"Then you may step down."
"Thank you, but I like it right where I am."
"You are a prisoner."
"What do you intend to do with me?"
"Put you back to sleep until the end of the Wait. Come down here!"
"No. And don't try shooting--or using a stun charge or gas, either. If you do, we're all of us dead the second it hits."
"What do you mean?" asked Turl, gesturing gently to the riflemen.
"My flier," said Jarry, "is a bomb, and I'm holding the fuse in my right hand." He raised the white metal box. "So long as I keep the lever on the side of this box depressed, we live. If my grip relaxes, even for an instant, the explosion which ensues will doubtless destroy this entire cavern."
"I think you're bluffing."
"You know how you can find out for certain."
"You'll die too, Jarry."
"At the moment, I don't really care. Don't try burning my hand off, either, to destroy the fuse," he cautioned, "because it doesn't really matter. Even if you should succeed, it will cost you at least two installations."
"Why is that?"
"What do you think I did with the fire-cannons? I taught the Redforms how to use them. At the moment, these weapons are manned by Redforms and aimed at two installations. If I do not personally visit my gunners by dawn, they will open fire. After destroying their objectives, they will move on and try for two more."
"You trusted those beasts with laser projectors?"
"That is correct. Now, will you begin awakening the others for the voting?"
Turl crouched, as if to spring at him, appeared to think better of it, relaxed.
"Why did you do it, Jarry?" he asked. "What are they to you that you would make your own people suffer for them?"
"Since you do not feel as I feel," said Jarry, "my reasons would mean nothing to you. After all, they are only based upon my feelings, which are different than your own--for mine are based upon sorrow and loneliness. Try this one, though: I am their god. My form is to be found in their every camp. I am the Slayer of Bears from the Desert of the Dead. They have told my story for two and a half centuries, and I have been changed by it. I am powerful and wise and good, so far as they are concerned. In this capacity, I owe them some consideration. If I do not give them their lives, who will there be to honor me in snow and chant my story around the fires and cut for me the best portions of the woolly caterpillar? None, Turl. And these things are all that my life is worth now. Awaken the others. You have no choice."
"Very well," said Turl. "And if their decision should go against you?"
"Then I'll retire, and you can be god," said Jarry.
Now every day when the sun goes down out of the purple sky, Jarry Dark watches it in its passing, for he shall sleep no more the sleep of ice and of stone, wherein there is no dreaming. He has elected to live out the span of his days in a tiny instant of the Wait, never to look upon the New Alyonal of his people. Every morning, at the new Deadland Installation, he is awakened by sounds like the cracking of ice, the trembling of tin, the snapping of steel strands, before they come to him with their offerings, singing and making marks upon the snow. They praise him and he smiles upon them. Sometimes he coughs.
Born of man and woman, in accordance with Catform Y7 requirements, Coldworld Class, Jarry Dark was not suited for existence anywhere in the universe which had guaranteed him a niche. This was either a blessing or a curse, depending on how you looked at it. So look at it however you would, that was the story. Thus does life repay those who would serve her fully.
Devil Car
Murdock sped across the Great Western Road Plain.
High above him the sun was a fiery yo-yo as he took the innumerable hillocks and rises of the Plain at better than a hundred-sixty miles an hour. He did now slow for anything, and Jenny's hidden eyes spotted all the rocks and potholes before they came to them, and she carefully adjusted their course, sometimes without his even detecting the subtle movement of the steering column beneath his hands.
Even through the dark-tinted windshield and the thick goggles he wore, the glare from the fused Plain burnt into his eyes, so that at times it seemed as if he were steering a very fast boat through night, beneath a brilliant alien moon, and that he was cutting his way across a lake of silver fire. Tall dust waves rose in his wake, hung in the air, and after a time settled once more.
"You are wearing yourself out," said the radio, "sitting there clutching the wheel that way, squinting ahead. Why don't you try to get some rest? Let me fog the shields. Go to sleep and leave the driving to me."
"No," he said, "I want it this way."
"All right," said Jenny. "I just thought I would ask."
"Thanks."
About a minute later the radio began playingчit was a soft, stringy sort of music.
"Cut that out!"
"Sorry, boss. Thought it might relax you."
"When I need relaxing, _I'll_ tell _you_."
"Check, Sam. Sorry."
The silence seemed oppressive after its brief interruption. She was a good car, though, Murdock knew that. She was always concerned with his welfare, and she was anxious to get on with his quest.
She was made to look like a carefree Swinger sedan: bright red, gaudy, fast. But there were rockets under the bulges of her hood, and two fifty-caliber muzzles lurked just out of sight in the recesses beneath her headlamps; she wore a belt of five and ten-second timed grenades across her belly; and in her trunk was a spray-tank containing a highly volatile naphthalic.
....for his Jenny was a specially designed deathcar, built for him by the Archengineer of the Geeyem Dynasty, far to the East, and all the cunning of that great artificer had gone into her construction.
"We'll find it this time, Jenny," he said, "and I didn't mean to snap at you like I did."
"That's all right, Sam," said the delicate voice. "I am programmed to understand you."
They roared on across the Great Plain and the sun fell away to the west. All night and all day they had searched, and Murdock was tired. The last Fuel Stop/Rest Stop Fortress seemed so long ago, so far back...
Murdock leaned forward and his eyes closed.
The windows slowly darkened into complete opacity. The seat belt crept higher and drew him back away from the wheel. Then the seat gradually leaned backwards until he was reclining on a level plane. The heater came on as the night approached, later.
The seat shook him awake, a little before five in the morning.
"Wake up, Sam! Wake up!"
"What is it?" he mumbled.
"I picked up a broadcast twenty minutes ago. There was a recent car-raid out this way. I changed immediately, and we are almost there."
"Why didn't you get me up right away?"
"You needed the sleep, and there was nothing you could do but get tense and nervous."
"Okay, you're probably right. Tell me about the raid."
"Six vehicles, proceeding westward, were apparently ambushed by an undetermined number of wild cars sometimes last night. The Patrol Copter was reporting it from above the scene and I listened in. All the vehicles were stripped and drained and their brains were smashed, and their passengers were all apparently killed too. There were no signs of movement."
"How far is it now?"
"Another two or three minutes."
The windshields came clear once more, and Murdock stared as far ahead through the night as the powerful lamps could cut.
"I see something," he said, after a few moments.
"This is the place," said Jenny, and she began to slow down.
They drew up beside the ravaged cars. His seat belt unstrapped and the door sprang open on his side.
"Circle around, Jenny," he said, "and look for heat tracks. I won't be long."
The door slammed and Jenny moved away from him. He snapped on his pocket torch and moved toward the wrecked vehicles.