It might not matter, however. If he were to believe half of what he read in the magazines and newspapers, the human race might well have doomed itself. And all life on the planet. Earth might be better off with humans occupied by the minds of Bellers. Bellers were logical beings, and, given a chance, they would clear up the mess that humans seemed to have made of the entire planet.
Kickaha shuddered a little. Such thinking was dangerous.
There could be no rest until the last of the Bellers died.
“What’s the matter with you?” Moo-Moo said, her voice losing its softness. “You don’t dig me?”
He patted her thigh and said, “You’re a beautiful woman, Moo-Moo, but I love Ann. However, tell you what! If the Gnome King succeeds in turning Ann into one of his Bad Eggs, you and I will make music together. And it won’t be the cacophony that radio is vomiting.”
She jerked with surprise and then said, “What do you mean? That’s the Rolling Stones!”
“No moss gathered here,” he said.
“You’re not with it,” she said. “Man, you’re square, square, square! You sure you’re not over thirty?”
He shrugged. He had not cared for the popular music of his youth, either. But it was sometimes pleasant, when compared to this screeching rhythm which turned his teeth in on himself.
The bus had moved out of the desert country into greener land. It sped along the freeway despite the increasing traffic. The sun was shining down so fiercely now, and the air was hot. The air was also noisy with the roar of cars and stinking with fumes. His eyes stung, and the sides of his nostrils felt needled. A grayish haze was lying ahead; then they were in it, and the air seemed to clear somewhat, and the haze was head again.
Moo-Moo said something about the smog really being fierce this time of the year and especially along here. Kickaha had read about smog in one of the magazines, although he did not know the origin of the word as yet. If this was what the people of southern California lived in, he wanted no more to do with it. Anana’s eyes were red and teary and she was sniffling and complaining of a headache and clogging sinuses.
Moo-Moo left him, and Anana sat down by him.
“You never said anything about this when you were describing your world to me,” she said.
“I didn’t know anything about it,” he said. “It developed after I left Earth.”
The bus had been traveling swiftly and too wildly. It had switched lanes back and forth as it squeezed between cars, tailgating and cutting in ahead madly. The driver crouched over his wheel, his eyes seeming to blaze, his mouth hanging open and his tongue flicking out. He paid no attention to the sound of screeching brakes and blaring horns, but leaned on his own horn when he wanted to scare somebody just ahead of him. The horn was very loud and deep and must have sounded like a locomotive horn to many a startled driver. These usually pulled over to another lane, sometimes doing it so swiftly, they almost sideswiped other cars.
After a while, the press of cars was so heavy that the bus was forced to crawl along or even stop now and then. For miles ahead, traffic was creeping along. The heat and the gray haze thickened. Moo-Moo said to Baum, “Why can’t we get air conditioning on this bus? We certainly make enough money!”
“How often do we get on the freeway?” the manager said.
Kickaha told Anana about Baum’s proposal.
Anana said, “I don’t know whether to laugh or to throw up.”
“A little of both might help you,” he said. “Well, I promised I wouldn’t try to argue you out of it if you decided to take him in preference to me. Which, by the way, he seemed one hundred percent sure would happen.”
“You sell me; you worry a while until I make up my mind,” she said.
“Sure. I’ll do that,” he replied. He rose and sauntered down the aisle and looked out the back of the bus. After a while he came back and sat down again with Anana.