The Best of John Jakes, page 3
“Dacey climbed out. He’s walkin’.”
“Attaboy, Dacey,” Lee breathed, “attaboy, never stop moving, boy. Wasn’t your fault—”
And for a moment, Billy could understand. Sympathize. For even if Dacey Ramp were dead, dead in his brains, something in his body would keep him twitching ahead on his feet, then on all fours if need be, because he’d already suffered the supreme humiliation of having his machine slowed to below 40 mph, then stopped; one thing you never did if you were born of the clans was to permit your forward motion to stop.
“You sure bunged that up, Billy,” Lee Ramp said, trying to pretend that Dacey’s lack of skill hadn’t been at fault. Billy stifled a swear word. No point arguing that it was not his skill at fault, but the girl driver’s lack of it. And Dacey’s; it was worse for a man, the humiliation of coming to a complete halt. No point worrying, either. He had enough on his mind with the nearness of the Superstack—immense, multileveled, built in the vee of slate mountain walls that extended out to the sixteen lanes where Billy was now; the drivers drove down at the bottom between those walls, raising booming echoes.
What about the girl, though?
A stopper, plainly. Joyriding. He hoped he hadn’t killed or maimed her. Christ, he hoped he hadn’t.
“Billy boy, you cost me one of my good cousins,” said Lee Ramp.
“They’s only four lanes in the Superstack,” said Colonel Tal; he sounded rough; unhappy; and—Billy’s palms sweated all at once—none too sure? “What difference does it make?”
“Plenty of difference if you plan to yellow out,” Lee returned.
“Did I say we were going to yellow out? Billy exclaimed.
“No, but you didn’t say we were running, either.”
“There wasn’t any time. That silly popheaded—”
“Will you quit making chicken excuses and say yes or no?” Lee yelled.
The radiophone link actually crackled with the noises of the challenge. Billy flinched, then felt ashamed of the unbidden reaction. Why did these Ramps buffalo him? No reason they should; they were all talk and swagger, lacking real skill; why, Colonel Tal could ram them up the wall.
Couldn’t he?
Eight lanes, sharply inclined upward, fled beneath the Twister’s glimmering orange hood. Like a carrion-eater, old Lee’s low, mean turbine stayed on Billy’s left, its metal suddenly rippling and flaring as the drivers swept under the first of the blue lamps that brightened the approaches to the Superstack. Windshields shot off stars of light; it was possible to glimpse Lee’s profile hunched above his wheel.
About two miles up the slope they reached the chute, the place where the eight lanes began to funnel down to four. The Superstack seemed to climb to the sky, concrete-white, untended in the fastness of the mountains. Billy tried to remember its layout; a double super corkscrew; you went up and around and around, and if you didn’t turn off at any of the radials on the way up—other freeways, leading to other places in the western U.S.—then you hit another corkscrew down, rolling tire-hot off the mountains onto the grade leading down to golden California.
But it was all sort of vague now, lacking crisp detail. Possible injury to the stopper in the runabout had densed his thoughts, slowed his perceptions. The rock walls ran away smeary behind him on both sides of his Twister, which had now developed a strange alarming shimmy in the rear end.
He checked the speedo. Godamighty! 94 mph and he didn’t even know it.
“Colonel Tal?” he said to the radiophone. “We’re going in.”
Colonel Tal cleared his throat, archly. “Why, ’course.”
“Jobe? We’re going in.”
Jobe was small-voiced. “Sure.” Billy feared for him.
“Okay,” Lee Ramp said with another of those wasp-edged chuckles. He spoke to his own clan, “You lads hear that?” They heard. “Okay, now you drive so Big Daddy would be proud of every one of you.”
“Listen, when are you going to stop telling that chicken-shit story that you boys are related to the Hardchargers?” Colonel Tal wanted to know.
“You farty old windbag,” Lee answered back, “if Big Daddy was here, he’d prove it.”
“Don’t even believe there is a Big Daddy.” That was Jobe, making himself sound brave so he would be. Billy squirmed to a tense position in his bucket, held the wheel as tightly as he could. “Don’t believe there’s even a Hard-charger clan—”
“Is,” advised Colonel Tal. “Small and piss-mean, but there is. I’ve met a few.”
“Big Daddy wouldn’t wipe his grease rags on you,” Lee came back. “He’s got fatter nuts to tighten. He’s gonna see the Big Fifty before he dies and he can’t be bothered with people like you Spoilers. He leaves it to his cousins. He leaves wiping up your kind to us.”
Across the connection between the speeding machines, Lee Ramp’s laugh sounded like icicles that Billy’d heard snapping on a Vermont power line over the turnpike up there. His eyes crawled to the speedo: an ordinary five places; built to accept 99,999 miles before turning completely. Big Daddy Hardcharger was rumored to have eight places on his custom-modified model. Big Daddy was a maniac—if he existed. Death-doomed, the road clans said.
Death. Billy knuckled sweat from his eyes; the wind roaring in the window didn’t evaporate it fast enough. He wondered whether he’d see the Firebird this morning.
Colonel Tal refused to lose the last point in the badgering game: “If you Ramps—”
Lee cut in, “What say we all kill the mikes and let’s get down to some serious driving?” A connection clicked; other clicks followed. The Ramps had shut off. Billy did the same.
The internal combustion machines thundered up the concrete grade. Colonel Tal pulled out to the left of Lee Ramp. Jobe pulled up on Billy’s right. The remaining two Ramps flanked the outside.
Hub to hub, the six machines thundered at the chute. The two outside lanes merged out of existence. The drivers were abreast, in six lanes.
Firebird, Billy thought. What’s it look like, that big red monster trailing flame off its wings?
Would there be the most beautiful, incredible, cream-breasted naked girl riding it, the bird’s blazing back between her bare thighs but not burning them? Billy had his own private conception of the girl some said sat astride the harbinger bird. She was a sweet, clean girl of corn-colored hair and radiant blue eyes; bis ideal woman, her clean but voluptuous beauty a contrast to the vengeful look of the burning bird.
I believe there’s a Firebird.
No I don’t either, it’s just some old superstition carried over from a long time ago when there was a hightest gas that used it for signs.
But he glanced to the right anyway, up over Jobe’s hood past the pearly blue lights; he saw no phantasmal fire-winged thing flying there. He shuddered a little private shudder. He wasn’t signed to die just yet.
The way it worked out was, men who were truly men only saw the Firebird the second before the big wheel revolved the last time. As a consequence, nobody in any of the clans had ever actually looked at the hell-red apparition with his own eyes—
A hard bank to the left coming up ahead.
Billy poured on the gas, edging the Twister’s bumper out ahead of his flankers. The incline was moderately steep here. The cars streaked into the beginning of the up corkscrew.
Billy was only partially conscious of discrete details: a signboard warning travelers bound for the huge, sprawling Tahoe meg to KEEP RIGHT; another warning to REDUCE SPEED TO 50 MPH. Billy edged the needle up past 95 mph. The Twister began to rattle and yaw in earnest.
Suddenly, on his right, Jobe disappeared.
Quick glance at the rearvision mirror; Jobe was dropping back, his brakelights lighting up the whole tail end of his mother, spilling scarlet along the waxed rear rocker-panels. The highway climbed upward and around to the left, past the radial that shot off through the tunnel to Tahoe. Sound bounced from the high concrete retaining walls. The Ramp car on his right veered over. Instinctively Billy corrected, edged left. He heard his hubs ping Lee Ramp’s, corrected again, the steering touchy, slow.
Jobe was out of sight somewhere down in the beginning of the corkscrew behind them. Billy hoped he was all right. He despised Jobe’s fear, but he tempered his fury. The kid was only twenty. Billy had two years on him.
Then there wasn’t any more time to fret over why Jobe’s nerve had gone smash; they were up past the third-level radials; large signs on either side of the lanes zoomed UP-
LEFT LANE ENDS - RIGHT LANE ENDS
Fell behind.
Up higher; around, around and up; leftward; force pushed him back against the bucket as he concentrated on steering within the lane markers while his left boot worked the power brake, his right the gas, both helping control his drift in the endless climbing turn. Right and left outside lanes began to narrow, ready to disappear.
Colonel Tal cut it over to the right to scare Lee Ramp. Lee drove steady on, and Colonel Tal looked like he was scared off, whipping back over to his own lane. But he didn’t stay there. His purple-flakepainted mother whammed the side of the Ramp on his left; whammed good and hard.
The impact caught the Ramp driver right as his lane ended. He started to put his own squeeze on Tal, trying to edge into Tal’s space. But Tal’s hit had put him out of control. He went left instead of right, his left front headlamps scraping the concrete retaining wall that angled in where the lanes narrowed.
Sparks and smoke flew. Billy heard tortured metal yammering. The Ramp turbine would bury its nose in the retaining wall unless its driver eased off. He did, with a sudden pound of brakes that dropped him from sight.
So now they were four, roaring in four lanes up past the sixth level where you could glimpse cold stars—if you dared take your eyes off the unreeling twist of concrete. Colonel Tal was on the extreme left; then Lee; then Billy; then the last Ramp. Two and two; an even split.
They held that formation all the way past the Sacramento radial, the LA-Vegas radial, all the rest, to the top.
The four machines burst out along the straightaway at the summit. About one mile of open, guardrailed lanes connected the two corkscrews. The wind whined cold and sharp through the window.
Lee Ramp edged over. Billy wouldn’t give. Lee edged back. Billy’s speedo read exactly 101 mpb. The old mill in the Twister wouldn’t take that much punishment for long.
Off on Billy’s left, the sky was a steamy orange above the clouds that covered the polluted mountain megs. Dawn; dawn on the great plains. How beautiful.
And how bracing the air. Sweet in the lungs, with just a tang of oil. How fine this feeling, too; this racing toward the down corkscrew with the radials shooting off at all levels, over and under the four main downspiraling lanes—how good, how pure and right it was to be here. There wasn’t a sign of a big blazing death-bird keeping pace in the blueblack sky above.
A horn—two horns. Lee’s; Colonel Tal’s. Billy instinctively turned his head a fraction, saw Colonel Tal inside his mother there beyond Lee’s profile. Colonel Tal’s old blue-lit face was convulsed with rage.
Billy whipped his head front, suddenly saw the cause of all the hom-blatting. They were roaring into the right-spiraling down incline now. Ahead, showing its tail lamps, was a big, cumbersome wagon bearing Oregon plates. Faces of scared children were pressed to the rear glass. The frantic driver of the wagon couldn’t or wouldn’t speed fast enough to escape those four thundering machines coming down on his tail, filling all four lanes. The wagon’s blinkerlights began to go on and off, right turn, right turn—
The wagon slewed into the extreme right lane, trying for the Phoenix radial that led off on the next level below. The wagon almost made it, too; almost. The Ramp turbine on Billy’s right clipped its tail end.
Out of control, the wagon skidded down the exit ramp. Instead of following the ramp’s curve, the wagon slammed dead ahead into the wall and burst into a fireball whose intensity Billy felt on his bare skin long after they were corkscrewing on down past.
God damn Ramps, he thought, braking, accelerating, working down through the gears when he could afford his brake foot free an instant. Should of eased off and let that stopper live; poor damn stopper who probably figured he’d beat the monumental dayside traffic by traveling at night. Out the corner of his right eye, Billy glimpsed the young Ramp whose turbine had done the damage. His mind seethed with foul words. No matter how much honor was up for grabs, Spoilers didn’t countenance that kind of blood. But the Ramp— a beaky nose, not much chin—actually looked happy.
They zoomed down past the fifth level. Billy banged over and handed the Ramp kid a good stiff rap. Give him credit—the youngster held on tight. Billy wobbled back into his own lane, fighting for control. Damn power steering never had been any good. Always needed over-correcting—
Lee Ramp recognized the signs of Billy’s distress, and took advantage. He wrenched to the right, pasted Billy’s Twister a hard one in the side. As if it were a prearranged strategy, the Ramp on Billy’s right dropped back suddenly. He steered into Billy’s lane, directly behind the Twister, as if he knew something would happen to Billy’s machine—
It did; it started to skid to the right. The rear end started flipping around out of control.
Lee Ramp rushed on by and down around out of sight. The retaining wall loomed dead ahead. Billy twisted the wheel left just as his machine started to rise on its left side. She wouldn’t come around fast enough.
His right fender hit the wall, scraped, peeled completely off. He heard the yell of metal. Suddenly his correcting worked. The Twister pulled away from the wall; its left tires came down, bam, but didn’t blow. Then Billy was weaving on down through the corkscrew.
He still had trouble steering. When he turned the wheel too far, the right front tire whined. Obviously part of the body metal was crimped in dangerously close to the tire.
Cutting it? Slashing it?
His eyes fell on the speedo. 65 mph. Falling. Never below 40 mph! Sweet God! A man wasn’t a man who let that happen!
He geared, got it wrong, threw it in properly an instant after the tire-whine, and continued on down the corkscrew. The others—two Ramps, Colonel Tal—were long gone ahead.
All at once Billy grew conscious of a gumminess in his right eyesocket. He swiped his eye with his right hand, examined his fingers. In the blue roadway lights they shone stickyblack.
How’d he been banged that way? When had it happened? In the frozen seconds in which he’d skated away from the wall? He hadn’t even felt an impact.
Driving cautiously, he made it down past the first level and into the plum shadows of the western grade leading to California.
About a mile ahead he saw Colonel Tal’s red tails. The Colonel’s mother was going list-and-bump, list-and-bump, the left rear tire in ribbons. But the old hard charger was driving a good minimum 45 mph nonetheless.
Farther on down the grade, two other sets of tails receded quite fast. Billy’s throat filled with bile.
He caught up with Colonel Tal, dodging in and out among a convoy of bullet-shaped milk freighters to do it. He pulled up alongside the Colonel’s mother. The Interstate was seven lanes each way now. He flipped on the radiophone.
“Lose a tire, Colonel?”
“Yes, sir, I did, and that’s when they lost me. You all right?”
“Got a fenderwell about to rip through a tire, but if I keep her bearing ever so little left I think I can make it.”
Colonel Tal made a phlegmy sound. “Lee let me have the middle finger nice and proper before they barreled away.”
“That bastard.” Hot-faced, Billy searched the shadows far down the grade. But the Ramp lights had disappeared.
“I think they killed that poor stopper in the Superstack,” he said.
“They’re really a chickenshit bunch,” Colonel Tal agreed. “Ought to be stopped in place one of these days, every last one.”
“Lee will be. Nobody beats me more than once.”
The phlegmy sound again. “Hope you remember that.”
Billy chewed his lip. “How’d they take us?”
“I reckon it was bad driving on our part and orneriness on theirs.”
“Spoilers don’t suffer that kind of hurrah. Colonel Tal.”
“Stop saying it, Billy. Just remember it silent. Inside.”
Rebuked, Billy shut up.
Turbine and electric cars from the meg fringe towns at the foot of the grade began to fill the superhighway. They came in at cautious speed from the right-hand feeders. Already the groves to either side of the great elevated road were tinged with light off the mountains. Well, Billy wouldn’t forget. Billy’d remember, yes indeed he would. He’d meet up with Lee Ramp again, too. It was inevitable. There weren’t that many clans on the highways.
The clans represented about ten percent of the total U.S. population, so the government said. They met on regular occasions—at holidays like Christmas—and when Billy saw Lee Ramp again, he vowed he’d smile and hide the knife till the right moment.
“’Spose we better head back and hunt for Jobe,” Colonel Tal suggested. “He was moving, but not very fas—holy waters of Jordan!”
So excited was Tal that Billy automatically looked left. He saw the Colonel staring at him in the new-breaking daylight across the space that separated their mothers. Billy was acutely conscious of being on policed roadway in a wholly illegal, unsafe, air-polluting internal combustion machine, and that fear gnawed him when he spotted Colonel Tal’s gap-jawed expression.
“What’s wrong, Colonel?”
Political Machine
Science fiction stories about political elections tend to be of two types—the frightening and the humorous. Stories like Isaac Asimov’s “Evidence,” Michael Sbaara’s “2066: Election Day,” Stanley Schmidt’s “May the Best Man Win,” and the late Miriam Allen deFord’s “The 1980 President” were all one or the other. Here John Jakes combines a terrifying premise with considerable humor in a story about a political system in which everyone and everything is manipulated.
