Teleologists must cultivate a sense of destiny, I thought. Roland's face glowed with it, and he regarded me with the self-assured smile of a man who relishes his meeting with the inevitable.
'This is it, Jake,' he said. 'We've been on it almost the whole trip. We're on Red Limit Freeway.'
I looked at him solemnly and nodded. 'I know,' I said. 'And at this rate, it won't be long before we reach the end of the road.'
Chapter 22
About four weeks into the journey, the Bugs pulled us over for a rest stop. You could call it that, but it might only have been to give the Talltree contingent an opportunity to bury Corey Wilkes. Apparently the strain had been too much for him.
They didn't bury him, though. We had to do it.
We stopped in the middle of one of the most attractive landscapes I had ever seen. It could have been Earth itself.
'Maybe it is,' Roland said. 'We have no idea where we are in space or in time.' He pointed to a range of mountains lifting snow-capped peaks above the horizon. 'Those could be the Pyrenees two million years ago. Or maybe the Appalachians.'
'I'd be willing to bet,' Yuri said, 'that we're a bit farther back than that. Several billion, in fact. This might be a planet of a star that lived and died a billion years before Earth's sun was a gleam in the universe's eye.'
'Hey, they're getting out!' Carl yelled.
Sean ran into the cab with a handful of weapons, but the men who had come out of one of Moore's vehicles weren't in a position to make a move. Chubby, Geof, and two others were carrying the limp body of Corey Wilkes. They dumped him like a load of garbage just a meter or so from the shoulder, looked around briefly, then returned to their vehicle and shut the hatch. I wondered whether they had done this on their own or at the Roadbug's behest.
I radioed and asked.
'He was beginning to smell a bit,' Chubby told me. 'So we requested permission to open the hatch and throw 'im out as we were going along. Instead, the Bugs stopped.'
'They answered you?'
'No, they just pulled over, and we found we could open up.'
'Okay, thanks.'
'Right-o.'
'Weren't the Bugs afraid they'd escape?' Roland wondered.
'To where, pray tell?' Sean asked, gesturing toward vast expanses of rolling pastureland dotted with stands of tall timber. It all looked friendly and inviting, but there wasn't very much to do out there.
'True.'
'The patrol creatures must have had their reasons,' Zoya said.
'They have orders to take care of us,' Lori said, sounding as if she knew.
'Who?' I asked.
''The Bugs. They got orders to deliver us safe and in good health. And you can't have a stinky body lying around, can you?'
'Hmmm,' I said, and thought about it. Then I asked, 'Who ordered them, Lori?'
She looked at me and said impatiently, 'The Roadbuilders, of course.' She shook her head. 'Really, Jake, sometimes you're just a little bit thick. Don't you realize that we're going to meet them? Where do you think they're taking us, on a punking picnic or something?' She rolled her eyes up in exasperation. 'Sheesh!'
'Ohhh, I see.'
We looked out at Wilkes' pale body.
'We can't just leave him lying there for the local scavengers,' Sam said. 'Somehow it's just not right.'
This surprised the hell out of everybody, including me, but nobody commented.
'You really think?' I asked halfheartedly.
'Look, as far as I'm concerned, Wilkes was the lowest form of life in the known universe. But he was human, dang it, and if he deserves to rot in hell, which he surely does, he also deserves a decent burial?or the best one we can give him.' Sam grumbled to himself for a moment. 'Besides, I think we should do it because we're better than he was.'
'Well, we may be moving again any second?but let's see if the Bugs'll let us,' I said.
I bent toward the dash microphone. 'Hey, out there. You guys. Bugs?whatever the hell you call yourselves. We'd like the time and the opportunity to conduct a ceremony of interment. You know? We want to dig a hole and put him in it. It's our custom.'
'Use Intersystem, for God's sake,' Sam scolded.
The answer was astonishingly quick.
'GRANTED.'
And it was in English.
'Be damned,' Sam said. 'When will those things stop surprising me?'
Yuri said, 'I think they were waiting for someone to go out there and do it.'
'Maybe.'
Carl pulled the release bar on the left hatch. It whooshed open, rising like a seagull's wing into the sweet- smelling air.
'Nobody thought to check when those guys got out,' he said. 'These were unlocked all the time.'
We went outside to find Ragna and Oni climbing out of their vehicle, looking crumpled and weary. The thing they were driving was sort of like a camper, with a little room to move around in, but for the time they had spent cooped up in there, it must've been hell. They were indomitably cheery, though, in spite of it all.
Ragna stretched and took several deep breaths. 'Ah, that is feeling much like the body I had of old, not this hurting thing I am having for the last several years, it is seeming like.'
Oni smiled. 'I am hoping we will be having the time to be working out the entirety of our kinks.'
'Depends on how kinky you are, Oni,' I said.
She nodded, then did a take. 'Oh, that is a joke.' She gave a polite, forced laugh. 'Quite funny, too!'
I laughed. I liked Oni a lot.
So we buried Corey Wilkes. I found an old shaped-charge mine in the ordnance locker?they're good for clearing a blocked back road when you have to make a delivery, though I hadn't had the occasion to use one in a long time. I picked a likely spot a little way off the road and blasted out a good-sized hole with it. Sean helped me carry the body over. Before dumping Wilkes in, I looked down at him. Bare blue feet, white pajama bottoms, bandaged chest, purple lips and earlobes, the generally collapsed look about the face and swelling of the abdomen signaling the commencement of decomposition?he didn't look like the formidable enemy I had known.
'I suppose some appropriate words should be spoken,' Sean said.
'If you feel like it, go ahead,' I said. 'Unless you have something to say, Sam.'
Sam spoke from the key. 'Not really. Dump him in.'
'I didn't know the man,' Sean said, 'except by reputation, though I've seen his handiwork in what was done to Carl, and the trouble those rowdyboys have given us. Nevertheless…' He closed his eyes momentarily, then opened them and spoke. ' 'And Cain said to the Lord, 'My punishment is too great to bear. You are driving me today from the soil; and from your face I shall be hidden. And I shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me.' But the Lord said to him, 'Not so! Whoever kills Cain shall be punished sevenfold.' Then the Lord gave Cain a mark so that no one finding him should kill him. And Cain went out… and dwelt in the land of Nod to the east of Eden.' '
Then Sean crossed himself. He smiled and shrugged. 'I'm not sure how appropriate it was, but I imagine it sounded all right.'
'It was fine,' Sam said. 'Better than he deserved. That was the Douay version, wasn't it?'
Sean nodded. 'It's the one I know.'
