He scowled. “I’ve got shirts!”
“I didn’t say you didn’t; I just asked if people around here wore shirts.”
“Of course they do. Where do you think you are, mister; Arkansas?”
I gave up and asked again about the road. He said, “Can I punch the button when we take off, huh?”
I explained that we were going to stay on the ground. He was frankly annoyed but condescended to point out a direction. I drove cautiously as the car was heavy for unpaved countryside. Presently he told me to turn. Quite a bit later I stopped the car and said, “Are you going to show me where that road is, or am I going to wallop your backsides?”
He opened the door and slid out. “Hey!” I yelled.
He looked back. “Over that way,” he admitted. I turned the car, not really expecting to find a highway, but finding one, nevertheless, only fifty yards away. The brat had caused me to drive around three sides of a large square.
If you could call it a highway—there was not an ounce of rubber in the paving. Still, it was a road; I followed it to the west. All in all, I had wasted more than an hour.
Macon, Missouri seemed normal—much too normal to be reassuring, as Schedule Bare Back obviously had not been heard of here. There were a number of bare backs, but it was a hot day. There were more backs that were covered and any of them might have concealed a slug. I gave serious thought to checking this town, rather than Kansas City, then beating back the way I had come, while I could. Pushing further into country which I knew to be controlled by the masters made me as nervous as a preacher at a stag party; I wanted to run.
But the Old Man had said “Kansas City”; he would take a dim view of a substitute. Finally I drove the belt around Macon and pulled into a landing flat on the far side. There I queued up for local traffic launching and headed for Kansas City in a mess of farmers’ copters and suchlike local craft. I would have to hold local speeds all across the state, but that was safer than getting into the hot pattern with my transponder identifying my car to every block control station.
The field was automatically serviced, no attendants, not even at the fuelling line. It seemed probable that I had managed to enter the Missouri traffic pattern without arousing suspicion. True, there was a block control station back in Illinois which might be wondering where I had gone, but that did not matter.
XVII
Kansas City is an old-fashioned city; it was not hurt in the bombings; except on the East Side where Independence used to be. Consequently, it was never rebuilt. From the southeast you can drive almost downtown, as far as Swope Park, without having to choose between parking or paying toll to enter the city proper.
One can fly in and make another choice: land in the landing flats north of the Missouri River and take the tunnels into the city, or land on the downtown platforms south of Memorial Hill.
I decided against both of these; I wanted the car near me but I did not want to have to pick it up through a checking system. If it came to a pinch, I could not shoot my way out while offering my combo to a parking attendant. I did not like tunnels in a pinch, either—nor launching platform elevators. A man can be trapped in such.
Frankly I did not want to go into the city at all.
I roaded the car on Route 40 and drove into the Meyer Boulevard toll gate. The line waiting to pay toll for the doubtful privilege of driving on a city street was quite long; I began to feel hemmed in as soon as another car filled in behind me and wished mightily that I had decided to park and go in by the public passenger ways. But the gatekeeper took my toll without glancing at me. I glanced at him, all right, but could not tell whether or not he was being ridden.