Stewart held the outside door open.
Randy stepped outside, to stare at a dirt parking lot where the high wheels of parked vehicles rested in narrow concrete troughs. The troughs curved in pairs, their tops a few inches above the muck, out into a road where they alternated with mud puddles under buzzing swarms of flies.
"Merciful God," said Randy.
Stewart growled, "Which of these heaps do we take?" He pulled open the door, and leaned back into the building. "Hey! Mike?"
The technician's voice was muffled, "Stew?"
"Randy and I are going to look at a van. What's the format for Inter-Continental Motors?"
There was a click of a door opening.
"InterCon? Wide and deep. But hey, Stew, wait." Footsteps hammered down the hall, and the technician peered out into the sunlight. "The format's about sixty-by-eight, but don't take an adjustable. I've found out InterCon's latest stunt, just by accident—and I do mean accident."
"What—?"
"They've raised the roads under their overpasses."
Stewart stared.
Mike nodded. "I saw one of those adjustable vans that's supposed to fit any format start under the overpass going in on Main Street. The top of the van hit the underpass. There was glass all over the road."
"They can't do that!"
"They can if they make it legal."
"What happened to the van?"
"A big InterCon wrecker slid under the overpass with inches to spare, and hauled the wreck out. An ambulance took the driver. That was an InterCon job, too."
Stewart shook his head. "Half the outfits using InterCon's format will start to collapse when news of this gets around. But how do we know which ones?"
Mike glanced around the lot. "Yeah. We don't want to get an orphan we can't find parts for. Well, all I can offer is, drive the InterCon job. It may be slow, but you won't spend half the day dodging underpasses."
"I was thinking of looking at one of the independents first."
"Then make two trips. But I tell you, Stew, I'd hesitate to get a van that won't go into InterCon's territory. They're big and getting bigger."
"A lot of our customers don't live there."
"Do you want to be driving a competing van when they throw the next block into the competition?"
"No. But there's an InterCon price list on my desk, stuck under the appointment pad. Take a look at that."
"That's how they play it. Well, enjoy yourself out there. Happy disposition!"
Stewart nodded moodily, and glanced at Randy. "Let's see what InterCon has to offer while we're still fresh. I'm not sure I can stand their van salesman after ten in the morning. Then we can look at some independents, and if we've got any strength left, we can try Rugged Jake."
Randy drew a shaky breath, and nodded. He glanced up. The sun and clouds looked the same. The trees looked like trees he had known before. The buildings looked unchanged. Then he looked back at the mud, the curving tracks, and the clouds of flies. Only one explanation presented itself: Things had changed since he ran that program.
Why hadn't he read the whole disclaimer? And where was he now? Had he been slung into some other continuum? Or was this just a dream?
With an effort, he straightened up. He had to eat, wherever he might be. And while this might not be the best job in the world, it was a job. He started across the lot, tripped over a curving trough, and just avoided a fall onto an angle where one concrete trough merged with another in crossing. Stewart, meanwhile, stepped with easy familiarity over the troughs to a vehicle with high wheels, lots of ground clearance, and a body that reminded Randy of the front end of a fire truck joined to the back end of a hay wagon.
As Stewart heaved himself up to the driver's seat, Randy barely missed putting his foot down a trough, and then almost slipped into a deep-looking puddle that stank of horse manure. It was a relief to climb onto the running board. He was pulling a cover off the passenger's seat when Stewart said dryly, "How about some help?"
Randy looked back blankly.
"What?"
Stewart leaned forward over the windshield, which was folded down flat, and tapped the curving red hood. He cupped his hand to his ear as if listening.
Randy stared at him stupidly.
Stewart stared back.
It occurred to Randy that he could lose his job here just as well as back home. He did a fast desperate feat of mental gymnastics, but found no answer.
Stewart shook his head. "Don't stay up so late with bad programs." He pointed to the front of the car, raised his arm to shoulder level, and whipped his forearm around in a circle.
Randy didn't get it, but decided to go look. He took a step, forgetting that he was on the running board, hit the puddle with a stiff-legged splash, and felt the water pour into his shoe. With a sucking squelch, he pulled free, then a lurch and a stagger brought him to the front of the car, and now he saw the hand-crank hanging down under the radiator. Randy took hold, and whipped the crank around fast.
Stewart snarled, "Seat it, will you! All you're doing is turning the crank, not the engine!"
Randy crouched down, shoved in on the crank, rotated it part way, and it slid forward another inch or two. He gave a heave, and got nowhere.
"Hold it!" yelled Stewart. "Sorry about that! Okay, I've got the clutch in. Try her again!"
Randy gave a desperate heave on the crank, and succeeded in turning it, but nothing happened. He tried again with the same result.
Stewart snorted. "This the first time you ever cranked an engine? Keep her going!"
Randy mopped his forehead, and as he took a fresh hold he chanced to notice two battered iron posts sunk into the ground, one near either end of the badly dented front bumper. A suspicion formed in his mind, and he looked up at Stewart.
"What gear you got it in?"
Stewart looked guilty. "Ah—" He pulled on a long lever, and there was a little grating noise. "Not that it matters. It was in low. I've got it in neutral now." Stewart's tone of voice confirmed Randy's suspicion that it did matter, though he had yet to work out exactly how. He took hold of the crank, heaved up, pushed down, heaved up, got the rhythm—
BANG! BAM! BANG!
The crank whipped out of his hands, the car shook, and Stewart yelled, "That's more like it! Okay, let's go!"
Randy detoured the puddle, his foot squelching in his shoe, climbed the running board, got over a metal lip, heaved the cover off the passenger's seat, and almost went out over the windshield as Stewart shifted into reverse. Stewart, possibly in apology, shouted, "Clutch is a bitch!"
The slimy soddenness of his shoe was getting to Randy, and he took advantage of a few seconds of calm as Stewart backed out of the lot to get the shoe off, and wring out his sock. He got that back on just as Stewart speeded up.
They backed fast on some kind of sidetrack, slid to a stop, and with a sudden lunge they jolted forward, hit repeated obstructions with a series of jarring shocks, and then Stewart grabbed his end of the windshield and yelled, "Let's put her up!"
Randy, barely able to hang on, pulled up on his end, tightened the wingbolt, then grabbed for support as they bounced around an uphill curve at possibly fifteen miles an hour; and then Stewart pulled back a lever even longer than the gearshift lever, and they slid to a stop at a traffic light. A cloud of dust rolled over them from the intersection, and then they turned onto a road each side of which looked a hundred feet wide, covered with concrete troughs of all widths and spacings, with horses trotting along at the edges. Randy watched the speedometer needle crawl up, with several shifts of gears, to twenty-five miles an hour, when Stewart set the throttle, glanced around, and grinned. "Still some life in this old baby!" Then he sat back in his seat with the steering wheel wobbling on its own as they thundered through clouds of dusts and flies, their wheels locked in the concrete tracks, with Stewart intent on a shouted conversation:
"Don't repeat what Mike told us!"
"No."
"What?"
/>
"I said NO!"
"It gives us a little advantage to know first."
"What?"
"I said, IT HELPS TO KNOW IT FIRST!"
"OKAY!"
After several interruptions when horses began to pass them on the turns, and Stewart looked askance at the speedometer and readjusted the throttle, they reached a turnoff; and after a series of jolts through interconnecting troughs, some of them partly crumbled away, they passed a huge sign lettered BRISTOL—HOME OF INTERCONTINENTAL MOTORS—ALL MOTORIZED VEHICLES USE INTERCON OFFICIAL FORMAT ONLY—HORSEDRAWN VEHICLES TAKE ALTERNATE THOROUGHFARES—IN THIS JURISDICTION ALL NON-INTERCON FORMATS ARE ILLEGAL!
They passed through an underpass littered with broken glass, came out the other side, and Stewart hauled on the wheel as they jounced around a corner, went down through another underpass, and crawled out on the far side to see a set of big buildings and a monster sign bearing the huge letters: INTERCON.
At a junction of concrete troughs, Stewart pulled off the road by a long shed under the sign, "Official Inter-Continental Motors Van and Auto Franchised Dealer." He glanced at Randy, "Whatever you do, don't hit the bastard."
An hour or so later, they emerged from the shed with a gray-coated individual meditatively puffing a pipe, who said in the manner of someone mentioning an afterthought, "Of course, that six thousand's the price for the main frame only. If you'd like an engine, the Thunderbolt will run you another nineteen hundred ninety-nine. If the Mule Reliable will do, that will be fifteen hundred eighty-four. You'll want wheels, I imagine; they're sixty-five each. You get one free in the Magnum Package Deal. If you'd like seats, we have a selection at various prices, or you could jam a fence rail into the slots back of the instrument panel deck. The van enclosure runs another two thousand, and it's fitted for the standard interconnecting rear port. That's four hundred ninety-nine."
"What, the van enclosure?"
"No, the rear port. That's the installed price at the time of purchase. Then there are the bolts to hold the enclosure on the main frame. They're special bolts, with grapple plates fitted to keep the enclosure from shifting, and yet it's adjustable backwards, forwards, and sideways, to suit your taste. They're seventy-five apiece."
"The ports?"
"The bolts."
"How are the ports going to match up if they're shifted around to suit my taste?"
"Well, you have to configure the grapple plates to get the ports to match up with the receiver vehicle. That's the point. These are female or male ports, as you specify. Same charge, either way."
"Well—"
"Be sure to get it right the first time. Otherwise we'll have to sell you a hermaphrodite port adaptor. And you'll need a rear bracket with a hoist to get the adaptor into place. It's a very delicate piece of work, actually, because you can wreck the port and the adaptor."
"What's the total on all this?"
"Depends on how you want it configured, with or without maintenance contract, and whether you want a port adaptor."
"Just give me a rough estimate."
"We don't make rough estimates."
"Then—"
"It confuses the customer."
"At least the port is standard, you say."
"Oh, sure. Standard OX444, of the InterCon Series 100 Port Type, Revision 3."
Stewart spat out a bad word. "And how do I know that what I'll have to shift cargo with is going to be the same type?"
"No problem. Don't deal with anyone who doesn't use the latest InterCon standard parts throughout."
Stewart said shortly, "We'll think it over." He swung up into the driver's seat, and glanced at Randy.
Randy climbed into the passenger's seat.
Stewart looked hard at Randy.
Randy came awake, and went up front to take hold of the crank.
The salesman looked on. "I've known people to get broken arms with that crank. Our new model has an automatic disconnect that works."
Randy swore to himself and heaved on the crank. The engine caught with a roar. There was a thud as Stewart's foot slipped off the clutch. The car, evidently in first, slammed against the posts of the parking slot. This tossed Randy back into the muck and left him with an aching wrist as the engine stalled.
The salesman slapped his thigh, and disappeared into the shed.
Stewart climbed down and made clucking noises.
"It never fails. When that bird starts talking price, I get so mad I can't think. Nothing broken, I hope?"
"Just wrenched."
"Cheap at the price."
"Thanks a lot."
"Scrape the worst of the muck off, and stand on the running board on the driver's side. See if it's in neutral, and give it a shot of gas when it catches. Don't sit down in the seat."
On the way back, they were both silent as the dust and flies flew over them. Randy spent the time trying to understand how there could be mud in some places and dust in others, and decided the troughs must drain rainwater from higher ground to lower. At the end of the deafening bone-jarring trip, as Stewart stopped with a jolt against the posts in his parking lot back of the store, he said, "Well—What do you think?"
"Of what?"
"InterCon's deal."
Randy studied his fingernails. "The nouns in my answer will cost you a hundred dollars each. Verbs are eighty apiece. For another hundred, I'll throw in some adjectives and adverbs, and connect everything up. Let me know how much you're willing to pay, and I'll put together an answer."
Stewart grinned. "You should get a job at that place." He glanced at his watch. "Go home and wash off, and this afternoon we'll try the independents. At InterCon, they figure there's no competition. Well, maybe. But we'll see."
The afternoon found them examining broad vehicles with narrow wide-spaced wheels, long slender vehicles hinged in the middle to go around curves, vehicles with rubber cogwheels in place of tires, and toughs to match, so that proud salesmen could show pictures of the CogCar climbing near-vertical slopes. There was also an assortment patterned after the vehicles they'd seen that morning.
"Yes, sir," a salesman assured them. "Not only is ours compatible, it is actually superior to the InterCon Personal Car. Ours is higher. You can wear a top hat in our vehicle. We offer 20% more maximum load! Moreover, we have the InterCon standard port, male or female, plus—brace yourselves, gentlemen—THE ENGINE IS INCLUDED IN THE PRICE! Now, any questions?"
Randy hesitated. "This male or female port—How do you know in advance which kind you'll need?"
Stewart nodded.
The salesman smiled condescendingly. "You'll have to have the other kind from the kind you're going to connect with."
"How do you know, now, what kind you may need to connect with after you've made the purchase?"
The salesman favored Randy with the look usually reserved for insects in the soup.
"By that time, sir, you should know what port you can mate with, sir."
"The other vehicle may not have the right port."
"Then you won't deal with him, sir."
"Maybe you want to deal with him."
"And pay the adaptor charge? And possibly wreck both ports?"
"What do you need a 'port' for? Why not just manhandle the load from one truck to the other?"
The salesman, bowing beside Randy as if trying to get down onto Randy's level, straightened up. "You do that, then." He turned his back, and called across the showroom, "Ed, you got tickets for the Car Show next week? Save me two. Hear? Two." He strolled away.
Randy took a step after him, but felt Stewart's hand at his shoulder. "Let's go, Randy. To knock his block off wouldn't solve our problem."
Randy walked out. "Why not forget this port mess?"
"You can if your vehicle is an adjustable, and can run different wheel formats. Otherwise, you have to shift load to another truck when you come to a change in format, and on some roads that happens every time you cross a municipal boundary."
"Why the different wh
eel spacings?"
"Why doesn't everyone like the same food? InterCon likes one wheel width and depth, and somebody else likes a different one, so you've got two, right there."
"For the love of—"
"Sure, it complicates everything. Every so often, a local legislature gets sick of maintaining all the different formats. Then InterCon, or whoever, will give a special deal to drivers to buy their make of vehicle, and finally the voters choose their format as the only one that's legal. That makes it simple for the local highway department. But for truckers, it's a nightmare."
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