"Oh, I didn't know you were talking to me." "I'm looking at you, son." "And I'm looking at you. Hello, there." Then the driver said, without taking his eyes off the road, "You know, its too bad we've got to deliver him in good shape—after the way he smashed up the other car with that damn bike."
"He could still have an accident Fall and crack a couple ribs, say," said the man to Tanner's left.The man to the right didn't say anything, but the man with the shotgun shook his bead slowly. "Not unless he tries to escape," he said. "L.A. wants him in good shape.
"Why'd you try to skip out, buddy? You might have known we'd pick you up."
Tanner shrugged.
"Why'd you pick'me up? I didn't do anything?"
The driver chuckled.
"That's why," he said. "You didn't do anything, and there's something you were supposed to do. Remember?"
"I don't owe anybody anything. They gave me a pardon and let me go."
"You got a lousy memory, kid. You made the nation of California a promise when they turned you loose yesterday. Now you've had more than the twenty-four hours you asked for to settle your affairs. You can tell them 'no' if you want and get your pardon revoked. Nobody's forcing you- Then you can spend the rest of your life making little rocks out of big ones. We couldn't care less. I heard they got somebody else lined up already."
"Give me a cigarette," Tanner said.
The man on his right lit one and passed it to him.
He raised both hands, accepted it. As he smoked, he flicked the ashes onto the floor.
They sped along the highway, and when they went through towns or encountered traffic the driver would hit the siren and overhead the red light would begin winking. When this occurred, the sirens of the two other patrol cars that followed behind them would also wail. The driver never touched the brake, all the way up to L.A., and be kept radioing ahead every few minutes.
There came a sound like a sonic boom, and a cloud of dust and gravel descended upon them like hail. A tiny crack appeared in the lower right-hand corner of the bullet-proof windshield, and stones the size of marbles bounced on the hood and the roof. The tires made a crunching noise as they passed over the gravel that now lay scattered upon the road surface. The dust hung like a heavy fog, but ten seconds later they had passed out of it.
The men in the car leaned forward and stared upward.
The sky had become purple, and black lines crossed it, moving from west to east. These swelled, narrowed, moved from side to side, sometimes merged. The driver had turned on his lights by then."Could be a bad one coming," said the man with the shotgun.
The driver nodded. "Looks worse further north, too," he said.
A wailing began, high in the air above them, and the dark bands continued to widen. The sound increased in volume, lost its treble quality, became a steady roar.
The bands consolidated, and the sky grew dark as a starless, moonless night and the dust fell about them in heavy clouds. Occasionally, there sounded a ping as a heavier fragment struck against the car.
The driver switched on his country lights, hit the siren again and sped ahead. The roaring and the sound of the siren fought with one another above them, and far to .the north a blue aurora began to spread, pulsing.
Tanner finished his cigarette, and the man gave him another. They were all smoking by then.
"You know, you're lucky we picked you up, boy," said the man to his left. "How'd you like to be pushing your bike through that stuff?"
"I'd like it," Tanner said.
"You're nuts."
"No. I'd make it. It wouldn't be the first time."
By the time they reached Los Angeles, the blue aurora filled half the sky, and it was tinged with pink and shot through with smoky, yellow streaks that reached like spider legs into the south. The roar was a deafening, physical thing that beat upon their eardrums and caused their skin to tingle. As they left the car and crossed the parking lot, heading toward the big, pillared building with the frieze across its forehead, they bad to shout at one another in order to be heard.
"Lucky we got here when we did!" said the man with the shotgun. "Step it up!" Their pace increased as they moved toward the stairway. "It could break any minute now!" screamed the driver. As they had pulled into the lot, the building had had the appearance of a piece of ice-sculpture, with the shifting lights in the sky playing upon its surfaces and casting cold shadows. Now, though, it seemed as if it were a thing out of wax, ready to melt in a instant's flash of heat.Their faces and the flesh of their hands took on a bloodless, corpse-like appearance.
They hurried up the stairs, and a State Patrolman let them in through the small door to the right of the heavy metal double doors that were the main entrance to the building. He locked and chained the door behind them, after snapping open his holster when he saw Tanner.
"Which way?" asked the man with the shotgun.
"Second floor," said the troooper, nodding toward a stairway to their right, "Go straight back when you get to the top. It's the big office at the end of the hall."
"Thanks." The roaring was considerably muffled, and objects achieved an appearance of natural existence once more in the artificial light of the building.
They climbed the curving stairway and moved along the corridor that led back into the building. When they reached the final office, the man with the shotgun nodded to his driver. "Knock," he said.
A woman opened the door, started to say something, then stopped and nodded when she saw Tanner. She stepped aside and held the door. "This way," she said, and they moved past her into the office, and she pressed a button on her desk and told the voice that said, "Yes, Mrs. Fiske?": "They're here, with that man, sir."
"Send them in." She led them to the dark, paneled door in the back of the room and opened it before them.
They entered, and the husky man behind the glasstopped desk leaned backward in his chair and wove his short fingers together in front of his chins and peered over them through eyes just a shade darker than the gray of his hair. His voice was soft and rasped Just slightly. "Have a seat," he said to Tanner, and to the others, "wait outside,"
"You know this guy's dangerous. Mister Denton," said the man with the shotgun as Tanner seated himself in a chair situated five feet in front of the desk.
Steel shutters covered the room's three windows, and though the men could not see outside they could guess at the possible furies that stalked there as a sound like machine-gun fire suddenly rang through the room.
"I know." "Well, he's handcuffed, anyway. Do you want a gun?""I've got one,"
"Okay, then. We'll be outside."
They left the room.
The two men stared at one another until the door closed, then the man called Denton said, "Are all your affairs settled now?" and the other shrugged. Then, "What the hell is your first name, really? Even the records show—"
"Hell," said Tanner. "That's my name. I was the seventh kid in our family, and when I was born the nurse held me up and said to my old man, 'What name do you want on the birth certificate?' and Dad said, 'Hell!' and walked away. So she put it down like that. That's what my brother told me. I never saw my old man to ask if that's how it was. He copped out the same day. Sounds right, though."
"So your mother raised all seven of you?"
"No. She croaked a couple weeks later and different relatives took us kids."
"I see," said Denton. "You've still got a choice, you know. Do you want to try it or don't you?"
"What's your job, anyway?" asked Tanner.
"I'm the Secretary of Traffic for the nation of California."
"What's that got to do with ir?"
"I'm coordinating this thing. It could as easily have been the Surgeon General or the Postmaster General, but more of it really falls into my area of responsibility. I know the hardware best. I know the odds—"