Starrigger

11

When we got back to the car, John was sitting in the front seat with his legs hanging out the door, grinning at us. Winnie was playing in the sand very near, drawing figures with a piece of shell. I grinned back, welcoming his change of mood.

"Where're your two kamradas?" I asked.

He pointed to the nearby tree, in the shade of which Roland and Susan lay wrapped up into a ball.

"They seemed to've patched things up," I said.

"Yes, they have," he said approvingly. There wasn't the least hint of jealousy. "How was the water?"

"Fine, but the sea life is a little too interesting."

'Trouble?"

"No, not really." I sat down on the front seat, wishing I had a cigarette. I tried to forget about it, looked up the beach to the causeway. No traffic as yet. I took the key from the dash and tried calling Sam. No answer. What if he didn't come through? I'd miss him, but we did have a vehicle. But no food… hmmm. And no money. What passed for coin-of-the-realm outside the known mazes? No doubt we'd find out. Food. God, was I hungry. How long? Supper last night, nothing since then. I sighed, then slipped the key into my pants pocket.

After a while, Roland and Susan gathered themselves together and walked over.

"Hi," Susan said to me, smiling a little sheepishly.

"Hello, Susan."

She seemed calm, even content. It was quite a change. "Well," she said brightly, "we seem to have… to've gone and done it, haven't we?"

"Yes, we have. I'm sorry."

She shook her head. "No need. I pretty much understand it all now. Roland is right about you. You're definitely a nexus for us." She laughed and crinkled her nose. "More Teelie talk. What it means is―"

"I think I understand," I said. Then, realizing I'd interrupted her again, I said, "Sorry, you were explaining. Go ahead."

"It doesn't matter. I get interrupted a lot mainly because I talk too damn much. I'll tell you later."

"Okay, but again, I'm sorry."

She drew near me and put her hand behind my neck, bent down, and was about to kiss me, but looked first toward Darla, as if to see if it was okay. Darla was crouching beside Winnie, watching her draw. Then Susan kissed me sweetly.

"You did what you had to do, Jake," she said. "It wasn't your fault. You have a Plan too."

"I do? And here I thought I was improvising so brilliantly."

"No, no. Your task is to discover the Plan first, then go with it, accept it."

"Uh-huh. Karma."

"No, not karma. Karma is another word for fate, predestination. A Plan is just that. A scheme, a plot, something to follow. Plans can be changed, but only if they have linkage ^vith the overall design of things."

"I see. Okay, I'll try." What could I say?

She kissed me again, then went over to see what Winnie and Darla were up to.

"Hmmmm." Roland's voice came from behind me.

I turned on the seat. He was studying the instrument panel again.

He looked at me. "I think I've finally figured out the beam weapon, if that's what this is all about," he said, indicating an area of readouts on the fire-control board. "By the way, did you notice that this whole business disappeared after we got through the portal?"

"No," I said, not oversurprised that Roland had had the presence of mind to notice anything amidst all the excitement.

"Must be automatic. Pops out when the defensive systems detect a threat ― that missile, for instance. But the driver can make it come out anytime. Here." He showed me a small button on the steering column. "Don't fret. Everyone was well away from the vehicle when I pushed it. That'll make the board appear when the driver perceives a danger that the car doesn't." He pointed to the beam-weapon controls. "Anyway, this thing…" He broke off and shook his head. '"Sic 'im, Fido'," he repeated. He turned to me with a bemused smile. "Isn't that the strangest thing?"

"Well, not really," I said. "The owner obviously wanted to confuse anyone who stole the car. Like us. Me."

"Then why label anything?"

"A good point. Poor memory?" Actually, the fact that the owner clearly had a sense of humor might explain it better, I thought.

"Well, who knows. At any rate, you choose a target simply by doing this." He touched a finger to the scanner screen, covering a blip with his fingertip, then withdrew it. Lines on the screen converged and the blip was centered in a flashing red circle. "That locks the system on target. And the fire switch is here."

"What have you got there?"

"The tree, I think. The thing's probably calibrated to ignore ground clutter, but that tree's a bit tall."

I looked around the immediate area. A few vehicles were parked a good distance behind us. The Weird Bastard's roadster was gone, and everyone in our party was toward the rear of the car. Then I looked at the tree. It was a shaggy, scrubby thing, not what you'd call attractive. The car was angled a little to the left of it.

"I take it the car's orientation doesn't matter."

"Doubt it," Roland said.

"Okay. Well, hold your fire for just a minute."

I got out, went over to the tree and took the grandest pee of my life. I'd been lucky to keep it in so long. Back on the Skyway there had been moments…

I walked back to the car and slid behind the wheel again. "Okay, Gunnery Sergeant. Fire when ready."

"Right." He hit the switch.

Something left the right underside of the car, something big and glowing, a writhing shape of swirling red fire, screeching like a hellbeast on the loose. The sound sent a cold twinge down my spine. The shape was vague, but there was something alive in there, a suggestion of a living form, limbs churning, legs moving over the ground, but the shape changed as it moved and parts of the phenomenon spun like a dust devil. It was big, at least three times as high as the car, and moved quickly, catlike, taking only a second or so to cover the distance from the car to its target. Furious flames enveloped the tree, then fiery arms surrounded it and tore it from the ground by the roots, flinging it up into the whirlwind where it was tossed and battered about as it burned. Flaming limbs flew in every direction. And all the while the shape of the cloud was shifting, changing, and the sound was like nothing you'd want to hear ever again. The tree was thrashed and ripped apart, tumbling in a vortex of demonic combustion. It went on for some time.

When there was nothing left, the phenomenon dissipated, fading into the air. All that remained were smoking fragments in the sand. Thin smoke rose from where the tree had been.

I found that I'd been'' gripping the wheel very tightly. I relaxed and sat back.

After a long silence Roland said, "So that was Fido." "Yeah." I suppressed a shudder. The thing had really gotten to me. "Any ideas?"

Roland thought about it. "Energy matrix of some kind." What had gotten to me was the maniacal single-mindedness of the thing. True, its target had been only a tree, but I had the feeling it would have done the same job on anything in the known universe. Anything. And not stop till the job was done. "I take it that by 'matrix' you mean energy molded by some kind of stasis field?"

"Either that, or it was an unimaginable sort of life form." "Life form? Good God." Right then I admitted to myself that-this vehicle was giving me a good case of the leaping creeps.

"Actually," Roland said, "I don't have a clue as to what it might have been."

"Yeah." I had no idea either, and wanted to drop the subject. I got out of the car, a little unsteadily. Up and down the shore as well as inland, people and beings were clambering into their buggies and moving away. I didn't blame them. John, Susan,

Darla, and Winnie were lying prone in the sand, looking up at me with shocked bewilderment, except Winnie, who still had her head tucked under Darla's arm.

"Sorry, folks," I said. "Should have warned you, but we weren't expecting anything like" ― I motioned over my shoulder―"whatever the hell that was."

They all began to pick themselves up. I went back to inspect the rear of the car, where the storage compartment was. There's another term for this area, but it eluded me. Black clumps of solidified tackyball still clung to the metal, some to the back window. I hit them with the heel of my hand until they snapped off. It had been a big gamble, but I had banked on the possibility that the hull of this strange vehicle would not admit a permanent bond. I'd won. The stuff had bonded superficially, but wasn't up to taking a sudden shear stress. I wondered if we'd seen the end of the surprises-the car had in store.

I went around to me front again, stepping over the drawings Winnie had etched in the sand, now partially erased. From what I could see, the figures were vaguely spiral.

I got in behind the wheel. John was now sitting where Roland had been.

"Well," I said, "I guess we hang around here for a while." Right then I noticed something, cocking my ears. "Hey, isn't the motor running?" The engine idled so quietly it was hard to tell.

"I shut it off," John told me. "When you got out after we stopped, you didn't look like you were… I'm sorry, did I do something wrong?" He looked deflated. "Again?" he added dismally.

"No, no, I should have said something. It's just that there should be antitheft devices on this buggy. But I can't understand how the weapons were operating. Oh, I see." The key had a setting marked AUX. John hadn't turned it back all the way. "Hm. Wonder what happens if I try to start it again?" John didn't look as if he understood the implications. Against my better judgment, I turned the key.

The air was full of cats, big cats with fur that stood straight up, crackling with static charges that needled every square inch of my skin. I leaped out of the car, hit beach, and rolled. The effect stopped the instant I was out, but I felt scratchy and raw all over. I looked up to see the car come alive. With two quick, solid bangs, the doors slammed shut by themselves and the windows rolled up. In seconds the vehicle was locked up tight.

Only John and I had been inside. Presently, he came limping around the car, brushing sand from his bare chest. His hair was salted with sand as well, and he stopped to bend over and brush it out. I got slowly to my feet, wondering why I sometimes do the things I do. John came up to me.

"Jake?"

"Yes, John."

"I just want to say…" He groped for words. "You're the most unboring person I've ever met. I don't know how else to put it." He gimped off.

A left-handed compliment, or a right-fisted insult?

On second thought, I never do a damn thing. It keeps on happening to me.