Seeth looked back over the Riviera’s hood. “I think they’re leaving, heading off the other way. Gonna check out Denny’s, maybe.”
“They won’t give up,” Rail reminded them warningly. “Oomemians never give up.”
“You said that. Check that out.” Seeth pointed at a customized Dodge van parked three lanes away. The front door stood slightly ajar.
“Wonder if they left the keys inside?” Kerwin strained for a better look while Seeth stared at him.
“What’s this? Can it be? The boy wonderbread thinking of stealing a vehicle that belongs not to him but another?”
“Borrowing,” Kerwin corrected him. “This is a matter of life and death.”
“Excuses. Maybe there’s hope for you yet. We don’t need keys.”
As they moved toward the van, Kerwin considered asking Rail about his obsession with the bowling ball. Expensive it might be, but it was getting a little ridiculous to keep hauling it around when they might have to make a run for it.
Seeth opened the door noiselessly and slid inside. Rail and Kerwin followed. The front was dominated by a pair of oversized captain’s chairs. Seeth didn’t have to demonstrate his antisocial skills because the van’s owner had thoughtfully left the keys in the ignition. It was slightly crowded up front with the three of them, not to mention the bowling ball. Music blared from the radio.
“Please, let me drive.” Rail’s request was unexpected.
Seeth eyed him briefly, then shrugged. He was listening to the rock pouring out of the custom speakers and feeling good. “Sure man, why not?” He moved aside and let the man slip behind the wheel.
Rail appeared to hesitate over the automatic shift. Maybe he was used to a stick, Kerwin mused. He turned the key and slowly eased forward. The loud music helped to muffle the sound of the engine turning over. They began easing out of the parking lot.
A blast of white-hot energy scorched the left side of the van.
“Hit it, hit it!” Kerwin yelled over the heavy-metal riffs of KDKW. Rail responded by slamming his foot down on the accelerator, leaving rubber behind as the van peeled out of the lot and roared eastward.
“All right!”” Seeth was bouncing up and down in time to the music, jabbing Kerwin in the ribs with an elbow. He leaned out of the passenger window and looked back the way they’d come as another bolt of energy, weaker with distance, seared the pavement behind them.
“Eat hot lead, Oomemian scum!” He cocked his thumb and forefinger and began shouting as he shot imaginary slugs. “Bang—bang!” Kerwin had to grab him by the seat of his pants to keep him from tumbling out as Rail sent the van careening wildly around a corner.
Their driver looked a little steadier now. He glanced uncertainly at Kerwin.
“What weapon is your friend firing?”
“Whaaa?” Crammed in between the enigmatic Rail on one side and Seeth-the-mental-case on the other, Kerwin
began to feel like a Tenniel illustration from Alice in Wonderland. “He’s not shooting anything.”
“Oh.” Rail sounded disappointed.
“Look, this whole business is insane. What are we running from, anyway?”
“It is not insane,” said Rail evenly. “It is inconvenient, which is not quite the same thing.”
He’d finally put the bowling ball down. It was rolling around, bumping up against the door and center console and the seat posts. It didn’t seem to affect his driving. A third energy bolt was barely audible as it sizzled by overhead.
“Wonder if they’ve got a car?” Seeth had finally come back inside. His Mohawk was frazzled and he wore a look of exhilaration.
“I am sure they must.” Rail turned another corner. He seemed to know where he was going. “They would not be as ill prepared as I and their resources are greater. Once more I extend my gratitude to you for saving me from a fate worse than death.”
“Heyyy.” Seeth looked nonchalant. “What are casual acquaintances for?” He turned the radio up and the music blasted through the van. “Much better. What do you think?”
“Catchy. Maybe they’ll play some X or Dead Kennedys or Siouxsie and the Banshees or Crumple.”
Seeth’s eyebrows rose slightly. “I’ll be damned. A classics lover.” He reached in front of Kerwin with an open palm. “Put ‘er there, compadre.”
Rail stared at the palm. “Put what where?”
“Forget it. You drive and I’ll cover us.” He leaned back out the open window, flinging pinging sounds into the New Mexico night.
Kerwin strained to see past him, trying to get a look at the outside rear view mirror. “Are they following?”
“Can’t tell.”
This late, the roads were almost deserted. Cops would be changing shifts, late-night giving way to graveyard. With luck, most of them would still be swapping stories in the doughnut shops down on Central, which was fortunate, considering Rail was exceeding the speed limit by double figures. Those police already on station were probably busy trying to bust underage drinkers near the campus. The presence of a pair of speeding vehicles, with the occupants of one of them firing a weapon of unknown potential at the other, should escape the constabulary’s notice entirely.
“Crap, here they come!” Seeth ducked back inside as another blast of flame just missed the weaving van. Kerwin stared as the upper half of the van’s antenna melted and ran like quicksilver. Reception suffered.
Seeth was bouncing up and down in the seat, pounding madly on the radio’s controls. “Dammit, that was Blowfish! I haven’t heard that song in years.” He leaned back out, screaming at the road. “Come on, you bastards, I’ll wrap you around a telephone pole! Blast you, evil scourge of the universe!”
Rail clung tightly to the wheel and murmured something that sounded like “How did he know?” but as Kerwin was about to question him he veered hard to port, almost rolling the van. The two wheels on the right side actually rose from the pavement before slamming back down. The radials held.
“Hey, take it easy! You total us and your Oomemians won’t have to shoot us.”
Rail spared him a glance. “I assure you I am perfectly quite aware of the relationship between gravity, mass, and velocity. I will keep us absolute straight upright.”
“So enough twenty questions already. Why are they chasing you and why are they shooting at us? Why are...?”
This time the interruption arose not from their pursuers but from the rear of the van. Kerwin and Seeth stared. Rail seemed to have no trouble keeping his eyes on the road.
The guy who was sitting up in the back of the van was big, though not nearly as big as the pursuing Oomemians. He was trying to extricate himself from a bevy of entangling blankets. The girl who sat up alongside him was exceedingly pretty. No, not exceedingly pretty, Kerwin corrected himself. Ravishing. Gorgeous. Overpoweringly radiant. And a few equally descriptive if less formal adjectives applied also. He applied them.
“Well helloooo.” Seeth leaned over the back of the captain’s chair and leered.
“What’s going on? Who are you people?” The guy looked slightly dazed, as though he was emerging from deep sleep. Or something else. Except for the rumpled blankets, he and his female companion were stark pale naked.
“I told you,” she said, sounding bored. “I told you I heard the van start up. Couldn’t you feel it moving?”
“Uh, no, not under the circumstances.”
“Man, what I wouldn’t give to be under the circumstances!” Seeth was trying hard not to pant. The girl ignored him, indifferent to his stare, his comments, and her partial nudity.
“Creep,” she finally murmured.
“Can’t,” Seeth told her. “I’m not on my knees. But gimme a minute and I’ll give it a try.”
The big guy glared at him. “Bug off, jerk.”
“Bugoff?” Seeth adopted a look of false concentration. “Sorry, the name’s Ransom. Seeth Ransom. Don’t know any Bugoffs. Hey, great haircut. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a
nybody who’s had their hair cut with a chainsaw before.”
The guy started to lunge at Seeth, remembered suddenly he wore nothing beneath the blankets. He started hunting around in the dark at the rear of the van. “Where the hell are my clothes? Miranda, have you seen my underwear?”
“I’ve seen your underwear, sweet thing,” simpered Seeth, “and frankly, I’m not impressed.”
The guy looked needles at him. “As soon as I find some clothes I’m gonna come up there and kill you, you little creep. You think you can steal my van with me in it and get away with it? I’m gonna pound you!”
“We’re not stealing your van.” Kerwin tried to placate him. “We’re just borrowing it for a minute. See, there are some people chasing us—at least, I think they’re people—and they’re trying to kill our friend here.”
“Chase? Kill? What are you mumbling about?” Another energy bolt crackled past and the van’s owner looked wildly at the roof. “What the hell was that?” He turned and Kerwin heard him banging around as he walked on his knees to the rear of the vehicle. He stared out the back window and Kerwin saw he wasn’t much older than himself. Rail sent them screeching up a side street.
“Jesus!” The guy turned to his girl. “Somebody’s shooting at us!”
Seeth made a show of checking a nonexistent watch. “Twenty-two seconds for basic message to travel from tympanum to central cortex. Another ten for preliminary interpretation. Not bad, for an orangutan.”
The girl leaned back against one wall, composed and relaxed. “So they’re shooting at us. What can we do about it?”
“Not a lot,” Seeth told her. “Not without underwear. Now, if you’ll give me a general idea of where yours might be located, I’ll be happy to...”
“Thanks, I’ll find it myself.”
“Did anyone ever tell you you’re the most beautiful organism ever to walk the Earth?”
“Lots of guys.” She started searching through the blankets for unmentionables.
She had better luck than her boyfriend. Soon she was trying to arrange her hair.
“Wanna borrow my comb?” Seeth dug in a pocket and produced a piece of black plastic six inches long. A few tines still showed forlornly among the gaps. She eyed it distastefully.
“Thanks. Let’s keep the oil in the engine, okay?”
“Hey, anytime,” he replied, blithey ignoring the sarcasm. He repocketed the comb. “So your name’s Miranda, huh? Wanna know why everybody calls me Seeth?”
“Not especially.”
“Glad you asked. It’s because I’m mad all the time. Seething. Get it?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“Seeth Manitoba Ransom, but that sounds too much like a seaport in Massachusetts, so everybody just calls me Seeth.”
“I’m Kerwin. Our friend here is Arthwit Rail.”
“Pleased to make your friendship acquaintance, madam.” Rail didn’t take his eyes off the road, for which Kerwin was persistently grateful.
“Hey, like, I’m no madam, you know? Just Miranda.”
“Miranda.” Seeth stared solemnly at the roof. “A name that should be applied to one of the major constellations so that all the heavens might glory in its sound.”
She stared at him a moment before looking over at Kerwin. “Is he for real?”
“I’m afraid he is.”
“I’m gonna kill him!” This from the back of the van.
“That’s Brock.” She gestured in his direction with a casual thumb.
“Brock?” Seeth turned to Kerwin. “And you thought Arthwit was a funny name.” He turned back to her. “Nobody’s really named Brock. Are they, Brock? You find your Fruit Of The Loom yet, fruit?”
An inarticulate cry sounded from the back of the van as Miranda’s boyfriend lunged forward—to stumble over something in the darkness and whack his head pretty good against the small bar sink that was sunk into the service counter on the left side of the van. The girl just shook her head.
“How do I end up with these clowns? I think, you know, like, I’m just unlucky.”
“Not to worry, sweetness,” Seeth reassured her. “You now have me here to protect you.”
“Swell. Protect me from you, will you?”
Rail was muttering to himself, squinting into the darkness. “Up this way; no, no, it must be over here.” He yanked hard on the wheel, sent the van bouncing and rattling up a steep dirt road that led back into the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo mountains. The persistent glare of twin headlights abruptly faded from behind them.
“Hey, I think maybe you lost them!” Kerwin shouted.
“Only temporarily, if at all. They are relentless trackers. They will find us again soon enough.”
“Not soon enough for me. Look, would you please tell us what this is all about? It’s bad enough you’ve ruined my project...”
“Ah, a scholar!” Rail seemed pleased. “Interesting.”
“Him, a scholar?” Seeth laughed unpleasantly. “That’s a joke. He’s a professional student. All he does is take every course they’ll let him into in the hope it’ll lead to something when he graduates.”
“I am a Renaissance man,” Kerwin said with dignity.
“Yeah, sure,” Seeth sneered. “Borgia, not Medici.”
“At least I can lay claim to being human.”
A puzzled Rail glanced from one young man to the other. “I should say you both qualify as human.”
“Not him.” Kerwin nodded at the smaller occupant of the passenger’s chair. “He’s a sub-species. Freaks.”
“That’s funny, coming from a zombie with play-dough for a moral conscience.”
The van slid wildly as Rail took another corner. “Hey, take it easy up there, damn you!” Brock bawled. “You know how much the flares on this mother cost? You know how hard it is to get good fiberglass bodywork?”
“Not really,” Seeth said conversationally, “but I’d say they did a pretty good job on your head.”
“You little prick! As soon as I get my pants on I’m going to beat the crap out of you!”
“Oh Bret, don’t be so crude,” Miranda admonished him tiredly.
“Crude? What the hell do you mean, crude? And my name’s Brock.”
She looked up at Kerwin out of mesmerizingly huge blue eyes. “Have you seen my blouse?”
Kerwin swallowed, staring. “Uh, no, but if I do, you’ll be the first to know.”
“Get your elbow out of my face, man,” Seeth snapped at him.
“Sorry.” He sat back, looked over at Rail. “You have any idea where you’re going? Some of these roads, when they get up into the national forest, they just run up to the edges of cliffs and stuff.”
Rail sounded more relaxed than at any time since they’d made his acquaintance. “No need to worry concern yourself needlessly. We are now traveling the correct course.”
Kerwin stared out into the night. The headlights illuminated nothing but dirt road and trees. “The correct course for what?”
“For losing cops, spitwad,” snapped Seeth. “Leave him alone. He knows what he’s doing. Don’t you, Rail?”
“Assuredly absolute.”
I am going to wake up, Kerwin told himself silently. Any minute now I am going to wake up. I am not an extra in a Spielberg or Lucas movie and any second now I will wake up.
“I’ve never been shot at before in my life.”
“Liar,” said Seeth.
“Will you kindly SHUT UP.” Kerwin turned back to Rail. “I’m not enjoying this, you know.”
“I understand, and I apologize for inadvertently having involved you in my problems. What can I do to make you understand?” The look in his eyes was considerably less maniacal since they’d shaken their pursuers.
“You could start by telling us how you happen to have seven fingers on one hand.”
Rail looked down at the hand in question. “Seven? I thought it was six.”
“Sorry. I definitely counted seven.”
“But I don’t have seven fingers.” He held up the controversial right hand and Kerwin was stunned to see five perfectly normal-looking digits. There was no sign of the additional pair.
“Now, that’s a neat trick,” said Seeth softly.
“Oh dear, now you’ve got me confused. I suppose I owe you a full explanation. Considering how things have gone and how many edicts I’ve broken already, I don’t suppose it will hurt to break one more.”
“Yeah, come on, bowling fiend, come clean,” said Seeth.
“That is precisely just what I intend to do.”
Rail put is hand over what looked like an ordinary wristwatch and ran fingers along both sides. The watch didn’t change. Rail did. His epidermis seemed to flow, like a copper plate undergoing an acid bath preparatory to being used to make etchings. His skin dissolved into nothingness and yet his clothes remained intact.
Thus revealed, Arthwit Rail looked over at them out of three small eyes set in a green ellipsoidal skull. The pink pupils were so tiny they looked like specks floating in pools of white water. Narrower than a human head, the skull was set on the end of a long wiry neck and was completely covered in a dark olive-green fuzz, which had been shaved to form intricate whorls and curlicues similar to Maori tattoos. His face looked like a miniature golf course speckled with water traps.
Gripping the steering wheel were two long tentacles that subdivided into double sets of smaller tentacles that subdivided still a third time. As Kerwin stared goggle-eyed at these limbs, the smallest tentacles shrank and disappeared—only to reappear at regular intervals, like sea anemones at a bridge party.
The only thing that hadn’t changed besides his attire was Rail’s voice.
“You see, the confusion arises from the fact that I can have as many digits as I want. Extending and withdrawing them is a nervous reaction among the Prufillia, much as your terrestrial felines extend and retract their claws according to their moods. When I’m especially uneasy it becomes particularly difficult for me to control my patterns, hence the additional digits you noticed back in your recreation center. Sometimes even the camouflage field can’t cover everything. You were most very observant.”
“Good study habits,” said Seeth.