But when it cleared away, I gasped.
There was a godawful line of cars all jammed up, about half a mile before us. They were all standing still and I could hear their horns.
“Slow down,” he said. “It’s the first obstacle.”
I did, and another grist of sand swept over us.
Before I could switch on the lights, it was gone, and I blinked my eyes several times.
All the cars were gone and silent their horns. But the roadway sparkled now as the sidewalks had for a time, and I heard Random damning someone or something under his breath.
“I’m sure I shifted just the way he wanted us to, whoever set up that block,” he said. “and it pisses me off that I did what he expected — the obvious.”
“Eric?” I asked.
“Probably. What do you think we should do? Stop and try it the hard way for a while, or go on and see if there are more blocks?”
“Let’s go on a bit. After all, that was only the first,”
“Okay.” he said, but added, “who knows what the second will be?”
The second was a thing — I don’t know how else to describe it.
It was a thing that looked like a smelter with arms, squatting in the middle of the road, reaching down and picking up cars, eating them.
I hit the brakes.
“What’s the matter?” Random asked. “Keep going. How else can we get past them?”
“It shook me a bit,” I said, and he gave me a strange, sidelong look as another dust storm came up.
It had been the wrong thing to say, I knew.
When the dust cleared away, we were racing along an empty road once more. And there were towers in the distance.
“I think I’ve screwed him up.” said Random. “I combined several into one, and I think it may be one he hasn’t anticipated. After all, no one can cover all roads to Amber.”
“True,” I said, hoping to redeem myself from whatever faux pas had drawn that strange look.
I considered Random. A little, weak looking guy who could have died as easily as I on the previous evening. What was his power? And what was all this talk of Shadows? Something told me that whatever Shadows were, we moved among them even now. How? It was something Random was doing, and since he seemed at rest physically, his hands in plain sight, I decided it was something he did with his mind. Again, how?
Well, I’d heard him speak of “adding” and “subtracting,” as though the universe in which he moved were a big equation.
I decided — with a sudden certainty — that he was somehow adding and subtracting items to and from the world that was visible about us to bring us into closer and closer alignment with that strange place, Amber, for which he was solving.
It was something I’d once known how to do. And the key to it, I knew in a flash, was remembering Amber. But I couldn’t.
The road curved abruptly, the desert ended, to give way to fields of tall, blue, sharp-looking grass. After a while, the terrain became a bit hilly, and at the foot of the third hill the pavement ended and we entered upon a narrow dirt road. It was hard-packed, and it wound its way among greater hills upon which small shrubs and bayonet like thistle bushes now began to appear.
After about half an hour of this, the hills went away, and we entered a forest of squat, big-boled trees with diamond-shaped leaves of autumn orange and purple.
A light rain began to fall, and there were many shadows. Pale mists arose from mats of soggy leaves. Off to the right somewhere, I heard a howl.
The steering wheel changed shape three more times, its latest version being an octagonal wooden affair. The car was quite tall now, and we had somewhere acquired a hood ornament in the shape of a flamingo. I refrained from commenting on these things, but accommodated myself to whatever positions the seat assumed and new operating requirements the vehicle obtained. Random, however, glanced at the steering wheel just as another howl occurred, shook his head, and suddenly the trees were much higher, though festooned with hanging vines and something like a blue veiling of Spanish Moss, and the car was almost normal again. I glanced at the fuel gauge and saw that we had half a tank.
“We’re making headway,” my brother remarked, and I nodded.
The road widened abruptly and acquired a concrete surface. There were canals on both sides, full of muddy water. Leaves, small branches, and colored feathers glided along their surfaces.
I suddenly became lightheaded and a bit dizzy, but “Breathe slowly and deeply,” said Random, before I could remark on it. “We’re taking a short cut, and the atmosphere and the gravitation will be a bit different for a time. I think we’ve been pretty lucky so far, and I want to push it for all it’s worth — get as close as we can, as quickly as we can.”
“Good idea,” I said.
“Maybe, maybe not,” he replied, “but I think it’s worth the garn — Look out!”
We were climbing a hill and a truck topped it and came barreling down toward us. It was on the wrong side of the road. I swerved to avoid it, but it swerved, too. At the very last instant, I had to go off the road, onto the soft shoulder to my left, and head close to the edge of the canal in order to avoid a collision.
To my right, the truck screeched to a halt. I tried to pull off the shoulder and back onto the road, but we were stuck in the soft soil.
Then I heard a door slam, and saw that the driver had climbed down from the right side of the cab, which meant that he probably was driving on the proper side of the road after all, and we were in the wrong. I was sure that nowhere in the States did traffic flow in a British manner, but I was certain by this time that we had long ago left the Earth that I knew.
The truck was a tanker. It said ZUNOCO on the side in big, blood-red letters, and beneath this was the motto “Wee covir the werld.” The driver covered me with abuse, as I stepped out, rounded the car, and began apologizing. He was as big as I was, and built like a beer barrel, and he carried a jack handle in one hand.
“Look, I said I’m sorry,” I told him. “What do you want me to do? Nobody got hurt and there was no damage.”
“They shouldn’t turn goddamn drivers like you loose on die road!” he yelled. “You’re a friggin’ menace!”
Random got out of the car then and said, “Mister, you’d better move along!” and he had a gun in his hand.
“Put that away,” I told him, but he flipped the safety catch off and pointed.
The guy turned around and started to run, a look of fear widening his eyes and loosening his jaw.
Random raised the pistol and took careful aim at the man’s back, and I managed to knock his arm to the side just as he pulled the trigger.
It scored the pavement and ricocheted away.
Random turned toward me and his face was almost white.
“You bloody fool!” he said. “That shot could have hit the tank!”
“It could also have hit the guy you were aiming at.”
“So who the hell cares? We’ll never pass this way again, in this generation. That bastard dared to insult a Prince of Amber! It was your honor I was thinking about.”
“I can take care of my own honor,” I told him, and something cold and powerful suddenly gripped me and answered, “for he was mine to kill, not yours, had I chosen,” and a sense of outrage filled me.
He bowed his head then, as the cab door slammed and the truck took off down the road.
“I’m sorry, brother,” he said. “I did not mean to presume. But it offended me to hear one of them speak to you in such a manner. I know I should have waited to let you dispose of him as you saw fit, or at least have consulted with you.”
“Well, whatever,” I told him, “let’s get back onto the road and get moving, if we can.”
The rear wheels were sunken up to their hubcaps, and as I stared at them, trying to decide the best way to go about things, Random called out, “Okay, I’ve got the front bumper. You take the rear and we’ll carry it back to the road — and we’d better deposit it in the left lane.”