'Check.'
I looked back at Susan. She was crying quietly now. She grew aware of my gaze and looked at me questioningly at first, then gave a quick shake of the head that said, just leave me alone.
Okay, I would.
I was hugging the extreme right edge of the fast lane. The fast lane is actually two lanes wide by Terran standards. The rest of the road is taken up by the 'doubleback' or return lane, reserved for opposing traffic, and two shoulder lanes on either side. The doubleback track is only about a lane and a half wide, since most traffic on the Skyway is moving in the same direction. There are no lines painted on the road; Skyway roadmetal doesn't take paint. But if you run over into the doubleback lane or onto the shoulder, you get annoying vibrations. Rumble strips, probably, though no grooves or projections are visible on the road surface. After many a klick of Skyway, though, you actually start seeing the lanes, oddly enough. I could, and can. Strange. Pushy alien drivers had been passing us on the right, using the shoulder lane, so I decided to run on the shoulder to prevent being blocked from making the cutoff. The vibrations can give you a headache after a while, but we'd be off the lane very shortly.
'See it yet?'
'No,' Roland said. 'This atmosphere's pretty thick, isn't it.
'Sam, can you paint any blips moving off to the right up there?'
'No, too early. Maybe ten klicks more. Keep your eyes peeled, though.'
'No need, really. If we miss it, we miss it. This is a dice roll, remember? Any portal will do.'
'You're the captain.'
'I like the cut of your jib, Sam.'
'The which of my what?'
'The rake of your spinnaker, or whatever.'
'I think your terminology's confused.'
'Well, I never rubbed elbows with the sail set.'
'No? Seems to me you did go sailing with the nubile daughter of some bureaucrat or another, back in your college days. Long time ago-lessee, what was her name? Zoya?'
'My God' do you have a memory.'
'Zoya. That was it, right?'
'I think so. Sure, I remember. Zoya Mikhailovna Bubnov.'
'Talk about memory,' Sam marvelled.
'I remember she had great bubnovs. Beautiful girl. Wonder whatever became of her.'
'You should have married her. She was head over heels in love with you, if I recollect. She came to visit at the farm once.'
'I believe she did,' I said. 'That was a long time ago. I couldn't have been more than twenty-one at the time. That would have made her around seventeen.'
'Ah, sweet bird of youth.'
'Horsefeathers.'
'Yep, you should have married the girl. Think where you'd be now.'
'In a psych motel.'
'You'd be sitting pretty, that's where you'd be.'
'Sitting prettily.'
'Huh? Oh, fudge. So what are you??a truckdriver. A bright kid like you, dragging freight from mudball to mudball, swilling beer…'
'Damn, I could use a beer. We got any?'
'Don't change the subject.'
'You brought it up! Hey, back there? Any beer in the cooler?'
'A few S & L's,' came Darla's voice.
Sean & Liam's.
'Yecch,' I said. 'Any Star Cloud left?'
'No, sorry, Jake. You drank the last of it back on Ragna's world.'
'Merle. Forget it.'
'Are you sure you don't want an S & L?' Darla asked.
'No, thank you.'
'Big ol dumb truckdriver,' Sam went on. 'You could have done anything you set your mind to. Been a scientist, better yet an engineer. Anything.'
'What I really wanted to do was write,' I said. 'Poetry.'
'I remember. You weren't bad, actually. Had some talent. Poetry don't pay the rent, though.'
'You can say that again. That's one of the reasons I quit writing.'
'And now you can pay the rent every other month. Progress.'
'C'mon, Sam, don't tell me you don't like the road.'
Sam gave a semicommittal grunt and said, 'Well, I'll admit that life on the road has its appeal… at times. Most of the time, though, it's boring. And ding dang it, most-of the time it don't pay doodly squat.'
''Doodly squat,'' Roland repeated, tasting the phrase. 'Oh, that's a fine collectible item.' He turned and smiled. 'I'm compiling a field dictionary of your patois, you know. Could you give a rough translation into Standard Received English?'
I got on the radio. 'Hey, Carl.'
'Yo'
'Roland wants to know what 'doodly squat' means. Can you give him a free translation into white-folks' talk?'
'Doodly squat? Hey, Roland, didn't you ever squat on your doodly?'
'I think I get the gist,' Roland said, 'and I'm extremely sorry I asked.'
'Actually, it doesn't mean beans.'
'I understand that,' Roland muttered.
'You know,' Carl went on, 'I am aware that a lot of my speech patterns strike people as slightly weird. l try to watch myself, but?'
Sam cut him off. 'Jake, someone on the skyband.'
'Put him on.'
An unfamiliar voice came from the cab speakers. '?that rig up there, do you have your ears on? I say breaker breaker, breaking for the rig with the Terran Maze markings. Are you human? Come back, please! This is an emergency!'
'You're on the skyband, Jake,' Sam informed me.
'Hey, you got the Terran rig here. Flaky Jake's the handle. What's the emergency? Come on?'
'Thank God! I can't tell you what a pleasure it is to hear a human voice again… We've been cut off from humanity for two years… Almost too good to be true. We thought we'd never?'
He stopped transmitting.
'Come on back? What's the nature of the emergency?'
'Sorry… sorry. A little overcome with emotion. The emergency is that we're lost! Been outside Terran Maze for the last twenty-six months. We are the survivors of an Authority expedition sent out to explore uncharted road. There are three left in our party. Two humans, one nonhuman. Please tell us?do you know a way back? Come on?'
I sighed and said, 'Sorry, no we don't. We're just as lost as you are, I'm afraid.'
A long pause. Then, 'I see. But we're still more than glad to have found you. We're about out of rations, no medical supplies to speak of. We're at our rope's end and would be most grateful to team up with you. We have little, but what we have we'll gladly share. We do have some possibly useful information, maps and such that we've put together. What say you to that?'
'Welcome aboard,' I said. -Do you need medical assistance?'
'No, we're in fairly good shape, considering. I'm flashing my headlights now. Can you pick me up?'
I checked the rearview screen, then looked out the port at the parabolic mirror. 'Okay, we're eyeballing you.' I couldn't make out what kind of vehicle it was.
