Planet America (22 page)

Tony backed away from him, stepped into the kitchen, and nearly peed himself.

The place was absolutely clean. No, clean was not the right word. Sparkling. That was it. All the dishes were now washed and stacked, all the pans were scrubbed and hanging in the proper stations.

Tony's jaw dropped through his three chins. The cowering night cook walked back to the cleaning area with a dirty pot covered with spaghetti sauce.

"He's been doing this since coming here, boss," the cook said with a quivering voice. "Place gets messy. He waits till no one is looking and—-phfft! It's all clean again. I mean, don't get me wrong; every cook loves a clean kitchen. But, if you ask me, I think it's kinda spooky, what he's been doing."

But Tony was barely listening to the man.

"Mind your own business," he finally said to the cook, taking the dirty pot and throwing it into the pristine sink. "Get back to work."

The cook scrambled away; Tony gingerly stepped back outside. He looked down at Zarex, who was drawing on his stubby cigarette like it was his last breath.

There was a long, awkward silence. Tony looked at Zarex; Zarex looked at Tony. He'd been to thousands of planets in his lifetime, but Zarex knew the real root of discovery came not from a world's rocks and clay but from its inhabitants. Everything the explorer had to know about this part of this planet he would learn right here, in this place, at this moment.

"Did you have something else to say?" he finally asked Tony, breaking the spell.

Tony just stared back at him for a few beats, then said, "Yeah, you missed a pot."

Several hundred miles to the southwest, Pater Tomm was standing in the shadows of a huge cathedral, watching a police car roll by.

He was in a city called Washington, D.C. It seemed to be the political center of this little world, but it was virtually empty of people, and anyone he did see walking around was doing so very slowly. He'd caught a ride on an empty railroad car to get here, he and a number of other hobos. When they arrived at the station, more hobos jumped on the train than jumped off. Tomm was convinced this meant something, but he didn't know what.

He'd walked the city and saw little he'd describe as spectacular. Many of the structures were built of the same red brick that was featured on other houses strictly as a heat-release device. There were plenty of cars, too. In fact, they were parked everywhere: along the curbs, in people's yards, even on their front lawns. Yet Tomm could have walked down the middle of any number of main streets without fear of getting clipped by one of the four-wheeled monsters. There were plenty of cars around; there just weren't that many people driving them.

He found the cathedral the afternoon of the second day. His heart leapt when he first spotted it. The cross on its steeple was nearly an exact copy of the one he always wore around his neck, proportionately speaking, of course. To his mind, this could only mean one thing. While for whatever reason this planet had missed out on a lot of the cool stuff available throughout the Galaxy, this one thing, religion, had somehow made it here.

It was for moments like these that Pater Tomm lived. So he sat in the park across the street from the grand church, nursing the free coffee he'd received from the nearby homeless center, intent on studying the people who went in and out of the place.

He'd sat like that for several hours. The strange thing was, no one approached the place; no one came out. As soon as it grew dark, he'd stolen into these shadows where he waited now, as the police car idled past. The two cops had been eating something, and this only reminded Tomm that it had been ages and billions of miles since his last good meal.

But first things first.

Once he was sure that the authorities were gone, he picked the lock on the back door of the church and let himself in.

But any excitement he'd felt in his heart drained right out of him as he took a long look around the inside of the cathedral. The altar was incredibly elaborate with much gold and silver in evidence. Finely carved wooden benches and a magnificent pulpit only added to the aura. Beautiful frescoes on the walls and ceiling. Marble for the altar rails and floor. A beautiful piece of architecture.

But then there was the dust. It was everywhere. Not just a scattering; it was nearly a half inch thick on some of the pews, and it was as hard as stone on some parts of the floor. Hymn books lay decayed and rotting. He picked one up, and it just fell away, its fibers only adding more to the dust.

Tomm sank into one of the pews and looked up at the altar. There was only one explanation.

No one had prayed in here in many, many years.

11

The name of the highway was Route 66.

Hunter had been driving it for the past four days, finding it shortly after leaving Mayfield—and Ashley-—behind.

Route 66 was more or less a straight highway, going west. It was well maintained, clean, pothole free, lined with trees or multicolored desert brush in many places. It also featured numerous dips and bumps. He'd literally sailed through the air after hitting a few of them. The Firebird had a little wing attached to its rear end; perhaps its function was to stabilize the car whenever it left the ground. He didn't know. Either way, it made for exciting driving.

He'd passed many strange things along the way. A huge barn with a rounded top. A leaning water tower intentionally built to look like it was falling over. Near a place called Amarillo, a line of Cadillacs buried halfway into the ground. Near a place called Tucumcari, a motel shaped like a gigantic mushroom. In Arizona, a huge canyon, spectacular, and older than anything Hunter had seen so far on this tiny planet.

He loved going fast. The road was smooth, no one was in front on him, no one was behind. Flying several light-years a second was a gas, too, but this was different. This was moving in a different way. Cars had begun to fascinate him. A machine that traveled on rubber wheels, used them not just for taxiing like those on his flying machine, but for actually going somewhere.

What a concept!

The open highway. The fresh air. Pedal to the metal. It all made incredible sense to him now. Driving at precisely 160 miles an hour, roof down, one hand on the wheel, the other wrapped around a bottle of Seagram's ...

Yes,
this
was freedom.

The night before, he'd pulled off Route 66 near the big city of Tulsa and made a bunch of new friends in a bar down by the river. It was there that he'd traded a music-producing device found under the dashboard of the car for some currency and six bottles of Seagram's whiskey. His new friends drove motorcycles, and some were nearly as huge and hairy as Zarex. Hunter had spilled his guts to them about Ashley, and they took pity on him. They told him not to dwell on her. It just wasn't worth it. But he missed her. Missed her, even though he didn't really know her. Many times he wished that she'd come to the hill that night. Many times he had wished that she was here with him right now. Would she have thought of any of this as having fun? He'd never know.

Everyone gets their heart broken by a blonde eventually, his new friends had told him.

He'd just had his.

He drove all night after Tulsa, all the next day and into the next night. Past miles of controlled vegetation, then grassy fields, then the desert, then over some enormous mountains where he'd seen snow, even though it was obviously not quite winter. Then came more desert, more mountains, then many, many hills.

During this stretch, he'd stopped several times for fuel. He was adept at interacting with the citizenry now. Everyone seemed friendly enough. His overgrown hair and erupting beard passed for high fashion at some of the stops along the way. Dealing with the coinage was different than the aluminum chips used throughout Galaxy though. The exchange of money out among the stars was far more low key. You needed something, you gave someone a few chips, and whatever you wanted was yours to keep. Here, on this little world, people seemed a bit more interested in getting the currency and a little less concerned that what you were getting was of the highest quality for the price.

A strange little quirk.

So was he on the wrong planet?

After almost a week and more than a few face-to-face encounters with the natives, the truth was, he still didn't know.

That didn't mean he disliked the place. To the contrary. He was getting to like it very much. But not for the reasons he would have suspected.

The people here really didn't know very much, beyond the basics of life, anyway. And they weren't very curious, either. Even though they sat in what had to be one of the most spectacular locations in the Galaxy, no one seemed to have any pressing desire to learn anything more about the great star roads beyond. Or even what was happening just beyond their own atmosphere.

But after four days on the road and just as many bottles of Seagram's, Hunter had come to the conclusion that there was freedom in all that, too. Ideas were what weighed you down. The less you had to carry around with you, the less the burden became.
That
was freedom. Or a type of it, anyway. And while it was not something that, given a choice, many people he knew would want, here on this planet, it was almost seductive. For someone who felt like he had too many ideas stuffed inside his head, living on a world like this might just be the ideal thing to do. With such people, Hunter could relate.

Or maybe there was another explanation. Maybe he was just stuck inside some long, elaborate dream. Or maybe he was in the middle of a mind-bender, after drinking too much slow-ship wine. And lucky for him, there
were
girls in his reveries.

Or maybe he'd just come home and still didn't know it.

Deep thoughts—or at least they seemed that way now as he left Flagstaff behind and began his ascent over the Sierra Nev-adas.

Open another bottle
, he told himself.

Over the mountains was a place called California.

He reached the ocean early the next morning. To get there, he'd driven down off a descending series of hills. At some points, the stars overhead seemed so bright, they lit his way even more than the car's headlights.

About an hour before dawn, he entered the city of Los Angeles. It seemed like a very nutty place: jammed with people, cars clogging roads and bridges, surprising at such an early hour. The city was remarkably clean, though—
sparkling
almost. Every street was lined with magnificently grand trees, all bearing long palmlike fronds, and many of the sidewalks seemed made of gold.

Beyond the city, he found the sea. It was bright blue, with high waves crashing against miles of pristine beaches. He discovered a place to park up a beach road that led to a cliff that overlooked one stretch of beach. Again, the natural tendency for him or any starman was to seek the highest point around. The cliff looked out over a place called Santa Monica Beach. Even though it was still a bit chilly, the beach was quickly filling up with thousands of scantily clad girls.

Hunter was there when the sun came up. Sitting on the hood of the car, the last of his Seagram's bottles in hand, he saw out on the clearing horizon, just barely within sight, something very surprising.

It was the skyline of a huge city.

And it looked familiar.

Now how could this be? The only big cities he'd seen so far were miles behind him. Then it hit him: When he'd taken Ashley on the joy ride, they'd passed over a place called New York City. It was a huge metropolis that at the time reminded Hunter of Big Bright City back on Earth. This place had hundreds of high buildings; they had flown between them. There was also a huge green statue of a woman holding a torch high over her head in a bay near the jungle of skyscrapers.

Hunter strained his eyes now, and sure enough, he could see this statue way off in the distance, nearly hidden by the ocean mist and the picket line of tall buildings.

Could this be right, though? He closed his eyes and saw the canyons of New York City roll as if he and Ashley had just flown between them. But all that had happened
back there
. He looked east, over the hills to the cloud-filled sky, as if just over those mountains was where Ashley lived and just beyond that was the grand city of New York.

Now he turned back toward the water, and to the vision on the horizon. And then he started laughing. The statue of the woman with the torch was in the harbor of New York City, and he knew New York City was on the east coast of the planet's only landmass. Yet, here he was, looking at it across this expanse of water.

How could that be? There was really only one explanation; it seemed crazy, but at the same time, he knew it made sense. This hadn't been as much a recon mission as it had been a circumnavigation. Because if that
was
New York City he was looking at just across the sea, then he'd not only crossed over a major part of this country, he'd nearly driven right around the planet.

Hunter spent the day parked up on the cliff, nursing his last bottle, looking down on all those girls, the expanse of blue water before him, and of course at the distant light reflecting from New York City. The sea became very busy with boats and other seagoing craft. During the warmest part of the day, Hunter took off his shirt and remained stretched out on the hood of the car, simply watching the never-ending parade of people and things go by.

He fell asleep a few times, woke to turn more toward the sun, swig from his bottle, adjust his shirt as a headrest. Night came again, and the lights of New York shone even brighter. All those strange stars appeared overhead again with the necklace of heavenly bodies lighting up the sky here just as it had over Mayfield.

Though he tried many times to resist it, Ashley was never very far from his mind. Again, strange in that he didn't know her very well. His night with her was just a blur to him, as he was sure it was to her. The way they met, their joyride, the night spent on the hill. It was the nature of these things that they all seemed hazy to him now, just a splinter of time, lasting a single heartbeat or just one deep breath, but not much longer than that. But it had left him with an aura of sorts. A buzz, of good feeling, unrelated to the Seagram's. Or so he hoped.