Roadmarks (2 page)

When he saw the tiny dot in the rearview mirror blossom and gleam. Red Dorakeen cursed softly.

"What is the matter?" came a husky voice from the dashboard.

"Huh? I didn't know I'd left you on."

His right hand moved toward the control knob, then dropped back.

"You didn't. I activated the circuit myself."

"How'd you manage that?"

"Remember the service job I won from you in that card game last month? There was sufficient credit remaining to have them install some extra circuits. I'd decided it was time to expand my horizons."

"You mean you've been eavesdropping on me for an entire month?"

"Yes. You talk to yourself a lot. It's fun."

"We'll have to do something about that."

"You could stop playing cards with me.
—
I repeat, what is the matter?"

"Police car. Coming up fast. May go right on by. May not, too."

"I'll bet I can knock him out. Want to fight?"

"Hell, no. Sit tight, Flowers. Certain things take time, that's all."

"I do not understand."

"I am in no hurry. If I fail, I try again. Or I try something else."

His eyes returned to the mirror. The shining, teardrop-shaped vehicle was large now in the passing lane and still gaining, though it seemed that it might have slowed.

"I still do not understand."

He struck a wooden match with his thumbnail and relit his cigar.

"I know. Don't worry about it
—
and stay out of any discussions that might arise."

"Acknowledged."

He glanced to the side. The vehicle had come abreast of him and was pacing him now. He sighed.

"Stop me or go on, damn you!" he muttered. "We're both too big to play games!"

As if in response, a siren wailed. A globe reared itself above the shining roof and began to blink like a hot eye.

Red turned the steering wheel and drew off onto the Road's shoulder. Again, the sky began to pulse, dark and light, darker and lighter. When the vehicle came to a complete halt, a morning sun hovered just above the horizon to his right, the grasses were pale with frost, birds were singing. The shining vehicle pulled off ahead of him. Both its doors opened and two gray-tunicked officers descended and moved in his direction. He turned off the ignition and sat perfectly still. He exhaled a large cloud of smoke.

The driver of the other vehicle came up beside his door. His companion moved toward the rear of the truck. The first man looked in. He smiled faintly.

"I'll be damned!" he said.

"Hi, Tony."

"Didn't know it was you, Red. Hope you're not up to anything too gross."

Red shrugged.

"Oh, a little of this, a little of that."

"Tony," came a voice from the rear. "You'd better take a look at this."

"Uh . . .  I'll have to ask you to step down, Red."

"Sure."

He opened the door and climbed out.

"What is it?" Tony asked, moving back.

"Look."

He had undone a corner of the tarp and raised it. He now proceeded to unfasten it further.

"I recognize those! They're C Twenty rifles, called M-1s."

"Yeah, I know. See what's back here? Browning Automatic Rifles. And this is a case of hand grenades. Lots of ammo, too."

Tony sighed, turned.

"Don't tell me. Let me guess," he said. "I know right where you are going. You still believe the Greeks should win the Battle of Marathon and you want to give them a hand."

Red grimaced.

"What makes you guess that?"

"You've been caught at it twice before."

"And you just pulled me over, part of a random sampling?"

"That's right."

"You trying to say that no one tipped you off?"

The officer hesitated and glanced away.

"That's right."

Red grinned around the cigar.

"Okay. You've got me with the goods. What are you going to do?"

"The first thing we are going to do is confiscate the stuff. You can give us a hand loading them into our van."

"Do I get a receipt?"

"Damn it, Red! Don't you know the seriousness of what you're doing?"

"Yep."

"Admitted, nothing will happen to us if you can pull it off. You will create another branch in the Road, though. Or another exit."

"What's wrong with that
—
really?"

"Who knows who might start traveling it from that point."

"A lot of weird fish travel it already, Tony. Look at us."

"But you're a devil we know. Everybody knows you. Why do you want that other goddamned branch anyway?"

"Because it was that way once before, but that sideroad is now blocked. I am trying to re-create a set of circumstances."

"I don't remember it."

"You're young, Tony."

"I don't understand you. Red. Come on, give me a hand with these weapons."

"Okay."

They began transferring the pieces.

"You know you have to stop this sort of thing."

"I know that watching for it is a part of your job, yes."

"But you don't give a damn. Supposing you were to open the route to some really rotten place, full of dangerous, vicious creatures with the ability to move along the Road? We'd all be in trouble then. Why not lay off this business?"

"I'm looking for something I haven't been able to find any other way."

"Mind telling me what?"

"Yes, I do. It's personal."

"You'd foul up the whole traffic pattern just for some selfish little whim?"

"Yep."

"Don't know why I asked. I've known you for about forty years. What's that come to for you?"

"Five or six years. Thirty, maybe. I don't know. You doing a lot of office work in between?"

"Too much."

"Probably where you got those notions about new branches."

"As a matter of fact, I did pick up a lot of the theory, and it is more complicated than you probably think."

"Hogwash! It was that way once, it can be that way again."

"Have it your way, but we won't have you messing around like this."

"People do it every day. Why else would they travel the Road? Everywhere they go, they alter the branches some way or other."

Tony's teeth clicked.

"I know, and that's frightening enough. This whole thing ought to be better controlled, check points set up
—
”

"But the Road has always been here, and those of us who can travel it always have. The world goes on, the Road goes on, from creation to destruction, amen, for all you know. What's your point?"

"I've known you for forty years
—
or thirty, or five or six. You haven't changed. I can't talk to you
—
Okay. We can't control most of the traffic, we can't stop the minor changes. We can look out for big things, though, and we do. You're always involved with the big ones. I'm trying to be nice and let you go with another warning."

"That's all you can do, and you know it. You can't prove where I was headed with this equipment. You can confiscate, you can lecture, you can make things rough for me for a while. But it won't last
—
and you know as well as I do that you are handing me another line. This isn't policy or guarding the peace or anything like that. You are harassing me, personally, for a particular reason. Someone's down on me and I'd like to know who, and why."

Tony reddened. His partner passed them with a carton of grenades.

"You're getting paranoid, Red," he finally said.

"Uh-uh. Care to give me a hint?" His eyes were fixed on the other's as he struck a match on an ammo box and relit his cigar. "Who could it be?"

Tony glanced at his partner, then, "Come on. Let's get the rest of this stuff loaded," he said.

It took another ten minutes to transfer the balance of the arms. When this had been done. Red was permitted to enter his truck.

"Okay. Consider yourself warned," Tony said.

Red nodded.

" . . . And be careful."

Red nodded again, more slowly.

"Thanks."

He watched them mount their shining vehicle and speed off.

"What was that all about?"

"He just did me a favor, Flowers. He came looking, to let me know we're in trouble."

"What kind?"

"I'll have to think about it. Where's the nearest rest stop?"

"Not too far ahead."

"You drive."

"Okay."

The truck jerked into motion.

The Marquis de Sade followed Sundoc into the enormous building.

"I appreciate this considerably," he said, "and I'd appreciate your not mentioning it to Chadwick, because he thinks I'm reading a stack of abominable manuscripts. Ever since Baron Cuvier's speculations, I have wondered, I have wished. But I never thought that I would actually get to see one."

Sundoc chuckled and led him into the huge laboratory.

"I can appreciate that. Don't worry. I like to show off my work."

They approached the great pit in the center of the hall, coming up to the railing that surrounded it.

Sundoc gestured with his right hand and the area below was flooded with light.

It stood like an enormous statue, like an unusually well-fashioned prop for a Grade B movie, like a suddenly materialized neurosis . . .

And then it moved. It shuffled its feet and lowered its head away from the light. A strip of gleaming metal was revealed at the back of its head, and another farther down along its spine.

"Ugly as they come," said Sundoc.

The marquis shook his head.

"God's dentures! It's beautiful!" he said softly. "Tell me again what it is called."

"
Tyrannosaurus rex
."

"Fitting. Yes, so fitting! It's lovely!"

He stood unmoving for over a minute. Then he asked "How did you obtain this wonderful beast? I was given to believe that they only existed in the extremely distant past."

"True. It took a fusion-powered vessel flying above the Road at a very good clip for a very long while to get back that far."

"Yet the Road does extend back to those days . . .  Amazing! And how did you transport something of that size, that power?"

"Didn't. The team I sent narcotized one and brought a tissue sample to a period about fifteen years back. This specimen was cloned from that sample, that is to say, he is an artificially cultivated twin of the original."

"Beautiful, oh beautiful! I don't understand, but it does not make a bit of difference, adds to the charm, the mystery, in fact. Now, tell me of your control over it."

"You see those metallic plates on its head and back?"

"Yes."

"They are implant grids. A great number of tiny electrodes extend down from them into the creature's nervous system. A moment . . . "

He walked away, crossing to a workstand from which he obtained a small rectangular box and a silver basket. He returned with these and displayed them.

"This," he said, indicating the box, "is a computer
—
”

"A thinking machine?"

"Oh, someone has been briefing you. Well, sort of. This one is also a broadcast unit."

He threw a switch. A tiny light came on behind a dial. There was no sound.

"You can make it do whatever you want
—
with that?"

"Better than that."

He fitted the basket over his head, adjusted its band. "Far better," he said, "for there is feedback." The reptile raised its head, turned it to regard them. " . . . I see two men looking down at me. One is wearing something shiny on his head. I am going to wave to them
—
my right forelimb."

Grotesquely, ludicrously, the relatively tiny appendage began a waving movement.

" . . . And now I will shout my greeting!"

A bellow that rattled equipment on distant tables, that seemed to shake the very building, rolled about them.

"I must! I must!" cried the marquis. "Let me try! Please let me try it!"

Sundoc grinned and removed the headgear. "Sure. It's easy. I'll show you how to put it on  . . . "

For several minutes, the marquis marched the monster about its pit, waving its tail, stamping its feet.

"I really can see through its eyes!"

"That's the feedback part I was telling you about.''

"My
—
Its strength must be phenomenal!"

"Oh, it is."

Several additional minutes passed, then, "I am really loath to surrender this sensation," he observed, "but I suppose I must. How do you turn it off?"

"Here, I'll show you."

He removed the headpiece, switched off the control unit.

"I have never known such a sensation of power," said the marquis. "Why
—
There would be the invincible weapon, the perfect assassin. Why do you not use it to kill that Dorakeen fellow and claim the bounty your master is offering?"

Sundoc laughed.

"Can you see it lumbering along the Road toward some guessed-at rendezvous, to step on his enemy? No, transportation would be an insuperable problem, even if we did know exactly where to deliver the beast. I never intended to use it in any such fashion. Far too cumbersome."

"True, true
—
when you put it that way. It was the imagery that took hold of me, the reptilian avenger swooping down upon its prey . . . The sensations of controlling it the while . . . "

"Um. I suppose so."

" . . . Whereas it actually represents a noble enterprise for the advancement of science."

"Hardly. All of the techniques employed here are quite venerable. The control of that monster represents no gain for science. Whatever information may be obtained concerning the beast itself could as easily be gained simply by studying it in an untampered condition. No, what you see down there is the fulfillment of a whim
—
which is why I consented so readily to showing it off. I had always had a desire to do this for the pure fun of it. That's all. It is an end in itself. There is no special use for the beast. Oh, my assistants will study its physiology and publish their findings. Might as well take advantage of its presence that way. After a long and rewarding career, I can afford to indulge myself in this fashion. So why not?"

"We are closer together in some matters than I would have believed."

"Because I admit to an expensive indulgence?"

The marquis shook his head.

"Because you enjoy the feeling of such a peculiar power."

Sundoc moved his hand and darkened the pit. He drew back from the railing and turned away.

"All right," he said. "You have a point." He replaced the gear on the workbench as they moved away. "You'd best get back to those manuscripts now."

"Ouch," said the marquis. "From Olympus to Tartarus in only a few blocks."

Sundoc smiled.

"It eats a lot too," he said. "But it's worth it."