The Lighter Side (11 page)

Tall in the misty light of pre-dawn, the mighty cottonwood tree which the two men had with such labor felled the previous day stood once more in its accustomed place, untouched by the axe.

Roger Tyson flipped the windshield wipers into high gear as the spatter of rain became a downpour, then a deluge. He slowed to fifty, his headlight beams soaked up and absorbed by the solid curtains of whirling water sheeting across the blacktop. Lightning winked and thunder banged like artillery.

"Perfect," Tyson congratulated the elements. "What a way to end up: the middle of the night, in the middle of nowhere, with no gas, no money, no credit card." His stomach rumbled. "Not even a ham sandwich. Something tells me I'm not fitted to survive in the harsh modern world."

A broken seat spring prodded him painfully; water trickled down from under the dash and dripped on his knee. The engine gasped three times, backfired, and died.

"Oh, no," he groaned, steering to the side of the road and off onto the shoulder. He turned up his coat collar, climbed out in the driving rain, lifted the hood. The engine looked like an engine. He closed the hood, stood with his hands in his pockets, staring off down the dark road.

"Probably won't be a car along for a week," he reflected dismally. "Only a damned fool would be out in this weather—and not even a damned fool would stop, even if he came along here, and—" His ruminations were interrupted by a glint of light in the distance; the faint sound of an approaching engine cut through the drum of the rain.

"Hey!" Roger brightened. "Someone's coming!" He trotted out into the center of the road, watching the light grow as it rushed toward him. He waved his arms.

"Hey, stop!" he yelled as the oncoming vehicle showed no indication of slowing. "Stop!" He leaped aside at the last instant as a low-slung motorcycle leaped out of the gloom, a slim, girlish figure crouched behind the windshield. He caught just a glimpse of her shocked expression as she swerved to miss him. The speeding bike went into a skid, slid sideways forty feet, and plunged off the road. There was a prolonged crashing and snapping of wood and metal, a final resounding crunch, and silence.

"Good Lord!" Roger skittered across the road, picked his way down the steep bank, following the trail of snapped-off saplings. At the bottom, the crumpled machine lay on its side, one chrome-plated wire wheel turning lazily, the headlight still shining upward through the wet leaves. The girl lay a few feet away, on her back, eyes shut.

Roger squatted at her side, reached for her pulse. Her eyes opened: pale green eyes, gazing into his.

"You must help me," she whispered with obvious effort.

"Sure," Roger gulped. "Anything at all! I—I'm sorry . . . "

"The message," the girl whispered. "It's of the utmost importance. It must be delivered . . . "

"Look, I'll have to go back up by my car and try to flag somebody down."

"Don't bother," the girl whispered. "My neck is broken. I have only a few seconds to live . . . "

"Nonsense," Roger choked. "You'll be right as rain in a few days—"

"Don't interrupt," the girl said sharply. "The message: Beware the Rhox!"

"What rocks?" Roger looked around wildly. "I don't see any rocks!"

"For your sake—I hope you never do," the victim gasped. "The message must be delivered at once! You must go . . . " Her voice faltered. "Too late," she breathed. "No time . . .  to explain . . . take . . . button . . . right ear . . . "

"I'm wasting time!" Roger started to rise. "I'll go for a doctor!" He checked as the girl's lips moved.

"Take . . . the button . . . put it in . . . your ear . . . " The words were almost inaudible, but the green eyes held on Roger's, pleading.

"Seems like a funny time to worry about a hearing aid," Roger gulped, "but . . . " He lifted a lock of wet black hair aside, gingerly grasped the small gold button tucked into the girl's delicately molded ear. As he withdrew it, the light of awareness faded from the girl's glazing eyes. Roger grabbed for her wrist, felt a final feeble thump-thump of the pulse—then nothing.

"Hey!" Roger stared uncomprehending at the white, perfect-featured face. "You can't be . . . I mean, I didn't . . . you mustn't . . . " He gulped hard, blinking back sudden tears.

"She's dead," he breathed. "And all because of me! If I hadn't jumped out in front of her like that, she'd still be alive!" Badly shaken, he tucked the gold button in his pocket, climbed back up the slope, slipping and sliding. Back in his car, he used tissues to mop off his face and hands.

"What a mess," he groaned. "I ought to be put in jail! I'm a murderer! Not that my being in jail would help any. Not that anything I could do would help any!" He took the button out and examined it under the dash light. There were thin filaments trailing from it, probably leads to a battery in the owner's pocket.

He rolled the bean-sized button between his fingers. "She seemed to think this was important; used her dying breath to tell me about it. Wanted me to stick it in my ear . . . " He held the tiny object to his ear. Did he hear a faint, wavering hum, or was it his imagination? He pushed it farther in. There was a faint tickling sensation, tiny rustling and popping sounds. He tried to withdraw the button, felt a sharp pain—

"Drive to Pottsville, one hundred and two miles, north-northeast," the dead girl's voice said in his ear. "Start now. Time is precious!" 

There was the sound of an approaching motor. Roger scrambled quickly from the car, peering into the rain, which had settled down now to a steady drizzle. For the second time, a single headlight was approaching along the road.

"Now, this time don't jump out yelling," he cautioned himself. "When they stop, just tell them that you've been driven mad by hardship, and are hearing voices. And don't forget to mention the hallucination about the girl on the motorcycle; that may be an important lead for the psychiatrist." He stood by the side of the car, staring anxiously at the oncoming light, waving his hand in a carefully conservative flagging motion. The vehicle failed to slow; instead, it swung wide, shot past him at full bore—and as it did, he saw the shape behind the handlebars: a headless torso, obese, bulbous, brick-red, pear-shaped, ornamented with two clusters of tentacles, like lengths of flexible metal hose. Through the single goggle, an eye as big as a pizza and similarly pigmented swiveled to impale him with a glance of utter alienness. With a strangled yell, Roger leaped back, tripped, went down hard on the mud-slick pavement. In horror, he saw the motorcycle veer wildly, stand on its nose, hurling its monstrous rider clear, then skid on its side another hundred feet before coming to a stop in the center of the highway.

Roger tottered to his feet and cantered forward, approached the inert form lying motionless on the pavement. From a distance of ten feet, he could see that it would never ride again: the upper portion was smashed into a pulp the consistency of mashed potatoes.

"Help," Roger said weakly, aware of a loud singing sensation in his ears. In his left ear, to be specific.

"Time is of the essence,"
the girl's slightly accented voice said.
"Get going!"
 

Roger tugged again at the button, was rewarded with another pang.

"I should go to the police," he said. "But what can I say? That I was responsible for the death of a girl and a giant rutabaga?"

"Forget the police," the voice said impatiently. "I'm maintaining vitality in a small cluster of cortical cells only with the greatest difficulty, in order to hold open this link through the Reinforcer! Don't render the effort useless by dithering here! Start now!" 

"B-but—my car won't start!"

"Take the motorcycle!" 

"That would be stealing!"

"Who's going to report it? Relatives of a giant rutabaga?" 

"You have a definite point there," Roger said, hurrying toward the fallen machine. "Somehow, I never thought insanity would be like this." He lifted the bike. Except for a few scratches in the green paint, it seemed as good as new. He kicked it into life, mounted, and gunned off down the highway, squinting into the darkness ahead.

At the next town, Roger scanned front lawns for a sign indicating the availability of an M.D. "No point in holding out for a high-powered big-city headshrinker," he rationalized. "The old-time small-town GP is the man to see and he'll be a lot less likely to demand cash in advance."

He spotted what he was looking for, pulled to the curb beside ranked garbage cans in front of a looming, three-story frame house. At once lights went on inside. The door opened, and a small, sharp-nosed man emerged, shading his eyes.

"What'll I tell him?" Roger asked himself, suddenly self-conscious. "I've heard about retarded kids stuffing things up their noses and ears and whatnot, but I'll feel a little foolish explaining how
I
happened to pull a trick like that."

"Who's that?" a scratchy voice called. "Just step inside and lie down on the table. Have you diagnosed in three minutes flat."

"I can't just tell him I stuck it in there cold," Roger reflected. "And if I tell him the real reason . . . "

"No reason to go around worrying about cancer," the sharp-nosed man said, venturing down the brick steps. "Take two minutes and set your mind at rest."

"Suppose he sticks me in a straitjacket and calls for the fellows with the butterfly nets?" the thought occurred to Roger. "They say once you're in, you have a heck of a time getting out again."

"Now, if it's just a touch of TB, I got just the thing." The practitioner was advancing along the walk. "None o' these fancy antibiotics, mind you—cost a fortune. My own patented formula, based on fermented mare's whey. Packs a wallop and good for what ails you!"

"After all, it's not as if it was actually unendurable or anything," Roger pointed out to himself. "Old Uncle Lafcadio carried on for years with a whole troop of little silver men giving him advice from under the wallpaper."

"Tell you what," the healer proposed, producing a bottle from under his coat as he crossed the parched grass strip. "I'll let you have a trial dosage for a dollar twenty-nine including tax; you can't beat them prices this side of K. C."

"Ah . . . no thank you, sir," Roger demurred, revving his engine. "Actually I'm not a patient; I'm a treasury agent on the lookout for excise violations."

"Excuse me, Buster," the little man said. "I just came out to empty the garbage." He lifted the lid of the nearest container and deposited the flat flask therein. Roger felt sharp eyes on him as he let out the clutch and sped off down the street.

"You made the right decision,"
the small voice said in his ear.

"I'm a coward," Roger groaned. "What do I care what he thinks? Maybe I'd better go back—"

A sharp pang in his ear made him yelp.

"I'm afraid I just can't allow that," his unseen companion stated firmly. "Just take a left at the next intersection, and we'll be in Pottsville in less than two hours." 

One hour and fifty-five minutes later, Roger was wheeling the bike slowly along a garishly lit avenue lined with pawnshops, orange-juice and shoe-shine stands, billiard emporia, and places of refreshment decorated with eight-by-ten glossies of startling candor, all bustling with activity in spite of the hour.

"Slower," the dead girl's voice cautioned. "Turn in up ahead, that big garage-like place." 

"That's the bus station," Roger said. "If you're planning on my buying a ticket, forget it. I'm broke."

"Nothing like that. We're within a few yards of our objective." 

Roger narrowly averted being crushed against the tiled wall by the snorting bulk of an emerging Chicago-bound Greyhound as he steered into the echoing interior. As directed, he abandoned the motorcycle, pushed through the revolving door into the fudgy atmosphere of the waiting room, with its traditional décor of sleeping enlisted personnel and unwed-looking mothers.

"Cross the room,"
the voice directed. Roger complied, halted on command before a closed door.

"Try in here." 

Roger pushed through the door. A corpulent lady with a mouthful of hairpins whirled on him with a shrill cry of alarm. He backed out hastily.

"That was the ladies' room!" he hissed.

"Damn right, Clyde," a bass voice rumbled at his elbow. A large cop eyed him with hostility from a height of at least six-three. "I got my eye on you birds. Dumbrowski runs a clean beat, and don't you forget it!" He bellied closer and lowered his voice. "Uh—by the way: what's it look like in there, anyways?"

"Just like a men's room," Roger gulped. "Practically."

"Yeah? Well, watch yourself, Ralph!"

"Certainly, officer." Roger backed to the adjoining door and stepped inside, urged by the voice. An elderly colored man straightened from his post against the wall.

"Yes, sir," he said briskly. "Shine? Shave? Massage? What about a fast clean and press?"

"No thanks, I just . . . "

"Little something to cut the fog?" He slid a flat bottle from his pocket.

"Say, if you've got TB, you ought to be in Arizona," Roger said.

The Negro gave him a thoughtful look. He removed the cap from the bottle and took a large swallow; he frowned, upended the bottle in the nearest sink.

"Man, you're right," he said. "I can just catch the 2:08 to Phoenix." He left hastily.

"At least I'm not the only one who's insane," Roger muttered.

"The last stall," the girl's voice said. "Sorry about the mix-up, but I left here in something of a hurry." 

"I should think so!" Roger said. "What were you doing in a men's room?"

"No time to explain now. Just swing that door open." 

Roger did so. The cubicle contained the usual plumbing, nothing more.

"A little to the left—there!" 

A glowing line had appeared in mid-air, directly over the bowl, shining with a greenish light of its own, brilliant in the gloom. When Roger moved his head a few inches, it disappeared.