“Left a bit!” Angalo shouted. “Then right just a smidgen, then go straight!”
“Smidgen?” said the signaler slowly. “I don’t think I know a code for smidgen. Could we—”
“Slow! Now left a bit! We’ve got to get on the right side of the road!”
Grimma peered over the top of The High Way Code.
“We are on the right side,” she said.
“Yes, but the right side should be the left side!”
Masklin jabbed at the page in front of them. “It says here we’ve got to show cons—consy—”
“Consideration,” murmured Grimma.
“—consideration for other road users,” he said. A jolt threw him forward. “What was that?” he said.
“Us going onto the sidewalk! Right! Right!”
Masklin caught a brief glimpse of a brightly lit shop window before the truck hit it sideways on and bounced back onto the road in a shower of glass.
“Now left, now left, now right, right! Straight! Left, I said left!” Angalo peered at the bewildering pattern of lights and shapes in front of them.
“There’s another road here,” he said. “Left! Give me left! Lots and lots of left! More left than that!”
“There’s a sign,” said Masklin helpfully.
“Left!” shrieked Angalo. “Now right. Right! Right!”
“You wanted left,” said the signaler accusingly.
“And now I want right! Lots of right! Duck!”
“We haven’t got a signal for—”
This time whoomph wouldn’t have done. It was definitely bang. The truck hit a wall, ground along it in a spray of sparks, rolled into a pile of litter bins, and stopped.
There was silence, except for the hissing sounds and pink, pink noises from the engine.
Then Dorcas’s voice came up from the darkness, slow and full of menace.
“Would you mind telling us down here,” it said, “what you’re doing up there?”
“We’ll have to think of a better way of steering,” Angalo called down. “And lights. There should be a switch somewhere for lights.”
Masklin struggled to his feet. The truck appeared to be stuck in a dark, narrow road. There were no lights anywhere.
He helped Gurder stand up and brushed him down. The Stationeri looked bewildered.
“We’re there?” he said.
“Not quite,” said Masklin. “We’ve stopped to, er, sort out a few things. While they’re doing that, I think we’d better go back and check that everyone’s all right. They must be getting pretty worried. You come too, Grimma.”
They climbed down and left Angalo and Dorcas deep in argument about steering, lights, clear instructions, and the need for a proper supply of all three.
There was a gabble of voices in the back of the truck, mixed with the crying of babies. Quite a few nomes had been bruised by the throwing about, and Granny Morkie was tying a splint to the broken leg of a nome who had been caught by a falling box when they hit the wall.
“Wee bit rougher than the last time,” she commented dryly, tying a knot in the bandage. “Why’ve we stopped?”
“Just to sort out a few things,” said Masklin, trying to sound more cheerful than he felt. “We’ll be moving again soon. Now that everyone knows what to expect.” He gazed down at the dark shadowy length of the truck, and inquisitiveness overcame him.
“While we’re waiting, I’m going to take a look outside,” he said.
“What on earth for?” said Grimma.
“Just to, you know, look around,” said Masklin awkwardly. He nudged Gurder. “Want to come?” he said.
“What? Outside? Me?” The Stationeri looked terrified.
“You’ll have to sooner or later. Why not now?”
Gurder hesitated for a moment and then shrugged.
“Will we be able to see the Store”—he licked his dry lips—“from the Outside?” he said.
“Probably. We haven’t really gone very far,” said Masklin, as diplomatically as he could.
A team of nomes helped them over the end of the truck, and they swung down onto what Gurder would almost certainly have called the floor. It was damp, and a fine spray hung in the air. Masklin breathed deeply. This was outside, all right. Real air, with a slight chill to it. It smelled fresh, not as though it had been breathed by thousands of nomes before him.
“The sprinklers have come on,” said Gurder.
“The what?”
“The sprinklers,” said Gurder. “They’re in the ceiling, you know, in case of f . . .” He stopped and looked up. “Oh, my,” he said.
“I think you mean the rain,” said Masklin.
“Oh, my.”
“It’s just water coming out of the sky,” said Masklin. He felt something more was expected of him. “It’s wet,” he added, “and you can drink it. Rain. You don’t have to have pointy heads. It just rolls off anyway.”
“Oh, my.”
“Are you all right?”
Gurder was trembling. “There’s no roof!” he moaned. “And it’s so big!”
Masklin patted him on the shoulder.
“Of course, all this is new to you,” he said. “You mustn’t worry if you don’t understand everything.”
“You’re secretly laughing at me, aren’t you?” said Gurder.
“Not really. I know what it’s like to feel frightened.”
Gurder pulled himself together. “Frightened? Me? Don’t be foolish. I’m quite all right,” he said. “Just a little, er, surprised. I, er, wasn’t expecting it to be quite so, quite so, quite so Outside. Now I’ve had time to come to terms with it, I feel much better. Well, well. So this is what it’s like”—he turned the word around his tongue, like a new candy—“Outside. So, er, big. Is this all of it, or is there any more?”
“Lots,” said Masklin. “Where we lived, there was nothing but outside from one edge of the world to the other.”
“Oh,” said Gurder weakly. “Well, I think this will be enough Outside for now. Very good.”
Masklin turned and looked up at the truck. It was almost wedged into an alleyway littered with rubbish. There was a large dent in the end of it.
The opening at the far end of the alley was bright with streetlights in the drizzle. As he watched, a vehicle swished by with a blue light flashing. It was singing. He couldn’t think of any other word to describe it.
“How odd,” said Gurder.
“It used to happen sometimes at home,” said Masklin. It was secretly rather pleasing, after all this time, to be the one who knew things. “You’d hear ones go along the highway like that. Dee-dah dee-dah DEE-DAH DEE-DAH dee-dah. I think it’s just to get people to get out of the way.”
They crept along the gutter and craned to look over the pavement at the corner, just as another bawling car hurtled past.
“Oh, Bargains Galore!” said Gurder, and put his hands over his mouth.
The Store was on fire.
Flames fluttered at some of the upper windows like curtains in a breeze. A pall of smoke rose gently from the roof and made a darker column against the rainy sky.
The Store was having its last sale. It was holding a Grand Final Clearance of specially selected sparks, and flames to suit every pocket.
Humans bustled around in the street below it. There were a couple of trucks with ladders on them. It looked as though they were spraying water into the building.
Masklin looked sidelong at Gurder, wondering what the nome was going to do. In fact he took it a lot better than Masklin would have believed, but when he spoke, it was in a wound-up way, as if he were trying to keep his voice level.
“It’s . . . it’s not how I imagined it,” he croaked.
“No,” said Masklin.
“We . . . we got out just in time.”
“Yes.”
Gurder coughed. It was as if he’d just had a long debate with himself and had reached a decision. “Thanks to Arnold Bros (est. 1905),” he said firmly.
; “Pardon?”
Gurder stared at Masklin’s face. “If he hadn’t called you to the Store, we’d all still be in there,” he said, sounding more confident with every word.
“But—” Masklin paused. That didn’t make any sense. If they hadn’t left, there wouldn’t have been a fire. Would there? Hard to be sure. Maybe some fire had got out of a fire bucket. Best not to argue. There were some things people weren’t happy to argue about, he thought. It was all very puzzling.
“Funny he’s letting the Store burn,” he said.
“He needn’t,” said Gurder. “There’s the sprinklers, and there’s these special things, to make the fire go out. Fire Exits, they’re called. But he let the Store burn because we don’t need it anymore.”
There was a crash as the entire top floor fell in on itself.
“There goes Consumer Accounts,” said Masklin. “I hope all the humans got out.”
“Who?”
“You know. We saw their names on the doors. Salaries. Accounts. Personnel. General Manager,” said Masklin.
“I’m sure Arnold Bros (est. 1905) made arrangements,” said Gurder.
Masklin shrugged. And then he saw, outlined against the firelight, the figure of Prices Slashed. There was no mistaking that hat. He was even holding his flashlight, and he was deep in conversation with some other humans. When he half turned, Masklin saw his face. He looked very angry.
He also looked very human. Without the terrible light, without the shadows of the Store at night, Prices Slashed was just another human.
On the other hand . . .
No, it was too complicated. And there were more important things to do.
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s get back. I think we should get as far away as possible as quickly as we can.”
“I shall ask Arnold Bros (est. 1905) to guide us and lead us,” said Gurder firmly.
“Yes, good,” said Masklin. “Good idea. And why not? But now we really must—”
“Has his Sign not said If You Do Not See What You Require, Please Ask?” said Gurder.
Masklin took him firmly by the arm. Everyone needs something, he thought. And you never know.
“I pull this string,” said Angalo, indicating the thread over his shoulder and the way it disappeared down into the depths of the cab, “and the leader of the steering wheel left-pulling team will know I want to turn left. Because it’s tied to his arm. And this other one goes to the right-pulling team. So we won’t need so many signals, and Dorcas can concentrate on the gears and things. And the brakes. After all,” he added, “we can’t always rely on a wall to run into when we want to stop.”
“What about lights?” said Masklin. Angalo beamed.
“Signal for the lights,” he said to the nome with flags. “What we did was, we tied threads to switches—”
There was a click. A big metal arm moved across the windshield, clearing away the raindrops. They watched it for a while.
“Doesn’t really illuminate much, does it?” said Grimma.
“Wrong switch,” muttered Angalo. “Signal to leave the wipers on but put on the lights.”
There was some muffled argument below them, and then another click. Instantly the cab was filled with the dull throbbing sound of a human voice.
“It’s all right,” said Angalo. “It’s only the radio. But it’s not the lights, tell Dorcas.”
“I know what a radio is,” said Gurder. “You don’t have to tell me what a radio is.”
“What is it, then?” said Masklin, who didn’t know.
“Twenty-Nine Ninety-Five, Batteries Extra,” said Gurder. “With AM, FM, And Auto-Reverse Cassette. Bargain Offer, Not To Be Repeated.”
“Am and Fum?” said Masklin.
“Yes.”
The radio voice droned on.
“—ggest fire in the town’s history, with firemen coming in from as far afield as Newtown. Meanwhile, police are searching for one of the store’s trucks, last seen leaving the building just before—”
“The lights. The lights. Third switch along,” said Angalo. There was a few seconds’ pause, and then the alley in front of the truck was bathed in white light.
“There should be two, but one got broken when we left the Store,” said Angalo. “Well, then, are we ready?”
“—Anyone seeing the vehicle should contact Blackbury police on—”
“And turn off the radio,” said Angalo. “That mooing gets on my nerves.”
“I wish we could understand it,” said Masklin. “I’m sure they’re fairly intelligent, if only we could understand it.”
He nodded at Angalo. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s go.”
It seemed much better this time. The truck scraped along the wall for a moment, then came free and moved gently down the narrow alley toward the lights at the far end. As the truck came out from between the dark walls, Angalo called for the brakes, and it stopped with only a mild jolt.
“Which way?” he said. Masklin looked blank.
Gurder fumbled through the pages of the diary. “It depends on which way we’re going,” he said. “Look for signs saying, er, Africa. Or Canada, perhaps.”
“There’s a sign,” said Angalo, peering through the rain. “It says Town Center. And then there’s an arrow and it says—” He squinted. “Onny—”
“One Way Street,” murmured Grimma.
“Town Center doesn’t sound like a good idea,” said Masklin.
“Can’t seem to find it on the map, either,” said Gurder.
“We’ll go the other way, then,” said Angalo, hauling on a thread.
“And I’m not sure about One Way Street,” said Masklin. “I think you should only go along it one way.”
“Well, we are,” said Angalo smugly. “We’re going this way.”
The truck rolled out of the side road and bumped neatly onto the pavement.
“Let’s have second gear,” said Angalo. “And a bit more go-faster pedal.” A car swerved slowly out of the truck’s way, its horn sounding—to nome ears—like the lost wail of a foghorn.
“Shouldn’t be allowed on the road, drivers like that,” said Angalo. There was a thump, and the remains of a streetlight bounced away. “And they put all this stupid stuff in the roadway, too,” he added.
“Remember to show consideration for other road users,” said Masklin severely.
“Well, I am, aren’t I? I’m not running into them, am I?” said Angalo. “What was that thump?”
“Some bushes, I think,” said Masklin.
“See what I mean? Why do they put things like that in the road?”
“I think the road is more sort of over to your right,” said Gurder.
“And it moves around, as well,” said Angalo sullenly, pulling the right-hand string slightly.
It was nearly midnight, and Blackbury was not a busy town after dark. Therefore there was no one rushing to run into the truck as it slid out of Alderman Surley Way and roared up John Lennon Avenue, a huge and rather battered shape under the yellow sodium glare. The rain had stopped, but there were wisps of mist coiling across the road.
It was almost peaceful.
“Right, third gear,” said Angalo, “and a bit faster. Now, what’s that sign coming up?”
Grimma and Masklin craned to see.
“Looks like Road Works Ahead,” said Grimma in a puzzled voice.
“Sounds good. Let’s have some more fast, down there.”
“Yes, but,” said Masklin, “why say it? I mean, you could understand Road Doesn’t Work Ahead. Why tell us it works?”
“Maybe it means they’ve stopped putting curbs and lights and bushes in it,” said Angalo. “Maybe—”
Masklin leaned over the edge of the platform.
“Stop!” he shouted. “Lots and lots of stop!”
The brake-pedal team looked up in astonishment but obeyed. There was a scream from the tires, yells from the nomes who were thrown forward, and then a lot of crunching and clanging from the front of
the truck as it skidded through an assortment of barriers and cones.
“There had better,” said Angalo, when it had finally stopped, “be a very good reason for that.”
“I’ve hurt my knee,” said Gurder.
“There isn’t any more road,” said Masklin, simply.
“Of course there’s road,” snapped Angalo. “We’re on it, aren’t we?”
“Look down. That’s all. Just look down,” said Masklin.
Angalo peered down at the road ahead. The most interesting thing about it was that it wasn’t there. Then he turned to the signaler.
“Can we please have just a wee bit of backward,” he said quietly.
“A smidgen?” said the signaler.
“And none of your cheek,” said Angalo.
Grimma was also staring at the hole in the road. It was big. It was deep. A few pipes lurked in the depths.
“Sometimes,” she said, “I think humans really don’t understand anything about the proper use of language.”
She leafed through the Code as the truck was reversed carefully away from the pit and, after crushing various things, driven onto the grass until the road was clear.
“It’s time we were sensible about this,” she said. “We can’t assume anything means what it says. So go slow.”
“I was driving perfectly safely,” said Angalo sulkily. “It’s not my fault if things are all wrong.”
“So go slow, then.”
They stared in silence at the rolling road.
Another sign loomed up.
“Roundabout,” said Angalo. “And a picture of a circle? Well. Any ideas?”
Grimma leafed desperately through the Code.
“I saw a picture of a roundabout once,” said Gurder. “If it’s any help. It was in We Go to the Fair. It’s a big shiny thing with lots of gold and horses on it.”
“I’m sure that’s not it,” muttered Grimma, turning the pages hurriedly. “I’m sure there’s something in here some—”
“Gold, eh?” said Angalo. “Should be easy to spot, anyway. I think”—he glared at Grimma—“that we can have a little third gear.”
Truckers Page 15