have walked straight into the jaws of the sexies, couldn’t you? Lots of practice has made them very good at their job.”
Sheklov thought for a long moment. Then he told them:
. xxv1
After that there seemed to be very little left to say. The car hummed onward into the night. Clouds were closing in ahead of them; it felt as though the familiar prospect of the stars were being shut away. Sheklov, conscious of having long ago passed the point of no return, was resigned to letting happen what would.
And Danty, having heard the story in full, sank back in his seat with a ferocious scowl of concentration and said nothing for so long that eventually Sheklov dozed.
He was awoken at last by Magda’s voice.
“I’m worn outl” she said loudly. “It’s nearly dawn.”
“Then I guess I’d better take the wheel again,” Sheklov said. “Danty can’t drive one-handed, and”-with a glance behind him, blinking to clear sleep from his eyes.-“Lora’s still asleep, isn’t she?”
“Looks like it,” Danty said. “I’d take my turn if I could -but this arm’s stiffening up pretty bad. Mag’, can we like pull in for breakfast? I’d like to get to a washroom and change the dressing on this cut.” He checked, seeming to be struck by an idea. “Sayl Make the left branch at the next interchange, will you? I’m getting it clearer in my head now. We have to shoot for the border in North Dakota some place. I’ll know it when I see it.”
“Service zone four miles,” Magda read from a sign. “That must be after the next interchange, then. Will do. . . . By the way, how are you feeling?”
“As though that crack on the head loosened my brains,” Danty said with a shrug. “But I’ll live.”
Properly roused from sleep now, Sheklov looked out at the morning as it spread across the vast net of the superway. A web spun by an inconceivable spider, a mesh of concrete offering the illusion of freedom to go, yet turning you back whenever you approached the limits you must not exceed , . .
Yes. A metaphor of the country. Perhaps of the human condition. Horriblel
All his doubts stormed back into his mind. For a brief
instant he was able to imagine that he had dreamed his admissions of last night; then Danty said, “Vassily, how are you?” And he knew they had been real.
“As well as can be expected,” Sheklov said with ghoulish humour.
“That goes for all of us.” He rubbed his eyes. “Mag’, I’ve only been dozing, not completely asleep. I’ve been working it out. North Dakota, like I said. If we go over as a party, we’re likely to be recognised. I don’t know why or how, I only feel it. I’m still trying to sort that out. But something else keeps getting in the way. Vassily, you did say, didn’t you, that the aliens showed pictures of Earth?”
“Nine still pictures,” Sheklov said.
“Could you-well-maybe draw them for me?”
“I guess so,” Sheklov answered after a moment for thought. “I looked at the photographs often enough. Might not get the details right, but in principle they’d be correct.”
“Fine,” Danty said, and gave his crooked smile. “Over breakfast I’ll take you up on it. Mag’, isn’t that the service zone up ahead?”
The restaurant of the service zone was nearly empty. Only a couple of incurious long-distance truck-drivers glanced at them as they entered. Having collected coffee and food from the counter, they sat down around a table isolated in the centre of the room and Danty produced a stack of paper serviettes.
“Okay, Vassily, shoot,” he said, and sat back, sipping his coffee.
“What are you doing?” Lora, said dispiritedly. She had hardly seemed to be awake when she stumbled from the car; now she sat with eyes red, hair tangled, displaying every sign of exhaustion, as though she had been the one who had to drive through the night. Magda, by contrast, seemed hardly affected. Pale, perhaps, but calm-faced and moving without obvious signs of fatigue.
“Drawing,” Sheklov said, unclipping a batlpen from his pocket. He added, reaching for the first of the pile of white serviettes, “And I’m not very good at it. But I’ll do what I can.”