“Then why don’t we hide out until nightfall?” she said. “Because in the daylight I can spot a car that definitely won’t be Orc’s. I won’t mind being picked up by one of them. But if Orc’s men show up and try anything, we have our rays and we can be on guard. At night, you won’t know who’s stopping to pick you up. We could avoid the road altogether and hike alongside it in the woods, but that’s slow going. I don’t want Wolff or the Beller to get too far ahead.”
“How do we know they didn’t both go the other way?” she said. “Or that Red Orc didn’t pick them up?”
“We don’t,” he said. “But I’m betting that this is the way to Los Angeles. It’s westward, and it’s downhill. Wolff would know this, and the instinct of the Beller would be to go down, I would think. I could be wrong. But I can’t stand here forever trying to make up my mind what happened. Let’s go.”
They started off. The air was sweet and clean; birds sang; a squirrel ran onto the branch of a tall and half-dead pine and watched them with its bright eyes. There were a number of dead or dying pines. Evidently, some plant disease had struck them. The only signs of human beings were the skeletal power transmission towers and aluminum cables going up the side of a mountain. Kickaha explained to Anana what they were; he was going to be doing much explaining from now on. He did not mind. It gave her the opportunity to learn English and him the opportunity to relearn it.
A car passed them from behind. On hearing it, Kickaha and Anana withdrew from the side of the road, ready to shoot their ray rings or to leap down the slope of the mountain if they had to. He gestured with his thumb at the car, which held a man, woman, and two children. The car did not even slow down. Then a big truck pulling a trailer passed them. The driver looked as if he might be going to stop but he kept on going.
Anana said, “These vehicles! So primitive! So noisy! And they stink!”
“Yes, but we do have atomic power,” Kickaha said. “At least, we had atomic bombs. America did anyway. I thought that by now they’d have atomic-powered cars. They’ve had a whole generation to develop them.”
A cream-colored station wagon with a man and woman and two teenagers passed them. Kickaha stared after the boy. He had hair as long as Kickaha’s and considerably less disciplined. The girl had long yellow hair that fell smoothly over her shoulders, and her face was thickly made-up. Like a whore’s, he thought. Were those really green eyelids?
The parents, who looked about fifty, seemed normal. Except that she had a hairdo that was definitely not around in 1946. And her makeup had been heavy, too, although not nearly as thick as the girl’s.
None of the cars that he had seen were identifiable. Some of them had a GM emblem, but that was the only familiar thing. This was to be expected, of course. But he was startled when the next car to pass was the beetle he had seen when he first looked down from the ledge. Or at least it looked enough like it to be the same. VW? What did that stand for?
He had expected many changes, some of which would not be easy to understand. He could think of no reason why such an ugly cramped car as the VW would be accepted, although he did remember the little Willys of his adolescence. He shrugged. It would take too much energy and time to figure out the reasons for everything he saw. If he were to survive, he would have to concentrate on the immediate problem: getting away from Red Orc’s men. If they were Red Orc’s.
He and Anana walked swiftly in a loose-jointed gait. She was beginning to relax and to take an interest in the beauty of their surroundings. She smiled and squeezed his hand once and said, “I love you.” He kissed her on the cheek and said, “I love you, too.” She was beginning to sound and act like an Earthwoman, instead of the superaristocratic Lord.