"I don't know," Ragle said. Darkness had obliterated the landscape around them; in the open spaces between towns there were no street lights to give them clues. Only the flat land, up to the sky, where lighter colors, a bluish-black, began. Stars had appeared.
"Do we have to wait until morning?" Vic said. "Are we going to have to drive all night?"
"Maybe so," Ragle said. On a curve, the headlights of the truck lit up a section of fence and scrub plants beyond it. I feel as if all this had happened before, he thought. Reliving it a second time.
Beside him, Vic examined the papers that he had brought out of the glove compartment. "What do you make of this?" He held up a long paper strip, brightly colored; Ragle glanced at it and saw that it read:
ONE HAPPY WORLD
At each end, in luminous yellow, a snake coiled into an S-shape.
"Has glue on back," Vic said. "It must be for the bumper."
"Like 'make mine milk'," Ragle said.
After a pause Vic said in a low voice, "Let me hold the wheel. I want you to look at it closer." He caught hold of the steering wheel and passed the bumper strip to Ragle. "At the bottom. In type."
Holding the strip near the dome light, Ragle read the words: _Federal law requires that this be displayed at all times_.
He passed it back to Vic. "We're going to run into a lot more we don't understand," he said. But the strip had disturbed him, too. Mandatory... it had to be on the bumper, or else.
Vic said, "There're more." From the glove compartment he lifted out a stack of strips, ten or eleven of them, all alike. "He must glue it on every time he makes a trip. Probably rips it off when he enters town."
At the next stretch of empty highway, when no other trucks could be seen, Ragle drove from the road onto the gravel shoulder. He stopped the truck and put on the hand brake. "I'm going to go around to the back," he said. "I'll see if he's getting enough air." As he opened the cab door he said, "And I'll ask him about the strip."
Nervously, Vic slid over behind the wheel. "I doubt if he'll give you a right answer," he said.
Walking with care, Ragle made his way through the darkness along the side of the truck, past the great wheels, to the back. He climbed the iron ladder and rapped on the door. "Ted," he said. "Or whatever your name is. Are you all right?"
From within the truck a voice said indistinctly, "Yeah. I'm okay, Mr. Gumm."
Even here, Ragle thought. Parked on the shoulder of the highway, in a deserted region between towns. I'm recognized.
"Listen, Mr. Gumm," the driver said, his mouth close to the crack of the doors. "You don't know what's out here, do you? You have no idea. Listen to me; there isn't a chance in the world you'll run into anything but harm -- harm for you, harm for everybody else. You have to take my word for it. I'm telling you the truth. Someday you'll look back and know I was right. You'll thank me. Here." A small white square of paper slid out from between the doors and fluttered down; Ragle caught it. A card, on the back of which the driver had written a phone number.
"What's this for?" Ragle said.
The driver said, "When you get to the next town, pull off the road and go phone that number."
"How far's the next town?"
A hesitation, and then the driver said, "I'm not sure. Pretty soon now. It's hard to keep track of the miles stuck back here."
"Can you get enough air?"
"Yeah." The driver sounded resigned, but at the same time highly keyed up. "Mr. Gumm," he said, in the same intense, beseeching voice, "you just got to believe me. I don't care how long you keep me cooped up in this thing, but in the next hour or two you've just got to get in touch with somebody."
"Why?" Ragle said.
"I can't say. Look, you apparently got it figured out enough to hijack this rig. So you must have some idea. If you have that much, you can figure out that it's important and not just somebody's smart idea, building all those houses and streets and those old cars back there."
Talk on, Ragle thought to himself.
"You don't even know how to drive a two-section rig," the driver said. "Suppose you hit a steep grade? This clunk carries forty-five thousand pounds when it's loaded; of course it ain't loaded right now. But you might sideswipe something. And there're a couple of railroad trestles this thing won't clear. You probably don't have any idea what the clearance of this is. And you don't know how to gear down a grade or anything." He lapsed into silence.
"What's the bumper strip for?" Ragle said. "The motto and the snake."
"Christ's sake!" the driver snarled.
"Does it have to go on?"
Cursing at him, the driver managed finally to say, "Listen, Mr. Gumm -- if you don't have that on right, they'll blow you sky-high; so help me god, I'm telling you the truth."
"How does it go on?" he said.
"Let me out and I'll show you. I'm not going to tell you." The man's voice rose in hysteria. "You better let me out so I can stick it on, or honest to god, you won't get by the first tank that spots you."
Tank, Ragle thought. The notion appalled him.
Hopping down, he walked back to the cab. "I think we're going to have to let him out," he said to Vic.
"I heard him," Vic said. "I'd just as soon he was out of there, in any case."
"He may be stringing us along," Ragle said.
"We better not take the chance."
Ragle walked back, climbed the ladder, and unfastened the door. It swung back, and the driver, still cursing sullenly, dropped down onto the gravel.
"Here's the strip," Ragle said to him. He handed it over. "What else do we have to know?"
"You have to know everything," the driver said bitterly. Kneeling down he yanked a transparent covering from the back of the strip, pressed the strip to the rear bumper, and then rubbed it smooth with his fist. "How are you going to buy fuel?"
"Credit card," Ragle said.
"What a laugh," the driver said, standing up. "That credit card is for in--" He ceased. "In town," he said. "It's a fake. It's a regular old Standard Oil credit card; there haven't been any of them for twenty years." Glaring at Ragle he continued, "It's all rationed, kerosene for the truck--"
"Kerosene," Ragle echoed. "I thought it took diesel oil."
"No," the driver said, with massive reluctance. He spat into the gravel. "It's not diesel. The stack is fake. It's turbine. Uses kerosene. But they won't sell you any. The first place you go, they'll know something isn't right. And out here--" Again his voice rose to a screech. "You can't take no risks! None at all!"
"Want to ride in front with us?" Ragle said. "Or in the back? I'll leave it up to you." He wanted to get the truck into motion again.
The driver said, "Go to hell." Turning his back, he started off down the gravel shoulder, hands in his pockets, body hunched forward.
As the shape of the driver disappeared into the darkness, Ragle thought, it's my own fault for unbolting the door. Nothing I can do; I can't run after him and hit him over the head. In a fight he'd take me apart. Take us both apart.
And anyhow, that isn't the answer. That isn't what we're looking for.
Returning to the cab, he said to Vic, "He's gone. I guess we're lucky he didn't jump out of the back waving a tire-iron."