'I wish you would,' the voice said. 'You have an absolutely incisive intellect, Jake. Why did you ever want to drive a truck for a living? Seems a waste.'
'I like keeping people off-balance. Nobody expects a truckdriver to have any brains. It amuses me.'
'Hell of a price to pay for amusement, I'd say.'
'Nah. Very small.' I made as if to wipe the edge of the cup with my finger, and in doing so dropped the tablets into the coffee. Then I sipped from the cup.
'It's your life,' Wilkes' voice said. 'Anyway, getting back to the subject of where we go from here and why I'm not very concerned about it, let's consider this. We have Winnie's map and George's map. We have the Cube, which might be a map. There are two very good technicians riding with the convoy following us, the same ones who tampered with Sam. They have some equipment with them, and they just might be able to crack the Cube. I'm not banking on it, mind you, but it's a possibility. Last but hardly least, here we are on a Roadbug service planet. There has to be a portal leading back to Terran Maze, Reticulan Maze, or the Outworlds. Has to be. I'd be willing to bet anything on it.'
'Yeah, but how are you going to find it?'
'Don't know that yet. Maybe we just ask the Bugs.'
'They'll probably tell you to go inseminate yourself,' I said, scoffing.
'Maybe, but then we have all those other options.'
'I don't know why you think either Winnie's or George's map is an option. If we happen to luck back onto either trail, fine. But chances are we won't.'
'It just seems to, me,' the voice said irritably, 'that with all these stinking maps around we should be able to come up with something, for God's sake.'
I shook my head in pity. 'That's your biggest flaw, Corey. You design these grand schemes and sit back and admire them, thinking the details will take care of themselves. You're a great strategist but a poor tactician. Wars are won in the trenches, my friend.'
'Thank you Karl von Clausewitz.' The voice gave a short, deprecating laugh. 'Actually, you may not be too far off the mark. I've always tended to think big, big, big?and the bigger the thinking gets, the more my best?laid plans gang agley all over the punking place, Witness this current fiasco. But I'm not licked yet. Far from it. In fact, I feel I'm operating from a position of considerable strength at the moment. Most of the options may be iffy propositions, but they're options nonetheless.'
I sat and drank, gaze fixed on the camera-eye, intrigued by the fact that this simulacrum of Wilkes' personality was far more introspective than the original. I wondered why.
'I have another question,' I said. 'Who put you together? Your programming, I mean. As far as being able to mimic emotions and personality traits, you seem to be the equal of Sam's VEM. That makes you pretty unique. Terran AI programs just aren't that good.'
'Oh, I'm pretty good, all right, but I'm all homemade. By humans, that is. I was written and debugged in the Outworlds. I'm strictly domestic goods.'
I worked one semidissolved chlorpromazine tablet into my mouth and swallowed it. 'I'm surprised. Didn't know they had that kind of expertise in the Outworlds.'
'You would be very surprised. Brain drain, Jake. We attract some of the best talent in every field.'
'My impression was things are pretty primitive there.'
'They are. But did you ever try to build a civilization from scratch? Takes time.'
I nodded. 'I see.' I finished the rest of the coffee, and with it the remnants of the second pill, its bitterness sluicing over my tongue and down my throat. I set the cup down into a circular receptacle on the dash. 'Okay, Corey. I think I've had about enough of you.'
'Oh?'
I switched on the intercom and bent to speak into the dash-mounted microphone. 'Carl, Sean… hey, everybody. Emergency. Everyone into the cab, please. Except you, Carl. Get in your buggy and stand by. Acknowledge.' I switched to LISTEN. It was too quiet back there.
'They won't answer, Jake,' Corey Wilkes' voice said.
'Roland? John? Darla?… Anybody?' I leaned and yelled into the mike. 'Hey, back there! Everybody up! Rise and shine!'
Nothing except light snoring.
I rose and started aft.
'I wouldn't go back there, Jake.'
I stopped in the aft-cabin. Susan was sitting up, looking at me blearily.
'What's the matter, Jake?' she asked. Then she shook her head, clearing the cobwebs. 'Who were you talking to? Is Sam back?'
She looked at me even more strangely as I directed my voice toward one of Sam's speaker-mikes in the comer. 'What do you have working back there, Corey? A dream wand?'
'No, not this time,' Wilkes' voice said. 'Just some knockout gas. Almost the same symptoms, though.'
Susan's right hand shot up to cover her mouth, and she pulled the ratty blanket up to cover her chest.
'Hi there!' the voice said brightly. 'Susan, is it? Last time we met, things were rather hectic. I'm Corey Wilkes.'
Susan uncovered her mouth and rasped, 'Jake, how?' She was shocked, eyes fear?rounded and disbelieving.
'It's okay, Suzie,' I said, not very convincingly.
The bogey-alert gong sounded.
'We've got company, Jake.'
I rushed to the ordnance locker, threw open the door, and rummaged through our stash of weapons. I tossed a pistol to Susan.
Just then the hatch between the cab and aft-cabin slid down. I lunged vainly to catch it.
'The whole rig's booby-trapped, Jake,' the voice told me in an almost apologetic tone. 'Really, I wouldn't move an inch if I were you. You're inhaling gas now. You could get hurt thrashing about.'
I picked myself up and went over to the cot. I sat beside Susan. She threw her arms about me.
'Seems the Roadbugs have escorted my friends here, Jake, old buddy. I was pretty sure they would.'
I said, 'I take back that comment about your being a poor tactician.'
'Thanks. I get better all the time.'
I pushed Susan down on the cot and covered her body with mine, burying my face in her silky hair.
'Jake, I'm afraid,' she said into my ear as the darkness closed in.
'Sleep, honey. Sleep,' I said softly, gently.
With any luck, I thought, we'll never wake up.
Chapter 20
The Snark was big but fast. I chased it into a gathering whirlpool of darkness, gaining on it all the time but never catching it. It yawked and hooted up ahead somewhere, ever-elusive, a spastically-dancing figure against the coiling black lines of force whose current kept tugging me off balance as I ran. Stomach churning and head reeling, I teetered on into the dark.
But soon the maelstrom swallowed me and there was nothing for a long time.
I woke up nauseated, my head throbbing. I was on my back with my feet trussed together and hands tied behind, both arms gone numb and prickly. They had put me in the trailer behind some packing cases. I rocked back and forth until I rolled over, finding Darla face down next to me. Wilkes' simulacrum had said that everyone had been knocked out with gas. That might have been true, but Darla's symptoms were unmistakable?open glassy eyes, dull vacuous stare?which meant that a dream wand was in operation somewhere about. I realized that it might even be the one I had taken from Wilkes during the fight aboard the Laputa. Maybe the Rikkis had been carrying only one wand. And that's why the knockout gas had been necessary. I knew that a wand's effect could be thwarted by taking a simple tranquilizer; the chlorpromazine seemed to be doing its job, now that the effects of the
