Why was he doing all this again?
He held the flag up to his face.
"Oh yeah," he thought aloud. " This is why—"
18
He walked about a mile down the road before he heard another vehicle coining up behind him, It was not any kind of car; it was a truck. Old, battered, cracked windshield, with yet another kid behind the wheel. He stopped a few feet from Hunter and stuck his head out the window.
But Hunter already knew the drill.
"Yeah, I want a ride," he told the kid.
He walked around to the other side of the cab but found the door was locked. Hie kid just looked at him and then gave him the thumb, indicating Hunter had to sit in the back. He hesitated only a moment, then walked to the rear of the truck and climbed aboard.
The rear was filled with boxes made of very thin wood. Hunter took a seat among them, then looked inside one of the boxes.
They were packed with turnips.
They rode for a very long time.
The road never changed, but the terrain did. From the beach, to the mountains, to the long, straight fields again. It was a bumpy, uncomfortable ride, but Hunter could have cared less.
He was beyond worrying about his own personal comfort now. He just wanted to get to the next stop, because he was convinced it would be the last in this long charade.
The kid driving the truck acted more like he was driving the Corvette. He was moving at high speed and never met a bump he didn't like. They were approaching a mildly steep hill when the truck hit a pothole so violentiy, Hunter went airborne. The truck and its contents went one way, and Hunter went the other. He was thrown from the back, landing hard in the roadway, a broken box of turnips smacking him on the head.
The truck driver never even looked in his rearview mirror. No brake lights. No downshifting.
Nothing.
He just kept on going.
Hunter picked himself up, dusted himself off, and started walking up the hill.
He reached inside his back pocket and found the remains of another apple. It was crushed and mostly mush, but he ate as much of it as he could. It tasted awful but, he supposed, it was better than eating a turnip.
He reached the top of the hill, only to find the road dipped and then led up to another hill, this one even steeper. Hunter stopped, scratched his head, and wondered if he was going in the right direction.
He turned around and was astonished to see an enormous blue screen had appeared right behind him.
Now this froze him to the spot. When he took part in the Earth Race, part of the competition was to pass through huge blue screens — huge as in infinite. The screens were part of an elaborate mind-blowing obstacle course. Passing through one screen meant that the next obstacle was coming up, each one matched to the personalities or the fears of the individual contestant. For Hunter this included everything from saving a girl from being assaulted to trying to get his craft through the teeth of a gigantic set of jaws.
On the other side of each screen was something that was always crazier than before, until that is, he broke through the final one. The strange thing was, they'd been popping up every once in a while ever since.
Now he was looking at this one, and it really did go in all directions. He didn't want to pass through it, especially since it was behind him; only something unpredictable could result. If in fact this thing was real.
But Hunter worked off instinct, and his instinct was telling him that he should at least try to understand what this thing was and why it was here. So he stuck his hand, then his shoulder, and then finally his head through the screen. What he saw was astonishing. He was looking at the barren landscape of Fools 6, the planet where he'd been found by Erx and Berx two years ago, the planet where he'd suddenly woke to find himself in the far-flung future.
But there was something strange here. He was about a mile away from the very familiar mountain where he'd found himself in a house he didn't build. But the house wasn't there. This could only mean he was looking at Fools 6 not only before he arrived but before the house had been built as well.
What the hell does that mean?
Suddenly, he found himself falling through the screen to the dusty road below. The screen had disappeared so quickly, he wound up hitting the road hard, with a mouthful of dirt to boot. He lay there for a moment as the vision of Fools 6, still burned on his retinas, slowly faded as well.
Then he picked himself up, wiped his clothes off, and found himself wondering if the screen had ever been there at all.
He walked down into the dip and up the next hill.
It was getting hot again, and he was perspiring by the time he reached the top of the hill. Up here, off to the left, was a country road, little more than a path.
Hunter turned on to it. Impulse, instinct, whatever it was, he knew this was the road to take.
It passed through a group of trees and then to a wide clearing. Here was a bright green field. A small rise.
At the top of the rise was a small cottage. Nondistinct. Except there was a flagpole outside.
Flying from it was an American flag.
He walked up the bare pathway leading to the cottage. As the small house was built on a hill, the higher he climbed, the larger he realized the grassy fields beyond it were. They seemed to go on for miles now.
He reached the front door and stopped. He could hear some movement inside. And the sounds of something mechanical, pumping, running. Breathing. Wheezing.
He knocked once, but in doing so, the door slowly opened. He stepped inside. He still had his gun, but he did not take it out. It had stayed in his holster since he'd climbed into the limo. He knew he wouldn't need it here.
He walked into the hallway. Again it looked more like something from his emerging previous lives than anything in the seventy-third century. Quaint was the first word that came to mind. The place was a bit dark, a bit subdued, but smelled of fresh flowers and some kind of spice. There were paintings of children on the wall, and an ancient time-keeping device called a grandfather clock in one corner. In his modern battle suit and his oversized crash helmet, Hunter felt very out of place.
What was awaiting him here? Another test of his will to conceal? He didn't think so.
He followed the wheezing sound to the first room on his left. The door was open. Hunter peered inside. It was a bedroom. An ancient four-poster bed was set against one wall. There was still a label on it that read, Sears Roebuck. On its mattress another label read, Sealy. There was a small table next to the bed and on it a tiny radio with the letters RCA emblazoned across its dial. Next to the radio was a small white machine, with a black liquid dripping into a pot underneath. A coffeemaker. It was making the wheezing sound.
There was a person lying on the bed. It was a man, presumably, dressed in a spacesuit, one that looked thousands of years old. A thick helmet was covering his head; on his hands were Velcro-lined gloves. His feet were shod with bulky, self-heating magnetic boots. On his left shoulder was a patch bearing the letters NASA. On the right, an American flag.
The man was an astronaut.
Literally, an ancient astronaut.
How did Hunter know? Because on a shelf above the bed there was a small digital clock — made by Timex. Its readout had been modified to count in hours, days, years. At that moment, it read 5,248 years, 14 days, 13 hours.