Philip Dick - Time Out of Joint

Nervously, Vic slid over behind the wheel. "I doubt if he'll give you a right answer," he said.

Walking with care, Ragle made his way through the darkness along the side of the truck, past the great wheels, to the back. He climbed the iron ladder and rapped on the door. "Ted," he said. "Or whatever your name is. Are you all right?"

From within the truck a voice said indistinctly, "Yeah. I'm okay, Mr. Gumm."

Even here, Ragle thought. Parked on the shoulder of the highway, in a deserted region between towns. I'm recognized.

"Listen, Mr. Gumm," the driver said, his mouth close to the crack of the doors. "You don't know what's out here, do you? You have no idea. Listen to me; there isn't a chance in the world you'll run into anything but harm -- harm for you, harm for everybody else. You have to take my word for it. I'm telling you the truth. Someday you'll look back and know I was right. You'll thank me. Here." A small white square of paper slid out from between the doors and fluttered down; Ragle caught it. A card, on the back of which the driver had written a phone number.

"What's this for?" Ragle said.

The driver said, "When you get to the next town, pull off the road and go phone that number."

"How far's the next town?"

A hesitation, and then the driver said, "I'm not sure. Pretty soon now. It's hard to keep track of the miles stuck back here."

"Can you get enough air?"

"Yeah." The driver sounded resigned, but at the same time highly keyed up. "Mr. Gumm," he said, in the same intense, beseeching voice, "you just got to believe me. I don't care how long you keep me cooped up in this thing, but in the next hour or two you've just got to get in touch with somebody."

"Why?" Ragle said.

"I can't say. Look, you apparently got it figured out enough to hijack this rig. So you must have some idea. If you have that much, you can figure out that it's important and not just somebody's smart idea, building all those houses and streets and those old cars back there."

Talk on, Ragle thought to himself.

"You don't even know how to drive a two-section rig," the driver said. "Suppose you hit a steep grade? This clunk carries forty-five thousand pounds when it's loaded; of course it ain't loaded right now. But you might sideswipe something. And there're a couple of railroad trestles this thing won't clear. You probably don't have any idea what the clearance of this is. And you don't know how to gear down a grade or anything." He lapsed into silence.

"What's the bumper strip for?" Ragle said. "The motto and the snake."

"Christ's sake!" the driver snarled.

"Does it have to go on?"

Cursing at him, the driver managed finally to say, "Listen, Mr. Gumm -- if you don't have that on right, they'll blow you sky-high; so help me god, I'm telling you the truth."

"How does it go on?" he said.

"Let me out and I'll show you. I'm not going to tell you." The man's voice rose in hysteria. "You better let me out so I can stick it on, or honest to god, you won't get by the first tank that spots you."

Tank, Ragle thought. The notion appalled him.

Hopping down, he walked back to the cab. "I think we're going to have to let him out," he said to Vic.

"I heard him," Vic said. "I'd just as soon he was out of there, in any case."

"He may be stringing us along," Ragle said.

"We better not take the chance."

Ragle walked back, climbed the ladder, and unfastened the door. It swung back, and the driver, still cursing sullenly, dropped down onto the gravel.

"Here's the strip," Ragle said to him. He handed it over. "What else do we have to know?"

"You have to know everything," the driver said bitterly. Kneeling down he yanked a transparent covering from the back of the strip, pressed the strip to the rear bumper, and then rubbed it smooth with his fist. "How are you going to buy fuel?"

"Credit card," Ragle said.

"What a laugh," the driver said, standing up. "That credit card is for in--" He ceased. "In town," he said. "It's a fake. It's a regular old Standard Oil credit card; there haven't been any of them for twenty years." Glaring at Ragle he continued, "It's all rationed, kerosene for the truck--"

"Kerosene," Ragle echoed. "I thought it took diesel oil."

"No," the driver said, with massive reluctance. He spat into the gravel. "It's not diesel. The stack is fake. It's turbine. Uses kerosene. But they won't sell you any. The first place you go, they'll know something isn't right. And out here--" Again his voice rose to a screech. "You can't take no risks! None at all!"

"Want to ride in front with us?" Ragle said. "Or in the back? I'll leave it up to you." He wanted to get the truck into motion again.

The driver said, "Go to hell." Turning his back, he started off down the gravel shoulder, hands in his pockets, body hunched forward.

As the shape of the driver disappeared into the darkness, Ragle thought, it's my own fault for unbolting the door. Nothing I can do; I can't run after him and hit him over the head. In a fight he'd take me apart. Take us both apart.

And anyhow, that isn't the answer. That isn't what we're looking for.

Returning to the cab, he said to Vic, "He's gone. I guess we're lucky he didn't jump out of the back waving a tire-iron."

"We better start up," Vic said, sliding away. "Want me to drive? I could. Did he stick the bumper strip on?"

"Yes," Ragle said.

"I wonder how long it'll be before he gets word to them about us."

Ragle said, "We would have had to let him out eventually." For another hour they passed no sign of activity or habitation. Then, suddenly, as the truck came out of a sharp descending curve, a group of bright bluish lights flashed ahead of them, far off down the highway.

"Here's something," Vic said. "It's hard to know what to do. If we slow down or stop--"

"We'll have to stop," Ragle said. Already, he could make out the sight of cars, or vehicles of some sort, parked across the road.

As the truck slowed, men appeared, waving flashlights. One of them strode to the window of the cab and called up, "Shut off your motor. Leave your lights on. Get down."

They had no choice. Ragle opened the door and stepped down, Vic behind him. The man with the flashlight had on a uniform, but in the darkness Ragle could not make it out. The man's helmet had been painted so that it did not shine. He flashed his light into Ragle's face, then Vic's face, and then he said,

"Open up the back."

Ragle did so. The man and two companions hopped into the truck and rummaged about. Then they reappeared and jumped down.

"Okay," one of them said. He held something out to Ragle, a piece of paper. Accepting it, Ragle saw that it was some sort of punched form. "You can go ahead."

"Thanks," Ragle said. Numbly, he and Vic returned to the cab, climbed in and started up the motor, and drove off.

Presently Vic said, "Let's see what he gave you."

Holding the wheel with his left hand, Ragle fished the form from his pocket.

CERTIFICATE OF ZONE BORDER

CLEARANCE 31. 4/3/98

"There's your date," Ragle said. April third, 1998. The balance of the form consisted of IBM-style punches.

"They seemed satisfied with us," Vic said. "Whatever it was they were looking for, we didn't have it."

"They had uniforms."

"Yes, they looked like soldiers. One of them had a gun, but I couldn't tell anything about it. There must be a war on, or something."

Or, Ragle thought, a military dictatorship.

"Did they see if we had the bumper strip on?" Vic said. "In the excitement I didn't notice."

"Neither did I," Ragle said.

A while later he saw what appeared to be a town ahead of them. A variety of lights, the regular rows that might be street lights, neon signs with words... somewhere in his coat he had the card the driver had given him. This is where we're supposed to call from, he decided.