Rolltown

XIV

In the very first flush of dawn, Bat Hardin took off his police car. He wasn’t pulling his mobile home. He had left it for Ferd Zogbaum to draw behind his camper. It would slow Ferd down but he’d be able to manage.

Bat and his deputies had been lining the town up for the past two hours and it was as ready to roll as it would ever be. There had been a great buzz of excitement but for some reason everybody had tended to speak in whispers.

He had both Al Castro and Luke Robertson on his car phone; the screen split so that both of their faces could be there at once.

He passed Linares. The town was dead at this hour of the morning. When he was two kilometers along the road he looked at Al Castro and said, “Okay, Al, let the town roll.”

Al Castro yawned mightily and murmured, “Here we come.”

They had agreed to attempt to keep at a one hundred kilometer an hour clip, if possible, and Bat Hardin remained at that speed. Light was coming on fast now and his head was continually in motion, peering to the right of the road, to the left, continually checking his rear vision mirrors.

He kept in continual communication with Al Castro and Luke Robertson, checking their speeds. Everything was going fine. All during the night, the town’s mechanics had worked on the engines of any electro-steamers that were suspect of possible breakdown. Thus far, all was tight, no stragglers.

At almost the exact spot where he had been halted the morning before, he came to a sudden halt. Leaning nonchalantly against a lone mesquite tree by the side of the road was the one they had called José. He seemed to be alone, nor was there any cover in the immediate vicinity which might have held others.

Bat said into the phone screen, “Al.”

“Yeah.”

“Slow down to about twenty-five. One of the clowns who picked me up yesterday is here.”

“Okay.”

His Gyro-jet carbine, which fired the exact same 9mm rocket shell as the pistol which had been appropriated yesterday, was on the seat beside him but he left it there. The other had no weapon#longdash#in hand, at least.

Bat got out of the car and approached. José stood erect and looked at him scornfully.

“So, gringo, you didn’t bother to listen to our warning.”

Bat said, “Some did. About a hundred of our mobile homes turned back to return to Texas.”

“It isn’t enough,” the other told him. “This is your last warning, gringo. Turn back now and return to the States or what will happen is your own fault.”

Bat shook his head. “We’ve made our decision. We have permission of the Mexican authorities to enter and travel through Mexico.” He added, “As you know, there are women and children and elderly people in this town.”

“We did not ask them to come to our country,” the other said flatly. “They too contribute to the corruption that you gringos bring wherever you go.”

Bat Hardin, in a quick flow of motion, stepped closer and drove his left fist into the other’s stomach. José, his eyes popping in agony, folded forward and Bat slugged him brutally in the jaw. The Mexican collapsed onto the ground. Bat reached down and frisked him. The other was out cold.

Bat Hardin grunted satisfaction as he retrieved the Gyro-jet pistol which had been taken from him the previous morning. He stuck it into his belt and returned to his car.

He said into the car phone screen, “Okay, Al, back to full speed. Ignore the seeming corpse at the side of the road, if he’s still there when you go by. He’s just unconscious. Ran into my fist by accident.”

“Fun and games,” Al said.

Bat said to Luke, even as he got his car under way, “Everybody still keeping up?”

“Seem to be,” Luke said.

They rolled on past the tiny town of Iturbide, also still asleep, only one or two sleepily shuffling locals on the streets, going about the duties of those whose work demands early rising.

Bat was doubly alert now and unconsciously chewing away at his lip. He said to Al and Luke, “That fellow I slugged knew that we were coming.”

Luke said, “How could he have, Bat?”

“Somebody told him.”

There was no answer to that.

They were getting out of the mountains now, and Bat Hardin felt moderately happier. He hadn’t liked being caught in the canyons, mountain crags to both sides that could have sheltered snipers. For that matter, an enemy knowledgeable about dynamite could have, with a comparatively small charge, set off an avalanche that might have buried a score of homes. And he might have done it in such a manner that the police would have had their work cut out finding evidence that the landslide had not been an act of God.

However, they left the mountains behind them and shortly passed still another small hamlet, Puerto Pastores. By now, the morning was more advanced and a score of Mexicans stood watching New Woodstock go by. Evidently, mobile towns were more of a novelty on this by-road than they were on the larger highways.

It was only forty-five kilometers to San Roberto and Bat realized that they were going to make it to the Pan American Highway without difficulty. If there was going to be an attack, it would already have taken place. The best spots for an ambush were all behind them. Don Caesar’s vigilantes simply hadn’t materialized.

It had been a bluff. A well-acted bluff, but a bluff. However, Bat still didn’t like it. Something didn’t quite ring true. He had no doubt about the sincerity of Don Caesar, José and the others. They desperately wished to end the flood of mobile towns that were inundating their country. But what possibly could have been accomplished by the phony threat? Of course, a hundred homes had turned back but that wasn’t a drop in the bucket. The vigilantes had accomplished nothing to end the flow of more than twenty towns and cities a day coming over the border.

He put it from his mind.

Shortly, they came to the end of Route E-60 and entered the wide Pan American Highway at the town of San Roberto. Without halting, Bat Hardin turned left and headed south. He had, thus far, continued to remain a full two kilometers before the convoy but now he dropped speed until Al Castro caught up with him.

Bat said into the phone screen, “Okay, we can relax a bit now. However, still no stragglers. I want to put as much distance as possible between us and Linares.”

“Righto,” Al said, “The precautions didn’t hurt us any.” He yawned. “I didn’t really expect anything to happen anyway. We have something like four hundred men with guns in this town. You’d need a small army to take us.”

Bat flicked Al and Luke off his phone screen and dialed a road map of this vicinity and checked it. The Pan American Highway at this point wasn’t automated so they’d have to remain on manual controls. That was all right with him.

He flicked the map off and said, “New Woodstock, Dean Armanruder.”

Armanruder’s face faded in. He was evidently sitting next to Nadine Paskov in his swank electro-steamer which drew one section of his mobile mansion. Bat knew that usually Manuel Chauvez drove the other section and that his wife, Concha, drove the smaller mobile home which was the living quarters of the two servants.

Dean Armanruder said testily, “See here, Hardin, the past hundred kilometers and more I’ve several times tried to get in touch with you to give instructions. I couldn’t get you.”

“Sorry, sir,” Bat said. “I’ve had my screen on Al Castro and Luke Robertson continually so we’d be in instant touch if anything came up.”

“Well, what did you call me for now?”

“I suggest we drive all the way through to San Luis Potosi and put as much space between us and our anti-American friends as we can. It’s a fairly big city and listed as having several sites. You could call ahead, to be sure, for reservations for New Woodstock.”

“How far is it?”

“Three hundred and twenty kilometers.”

“That’s a pretty long drag for a mobile town.”

“Yes, sir, but we’ve got an early start. And I suggest we not stop for lunch.”

The former magnate said testily, “Is this going to be a recommendation of yours every day, all the way to Peru?”

Bat said, “No, sir. I’m in no more of a hurry, ordinarily, than anyone else but the sooner we get a good many kilometers between us and Don Caesar and his boys the happier I’ll be.”

“It seems to me, Hardin, that you’re taking over a good deal of the running of this town.”

Bat sighed inwardly. “Not deliberately, Mr. Armanruder. But I’m the town cop and we were being threatened.”

“Well, just remember that New Woodstock is governed by an executive committee elected by the citizens.”

Bat said, but gently, “Whose decisions have to be passed upon by the assembly of all town adults.”

“Of course. Very well, Hardin, I’ll put it to the vote, whether to press on all the way to San Luis Potosi and to skip stopping for lunch.” His face faded.

Bat grunted. He sometimes wondered at his desire to hold down this job. What did he get out of it? Not even a bit of gratitude from such as Dean Armanruder and the open dislike of such as Jeff Smith.

Bat Hardin wondered who had voted for that worthy to take over Bat’s office. But then it came to him. Whoever the traitor was that had kept Don Caesar and his people informed as to the movements of the town had also wanted Bat out and someone less competent in the crucial office of town police officer. That was an interesting thought.

San Luis Potosi was the most modern and progressive Mexican city they had as yet seen. Situated, as it was, on the Pan American Highway and the principal route from the States to Mexico City, it was well-equipped with sites for mobile towns. In fact, they spread out far over the countryside and, in area, were actually larger than the city itself, though it would seem doubtful if all the sites were ever completely occupied at one time.

There were three grades of sites, the smallest, ultra-luxurious with a fine complement of stores, restaurants and even nightclubs and theatres. The least well-equipped was by far the largest and was aimed at mobile towns and cities largely occupied by persons with no other income than their NIT. However, even the accommodations at this site must have seemed exotic to the average Mexican, if the complaints of Don Caesar and his men were to be taken literally.

Dean Armanruder had called ahead for reservations and had been accepted, in spite of the fact that two other towns were at present parked in San Luis Potosi, evidently, like New Woodstock, on their way through to points further south. Their town, art colony that it was, seldom took on the expense of renting space in sites of the more swank variety. Although some of New Woodstock’s citizens were wealthy, a considerably larger element were on NIT and had to watch expenditures. Here, in San Luis Potosi, they drove to the cheapest site available.

Bat Hardin, as usual, parked near the administration building and before setting up his own home drifted about the town to see that all was well. Evidently it was. They’d had excellent luck all day with not a single breakdown. The town had kept well together, much more so than usual. New Woodstock’s artists were usually apt to be on the philosophical side and sometimes, on a long haul, the town might be stretched out several hundred kilometers. In fact, often single units or small groups would drop behind for days. It made life a misery for the town policeman who would have preferred more cohesion.

Bat, sauntering alone, passed Jeff Smith who was setting up his overly large home; overly large in view of its single occupant. Smith’s mobile home wasn’t nearly so big as that of Armanruder or Blake, nor even Sam Prager’s, although the Prager establishment included the workshop, of course.

Jeff Smith looked up at him and snorted contempt. “Vigilantes,” he said.

Bat ignored him and went on. He was afraid that the southerner wasn’t going to make out in New Woodstock. Actually, he was sorry. He couldn’t like the man, but Smith was the only musical composer that the art colony boasted and could have been expected to break down, eventually, and have presented some of his work at community affairs.

All seemed in order, but everyone so tired from the strain of the day and the long drive that it was a matter of a quick evening meal and then to bed. Bat returned to his own home and went through the automatic motions of setting it up.

He went inside and dialed himself a tequila sour on the automatic bar. He could use the drink; he’d been, through a lot, and had gotten precious little sleep the last couple of nights.

Glass in hand, he slumped into the most comfortable chair and automatically looked over at his small collection of books. But, the hell with it, he was too tired to read.

On his phone screen, he dialed the local road map again and checked. Queretaro was the next major city, two hundred and three kilometers to the south. That would probably be their next stop. It was far enough, in that they’d been pushing themselves for the past several days. They had made their decision to make the trek to South America while parked in the vicinity of New Orleans and had kept on the road since then. Some of the younger children, in particular, were getting tired. He supposed that they would make at least a several days’ stop at Mexico City to rest up, make any repairs that had accumulated, shop for major items that might not be available in the smaller cities to the south, and allow time for those who had never seen the Mexican capital before doing some sightseeing. He checked. Oaxaca was a fairly good-sized town but otherwise the next major city to the south of Mexico City was Guatemala, in that country.

There was a knock on his door and he said, “Come on in.”

It was Diana Sward, for once wearing a shirt, due to the cool of the Mexican evening.

She looked about the room and swore, “Damn it, every time I come into a bachelor’s home I notice all over again how much neater you are than a single female. Why don’t you mess it up a little, just in the way of creating an air of comfort?”

He laughed at that, even as she sank down onto the couch, without invitation, stretching her long shapely legs out before her.

He didn’t ask her the reason for her visit. It wasn’t the first time Di Sward had dropped in to chat. Alone, as was he, she sometimes spent a couple of hours with him just for the companionship. Diana Sward was a man’s woman, and didn’t particularly have any close feminine friends. There was something in her that the other women didn’t seem to take to. Not that she had active foes in New Woodstock, to any extent, it was just that she wasn’t the type to sit about and exchange gossip with the town’s married women.

He went over to the bar. “Drink?”

“Do you have pseudo-whiskey?”

“No, you can’t have whiskey.”

“Why not?”

“Because you’re in Mexico. Drink the local product. In Mexico, drink tequila, mescal or Kahlua.”

“You’re a hard man, Hardin. What’s Kahlua?”

“A liqueur based on coffee,” he told her. “And one of the best liqueurs in the world.”

“Sounds too sweet. What are you drinking?”

“A tequila sour.”

“You talked me into it.”

He dialed another tequila sour and took it over to her and then returned to his own chair.

They sipped for a moment in silence. Finally, she said, “Remember that conversation we had about I.Q.?”

“Sure.”

“I’ve been thinking about it. I wonder if the question has ever occurred to anyone, is it desirable to breed for greater intelligence?”

He scowled at her. “How do you mean, Di?”

“Well, take greater height. Why is being a six-footer or over desirable? Why is the average height of the Japanese, slightly over five feet, not just as good, or better? Certainly, in the old days when men slugged it out with swords, or when they worked with a shovel or plow, physical size was desired, but why now? We don’t usually think of a man who weighs over two hundred as being in the best of shape, but we seem to have an absolute mania to be over six feet and to have a genius-level I.Q. Why? Has it ever been indicated, not to say proven, that the man with an I.Q. of 150 is happier than one with an I.Q. of 100? The genius, as well as the moron, is a misfit in society. Do we want to be smarter, or happier? If it is the pursuit of happiness that is our primary interest, then perhaps we should not seek, as a race, a high intelligence quotient.”

Bat thought about it, for some reason slightly irritated. The subject was not a favorite one with him. He said, finally, slowly, “Man is a thinking animal, Di. If it wasn’t for our superior intelligence we never would have gotten out of the caves.”

“All right. I’m not contending that we ought to breed for morons, just that we also shouldn’t make a fetish of the highest I.Q.s. Back when we were in the caves both intelligence and physical strength were necessary or the individual perished. So our I.Q. was bred up.”

Bat said, “As a matter of fact, I understand that not only Cro-Magnon but even Neanderthal man had a larger brain than modern man.”

“All right. But what I meant is, man has largely licked the problems he was confronted with in his infancy. We’ve defeated our animal enemies. We’ve conquered nature, at least to the extent that we can now produce all of our needs in abundance. All right. Isn’t it time we took stock and decided where we want to go from here? We’ve achieved the necessities of life, now shouldn’t we resume the pursuit of happiness?”

“Whatever that is,” Bat said sourly. “Anyway, it’s a great idea that possibly the average person, with his I.Q. of 100, is just as happy, or possibly happier, than one with 150. The trouble is, under the Meritocracy, I.Q. is what counts. And if you’re ambitious and want to get ahead in present-day society, you’d best have one in the upper brackets.”

She set her glass down and leaned forward slightly. “That’s what I mean. Maybe Ferd Zogbaum is correct. Maybe this Meritocracy of ours isn’t the end of the line so far as social evolution is concerned, if there’s ever an end.”

Bat said impatiently, “It’s true that in production today not all jobs require a high intelligence. There are various operations, the sensory-manipulative operations that are involved in handling a power shovel, for instance, which have no appreciable educational or intellectual requirements and which do not lend themselves to automatic processes. But the overwhelming majority of useful jobs today do require high I.Q. and there is simply little place for we who are not particularly bright, to put it bluntly.”

It was her turn to shake her head in despair. “You still sound like a goddamned professor of something or other to me,” she said. “And here you say you’re subnormal intellectually. But that was the very point I was trying to make.”

He regarded her, still frowning.

She said urgently. “Don’t you see? All members of society should be useful members of society. If they aren’t, something snaps sooner or later. Look at the Roman proletariat. At present, under the Meritocracy, things are temporarily going along well enough, perhaps. The people were raised too long in the tradition that it was a good thing to get something for nothing, feather-bedding, and so forth. Beating the rap was admirable; they even idealized bankrobbers and other criminals. But now that the ultimate in pay without work has been reached, the first stirrings of second thought are to be found. I think that instinctively a man strives. He may be seduced away from the desire to work, to strive. He may, but if so it is a temporary thing, as the history of the race goes. Man wants to work and achieve. The so-called fireman sitting in the cab of a locomotive seven hours a day without a single thing to do, since the locomotive is electric, is not a happy man. Certainly, the pay is good, and everybody tells him he is getting away with it, but he isn’t a happy man. If he is, he’s a sick man. If his fellows were contemptuous of him rather than pretending admiration, he’d get himself something else to do.”

Bat made a gesture of impatience. “But the fact remains that there is no place for us in modern production. A fraction of the people can handle all of the jobs. Maybe it’s not good for the rest of us to sit around, idle, but there’s no alternative.”

She leaned forward still further, her elbows on her knees and her voice very earnest.

She said, “Then we’ve got to make some changes. Back before we licked the problems of production of abundance that was, and had to be, the main goal of the race. Food, clothing, shelter, medicine, education, recreation for all, in abundance. But now that we’ve gained the goals, let’s stop a minute and look around. How about the arts, how about the handicrafts? Ours has become a synthetic world, why not devote these surplus energies of ours, devote the leisure time that hangs so heavily, into some of the old virtues? My grandfather mentions that when he was a boy practically everybody played some musical instrument. There was a bandstand in every park and at least one band in every town, no matter how small. Women used to sew, knit, crochet, embroider, make quilts and so forth. Have you ever seen some of those handmade quilts in a museum and compared them with the mass-produced things that we put on our beds today?”

Bat was chewing away on his lip. He said, “Some people already go into the arts; yourself, for instance. But not everybody has talent. And most are too lazy, if they don’t have to, to bother with doing ceramics, weaving cloth, quilting, or whatever.”

“Perhaps they are now, but that’s our problem,” she told him. “We’ve got to educate our people to want to do them. Take cooking. Cooking has become automated#longdash#and it tastes like it. Why, the person who could afford decent food a hundred years ago wouldn’t have dreamed of eating the tasteless stuff that we down these days. Never has food been more beautifully packaged, been so adulterated, and tasted so poorly. And music. For all practical purposes, it’s all canned these days. Sometimes I think that a few dozen musicians are turning out all the music for the country. How long has it been since you’ve seen a live musician? How long has it been since you’ve seen live theatre?”

Bat said doggedly, “It doesn’t make sense in this day for there to be live theatres, employing tens of thousands of actors, when a cast of twenty can entertain fifty million persons at a time over TV.”

“Like hell it doesn’t,” she said. “That’s exactly the point I was trying to make. I’m beginning to suspect that Ferd is right. Our present society needs a little subverting. What time is it?” She brought her pocket phone from her jeans and dialed for the time.

“Good Jesus,” she said. “Is it that late? I better get going. I assume we’re off to a fairly early start in the morning.”

Bat shrugged. “Not necessarily. We’ll probably only go about two hundred kilometers, so there’s no rush to get rolling.” He stood to show her to the door.

But Diana didn’t return immediately to her own trailer.

Her sexual binge with Ferd Zogbaum had been possibly the most satisfying she had ever known. It wasn’t just that her lover had been tireless, though heavens knew he was possibly the only man she had ever slept with who had truly satiated her. It was also that they were in rapport. He obviously liked her, was attracted to her, as much as she was to him. It is difficult to prevaricate in bed, in a sexual relationship, or, at least, she had always thought so. She knew, instinctively, that he adored her body. She also knew, from the easygoing association she had had with the aspiring writer over the past weeks, that he was intellectually compatible with her.

Now she approached his camper and knocked at the door. She made no effort at all to be stealthy. Not in New Woodstock. Nobody could have cared less if she was having an affair with the popular Ferd Zogbaum. In fact, if anybody discovered the development they undoubtedly would have been happy for them both. Probably half of the so-called married folk in town were actually living in what was once known as sin.

She knocked at the door.

He opened and looked at her and made a humor face and said, “Oh, no, not again.”

“Oh yes,” she said. “Stand aside, young man. We’re going to play yes and no once more.”

“I surrender.”

She said, “Oh, darling, whatever is going to happen to us?”

“Yes.”

“But it can never be a normal relationship. Not with you continually having to be on guard with everything you say to me.”

“No.”

“I love you, Ferd Zogbaum.”

There was no answer. They kissed again, hotly.

“There is no answer, is there, darling?”

“No.”

“Even if it was possible for us to have a… permanent relationship, they wouldn’t allow it, would they? I’m an alien, an off-beat artist, a Bohemian#longdash#”

“Yes.”

“You mean they wouldn’t allow it?”

“Yes.”

She slumped a bit in his arms. “All we can have is this?”

“Yes.”

“Or they’ll drag you back to prison#longdash#or to more brain surgery?”

“Yes.”

“Let’s get undressed.”

They were resting between bouts.

She said, “Ferd, can you answer yes or no questions about this conspiracy to commit subversion against this government of yours?”

He hesitated for a long moment before saying cautiously, “Yes.”

“They can’t monitor your thoughts as such, eh? Just the words you think and if you get emotionally upset by committing violence.”

He hesitated again.

She said, “There’s more to it then that, eh?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I don’t suppose I’d understand it even if you could explain. Brain surgery isn’t exactly my strong point. Did you belong to an organization in the States?”

Hesitation. Then, “Yes.”

“Whose purpose was to start a new kind of government?”

“Yes.”

“Was it a very large organization?”

“No.”

“Do you think someday it will win out?”

Ferd hesitated still once again before saying, “Yes.” It was an extremely difficult manner in which to learn much about what he believed in. She knew perfectly well that he would have preferred to answer in more detail, to have qualified some of his yes and no answers.

She would have liked to find out just what this organization of Ferd’s foresaw as a more desirable socio-economic system than Meritocracy. But it was too complicated a question under the circumstances.

Something came to her. “Could you write out answers to questions I asked you?”

“No.”

“Hmmm. That’s one hell of a complicated electronic bug they’ve planted in your bonnet, friend.”

“Yes.”