The wrong end of time Read Free Page A

chase he clean forgot about Danty and Rollins.
     
     
Turpin was plainly ill at ease and could not make up his mind how to open a conversation. For the time being that suited Sheklov. He wanted to get the feel of America, hammering home on the automatic level what he had learned on the conscious. Already he had noticed a contradiction. From the radio that Turpin had switched on, as though by reflex, music was emanating of a kind that he himself had barely encountered since his teens, when his generation still thought it "progressive" and "liberal" to imitate the example of Western rock-groups. The sound was imbued with curious nostalgia. Then, between items, an announcer resolved the paradox by saying that the program was aimed at the eternally youthful and proceeding to advertise a skin-food.
     
For men, as well as women. He sniffed. Yes, he wasn't mistaken; Turpin was heavily perfumed with something that hadn't been detectable in the open air, but had built up in the closed metal box of the car, despite the conditioning, until it was overpowering. He thought of asking for a window to be opened, but changed his mind. He was going to have to adjust.
     
To things like this superway, for instance. Back home, the roads he knew were typically two or at most three lanes wide, laid with geometrical exactitude across the landscape, carrying far more trucks and hundred-passenger buses than private cars, and had control cables laid under the surface so that no mere human being should be called on to avert an accident at 200 k.p.h.
     
But roads weren't really important. You could use less land and shift more people with a hover train riding concrete pylons, or for long distances you would fly.
     
When this road, with its opulent curves, came to a rise in the ground, its builders had contrived to give the impression that it eased itself up to let the hill pass beneath. Elegant, certainly. Yet so wasteful Eight lanes in each direction, not because there was so much traffic, only because that much margin must be allowed for human error!
     
Thinking of speed . . . . He repressed a start as he looked at the speedometer. Oh. yes. Not k.p.h., but m.p.h; the Americans had resolutely clung to their antiquated feet. yards and miles just as they had clung to Fahrenheit when the rest of the world abandoned it. Even so, he hoped that Tuipin was a reasonably competent driver. He himself had never attempted to guide a land-vehicle at such velocity.
     
Now. finally, Turpin was addressing him: "Cigarette?"
     
"Please." It would be interesting to try American tobacco. But he found it hot, dry, and lacking in aroma.
     
Ahead, a lighted beacon warned traffic to merge into the left lanes, and shortly, as the car slowed, he saw something that confirmed his worst fears: a wreck involving two trucks and a private car around which a gang of black men were busy with chains, jacks, and cutting torches. On the center divide an ambulance-crew waited anxiously to be offered a cargo.
     
When was someone last killed on the roads, Back There?
     
He watched Turpin covertly as they passed the spot, and read no emotion whatever on his face.
     
Well, to sustain his pretense for so long, obviously he must have had to repress his natural reactions . . .
     
Yet Sheklov found the explanation too glib to be convincing.
     
     
Then, a little farther on, they encountered another gang of workmen, also black. being issued with tools from a truck on the hard shoulder. Some of them were setting up more beacons. That was a phenomenon Sheklov had been briefed about: a "working welfare" project Obviously they were here to repair the road; equally obviously, the road didn't need repairing. But it conformed to the American ideal: You don't work, you don't eat.
     
He felt a surge of pride as he reflected on the superior efficiency of a planned economy. Then, sternly, he dismissed the thought. The system must work. otherwise human beings could not tolerate it. It was not for