_We are always, thanks to our human nature, potential criminals.
None of us stands outside humanity's black collective shadow._
--The Undiscovered Self,
_by Carl Jung_
Ordinarily scroungers who hide around on the outskirts until the
killing's done and then come in to share the loot get what they
deserve--wordless orders, well backed up, to be on their way at once.
Sometimes they even catch an after-clap of the murder urge, if it hasn't
all been expended on the first victim or victims. Yet they _will_ do it,
trusting I suppose to the irresistible glamor of their personalities.
There were several reasons why we didn't at once give Pop this
treatment.
In the first place we didn't neither of us have our distance weapons. My
revolver and her dart gun were both tucked in the cave back at the edge
of the freeway. And there's one bad thing about a bugger so knife-happy
he lugs them around by the carload--he's generally good at tossing them.
With his dozen or so knives Pop definitely outgunned us.
Second, we were both of us without the use of an arm. That's right, the
both of us. My right arm still dangled like a string of sausages and I
couldn't yet feel any signs of it coming undead. While she'd burned her
fingers badly grabbing at the gun--I could see their red-splotched tips
now as she pulled them out of her mouth for a second to wipe the Pilot's
blood out of her eyes. All she had was her stump with the knife screwed
to it. Me, I can throw a knife left-handed if I have to, but you bet I
wasn't going to risk Mother that way.
Then I'd no sooner heard Pop's voice, breathy and a little high like an
old man's will get, than it occurred to me that he must have been the
one who had given the funny scream that had distracted the Pilot's
attention and let us get him. Which incidentally made Pop a quick
thinker and imaginative to boot, and meant that he'd helped on the
killing.
* * * * *
Besides all that, Pop did not come in fawning and full of extravagant
praise, as most scroungers will. He just assumed equality with us right
from the start and he talked in an absolutely matter-of-fact way,
neither praising nor criticizing one bit--too damn matter-of-fact and
open, for that matter, to suit my taste, but then I have heard other
buggers say that some old men are apt to get talkative, though I had
never worked with or run into one myself. Old people are very rare in
the Deathlands, as you might imagine.
So the girl and me just scowled at him but did nothing to stop him as he
came along. Near us, his extra knives would be no advantage to him.
"Hum," he said, "looks a lot like a guy I murdered five years back down
Los Alamos way. Same silver monkey suit and almost as tall. Nice chap
too--was trying to give me something for a fever I'd faked. That his gun
melted? My man didn't smoke after I gave him his quietus, but then it
turned out he didn't have any metal on him. I wonder if this chap--" He
started to kneel down by the body.
"Hands off, Pop!" I gritted at him. That was how we started calling him
Pop.
"Why sure, sure," he said, staying there on one knee. "I won't lay a
finger on him. It's just that I've heard the Alamosers have it rigged so
that any metal they're carrying melts when they die, and I was wondering
about this boy. But he's all yours, friend. By the way, what's your
name, friend?"
"Ray," I snarled. "Ray Baker." I think the main reason I told him was
that I didn't want him calling me "friend" again. "You talk too much,
Pop."
"I suppose I do, Ray," he agreed. "What's your name, lady?"
The girl just sort of hissed at him and he grinned at me as if to say,
"Oh, women!" Then he said, "Why don't you go through his pockets, Ray?
I'm real curious."
"Shut up," I said, but I felt that he'd put me on the spot just the
same. I was curious about the guy's pockets myself, of course, but I was
also wondering if Pop was alone or if he had somebody with him, and
whether there was anybody else in the plane or not--things like that,
too many things. At the same time I didn't want to let on to Pop how
useless my right arm was--if I'd just get a twinge of feeling in that
arm, I knew I'd feel a lot more confident fast. I knelt down across the
body from him, started to lay Mother aside and then hesitated.
* * * * *
The girl gave me an encouraging look, as if to say, "I'll take care of
the old geezer." On the strength of her look I put down Mother and
started to pry open the Pilot's left hand, which was clenched in a fist
that looked a mite too big to have nothing inside it.
The girl started to edge behind Pop, but he caught the movement right
away and looked at her with a grin that was so knowing and yet so
friendly, and yet so pitying at the same time--with the pity of the old
pro for even the seasoned amateur--that in her place I think I'd have
blushed myself, as she did now ... through the streaks of the Pilot's
blood.
"You don't have to worry none about me, lady," he said, running a hand
through his white hair and incidentally touching the pommel of one of
the two knives strapped high on the back of his jacket so he could reach
one over either shoulder. "I quit murdering some years back. It got to
be too much of a strain on my nerves."
"Oh yeah?" I couldn't help saying as I pried up the Pilot's index finger
and started on the next. "Then why the stab-factory, Pop?"
"Oh you mean those," he said, glancing down at his knives. "Well, the
fact is, Ray, I carry them to impress buggers dumber than you and the
lady here. Anybody wants to think I'm still a practicing murderer I got
no objections. Matter of sentiment, too, I just hate to part with
them--they bring back important memories. And then--you won't believe
this, Ray, but I'm going to tell you just the same--guys just up and
give me their knives and I doubly hate to part with a gift."
I wasn't going to say "Oh yeah?" again or "Shut up!" either, though I
certainly wished I could turn off Pop's spigot, or thought I did. Then I
felt a painful tingling shoot down my right arm. I smiled at Pop and
said, "Any other reasons?"
"Yep," he said. "Got to shave and I might as well do it in style. A new
blade every day in the fortnight is twice as good as the old ads. You
know, it makes you keep a knife in fine shape if you shave with it. What
you got there, Ray?"
"You were wrong, Pop," I said. "He did have some metal on him that
didn't melt."
I held up for them to see the object I'd extracted from his left fist:
a bright steel cube measuring about an inch across each side, but it
felt lighter than if it were solid metal. Five of the faces looked
absolutely bare. The sixth had a round button recessed in it.
From the way they looked at it neither Pop nor the girl had the faintest
idea of what it was. I certainly hadn't.
"Had he pushed the button?" the girl asked. Her voice was throaty but
unexpectedly refined, as if she'd done no talking at all, not even to
herself, since coming to the Deathlands and so retained the cultured
intonations she'd had earlier, whenever and wherever that had been. It
gave me a funny feeling, of course, because they were the first words
I'd heard her speak.
"Not from the way he was holding it," I told her. "The button was
pointed up toward his thumb but the thumb was on the outside of his
fingers." I felt an unexpected satisfaction at having expressed myself
so clearly and I told myself not to get childish.
The girl slitted her eyes. "Don't you push it, Ray," she said.
"Think I'm nuts?" I told her, meanwhile sliding the cube into the
smaller pocket of my pants, where it fit tight and wouldn't turn
sideways and the button maybe get pressed by accident. The tingling in
my right arm was almost unbearable now, but I was getting control over
the muscles again.
"Pushing that button," I added, "might melt what's left of the plane, or
blow us all up." It never hurts to emphasize that you may have another
weapon in your possession, even if it's just a suicide bomb.
"There was a man pushed another button once," Pop said softly and
reflectively. His gaze went far out over the Deathlands and took in a
good half of the horizon and he slowly shook his head. Then his face
brightened. "Did you know, Ray," he said, "that I actually met that man?
Long afterwards. You don't believe me, I know, but I actually did. Tell
you about it some other time."
I almost said, "Thanks, Pop, for sparing me at least for a while," but I
was afraid that would set him off again. Besides, it wouldn't have been
quite true. I've heard other buggers tell the yarn of how they met (and
invariably rubbed out) the actual guy who pushed the button or buttons
that set the fusion missiles blasting toward their targets, but I felt a
sudden curiosity as to what Pop's version of the yarn would be. Oh well,
I could ask him some other time, if we both lived that long. I started
to check the Pilot's pockets. My right hand could help a little now.
* * * * *
"Those look like mean burns you got there, lady," I heard Pop tell the
girl. He was right. There were blisters easy to see on three of the
fingertips. "I've got some salve that's pretty good," he went on, "and
some clean cloth. I could put on a bandage for you if you wanted. If
your hand started to feel poisoned you could always tell Ray here to
slip a knife in me."
Pop was a cute gasser, you had to admit. I reminded myself that it was
Pop's business to play up to the both of us, charm being the secret
weapon of all scroungers.
The girl gave a harsh little laugh. "Very well," she said, "but we will
use my salve, I know it works for me." And she started to lead Pop to
where we'd hidden our things.
"I'll go with you," I told them, standing up.
It didn't look like we were going to have any more murders today--Pop
had got through the preliminary ingratiations pretty well and the girl
and me had had our catharsis--but that would be no excuse for any such
stupidity as letting the two of them get near my .38.
Strolling to the cave and back I eased the situation a bit more by
saying, "That scream you let off, Pop, really helped. I don't know what
gave you the idea, but thanks."
"Oh that," he said. "Forget about it."
"I won't," I told him. "You may say you've quit killing, but helped on a
do-in today."
"Ray," he said a little solemnly, "if it'll make you feel any happier,
I'll take a bit of the responsibility for every murder that's been done
since the beginning of time."
I looked at him for a while. Then, "Pop, you're not by any chance the
religious type?" I asked suddenly.
"Lord, no," he told us.
That struck me as a satisfactory answer. God preserve me from the
religious type! We have quite a few of those in the Deathlands. It
generally means that they try to convert you to something before they
kill you. Or sometimes afterwards.
We completed our errands. I felt a lot more secure with Old Financier's
Friend strapped to my middle. Mother is wonderful but she is not enough.
I dawdled over inspecting the Pilot's pockets, partly to give my right
hand time to come back all the way. And to tell the truth I didn't much
enjoy the job--a corpse, especially such a handsome cadaver as this,
just didn't go with Pop's brand of light patter.
* * * * *
Pop did up the girl's hand in high style, bandaging each finger
separately and then persuading her to put on a big left-hand work glove
he took out of his small pack.
"Lost the right," he explained, "which was the only one I ever used
anyway. Never knew until now why I kept this. How does it feel, Alice?"
I might have known he'd worm her name out of her. It occurred to me that
Pop's ideas of scrounging might extend to Alice's favors. The urge
doesn't die out when you get old, they tell me. Not completely.
He'd also helped her replace the knife on her stump with the hook.
By that time I'd poked into all the Pilot's pockets I could get at
without stripping him and found nothing but three irregularly shaped
blobs of metal, still hot to the touch. Under the charred spots, of
course.
I didn't want the job of stripping him. Somebody else could do a little
work, I told myself. I've been bothered by bodies before (as who hasn't,
I suppose?) but this one was really beginning to make me sick. Maybe I
was cracking up, it occurred to me. Murder is a very wearing business,
as all Deathlanders know, and although some crack earlier than others,
all crack in the end.
I must have been showing how I was feeling because, "Cheer up, Ray," Pop
said. "You and Alice have done a big murder--I'd say the subject was six
foot ten--so you ought to be happy. You've drawn a blank on his pockets
but there's still the plane."
"Yeah, that's right," I said, brightening a little. "There's still the
stuff in the plane." I knew there were some items I couldn't hope for,
like .38 shells, but there'd be food and other things.
"Nuh-uh," Pop corrected me. "I said _the plane_. You may have thought
it's wrecked, but I don't. Have you taken a real gander at it? It's
worth doing, believe me."
I jumped up. My heart was suddenly pounding. I was glad of an excuse to
get away from the body, but there was a lot more in my feelings than
that. I was filled with an excitement to which I didn't want to give a
name because it would make the let-down too great.
One of the wide stubby wings of the plane, raking downward so that its
tip almost touched the concrete, had hidden the undercarriage of the
fuselage from our view. Now, coming around the wing, I saw that _there
was no undercarriage_.
I had to drop to my hands and knees and scan around with my cheek next
to the concrete before I'd believe it. _The "wrecked" plane was at all
points at least six inches off the ground._
* * * * *
I got to my feet again. I was shaking. I wanted to talk but I couldn't.
I grabbed the leading edge of the wing to stop from falling. The whole
body of the plane gave a fraction of an inch and then resisted my
leaning weight with lazy power, just like a gyroscope.
"Antigravity," I croaked, though you couldn't have heard me two feet.
Then my voice came back. "Pop, Alice! They got antigravity!
Antigravity--and it's working!"
Alice had just come around the wing and was facing me. She was shaking
too and her face was white like I knew mine was. Pop was politely
standing off a little to one side, watching us curiously. "Told you
you'd won a real prize," he said in his matter-of-fact way.
Alice wet her lips. "Ray," she said, "we can get away."
Just those four words, but they did it. Something in me unlocked--no,
exploded describes it better.
"We can go places!" I almost shouted.
"Beyond the dust," she said. "Mexico City. South America!" She was
forgetting the Deathlander's cynical article of belief that the dust
never ends, but then so was I. It makes a difference whether or not
you've got a means of doing something.
"Rio!" I topped her with. "The Indies. Hong Kong. Bombay. Egypt.
Bermuda. The French Riviera!"
"Bullfights and clean beds," she burst out with. "Restaurants. Swimming
pools. Bathrooms!"
"Skindiving," I took it up with, as hysterical as she was. "Road races
and roulette tables."
"Bentleys and Porsches!"
"Aircoups and DC4s and Comets!"
"Martinis and hashish and ice cream sodas!"
"Hot food! Fresh coffee! Gambling, smoking, dancing, music, drinks!" I
was going to add _women_, but then I thought of how hard-bitten little
Alice would look beside the dream creatures I had in mind. I tactfully
suppressed the word but I filed the idea away.
I don't think either of us knew exactly what we were saying. Alice in
particular I don't believe was old enough to have experienced almost any
of the things the words referred to. They were mysterious symbols of
long-interdicted delights spewing out of us.
"Ray," Alice said, hurrying to me, "let's get aboard."
"Yes," I said eagerly and then I saw a little problem. The door to the
plane was a couple of feet above our heads. Whoever hoisted himself up
first--or got hoisted up, as would have to be the case with Alice on
account of her hand--would be momentarily at the other's mercy. I guess
it occurred to Alice too because she stopped and looked at me. It was a
little like the old teaser about the fox, the goose, and the corn.
Maybe, too, we were both a little scared the plane was booby-trapped.
* * * * *
Pop solved the problem in the direct way I might have expected of him by
stepping quietly between us, giving a light leap, catching hold of the
curving sill, chinning himself on it, and scrambling up into the plane
so quickly that we'd hardly have had time to do anything about it if
we'd wanted to. Pop couldn't be much more than a bantamweight, even with
all his knives. The plane sagged an inch and then swung up again.
As Pop disappeared from view I backed off, reaching for my .38, but a
moment later he stuck out his head and grinned down at us, resting his
elbows on the sill.
"Come on up," he said. "It's quite a place. I promise not to push any
buttons 'til you get here, though there's whole regiments of them."
I grinned back at Pop and gave Alice a boost up. She didn't like it, but
she could see it had to be her next. She hooked onto the sill and Pop
caught hold of her left wrist below the big glove and heaved.
Then it was my turn. I didn't like it. I didn't like the idea of those
two buggers poised above me while my hands were helpless on the sill.
But I thought _Pop's a nut. You can trust a nut, at least a little ways,
though you can't trust nobody else._ I heaved myself up. It was strange
to feel the plane giving and then bracing itself like something alive.
It seemed to have no trouble accepting our combined weight, which after
all was hardly more than half again the Pilot's.
* * * * *
Inside the cabin was pretty small but as Pop had implied, oh my!
Everything looked soft and smoothly curved, like you imagine your
insides being, and almost everything was a restfully dull silver. The
general shape of it was something like the inside of an egg. Forward,
which was the larger end, were a couple of screens and a wide viewport
and some small dials and the button brigades Pop had mentioned, lined up
like blank typewriter keys but enough for writing Chinese.
Just aft of the instrument panel were two very comfortable-looking
strange low seats. They seemed to be facing backwards until I realized
they were meant to be knelt into. The occupant, I could see, would sort
of sprawl forward, his hands free for button-pushing and such. There
were spongy chinrests.
Aft was a tiny instrument panel and a kind of sideways seat, not nearly
so fancy. The door by which we'd entered was to the side, a little aft.
I didn't see any indications of cabinets or fixed storage spaces of any
kinds, but somehow stuck to the walls here and there were quite a few
smooth blobby packages, mostly dull silver too, some large, some
small--valises and handbags, you might say.
All in all, it was a lovely cabin and, more than that, it seemed lived
in. It looked as if it had been shaped for, and maybe by one man. It had
a personality you could feel, a strong but warm personality of its own.
Then I realized whose personality it was. I almost got sick--so close to
it I started telling myself it must be something antigravity did to your
stomach.
But it was all too interesting to let you get sick right away. Pop was
poking into two of the large mound-shaped cases that were sitting loose
and open on the right-hand seat, as if ready for emergency use. One had
a folded something with straps on it that was probably a parachute. The
second had I judged a thousand or more of the inch cubes such as I'd
pried out of the Pilot's hand, all neatly stacked in a cubical box
inside the soft outer bag. You could see the one-cube gap where he'd
taken the one.
I decided to take the rest of the bags off the walls and open them, if I
could figure out how. The others had the same idea, but Alice had to
take off her hook and put on her pliers, before she could make progress.
Pop helped her. There was room enough for us to do these things without
crowding each other too closely.
By the time Alice was set to go I'd discovered the trick of getting the
bags off. You couldn't pull them away from the wall no matter what force
you used, at least I couldn't, and you couldn't even slide them straight
along the walls, but if you just gave them a gentle counterclockwise
twist they came off like nothing. Twisting them clockwise glued them
back on. It was very strange, but I told myself that if these boys could
generate antigravity fields they could create screwy fields of other
sorts.
It also occurred to me to wonder if "these boys" came from Earth. The
Pilot had looked human enough, but these accomplishments didn't--not by
my standards for human achievement in the Age of the Deaders. At any
rate I had to admit to myself that my pet term "cultural queer" did not
describe to my own satisfaction members of a culture which could create
things like this cabin. Not that I liked making the admission. It's hard
to admit an exception to a pet gripe against things.
The excitement of getting down and opening the Christmas packages saved
me from speculating too much along these or any other lines.
I hit a minor jackpot right away. In the same bag were a compass, a
catalytic pocket lighter, a knife with a saw-tooth back edge that made
my affection for Mother waver, a dust mask, what looked like a compact
water-filtration unit, and several other items adding up to a deluxe
Deathlands Survival Kit.
There were some goggles in the kit I didn't savvy until I put them on
and surveyed the landscape out the viewport. A nearby dust drift I knew
to be hot glowed green as death in the slightly smoky lenses. Wow! Those
specs had Geiger counters beat a mile and I privately bet myself they
worked at night. I stuck them in my pocket quick.
* * * * *
We found bunches of tiny electronics parts--I think they were; spools of
magnetic tape, but nothing to play it on; reels of very narrow film with
frames much too small to see anything at all unmagnified; about three
thousand cigarettes in unlabeled transparent packs of twenty--we lit up
quick, using my new lighter; a picture book that didn't make much sense
because the views might have been of tissue sections or starfields, we
couldn't quite decide, and there were no captions to help; a thin book
with ricepaper pages covered with Chinese characters--_that_ was a
puzzler; a thick book with nothing but columns of figures, all zeros and
ones and nothing else; some tiny chisels; and a mouth organ. Pop, who'd
make a point of just helping in the hunt, appropriated that last item--I
might have known he would, I told myself. Now we could expect "Turkey in
the Straw" at odd moments.
Alice found a whole bag of what were women's things judging from the
frilliness of the garments included. She set aside some squeeze-packs
and little gadgets and elastic items right away, but she didn't take any
of the clothes. I caught her measuring some kind of transparent chemise
against herself when she thought we weren't looking; it was for a girl
maybe six sizes bigger.
* * * * *
And we found food. Cans of food that was heated up inside by the time
you got the top rolled off, though the outside could still be cool to
the touch. Cans of boneless steak, boneless chops, cream soup, peas,
carrots, and fried potatoes--they weren't labeled at all but you could
generally guess the contents from the shape of the can. Eggs that heated
when you touched them and were soft-boiled evenly and barely firm by the
time you had the shell broke. And small plastic bottles of strong coffee
that heated up hospitably too--in this case the tops did a five-second
hesitation in the middle of your unscrewing them.
At that point as you can imagine we let the rest of the packages go and
had ourselves a feast. The food ate even better than it smelled. It was
real hard for me not to gorge.
Then as I was slurping down my second bottle of coffee I happened to
look out the viewport and see the Pilot's body and the darkening puddle
around it and the coffee began to taste, well, not bad, but sickening. I
don't think it was guilty conscience. Deathlanders outgrow those if they
ever have them to start with; loners don't keep consciences--it takes
cultures to give you those and make them work. Artistic
inappropriateness is the closest I can come to describing what bothered
me. Whatever it was, it made me feel lousy for a minute.
About the same time Alice did an odd thing with the last of _her_
coffee. She slopped it on a rag and used it to wash her face. I guess
she'd caught a reflection of herself with the blood smears. She didn't
eat any more after that either. Pop kept on chomping away, a slow feeder
and appreciative.
To be doing something I started to inspect the instrument panel and
right away I was all excited again. The two screens were what got me.
They showed shadowy maps, one of North America, the other of the World.
The first one was a whole lot like the map I'd been imagining
earlier--faint colors marked the small "civilized" areas including one
in Eastern Canada and another in Upper Michigan that must be "countries"
I didn't know about, and the Deathlands were real dark just as I'd
always maintained they should be!
South of Lake Michigan was a brightly luminous green point that must be
where we were, I decided. And for some reason the colored areas
representing Los Alamos and Atlantic Highlands were glowing brighter
than the others--they had an active luminosity. Los Alamos was blue,
Atla-Hi violet. Los Alamos was shown having more territory than I
expected. Savannah Fortress for that matter was a whole _lot_ bigger
than I'd have made it, pushing out pseudopods west and northeast along
the coast, though its red didn't have the extra glow. But its
growth-pattern reeked of imperialism.
* * * * *
The World screen showed dim color patches too, but for the moment I was
more interested in the other.
The button armies marched right up to the lower edge of the screens and
right away I got the crazy hunch that they were connected with spots on
the map. Push the button for a certain spot and the plane would go
there! Why, one button even seemed to have a faint violet nimbus around
it (or else my eyes were going bad) as if to say, "Push me and we go to
Atlantic Highlands."
A crazy notion as I say and no sensible way to handle a plane's
navigation according to any standards I could imagine, but then as I've
also said this plane didn't seem to be designed according to any
standards but rather in line with one man's ideas, including his whims.
At any rate that was my hunch about the buttons and the screens. It
tantalized rather than helped, for the only button that seemed to be
marked in any way was the one (guessing by color) for Atlantic
Highlands, and I certainly didn't want to go there. Like Alamos, Atla-Hi
has the reputation for being a mysteriously dangerous place. Not openly
mean and death-on-Deathlanders like Walla Walla or Porter, but buggers
who swing too close to Atla-Hi have a way of never turning up again. You
never expect to see again two out of three buggers who pass in the
night, but for three out of three to keep disappearing is against
statistics.
Alice was beside me now, scanning things over too, and from the way she
frowned and what not I gathered she had caught my hunch and also shared
my puzzlement.
Now was the time, all right, when we needed an instruction manual and
not one in Chinese neither!
Pop swallowed a mouthful and said, "Yep, now'd be a good time to have
him back for a minute, to explain things a bit. Oh, don't take offense,
Ray, I know how it was for you and for you too, Alice. I know the both
of you _had_ to murder him, it wasn't a matter of free choice, it's the
way us Deathlanders are built. Just the same, it'd be nice to have a way
of killing 'em and keeping them on hand at the same time. I remember
feeling that way after murdering the Alamoser I told you about. You see,
I come down with the very fever I'd faked and almost died of it, while
the man who could have cured me easy wouldn't do nothing but perfume the
landscape with the help of a gang of anaerobic bacteria. Stubborn
single-minded cuss!"
* * * * *
The first part of that oration started up my sickness again and irked me
not a little. Dammit, what right had Pop to talk about how all us
Deathlanders _had to_ kill (which was true enough and by itself would
have made me cotton to him) if as he'd claimed earlier _he'd_ been able
to quit killing? Pop was, an old hypocrite, I told myself--he'd helped
murder the Pilot, he'd admitted as much--and Alice and me'd be better
off if we bedded the both of them down together. But then the second
part of what Pop said so made me want to feel pleasantly sorry for
myself and laugh at the same time that I forgave the old geezer.
Practically everything Pop said had that reassuring touch of insanity
about it.
So it was Alice who said, "Shut up, Pop"--and rather casually at
that--and she and me went on to speculate and then to argue about which
buttons we ought to push, if any and in what order.
"Why not just start anywhere and keep pushing 'em one after
another?--you're going to have to eventually, may as well start now,"
was Pop's light-hearted contribution to the discussion. "Got to take
some chances in this life." He was sitting in the back seat and still
nibbling away like a white-topped mangy old squirrel.
Of course Alice and me knew more than that. We kept making guesses as to
how the buttons worked and then backing up our guesses with hot
language. It was a little like two savages trying to decide how to play
chess by looking at the pieces. And then the old escape-to-paradise
theme took hold of us again and we studied the colored blobs on the
World screen, trying to decide which would have the fanciest
accommodations for blase ex-murderers. On the North America screen too
there was an intriguing pink patch in southern Mexico that seemed to
take in old Mexico City and Acapulco too.
"Quit talking and start pushing," Pop prodded us. "This way you're
getting nowhere fast. I can't stand hesitation, it riles my nerves."
Alice thought you ought to push ten buttons at once, using both hands,
and she was working out patterns for me to try. But I was off on a kick
about how we should darken the plane to see if any of the other buttons
glowed beside the one with the Atla-Hi violet.
"Look here, you killed a big man to get this plane," Pop broke in,
coming up behind me. "Are you going to use it for discussion groups or
are you going to fly it?"
"Quiet," I told him. I'd got a new hunch and was using the dark glasses
to scan the instrument panel. They didn't show anything.
"Dammit, I can't stand this any more," Pop said and reached a hand and
arm between us and brought it down on about fifty buttons, I'd judge.
The other buttons just went down and up, but the Atla-Hi button went
down and stayed down.
The violet blob of Atla-Hi on the screen got even brighter in the next
few moments.
The door closed with a tiny thud.
We took off.