To catch up with Vyry. With Turner. With the shell.
And then what?
He had no ready answer, and that worried him. Maybe the best thing to do was stop at one of the silent farmhouses, awaken the owner, demand to use his phone for Army business. Get the fort and tell Norris everything and let him decide, let him assume responsibility. That was the logical way, the Army way, the smart way.
But you're not very smart, Quidley.
No, I'm not. That seems to be the one thing they all agree on, doesn't it?
Does that mean you're not going to stop?
That's right. I'm not going to stop.
Because now things were changing. He could feel them slipping, like rock faces under titanic pressure, unchanging for millions of years yet moving now into new shapes. He could feel certainties he'd never questioned, givens he'd built his life on, giving way to the corrosive nibble of doubt.
He knew now — to take just one of them — that he loved Vyry Lewis. That was why her "betrayal" had hurt so deeply. He had to smile at the idea of being betrayed by a colored whore. She was a whore — by government decree. But that didn't change the fact he loved her.
He'd called her traitor in his heart. But all the time it had been Sharon. Pretty, coy, witless Sharon Sue. The one he'd smiled over patronizingly, thinking she hadn't a brain that blonde head. He'd typed her too, classified her just the same way he had Vyry. And he'd been wrong. She'd been a fighter, strong, clever, and she too had a cause she believed in.
And Sawyer. That didn't surprise him as much, that Earl had been a Leaguer. He still found it far more surprising that he'd become an officer, with such appalling manners. But the plans he'd revealed did.
And driving west through Virginia on a nighttime road, he had to admit at last that it wasn't just the Kuklos League whose plans he hated and had to frustrate. They were the worst. But as the fault lines inside him shifted he saw more and more clearly that the principles and even the methods of the League were the same as those of the government, the Army, the Tredegar Works; all of Dixie Socialism and the modern South. It was all…
Poorly planned?
Mistaken?
Wrong?
But if the Confederacy was based on evil… if Sharon and Turner and the Railroaders were right, if inequality and separation were not natural but a monstrous wrong… then where did that leave Major Aubrey Quidley, CSA?
His hands tightened on the wheel as he remembered Turner. Remembered the Yankee captain he'd killed. Remembered Sawyer, arms outstretched, a rigid figure dressed in flame.
He wasn't sure, even yet.
But maybe not being sure was a sign of progress?
When he left the outskirts of Suffolk behind he slowed as he approached the fork. North, to Smithfield, along the winding ancient road along the riverbank? Or northwest along the straighter yet less populous way through Wakefield? He tried again to put himself in the fugitives' place, but couldn't.
Maybe the shortest route would be best: the straight road through Wakefield. He should be able to overtake them if he maintained at least sixty miles an hour. They'd be driving slowly, to avoid attention from the police. Just south of Richmond, where the roads joined, he could park and wait. Whichever road they'd taken, they had to pass by him there.
He hoped he'd recognize them. He turned on to the old Petersburg road, 460, and accelerated again. The transmission whined and air tore at the convertible top where parts had been melted through. He flipped the lights to high and roared down the tunnel they bored into what soon became unbroken forest.
He passed through small towns, sometimes identifying them from the signs, sometimes past them before his eyes could snap away from the road.
It was almost the same, about a half hour later, with the roadblock. He saw the red light flickering ahead a long time before he reached it. He maintained speed, thinking it was a breakdown. Only when the barricade loomed, and men suddenly stood and then scattered as he bore down at ninety, did he see what it was at last and hit the brakes far too hard for the light car and send it skidding, tires smelling of burned rubber and engine stalled, till it stopped broadside to the barricade only five feet away.
"Ho-ly Jeezus, man, you like to get youself killed drivin' like that."
He looked up. A deputy sheriff stood beside the car, arms aggressively akimbo. He sized the man up instantly: a bumpkin type, small-town poor white- overweight from poor diet, loud because of his badge and his gun but easily cowed… and doubtless, yes, doubtless a Kuklos too. This was their type of man.
The deputy — Williams, he noted — cleared his throat and leaned closer, then straightened up quickly and touched his cap. "Sorry, Major, didn't see right away who you was. Boys, get that thing out'n the road, Army officer wants through."
"Thanks, deputy. You blocking this road against the shell?"
"Shell, sir?"
"Why are you out here, Williams? Or do you know?"
"Orders, sir — some niggers stole a truck, with some Army property, that's all I know."
So Norris had taken precautions, yet without letting word out exactly what had been taken. Good, he thought. Sound thinking. "Anyone been through here last hour or so?"
"Not much, Major. Couple farmers in pickups, a carload of kids goin' up the conservatory. Drunk, of course." He chuckled; Quidley caught the smell of whiskey on his breath. "Oh, and one truck, quarter of a hour ago."
"What kind of truck?"
"Coffee truck."
"Flatbed?"
"No, closed up in back. A reg'lar delivery truck, Southern Motors, I think. Late model."
"You check it?"
"Sure I checked it," said Williams, sounding hurt. "Think I'm just goin' to wave it on through? Sure I checked it."
Quidley stared up at the man. The deputy grew fidgety; his eyes slid away, wandered to his men. "You can drive on through now, Major," he said, clearing his throat again.
"One more question first. Who was driving that last truck? Who was in the cab?"
Williams fidgeted, spat, and finally said guiltily, "Hell, no use me lyin' to you, Major. Had them a darky drivin'. But there was a white man with 'em, and their papers looked all right."
"Anything else you forgot to tell me, Deputy?"
"Just that they was a colored gal, too, a real looker. All three of 'em up there in the cab together. Say, hope I didn't make no mistake, but it seemed to me—"
"No, it's all right," said Quidley automatically. It was them; had to be. "Fifteen minutes ago, you say?"
"'Bout that, yessir. Look — if you want, me and the boys can pack up here, get on the road — we can catch 'em afore they gets to Petersburg."
"No, you stay here. That can't have been them. They were all black men, no whites or women, and the truck was an Army two-ton."
"This here was a big SM," said Williams, sounding relieved. "It was no Army truck."
"Right then." He started the engine again and wheeled the Triumph around. The barricade had been moved and he saw the right lane was unblocked. "You're only stopping northbound traffic?" he called.
"That's orders, sir, but if you want—"
"No, no. You're doing fine." He touched a hand to his forehead as Williams snapped to a grotesquely rigid salute, belly quivering over his gunbelt. "Carry on."
"Yes, sir!"
Fifteen minutes ahead… He shifted up as fast as the car would permit, keeping the pedal to the floor. The motor hammered, and he wondered if it were overheating. He eased back to eighty and roared along at that speed for perhaps ten minutes, seeing nothing in his lights save the ruler-straight road and off in the woods the occasional double glint of animal eyes in the dark.
He was past it before his brain registered it: a dim glow from the woods, and the yellow-orange flash of reflectors. There was something in there, probably off on a side road, and it was big; the upper reflectors had been at least ten feet above the ground. He hesitated long enough that momentum carried him five hundred yards down the road, then braked, wheeled around for a U-turn that would have toppled a larger car, and rolled back at a little over thirty-five.