But Siferra was right. They had to go down and find water. The supply that they had brought with them was all but exhausted. And perhaps they needed some time away from the hellish unending strip of demolished cars and stiff, staring corpses before they resumed their march toward Amgando.
He pointed to a road-sign a short way in front of them. “Half a mile to the next exit.”
“We should be able to get there in an hour.”
“Less,” he said. “The road looks pretty clear up ahead. We’ll get ourselves down from the highway and do what we need to do, as fast as we can, and then we’d better get back up here to sleep. It’s safer to bed down out of sight between a couple of these cars than to take our chances in the open fields.”
Siferra saw the logic of that. In this relatively uncluttered stretch of the road they moved quickly toward the upcoming exit ramp, traveling faster than they had in covering any previous section of the highway. In hardly any time at all they came to the next road-sign, the one that gave quarter-mile warning of the exit.
But then their rapid progress was sharply checked. They found the roadbed blocked at that point by so immense a pileup of crashed cars that Theremon feared for a moment that they would not be able to get through at all.
There must have been some truly monstrous series of crashes here, something dreadful even by the standards of what he and Siferra had already passed through. Two huge transport trucks seemed to be in the middle of it, interlocked face to face like two warring beasts of the jungle; and it appeared that dozens of passenger cars had come barreling into them, flipping up on end, falling back on those who followed them, building a gigantic barrier that reached from one side of the road to the other and outward over the railings at the road’s margins. Crumpled doors and fenders, sharp as blades, stuck out everywhere, and acres of broken glass set up a sinister tinkling as the wind played over it.
“Here,” Theremon called. “I think I see a way—up through this opening, and then over the left-hand truck—no, no, that won’t work, we’ll have to go under—”
Siferra came up alongside him. He showed her the problem—a cluster of up-ended cars waiting for them on the far side, like a field of upturned knives—and she nodded. They went underneath instead, a slow, dirty, painful crawl through shards of glass and clotted pools of fuel. Midway through they paused to rest before continuing through to the far side of the pileup.
Theremon was the first to emerge.
“Gods!” he muttered, staring in bewilderment at the scene that lay before him. “What now?”
The road was open for perhaps fifty feet on the far side of the great mass of wreckage. Beyond the clear space a second roadblock lay across the highway from one side to the other. This one, though, had been deliberately constructed—a heap of car doors and wheels neatly piled on the roadbed to a height of eight or nine feet.
In front of the barricade Theremon saw some two dozen people, who had set up a campsite right on the highway. He had been so intent on getting through the tangle of wreckage that he had paid no attention to anything else, and so he had not heard the sounds from the other side.
Siferra came crawling out beside him. He heard her gasp of surprise and shock.
“Keep your hand on your needler,” Theremon said quietly to her. “But don’t pull it out and don’t even think of trying to use it. There are too many of them.”
A few of the strangers were sauntering up the road toward them now, six or seven brawny-looking men. Theremon, motionless, watched them come. He knew that there was no turning back from this encounter—no hope of escape through that maze of knife-sharp wreckage through which they had just wriggled. He and Siferra were trapped in this clearing between the two roadblocks. All they could do was wait to see what happened next, and hope that these people were reasonably sane.
A tall, slouch-shouldered, cold-eyed man came unhurriedly up to Theremon until they were standing virtually nose to nose, and said, “All right, fellow. This is a Search station.” He put a peculiar emphasis on the word Search.
“Search station?” Theremon repeated coolly. “And what is it that you’re searching for?”
“Don’t get wise with me or you’ll find yourself going over the edge head first. You know damned well what we’re searching for. Don’t make trouble for yourself.”
He gestured to the others. They moved in close, patting Theremon’s clothes and Siferra’s. Angrily Theremon pushed the questing hands away.
“Let us pass,” he said tightly.
“Nobody goes through here without Search.”
“By whose authority?”
“By my authority. You going to let us, or we going to have to make you?”
“Theremon—” Siferra whispered uneasily.
He shook her off. Rage was rising in him.
Reason told him that it was folly to try to resist, that they were badly outnumbered, that the tall man wasn’t fooling around when he said there’d be trouble for them if they refused to submit to the search.
These people didn’t exactly seem to be bandits. There was something official-sounding about the tall man’s words, as though this were some kind of boundary, a customs station, perhaps. What were they searching for? Food? Weapons? Would these men try to take the needle-guns from them? Better to give them everything they were carrying, Theremon told himself, than to be killed in a vain and foolishly heroic attempt at maintaining their freedom of passage.
But still—to be manhandled like this—to be forced to submit, on a free public highway—
And they couldn’t afford to give up the needle-guns, or their food supply. It was still hundreds of miles to Amgando.
“I warn you,” the tall man began.
“And I warn you, keep your hands away from me. I’m a citizen of the Federal Republic of Saro and this is still a road freely open to all citizens, no matter what else has happened. You have no authority over me.”
“He sounds like a professor,” one of the other men said, laughing. “Making speeches about his rights, and all.”
The tall man shrugged. “We’ve already got our professor here. We don’t need any more. And this is about enough talk. Grab them and put them through Search. Top to bottom.”
“Let—go—of—me—”
A hand clutched at Theremon’s arm. He brought his fist up quickly and jammed it forward into someone’s ribs. This all seemed very familiar to him: another scuffle, another beating in store for him. But he was determined to fight. An instant later someone hit him in the face and another man caught him by the elbow, and he heard Siferra cry out in fury and fear. He tried to pull free, hit someone again, was hit again himself, ducked, swung, took a sharp stinging blow in the face—
“Hey, wait a second!” a new voice called. “Hold on! Butella, get away from that man! Fridnor! Talpin! Let go of him!”
A familiar voice.
But whose?
The Searchers stepped back. Theremon, swaying a little, struggled to keep his balance as he looked at the newcomer.
A slender, wiry, intelligent-looking man, grinning at him, keen bright eyes peering out of a dirt-stained face—
Someone he knew, yes.
“Beenay!”
“Theremon! Siferra!”
40
In a moment everything was changed. Beenay led Theremon and Siferra to a surprisingly cozy-looking little nest just on the far side of the roadblock: cushions, curtains, a row of canisters that appeared to contain foodstuffs. A slim young woman was lying there, her left leg swathed in bandages. She looked weak and feverish, but she flashed a brief faint smile as the others entered.