Anti-Man

V

I opened a can of thick beef stew and heated it in an old aluminum pan that I found in the cupboard under the sink. I ate directly from the pan to save time and dishes. I was getting so used to His new appearance that I did not have to leave the room to eat, as I thought, at first, I might. Indeed, I sat watching Him and talking to Him while I gobbled the meat and potatoes. I finished supper with a can of pears, then went and struggled into my arctic traveling gear. When I came back into the kitchen to tell Him that I was leaving, He said, "I almost forgot about it."

"What's that?"

"When I was out in the utility shed starting the generator this morning, I noticed it on a platform near the back wall. Didn't think much of it then, but it will come in handy now. A magnetic sled."

"How big?" I asked.

"Two-man. You can handle it easily. It'll save a devil of a lot of walking."

"That it will," I said. I turned and walked into the living room.

"Be careful," He called after me from where he lay in the kitchen like a beached whale.

"Don't worry."

Then I was through the door, closing it behind, and into the white and black world of the early Alaskan night. The wind buffeted me, and the snow stung my face. I held my goggles and mask in my right hand, walked down the steps and hurried around the cabin to the utility shed. The door was a heavy metal one, bent slightly because He had had to smash it repeatedly to break its lock. It rattled now, gently, as the wind rocked it against the frame. I pushed it open. It grated unpleasantly where the buckled metal worked against the hinges.

Inside the shed, I fumbled for a light switch, found one two feet from the door, off to the right. A dim bulb popped into life, revealing the fact that Harry did not keep his tool shed too neat. Everything was stacked haphazardly around the bulk of the generator and the mammoth bulge of the water storage tank that descended from the ceiling like a pus sack. Back against the far wall, there was a platform of wooden beams nailed crudely together, and the magnetic sled perched there-a very welcome sight.

I went back to it and checked it out. It was a relatively expensive model. It was just under seven feet long, three feet wide. The front was swept up in a snowshield curve, and the metal metamorphosed into a plexiglass window to cut down the battering ram of the wind. There were two seats, one behind the other, and a set of controls before the first. I examined the controls, saw that there was nothing fancy. Behind the second seat, the oblong box of the drive mechanism jutted like a barnacle off the sleek hide of this beast-machine. I went to it, thumbed the rotating catches, flipped them back, and lifted the lid. The battery was totally dead.

For a moment, I was ready to kick the damn sled and to curse Harry with every four- and five- and six-letter dirty word I had in my vocabulary. That would have wasted a rather large chunk of time, considering the extensiveness of my known oaths. Then I relented and allowed my brain to do the thinking instead of my gut. It took just seconds to realize that Harry must have some way to recharge that battery. After all, it would have been dead for him, too.

I went to the generator first and found exactly what I had expected. There was a large battery on the floor next to the generator, and a trickle feedline kept this spare constantly charged. I disconnected the jumper cables from this live battery and hefted it, staggered back to the sled and set it down. Taking out the old battery, I replaced it with this healthier one, then took it back to the generator for its session of reactivation. Now I was ready to move.

But now there was another problem. The sled weighed a hundred and twenty or thirty pounds. I could not see myself lifting it and carrying it through the twisting aisles between the junk, turning it sideways at the narrow places, swinging it around the sharp bend between the generator and the open door. The urge to kick and curse returned. Then I won the battle with my gut and my brain was once again in charge. If I couldn't lift it and carry it out, neither could Harry, for he was smaller than I. Which meant there was some other way out of the shed. I examined the wall against which the sled rested, found the handle that slid a wide piece of it back. I flipped off the bolt lock, slid it back, and was looking out onto the snow. In fact, the sled was facing that way, ready to move.

I crawled into it, strapped the belt around my waist and made certain it was secure. When you are going anywhere on a magnetic sled and you are in a hurry, your life can easily depend on that strap of nylon cloth. As comfortable as possible, I switched on the ignition in the steering column. The sled hummed to life, purring quietly like a contented cat being stroked beneath the chin. Giving the controls another once-over, I put the sled in gear and pressed down ever so gently on the accelerator that tapped the battery. The sled moved forward, off the wooden platform and bumped onto the carpet of snow.

The magnetic sled is the only end product of what, at one time, promised to be a revolution in transportation. Dr. Kesey and his associates, working under Ford auspices, had cracked the wall blocking Man from the use of magnetic forces in transportation. The Kesey people developed a sled that could move across a body of water-or at least across their testing lake-on a magnetic cushion. It was very simple, as Kesey explained it, though, of course, he pared the details down to a layman's level of understanding. The bottom of the sled was plated with a magnetized layer of iron. Suspended from the bottom of the sled by four steel arms (one at each corner of the rectangular craft) was an electrified wire mesh that produced another magnetic field exactly like the first. The pattern of the field waves were constructed so that the two fields pushed against each other. The weight of the sled and its driver was, in effect, nullified. The wire mesh was bottomed with a thin layer of non-magnetic aluminum, which skimmed across the water. A set of propellers, driven by an electric battery, spun at the rear, pushing the-in effect, again-weightless craft across the surface of the lake.

Ford thought they had come up with something that was going to do away with the wheel. Then the hitches began to develop. The sled worked well on a lake, on any small body of water. But in a large lake or on the ocean, it was useless. The waves swamped it, for it rode on the water, not above it like a flivver. Ocean travel was out. Secondly, and far worse, further testing proved that the magnetic sled would not function on land. It required a surface with a high degree of give and resilience, such as water-or snow. When driven on the ground or a pavement, the aluminum was shredded away in seconds, the wire grid torn loose immediately afterward, and the sled came to a slamming, banging halt. Finally, Kesey discovered that there was a limitation to the size of the magnetic sled. A one-man sled worked exceedingly well. A two-man sled was slightly more difficult to handle. A three-man sled required a competent and experienced driver. A four-man sled required two men and two separate wheels to control the bucking. A five-man sled was too erratic for use. The Kesey-Ford dream of revolutionizing the world suffered a severe setback.

The sleds went into production as pleasure craft. It wasn't long before they had replaced the small boat as the favorite middle-class luxury item. The snowmobile, so popular for thirty years, died overnight. The magnetic sled could never get stuck, could never break a tread, and moved faster. It could also go places the snowmobile could never reach. Ford made money. Kesey was kept on at his research lab. But the revolution never came.

Now I rested outside the cabin on the snow, drifting slightly forward. I accelerated a bit more, brought the craft smoothly ahead, and took it around the cabin, under the trees. I pointed the front end down the white stretch of the long slope below the cabin and stepped up the propeller speed. They whined behind me. I surged forward, the trees and mounds of snow flashing past. I kept the machine at twenty, not daring to go much faster. There was just enough light reflected off the snow from the pale moon to see by, and I kept a sharp lookout for sharp rises in the landscape. If the land dropped abruptly, the sled would fall gently back to the surface without disaster. But if there was a rise that I did not pull back on the wheel to compensate for, the sled would glide into it, smash nose-first and tip over. Even if I didn't get hurt, such an accident would damage the sled so that I would be forced to walk the rest of the way. And that was not a pleasant prospect.

When I came to the first section of woods, I decided to circle it rather than hunt a wide enough path through. Even if I did find a deer trail, I would have to slow up, for the woods were very treacherous for a sled. I soared past, curving in a wide arc around the trees. It would be an extra couple of miles around the stand of pine, but the increased speed would more than compensate for it. I moved sharply in the last moments of the high point of the arc, sending a spray of snow in a long geyser behind. The ride was exhilarating. For the first time in a long time, I felt like laughing.

I crossed more open fields beyond the wood, bringing the speed up to thirty, now that I was more sure of myself. Five minutes like that brought me to another section of forest. As I approached, I saw that it stretched to both sides, far out of sight. It looked as if I would be forced to go through the trees here. I slowed to fifteen and cruised along the edge of the woods, looking for a path. I disregarded the first two because they were windy and narrow, but the third showed regular use by elk or deer and had been beaten into a fairly well-traveled and wide thoroughfare. I turned into it, dropped my speed to eight miles an hour, and proceeded with care.

The trees went by at a steady clip. It was slightly over two miles before I saw the opening at the end of the woods and the fields beyond. With a hundred feet to go through the tunnel of wood, I tramped down on the accelerater. The sled leaped ahead. I could see that the remainder of the path was wide and free of branches. The only thing I did not see was the white-tailed deer to the left of the hole leading into the field. He moved in front of my exit just as I reached it

I hit the brakes almost instantly, but it was too late to avoid him completely. Startled, he tried some evasive action of his own, turning and leaping back. The sled smacked into his brown rump, leaped into the air, came down on its magnetic field, slapping the surface hard, tilted onto its side, and careened along the field for fifty feet, nosing into the snow until the propellers became clogged and the motor stalled.

I had not been able to get free, for I was strapped tight. Perhaps it was fortunate that I rode out the wreck. Otherwise, I might have been thrown off and had my neck broken. As it was, my goggles had been rammed down onto my nose with such force that the old proboscis had started bleeding. My back had been wrenched, and the stiffness reached up into my neck. A little bit of a whiplash and a bloody nose, I thought. Not too bad. Not considering.

Then I remembered the sled. And the long walk without it.

And I was suddenly much more concerned about it than I was about anything that might have happened to my body.

I unfastened the belt and crawled away from the sled. The snow had blown off this field and had packed in among the trees, so there was not more than two and a half feet on the surface. Halfway up my thigh. Which made for tough walking, but which, at least, could not gulp me down and smother me. I turned around and moved carefully to the sled. It was lodged in the snow, only a few inches of the side sticking out. I set to work scooping the snow away from it, wishing my hands could reform themselves as His had. Ten minutes later, I was able to pull it free and turn it right side up in the hole it had made. The underside looked amazingly intact. The drive box had not been breached. I thumbed the ignition, and was delighted beyond words when the propeller fluttered and the motor hummed.

There was a noise behind me, perhaps twenty feet off. I turned, startled, and remembered the deer. There were about two dozen of them, standing in an area where the wind seemed to have scoured away all but three or four inches of snow. I could not tell which of them was the one I had hit a glancing blow with the sled. They watched me, snorting among themselves and blinking their large, dark eyes.

I turned back to the sled, muscled it up out of the snow and onto the undisturbed surface, its motor idling, the field on and holding it on the thin crust. I climbed aboard, buckled up, and started out again. I kept it at a decent twenty miles an hour as I had at first, and I kept it like that until I had come down through all the foothills and had reached the fence at the edge of the park.

Beyond the fence, there was a plowed and cindered road banked with snow on both sides. I realized that I could not be far from the main gate where He and I had first entered. But, of course, it would be nothing but suicide to go back there. The World Authority coppers would be congregated at the first ranger station, would have secured that primary gate. All gates, in fact. If I were to get out, I would have to climb the fence.

I lugged the sled to a clump of brush, brown and dry and dead from the battering of winter. I tucked it into them, then stood back and examined it. It was still noticeable from the road, I was certain. I went behind the bushes, dug out snow and threw it on the sled. Five minutes later, I was satisfied. The contours of its hidden shape were irregular and unnatural, but the smooth blanket of falling snow would take care of that in another hour. I went back to the fence and spent a good fifteen minutes climbing and falling off before I went over and dropped in the snow on the other side.

On each of the fence posts, there was a small red plate with a number stamped into it. I checked the number on this one: 878. Now all I would have to do when I returned was get on this park access highway and follow the fence posts down or up until I came to 878. I felt proud of my ingenuity, so proud that I almost stepped out onto the road before I noticed the low, rumbling sound of an approaching jeep.