"Probably."
"Then what are we to do about helping Red get through this thing?"
"Oh, we'll help him to cheat too, of course. Just how, I don't know yet. We will have to catch up with him first. Finish eating so we can get moving."
When she had left to get her duffle bag. Randy asked Leaves, "How well did you know her? How far can we trust her?"
"I know that Red trusted her. There is some strong bond between them. I think we should trust her too."
"Good," Randy said, "because I want to. I wonder what we're getting into, though."
When Leila returned some minutes later, her duffle bag on her shoulder, cigar clenched between her teeth, she smiled, nodded and gestured with her head toward the door.
"I am all settled up and checked out," she said. "Have a cigar and let's roll."
Randy nodded, collected Leaves and followed her, unwrapping the stogie she had thrust upon him.
One
"Flowers?"
"Yes, Red?"
"Good driving. Thanks."
"Is that all?"
"No. How'd you know?"
"You never just compliment anybody, or thank them. It is always an afterthought or a preliminary."
"Really? I never noticed that. I guess you're right Okay. Are you getting tired of being what you are? Would you like to move on into a new avatar, become part of a more complex computer setup? Or perhaps go the organic route and be the matrix of awareness in a body?"
"I have thought of it—yes."
"I'd like to reward you, for faithful service and all that. So decide what you want and pull in at the next service center. I will leave you there for pickup and delivery to the proper institution, with authorization for everything to be billed to my account."
"Wait a minute. You always were a tightwad. This isn't at all like you. What is the matter? I thought I knew everything you know. What did I miss?"
"You're more suspicious than half a dozen wives. I made you a bona fide offer—"
"Come off it! Why do you want to get rid of me?"
"1-" "I probably know you better than half a dozen wives.
So forget the shit. Get to the point. What's the matter?"
"It is just that I do not believe I will be requiring your services for much longer. You've been a good and faithful employee. The least I can do is reward you this
way." "It sounds as if you are getting ready for retirement
or death. Which is it?"
"Neither. Both. I'm not sure ... I am planning a change in status, though, and I don't want you damaged in anything that entails."
"What do you think I am—a pocket calculator? After all this time, you insult me by assuming I possess no curiosity. You've said enough to guarantee not being able to get rid of me until I have the whole story."
"Hm."
"... And if you are thinking of sending me off to my new career without my consent, bear in mind that I can turn this vehicle into a cage."
"You are persuasive. I was trying to get out of it, but I guess I do owe you some explanation. Okay. I suppose it will be difficult for you to understand what a dream is, let alone some of the peculiar ones that have always followed me..."
"I'm strong on theory. Go on."
"My most recurrent dream has always been of gliding, gliding on warm air currents, holding myself motionless above a rich and varied landscape, and sometimes the sea. I can do it forever, it seems, seeing into the secret hearts of everything below. It breeds in me a pleasant combination of peace and cynicism, as well as some other feelings I can no longer put a name to. Days and nights seem to roll by without special emphasis. There is a profound joy in simply being, and a species of understanding I cannot bring over to here and now.
There is also a power, a terrible power in me, which I am almost too lazy to use. I drift..."
"Sounds like a nice head-vacation. You're fortunate."
"It's more than that, and different things happen in different dreams."
"Such as?"
"I said that I moved above different places—lands where there are wars, or great cities, or both, wilderness. erupting volcanoes, ships on the oceans, small towns, dizzying cityscapes where nothing natural remains in sight. I recognize many of them—Babylon, Athens, Rome, Carthage, New York—across the ages. And there are many, stranger still, which I do not recognize. I begin to move my wings. I soar above the Road. It is a toy. It is a gauge, like marks on a map. We put if there. It is funny, watching the few who have noted it as they scramble along from probability to probability. I do not know but—"
" 'We'? Who is this 'we,' Red?"
"The dragons of Bel'kwinith would be the best way I could say it in these words we use. I just remembered that part earlier, and—"
"In your dreams you are a dragon?"
"That is the best way I know of describing the feeling and the appearance, though that is not exactly it."
"Interesting if not comprehensive. Red. But what has all this got to do with your present problems and your decision to ditch me?"
"They are not just dreams. They are real. I only recently realized that more and more of them seem to return to me when my life is threatened. I seem to undergo some sort of transformation."
"Real? You are not a man dreaming you are a dragon, but the other way around?"
"Something like that. Or both. Or neither. I don't know. It is real, though, the more of it I recall. As real as this."
"These—dragons of Bel'kwinith—you think that they you—whoever—built the Road?" "They didn't exactly build it. They sort of composed it, or compiled it, like an index for a book." "And we are driving down an abstraction? Or a
dream? "I don't know what you'd call it."
"I have to stay with you now, Red. Till you get your
wits back." "This is why I would have preferred not telling you
as much as I have. I foresaw this reaction. I can't convince someone else of the existence of a version of reality that is temporarily my subjective vision. But I know I am stable."
"You say 'as much as I have,' meaning that there is more to tell, and I still do not know why you want to get rid of me. Let's have it all."
"This is just what I was trying to avoid .. ."
The truck creaked loudly. To his right, the seat buckled and folded toward him. The steering wheel began to elongate and twist in his direction like a strange, dark flower. The roof pressed down upon his head. A clawed arm emerged from the glove compartment, reaching for him. Outside, a shadow on the truck's bed twisted like seaweed in a current.
"I can deliver you to the nearest human service station for a complete physical and psychiatric workup, unless you show me why I should not."
"I would like to avoid that too," Red said. "You have made your point. Okay. Ease up and I'll satisfy your circuits."
The clawed arm retreated into the glove compartment and emerged again moments later holding a lighted cigar, which it extended to him while the steering wheel resumed its normal form, the roof rose and the seat settled.
"Thank you." He accepted it, puffed upon it.
Suddenly, Flowers recited:
"Toute 1'ame resumee Quand lente nous 1'expirons Dans plusieurs ronds de fumee Abolis en autres ronds
Atteste quelque cigare Brulant savament pour peu
Que la cendre se separe De son clair baiser de feu
Ainsi Ie choeur des romances A la levre vole-t-il Exclus-en si tu commences Le reel parce que vil
Le sens trop precis rature Ta vague litterature"
He chuckled.
"Apt, I suppose," he said. "But I thought you were programmed for Baudelaire, not Mallarme."
"I am programmed Decadent. I am beginning to see why. No matter what you do, you are slumming."