Store of the Worlds: The Stories of Robert Sheckley (48 page)

He was abruptly shaken out of his musings. Appearing as if from nowhere, a party of armed men suddenly barred his path. They wore masks, wide-brimmed black hats, and bandoliers of ammunition. Their aspect was both villainous and picturesque.

One of them, evidently the leader, stepped forward. He was a craggy-featured, balding old man with a heavy black moustache and mournful red-rimmed eyes. “Stranger,” he said, “let's see yore pass.”

“I don't believe I have one,” Baxter said.

“Damned right you don't,” the old man said. “I'm Pablo Steinmetz, and I issue all the passes around here, and I don't recollect ever seeing you afore in these parts.”

“I'm a stranger here,” Baxter said. “I'm just passing through.”

The black-hatted men grinned and nudged each other. Pablo Steinmetz rubbed his unshaven jaw and said. “Well, sonny, it just so happens that you're trying to pass through a private toll road without permission of the owner, who happens to be me; so I reckon that means you're illegally trespassing.”

“But how could anyone have a private toll road in the heart of New York City?” Baxter asked.

“It's mine 'cause I say it's mine,” Pablo Steinmetz said, fingering the notches on the stock of his Winchester 78. “That's just the way it is, stranger, so I reckon you'd better pay or play.”

Baxter reached for his wallet and found it was missing. Evidently the pot-boat captain, upon parting, had yielded to his baser instincts and picked his pocket.

“I have no money,” Baxter said. He laughed uneasily. “Perhaps I should turn back.”

Steinmetz shook his head. “Going back's the same as going forward. It's toll road either way. You still gotta pay or play.”

“Then I guess I'll have to play,” Baxter said. “What do I do?”

“You run,” Old Pablo said, “and we take turns shooting at you, aiming only at the upper part of your head. First man to bring you down wins a turkey.”

“That is infamous!” Baxter declared.

“It is kinda tough on you,” Steinmetz said mildly. “But that's the way the mortar crumbles. Rules is rules, even in an anarchy. So, therefore, if you will be good enough to break into a wild sprint for freedom ...”

The bandits grinned and nudged each other and loosened their guns in their holsters and pushed back their wide-brimmed black hats. Baxter readied himself for the death run—

And at that moment, a voice cried, “Stop!”

A woman had spoken. Baxter turned and saw that a tall, red-headed girl was striding through the bandit ranks. She was dressed in toreador pants, plastic galoshes, and Hawaiian blouse. The exotic clothing served to enhance her bold beauty. There was a paper rose in her hair, and a string of cultured pearls set off the slender line of her neck. Never had Baxter seen a more flamboyant loveliness.

Pablo Steinmetz frowned and tugged at his moustache. “Flame!” he roared. “What in tarnation are you up to?”

“I've come to stop your little game, Father,” the girl said coolly. “I want a chance to talk to this tanglefoot.”

“This is man's business,” Steinmetz said. “Stranger, git set to run!”

“Stranger, don't move a muscle!” Flame cried, and a deadly little Derringer appeared in her hand.

Father and daughter glared at each other. Old Pablo was the first to break the tableau.

“Damn it all, Flame, you can't do this,” he said. “Rules is rules, even for you. This here illegal trespasser can't pay, so he's gotta play.”

“That's no problem,” Flame announced. Reaching inside her blouse she extracted a shiny silver double eagle. “There!” she said, throwing it at Pablo's feet. “I've done the paying, and just maybe I'll do the playing, too. Come along, stranger.”

She took Baxter by the hand and led him away. The bandits watched them go and grinned and nudged each other until Steinmetz scowled at them. Old Pablo shook his head, scratched his ear, blew his nose, and said, “Consarn that girl!”

The words were harsh, but the tone was unmistakably tender.

Night came to the city, and the bandits pitched camp on the corner of 69th Street and West End Avenue. The black-hatted men lounged in attitudes of ease before a roaring fire. A juicy brisket of beef was set out on a spit, and packages of flash-frozen green vegetables were thrown into a capacious black cauldron. Old Pablo Steinmetz, easing the imaginary pain in his wooden leg, drank deep from a jerry can of premixed Martinis. In the darkness beyond the campfire you could hear a lonely poodle howling for his mate.

Steve and Flame sat a little apart from the others. The night, silent except for the distant roar of garbage trucks, worked its enchantment upon them both. Their fingers met, touched, and clung.

Flame said at last, “Steve, you—you do like me, don't you?”

“Why, of course I do,” Baxter replied, and slipped his arm around her shoulders in a brotherly gesture not incapable of misinterpretation.

“Well, I've been thinking,” the bandit girl said. “I've thought ...” She paused, suddenly shy, then went on. “Oh, Steve, why don't you give up this suicidal race? Why don't you stay here with me! I've got land, Steve, real land—a hundred square yards in the New York Central Switchyard! You and I, Steve, we could farm it together!”

Baxter was tempted—what man would not be? He had not been unaware of the feelings which the beautiful bandit girl entertained for him, nor was he entirely unresponsive to them. Flame Steinmetz's haunting beauty and proud spirit, even without the added attraction of land, might easily have won any man's heart. For a heartbeat he wavered, and his arm tightened around the girl's slim shoulders.

But then, fundamental loyalties reasserted themselves. Flame was the essence of romance, the flash of ecstasy about which a man dreams throughout his life. Yet Adele was his childhood sweetheart, his wife, the mother of his children, the patient helpmate of the long years together. For a man of Steve Baxter's character, there could be no other choice.

The imperious girl was unused to refusal. Angry as a scalded puma, she threatened to tear out Baxter's heart with her fingernails and serve it up lightly dusted in flour and toasted over a medium fire. Her great flashing eyes and trembling bosom showed that this was no mere idle imagery.

Despite this, quietly and implacably, Steve Baxter stuck to his convictions. And Flame realized sadly that she would never have loved this man were he not replete with the very high principles which rendered her desires unattainable.

So in the morning, she offered no resistance when the quiet stranger insisted upon leaving. She even silenced her irate father, who swore that Steve was an irresponsible fool who should be restrained for his own good.

“It's no use, Dad—can't you see that?” she asked. “He must lead his own life, even if it means the end of his life.”

Pablo Steinmetz desisted, grumbling. And Steve Baxter set out again upon his desperate Odyssey.

Downtown he traveled, jostled and crowded to the point of hysteria, blinded by the flash of neon against chrome, deafened by the incessant city noises. He came at last into a region of proliferating signs:

Winding through this maze of conflicting commands, he stumbled accidentally into that vast stretch of misery known as Central Park. Before him, as far as the eye could see, every square foot of land was occupied by squalid lean-tos, mean teepees, disreputable shacks, and noisome stews. His sudden appearance among the brutalized park inhabitants excited comment, none of it favorable. They got it into their heads that he was a health inspector, come to close down their malarial wells, slaughter their trichinoidal hogs, and vaccinate their scabrous children. A mob gathered around him, waving their crutches and mouthing threats.

Luckily, a malfunctioning toaster in Central Ontario triggered off a sudden blackout. In the ensuing panic, Steve made good his escape.

But now he found himself in an area where the street signs had long ago been torn down to confuse the tax assessors. The sun was hidden behind a glaring white overcast. Not even a compass could be used because of the proximity of vast quantities of scrap iron—all that remained of the city's legendary subway system.

Steve Baxter realized that he was utterly and hopelessly lost.

Yet he persevered, with a courage surpassed only by his ignorance. For uncounted days he wandered through the nondescript streets, past endless brownstones, mounds of plate glass, automobile cairns, and the like. The superstitious inhabitants refused to answer his questions, fearing he might be an FBI man. He staggered on, unable to obtain food or drink, unable even to rest for fear of being trampled by the crowds.

A kindly social worker stopped him just as Baxter was about to drink from a hepatitic fountain. This wise gray-haired old man nursed him back to health in his own home—a hut built entirely of rolled newspapers near the moss-covered ruins of Lincoln Center. He advised Baxter to give up his impetuous quest and to devote his life to assisting the wretched, brutalized, superfluous masses of humanity that pullulated on all sides of him.

It was a noble ideal, and Steve came near to wavering: but then, as luck would have it, he heard the latest race results on the social worker's venerable Hallicrafter.

Many of the contestants had met their fate in urban-idiosyncratic ways. Freihoff St. John had been imprisoned for second-degree litterbugging. And the party that crossed the Verrazzano Bridge had subsequently disappeared into the snow-capped fastnesses of Brooklyn Heights and had not been heard from again.

Baxter realized that he was still in the running.

His spirits were considerably lifted when he started forth once again. But now he fell into an overconfidence more dangerous than the most profound depression. Journeying rapidly to the south, he took advantage of a traffic lull to step onto an express walkaway. He did this carelessly, without a proper examination of the consequences.

Irrevocably committed, he found to his horror that he was on a one-way route, no turns permitted. This walkaway, he now saw, led nonstop to the
terra incognita
of Jones Beach, Fire Island, Patchogue, and East Hampton.

The situation called for immediate action. To his left was a blank concrete wall. To his right there was a waist-high partition marked NO VAULTING ALLOWED BETWEEN 12:00 NOON AND 12:00 MIDNIGHT, TUESDAYS, THURSDAYS, AND SATURDAYS.

Today was Tuesday afternoon—a time of interdiction. Nevertheless, without hesitation, Steve vaulted over the barrier.

Retribution was swift and terrible. A camouflaged police car emerged from one of the city's notorious ambushes. It bore down upon him, firing wildly into the crowd. (In this unhappy age, the police were required by law to fire wildly into the crowd when in pursuit of a suspect.)

Baxter took refuge in a nearby candy store. There, recognizing the inevitable, he tried to give himself up. But this was not permitted because of the overcrowded state of the prisons. A hail of bullets kept him pinned down while the stern-faced policemen set up mortars and portable flame-throwers.

It looked like the end, not only of Steve Baxter's hopes, but of his very life. Lying on the floor among gaudy jawbreakers and brittle liquorice whips, he commended his soul to God and prepared to meet his end with dignity.

But his despair was as premature as his earlier optimism had been. He heard sounds of a disturbance and, raising his head, saw that a group of armed men had attacked the police car from the rear. Turning to meet this threat, the men in blue were enfiladed from the flank and wiped out to the last man.

Baxter came out to thank his rescuers and found Flame O'Rourke Steinmetz at their head. The beautiful bandit girl had been unable to forget the soft-spoken stranger. Despite the mumbled objections of her drunken father, she had shadowed Steve's movements and come to his rescue.

The black-hatted men plundered the area with noisy abandon. Flame and Steve retired to the shadowy solitude of an abandoned Howard Johnson's restaurant. There, beneath the peeling orange gables of a gentler, more courteous age, a tremulous love scene was enacted between them. It was no more than a brief, bittersweet interlude, however. Soon. Steve Baxter plunged once again into the ravening maelstrom of the city.

Advancing relentlessly, his eyes closed to slits against the driving smog storm and his mouth a grim white line in the lower third of his face, Baxter won through to 49th Street and Eighth Avenue. There, in an instant, conditions changed with that disastrous suddenness typical of a Jungle City.

While crossing the street, Baxter heard a deep, ominous roar. He realized that the traffic light had changed. The drivers, frenzied by days of waiting and oblivious to minor obstacles, had simultaneously floored their accelerators. Steve Baxter was directly in the path of a vehicular stampede.

Advance or retreat across the broad boulevard was clearly impossible. Thinking fast, Baxter flung aside a manhole cover and plunged underground. He made it with perhaps a half-second to spare. Overhead, he heard the shrieks of tortured metal and the heavy impact of colliding vehicles.

He continued to press ahead by way of the sewer system. This network of tunnels was densely populated, but was marginally safer than the surface roads. Steve encountered trouble only once, when a jackroller attacked him along the margin of a sediment tank.

Toughened by his experiences. Baxter subdued the bravo and took his canoe—an absolute necessity in some of the lower passageways. Then he pushed on, paddling all the way to 42nd Street and Eighth Avenue before a flash flood drove him to the surface.

Now, indeed, his long-desired goal was near to hand. Only one more block remained; one block, and he would be at the Times Square Land Office!