Red Limit Freeway

Chapter 20

The Snark was big but fast. I chased it into a gathering whirlpool of darkness, gaining on it all the time but never catching it. It yawked and hooted up ahead somewhere, ever-elusive, a spastically-dancing figure against the coiling black lines of force whose current kept tugging me off balance as I ran. Stomach churning and head reeling, I teetered on into the dark.

But soon the maelstrom swallowed me and there was nothing for a long time.

I woke up nauseated, my head throbbing. I was on my back with my feet trussed together and hands tied behind, both arms gone numb and prickly. They had put me in the trailer behind some packing cases. I rocked back and forth until I rolled over, finding Darla face down next to me. Wilkes' simulacrum had said that everyone had been knocked out with gas. That might have been true, but Darla's symptoms were unmistakable―open glassy eyes, dull vacuous stare―which meant that a dream wand was in operation somewhere about. I realized that it might even be the one I had taken from Wilkes during the fight aboard the Laputa. Maybe the Rikkis had been carrying only one wand. And that's why the knockout gas had been necessary. I knew that a wand's effect could be thwarted by taking a simple tranquilizer; the chlorpromazine seemed to be doing its job, now that the effects of the gas had worn off, but I wondered how much time I had before the Reticulan mindcontrol device began to work its stupefying magic on me.

I looked around. If anybody noticed I had moved they might guess I was temporarily immune. I could see someone's big boots, probably Sean's, sticking out from behind the left front tire of Carl's buggy. No one else was visible from my vantage point. I waited until some circulation returned to my arms and rolled over on my back again. The trailer was silent. I listened for half a minute. It seemed no one had been charged with keeping an eye on us. I struggled to my feet and hopped away.

The wand would have to be back here somewhere― No. I remembered that the device's range was more than a city block, and walls didn't seem to stop it. I searched the forward end of the trailer by the egg-crate section. Nothing there. Well, the drugs I'd taken should hold up for several minutes at least, time enough maybe to get free of the ropes.

The small tool compartment had been emptied, doubtless by our captors as a precaution. Awkwardly holding up the lid with my bound hands, I looked over my shoulder inside to see if any of the debris at the bottom could be useful. Nothing but stray nuts and bolts, a few scraps of paper. Then I remembered a wickedly sharp edge on a piece of the astronomical equipment we were supposedly hauling (delivery was just a bit overdue), a big cabinet affair with a metal counter. I had nicked my finger on it during loading.

A sideshow contortionist would have had an easy time of it. As it was, I nearly dislocated several joints angling myself to bring my hands up against the edge of the counter, which wasn't as sharp as I had thought. They had done a good job tying me, even wrapping the forearms to prevent me from bringing my arms around by wriggling my butt and legs through. I didn't have a knife edge to work with, but luckily I had some time. The rope material wasn't strong either. It took ten minutes to cut through, and I was free.

Everybody but Carl was back here, lying like corpses among the cargo: here Suzie, there John and Roland, Lori. They were probably questioning Carl about his strange vehicle. None too gently, I feared; but Carl was a tough kid.

I had to do something fast, and quietly. The monitoring camera in the trailer was still out, victim of the mortar shell; we had never gotten around to repairing or replacing it. But no doubt they would be listening periodically for any sounds of movement. I checked my pockets. No, they hadn't searched me and found the tranquilizers. Wilkes' analog had probably reported I hadn't had the chance to take any, but they might be back here at any moment to make sure.

Ho ho.

Why hadn't Sean mentioned the shooting irons in his buggy? There they were, under the front bucket seats. Well, everyone carries weapons in their vehicle―no need to mention it. Our captors had been negligent in overlooking them; but then they had been relying on the wand. I chose a heavy beam weapon of Ryxxian make.

The only plan of attack open to me, I thought, was a frontal assault―or backal, looking at it another way. I would have to crawl through the access tube and… do what, exactly? I felt a cold anger rising, an even more murderous version of what had come over me on Talltree. To be held against my will yet again, the fourth time in less than two months! It burned me. I was more than ready to just roll through the hatch and start blasting. I'd shoot all of them, every last one of the vermin. Moore, I'd do him first, just because of his conceited smirk and the sham friendliness he had shown me. Then Wilkes, if he was around. Him I'd hand―carve, slowly, giving Sam a ringside seat. And anybody else who was part of this would get what was coming to him. I'd see to that. The only thing preventing me from sliding right through and doing it was the possibility that Carl might get caught in the middle. So I crept, commandolike. At the far end of the tube I stopped. The hatch was slightly ajar, and I could hear voices.

All too familiar ones.

I eased the hatch open just the barest centimeter and peeked.

Geof and Chubby were sitting at the breakfast nook playing cards. Standing over them, kibitzing, was our old friend Krause, the sociable sailor, who had given us a hard time back on Splash. I had more or less settled the score with these three, with Geof especially, though I regretted not shooting the bastard when I'd had the opportunity.

Someone else came through the hatch into the aft-cabin. I couldn't see him but knew whose voice it was.

"You two'll be playing hearts on bloody Doomsday!" Zack Moore growled.

"Not really much to do, guv," Chubby said lamely.

"You can bloody well get us something to eat. You've a bloody kitchen here―or haven't you noticed?"

"Have a heart, Zack," Geof said. "It was hard work cracking that safe."

"Shut up and get this out to Darrell and Jules," Moore snapped.

Geof dropped his hand of cards and caught the Black Cube.

"You get some food on," he added to Chubby.

I pushed open the hatch and aimed the gun at Moore's midsection.

"Eat this, motherfucker."

A tableau: Moore, mouth agape, standing in front of the hatch; Chubby caught in mid-rise from the table; Geof holding the Cube, gawking; Krause petrified.

Me on my belly with a monstrous weapon, wondering in the intervening few seconds whether I had it in me to cut a man down, even such a man as this, and the rest of them―mass murder? Would it be?

Somebody make a move, I pleaded silently. It'll make it easier.

But no one moved.

"We… have your friend," Moore said cautiously, gravely. Tentatively.

"You are a dead man," I stated.

"I have more men," Moore went on. "Outside. You'll never―"

"Dead," I said.

Silence.

"Nothing I can do, Zack," Corey Wilkes' voice broke in finally.

A question was forming in the air, hanging over the proceedings.

So?

The question slowly settled on me, became a vast weighty thing bearing down. Meanwhile wheels spun frantically in my head. My first shot should be to the CPU, knocking out Wilkes' simulacrum, taking the horrible chance that Sam's VEM wouldn't be damaged. I knew approximately where it was. But the angle was bad. Think, think.

"What do you want us to do, Jake?" Wilkes' computer-ghost asked mildly.

There was someone else, I knew, in the cab, waiting for Moore to either go down or get out of the way so as to get a shot off at e. I could shoot Moore and hose the hatchway, but Geof would in the meantime go for his gun. Or Krause, or Chubby.

"Oh my God," Wilkes' voice said. "Here they come, and what a time."

"Bugs?" Moore asked.

"The same."

Moore looked at me. "See here," he said. "We're not getting anywhere―"

The next few moments were very confused.

Here is approximately what happened. The lights dimmed a little. Things and people began to sail around the cabin. I found myself floating up off the bottom of the crawl tube and coasting out into the air, finding it extremely difficult to move. An invisible wrapping covered me, a rubbery, yielding envelope of force. Coming out from the tube, I rose, did a midair backward somersault and bounced gently off the ceiling. Krause was levitating below me, and Moore below him. Chubby and Geof were twirling in air over the breakfast nook, struggling frantically against the unseen bundling that covered them. Other things were afloat, every object in the cabin that had been loose: cups, spoons, cards, somebody's sock―one of mine that had been left lying under the cot, I guess―and the Black Cube, which Geof had apparently let go.

It was difficult to move, but not impossible. I strained against the envelope and got my feet flat against the ceiling. Then I pushed off and rammed into Krause, rather into his envelope, which yielded sluggishly. I pushed him out of the way, brought my gun arm around and aimed at Moore, who slowly wafted up at me. I squeezed the trigger and nothing happened. With considerable effort, Moore brought his pistol around and tried the same thing. Same result. I let go of the pistol. It hung close to my hand, rotating lazily. Arms outstretched, Moore came up to meet me, and we grappled clumsily. I aimed a kick at his groin and missed, though it would have landed with the force of a thousand snowflakes at least. Moore tried a chop at my neck which I blocked, grabbing his envelope and compressing it until I felt my hand close about his wrist. He flailed at me with his other arm, to little effect, then kicked at my midsection, catching me good enough to send me spinning away, but I held on to his wrist. Finding myself against the ceiling again, I pushed off with my might and slammed into him, sending us plummeting toward the breakfast nook. His head whanged off the edge of the little table, which under ordinary circumstances would have knocked him out. With the envelope acting as a cushion, he was merely disoriented. I got my hands around his neck and squeezed, concentrating all my force and will. He brought his forearms up through mine in the standard countermove but couldn't raise them high enough. Transformed by rage, the muscles of my body became taut wire cable, the hoop of my arms a ring of power conducting furious white energy. The invisible envelope slowly gave until Moore's eyes went wide and filled with fear. There was a madman on him who wouldn't let go.

"Tell me now," I said through clenched teeth, "about how you'll abuse those women and make me watch. Tell me. I want to hear it."

"Bastard!" he hissed. "You―"

"In detail. Tell me."

The pressure got to his throat. He gurgled, gave up trying to bring his arms through, seized my wrists and began vainly to tug at them. His kicks were weaker now. I ignored them. His head drifted under the table. I yanked and whacked his face against the underside. It felt good and the sound was most satisfactory. I did it again.

"Tell me," I kept repeating with each thwack. His body went limp but I did not stop choking him.

A current of force caught us then, whooshing us out from under the nook and toward the hatchway. In the air, a flurry of objects swirled about us, more than could possibly have been loose. The doors and drawers of the kitchen cabinets were open, spewing out streams of utensils, dishes, cups and such. They too seemed to be heading in the general direction of the cab. We drifted through the hatch and my grip weakened. The distraction of what was happening deflected my concentration, and my fury began to subside.

But when I saw what they had been doing to Carl, my wrath doubled and redoubled. He tumbled beside me nude from the waist down. Wires dangled from his scrotum, to which they were affixed by tape. The wires led to a small battery and switch affair floating nearby. Carl was fumblingly trying to pick the tape off, encircled by trailing lengths of rope by which he had been tied to one of the back seats. I tried to tighten my grip on Moore's enormous neck but couldn't. The envelope had stiffened. I lost my hold completely and drifted away. Moore was unconscious, his face dark and bloated, but I couldn't tell whether I had killed him. He might still have been breathing. Another of Moore's henchmen was in the cab. I kicked at his face as I flew by, then tried to push myself off the front port and back to Moore to finish the job. Drifting objects got in my way and I batted at them like flies. They were everywhere: pencils, lading sheets, binocular case, backpacks, shoes, a packet of feminine napkins, the druggy contents of the medicine chest, somebody's lost sandal, dishes, scraps of paper, a moldy dinner roll, books, a pipette reader, the Ahgirr maps… all the junk that had accumulated over the past month and which everyone agreed needed to be cleaned up―tomorrow, maybe.

I had just about reached Moore again when both the cab's gull-wing hatches sprang open. The explosive decompression drove everything and everyone out of the rig and into the hard vacuum of the immense chamber.

But I could breathe. The invisible envelope held, trapped air. As I drifted upward, tumbling and turning, I wondered how much and how long it would last.

Soon my rotation slowed, not due to any effort on my part, and I could see the action below. There were Bugs everywhere, maybe about thirty of them, flittering here and about and from vehicle to vehicle, all of which were spewing an endless stream of objects and people from sprung hatches. The rig vomited clouds of jetsam from both ends. All our equipment and stores came flying out, including the astronomical gear―minus its protective wrappings. The whole gang too: Darla, Sean, Susan, Lori, the Voloshins, George and Winnie (where the hell had they been, I wondered), John, Roland, and Liam, all freed from their bindings and from the spell of the dream wand. Wide-eyed and disoriented, Darla passed me as we ascended. Then Lori went by, and I tried to wave. She saw me and shouted something but made no sound at all. She looked very frightened. I didn't blame her. I was scared bowelless myself.

Everything rose, tumbling, wobbling, spinning lazily. At about the height of fifty meters, the ascent stopped. Everything then proceeded to form into a vast swirling cloud like a flock of migrating birds, orbiting about a point on the floor of the chamber around which the Bugs were arranging themselves into a circle.

The scene was dreamlike; everything transpired in perfect silence. I could hear myself as I shouted and called out to everyone, but no sound conducted through the vacuum between individual force-envelopes. No reason why it should, I thought, so I shut up.

The cloud of junk and people began to order itself, forming spiraling lines leading down. During the reshuffling, I was astonished to see Wilkes―the genuine flesh-and-blood Corey Wilkes―go wafting past. He was naked from the waist up and wore white pajama bottoms. His chest was wrapped with white bandages. He looked as if he was having trouble breathing. His eyes seemed to find me as he passed. Dim recognition formed in his expression for a moment, then his eyes closed and he floated out of my ken. It was a reunion up there. Twrrrll, the surviving Reticulan, ghosted by, zoom-lens eyes fixing me in an insensate stare.

If Wilkes had been a shock, the sight of Ragna coming in for a docking maneuver had me reeling. In spite of myself, I yelled out, "Ragna! What the hell are you doing here!!??"

Well, he answered, and what he said was probably something like "Greetings, Jake, my friend of the bosom! Is this not of immense interestinghood?" or words to that effect, if his idiotically effusive smile was any indication. A slight perturbation of his orbit took him away, with his wife Oni following. I groaned.

I saw men I didn't recognize; other members of Moore's gang of cutthroats no doubt.

Above the circle of Roadbugs a gigantic cyclonic funnel took shape. Currents of force carried junk in spiraling patterns down to make a wide circuit in front of the Bugs, then back up again through the funnel and into the hovering cloud of people and debris. It seemed the Bugs wanted to inspect us and every doodad and whatnot we owned. I found myself in the funnel in short order, and began a dizzying descent in a quickly tightening gyre. As I neared the bottom, though, everything stopped.

They had found the. Cube.

The circle of Bugs drew tighter. In the dim light of the chamber I could barely see a black dot making the inspection circuit by itself, pausing briefly in front of each Bug before moving on. The Cube made the circuit twice, and that seemed to be enough. The funnel cloud began twisting downward again and I found myself parading before the assembled inspectors, floating single file with an assortment of digging tools. I had a momentary fantasy, imagining what was going through the Bugs' minds―if they had minds―as they categorized and cataloged everything.

Inanimate: implement; inanimate: foodstuff; inanimate: (unclassifiable); animate: being (semisentient, bipedal, mammalian); Inanimate: apparel (covering for pedal extremities)…

They found me of little interest but paused for a moment to better scrutinize George and Winnie. Then I gravitated up into the cyclone again, a helical course until I returned to take my place in the huge swirling galaxy of stuff and people above.

I looked down. Carl's Chevy was rising on its own special updraft. When the funnel cloud had dissipated, it floated down to rest on the floor in the middle of the circle. The Bugs crowded even closer together to get a better look at it―if that was what they were doing. None of the car's hatches opened and none of its contents came out. They spent a good ten seconds looking it over, then backed off, apparently either satisfied with what they saw, or despairing of ever making sense of it.

The strip-search was over―none too soon, because I was finding each succeeding breath more difficult to draw.

What happened next happened quickly. The cloud of stuff broke apart, its elements falling precipitously, but gathering into a dozen or so individual streams. I fell, my stomach flipping over even though the sensation wasn't like an ordinary fall. I started tumbling, tried to stop but couldn't. Blizzards of junk accompanied me. Somebody's shirt covered my face and I brushed it off. Then a tool box bumped into my protective envelope but didn't hit me. I grew disoriented and slightly nauseated. The last few moments of the ordeal were mercifully quick, and I can't describe exactly how I got there, but the next thing I knew I was back in the cab again. A cataract of debris followed me through the hatch, spilling onto the deck in an ever-rising tide. John shot through the hatch, then Susan, then Roland, followed by the rest of our party including the Voloshins. None of Moore's gang appeared. Then my invisible wrapping ceased to exist and I fell headfirst into the lake of junk. The hatches slammed shut and there was silence.

Someone was standing on my legs. I twisted, and whoever it was fell over. I surfaced from the junk, tried standing up. My leg oozed into a pile of loose crap, sending me over. I grabbed the back of the shotgun seat and pulled myself up.

"Interesting weather we've been having," a reassuringly familiar voice said.

"Sam!"

"Yup, I'm back."

The cab was, needless to say, a god-awful mess. Several minutes went by and we still hadn't found Winnie. Eventually she turned up under a mound of bedding, unhurt. She jumped up on me, and squeezed me in a hug.

"Hello, Winnie honey," I said soothingly. "It's okay, girl. It's okay."

I realized that the rig was moving.

"Hey, Sam," I said. "Where are we going?"

"You got me," he said. " I ain't driving."