Car Sinister, Page 3

  “Thanks,” he said, “you overprogrammed ashcan. Thanks a lot!”

  “I am sorry, Sam.”

  “Shut up—No, don’t, not yet. First tell me what you’re going to do if we find ‘him.’ ”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well think it over fast. You see that dust cloud ahead as well as I do, and you’d better speed up.”

  They shot forward.

  “Wait till I call Detroit. They’ll laugh themselves silly, till I claim the refund.”

  “I am not of inferior construction or design. You know that. I am just more . . .”

  “ ‘Emotional,’ ” supplied Murdock.

  “. . . Than I thought I would be,” she finished. “I had not really met many cars, except for young ones, before I was shipped to you. I did not know what a wild car was like, and I had never smashed any cars before—just targets and things like that. I was young and . . .”

  “ ‘Innocent’ ” said Murdock. “Yeah. Very torching. Get ready to kill the next car we meet. If it happens to be your boyfriend and you hold your fire, then he’ll kill us.”

  “I will try, Sam.”

  The car ahead had stopped. It was the yellow Chrysler. Two of its tires had gone flat and it was parked, lopsided, waiting.

  “Leave it!” snarled Murdock, as the hood clicked open. “Save the ammo for something that might fight back.”

  They sped past it.

  “Did it say anything?”

  “Machine profanity,” she said. “I’ve only heard it once or twice, and it would be meaningless to you.”

  He chuckled. “Cars actually swear at each other?”

  “Occasionally,” she said. “I imagine the lower sort indulge in it more frequently, especially on freeways and turnpikes when they become congested.”

  “Let me hear a machine swear-word.”

  “I will not. What kind of car do you think I am, anyway?”

  “I’m sorry,” said Murdock. “You’re a lady. I forgot.” There was an audible click within the radio.

  They raced forward on the level ground that lay before the foot of the mountains. Murdock took another drink, then switched to coffee.

  “Ten years,” he muttered, “ten years . . .”

  The trail swung in a wide curve as the mountains jogged back and the foothills sprang up high beside them.

  It was over almost before he knew it.

  As they passed a huge, orange-colored stone massif, sculpted like an upside-down toadstool by the wind, there was a clearing to the right.

  It shot forward at them—the Devil Car. It had lain in ambush, seeing that it could not outrun the Scarlet Lady, and it rushed toward a final collision with its hunter.

  Jenny skidded sideways as her brakes caught with a scream and a smell of smoke, and her fifty-calibers were firing, and her hood sprang open and her front wheels rose up off the ground as the rockets leapt wailing ahead, and she spun around three times, her rear bumper scraping the salt sand plain, and the third and last time she fired her remaining rockets into the smouldering wreckage on the hillside, and she came to rest on all four wheels; and her fifty-calibers kept firing until they were emptied, and then a steady clicking sound came from them for a full minute afterwards, and then all lapsed into silence.

  Murdock sat there shaking, watching the gutted, twisted wreck blaze against the morning sky.

  “You did it, Jenny. You killed him. You killed me the Devil Car,” he said.

  But she did not answer him. Her engine started once more and she turned toward the southeast and headed for the Fuel Stop/Rest Stop Fortress that lay in that civilized direction.

  For two hours they drove in silence, and Murdock drank all his bourbon and all his coffee and smoked all his cigarettes.

  “Jenny, say something,” he said. “What’s the matter? Tell me.”

  There was a click, and her voice was very soft:

  “Sam—he talked to me as he came down the hill . . .” she said.

  Murdock waited, but she did not say anything else.

  “Well, what did he say?” he asked.

  “He said, ‘Say you will mono your passenger and I will swerve by you,” she told him. “He said, ‘I want you, Scarlet Lady—to run with me, to raid with me. Together they will never catch us’ and I killed him.”

  Murdock was silent.

  “He only said that to delay my firing though, did he not? He said that to stop me, so that he could smash us both when he went smash himself, did he not? He could not have meant it, could he, Sam?”

  “Of course not,” said Murdock, “of course not. It was too late for him to swerve.”

  “Yes, I suppose it was—do you think though, that he really wanted me to run with him, to raid with him—before everything, I mean—back there?”

  “Probably, baby. You’re pretty well-equipped.”

  “Thanks,” she said, and turned off again.

  Before she did though, he heard a strange mechanical sound, falling into the rhythms of profanity or prayer.

  Then he shook his head and lowered it, softly patting the seat beside him with his still unsteady hand.

  VAMPIRE LTD.

  By Josef Nesvadba

  Josef Nesvadba is a full-time psychiatrist and part-time science-fiction writer in Prague, Czechoslovakia. He is one of the very few Eastern European SF writers to have had a story collection published in this country. Here he gives us (free of charge) a solution to the fuel crisis and a just reward to those who tamper with the unknown.

  When I think back on my visit to England after a year, I remember above all, the cars. It was as though there had been a new invasion Of Western Europe—an automobile invasion.

  The first time I realized this was when we were chatting with the fat Irishman who spilled artichokes on the escalator at Orly Airport. His plane was leaving in a few minutes, and the escalator carried his artichokes to the waiting room for the Near East, Ecuador, and Guadaloupe. He had to let them go. Throughout the flight above the Channel he mourned for his lost vegetables, giving us an unpromising introduction to the English cuisine.

  “I represent an automobile company,” he said proudly. “Our sports cars dominate the whole world . . .”

  “Back home, I have an English car,” said my friend to please him, “a Hillman.” The pink-cheeked Irishman stopped speaking. It was as though he’d heard something indecent. We were flying first-class and obviously until then he had taken us for prosperous people.

  “That’s quite a decent car,” he said with an effort, “for the money . . .” and he spread his hands. “I myself represent Jaguars. We shall certainly soon be exporting them behind the Iron Curtain as well,” he added, having closely and inconspicuously examined my tie. “Our vehicles transform bad roads into good highways and good highways into heaven.” I did not ask him whether he believed in life after death—we were already landing.

  I had my second encounter with cars that evening, while looking for my girlfriend in Kensington Terrace. I emerged from the underground and searched for someone to ask for directions to the street she was supposed to live on. But no one was about. I mean, there was no one on the sidewalk, while along the road crept a four-lane snake of steel boxes that insulated their drivers so completely, they heard neither questions nor even shouts from the outside.

  But most interesting of all was my last experience, and it is this that I really want to tell about. To this day I cannot quite believe it happened. I stayed at my girlfriend’s well into the night. We drank Johnnie Walker Black Label, which is one hundred and forty proof. I discovered next day, when I arrived at the hotel, that my friend had already left. They said he had waited for me until the last moment, but could not afford to miss his train. Maybe he thought I had let him down. He had not even left a message at the hotel. I was alone in a city of eight million people, knowing no one, without a penny in my pocket. My girlfriend was not at work. I did not find her at home, either. The only alternative was to try to get a rid
e to Bolster, where our committee was meeting. But even back home I do not hitchhike. I am already quite bald, and I doubt if anyone would pull up because of my personal charms. I trudged up to a Shell station and gazed yearningly at the drivers. At that moment they seemed to me even more remote than they had the day before, even though I drive a small car of my own at home.

  “Do you need a lift?” asked a tall, pale fellow with whiskers. He had a public-school accent and wore knickers. I’ll never forget him—or his car. It was a racing model—had disk brakes, eight gears, the second taking you up to ninety miles an hour, and luxurious suspension. It did not appear to run on ordinary gasoline, for its owner stopped at the opposite curb.

  “To Bolster,” I said feebly. I did not understand why this fellow wanted to help me—I had never seen him before.

  “You really need a car,” he said after a while, having reached the main highway. Naturally he drove on the left, like everyone in England, and I unconsciously braked so much at every curve, I thought I would push through the floor.

  “I have to get to a conference,” I told him. “I came to England especially for it. I must be there on time.”

  “You can drive,” he suddenly announced as he stopped the car and stumbled out of the seat. “I shall come to Bolster for the car tomorrow. I still have some business to transact in the city.” He was deathly pale—ought to have done business with a funeral parlor.

  “But I’ve no papers, I’m a foreigner,” I mumbled weakly, not wanting to admit I was apprehensive about driving on the left.

  “You won’t need papers for this car,” said my benefactor, and stopped a taxi going the other way before I could thank him. I remembered the famous story about the million-pound note. Did he want to win some bet with my help, perhaps? Anyhow, he forgot to tell me how to drive the car, how many cylinders it had, and whether there were camshafts in the cylinder heads as in other racing cars. We had not spoken about the compression ratio or the fuel. Behind the steering wheel I felt as though I were in a prison. The interior was also very narrow, seating only two, furnished with special upholstery on which it was impossible to slip, with a large number of dials under the windshield. He had left the keys in. I pressed the accelerator, and the car took off like a frightened horse. I seemed to be driving a rocket. I forgot how I’d gotten behind the wheel, and concentrated on mastering it. It was very hard at the beginning, but I soon found that everyone on the highway wanted to help me. Cars stopped in awe. All those Austins, Fords, Rolls-Royces, Morrises, Peugeots, Chevrolets, and what have you, all these middle-class cars stopped respectfully for my aristocrat. Even policemen on motorbikes saluted me. This alone should have worried me. I should have gotten out right then, but I drove on.

  At the next intersection I even picked up a girl. She was called Susan. Her mother had been an actress and had given her a modem education. When I told her that in my country sixteen-year-old girls do not go barefoot and do not wear rings on their big toes and violet eye shadow, she wiped off the make-up obediently and took some slippers from her bag. She was glad I was a Red, and kept examining me closely. She said her girlfriend had slept with a jazz drummer on vacation at the seaside, and that had the whole class licked. But none of the girls had bagged a real Communist yet, from behind the Iron Curtain. I began to hate jazz, actresses, and her whole group of friends. But I liked Susan.

  “Let’s have some tea,” she said as we were passing by roadside inns and filling stations, swarms of them, as well as huge billboards which private firms continually impose upon the driver’s attention. “You can buy me some whiskey . . .” Since whiskey is only sold during certain hours, no one forgives himself if he doesn’t buy some and prove how libertine he is. We went for some tea . . . Maybe she’ll have some money herself, I thought, or maybe I’ll be able to send the bill to the Embassy—for I must not let my country down.

  We stood at a wide wooden counter with other drivers. My head reeled a bit.

  “. . . But it’s still a Bentley. Forget an Arnold-Bristol. This one has disk brakes on all four wheels. It’s a terrific car—no Morse, no Dellow, no Crosley, no Frazer-Nash. It’s a Bentley—I saw it myself at last year’s Le Mans rally. It’s the only car in England that can stick with my Cunningham . . .” I heard all this over my shoulder, and I didn’t realize at first that a woman was speaking to me about my car. She ordered crayfish soup, fish and roast beef for us. She knew all about Prague—even that our woman driver Eliska Junkova almost won the famous Sicilian Targa Florio race in ’26, and that we have the most famous woman racing driver in the world.

  “But now you’re in a bad way,” she added. “I’ve heard that the Russians race only in rebuilt passenger cars of the Pobeda make. No private owner can possibly buy a Bugatti or Porsche in your country. How did you come by that English car?”

  I side-stepped that one, and I told her that I regarded this car cult in the West as a crisis of individualism. Everyone wants to have his own means of transportation, which results in the jamming of all highways and town streets, until the individual has nothing at all. In the same way everyone wants free enterprise, free discussion and a free vote—but only for himself, which amounts to destroying the selfsame freedom he sought. “This flood of cars,” I continued, “is really a symptom of the individual’s crisis in our epoch.” She didn’t understand me and asserted that in her Cunningham (a post-war American car which millionaires had built for European road races, for in America they race only on closed circuits) she’d beat me any time. The more she spoke, the more she sounded to me like a four-stroke motor, so I stopped listening to her and left. The Ambassador will have a large bill, I thought to myself—and I will have questions to answer in Prague. However, the waiter assured us that the woman had paid. He said she was the Marchioness of Nuvolari, née Riley, who had married into the family of the famous racing driver, just to have the name.

  She followed us out of the inn, jumped into her single-seater, pulled a hood over her head and sportingly waited for me to start. We took off together. By good luck, evening had fallen and there were only a few cars on the highway. We raced according to all the rules, and I wanted to show up that braggart. We soon drew ahead of her. I don’t know what was in my motor, but it left that American supermodel far behind. The passing countryside seemed smudged like an abstract painting, and I braked carefully, afraid that our car would overturn. Susan flung her arms around my neck and started to kiss me enthusiastically. We had won—our Mille Miglia, our Targa Florio, our Le Mans . . . Our Brno Circuit, I thought to myself. And I felt exhausted as if I had run that race on foot. I was conscious of kissing and embracing Susan, and then I fell across the seat.

  When I awoke, it was already night. Susan gave me Schweppes with tonic (they drink soda water with quinine in England). Then she took off my right shoe and cradled my foot in her lap.

  “You didn’t tell me you were injured,” she said. I’d had a medical checkup in Prague before leaving, and I knew there was nothing wrong with me. But all the same Susan showed me a fresh sore on my sole, almost as big as her palm.

  “You must see a doctor. You’ve lost a lot of blood,” she said.

  “I was examined by a doctor the day before yesterday. I haven’t done anything to my foot and I don’t see how I could have lost any blood. It’s nonsense.”

  And I wanted to get up, but my head was reeling, so that I had to clutch on to the door and stagger out of the car like that fellow in London who had inexplicably lent me the vehicle . . . I had done nothing with my foot, merely stepped on the gas. I frowned.

  “You don’t know how to open the hood, do you?” I asked her.

  “Well, it’s your car!” she said irritably. But after a while I managed to open the hood. It was a very unusual engine. Instead of a carburetor it had a big oval steel case from which two thick pipes led to the engine itself. I knew some cars have only one cylinder, so I tried to open that weird contraption—but it was no use. I returned to the dashboard. Susan
watched me sulkily. I started the engine and tried to rev it up by pressing the generator with my empty shoe, without touching it myself. The car didn’t budge. I poked the accelerator with my finger and the car leaped forward, both of us bumping our heads on the roof.

  “What’s the matter with you?” asked Susan. “Why don’t we start?” After a lot of trouble I switched on the light and showed her my finger. There was a fairly small sore on it, only a bruise as yet.

  “Look at that,” I said, but she didn’t get it. “This is some car. No Berkeley, nor Mors, but it could really bring death to its driver. It runs on human blood . . .”

  She began to laugh. She showed me the maker’s name—James Stuart, Old Georgetown 26. It was stamped on a brass plate directly under the steering wheel.

  “Do you think this gentleman sells cars to suicide cases? Now I see what stories you foreigners are willing to believe! A car running on blood!” But then she fell silent. For around the big vessel—the steel heart of the car, a heart with pulmonary artery and aorta—crept thin veins, quite transparent and now dark red. It seemed I was right. I told her about the strange way I had acquired the car, and about the last moments spent with the former owner. I was sure he had chosen me as his next victim because I was a foreigner, whom no one knew and no one would miss.

  “But what’ll we do?” she said. I had no choice. I would walk to the nearest inn and ring my colleague in Bolster. Susan would have to find another car and a more trustworthy driver.