Fritz Leiber - The Wanderer

“Mr. Brecht,” Margo said. “Are you planning to take us over Monica Mountainway to the Valley?”

“Part way at any rate. To the two-thousand-foot heights, if I can. After that…” He shrugged.

“Mr. Brecht,” she went on, “Vandenberg Three is just the other end of the Mountainway. On the slopes, in fact. Morton Opperly’s there, in charge of the pure science end of the Moon Project. I think we should try to contact him.”

“Say, that’s not a bad idea,” Doc told her. “He ought to be showing more sense than the V-2 brass, and he might welcome some sane recruits. It’s a sound idea that we cluster around the top scientists in this para-reality situation. However, God knows if we’ll ever get to V-3, or if Opperly will still be there if we do,” he added, shrugging again.

“Never mind that,” Margo said. “All I ask is that if there’s a chance to contact him, you help me. I’ve a special reason which is extremely important but which I can’t explain now.”

Doc looked at her shrewdly, then grinned. “Sure thing,” he promised, as Hunter and some of the others closed in on him with other questions and suggestions.

Margo boarded the bus at once and took the seat behind the driver. He was a scowly old man with a jaw so shallow she wondered if he had teeth.

“It’s very good of you to help us out this way,” she remarked.

“You’re telling me?” he retorted, looking around at her incredulously and flashing some yellowed, stumpy incisors and scattered, black, amalgam-roofed molars. “ He told me,” he went on, jerking a thumb at Doc just outside the door, “about this five-hundred-and-sixty-foot tide that would drown me if I didn’t get up in the hills fast. He made it mighty vivid. And then he told me I needn’t strain myself making up my mind whether to take you folks too, because he had a guy with a gun. Good o’ me? I just had no choice. Besides,” he added, “there was a big slide blocking off my regular route south. Might as well throw in with you crazy folks.”

Margo laughed self-consciously. “You’ll get used to us,” she said. At that moment the Ramrod came shouldering into the bus, calling back to Doc: “Very well, Wanda and I will ride in this conveyance, but I categorically refuse to drink milk with fallout rays and rat poison in it!”

The driver looked at Margo. “Maybe,” he said sourly.

The rest came crowding aboard. Hunter had sat down beside Margo while the driver was talking to her. She ostentatiously made extra room, but he didn’t look at her. Doc stood in the door and counted noses. “All here,” he announced. He leaned out and shouted to the truck, “O.K., off we go! Reverse course and follow in line astern!”

The school bus turned around on the bridge, and the truck behind it. Margo noticed that the water in the wash was now a yard higher. A tiny roller came up it, foaming along the sides. The beach onto which she’d shot the boulder was under water, too. Last night the road here had been over half a mile from the ocean, but now only a hundred yards separated it from the surf.

Doc settled down in the strategic spot he’d reserved for himself, opposite Hunter and behind the door. He sprawled a leg over the extra seat beside him.

“On to Monica Mountainway,” he told the driver. “Keep her at an easy thirty and watch for rocks. We’ve hardly four miles to go along the highway — ample time to dodge Mrs. Pacific as she fattens up. Remember, everybody, the Pacific Coast tides are the mixed kind. Fortunately for us, this morning’s the low high. — McHeath,” he called over his shoulder, “you’re our liaison officer. Keep an eye on the truck. Rest of you, don’t crowd the sea-side. I want this bus balanced when we start uphill. We’re well ahead of the tide — there’s no danger.”

“Unless we get some more—” Margo began, but checked herself. She’d been going to say “earthquake waves” or “tsunami.”

Hunter flashed her a smile. “That’s right; don’t say it,” he whispered to her. Then, in a not much louder voice, across to Doc: “Where did you pick up that five-sixty figure, Rudy?”

“Eighty times the L.A. tidal range of seven feet,” Doc replied. “Much too big, I devoutly hope, but we have to make some kind of estimate. Oh, a life on the ocean wave, a home on the rolling deep, da-da-da-da-da-da-da…”

Margo winced at the raucous voice “singing for morale” — how well consideredly was an open question — and wished it were Paul’s. Then she clasped her hands together and studied the back of the driver’s seat. It looked recently scrubbed, but she could make out, “Ozzie is a stinker,” “Jo-Ann wears falsies,” and “Pop has 13 teeth.”

Despite Doc’s reassurances, there was considerable excited watching of the creeping waters and scanning of the misty horizon, and a mounting feeling of tension as the bus chugged south. Margo felt the tension slacken the moment they turned up the sharply mounting, two-lane black ribbon of the moun-tainway — and then, almost immediately, gather again as people scanned the road ahead for slides or buddings. There instantly sprang out of Margo’s own memory Mrs. Hixon’s vivid phrase: “Those mountains have stirred like stew.” But the first stretch, at least, straight up a low-domed hill, looked clear and smooth.

“Truck turning inland after us, Mr. Brecht,” came a soldierly voice from the rear.

“Thank you, McHeath,” Doc called back. Then, to Hunter and Margo with grinning enthusiasm, and loudly enough for all to hear, “I’m banking on Monica Mountainway. There hasn’t been much about it in the general press, but actually it’s a revolutionary advance in roadbuilding.”

“Hey, Doc,” Wojtowicz called, “if this road’s clear to the Valley, there’d be traffic coming through.”

“You’re sharp this morning, Wojtowicz,” Doc agreed, “but we only need the mountainway clear the first three miles — that’ll put us over six hundred feet up. We don’t have to worry about the other twenty-two miles. In fact, it’s probably better for us if it’s blocked somewhere beyond that”

“I get you, Doc: we’d be fighting fifty million cars.”

“The sky looks blacker ahead, Mommy,” Ann piped up. She and Rama Joan were in the seat behind Doc. “A big smoke plume.”

“We’re between water and fire,” the Ramrod announced, some of the dreamy note coming back into his voice. “But be of good cheer; Ispan will return.”

“I’m only too afraid it will,” Hunter said to Margo, sotto voce. Then, in the same tone, his glance dropping to her zippered-up leather bosom, “Would you care to show me the thing the cat-woman dropped from the saucer? I saw you catch it, you know, and I think you tested it this morning. Work?”

When she didn’t answer him, he said: “Keep it to yourself if it makes you feel more secure. I heard the questions you asked Doc and I heartily approve. Otherwise I’d take it away from you right now.”

She still didn’t look at him. He might have combed his beard, but she could smell his musky sweat.

The bus topped the first hill, took a slow, dipping curve, and started up a steeper one. Still no falls or crumblings came into view.

Doc said loudly: “Monica Mountainway is laid almost along the ridge tops and built of an asphaltoid that’s full of long molecular cables. Result: it’s strong in tension and almost impervious to falls. I learned that poking into engineering journals. Ha! Always trust a diversified genius, I say!”

“Diversified loudmouth,” someone behind them muttered.

Doc looked around with a hard grin, squinting suspiciously at Rama Joan. “We have already gained some three hundred feet in altitude,” he announced.