Billy made a helpless gesture. 'What can I tell you? I'm stranded.'
The face appeared to be thinking; then it made up its mind. 'Ah, what the hell. I can always toss you out again if you bug me.' A hatch to the rear of the canopy popped open. 'Climb aboard.'
Entering the vehicle was like crawling into a mobile womb. The walls were covered with quilted pink, tuck- and-roll leather. The floor was as soft as a mattress and was covered in a thick pile of shaggy pink fur. A hologram projection panel on the ceiling filled the rear of the vehicle with undulating abstract erotics. Billy was scarcely inside when the hatch sighed closed, the driver banged it into drive, and the machine accelerated away. Billy lost his balance and sprawled into the fur.
The driver glanced back. 'Come and sit up here.'
The driver occupied a contoured command chair in the nose of the ground craft. With a fast gesture he indicated the smaller contour berth beside him. Billy crawled forward and eased himself into the berth.
'Nice machine.'
'It'll do.'
The driver was short and thickset, with pale, almost transparent skin. He was dressed in a mylar jumpsuit with red and blue slogans on it written in a chunky script Billy could neither read nor recognize. He turned his head and grinned at Billy. He had a mouthful of bad crooked teeth.
'You know something? I almost ran you down.'
'I'm glad you didn't.'
'Thought you were a stinking priest. Can't stand priests. Always try to run them down if I find them in the road.'
'I'm no priest.'
'You look like one in that there dress.'
'It's all the robbers left me.'
'They left you your SG.'
Billy nodded.
The driver glanced at him suspiciously. 'Most of the boys I know would have taken the SG double fast. A guy who's one with the non can't come after you.'
'Maybe they had pity on me.'
The driver shook his head. 'Thieves with pity? What's the world coming to?'
He suddenly stuck out a hand. 'The name's Schook Jetstream.'
Billy briefly clasped the hand. 'Please to meet you. I'm Billy.'
Jetstream took another look at Billy. The suspicion was back. 'I knew a Billy once.'
'There are a lot of Billys in this world.'
Schook Jetstream nodded thoughtfuxxly. 'I guess there are.'
For the moment, at least, his worries seemed to be allayed. He fumbled in one of the many patch pockets of his reflective jumpsuit. 'You want a rubyjewel?'
He was holding out one of the clear, red, very powerful stimulant beads. If he lived on those things, Billy thought, it would account for the transparency of his skin.
'Sure, I don't mind if I do.' The rubyjewel would certainly stop the pangs of hunger.
Schook Jetstream seemed pleased by the response. 'Least you can't be no priest. No priest would take one of those.'
Billy put the bead in his mouth, but his throat was too dry to swallow. 'Do you have any water?'
Jetstream shook his head. 'I got a beer, though.'
He took one hand off the controls, reached down into a cooler beside the command chair, and produced a can. It was silver, with more of the indecipherable characters. Billy took it and popped the seal. It tasted wonderful. He could not remember how long it had been since he had tasted beer. He sank back in his chair as the bead began to work and stared out the greenhouse canopy. The highway looked no different from the way ithad been when he had climbed into Jetstream's machine, but judging from the way the globes of light were flashing past overhead, the ground craft was traveling at high speed. The phrase 'speeding to nowhere' flashed through Billy's mind.
Schook Jetstream opened a beer of his own. He took a long pull and once again showed Billy his crooked teeth. 'So you don't know where you are, right?'
He seemed to take quite a delight in Billy's supposed misfortune. Billy was not at all sure what to make of Jetstream. If the man had a rubyjewel habit, he could expect sudden, unpredictable shifts of mood.
'That's right, I'm totally lost.'
'And you don't know where you want to go?'
'I'll go anywhere, any place where I can get myself fixed up.'
'I'm probably going on through to Graveyard.'
'That would do me just fine.'
'So maybe I'll let you ride along with me.'
Billy nodded his thanks. He did not particularly like the way Jetstream had used the word 'maybe.' He turned back to the view. They were running straight through a cluster of the indistinct ghostly shapes. He looked at Jetstream. 'What are those things?'
Jetstream's face was blank. 'What things?'
Billy pointed through the canopy. 'Those things.'
Jetstream's head turned. His eyes were cold, the suspicion back in spades. 'You weirding on me? You been in the nothings too long?'
Billy realized that Schook Jetstream could not see the ghostly shapes. He lamely shook his head. 'It's nothing. Just my imagination.'
'You better not be weirding on me. I'll throw you out right now.'
Billy did his best to reassure the driver. 'Really, it's okay. I just thought I saw something. You know how it can get.'
'Do I? Do I? I'm not sure that I do.'
Things were starting to get difficult. 'Why don't we just forget it.'
'I'm not sure about you, Billy. I bring you in here and I give you a rubyjewel and a beer to wash it clown, and now you start weirding on me.'
If anyone was weirding, it was Schook Jetstream.
'I'm not weirding, I'm okay.'
Jetstream was thinking again. 'Billy. . Billy? I could swear.'
To Billy's alarm, Jetstream suddenly slammed a fist into the control panel.
'I knew I knew you! Billy! Just Billy, huh? I know who you are, friend. You're Billy Oblivion!'
Billy's heart froze. 'I. .'
He could swear that he had never met the man. Unless, of course, the nothings had time-warped him.
Schook Jetstream hit the retros, and the vehicle shuddered to a stop. Billy, who had not bothered to strap in, was thrown headfirst into the canopy. Jetstream was glaring at him with a look of pure hate.
'Out!'
Billy was dizzy and a little stunned. He had trouble getting his arms and legs untangled. Jetstream was throwing off his safety webbing. Billy was on his hands and knees, crawling back down the cabin. Jetstream aimed a kick at him.
'Out, I said! Out of here, you murderous bastard!'
Jetstream was smashing at Billy with boots and fists. As Billy tried to avoid the blows, he wondered desperately what he might have done to the man. He could not remember ever having set eyes on him before. He was well aware that there were plenty of people who might be more than justified in reacting to him like that. He just couldn't place Jetstream among their number. The other man had turned back to the control console. The hatch popped. Then Jetstream was coming at him again, brandishing a short black billy club.
'Out of here! Get out!'
Without thinking, Billy rolled through the hatch. He fell heavily to the road surface, grazing his knees and elbows. Above him, Jetstream was screaming.
'I hope you die out there! I hope you rot! Why don't you crawl into the nothings and be done with it, you bastard!'
