"ICE NUDES ON GLACIER!!!"
It was accompanied by a rather fuzzy photograph of a nude woman in unidentifiable surroundings. The remainder of the headlines lined the margin of the front page like wallflowers at a school dance. One of them proclaimed a new "Thermal Diet" to help keep one warm and comfortable during the colder winters. From what he could glean, it involved a considerable amount of curry and jalapeno peppers.
The woman caught him reading the front page and, with a sniff of righteous indignation, folded it over and returned it to its rack. Thor wondered what unspoken rule he had transgressed. Could one freeload on a freeloader?
Fang scurried up to him with an armful of spice cans, dumped them into the arm basket Thor held, and dashed off for one more run. Thor scanned Fang's choices. A little bit of everything, with an emphasis on the preservative spices. When the contents were used up, the light tin-plated containers would still be valuable. He considered for a moment sending Fang after some jalapenos, but decided it would take too long to explain.
Where were the Angels by now? Halfway to St. Louis, probably. Thor toyed idly with the spice cans. Was he right to drop out? After all, Fang was sticking with it. He'd be setting out in Larry as soon as they bought the supplies.
But someone had to watch over Ron Cole. And the fewer people hanging around the Angels the better. And the Phoenix would never fly anyway.
See what free men-
Thor sighed unhappily. He had really believed in the Cole legend. A naive belief, he saw now. His parents had always been after him to "be realistic." Especially after catching him with "that" literature. So he had always associated realism with a world where dreaming was suspect.
Ninety-nine out of a hundred dreams came crashing down around you. But if life always fell short of your expectations, that was no argument for lowering them. There was always the hundredth dream.
The shopper in front of him finished her check through and Fang returned to line with a jumbo jar of multivitamins just in time. Madam Doughball pointedly did not move aside for Fang, but that didn't stop the crusty old guy. He lobbed it.
Now, there was someone who had the Talent. Fang could dream realistically. The Titan had not fazed him at all. An option had failed to pan out; there were other options.
Fang watched the tally carefully. Programming skills were deteriorating and scanners had been known to commit egregious errors as a result. But all Thor could see in his mind's eye was the magnificent ascent of Phoenix from her desert home. With ten berths in her crew cabin module. Eight of them up for grabs. He wondered if any of the others had had the same dream he had.
But it wasn't realistic.
Riding in the cab of an eighteen-wheeler tank truck southbound on I-55 for the Gateway City, with the pavement humming beneath their tires and off-highway neonlit diners flashing past in the darkness, Sherrine had a barely controllable urge to tune into a country/western station. Bob was hunched over the steering wheel, eyes glued on the road ahead. He looked like a trucker. They'd found him a yellow baseball cap with the name of a feed store on it, which he wore pushed back on his head. Between them, Gordon dozed fitfully.
Sherrine had thought that the truck cabin would be crowded with four of them aboard; but she found that the big Peterbilt could fit three across the seat while the fourth could rest in a smaller sleeping compartment behind the cab. The two Angels did not mind the cramped conditions. In fact, they seemed to relax. Sherrine judged that they were accustomed to sleeping quarters not much roomier than the back of the Peterbilt.
They passed the turn-off for Winnemucca, which made her think of Cordwainer Bird. Bird had taken the National Endowment for the Arts advance for The Very, Very Last Dangerous Visions; Really. And This Time I'm Not Foolin' and vanished without a trace. Rumor speculated that he was preparing the ultimate diatribe; the one that would rock the Establishment to its very foundation.
There were stories about Bird. Some of them were true.
I wonder ifBob misses his van. Foolish question. Of course he did. He had had that van a long time and had kept it in careful condition. It was comfortable, like an old slipper. Lots of memories there.
Lots. The quilts and blankets in the back of the van were not entirely meant for insulation. Sherrine gave Bob a sidelong glance. She was not opposed to marriage, in principle. Not for sex, although the new laws made it safer that way, but for the comradeship. She had even tried it once, and it had been the happiest three years of her life… though the marriage had lasted five.
Whatever had become of Jake? Had his liaison with Heather lasted? The Cookie had struck her as one who enjoyed the chase more than the prize. Suppose, after dumping his wife for a better looker, Jake had been dumped in turn for a more virile stud?
Or else Jake and Heather were living a life of connubial bliss in a suburban bungalow somewhere, with a miniature Jake and Heather scampering around them.
Well, well. How little we know ourselves. She had not thought about Jake in a long, long time. Yet, the recollection still drove her heart to flutter. Not the end-Jake, but the early Jake. He with the wide, smiling mouth and the perpetually shadowed jaw and the audacity to wander through the timescape of undreamed lands. Somehow, beneath the bitterness, beneath the anger, there was… not love, but the shadow of a love that once was.
She was glad when Bob pulled over and turned the wheel over to her. Gordon half-woke, then settled back. Alex climbed out of the sleeper box like a sleepy spider monkey. Bob crawled in. Sherrine put the monster in gear.
The task at hand was to honcho an eighteen-wheeler to St. Louis. Other cars drifted past like windup toys. There weren't many in these early morning hours.
The truck turned majestically, less like a car than a seagoing liner. A lot of momentum in an eighteen-wheeler. But if they stuck mainly to the interstates she would be okay. No sharp turns. What was it that Bill Vukovich had said after winning his second strait Indy 500? "There's no secret. You just press the accelerator to the floor and keep turning left."
"What did you--?"
"Did I say that out loud? Sorry, Gordon. Back to sleep."
"Can you drive and talk?"
"Sure, Gordon. How are you holding up?"
"I was asked, 'Am I still having fun?' I am. You?"
"I haven't had time to stop and think since Bob rousted me out of bed to pull Angels off the Ice." She remembered the comfort and security of the computer room with a longing that shocked her. There was an animal contentment to living only in the present, snug under the covers and comforters, giving no thought to the future.
The future was a sneaky tense that crept up a day at a time, each tomorrow just a little different from the last, until one day you looked back along the path you had traveled and saw how very, very far you had come from your roots. Safe and secure; but with your dreams cauterized. In the bright light of day, she could see that that path of accumulated tomorrows was a smooth and slippery one that led down, down, down. The bottom of a Well was the point of minimum energy; which was why it was so easy to rest there unmoving.
To move, however… Ah, that was another matter entirely. There were other paths, other tomorrows. One could choose among them. And she had made her choice.
And having made that choice, having left behind everything in her life but a change of clothes-"Yeah. Yes, Gordon, I'm still having fun."
But both Angels were asleep, slumped into each other as if boneless.
Sherrine felt more at peace than she had had at any time since Jake had left. Yet, all the psychologists would agree that she should be feeling terrible tensions and insecurity. Abody at rest tends to remain at rest, unless acted upon by an outside force. She had never thought of Newton as a psychologist before.