They were quite far north now. Big green signs announced North Dudson as the next exit from the Thruway. Wally, suddenly nervous, began to rattle his maps, self-conscious and shy. He had maps for the area as it was now, and maps for the area from before the reservoir was put in, and the reservoir was only one of the changes that had taken place in the intervening years. Wally felt the awful weight of his responsibility, to guide these people and this car through the modern map to one specific spot on the old map. And to do so without revealing his own extra knowledge of the terrain.
None of the others knew about that private trip of his up here; not telling them about it had been another part of the computer’s advice. In fact, the whole trip had been at the advice of the computer. After Wally had input the story of the unknown women following them around in circles, the computer had said he should definitely find out who those people were.
The hero must identify his helpers.
The hero must know his enemies.
All players in the game must be aware of one another.
So he had gotten out his little old yellow VW Beetle that he only drove four or five times a year and that he kept otherwise in a Department of Transportation garage on Twelfth Avenue rent-free (arranged through his computer access), and he’d putt-putted all the way up to North Dudson—the farthest he’d ever gone in that car—and he’d driven around and around looking for a black Ford Fairlane, knowing that even in a town like this there couldn’t be more than one such vehicle, and when he saw it at last—just got a glimpse of it, really—at the end of a driveway, in front of an old-fashioned two-door garage, being washed by an angry-looking old lady, the rest had been easy.
Wally, who was almost always tongue-tied and shy with other people—especially girls—had partly by luck and partly out of a sense of self-preservation begun his conversation with Myrtle Jimson on the one topic that would permit him to be fluent, even eloquent: computers. By the time they were through with that, some level of rapport had been established, and he was even confident and relaxed enough to ask her to join him for lunch.
All through lunch at Kitty’s Kountry Kitchen on Main Street they’d just talked. Wally told her about growing up in Florida, and she told him about growing up in North Dudson, and there was just nothing in any of what she told him to explain the car-following incident.
Was she even related to Tom Jimson? But the name couldn’t be a coincidence, it just couldn’t. In the first place, coincidence does not exist in the world of the computer. [Randomness (a.k.a. chance) has been factored into some of the more sophisticated games, but coincidence (a.k.a. meaningless correspondence other than junk mail) violates the human craving for order. Which is why puns are the pornography of mathematicians.] But knowing the computer would be just as confused as he when he reported back to it (and it was) didn’t help Wally’s mood much.
Myrtle had insisted on paying for her own lunch, and then he’d walked her back to the library, where she’d promised to keep using her computer terminal from now on, and where he’d gotten back into his yellow VW and putt-putted away to the city. And this was the first time he’d been back among the Dudsons since. “It’s our next exit, Andy,” he said, rattling his maps.
“I know that, Wally,” Andy said, amiably enough. “The State of New York spent three hundred thousand dollars to put up a sign there to tell me so.”
“Oh,” Wally said. “I wasn’t sure you saw it.”
“Thanks, anyway, Wally,” Andy said.
So Wally subsided again, as Andy steered the Lincoln Continental expertly off the Thruway and around the ramp and down the narrow road into North Dudson.
As usual, the town was full of people who’d forgotten why they were driving. In a pleasant voice, Andy made speculative remarks about such people’s ancestry, education, brain power, and sexual bent, while Wally, scandalized, his ears burning (his earlobes actually felt hot, so suffused with blood from his blushing were they), blinked obsessively at his maps, double-checking and triple-checking his projected route, and from the backseat John gave an occasional long sigh. His sighs didn’t seem to comment on Andy’s language or the quality of North Dudson’s drivers so much as on life itself.
“Pilot to navigator,” Andy said, as pleasant as ever.
Wally jumped, rattled, the maps sliding from his knees to the floor. “What? Me?”
“We’re out of that charming village,” Andy pointed out. “It’s time to give me directions, Wally.”
“Right! Right!”
“Turn right?”
“Not yet!” Wally was scrabbling about for his maps. “Stay on this road until, uh, uh…”
“Take your time,” Andy said, and John sighed.
Wally found his maps and his place. “We turn right,” he said, “at, uh, where the road says to Dudson Falls.”
“Check,” Andy said, and a few miles later made the turn, and all the subsequent turns Wally told him about, as they maneuvered their way through the spider web of back roads; these roads, already a planless catch-as-catch-can hodge-podge by the middle of the twentieth century, had only been made more complicated when the reservoir was dumped in their midst.
“It should be around here somewhere, shouldn’t it?” Andy asked as they bumped over an old railroad track.
Wally stared at him to be sure he wasn’t joking. “Andy? That was it!”
Andy frowned at the rearview mirror. “What was it?”
“We’re looking for the railroad,” Wally reminded him. “We just drove over it, Andy.”
“By God, you’re right,” Andy said, and swung the Lincoln off the road to wait for an oncoming bulk milk truck to pass. “I think what it is, Wally,” he said, “I never went looking for anything so short before.”
“I guess,” Wally said.
Andy swung around behind the milk truck, reapproached the railroad line, and again pulled off onto the verge, where a million spring weeds were in flower. They all climbed out, stretched, shook their legs as though looking for a quarter that had fallen through a hole in their pocket, and went over to look at the railroad line.
It was a singleton, one pair of rusty tracks stretching off both ways into the woods, here and there partly covered by encroaching weeds and brush. The section across the black-top road was less rusty than the rest, which had aged to a dull dark blackish red. Set back on both sides of the road were barriers across the rail line, these consisting of two broad bands of horizontal metal attached to metal stakes set in concrete footings. The barriers had once been painted white, but most of the color had rusted away. Signs reading NO ENTRY were screwed to them.
Andy beamed at the railroad line. “You know what this reminds me of?”
“Yes,” John said. “It reminds you of Tom Thumb.” He didn’t sound particularly cheerful about it.
But Andy was cheerful. “You’re right!” he said.
John looked back and forth, then said to Wally, “Which way’s the reservoir?”
Wally pointed to the right. “Two miles that way.”
“Two miles,” John repeated, and sighed.
“That isn’t so far,” Andy told him. “Two miles, just a good healthy walk.”
“Four miles,” John said. “Unless you figure to live there.”
“Well, let’s get started,” Andy said, walking around one side of the barrier.
John said, “I don’t suppose there’s any way to get that car onto the tracks.”
“Even if it was the same gauge, John,” Andy said, leaning on the barrier on its other side, “we’d have to chop down these three or four trees here to get the car in.”
John glared at him. “Gauge? What do you mean, gauge?”