Дэймон Найт - Orbit 13

“You all right?” The waitress looked at him suspiciously.

“Just coffee,” said Lindsey. “Leave the pot.” The waitress left.

The coffee was hot and caustic. Lindsey patiently cooled it with his spoon, a steel hull constantly filling and sinking and carrying him to cooler depths. The two men in the next booth were talking, and Lindsey listened.

“Look at the headlines,” one declared, crackling the newspaper. “New York Man Sought in Nebraska.” He traversed the page with his finger. “Supposed Psychopath Sighted Near Omaha.”

They both studied the photograph.

Lindsey slouched low in his seat.

“What did he do?” said the nearer man in the next booth.

“Assault,” said the man with the paper. “Beat up a doctor.”

Lindsey surfaced from dreams raggedly, limbs jerking in small spasms. He awoke and Mona would be close, very warm and reassuring. Her stroking fingers calmed him. Her voice soothed, cradled him until he could sleep peacefully. No dreams then, not until morning when he awoke to dirty sunlight in the city.

The waitress slapped down the lime-green check. Lindsey reached for his wallet. “Pay the cashier.”

On his way out of the restaurant, Lindsey slipped a quarter into a vending machine and took out a copy of the newspaper. One headline read, NEW YORK AIR ALERT IN EIGHTH DAY. The other read, NO AGREEMENT IN YUCATAN. The front page photo was of the president of Mexico. Lindsey dropped the paper in the KEEP AMERICA CLEANER receptacle.

Again the stripes zip-zipped past, all the way across arid Wyoming. Lindsey surrendered to their peaceful procession. A hum rose loud and louder in his ears until it drowned the motor and road noise. The road ahead constricted to a view seen through a tunnel. Lindsey took another of the red pills his doctor had prescribed for appetite-suppression during college. It stuck in his throat and he had to swallow repeatedly.

Across the Utah border there were white airplane silhouettes painted on the pavement. With his limited knowledge of the Mormon culture, Lindsey assumed they were stylized seagulls. A public service billboard informed him that the road was under radar surveillance from aircraft. Lindsey reduced the ancient Camaro’s speed to five miles above the speed limit.

Just before sunset on the salt flats, Lindsey invented a new game. He focused his left eye on the line of stripes coming toward him from the west. He focused his right eye on the rear-view mirror where the stripes receded into the distance. A dozen times his peripheral vision barely saved him from death. Twelve angry drivers drove toward Salt Lake, shouting silent curses back across the desert.

“You idiot, you wanna get killed?”

There was a need for running. They were driving him crazy.

Go west, young man. So he went west.

In Wendover, on the Nevada state line, Lindsey discovered he had taken the wrong turn for Los Angeles.

“You wanted Interstate Fifteen,” said the wrinkled man, handing Lindsey a Chevron roadmap. “You’re headed for San Francisco.”

“So I’m lost,” Lindsey admitted. “Help me.”

They spread the map on the service-station counter above the gum and candy. “Bear south on U.S. Alternate Fifty. ‘Bout a hundred miles it runs into U.S. Ninety-three. That puts you right into Vegas and then it’s freeway all the way to LA. All downhill.”

“Thanks,” said Lindsey, folding the map along the wrong creases.

“You better get some rest.”

“I’m fine,” said Lindsey, “but I’m late.”

The service-station man called across the tarmac, “You remind me of that white rabbit in that kids’ book—sayin’ ‘I’m late, I’m late, for a very important date.’ You got something important?”

“A very important date,” said Lindsey. He looked at his watch. It had stopped at three twenty; he had forgotten to wind it.

“What?” said the service-station man.

“I’m late,” said Lindsey, looking back at him blankly.

Left turn, right turn, Lindsey stopped his car at the junction and slumped forward, resting his forehead on the wheel. Choices—San Francisco and Los Angeles both meant California. San Francisco . . . something about fog and damp. He was too tired to consider more than simplicities; there was something mythic about Los Angeles. Hating decisions, he surged blindly into the intersection.

For the first time he drove along two-lane black-top. The constant white dashes were now supplemented on curves and hills by continuous yellow stripes. Lindsey marked the addition.

He encountered little traffic on the Nevada highway, yet the road was strewn with dead animals: rabbits, porcupines, even an occasional badger. Once he had to swerve to avoid something so massive it could only have been a dead cow. He opened his window to the cold night air and after many miles realized that the scent coming into the car was the odor of corruption.

Seventy miles south of Wendover he pulled off the road. He urinated in the barrow pit beneath the cold sky and stars. The desert tried to retain him. Lindsey thought of the highway department crew finding his frozen body in the morning, standing spraddle-legged and stiff, jutting a yellow rainbow into the east. When he got back into the car it was like slamming a refrigerator door. Lindsey turned the heater controls all the way up and the car began to smell of dust.

At a truckstop south of Ely, he stopped briefly for gasoline. As Lindsey pulled out of the service area, he passed a hitchhiker. The man waited on the shoulder of the highway beneath a mercury lamp and extended a tentative thumb. Lindsey’s foot hesitated on the accelerator. He looked through the window at the hitchhiker; the man looked back from shadowed, invisible eyes. The hitchhiker was tall and thin, with a dark tapered beard. He was wrapped in heavy, shabby clothing, and carried a canvas rucksack slung over one shoulder.

There was something naggingly familiar about the hitchhiker. Was he— Sorry, thought Lindsey, and drove away so fast that gravel scattered from the Camaro’s rear tires. Pebbles leaped and ticked around the hitchhiker’s feet.

Veach appeared unexpectedly on the passenger’s side of the seat. He looked across at Lindsey with a Cheshire grin. “Hey Lindy, come home with me tonight and meet the wife.”

What wife, thought Lindsey. Some nice boy you picked up on Forty-second? He instantly regretted the thought and felt ashamed; Veach had more taste. “No thanks, not tonight. Mona’s having friends over.”

“Mona,” said Veach. “Who the hell’s Mona? Lindy, baby, you ought to see a shrink.”

I love her, thought Lindsey.

“It won’t kill you,” Veach said, taking a cigarette from a gold case and tapping it against the dashboard.

“What?” Lindsey said vaguely.

Veach was disgusted. “You’re not listening.”

“I am. Why should I see a psychiatrist?”

“Are you unhappy?”

Lindsey admitted he was.

“Shrinks help. Trust me.”

“Psychiatrists fool around with things that aren’t their business.”

“That’s their business,” said Veach.

Later: the elder Lindsay, implacable. “You’re a good, solid man, Lindsey. An asset to the firm.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“But I think perhaps you are upset. Lately your work has been uneven.”

“I’m sorry, sir.”

“I want you to take some time off. Maybe . . . seek some professional help.”

“I’m fine, sir. I’d rather not.”

“I’d rather you did, boy.”

“Sir ...”

“Mr. Veach can recommend an extremely competent man.”

Sometime during the night, the sky above the hills to the southwest began to lighten. In an hour it became a white glow. Another hour: Las Vegas. Lindsey had never been to Las Vegas—he had never before been west of Pittsburgh—yet he had heard . . . The coins in his right trousers pocket pressed against his thigh. Lindsey unconsciously touched the wallet in his jacket. He realized it was too easy a dream and instantly denied it, laughing.