys. Bugs―whatever the hell you call yourselves. We'd like the time and the opportunity to conduct a ceremony of interment. You know? We want to dig a hole and put him in it. It's our custom."
"Use Intersystem, for God's sake," Sam scolded.
The answer was astonishingly quick.
"GRANTED."
And it was in English.
"Be damned," Sam said. "When will those things stop surprising me?"
Yuri said, "I think they were waiting for someone to go out there and do it."
"Maybe."
Carl pulled the release bar on the left hatch. It whooshed open, rising like a seagull's wing into the sweet-smelling air.
"Nobody thought to check when those guys got out," he said. "These were unlocked all the time."
We went outside to find Ragna and Oni climbing out of their vehicle, looking crumpled and weary. The thing they were driving was sort of like a camper, with a little room to move around in, but for the time they had spent cooped up in there, it must've been hell. They were indomitably cheery, though, in spite of it all.
Ragna stretched and took several deep breaths. "Ah, that is feeling much like the body I had of old, not this hurting thing I am having for the last several years, it is seeming like."
Oni smiled. "I am hoping we will be having the time to be working out the entirety of our kinks."
"Depends on how kinky you are, Oni," I said.
She nodded, then did a take. "Oh, that is a joke." She gave a polite, forced laugh. "Quite funny, too!"
I laughed. I liked Oni a lot.
So we buried Corey Wilkes. I found an old shaped-charge mine in the ordnance locker―they're good for clearing a blocked back road when you have to make a delivery, though I hadn't had the occasion to use one in a long time. I picked a likely spot a little way off the road and blasted out a good-sized hole with it. Sean helped me carry the body over. Before dumping Wilkes in, I looked down at him. Bare blue feet, white pajama bottoms, bandaged chest, purple lips and earlobes, the generally collapsed look about the face and swelling of the abdomen signaling the commencement of decomposition―he didn't look like the formidable enemy I had known.
"I suppose some appropriate words should be spoken," Sean said.
"If you feel like it, go ahead," I said. "Unless you have something to say, Sam."
Sam spoke from the key. "Not really. Dump him in."
"I didn't know the man," Sean said, "except by reputation, though I've seen his handiwork in what was done to Carl, and the trouble those rowdyboys have given us. Nevertheless…" He closed his eyes momentarily, then opened them and spoke. " 'And Cain said to the Lord, "My punishment is too great to bear. You are driving me today from the soil; and from your face I shall be hidden. And I shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me." But the Lord said to him, "Not so! Whoever kills Cain shall be punished sevenfold." Then the Lord gave Cain a mark so that no one finding him should kill him. And Cain went out… and dwelt in the land of Nod to the east of Eden.' "
Then Sean crossed himself. He smiled and shrugged. "I'm not sure how appropriate it was, but I imagine it sounded all right."
"It was fine," Sam said. "Better than he deserved. That was the Dou
ay version, wasn't it?"
Sean nodded. "It's the one I know."
I sighed. "Well…"
We threw him in. I used another mine to blow a shelf of rock to smithereens. John and the rest, who had been looking on from a distance, came over to help us carry the pieces over and cover him up. We filled the hole to about three quarters of the way, up, making a sort of sunken cairn, then kicked in what little loose dirt was handy. Everybody helped but Darla, and I didn't blame her.
And that was that. We stool around, not very eager to get back into our traveling prison. I wasn't very worried about Moore trying something, not with the Roadbugs around.
Darla was gazing off into the distance.
"If there is a heaven, I imagine it would look something like this place."
I looked out. It was the most Earthlike planet I'd ever seen.
I could have sworn that the trees in the closest stand of timber were Douglas firs. The sky was purest blue, daubed with fleecy clouds. The air carried familiar smells, the tall grasses were kelly green, waving in a benign breeze. A clear stream flowed through a dip in the terrain to the left. A gentle hill rose from the far bank―great place for a farmhouse, nice little place indeed.
"You could find peace here," Darla said.
I watched her for a moment. Then she came out of her daydream, gave me a strange little smile, and walked off.
Winnie and George were having a good time, chasing each other through the grass like two kids―which they were, in a way.
"We go home!" Winnie had said when asked where she thought we were being taken.
"Home!" George had echoed.
Everyone still wondered what they meant.
An hour had gone by quickly.
"Okay, everybody," I said. "I hate to say it, but we should probably get back aboard. The Bugs are probably getting impatient."
Groans. But they all climbed in.
We told Ragna and Oni to come with us. They protested but finally gave in, and after running to fetch some things, they climbed aboard.
Before I did, I looked toward Moore's string of vehicles. They had been watching us enviously through the ports the whole while. Apparently, their doors had been sealed after they'd deposited the body.
"Too bad, kids," I yelled. "Be good and they might let you out for recess next time."
Puzzled looks from the boys. What'd he say?
We watched it happen on a lifeless planet with a thin, clear atmosphere of carbon dioxide. Around us, endless plains of orange dirt rolled out to a featureless horizon.
We saw a Bug road crew create and spin up a cylinder.
It was about a week after the rest stop. We hadn't run out of food, but most of the good stuff had been consumed. We assumed Moore and his gang were in bad shape in that regard. We had gotten a few desperate calls.
On our arrival, we had discovered a number of Bugs moving about, towing strange equipment and generally scurrying back and forth over the road. Farther down the road, there were more gathered a few kilometers from where the portal should have been.
Our Bug trainmen pulled us over not far from the road crew. Out on the plain, something was happening. A gray shadow of a cylinder appeared, wavering at first, then stabilizing and taking on substance. The shadow darkened, becoming an inky shaft jutting into an orange sky. Gradually, the cylinder took on its familiar hue, which is to say it was no color at all except that of black velvet at midnight.
We watched, mouths agape.
Yuri, though, was excited. "I was right! Damned if I wasn't right. They're made of pure virtual particles. The goddamn things don't even exist?"
"What do you mean?" John asked.
"I don't have the ghost of an idea how it's done, but these objects are being sustained in their existence from microsecond to microsecond. No, let me correct that. The time interval has to be vastly smaller. Perhaps the mass that makes up cylinder only exists within an increment shorter than the Planck limit, less time than it takes light to cross the diameter of a proton. But string those infinitely tiny blips of time together, and the mass takes on virtual existence. The thing of it is, anything goes within that interval. The physical laws of our continuum are null and void. You can create a new-class of matter and a new set of physical realities in there. You can do anything, as long as it's canceled out within a short enough period of time. Our universe looks the other way. It's like a student making rude faces when the teacher's back is turned and instantly becoming a model pupil when the teacher spins around to catch him at it."
"I think I'm understanding this," John said. "Somewhat."
"I won't say it's very simple," Yuri went on. "But what's important here is understanding that this new kind of mass may have, and probably does have, radically different gravitational characteristics. That's how the gravitational fields around a cylinder can be shaped and tailored so as not to interfere with the planet it rests on. That's how the effect zone can be so limited. And that may be how the field is cut off precisely at the level of the road surface and centimeters off the ground."
"Pretty slick," Sam said.
Yuri laughed. "Yes, yes, it is."
I said, "Everybody's always wondered what would happen if the machinery holding up a cylinder were to fail."
"Exactly," Yuri said. "And the answer is―the cylinder would simply cease to exist! They're no more than projections, like the images of a motion picture film. If you turn off the projector, they disappear."
"But they are real, in a sense," Roland said. "Aren't they?"
"In a sense," Yuri said. "Taken one frame at a time, one infinitesimal interval, they are the stuff of nonexistence. But taken as a progression of serial events in a block of real time, they have virtual existence. Virtual―possessing qualities or being something in effect or essence, though not in actual fact."
Zoya said, "Congratulations, Yuri. Your theories were precisely on target."
It wasn't grudging, but it was cool.
Yuri's smile faded. "Thank you, Zoya. We must of course collaborate on the paper." His expression turned grim. "If there was only some way to get out and use our instruments."
"Pity," Zoya said.
"Where do you think the machinery that sustains the cylinders is located?" Liam asked Yuri.
"Most likely it's beneath the ground at the portal site. Perhaps in the roadbed itself."
I nodded. "Like Sam said, pretty slick."
Eventually my gaze was drawn elsewhere. I hadn't noticed it at first, for understandable reasons, but there was a huge circular paved area off the left shoulder, connected to the road by short ramp made of Skyway material:
Our train started up again. The locomotive Bug made a sharp turn onto the ramp, dragged us to the middle of the disk and stopped. There were other disks, about half a dozen of them, spaced at even intervals up and down the road. Like this one, they were colored silver.
"Have we been shunted off to a siding?" Sam wondered.
"Yeah," I said, "to take on coal and water."
There was about a ten minute wait. We looked out the starboard ports but nothing was happening out on the plain at the portal site.
Then suddenly, something very disconcerting happened.
The world began to tilt.
It wasn't us, or didn't seem to be. Everything seemed normal and it felt as if we were still level. It was the ground that appeared to drop from beneath us. Looking straight ahead, we saw sky. The ground looked to be tilted down forty-five degrees from the disk―but of course it was the disk that was tilting up.
"Strap in, everybody," I yelled. "Just in case."
"Jake!" Susan screamed. "What's happening?"
"Um, I think we're going to take off."
And we did.
Oh, did we take off.
The planet dropped away from us. Our acceleration must have been a hundred Gs. We felt nothing. We heard nothing.
"Sam, are you registering any airspeed at all?"
"None. 'Course, that can't
be."
"Maybe, if there's some kind of force field around us. Can you see a slipstream or contrail behind us?"
"Yup, you're right, there is."
Presently, the sky darkened and the curve of the planet appeared. Ahead was star-sprinkled blackness. We were in space, just like that.
"Incredible," Yuri murmured. "Absolutely…"
As distance increased, the visually-induced sensation of speed abated. We floated above the planet for a while, banking to the right. The still mammoth but slowly dwindling orange disk of the world below heaved full into the starboard ports. Then the terminator line came over the horizon and swept past. We were heading for the dark side and away from the sun.
Roland's face was transfixed with delight. His grin drew a crescent from ear to ear and he was giggling like a three-year-old child on his first merry-go-round. His Oriental eyes were narrowed to curved slits. He looked absolutely insane.
"Spaceship!" he burbled, then laughed maniacally.
"Yeah, neat," I said. "Jesus Christ, Roland, take it easy."
Everyone else was silent and awed to the very marrow.
The planet waned to a thin bright crescent and dropped away behind. Oblivious to the laws of physics as they are commonly understood, our magic disk, our spaceship, whisked us at unimaginable speeds into deep space. We were like meat on a serving dish. The planet crept to the stern, dwindling fast, and by the time I could get it on the rearview screens it had been reduced to a tiny scratch against the dark wall of night. Gone.
"Sam, can you get any kind of estimation of our speed?"
"Trying," he said. A moment went by, then he went on, "You wouldn't believe it. I can't believe it. We're accelerating so fast I can't even give you numbers. Call it umpteen million klicks per second and still accelerating."
"Carl," I said, "did your flying saucer look anything like this?"
"Nah, but I bet it went as fast."
"I'll have to try for star readings now," Sam said.
The illusion of speed was gone now that there weren't any points of reference. But even the stars, what little of them there were, seemed to be shifting like distant scenic features as we flew past. If Sam's readings were to be believed, we would be out of the local solar system and into interstellar space in a matter of a few hours, a day at the most.
Red Limit Freeway s-2 Page 28