His heaving, disordered brain managed to spike a relay signal via minute electrodes to the sleep circuit. A voltage breaker clicked open, and a solid, disturbing tone awakened Buckman from his sleep and from his dream.
God, he thought, and shivered. How cold it had become. How empty and alone he felt himself to be.
The great, weeping grief within him, left from the dream, meandered in his breast, still disturbing him. I’ve got to land, he said to himself. See some person. Talk to someone. I can’t stay alone. Just for a second if I could—.
Shutting off the automatic pilot he steered the quibble toward a square of fluorescent light below: an all-night gas station.
A moment later he bumpily landed before the gas pumps of the station, rolling to a stop near another quibble, parked and empty, abandoned. No one in it.
Glare lit up the shape of a middle-aged black man in a topcoat, neat, colorful tie, his face aristocratic, each feature starkly outlined. The black man paced about across the oil-streaked cement, his arms folded, an absent expression on his face. Evidently he waited for the robotrix attendant to finish fueling up his ship. The black man was neither impatient nor resigned; he merely existed, in remoteness and isolation and splendor, strong in his body, standing high, seeing nothing because there was nothing he cared to see.
Parking his quibble, Felix Buckman shut off the motor, activated the door latch and lock, stepped stiffly out into the cold of night. He made his way toward the black man.
The black man did not look at him. He kept his distance. He moved about, calmly, distantly. He did not speak.
Into his coat pocket Felix Buckman reached with coldshaken fingers; he found his ballpoint pen, plucked it out, groped in his pockets for a square of paper, any paper, a sheet from a memo pad. Finding it, he placed it on the hood of the black man’s quibble. In the white, stark light of the service station Buckman drew on the paper a heart pierced by an arrow. Trembling with cold he turned toward the black man pacing and extended the piece of drawn-on paper to him.
His eyes bulging briefly, in surprise, the black man grunted, accepted the piece of paper, held it by the light, examining it. Buckman waited. The black man turned the paper over, saw nothing on the back, one again scrutinized the heart with the arrow piercing it. He frowned, shrugged, then handed the paper back to Buckman and wandered on, his arms once again folded, his large back to the police general. The slip of paper fluttered away, lost.
Silently, Felix Buckman returned to his own quibble, lifted open the door, squeezed inside behind the wheel. He turned on the motor, slammed the door, and flew up into the night sky, his ascent warning bulbs winking red before him and behind. They shut automatically off, then, and he droned along the line of the horizon, thinking nothing.
The tears came once again.
All of a sudden he spun the steering wheel; the quibble popped violently, bucked, leveled out laterally on a descending trajectory; moments later he once again glided to a stop in the hard glare beside the parked, empty quibble, the pacing black man, the fuel pumps. Buckman braked to a stop, shut off his engine, stepped creakingly out.
The black man was looking at him.
Buckman walked toward the black man. The black man did not retreat; he stood where he was. Buckman reached him, held out his arms and seized the black man, enfolded him in them, and hugged him. The black man grunted in surprise. And dismay. Neither man said anything. They stood for an instant and then Buckman let the black man go, turned, walked shakingly back to his quibble.
“Wait,” the black man said.
Buckman revolved to face him.
Hesitating, the black man stood shivering and then said, “Do you know how to get to Ventura? Up on air route thirty?” He waited. Buckman said nothing. “It’s fifty or so miles north of here,” the black man said. Still Buckman said nothing. “Do you have a map of this area?” the black man asked.
“No,” Buckman said. “I’m sorry.”
“I’ll ask the gas station,” the black man said, and smiled a little. Sheepishly. “It was—nice meeting you. What’s your name?” The black man waited a long moment. “Do you want to tell me?”
“I have no name,” Buckman said. “Not right now.” He could not really bear to think of it, at this time.
“Are you an official of some kind? Like a greeter? Or from the L.A. Chamber of Commerce? I’ve had dealings with them and they’re all right.”
“No,” Buckman said. “I’m an individual. Like you.”
“Well, I have a name,” the black man said. He deftly reached into his inner coat pocket, brought out a small stiff card, which he passed to Buckman. “Montgomery L. Hopkins is the handle. Look at the card. Isn’t that a good printing job? I like the letters raised like that. Fifty dollars a thousand it cost me; I got a special price because of an introductory offer not to be repeated.” The card had beautiful great embossed black letters on it. “I manufacture inexpensive biofeedback headphones of the analog type. They sell retail for under a hundred dollars.”
“Come and visit me,” Buckman said.
“Call me,” the black man said. Slowly and firmly, but also a little loudly, he said. “These places, these coin-operated robot gas stations, are downers late at night. Sometime later on we can talk more. Where it’s friendly. I can sympathize and understand how you’re feeling, when it happens that places like this get you on a bummer. A lot of times I get gas on my way home from the factory so I won’t have to stop late. I go out on a lot of night calls for several reasons. Yes, I can tell you’re feeling down at the mouth—you know, depressed. That’s why you handed me that note which I’m afraid I didn’t flash on at the time but do now, and then you wanted to put your arms around me, you know, like you did, like a child would, for a second. I’ve had that sort of inspiration, or rather call it impulse, from time to time during my life. I’m forty-seven now. I understand. You want to not be by yourself late at night, especially when it’s unseasonably chilly like it is right now. Yes, I agree completely, and now you don’t exactly know what to say because you did something suddenly out of irrational impulse without thinking through to the final consequences. But it’s okay; I can dig it. Don’t worry about it one damn bit. You must drop over. You’ll like my house. It’s very mellow. You can meet my wife and our kids. Three in all.”
“I will,” Buckman said. “I’ll keep your card.” He got out his wallet, pushed the card into it. “Thank you.”
“I see that my quibble’s ready,” the black man said. “I was low on oil, too.” He hesitated, started to move away, then returned and held out his hand. Buckman shook it briefly. “Goodbye,” the black man said.
Buckman watched him go; the black man paid the gas station, got into his slightly battered quibble, started it up, and lifted off into the darkness. As he passed above Buckman the black man raised his right hand from the steering wheel and waved in salutation.
Good night, Buckman thought as he silently waved back with cold-bitten fingers. Then he reentered his own quibble, hesitated, feeling numb, waited, then, seeing nothing, slammed his door abruptly and started up his engine. A moment later he had reached the sky.
Flow, my tears, he thought. The first piece of abstract music ever written. John Dowland in his Second Lute Book in 1600. I’ll play it on that big new quad phonograph of mine when I get home. Where it can remind me of Alys and all the rest of them. Where there will be a symphony and a fire and it will all be warm.
I will go get my little boy. Early tomorrow I’ll fly down to Florida and pick up Barney. Have him with me from now on. The two of us together. No matter what the consequences. But now there won’t be any consequences; it’s all over. It’s safe. Forever.
His quibble crept across the night sky. Like some wounded, half-dissolved insect. Carrying him home.