My driver, who kept shaking his head, finally pulled up to the roadblock in his turn.
“Let me see your ID, please. Your passenger’s, too,” the nearest cop said.
He produced his own from an inside wallet, while I fished for mine.
“What’s the matter, officer?” he asked.
The policeman shook his head.
“Fugitive,” he said.
“Dangerous?”
The cop looked at him and glanced at the second car, upon the hood of which was perched an officer holding a shotgun, and he smiled.
The driver passed him my SR card. Almost without thinking, I coiled into the small unit he wore slung like an accordian and keyed with less musical effect. It was one of the older units, I saw. With the newer ones you could just push the card into a slot for a direct read.
He punched my number, but a slightly different signal went out. In the broadcast version a pair of the digits had been transposed. An All Clear light came on upon the face of the box. He handed back the cards.
“Go on,” he said, turning toward the next car.
We pulled away. The driver sighed. He had his headlights on now, as did the other vehicles.
It seemed only moments later that I heard a cry from behind us, followed by the shotgun’s boom. A sound like hail came from all over the place.
“What the hell,” the driver said, stepping on the gas rather than the brake.
But I had already begun to suspect. Someone, somewhere back at home base, must have been watching a printout or display screen. The machine cleared it, but to a human observer a pair of transposed digits still came awfully close to what they wanted. The possibility of operator error must have occurred to him and he had radioed out to have them halt us again. The fact that they were this trigger-happy made me wonder what they had been told and what their instructions must have been. I did not want to stay around to ask them personally. So…
“Stop!” I cried. They’ll shoot again!”
He finally hit the brake and we began to slow. I glanced back.
No time to wait for him to come to a complete stop. I needed every bit of the lead we had.
I opened the door and jumped out. I hit that grassy central strip, collapsed and rolled. I didn’t look back as I recovered my feet. I ran for the woods, cutting to my left and then to my right as soon as I entered them. I heard gunshots far to the rear, but they had the sound of pistols.
The ground took an abrupt turn upward and I stumbled to mount it. The sounds of traffic came from above. I did not know what road it was, but it did not matter. I was heading for it now. It was dark, there were lots of trees between me and the police and the shouting had stopped. If I could just get out and get across the highway… It was almost too much to hope that I might be able to flag a ride. I was vaguely aware of blood on my hand and my face, and I was certain that my trousers were torn…
… They must have been told that I was armed and dangerous, maybe even a cop-killer, to come on shooting that way. I kept expecting to hear them behind me again at any moment…
Up ahead of me, pieces of the blackness moved, came together. Suddenly, they shot upward, towering, swaying, acquiring illumination as from strong moonlight. It was a bear! An enormous grizzly—I’d seen them in zoos—reared up on its hind legs, facing me! It—
Oh, no. Not again, Ann. Not here. Not that way. Not with a grizzly bear on the outskirts of Philadelphia. You should have tried a cop with a shotgun if you’d wanted to stop me. I’d have shit my pants and wouldn’t have smelled your flowers. Better luck next time.
I headed straight toward it. I bit my lip and closed my eyes as I passed through, but I did pass through. When I opened them-again I saw the lights of traffic through a final screen of trees. Not just a little traffic, though. It was heavy, a veritable river. There was no way I could get across it without being hit.
But I thought I heard voices in the woods below now. Not too damn much choice.
I burst out of the wooded strip onto the shoulder of the highway, waving my arms at everything in the nearest lane, wondering what sort of impression I made—bloody, dirty and ragged—there in their headlights.
… Smile a little. That sometimes seems to help…
I came to a halt and just kept waving. Definitely now, I could hear the sounds of my pursuers, working their way through the woods, yelling to each other…
A truck screeched to a halt before me. I could hardly believe it, but I was not about to question the driver’s judgment. Behind it, an entire lane of vehicles was coming to a halt. I ran for it, pulled open the door and jumped in. I slammed it behind me and collapsed in the passenger seat. Immediately, the engine roared and we were moving. I felt like the Count of Monte Cristo, Willie Sutton and the Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo—lucky and free. For the moment, anyhow. At least, I wouldn’t be shot for a while and I was moving, away.
“Thanks,” I said. “Maybe it looks funny, but I’ll explain it as soon as I get my breath back. You’re a real life-saver.”
I breathed a couple of deep ones and waited. The engine had settled down to a steady, smooth purring. We were moving along at a very good clip, the countryside flashing by in a long, curving blur. I turned my head.
The driver’s seat was as empty as a pawnbroker’s heart.
I took a deep breath. There wasn’t the faintest trace of daffodils, narcissi, Lilies or any other plant’s sexual organs, just the slightly stale, dusty smell of an area long enclosed.
I exhaled. What the hell.
“Thanks,” I repeated, anyway.
Chapter 8
peeding along through the dark tube of the night, towns and country rush together… The lights are bright beads, the sound of the engine soothing in its monotony. I had lapsed into a half-drowse in quick reaction to the day’s events…
I was moving along at about one hundred-fifty kilometers an hour in one of the safest vehicles on the road. The truck was powered by large and expensive batteries, which were still economical because of the recent cheapness of electric power. A competing line of vehicles was fueled by hydrogen, clean and non-polluting, available now in unlimited supply again because of the cheap electricity produced by solar power. Both were largely the result of advances made under patents held by Angra Energy, with their vast new power installations producing electricity across the Sunbelt.
I remembered vividly how the substance of some of the patents had been obtained. I was guilty of industrial espionage, though I wondered whether any statute really covered the specific methods I had used. Morally, though… Well… This was not a suitable time for soul-searching, though I wondered why it bothered me now when it hadn’t then. Or had it? Or had I changed? Or both? There was a memory somewhere that I couldn’t quite reach.
The truck I rode was completely automated, traveling only on specially equipped highways, though more and more roads were being fitted with the necessary equipment. Usually, they drove in one special lane. It was plainly marked, so that human drivers could avoid it if they wished. Actually, though, the automated tracks had proven safer than the traditional kind, and very few people objected to sharing the road with them.
All of this meant that I was safe, for the moment. But there were really a number of things I should be about. Only, it felt so good to be stretched out here on the right seat, which converted into a cot, my head propped slightly to see the lights in the sky as well as those along the way. The wind whistled about us, engines hummed below. Peripherally, I was aware of steady transfers of data, and this too was good. Every minute, I was getting farther and farther away from the scene of my troubles.