Now he was paying a toll. He left the bridge behind him. Now he was ignoring Bronx signs. He was spotting U.S. 278. Throg's Neck? Was he going to Throg's Neck? No. Now he was on Hutchinson River Parkway. White Plains? Was he going to White Plains? No, he passed that turnoff. Boston? Ah, New Brunswick, Canada! He must be running away to leave the country.
I instantly got up to send Raht and Terb a message. Heller would be going out of the range of the activator-receiver, to say nothing of the 831 Relayer!
I halted. My Gods, due to all the disturbance Heller was guilty of, I had forgotten to give Raht and Terb their receiver and decoder! I was not in contact with them!
Helplessly, I sat and watched the viewer.
I cursed him. This was all his fault. He hadn't gone over this cursed "Master Plan" with anyone while I was watching!
The sun was up now where he was. He seemed to be appreciating the green trees and grass that flowed by, for he certainly wasn't paying much attention to his driving. Maybe somebody would consider that scenery beautiful if they were less under the hammer of fate than I was.
He went through a toll gate and was on a toll road, the New England Thruway. His eye lingered on a sign. Stamford! He was in Connecticut!
And then I got my first clue. Looking at some very dark green trees, he said, "Old Cap Duggan was right! You are a beautiful country."
Cap Duggan! The Geological Survey! But what had they discussed? Gold in Alaska? Maybe he was going to Alaska! But this wasn't the route to Alaska. And you wouldn't be driving a bright orange, vintage antique, New York taxicab to Alaska. You'd go in a dog sled! I knew the planet! But maybe he had some cunning deception plan in mind. I knew no good would come of his ROTC studying for the Army's G-2!
He went right on by any opportunity to turn off into Stamford. But just as my attention was beginning to relax, off to his right he went and was on a bad state highway. A sign said Noroton Point lay in that direction.
Soon, he stopped the cab and got out.
He was standing on a beach. A vast expanse of water spread before him, a solid sheet of gold in the morning sunlight. He walked along the sand. He seemed to be enjoying the flow of ocean air. He took several breaths as though it tasted good.
He said, "They haven't completely wrecked you yet, old planet." Then he walked a ways and saw an oil scum. He amended what he had said. "But they're working on it pretty hard."
He walked further. Some sandpipers did a running walk away from him. Some gulls wheeled overhead. The surf, golden-tipped, purled up the beach toward his toes.
"It's a shame," he said. "You're such a pretty planet." Then, with sudden determination, he said, "I better get to work while you're still habitable!"
He trotted north. He was looking at a place where a river emptied into the sea. "Aha," he said. "That's it!"
He ran back to the cab, jumped in and was soon roaring along. He bypassed the New England Thruway, went through a fair-sized city and continued on into a hilly countryside, green and much of it wild.
He stopped. He unrolled a Geological Survey map. It seemed to have every house on it.
He tossed down the roll and turned the cab from the state highway he had been on straight off into a cow track!
He seemed to be looking for markers. He found an aged milepost. Right there on the cow track! It was so weathered you could hardly read it. Then I worked it out. He was on an ancient, abandoned road!
With rhododendrons and laurel and weeds whipping at the old cab's fenders, he came at length to some buildings. They didn't look like a farm. What did they look like? Then a thoroughly rusted sign told all: it was an abandoned service station now doing duty, with some chicken coops in the back, as a sort of makeshift residence.
A small plume of smoke was coming from a chimney.
Heller knocked on a rickety door.
A very old woman opened it. Suddenly, from her eye misdirection, I could tell she was blind.
"I'm the young fellow who called yesterday from New York," said Heller in a gentle voice.
"Oh, sakes alive. Come in, come in and sit. Have some coffee." Heller did and she bustled about and got him some coffee.
"I am surely glad you could drive in," she said.
"There ain't been a car on that road since my husband died. How'd you find this place anyway?"
"You're still on the map, ma'am," said Heller in a strong New England accent.
"Well, I do declare it's a comfort not to be spilled off the country complete!" She groped for the chair and sat down, not quite facing him. "This used to be a busy place until they changed all the roads. Them dang-blast commissioners is always changing things. Be moving these hills off next! Some more coffee?"
I blinked. How did she know his cup had been emptied?
"No, thanks," said Heller. "Now, you said, ma'am, that the old repair shop could be locked up tightly and the roof was still sound. Could I see it?"
She got some keys and shortly had groped along a wall and around the building and had the place open. It was a space big enough for several cars, greasepits in the floor, windows sealed.
"Looks fine," said Heller. "I'd like to rent it for a few months."
"Well, a little rent would help in these inflation times. What would you be willing to pay?"
"A hundred a month."
"A hundred a month! Sakes alive! You could have the whole place for half that and the chickens, too!"
"Well, there'll be two cars here," said Heller.
"Oh."
"Off and on. Does anyone ever come here, ma'am?"
"My niece, every couple days, to see if I'm all right. But since I drivv some intruders off with a shotgun, nary a soul except my niece."
"It's a deal, then," said Heller. "Mind if I drive a car in here now? I got to make some adjustments."
"Go right ahead! There's plenty of tools if you don't mind rust."
He gave her a hundred and she gave him some keys. He drove the cab in.
And then he did something that showed the cunning and treachery I had always hated in him.
He closed up the doors from within.
He opened a bag and got out paper rolls and he taped it across all the window insides. He turned on the old electric bulbs of the place.
Then, (bleep) him, he took a small floodlight out of his bag and pointed it at the side of the cab, and the area turned BLACK!
The sign on the door vanished!
Playing the light over the whole cab, section by section, he was turning the glaring orange to a midnight ink!
Then I knew what it was. He was using a Voltarian preparation. He had had that man in Newark add it to the cab's paint! The light was giving it a color shift!
They use it in fancy Voltarian advertising signs. A beam passes over the sign and it turns blue, then a second beam of a different frequency passes over the sign and it turns red, by a shift of refraction frequency in the paint additive.
It didn't take him very long. Then he went around to the front and bent down, snapped a sort of cover off the license plate. He did the same thing in back.
Then he opened up the bag and got a little vial, put some liquid on his fingers and rubbed it over his face and into his hair. He put some on the back of his hands.
He sat in front of the rearview mirror, turned a dial on his light and played it over his head. He had black hair! Then he turned the dial again and played the light over his face and hands and he had dark brown, almost black face and hands. Then he put on a false black mustache.
The sly treachery of it!
But he wasn't that good. He still had blue eyes!
He had been wearing a black suit. He didn't change it. He got out a black slouch hat and put it on.
He stood back and looked at the cab. He got in and folded the meter down out of sight.
He opened up the garage and backed out.
At the house door, he said, "I'll be back and forth from time to time. I may be late or early."
"That's all right," said the old blind woman. "Just toot your horn twice so I'll know it's you. An' anybody else'll get drivv off with a shotgun!"
Off went a dark-brown Heller in a black car!
But he wasn't that smart. It still looked like a vintage New York cab, orange or black!
He seemed to know right where he was going. He drove into a town, looked at some street numbers and pulled up at an old house with a big sign:
Real Estate Cyrus Aig
Heller knocked, was sent by a woman around to an office in the back.
"Cyrus Aig?" said Heller. "Me—English no not native tongue—got appointment?"
Cyrus Aig was a very, very old man. He turned away from his roll-top desk and eyed the stranger. "Glad you could make it. But I dunno if anything I got will suit. All the old barns and proppity like that gits bawt up by rich folks to make homes out of, y'know."
Heller had a roll of maps. "Actual, me look for mines, old."
"Oh, yes," said the aged realtor. "You did hev somethin' to say about that on the phone. Now, I done some lookin' at records. Somebody buyin' a mine here in the east is kinda out of my line. I git holt of old barns for rich folks to make homes out of. Sit down."
Heller sat in a rickety rocking chair.
"Could be a hundred years ago," said Cyrus Aig, "there might hev been a mine. But jus' because the name of the creek is Goldmine Creek ain't no reason it ever had a gold mine on it."
"This place," said Heller, pushing out the Geological Survey maps, "it show buildings on Goldmine Creek."
"Oh, that," said Cyrus. "Nobody been up in that area for years. That's wilderness. Ain't even a road in there. Wonder them government surveyors even went there. That's a valley with rocks. Cain't grow nothin' on it. Just two, three little hills. Creek runs through it. Half a century back that was the bootlegger roadhouse."
The old agent took the maps. "Yes, that's a fact. I was in there once when I was a kid. There was a highway run past it in them days. Now, see here. This creek runs down and turns here and then goes into the sea."
He got a road map. "But you can make out on that that they put a reservoir way up that creek near the source and the water didn't flow much anymore. And then they put two turnpikes across it before it reached Long Island Sound. So she don't work for bootlegging anymore."
"Me not see how..."
"Why, you couldn't run a shallow draft boat up it no more. Y'see, the bootleggers used to run their stuff in from the Atlantic, up the creek and to this roadhouse. Then they'd water it down, rebottle it and either serve it on the spot or run it down to New York through the gauntlet of hijackers."
He handed back the maps. "Was a time nobody'd go near that old roadhouse. Bodies! Haunted. But I even forgot it existed."
"Me mebbe buy," said Heller.
Cyrus Aig wearily got an old fishing hat. Heller followed him out. Using Cyrus Aig's rattletrap Ford they went to the courthouse and Cyrus looked into the records.
"Listed here as owned by John Smith of New York in care of this attorney they note here. Hundred and twenty acres of prime rocks."
Heller was writing down all the particulars and addresses. "If me buy, me give commission."
"Well, that's fine but you don't catch me thrashing around up there off the roads. I cain't even get out fishing lately. You sure you don't want an old barn? I got a couple of those in driving distance."
Heller went back to the house with him, jumped in the cab and was off. Thank Heavens he was still very well within the activator-receiver range. He wasn't more than thirty miles or so from New York! Whatever he was up to, I would at least know and be able to handle it if it proved dangerous.
Chapter 5
He headed north on U.S. 7. He was driving at a leisurely pace, looking about him at the hills and valleys and streams of Connecticut, apparently highly approving. A very rural scene, mostly picturesque like you see in paintings—I myself wouldn't like it at all. Too neat and serene.
Way ahead, although they probably didn't think it was visible, a police car was lying in wait for unwary speeders. Heller went by it at a crawl. It wasn't really a police car. It was a sheriff's car with a big star on the side of it. Two men were in the front seat, dressed in khaki. They had cowboy hats on. Deputy sheriffs, no doubt. They were taking it easy. From the litter on the ground around it, this was their favorite speed trap.
Heller went on. He was examining the left side of the road very carefully. Ahead, a difference showed in the embankment. I myself might have missed it.
He turned left and went on down the embankment! Right off the road into the brush! Just like that!
He must have been steering more by his sense of compass direction than whatever he thought he was driving on. He was going dead slow. Weeds were raking and whipping at the underside of the car.
A big bush was ahead. There seemed to be no way around it. He got out, took a machete from the car and cleared the bush away. Then he got back in and on he went.
It came to me that he must be following an old road not unlike the one to the ancient gas station but much more obscured. He even had to go around trees more than a third of a century old.
He went over a little rise. Ahead was what appeared to be a massive stand of maple trees and some evergreens. They were huge trees, fifty years old at least.
Just beyond them lay a streambed, only a trickle of water in it now, despite the high banks. The remains of a wooden bridge were collapsed into the stream.
Heller stopped the cab and got out. It really was a wilderness. Several knolls were visible. There was flat ground but it was covered with rocks.
He walked around the fields. There was a flat place not too far from the trees. This seemed of interest to him.
He went down to the stream. A ledge of white outcrop with a red rust stain seemed to interest him. The stream had eaten down through it over the eons.
A small, unnatural hill caught his attention. He got a shovel and dug into it. It was just very fine white dirt. He put the shovel back in the car and took out a pack.
Only then did he pay any attention to the grove of huge trees. He walked straight into it.
Canopied and shadowed by the growth which must have matured long after the original place was built, masked by climbing vines and shrubs, there lay the road-house!
It sprawled. It had a veranda and wings. It was apparently built of the same rocks which lay in such abundance roundabout.
Heller walked up the stone steps to the front door. It was a big door. It was padlocked. Still, I wondered how, after nearly half a century, this place would still be there without the usual traces of vandalism. America is like that.
Heller took out a picklock and an oilcan and in almost no time at all had the padlock off! It startled me. Apparatus people weren't that fast at locks. Then I realized he was, after all, an engineer. He knew levers and tumblers intimately.
With his oilcan, he got to work on the hinges. The door, although a bit sagged, was not too hard to open. He examined its edge and then I saw why the place wasn't vandalized. That door was cored with armor plate!
He tapped a window. Bulletproof glass!
This place was a FORT!
He went back to the car and got a bag. He entered the main front room. He turned on a lamp he carried and set it down on a table.
The faded, drooping remains of what must have been the last party in the place hung forlornly from thick rafter beams. The gutted remains of Japanese waxed paper lanterns cast strange shadows against the ceiling.
He walked across what must have once been a polished dance floor, for he kicked off his spikes before he stepped on it.
He picked another lock and opened an inner door. The bar! A long piece of mahogany, little else in the way of furniture. He examined a broken mirror—a bullet hole.
There were other rooms—private party rooms and what once might have been overdecorated bedrooms. The kitchen had a big, wood-burning range—a ra
t had made a nest in the firebox, exiting and entering through the chimney.
The back door was also armor plate. And every outside window was bulletproof!
Heller found an office. The desk was still there. The papers were browned with age. He looked through them. Forty cases here and eighty there and an IOU for five hundred. One wondered if it had ever been paid.
There were framed photographs on the wall. Some were autographed with age-browned ink. To Toots, Jimmy Walker said one of a handsome young man. Jimmy Walker? The famous New York mayor?
Another attracted his attention. It was a lineup of stiffly standing young men. Four of them. They were holding submachine guns! Heller was reading the name signed under each one. Joe Corleone! He was second from the right. He looked like a kid of twenty!
Heller took a Voltar camera out of his bag, focused in just on Joe Corleone and shot a copy, including the signature. Then he shot one of all four of them.
Ghosts indeed! "Holy Joe" had been pushing eighty-eight when he died. But he was a ghost now with all the rest of this roadhouse and this era.
Now Heller must have considered that he had amused himself enough. He began to move very fast. He took a metal bar from his pack and with great rapidity began to tap walls and floors. I knew enough about him now to know that he was echo-sounding. He must be looking for hidden rooms.
He found one. When he also found its entrance, it was just a closet.
He went on.
Then he trotted outside and began to hit the ground. He gave that up.
He got out a little meter and started to walk all around the house. He got a read. He stopped. He crisscrossed an area. He got more reads.
Heller must have worked it all out. He went straight to the bar and took soundings with his meter. It was the far end of the bar.
Using some oil, he shortly had a hinge working. The whole end of the bar slid aside and he was looking down some steps.
He went down.
He was in a cavern!
He walked along a tunnel and then shined a light down a shaft. If there had ever been any ladder there, it was gone now.