Jan took one weary step forward and raised his fist, and the face vanished instantly. Yes, he had gone too far, had shown the bully to be a coward. Hem would never forgive him. Particularly since there had been a witness. Lajos Nagy sat in the co-driver’s seat in silence, silent but well aware of what had happened.
“Start the motors, Jan said. “You think I was too hard on him, Lajos?”
“He’s all right when you work with him a while.”
“I’ll bet he’s worse the longer he’s around.”
A deep vibration shook the floor as the gear trains were engaged and Jan cocked his head, listening. The tank was in good shape. “Pass the word to the others, start engines,” he said. He dogged the hatch shut as the air conditioner came on, then slid into the driver’s seat, his feet on the brakes, his hands resting lightly on the wheel that synchronized track speed and clutches. Twenty tonnes of machinery vibrated gently with anticipation, waiting his command.
“Tell them to stay in line behind me, hundred-meter intervals. We’re moving out.”
Lajos hesitated for just an instant before he switched on his microphone and relayed the order. He was a good man, one of Jan’s mechanics when they weren’t on the Road.
Jan eased the wheel forward and tilted it at the same time. The whine of the gearboxes grew in pitch and the tank lurched ahead as the clutches engaged, the heavy tracks slapping down on the solid rock of the Road. When he switched on the rear camera he saw the rest of the tanks rumble to life on the screen and move out behind him. They were on the way. The broad central street of the city slipped past, the looming walls of the warehouses, then the first of the farms beyond. He kept the controls on manual until the last of the buildings was behind him and the Road had narrowed. The tank picked up speed as he switched to automatic and sat back. A wire, imbedded beneath the congealed lava surface of the Road, acted as a guide. The column of tanks roared on past the farms toward the desert beyond.
They were into the sandy wastes, the unreeling ribbon of Road the only sign of mankind’s existence, before the expected message came through.
“I’m having radio trouble, I’ll call you back,” Jan said, switching off the microphone. The other tanks were on FM command frequency, so should not have intercepted the message. Now that he had started this thing he was going to finish it in his own way.
They were over three hundred kilometers from the settlement before they hit the first problem. Sand had drifted across the Road, forming a barrier two meters thick at its highest. Jan halted the column while his tank crawled up the slope. It wasn’t too bad.
“Which are the two with the biggest dozer blades?”
“Seventeen and nine,” Lajos said.
“Get them up here to clean this stuff away. Get a second driver from the house car, have him stay with you until Hem Ritterspach gets here. He won’t be bearable for a couple of days, so try to ignore him. I’ll radio for him to come in a copter, if it’s not on the way already, and I’ll go back with it.
“I hope there won’t be trouble.”
Jan smiled, tired but happy at having done something. “Of course there will be trouble. That’s all there ever is. But this column is moving fine, Ritterspach won’t dare turn back now. All he can do is push on.”
Jan sent the message, then kicked open the hatch and climbed down onto the sand. Was it warmer here or just his imagination? And wasn’t it lighter on the southern horizon? It might very well be; dawn wasn’t that far away. He stood aside while the tanks ground up the slope and churned past him, the last in the column, towing the house car, stopping just long enough for the relief driver to climb down. The dozers were just attacking the sand when the flutter of the helicopter could be heard above the sound of their tracks. It had been on the way well before his message had been received. It circled once, then settled slowly onto the Road. Jan went to meet it.
Three men climbed down, and Jan knew that the trouble was not over, was perhaps just beginning. He spoke first, hoping to keep them off balance.
“Ivan, what the devil are you doing here? Who is taking care of things with both of us out on the Road?”
Ivan Semenov twisted his fingers in his beard and looked miserable, groping for words. Hem Ritterspach, an assistant Proctor close by his side, spoke first.
“I’m taking you back, Kulozik, under official arrest. You are going to be charged with—”
“Semenov, exert your authority,” Jan called out loudly, turning his back on the two Proctors, well aware of the sidearms that both men wore, their hands close to the butts. There was a tightness between his shoulder blades that he tried to ignore. “You are Trainmaster. This is an emergency. The tanks are clearing the Road. Hem must be with them, he is in command. We can talk about his little problems when we get to Southtown.”
“The tanks can wait; this must be done first! You attacked me!”
Hem was shaking with rage, his gun half drawn. Jan turned sideways enough to watch both Proctors. Semenov finally spoke.
“A serious matter, this. Perhaps we had all better return to town and discuss it quietly.”
“There is no time for discussion — quiet!” Jan shouted the words, pretending anger to feed the other’s anger as well. “This fat fool is under my command. I never touched him. He’s lying. This is mutiny. If he does not instantly rejoin the tanks I shall charge him and disarm him and imprison him?’
The slash of the words was, of course, too great a burden for Hem to bear. He pawed at his holster, clutched his gun and drew it. As soon as the muzzle was clear, before it could be raised, Jan acted.
He turned and grabbed Hem’s wrist with his own right hand, his left hand slapping hard above the other’s elbow. Still turning, using speed and weight, he levered the man’s arm up beside his back so hard that Hem howled with pain. Uncontrollably the big man’s fingers went limp, the gun began to drop and Jan kept pushing. It was cruel, but he must do it. There was a cracking sound that shuddered Hem’s body as the arm broke, and only then did Jan let go. The gun clattered on the stone surface of the Road and Hem slid down slowly after it. Jan turned to the other armed man.
“I am in command here, Proctor. I order you to aid this wounded man and take him into the copter. Trainmaster Semenov concurs with this order.”
The young Proctor looked from one to the other of them in an agony of indecision. Semenov, confused, did not speak, and his silence gave the man no guide. Hem groaned loudly with pain and writhed on the unyielding rock. With this reminder the Proctor decided; he let his half-drawn gun drop back into the holster and knelt beside his wounded commander.
“You should not have done that, Jan.” Semenov shook his head unhappily. “It makes things difficult.”
Jan took him by the arm and drew him aside. “Things were already difficult. You must take my word that I never attacked Hem. I have a witness to back me up if you have any doubts. Yet he built this trouble up so large that one of us had to go. He is expendable. His second in command, Lajos, can take over. Hem will ride in the train, and his arm will knit, and he’ll cause more trouble at Southtown. But not now. We must move as planned.”
There was nothing for Semenov to say. The decision had been taken from him and he did not regret it. He took the medical bag from the copter and attempted to fit an airbag splint onto the broken arm. They could only do this after an injection had put the wailing Hem under. The return trip was made in silence.
Four
Jan lay back on his bunk, his muscles too tired to relax, going over his lists just one more time. They were only hours away from departure. The last of the corn was being loaded now. As the silos were emptied the partitions were removed so that the heavy equipment could be rolled in. Coated with silicon grease and cocooned with spun plastic, they would sit out the 200 degree heat of the four-year long summer. All of them, trucks, copters, reapers, were duplicated and in storage at Southtown, so need not be carried with them on the trek. They had their stocks of frozen food, the chicks, lambs and calves to start anew the herds and flocks, home furnishings — now painfully reduced — and the corn filling most of all the cars. The water tanks were full; he wrote and underlined. Water. First thing in the morning he must hook into the computer relay and put the Northpoint desalination plant on standby. It had already stopped all secondary functions, chemical and mineral extraction, fertilizer production, and was operating at minimum to keep the 1300-kilometer-long canal and tunnel complex filled with water. He could stop that now; the farming was over for this season. There was a knock on the door, so soft at first that he wasn’t sure he had heard it. It was repeated.