Dreamsongs 2-Book Bundle Page 12

  I shuddered a little as I remembered the screams from the burning car. “But that was forty years ago, you said. How does that explain what happened to me last night?”

  “I’m getting to that,” the old man said. He picked up a donut, dunked it into his coffee, and chewed on it thoughtfully. “Next thing was about two years later,” he said at last. “Guy reported a collision to the cops. Collision with an Edsel. Late at night. On the interstate. The way he described it, it was an instant replay of the other crash. Only, when they got there, his car wasn’t even dented. And there was no sign of the other car.

  “Well, that guy was a local boy, so it was dismissed as a publicity stunt of some sort. But then, a year later, still another guy came in with the same story. This time he was from the East, couldn’t possibly have heard of the first accident. The cops didn’t know what to make of it.

  “Over the years it happened again and again. There were a few things common to all the incidents. Each time it was late at night. Each time the man involved was alone in his car, with no other cars in sight. There were never any witnesses, as there had been for the first crash, the real one. All the collisions took place just beyond Exit 77, when the Edsel swerved and tried to make a U-turn.

  “Lots of people tried to explain it. Hallucinations, somebody said. Highway hypnosis, claimed somebody else. Hoaxes, one guy argued. But only one explanation ever made sense, and that was the simplest. The Edsel was a ghost. The papers made the most of that. ‘The haunted highway,’ they called the interstate.”

  The old man stopped to drain his coffee, and then stared into the cup moodily. “Well, the crashes continued right up through the years whenever the conditions were right. Until ’93. And then traffic began slacking off. Fewer and fewer people were using the interstate. And there were fewer and fewer incidents.” He looked up at me. “You were the first one in more than twenty years. I’d almost forgotten.” Then he looked down again, and fell silent.

  I considered what he had said for a few minutes. “I don’t know,” I said finally, shaking my head. “It all fits. But a ghost? I don’t think I believe in ghosts. And it all seems so out of place.”

  “Not really,” said the old man, looking up. “Think back on all the ghost stories you read as a kid. What did they all have in common?”

  I frowned. “Don’t know.”

  “Violent death, that’s what. Ghosts were the products of murders and of executions, debris of blood and violence. Haunted houses were all places where someone had met a grisly end a hundred years before. But in twentieth century America, you didn’t find the violent death in mansions and castles. You found it on the highways, the bloodstained highways where thousands died each year. A modern ghost wouldn’t live in a castle or wield an axe. He’d haunt a highway, and drive a car. What could be more logical?”

  It made a certain amount of sense. I nodded. “But why this highway? Why this car? So many people died on the roads. Why is this case special?”

  The old man shrugged. “I don’t know. What made one murder different from another? Why did only some produce ghosts? Who’s to say? But I’ve heard theories. Some said the Edsel is doomed to haunt the highway forever because it is, in a sense, a murderer. It caused the accident, caused those deaths. This is a punishment.”

  “Maybe,” I said doubtfully. “But the whole family? You could make a case that it was the kid’s fault. Or even the father’s, for letting him drive with so little experience. But what about the rest of the family? Why should they be punished?”

  “True, true,” the old man said. “I never bought that theory myself. I’ve got my own explanation.” He looked me straight in the eye.

  “I think they’re lost,” he said.

  “Lost?” I repeated, and he nodded.

  “Yes,” he said. “In the old days, when the roads were crowded, you couldn’t just turn around when you missed an exit. You had to keep going, sometimes for miles and miles, before you could find a way to get off the road and then get back on. Some of the cloverleaves they designed were so complicated you might never find your way back to your exit.

  “And that’s what happened to the Edsel, I think. They missed their exit, and now they can’t find it. They’ve got to keep going. Forever.” He sighed. Then he turned, and ordered another cup of coffee.

  We drank in silence, then walked back to the gas depot. From there, I drove straight to the town library. It was all there, in the old newspapers on file. The details of the original accident, the first incident two years later, and the others, in irregular sequence. The same story, the same crash, over and over. Everything was identical, right down to the screams.

  The old highway was dark and unlit that night when I resumed my trip. There were no traffic signs or white lines, but there were plenty of cracks and potholes. I drove slowly, lost in thought.

  A few miles beyond San Breta I stopped and got out of the car. I sat there in the starlight until it was nearly dawn, looking and listening. But the lights stayed out, and I saw nothing.

  Yet, around midnight, there was a peculiar whistling sound in the distance. It built quickly, until it was right on top of me, and then faded away equally fast.

  It could have been a hovertruck off over the horizon somewhere, I suppose. I’ve never heard a hovertruck make that sort of noise, but still, it might have been a hovertruck.

  But I don’t think so.

  I think it was the wind whistling through the nose of a rusty white ghost car, driving on a haunted highway you won’t find on any road maps. I think it was the cry of a little lost Edsel, searching forever for the exit to San Breta.

  THE SECOND KIND OF LONELINESS

  JUNE 18—My relief left Earth today.

  It will be at least three months before he gets here, of course. But he’s on his way.

  Today he lifted off from the Cape, just as I did, four long years ago. Out at Komarov Station he’ll switch to a moon boat, then switch again in orbit around Luna, at Deepspace Station. There his voyage will really begin. Up to then he’s still been in his own backyard.

  Not until the Charon casts loose from Deepspace Station and sets out into the night will he feel it, really feel it, as I felt it four years ago. Not until Earth and Luna vanish behind him will it hit. He’s known from the first that there’s no turning back, of course. But there’s a difference between knowing it and feeling it. Now he’ll feel it.

  There will be an orbital stopover around Mars, to send supplies down to Burroughs City. And more stops in the belt. But then the Charon will begin to gather speed. It will be going very fast when it reaches Jupiter. And much faster after it whips by, using the gravity of the giant planet like a slingshot to boost its acceleration.

  After that there are no stops for the Charon. No stops at all until it reaches me, out here at the Cerberus Star Ring, six million miles beyond Pluto.

  My relief will have a long time to brood. As I did.

  I’m still brooding now, today, four years later. But then, there’s not much else to do out here. Ringships are infrequent, and you get pretty weary of films and tapes and books after a time. So you brood. You think about your past, and dream about your future. And you try to keep the loneliness and the boredom from driving you out of your skull.

  It’s been a long four years. But it’s almost over now. And it will be nice to get back. I want to walk on grass again, and see clouds, and eat an ice cream sundae.

  Still, for all that, I don’t regret coming. These four years alone in the darkness have done me good, I think. It’s not as if I had left much. My days on Earth seem remote to me now, but I can still remember them if I try. The memories aren’t all that pleasant. I was pretty screwed up back then.

  I needed time to think, and that’s one thing you get out here. The man who goes back on the Charon won’t be the same one who came out here four years ago. I’ll build a whole new life back on Earth. I know I will.

  JUNE 20—Ship today.

  I didn’t
know it was coming, of course. I never do. The ringships are irregular, and the kind of energies I’m playing with out here turn radio signals into crackling chaos. By the time the ship finally punched through the static, the station’s scanners had already picked it up and notified me.

  It was clearly a ringship. Much bigger than the old system rust-buckets like the Charon, and heavily armored to withstand the stresses of the nullspace vortex. It came straight on, with no attempt to decelerate.

  While I was heading down to the control room to strap in, a thought hit me. This might be the last. Probably not, of course. There’s still three months to go, and that’s time enough for a dozen ships. But you can never tell. The ringships are irregular, like I said.

  Somehow the thought disturbed me. The ships have been part of my life for four years now. An important part. And the one today might have been the last. If so, I want it all down here. I want to remember it. With good reason, I think. When the ships come, that makes everything else worthwhile.

  The control room is in the heart of my quarters. It’s the center of everything, where the nerves and the tendons and the muscles of the station are gathered. But it’s not very impressive. The room is very small, and once the door slides shut the walls and floor and ceiling are all a featureless white.

  There’s only one thing in the room: a horseshoe-shaped console that surrounds a single padded chair.

  I sat down in that chair today for what might be the last time. I strapped myself in, and put on the earphones, and lowered the helmet. I reached for the controls and touched them and turned them on.

  And the room vanished.

  It’s all done with holographs, of course. I know that. But that doesn’t make a bit of difference when I’m sitting in that chair. Then, as far as I’m concerned, I’m not inside anymore. I’m out there, in the void. The control console is still there, and the chair. But the rest has gone. Instead, the aching darkness is everywhere, above me, below me, all around me. The distant sun is only one star among many, and all the stars are terribly far away.

  That’s the way it always is. That’s the way it was today. When I threw that switch I was alone in the universe with the cold stars and the ring. The Cerberus Star Ring.

  I saw the ring as if from outside, looking down on it. It’s a vast structure, really. But from out here, it’s nothing. It’s swallowed by the immensity of it all, a slim silver thread lost in the blackness.

  But I know better. The ring is huge. My living quarters take up but a single degree in the circle it forms, a circle whose diameter is more than a hundred miles. The rest is circuitry and scanners and power banks. And the engines, the waiting nullspace engines.

  The ring turned silent beneath me, its far side stretching away into nothingness. I touched a switch on my console. Below me, the nullspace engines woke.

  In the center of the ring, a new star was born.

  It was a tiny dot amid the dark at first. Green today, bright green. But not always, and not for long. Nullspace has many colors.

  I could see the far side of the ring then, if I’d wanted to. It was glowing with a light of its own. Alive and awake, the nullspace engines were pouring unimaginable amounts of energy inward, to rip wide a hole in space itself.

  The hole had been there long before Cerberus, long before man. Men found it, quite by accident, when they reached Pluto. They built the ring around it. Later they found two other holes, and built other star rings.

  The holes were small, too small. But they could be enlarged. Temporarily, at the expense of vast amounts of power, they could be ripped open. Raw energy could be pumped through that tiny, unseen hole in the universe until the placid surface of nullspace roiled and lashed back, and the nullspace vortex formed.

  And now it happened.

  The star in the center of the ring grew and flattened. It was a pulsing disc, not a globe. But it was still the brightest thing in the heavens. And it swelled visibly. From the spinning green disc, flame-like orange spears lanced out, and fell back, and smoky bluish tendrils uncoiled. Specks of red danced and flashed among the green, grew and blended. The colors all began to run together.

  The flat, spinning, multi-colored star doubled in size, doubled again, again. A few minutes before it had not been. Now it filled the ring, lapped against the silver walls, seared them with its awful energy. It began to spin faster and faster, a whirlpool in space, a maelstrom of flame and light.

  The vortex. The nullspace vortex. The howling storm that is not a storm and does not howl, for there is no sound in space.

  To it came the ringship. A moving star at first, it took on visible form and shape almost faster than my human eyes could follow. It became a dark silver bullet in the blackness, a bullet fired at the vortex.

  The aim was good. The ship hit very close to the center of the ring. The swirling colors closed over it.

  I hit my controls. Even more suddenly than it had come, the vortex was gone. The ship was gone too, of course. Once more there was only me, and the ring, and the stars.

  Then I touched another switch, and I was back in the blank white control room, unstrapping. Unstrapping for what might be the last time, ever.

  Somehow I hope not. I never thought I’d miss anything about this place. But I will. I’ll miss the ringships. I’ll miss moments like today.

  I hope I get a few more chances at it before I give it up forever. I want to feel the nullspace engines wake again under my hands, and watch the vortex boil and churn while I float alone between the stars. Once more, at least. Before I go.

  JUNE 23—That ringship has set me to thinking. Even more than usual.

  It’s funny that with all the ships I’ve seen pass through the vortex, I’ve never even given a thought to riding one. There’s a whole new world on the other side of nullspace; Second Chance, a rich green planet of a star so far away that astronomers are still unsure whether it shares the same galaxy with us. That’s the funny thing about the holes—you can’t be sure where they lead until you go through.

  When I was a kid, I read a lot about star travel. Most people didn’t think it was possible. But those that did always mentioned Alpha Centauri as the first system we’d explore and colonize. Closest, and all that. Funny how wrong they were. Instead, our colonies orbit suns we can’t even see. And I don’t think we’ll ever get to Alpha Centauri—

  Somehow I never thought of the colonies in personal terms. Still can’t. Earth is where I failed before. That’s got to be where I succeed now. The colonies would be just another escape.

  Like Cerberus?

  JUNE 26—Ship today. So the other wasn’t the last, after all. But what about this one?

  JUNE 29—Why does a man volunteer for a job like this? Why does a man run to a silver ring six million miles beyond Pluto, to guard a hole in space? Why throw away four years of life alone in the darkness?

  Why?

  I used to ask myself that, in the early days. I couldn’t answer it then. Now I think I can. I bitterly regretted the impulse that drove me out here, then. Now I think I understand it.

  And it wasn’t really an impulse. I ran to Cerberus. Ran. Ran to escape from loneliness.

  That doesn’t make sense?

  Yet it does. I know about loneliness. It’s been the theme of my life. I’ve been alone for as long as I can remember.

  But there are two kinds of loneliness.

  Most people don’t realize the difference. I do. I’ve sampled both kinds.

  They talk and write about the loneliness of the men who man the star rings. The lighthouses of space, and all that. And they’re right.

  There are times, out here at Cerberus, when I think I’m the only man in the universe. Earth was just a fever dream. The people I remember were just creations of my own mind.

  There are times, out here, when I want someone to talk to so badly that I scream, and start pounding on the walls. There are times when the boredom crawls under my skin and all but drives me mad.

  But
there are other times, too. When the ringships come. When I go outside to make repairs. Or when I just sit in the control chair, imaging myself out into the darkness to watch the stars.

  Lonely? Yes. But a solemn, brooding, tragic loneliness that a man hates with a passion—and yet loves so much he craves for more.

  And then there is the second kind of loneliness.

  You don’t need the Cerberus Star Ring for that kind. You can find it anywhere on Earth. I know. I did. I found it everywhere I went, in everything I did.

  It’s the loneliness of people trapped within themselves. The loneliness of people who have said the wrong thing so often that they don’t have the courage to say anything anymore.

  The loneliness, not of distance, but of fear.

  The loneliness of people who sit alone in furnished rooms in crowded cities, because they’ve got nowhere to go and no one to talk to. The loneliness of guys who go to bars to meet someone, only to discover they don’t know how to strike up a conversation, and wouldn’t have the courage to do so if they did.

  There’s no grandeur to that kind of loneliness. No purpose and no poetry. It’s loneliness without meaning. It’s sad and squalid and pathetic, and it stinks of self-pity.

  Oh yes, it hurts at times to be alone among the stars.

  But it hurts a lot more to be alone at a party. A lot more.

  JUNE 30—Reading yesterday’s entry. Talk about self-pity—

  JULY 1—Reading yesterday’s entry. My flippant mask. After four years, I still fight back whenever I try to be honest with myself. That’s not good. If things are going to be any different this time, I have to understand myself.

  So why do I have to ridicule myself when I admit that I’m lonely and vulnerable? Why do I have to struggle to admit that I was scared of life? No one’s ever going to read this thing. I’m talking to myself, about myself.

  So why are there so many things I can’t bring myself to say?