Deathbird Stories Page 4

  “George, you’re a family man, not a rodder!”

  “Stuff it!”

  Then he was sorry he’d said it. She meant well. It was simply that…well, a man had to work hard to keep his balls. He looked sidewise at her. Wearing the Armadillo crash-suit, with its overlapping discs of ceramic material, she looked like a ferryflight pilot. The bangup hat hid her face. He wanted to apologize, but the moment had arrived. He locked the laser on the Merc, depressed the fire stud, and a beam of blinding light flashed from the hood of the Piranha. With the Merc on air-cushion, he had gone straight for the fuel tank.

  But the Merc suddenly wasn’t in front of him. Even as he had fired, the driver had sheered left into the next forty-foot-wide lane, and cut speed drastically. The Merc dropped back past them as the Piranha swooshed ahead.

  “He’s on my back!” George shouted.

  The next moment Spandau slugs tore at the hide of the Chevy. George slapped the studs, and the bulletproof screens went up. But not before pingholes had appeared in the beryllium hide of the Chevy, exposing the boron fiber filaments that gave the car its lightweight maneuverability. “Stuffer!” George breathed, terribly frightened. The driver was on his back, could ride him into the ground.

  He swerved, dropping flaps and skimming the Piranha back and forth in wide arcs, across the two lanes. The Merc hung on. The Spandaus chattered heavily. The screens would hold, but what else was the driver running? What were the “coded optionals” the CC Operator had mentioned?

  “Now see what you’ve gotten us into!”

  “Jess, shut up, shut up!”

  The transceiver queeped. He studded it on, still swerving. This time the driver of the Merc was sending via microwave video. The face blurred in.

  He was a young boy. In his teens. Acne.

  “Punk! Stinking punk!” George screamed, trying to swerve, drop back, accelerate. Nothing. The blood-red Merc hung on his tailfin, pounding at him. If one of those bullets struck the radiator tailfin, ricocheted, pierced to the engine, got through the lead shielding around the reactor. Jessica was crying, huddled inside her Armadillo.

  He was silently glad she was in the g-suit. He would try something illegal in a moment.

  “Hey, Boze. What’s your slit look like? If she’s creamy’n’nice I might letcha drop her at the next getty, and come back for her later. With your insurance, baby, and my pickle, I can keep her creamy’n’nice.”

  “Fuzzfaced punk! I’ll see you dead first!”

  “You’re a real thrasher, old dad. Wish you well, but it’s soon over. Say bye-bye to the nice rodder. You gonna die, old dad!”

  George was shrieking inarticulately.

  The boy laughed wildly. He was up on something. Ferro-coke, perhaps. Or D4. Or merryloo. His eyes glistened blue and young and deadly as a snake.

  “Just wanted you to know the name of your piledriver, old dad. You can call me Billy…”

  And he was gone. The Merc slipped forward, closer, and George had only a moment to realize that this Billy could not possibly have the money to equip his car with a laser, and that was a godsend. But the Spandaus were hacking away at the bulletproof screens. They weren’t meant for extended punishment like this. Damn that Detroit iron!

  He had to make the illegal move now.

  Thank God for the g-suits. A tight turn, across the lanes, in direct contravention of the authorization. And in a tight turn, without the g-suits, doing–he checked the speedometer and tach–250 mph, the blood slams up against one side of the body. The g-suits would squeeze the side of the body where the blood tried to pool up. They would live. If…

  He spun the wheel hard, slamming down on the accelerator. The Merc slewed sidewise and caught the turn. He never had a chance. He pulled out of the illegal turn, and their positions were the same. But the Merc had dropped back several car-lengths. Then from the transceiver there was a queep and he did not even stud in as the Police Copter overhead tightbeamed him in an authoritative voice:

  “XUPD 88321. Warning! You will be in contravention of your dueling authorization if you try another maneuver of that sort! You are warned to keep to your lanes and the standard rules of road courtesy!”

  Then it queeped, and George felt the universe settling like silt over him. He was being killed by the system.

  He’d have to eject. The seats would save him and Jessica. He tried to tell her, but she had fainted.

  How did I get into this? he pleaded with himself. Dear God, I swear if you get me out of this alive I’ll never never never go mad like this again. Please God.

  Then the Merc was up on him again, pulling up alongside!

  The window went down on the passenger side of the Mercury, and George whipped a glance across to see Billy with his lips skinned back from his teeth under the windblast and acceleration, aiming a .45 at him. Barely thinking, George studded the bumpers.

  The super-conducting magnetic bumpers took hold, sucked Billy into his magnetic field, and they collided with a crash that shook the .45 out of the rodder’s hand. In the instant of collision, George realized he had made his chance, and dropped back. In a moment he was riding the Merc’s tail again.

  Naked barbarism took hold. He wanted to kill now. Not crash the other, not wound the other, not stop the other–kill the other! Messages to God were forgotten.

  He locked-in the laser and aimed for the windshield bubble. His sights caught the rear of the bubble, fastened to the outline of Billy’s head, and George fired.

  As the bolt of light struck the bubble, a black spot appeared, and remained for the seconds the laser touched. When the light cut off, the black spot vanished. George cursed, screamed, cried, in fear and helplessness.

  The Merc was equipped with a frequency-sensitive laserproof windshield. Chemicals in the windshield would “go black,” opaque at certain frequencies, momentarily, anywhere a laser light touched them. He should have known. A duelist like this Billy, trained in weaponry, equipped for whatever might chance down a Freeway. Another coded optional. George found he was crying, piteously, within the cavern of his bangup hat.

  Then the Merc was swerving again, executing a roll and dip that George could not understand, could not predict. Then the Merc dropped speed suddenly, and George found himself almost running up the jet nozzle of the blood-red vehicle.

  He spun out and around, and Billy was behind him once more, closing in for the kill. He sent the propellers to full spin and reached for eternity. 270. 280. 290.

  Then he heard the sizzling, and jerked his head around to see the back wall of the car rippling. Oh my God, he thought, in terror, he can’t afford a laser, but he’s got an inductor beam!

  The beam was setting up strong local eddy currents in the beryllium hide of the Chevy. He’d rip a hole in the skin, the air would whip through, the car would go out of control.

  George knew he was dead.

  And Jessica.

  And all because of this punk, this rodder fuzzface!

  The Merc closed in confidently.

  George thought wildly. There was no time for anything but the blind plunging panic of random thought. The speedometer and the tach agreed. They were doing 300 mph.

  Riding on air-cushions.

  The thought slipped through his panic.

  It was the only possibility. He ripped off his bangup hat, and fumbled Jessica’s loose. He hugged them in his lap with his free hand, and managed to stud down the window on the driver’s side. Instantly, a blast of wind and accelerated air skinned back his lips, plastered his cheeks hollowly, made a death’s head of Jessica’s features. He fought to keep the Chevy stable, gyro’d.

  Then, holding the bangup hats by their straps, he forced them around the edge of the window where the force of his speed jammed them against the side of the Chevy. Then he let go. And studded up the window. And braked sharply.

  The b
ulky bangup hats dropped away, hit the roadbed, rolled directly into the path of the Merc. They disappeared underneath the blood-red car, and instantly the vehicle hit the Freeway. George swerved out of the way, dropping speed quickly.

  The Merc hit with a crash, bounced, hit again, bounced and hit, bounced and hit. As it went past the Piranha, George saw Billy caroming off the insides of the car.

  He watched the vehicle skid, wheelless, for a quarter of a mile down the Freeway before it caught the inner breakwall of the lane-divider, shot high in the air, and came down turning over. It landed on the bubble, which burst, and exploded in a flash of fire and smoke that rocked the Chevy.

  At three hundred miles per hour, two inches above the Freeway, riding on air, anything that broke up the air bubble would be a lethal weapon. He had won the duel. That Billy was dead.

  George pulled in at the next getty, and sat in the lot. Jessica came around finally. He was slumped over the wheel, shaking, unable to speak.

  She looked over at him, then reached out a trembling hand to touch his shoulder. He jumped at the infinitesimal pressure, felt through the g-and crash-suits. She started to speak, but the peek queeped, and she studded it on.

  “Sector Control, sir.” The Operator smiled.

  He did not look up.

  “Congratulations, sir. Despite one possible infraction, your duel has been logged as legal and binding. You’ll be pleased to know that the occupant of the car you challenged was rated number one in the entire Central and Eastern Freeway circuit. Now that Mr. Bonney has been finalized, we are entering your name on the dueling records. Underwriters have asked us to inform you that a check will be in the mails to you within twenty-four hours.

  “Again, sir, congratulations.”

  The peek went dead, and George tried to focus on the parking lot of the neon and silver getty. It had been a terrible experience. He never wanted to use a car that way again. It had been some other George, certainly not him.

  “I’m a family man,” he repeated Jessica’s words. “And this is just a family car…I…”

  She was smiling gently at him. Then they were in each other’s arms, and he was crying, and she was saying that’s all right, George, you had to do it, it’s all right.

  And the peek queeped.

  She studded it on and the face of the Operator smiled back at her. “Congratulations, sir, you’ll be pleased to know that Sector Control already has fifteen duel challenges for you.

  “Mr. Ronnie Lee Hauptman of Dallas has asked for first challenge, and is, at this moment, speeding toward you with an ETA of 6:15 this evening. In the event Mr. Hauptman does not survive, you have waiting challenges from Mr. Fred Bull of Chatsworth, California…Mr. Leo Fowler of Philadelphia…Mr. Emil Zalendo of…”

  George did not hear the list. He was trying desperately, with clubbed fingers, to extricate himself from the strangling folds of the g-and crash-suits. But he knew it was no good. He would have to fight.

  In the world of the Freeway, there was no place for a walking man.

  The Author wishes to thank Mr. Ben Bova, formerly of Avco Everett Research Laboratory (Everett, Massachusetts), for his assistance in preparing the extrapolative technical background of this story.

  Posing the question: does the god of love use underarm deodorant, vaginal spray and fluoride toothpaste?

  On the Downhill Side

  “In love, there is always one who kisses

  and one who offers the cheek.”

  –French proverb

  I knew she was a virgin because she was able to ruffle the silken mane of my unicorn. Named Lizette, she was a Grecian temple in which no sacrifice had ever been made. Vestal virgin of New Orleans, found walking without shadow in the thankgod coolness of cockroach-crawling Louisiana night. My unicorn whinnied, inclined his head, and she stroked the ivory spiral of his horn.

  Much of this took place in what is called the Irish Channel, a strip of street in old New Orleans where the lace curtain micks had settled decades before; now the Irish were gone and the Cubans had taken over the Channel. Now the Cubans were sleeping, recovering from the muggy today that held within its hours the déjà vu of muggy yesterday, the déjà rëvé of intolerable tomorrow. Now the crippled bricks of side streets off Magazine had given up their nightly ghosts, and one such phantom had come to me, calling my unicorn to her–thus, clearly, a virgin–and I stood waiting.

  Had it been Sutton Place, had it been a Manhattan evening, and had we met, she would have kneeled to pet my dog. And I would have waited. Had it been Puerto Vallarta, had it been 20°36’N, 105° 13’W, and had we met, she would have crouched to run her fingertips over the oil-slick hide of my iguana. And I would have waited. Meeting in streets requires ritual. One must wait and not breathe too loud, if one is to enjoy the congress of the nightly ghosts.

  She looked across the fine head of my unicorn and smiled at me. Her eyes were a shade of gray between onyx and miscalculation. “Is it a bit chilly for you?” I asked.

  “When I was thirteen,” she said, linking my arm, taking a tentative two steps that led me with her, up the street, “or perhaps I was twelve, well no matter, when I was that approximate age, I had a marvelous shawl of Belgian lace. I could look through it and see the mysteries of the sun and the other stars unriddled. I’m sure someone important and very nice has purchased that shawl from an antique dealer, and paid handsomely for it.”

  It seemed not a terribly responsive reply to a simple question.

  “A queen of the Mardi Gras Ball doesn’t get chilly,” she added, unasked. I walked along beside her, the cool evasiveness of her arm binding us, my mind a welter of answer choices, none satisfactory.

  Behind us, my unicorn followed silently. Well, not entirely silently, His platinum hoofs clattered on the bricks. I’m afraid I felt a straight pin of jealousy. Perfection does that to me.

  “When were you queen of the Ball?”

  The date she gave me was one hundred and thirteen years before.

  It must have been brutally cold down there in the stones.

  There is a little book they sell, a guide to manners and dining in New Orleans: I’ve looked: nowhere in the book do they indicate the proper responses to a ghost. But then, it says nothing about the wonderful cemeteries of New Orleans’ West Bank, or Metairie. Or the gourmet dining at such locations. One seeks, in vain, through the mutable, mercurial universe, for the compleat guide. To everything. And, failing in the search, one makes do the best one can. And suffers the frustration, suffers the ennui.

  Perfection does that to me.

  We walked for some time, and grew to know each other, as best we’d allow. These are some of the high points. They lack continuity. I don’t apologize, I merely point it out, adding with some truth, I feel, that most liaisons lack continuity. We find ourselves in odd places at various times, and for a brief span we link our lives to others–even as Lizette had linked her arm with mine–and then, our time elapsed, we move apart. Through a haze of pain occasionally; usually through a veil of memory that clings, then passes; sometimes as though we have never touched.

  “My name is Paul Ordahl,” I told her. “And the most awful thing that ever happened to me was my first wife, Bernice. I don’t know how else to put it–even if it sounds melodramatic, it’s simply what happened–she went insane, and I divorced her, and her mother had her committed to a private mental home.”

  “When I was eighteen,” Lizette said, “my family gave me my coming-out party. We were living in the Garden District, on Prytania Street. The house was a lovely white Plantation–they call them antebellum now–with Grecian pillars. We had a persimmon-green gazebo in the rear gardens, directly beside a weeping willow. It was six-sided. Octagonal. Or is that hexagonal? It was the loveliest party. And while it was going on, I sneaked away with a boy…I don’t remember his name…and we went into the gazebo, and I let him tou
ch my breasts. I don’t remember his name.”

  We were on Decatur Street, walking toward the French Quarter; the Mississippi was on our right, dark but making its presence known.

  “Her mother was the one had her committed, you see. I only heard from them twice after the divorce. It had been four stinking years and I really didn’t want any more of it. Once, after I’d started making some money, the mother called and said Bernice had to be put in the state asylum. There wasn’t enough money to pay for the private home any more. I sent a little; not much. I suppose I could have sent more, but I was remarried, there was a child from her previous marriage. I didn’t want to send any more. I told the mother not to call me again. There was only once after that…it was the most terrible thing that ever happened to me.”

  We walked around Jackson Square, looking in at the very black grass, reading the plaques bolted to the spear-topped fence, plaques telling how New Orleans had once belonged to the French. We sat on one of the benches in the street. The street had been closed to traffic, and we sat on one of the benches.

  “Our name was Charbonnet. Can you say that?”

  I said it, with a good accent.

  “I married a very wealthy man. He was in real estate. At one time he owned the entire block where the Vieux Carré now stands, on Bourbon Street. He admired me greatly. He came and sought my hand, and my maman had to strike the bargain because my father was too weak to do it; he drank. I can admit that now. But it didn’t matter, I’d already found out how my suitor was set financially. He wasn’t common, but he wasn’t quality, either. But he was wealthy and I married him. He gave me presents. I did what I had to do. But I refused to let him make love to me after he became friends with that awful Jew who built the Metairie Cemetery over the race track because they wouldn’t let him race his Jew horses. My husband’s name was Dunbar. Claude Dunbar, you may have heard the name? Our parties were de rigueur.”

  “Would you like some coffee and beignets at Du Monde?”

  She stared at me for a moment, as though she wanted me to say something more, then she nodded and smiled.