Prescription for Chaos (24 page)

They passed through an underpass littered with broken glass, came out the other side, and Stewart hauled on the wheel as they jounced around a corner, went down through another underpass, and crawled out on the far side to see a set of big buildings and a monster sign bearing the huge letters: INTERCON.

At a junction of concrete troughs, Stewart pulled off the road by a long shed under the sign, "Official Inter-Continental Motors Van and Auto Franchised Dealer." He glanced at Randy, "Whatever you do, don't hit the bastard."

An hour or so later, they emerged from the shed with a gray-coated individual meditatively puffing a pipe, who said in the manner of someone mentioning an afterthought, "Of course, that six thousand's the price for the main frame only. If you'd like an engine, the Thunderbolt will run you another nineteen hundred ninety-nine. If the Mule Reliable will do, that will be fifteen hundred eighty-four. You'll want wheels, I imagine; they're sixty-five each. You get one free in the Magnum Package Deal. If you'd like seats, we have a selection at various prices, or you could jam a fence rail into the slots back of the instrument panel deck. The van enclosure runs another two thousand, and it's fitted for the standard interconnecting rear port. That's four hundred ninety-nine."

"What, the van enclosure?"

"No, the rear port. That's the installed price at the time of purchase. Then there are the bolts to hold the enclosure on the main frame. They're special bolts, with grapple plates fitted to keep the enclosure from shifting, and yet it's adjustable backwards, forwards, and sideways, to suit your taste. They're seventy-five apiece."

"The ports?"

"The bolts."

"How are the ports going to match up if they're shifted around to suit my taste?"

"Well, you have to configure the grapple plates to get the ports to match up with the receiver vehicle. That's the point. These are female or male ports, as you specify. Same charge, either way."

"Well—"

"Be sure to get it right the first time. Otherwise we'll have to sell you a hermaphrodite port adaptor. And you'll need a rear bracket with a hoist to get the adaptor into place. It's a very delicate piece of work, actually, because you can wreck the port
and
the adaptor."

"What's the total on all this?"

"Depends on how you want it configured, with or without maintenance contract, and whether you want a port adaptor."

"Just give me a rough estimate."

"We don't make rough estimates."

"Then—"

"It confuses the customer."

"At least the port is standard, you say."

"Oh, sure. Standard OX444, of the InterCon Series 100 Port Type, Revision 3."

Stewart spat out a bad word. "And how do I know that what I'll have to shift cargo with is going to be the same type?"

"No problem. Don't deal with anyone who doesn't use the latest InterCon standard parts throughout."

Stewart said shortly, "We'll think it over." He swung up into the driver's seat, and glanced at Randy.

Randy climbed into the passenger's seat.

Stewart looked hard at Randy.

Randy came awake, and went up front to take hold of the crank.

The salesman looked on. "I've known people to get broken arms with that crank. Our new model has an automatic disconnect that works."

Randy swore to himself and heaved on the crank. The engine caught with a roar. There was a thud as Stewart's foot slipped off the clutch. The car, evidently in first, slammed against the posts of the parking slot. This tossed Randy back into the muck and left him with an aching wrist as the engine stalled.

The salesman slapped his thigh, and disappeared into the shed.

Stewart climbed down and made clucking noises.

"It never fails. When that bird starts talking price, I get so mad I can't think. Nothing broken, I hope?"

"Just wrenched."

"Cheap at the price."

"Thanks a lot."

"Scrape the worst of the muck off, and stand on the running board on the driver's side. See if it's in neutral, and give it a shot of gas when it catches. Don't sit down in the seat."

On the way back, they were both silent as the dust and flies flew over them. Randy spent the time trying to understand how there could be mud in some places and dust in others, and decided the troughs must drain rainwater from higher ground to lower. At the end of the deafening bone-jarring trip, as Stewart stopped with a jolt against the posts in his parking lot back of the store, he said, "Well—What do you think?"

"Of what?"

"InterCon's deal."

Randy studied his fingernails. "The nouns in my answer will cost you a hundred dollars each. Verbs are eighty apiece. For another hundred, I'll throw in some adjectives and adverbs, and connect everything up. Let me know how much you're willing to pay, and I'll put together an answer."

Stewart grinned. "You should get a job at that place." He glanced at his watch. "Go home and wash off, and this afternoon we'll try the independents. At InterCon, they figure there's no competition. Well, maybe. But we'll see."

The afternoon found them examining broad vehicles with narrow wide-spaced wheels, long slender vehicles hinged in the middle to go around curves, vehicles with rubber cogwheels in place of tires, and toughs to match, so that proud salesmen could show pictures of the CogCar climbing near-vertical slopes. There was also an assortment patterned after the vehicles they'd seen that morning.

"Yes, sir," a salesman assured them. "Not only is ours compatible, it is actually superior to the InterCon Personal Car. Ours is higher. You can wear a top hat in our vehicle. We offer 20% more maximum load! Moreover, we have the InterCon standard port, male or female, plus—brace yourselves, gentlemen—THE ENGINE IS INCLUDED IN THE PRICE! Now, any questions?"

Randy hesitated. "This male or female port—How do you know in advance which kind you'll need?"

Stewart nodded.

The salesman smiled condescendingly. "You'll have to have the other kind from the kind you're going to connect with."

"How do you know, now, what kind you may need to connect with after you've made the purchase?"

The salesman favored Randy with the look usually reserved for insects in the soup.

"By that time, sir, you should know what port you can mate with, sir."

"The other vehicle may not have the right port."

"Then you won't deal with him, sir."

"Maybe you want to deal with him."

"And pay the adaptor charge? And possibly wreck both ports?"

"What do you need a 'port' for? Why not just manhandle the load from one truck to the other?"

The salesman, bowing beside Randy as if trying to get down onto Randy's level, straightened up. "You do that, then." He turned his back, and called across the showroom, "Ed, you got tickets for the Car Show next week? Save me two. Hear? Two." He strolled away.

Randy took a step after him, but felt Stewart's hand at his shoulder. "Let's go, Randy. To knock his block off wouldn't solve our problem."

Randy walked out. "Why not forget this port mess?"

"You can if your vehicle is an adjustable, and can run different wheel formats. Otherwise, you have to shift load to another truck when you come to a change in format, and on some roads that happens every time you cross a municipal boundary."

"Why the different wheel spacings?"

"Why doesn't everyone like the same food? InterCon likes one wheel width and depth, and somebody else likes a different one, so you've got two, right there."

"For the love of—"

"Sure, it complicates everything. Every so often, a local legislature gets sick of maintaining all the different formats. Then InterCon, or whoever, will give a special deal to drivers to buy their make of vehicle, and finally the voters choose their format as the only one that's legal. That makes it simple for the local highway department. But for truckers, it's a nightmare."

"But where's the problem in swapping loads by hand? Why do you have to have a 'port'?"

Stewart glanced at the drying mud and curving troughs of the parking lot.

"You want to manhandle crates with your feet on that? You want a broken ankle or a cracked skull?"

"But this male and female business. For—"

Stewart walked behind the vehicle they'd come in, pulled on a lever, and the lower half of the rear door opened down horizontally, the upper half swung up horizontally; and, as he pulled again, inner doors swung out right and left, the four half-doors making an extension open at the rear. Several inches underneath, two steel beams slid back below the lower door.

"This is a so-called male port. The female port is wider and higher. Now, watch." He heaved on the lever, and the two steel beams slid further, to project beyond the rear of the extension. "These support the floor of the joined ports, and the ends rest in brackets underneath the other vehicle's port. That joins the vehicles, and nobody slips in the mud or drops freight overside. But, boy, if the troughs are curved, or the trucks don't match just right—"

"Why not just have a gate that drops down at the rear of the truck, with a chain on each side to keep the gate horizontal? That would work."

Stewart thought it over. "Maybe. Unfortunately, we've now got regulations that require male or female ports, made to the standard pattern. This is the standard pattern. At least it's less bad than the gas nozzles. If they come out with one more pattern—"

"What, for the gas pumps?"

"At last count, there were eighteen different designs, and they make the intake on the auto to fit the nozzle. It depends on which car company strikes what deal with which gas company. Well, let's go see Jake."

Randy, his head spinning, cranked the car and climbed in. Stewart started to pull out onto the road, then jammed on the brake. Out in the street, a truck rumbled past pushing a row of little shovels through the concrete troughs, to leave dirt and trash in long low piles to either side.

Randy massages his temples, and watched a horse and open carriage rumble past at the corner. The horse was moving right along, and the people in the carriage grinned at Stewart and Randy waiting for the trough-cleaner. Stewart said, "Ah, nuts," and let the clutch out so fast the car bucked and stalled. This brought gales of laughter from the carriage.

Stewart snarled, "I'll crank it. You work the throttle."

Randy dragged his mind off the question why, if this were a dream, he hadn't woken up yet. He discovered that Stewart had left the car in gear just as Stewart found out, and said some words Randy hadn't heard before. Then they had the vehicle started, and jounced and slammed through the dirt piled into the junctions as the main troughs were cleaned out.

"It would all be so easy," said Stewart, fighting the wheel, "if it weren't for the details. This is obviously the transportation system of the future—and yet—look at this."

On the street in front were two long things like narrow trap doors that popped open as they crossed the intersection. It dawned on him that these were trough-covers, closed to keep the horses from falling where horse-streets and car-streets crossed on the same level. And, of course, the covers had to open for the vehicles to get through.

"Quite a thing," said Stewart cynically, "when the trough cover gets grit in its hinges. Either the horses break their legs, or the cars climb out of the troughs."

"Why not pave the whole street and have done with it?"

"We can never vote it in. The horse interests go along with whoever favors the present set-up, and together they vote down any change. To pave the street would mean cars could go near horses, and scare the daylights out of them. And it would end the set-up we've got now, when only horses can go everywhere. Naturally, the horse-freight outfits want to keep that. It makes you wish Gritz hadn't invented the security slot in the first place."

"Who?"

"Gritz. Father of the auto industry. Invented the trough-section casting machine. The idea is to avoid accidents, and be able to keep moving in mud, fog and bad weather. Have a track, like the railroads. It sounds good. But ye gods, when you have a pile-up, or get a freezing rain!"

"Speaking of inventors, weren't there some others—Henry Ford, Thomas Edison—?"

"Ford? Let's see . . . Ford . . . no, never heard of him. Edison? Sure, he invented the electric light, the phonograph, the aerabat, the vacuum tube, and the relay-computer.—Ah, here we are!"

Randy considered the fact that Henry Ford apparently hadn't lived in this universe, dream, or whatever it was. Instead of Ford's aim, "I'll belt the world with reliable motorcars," there were all these people figuring, "I'll patent a new gas nozzle and get a stranglehold on the industry." The car gave a jolt, brought his mind back to the present, and he saw a huge sign:

Ahead of them, as they bounced through the trough junctions, was a fortresslike building behind a high chain link fence. Also behind the fence were separate sheds, and small lots filled with cars. Stewart hummed cheerfully as they stopped at a gate, and a guard peered out a slit.

"Password?" said the guard.

"Stewed prunes."

The guard kept his eyes on Stewart and Randy, and spoke over his shoulder. "Stewed prunes."

A man's voice answered, "Get his name."

Stewart said, "Stewart Rafer."

"Occupation?"

"Computer dealer."

The voice said, "Checks."

The guard grinned. "Go in, but drive slow. We got a new shipment and they're fighting over it."

Stewart swung the car around a big metal-sheathed shed, and jammed on the brakes. In front of the shed stood a large man in whipcord trousers and a white silk shirt, with a cigar jutting out the corner of his mouth. Opposite him, a man in a business suit pointed to a steam locomotive three hundred feet away on the far side of a barred gate.

"You'll either let that consignment in, or that's the last load you get from me!"

"You either forget that paper I'm supposed to sign, or the gate stays shut. And I want your personal guarantee on what I buy."