Fritz Leiber - The Wanderer

“Not if you had antigravity,” said Rama Joan.

“Wow,” Wojtowicz said tonelessly.

“You’re clever, Mommy,” Ann observed sleepily.

Hunter said: “If you cancelled the gravity of a rotating planet, you’d have to have it pretty well tied together, or centrifugal force would tear it apart.”

“Nope,” Doc told him. “Mass and momentum would disappear together.”

Paul cleared his throat. He was sitting beside Margo and he’d taken off his coat and put it around her. He’d meant to put his arm around her too, if only for the practical purpose of getting some of his body-heat back, but somehow he hadn’t yet. He said: “If beings were that advanced, wouldn’t they also be careful not to injure or even disturb any inhabited planets they came near?” He added uncertainly: “I suppose I’m assuming a benign Galactic Federation, or whatever you’d call it…”

“Cosmic Welfare State,” Doc suggested in faintly sardonic tones.

“No, you’re absolutely right, young man,” the fat woman said authoritatively, while the thin woman nodded, her mouth pursed. The first law of the Saucerians is to harm no life, but to nurture and protect all.”

“But is it the first law of General Motors?” Hunter wanted to know. “Or General Mao?”

Rama Joan smiled quizzically and asked Paul: “When you make an automobile trip, what special precautions do you take against running over cats and dogs? Are the anthills all marked in your garden?”

“Still hot on your devil-theory, aren’t you?” Doc observed.

Rama Joan shrugged. “Devils may be nothing but beings intent on their purpose, which now happens to collide with yours.”

“Then evil’s just an auto accident?”

“Perhaps. Remember, there are careless drivers, and even drivers who use a car to express themselves.”

Paul asked: “Even if the car’s a planet?”

Rama Joan nodded.

“Hmm. I just use naked me to express myself,” Doc asserted, chuckling wickedly.

Margo, whose hands were curved around Miaow asleep on her lap, interjected sharply: “When I drive I can see a cat on the sidewalk three blocks ahead. Cats are people. That’s why I could never have gone into Vandenberg, even if they’d been more decent about the rest of it”

“But are people always people?” Hunter asked her with a smile.

“I’m not so sure of that,” she admitted, wrinkling her nose.

The fat woman made a pshaw-sound. Rama Joan said sweetly to Margo: “I hope that when things get…well…rougher, you never regret passing up Vandenberg and throwing in with us. You had your chance, you know.”

Wojtowicz jumped up. “Look at that!” he said.

He was pointing across the sand to where a pair of headlights were bobbing up and down. And now there came plainly to their ears the swelling growl of an engine.

Hunter said: “Paul, looks like Major Humphreys has changed his mind and sent to fetch you.”

Doc said: “It’s coming from the wrong direction.”

Wojtowicz said: “Yeah, it’s from the highway, come around the slide.”

The headlights slewed around, hesitated, then came on bright. Their glare made it hard to see the car, despite the twilight.

Margo said: “They’ll get stuck, whoever they are.”

“Not if they keep up speed they won’t,” said Wojtowicz.

The car came on as if it were going to ram the platform and then careened to a stop fifty feet away and doused its headlights.

“It’s Hixon’s panel truck!” the Little Man said.

“And there’s Mrs. Hixon,” Doc said, as a figure in pak slacks and sweater dropped from the back of the truck and ran toward them.

Wojtowicz, Ross Hunter, and Harry McHeath hurried toward the truck. As Mrs. Hixon passed them, she cried: “Help Bill look after Ray Hanks. Ray’s got a broken leg.” Then she was on the platform.

Earlier in the evening Mrs. Hixon had been a handsome-looking woman, but now her hands, face, slacks, and sweater were smeared with dirt, her hair had come unpinned and hung down in strands, her lips were pulled back from her teeth, and her eyes stared. There was blood on her chin. As soon as she stopped moving she started to shake.

“The highway’s blocked both ways,” she gasped. “We lost the others. I think they’re dead. I think the whole world’s smashed. My God, have you got something to drink?”

Doc said: “You called it,” to Hunter as he pulled out his half pint, poured a double shot in an empty coffee cup, and started to add water. She clutched it before he could and sucked it down greedily, then shuddered over her shaking. Doc put his arms around her shoulders, hard. “Now tell us point by point,” he said, “from the beginning.”

She nodded, closed her eyes a moment. Then: “We dug out three cars. Rivis’, our truck, Wentcher’s microbus. The rest were too deep, but that was enough to hold us easy. Just Bill and Ray and me in the truck. When we got to the highway there was no traffic. That should have warned us, but we thought it was great. Christ! Rivis turned north. We headed for L.A., following the microbus. The car radio got two stations through the static. Just snatches. Nothing but the big L.A. quake — do this, do that, don’t do it. We had to keep swinging around little falls and rocks. Still no cars. The microbus was way ahead. We were where there was no beach, just a drop into the sea.

“The road heaved — just like that, without warning, my God! It rocked the car like a boat. The door jerked open and Ray Hanks pitched out. I hung on to Bill. He was rammed against the back of the car seat, braking. The cliffs came down. A rock big as a room hit ahead of us and cut a slice out of the road ten feet wide. I remember I bit my tongue. Ray got the car stopped. The road stopped heaving, too. Then I was choking on dust, but then through the dust came a big splash of water where the rock hit the sea. I was tasting salt and blood and dust, and I could still feel my brains shaking.

“It got awful quiet. The road ahead was all blocked, dirt piled against the bumper. I don’t know if we could have climbed the fall, but we were going to try, because we didn’t know if the microbus got buried, or got away, or what. Just then an after-slide came. A boulder as big as a lion missed me by that. Another just exploded. Bill made me get back in the car, while he walked through the new falls, telling me how to cut the wheels as I backed it around rocks and over ridges and angles. In between, he was coughing and cursing that new planet.

“Someone was screaming curses too — at us. It was Ray. We’d forgot him. His leg was broken above the knee, but we got him in the back on a canvas. I stayed beside him. Bill could turn the car now, and we headed back.

“The little slides were bigger but we got around them. We wanted to meet cars now, but there still weren’t any. Bill stopped at a roadside phone, but it was dead, and the light in the booth died while he was trying to get a dial tone. The radio was nothing but static now. The only word that ever seemed to get through was fire! Ray and I kept yelling at Bill to go slower and faster.

“We passed the turnoff here, but after a quarter of a mile the road was blocked by another slide — not a soul in sight, not a light — except that godawful thing up there. We came back here. There wasn’t anywhere else.”

She breathed deeply. Doc asked: “What about the little roads back across the Santa Monica mountains? Specifically, what about Monica Mountainway?”

“Little roads?” Mrs. Hixon looked up at him wonderingly, then started to laugh and sob together. “You goddamn fool idiot, those mountains have been stirred like stew!” Her laughter went out of control. Doc clapped his hand over her mouth. She struggled wildly for a moment, then let her head slump. Wanda and the thin woman took over for Doc, walking her away down the platform. Rama Joan followed them, after asking Margo to take her place as a pillow for Ann, who was watchful as a mouse.