Roadmarks Read Free

personal."
    "You'd foul up the whole traffic pattern just for some selfish little whim?"
    "Yep."
    "Don't know why I asked. I've known you for about forty years. What's that come to for you?"
    "Five or six years. Thirty, maybe. I don't know. You doing a lot of office work in between?"
    "Too much."
    "Probably where you got those notions about new branches."
    "As a matter of fact, I did pick up a lot of the theory, and it is more complicated than you probably think."
    "Hogwash! It was that way once, it can be that way again."
    "Have it your way, but we won't have you messing around like this."
    "People do it every day. Why else would they travel the Road? Everywhere they go, they alter the branches some way or other."
    Tony's teeth clicked.
    "I know, and that's frightening enough. This whole thing ought to be better controlled, check points set up — ”
    "But the Road has always been here, and those of us who can travel it always have. The world goes on, the Road goes on, from creation to destruction, amen, for all you know. What's your point?"
    "I've known you for forty years — or thirty, or five or six. You haven't changed. I can't talk to you — Okay. We can't control most of the traffic, we can't stop the minor changes. We can look out for big things, though, and we do. You're always involved with the big ones. I'm trying to be nice and let you go with another warning."
    "That's all you can do, and you know it. You can't prove where I was headed with this equipment. You can confiscate, you can lecture, you can make things rough for me for a while. But it won't last — and you know as well as I do that you are handing me another line. This isn't policy or guarding the peace or anything like that. You are harassing me, personally, for a particular reason. Someone's down on me and I'd like to know who, and why."
    Tony reddened. His partner passed them with a carton of grenades.
    "You're getting paranoid, Red," he finally said.
    "Uh-uh. Care to give me a hint?" His eyes were fixed on the other's as he struck a match on an ammo box and relit his cigar. "Who could it be?"
    Tony glanced at his partner, then, "Come on. Let's get the rest of this stuff loaded," he said.
    It took another ten minutes to transfer the balance of the arms. When this had been done. Red was permitted to enter his truck.
    "Okay. Consider yourself warned," Tony said.
    Red nodded.
    " . . . And be careful."
    Red nodded again, more slowly.
    "Thanks."
    He watched them mount their shining vehicle and speed off.
    "What was that all about?"
    "He just did me a favor, Flowers. He came looking, to let me know we're in trouble."
    "What kind?"
    "I'll have to think about it. Where's the nearest rest stop?"
    "Not too far ahead."
    "You drive."
    "Okay."
    The truck jerked into motion.
     

TWO
     
    The Marquis de Sade followed Sundoc into the enormous building.
    "I appreciate this considerably," he said, "and I'd appreciate your not mentioning it to Chadwick, because he thinks I'm reading a stack of abominable manuscripts. Ever since Baron Cuvier's speculations, I have wondered, I have wished. But I never thought that I would actually get to see one."
    Sundoc chuckled and led him into the huge laboratory.
    "I can appreciate that. Don't worry. I like to show off my work."
    They approached the great pit in the center of the hall, coming up to the railing that surrounded it.
    Sundoc gestured with his right hand and the area below was flooded with light.
    It stood like an enormous statue, like an unusually well-fashioned prop for a Grade B movie, like a suddenly materialized neurosis . . .
    And then it moved. It shuffled its feet and lowered its head away from the light. A strip of gleaming metal was revealed at the back of its head, and another farther down along its spine.
    "Ugly as they come," said Sundoc.
    The marquis shook his head.
    "God's dentures! It's beautiful!" he said softly. "Tell me again what it is called."
    " Tyrannosaurus rex ."
    "Fitting. Yes, so fitting!