CHAPTER I

　ENCOUNTER ON A LONELY ROAD

　People taken from other universes should always be near death. —The Books of Rules, XX, 109, 234(a)

　JUST BECAUSE YOUR WHOLE LIFE IS GOING TO HELL DOESN"T

　mean you have to walk there.

　She was walking down a lonely stretch of west Texas free- way in the still dark of the early morning, an area where nobody walked and where there was no place to walk to, anyway. She might have been hitching, or not, but a total lack of traffic gave her very little choice there. So she was just walking, clutching a small overnight bag and a purse that was almost the same size, holding on to them as if they were the only two real things in her life, they and the dark and that endless stretch of west Texas freeway.

　Whatever traffic there was seemed to be heading the other way—an occasional car, or pickup, or eighteen-wheeler with someplace to go and some reason to go there, all heading in the direction she was walking from, and where, she knew too well, there was nothing much at all for anybody. But if their destinations were wrong, their sense of purpose separated the night travelers from the woman on the road; people who had someplace to go and something to do belonged to a different world than she did.

　She had started out hitching, all right. She"d made it to the truck stop at Ozona, that huge, garish, ultramodern, and plastic heaven in the middle of nowhere that served up anything and everything twenty-four hours a day for those stuck out here, going between here and there. After a time, she"d gotten an- other ride, this one only twenty miles west and at a cost she was not willing to pay. And so here she was, stuck out in the middle of nowhere, going nowhere fast. Walk, walk, walk to nowhere, from nowhere in particular, because nowhere was all the where she had to go.

　Headlights approached from far off; but even if they had

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　held any interest for her, they were still too far away to be

　more than abstract, jerky round dots in the distance, a distance that the west Texas desert made even more deceptive. How far off was the oncoming driver? Ten miles? More? Did it matter?

　It was at least ten, maybe fifteen minutes before the vehicle grew close enough for the woman to hear the roar of the big diesel and realize that this was, in fact, one of those haunters of the desert dark, a monster tractor-trailer truck with a load of furniture for Houston or beef for New Orleans or, perhaps, California oranges for the Nashville markets. Although it had been approaching her from the west for some time, its sudden close-up reality was startling against the total stillness of the night, a looming monster that quickly illuminated the night and its empty, vacant walker, then was just as suddenly gone, a mass of diminishing red lights in the distance behind her. But in the few seconds that those gaping headlights had shone on the scene, they had illuminated her form against that desperate dark, illuminated her and, in the cab behind those lights, gave her notice and recognition.

　She paid this truck no more attention than any of the others and just kept walking onward into the unseen distance.

　The driver had been going much too fast for a practical stop, a pace that would have upset the highway patrol but was re- quired to make his employer"s deadline. Besides, he was on • the wrong side of the median to be of any practical help himself— but there were other ways, ways that didn"t even involve slow- ing down.

　"Break one-nine, break, break. How "bout a westbound? Anybody in this here Lone Star truckin" west on this one dark night?" His accent was Texarkana, but he could have been from Maine or Miami or San Francisco or Minneapolis just as well. Something in the CB radio seemed automatically to add the standard accent, even in Brooklyn.

　"You got a westbound. Go," came a reply, only very slightly different in sound or tone from the caller"s.

　"What"s your twenty?" Eastbound asked.

　"Three-thirty was the last I saw," Westbound responded. "Clean and green back to the truck-"em-up. Even the bears go to sleep this time o" night in these parts."

　Eastbound chuckled. "Yeah, you got that right. I got to keep

　pushin" it, though. They want me in Shreveport by tonight."

　JACK L. CHALKER

　3

　"Shreveport! You got some haul yet!"

　"Yeah, but that"s home sweet home, baby. Get in, get it off, stick this thing in the junkyard, and I"m in bed with the old lady. I"ll make it."

　"All I got is El Paso by ten."

　"Aw, shit, you"ll make that easy. Say—caught something your side in my lights about three-two-seven or so you might check out. Looked like a beaver just walkin" by the side of the road. Maybe a breakdown, though I ain"t seen no cars on your side and I"m just on you now. Probably nothin", but you might want to check her out just in case. Ain"t nobody lives within miles o" here, I don"t think."

　"P 11 back off a little and see if I can eyeball her," Westbound assured him. "Won"t hurt much. That your Kenworthjust passed me?"

　"Yeah. Who else? All best to ya, and check on that little gal. Don"t wanna hear she got found dead by the side of the road or something. Spoil my whole day."

　"That"s a four," Westbound came back with a slight chuckle.

　"Keep safe, keep well, that"s the Red Rooster sayin" that, eastbound and down."

　"Y"all have a safe one. This is the Nighthawk, westbound and backin" down."

　Nighthawk put his mike into its little holder and backed down to fifty. He wasn"t in any hurry, and he wouldn"t lose much, even if this was nothing at all, not on this flat stretch.

　The woman was beginning to falter, occasionally stumbling in the scrub brush by the side of the road. She was starting to think again, and that wasn"t what she wanted at all. Finally she stopped, knowing it was beyond her to take too many more steps, and looked around. It was incredible how dark the desert could be at night, even with more stars than city folk had ever seen beaming down from overhead. No matter what, she knew

　. she had to get some rest. Maybe just lie down over there in the scrub—get stung by a tarantula or a scorpion or whatever else lived around here. Snake, maybe. She considered the idea and was somewhat surprised that she cared about that. Nice and quick, maybe—but painfully bitten or poisoned to death by inches? That seemed particularly ugly. With everything else so messed up, at least her exit ought to be clean, neat, and as comfortable as these things could be. One thing in her life

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　should go right, damn it. And for the first time since she"d jumped out of the car, she began to consider living again—at least a little bit longer, at least until the sunrise. She stopped and looked up and down the highway for any sign of lights, wondering what she"d do if she saw any. It would just as likely be another Cal Hurder as anybody useful, particularly at this ungodly hour in a place like this.

　Lights approaching from the east told her a decision was near, and soon. But she made no decision until the lights were actually on her, and when she did, it was on impulse, without any thought applied to it. She turned, put down her bags, and stuck out her thumb.

　Even with that and on the lookout for her, he almost missed her. Spotting her, he hit the brakes and started gearing to a stop by the side of the road, getting things stopped fully a hundred yards west of her. Knowing this, he put the truck in reverse and slowly backed up, eyeing the shoulder carefully with his right mirror. After all this, he didn"t want to be the one to run her down.

　Finally he saw her, or thought he did, just standing there, looking at the huge monster approaching, doing nothing else at all. For her part, she was unsure of just what to do next. That huge rig was really intimidating, and so she just stood there, trembling slightly.

　Nighthawk frowned, realized she wasn"t coming up to the door, and decided to put on his flashers and go to her. He was not without his own suspicions; hijackers would use such bait and such a setting—although he could hardly imagine some- body hijacking forty thousand pounds of soap flakes. Still, you

　never knew—and there was always his own money and cards and the truck itself to steal. He took out his small pistol and slipped it into his pocket, then slid over, opened the passenger door, and got out warily.

　He was a big man, somewhat intimidating-looking himself, perhaps six-three, two hundred and twenty-five pounds of mostly muscle, wearing faded jeans, boots, and a checkered flannel shirt. His age was hard to measure, but he was at least in his forties with a face maybe ten years older and with very long, graying hair. He was dark, too—she took him at first for a black man—but there was something not quite of any race and

　JACK L. CHALKER

　5

　yet of all of them in his face and features. He was used to the look she was giving him and past minding.

　"M"am?" he called to her in a calm yet wary baritone. "Don"t worry—I don"t bite. A trucker going the other way spotted you and asked me to see if you was all right."

　Oh, what the hell, she decided, resigning herself. / can always jump out again. "I need a ride," she said simply. "I"m kind of stuck here."

　He walked over to her, seeing her tenseness and pretty much ignoring it. He picked up her bag, letting her get her purse, and went back to the truck. "Come on. I"ll take you for a while if you"re going west."

　She hesitated a moment more, then followed him and per- mitted him to assist her up into the cab. He slammed her door, walked around the truck, got in on the driver"s side, released the brakes, and put the truck in gear. "How far you going?" he asked her.

　She sat almost pressed against the passenger door, trying to look as if she weren"t doing it. For all he knew, she didn"t realize she was doing it.

　She sighed. "Any place, I guess. How far you going?"

　"El Paso. But I can get you to a phone in Fort Stockton if that"s what you need." ,

　She shook her head slowly. "No, nobody to call. El Paso"s

　fine, if it"s okay with you. I don"t have enough money for a motel or anything."

　Up to speed and cruising now, he glanced sideways over at her. At one time she"d been a pretty attractive woman, he decided. It was all still there, but something had happened to it, put a dull, dirty coating over it. Medium height—five-four or -five, maybe—with short, greasy-looking brown hair with traces of gray. Thirties, probably. Thin and slightly built, she had that hollow, empty look, like somebody who"d been on the booze pretty long and pretty hard.

　"None of my business, but how"d you get stuck out here in the middle of nowhere at three in the morning?" he asked casually.

　She gave a little sigh and looked out the window for a moment at the black nothingness. Finally she said, "If you really want to know, I jumped out of a car."

　"Huh?"

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　"I got a ride with a salesman—at least he said he was a salesman—back at Ozona. We got fifteen, twenty miles down the road and he pulled over. You can guess the rest."

　He nodded. "I grabbed the bags and ran. He turned out to be a little

　scared of the dark, I guess. Just stood there yelling for me, then threatened to drive off if I didn"t come back. I didn"t—

　and he did."

　He lighted a cigarette, inhaled deeply, and expelled the smoke with an accompanying sigh. "Yeah, I guess I get the

　picture."

　"You—you"re an Indian, aren"t you?"

　He laughed. "Good change of subject. Well, son of. My

　mom was a full-blooded Seminole, my dad was Puerto Rican,

　which is a little bit of everything."

　"You"re from Florida? You don"t sound like a southerner." Again he chuckled. "Oh, I"m from the south, all right. South of Philadelphia, anyway. Long story. Right now what home I have is in a trailer park in a little town south of Baltimore. No Indians or Puerto Ricans around, so they just think of me as something a little bit exotic, I guess."

　"You"re a long way from home," she noted. He nodded. "More or less. Don"t matter much, though. I"m on the road so much the only place I really feel at home is in this truck. I own it and I run it, and it"s mine as long as I keep up the payments. They had to let me keep the truck, otherwise they couldn"t get no alimony. What about you? That pretty

　voice sounds pure Texas to me."

　She nodded idly, still staring distantly into the nothingness.

　"Yeah. San Antone, that"s me."

　"Air Force brat?" He was nervous at pushing her too much, maybe upsetting or alienating her—she was on a thin edge, that was for sure—but he just had the feeling she wanted to

　talk to somebody.

　She did, a little surprised at that herself. "Sort of. Daddy

　was a flier. Jet pilot."

　"What happened to him?" He guessed by her tone that some- thing had happened.

　"Killed in his plane, in the finest traditions of the Air Force. Sucked a bird into his jets while coming in for a landing and that was it, or so I"m told. I was much too young, really, to

　JACK L. CHALKER

　7

　remember him any more than as a vague presence. And the pictures, of course. Momma kept all the pictures. The benefits, though, they weren"t all that much. He was only a captain, after all, and a new one at that. So Momma worked like hell

　at all sorts of jobs to bring me up right. She was solid Okla- homa—high school, no marketable skills, that sort of thing. Supermarket checker was about the highest she got—pretty good, really, when you see the benefits they get at the union stores. She did really well, when you think about it—except it was all for me. She didn"t have much else to live for. Wanted me to go to college—she"d wanted to go, but never did. Well, she and the VA and a bunch of college loans got me there, all right, and got me through, for all the good it did. Ten days after I graduated with a useless degree in English Lit, she dropped dead from a heart attack. I had to sell the trailer we lived in all those years just to make sure she was buried right. After paying out all the stuff she owed, I had eight hundred dollars, eight pairs of well-wom jeans, a massive collection of T-shirts, and little else."

　He sighed. "Yeah, that"s rough. I always wanted to go to college, you know, but I never had the money until I didn"t have the time. I read a lot, though. It don"t pay to get hooked on TV when you"re on the road so much."

　She chuckled dryly. "College is all well and good and some of it"s interesting, but if your degree"s not in business, law, medicine, or engineering, the paper"s only good for about thirty- eight hundred—that"s what I still owe on those loans, and it"ll be a cold day in hell before they see a penny. They track you down all over, too—use collection agents. So you can"t get credit, can"t get a loan, none of that. I got one job teaching junior high English for a year—but they cut back and laid me off. Only time I ever really enjoyed life."

　"So you been goin" around from job to job ever since?"

　"For a while. But a couple years of working hamburger joints and all those other minimum-wage, minimum-life jobs gets to you. I finally sat down one day and decided it was fate, or destiny, or something. I was getting older, and all I could see was myself years later, sitting in a rented slum shared with a couple of other folks just like me, getting quickies from the night manager. So I figured I would find a man, marry him,

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　and let him pay my bills while I got into the cooking and baby

　 business."

　"Well, it"s a job like any other and has a pretty long history,"

　he noted. "Somebody"s got to do it—otherwise the government

　will do that, too."

　She managed a wan smile at the remark. "Yeah, well, that"s

　what I told myself, but there are many ways to go about it. You can meet a guy, date, fall in love, really commit yourself— both of you. That might work. But just to go out in desperation and marry the first guy who comes along who"ll have you—

　that"s disaster."

　"Works the other way, too, honey," he responded. "That"s

　why I"m paying five hundred a month in rehabilitation money— that"s what they call alimony these days in liberal states that abolished alimony—and child support. And she"s living with another guy who owns an auto-repair shop and is doing pretty well; she has a kid by him, too. But so long as she don"t marry

　him, I"m stuck." "You have a kid?"

　He nodded. "A son. Irving. Lousy name, but it was the one uncle he had on her side who had money. Not that it got us or him anything. I love him, but I almost never see him." "Because you"re on the road?"

　"Naw. You"d be surprised what you can work. I"m supposed to have visitation rights, but somehow he"s always away when I come visiting. She don"t want him to see me, get to know me instead of her current as his daddy. Uh-uh." "Couldn"t you go to court on that?" He laughed. "Honey, them courts will slap me in jail so fast if I miss a payment to her it isn"t funny—but tell her to live up to her end of the bargain? Yeah, they"ll tell her, and that"s that. Tell her and tell her and tell her. Until, one day, you realize that the old joke"s true—she got the gold mine in the settlement and I got the shaft. Oh, I suppose I could make an unholy mess trying to get custody, but I"d never win. I"d have to give up truckin", and truckin"s all I know how to do.

　And I"d probably lose, anyway—nine out of ten men do. Even if I won—hell, it"s been near five years." He sighed. "I guess at this stage he"s better off. I hope so."

　"I hope so, too," she responded, sounding genuinely touched,

　JACK L. CHALKER

　9

　with the oddly pleasing guilt felt when, sunk deep in self-pity, you find a fellow sufferer.

　They rode in near silence for the next few minutes, a silence broken only by the occasional crackle from the CB and a report of this or that or two jerks talking away at each other when they could just as easily have used a telephone and kept the world out.

　Finally he said, "I guess from what you say that your mar- riage didn"t work out either."

　"Yeah, you could say that. He was an Air Force sergeant at Lackland. A drill instructor in basic. We met in a bar and got drunk on the town. He was older and a very lonely man, and, well, you know what I was going through. We just kinda fell into it. He was a pretty rough character, and after all the early fun had worn off and we"d settled down, he"d come home at night and take all his frustrations out on me. It really got to him, after a while, that I was smarter and better educated than he was. He had some inferiority complex. He was hell on his recruits, too—but they got away from him after eight weeks or so. I had him for years. After a while he got transferred up to Reese in Lubbock, but he hated that job and he hated the cold weather and the dust and wind, and that just made it all the worse. Me, I had it really bad there, too, since what few friends I had were all in San Antonio."

　"I"d have taken a hike long before," he commented. "Di- vorce ain"t all that bad. Ask my ex."

　"Well, it"s easy to see that—now. But I had some money for the first time, and a house, and a real sense of something permanent, even if it was lousy. I know it"s kind of hard to understand—it"s hard to explain. I guess you just had to be me. I figured maybe kids would mellow him out and give me a new direction—but after two miscarriages, the second one damn near killing me, the doctors told me I should never have kids. Probably couldn"t, but definitely shouldn"t. That just made

　him meaner and sent me down the tubes. Booze, pot, pills— you name it, I swallowed it or smoked it or sniffed it. And one day—it was my thirtieth birthday—I looked at myself in the mirror, saw somebody a shot-to-hell forty-five looking back at me, picked up what I could use most and carry easy, cashed a check for half our joint account, and took a bus south to think things out. I"ve been walking ever since—and I still haven"t

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　JACK L. CHALKER

　11

　been out of the goddamned state of Texas. I waited tables, swept floors, never stayed long in one spot. Hell, I"ve sold my body for a plate of eggs. Done everything possible to keep from thinking, looking ahead, worrying. I burned out. I"ve had it."

　He thought about it for a moment, and then it came to him. "But you jumped out of that fella"s car."

　She nodded wearily. "Yeah, I did. I don"t even know why, exactly. Or maybe, yes, I do, too. It was an all-of-a-sudden kind of thing, sort of like when I turned thirty and looked in the mirror. There wasn"t any mirror, really, but back there in that car I still kind of looked at myself and was, well, scared, frightened, maybe even revolted at what I saw staring back. Something just sorta said to me, "If this is the rest of your life, then why bother to be alive at all?""

　He thought, but could find little else to say right then. What was the right thing to say to somebody like this, anyway?

　Flecks of rain struck his windshield, and he flipped on the wipers, the sound adding an eerie, hypnotic background to the sudden roar of a midsummer thunderstorm on a truck cab. Peering out, he thought for a moment he saw two Interstate 10 roadways—an impossible sort of fork he knew just couldn"t be there. He kicked on the brights and the fog lights, and the image seemed to resolve itself a bit, the right-hand one looking

　more solid. He decided that keeping to the white stripe down the side of the road separating road and shoulder was the safest course.

　At the illusory intersection, there seemed for a moment to be two trucks, one coming out of the other, going right, while the other, its ghostly twin, went left. The image of the second truck, apparently passing his and vanishing quickly in the dis- tance to his left, startled him for a moment. He could have sworn there wasn"t anything behind him for a couple of miles, and the CB was totally silent.

　The rain stopped as suddenly as it had begun, and things took on a more normal appearance in minutes. He glanced over at the woman and saw that she was asleep—best thing for her, he decided. Ahead loomed a green exit sign, and, still a little unnerved, he badly wanted to get his bearings.

　The sign said, "Ruddygore, 5 miles."

　That didn"t help him much. Ruddygore? Where in hell was

　that? The next exit should be Sheffield. A mile marker ap- proached, and he decided to check things out.

　The little green number said, "4."

　He frowned again, beginning to become a little unglued. Four? That couldn"t be right. Not if he was still on I-10. Uneasily, he began to think of that split back there. Maybe it was a split—that other truck had seemed to curve off to the left when he went right. If so, he was on some cockeyed interstate spur to God knew where.

　God knew, indeed. As far as he knew or could remember, there were no exits, let alone splits, between Ozona and Shef- field.

　He flicked on his interior light and looked down at his road atlas, held open by clips to the west Texas map. According to it, he was right—and no sign of any Ruddygore. He sighed and snapped off the light. Well, the thing was wrong in a hundred places, anyway. Luckily he was still ahead of sched- ule, so a five-mile detour shouldn"t be much of a problem. He glanced over to his left again for no particular reason. Funny. The landscaping made it look as if there weren"t any lane going back.

　 A small interstate highway marker, the usual red, white, and blue was between mile markers 3 and 2, but it told him nothing. It didn"t even make sense. He was probably just a little crazy tonight, or his eyes were going, but it looked for all the world as if it said:

　 °o? What the hell was that? Somebody in the highway de- partment must have goofed good there, stenciling an 8 on its side.

　At the 2, another green sign announced Ruddygore, and there was also a brown sign, like the kind used for parks and monuments. It said, "Ferry—Turn Left at Stop Sign."

　Now he knew he had gone suddenly mad. Not just that he knew that 1-8 went from Tucson to San Diego and nowhere

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　near Texas, but—a ferry? In the middle of the west Texas

　desert?

　He backed down to slow—very slow—and turned to his

　passenger. "Hey, little lady. Wake up!"

　She didn"t stir, and finally he reached over and shook her,

　repeating his words.

　She moved and squirmed and managed to open her eyes.

　"Urn. Sorry. So tired.. .What"s the matter? We in El Paso?" He shook his head. "No. I think I"ve gone absolutely nuts. Somehow in the storm we took an exit that wasn"t supposed to be there and we"re headed for a town called Ruddygore.

　Ever heard of it?"

　She shook her head sleepily from side to side. "Nope. But

　that doesn"t mean anything. Why? We lost?"

　"Lost ain"t the word," he mumbled. "Look, I don"t want to scare you or anything, but I think I"m going nuts. You ever

　hear of a ferryboat around here?"

　She looked at him as if he had suddenly sprouted feathers.

　"A what? Over what?"

　He nodded nervously and gestured toward the windshield.

　"Well, then, you read me that big sign."

　She rubbed the sleep from her eyes and looked. "Ruddy- gore—exit one mile," she mumbled.

　"And the little brown sign?"

　"Ferry," she read, suddenly awake and looking very con- fused. "And an arrow." She turned and faced him. "How long

　was I asleep?"

　"Five, maybe ten minutes," he answered truthfully. "You

　can still see the rain on the windshield where the wipers don"t

　reach."

　She shook her head in wonder. "It must be across the Pecos.

　But the Pecos isn"t much around here."

　"Yeah," he replied and felt for his revolver. The interstate road went right into the exit, allowing no choice. There was a slight downgrade to a standard stop sign and a set of small signs. To the left, they said, were Ruddygore and the impossible ferry. To the right was—Oblivion.

　"I never heard of any town named Oblivion, either," he muttered, "but it sounds right for these parts. Still, all the signs said only Ruddygore, so that"s got to be the bigger and closer place. Any place they build an interstate spur to at a few million

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　bucks a mile has to have something open even this time of night. Besides," he added, "I"m damned curious to see that ferry in the middle of the desert."

　He put on his signals, then made the turn onto a modest two-lane road. He passed under the highway and noted glumly that there wasn"t any apparent way of getting back on. Well, he told himself, he"d find it later.

　Up ahead in the distance he saw, not the town lights he"d expected, but an odd, circular, lighted area. It was particularly unusual in that it looked something like the kind of throw a huge spotlight, pointed straight down, might give—but there were no signs of lights anywhere. Fingering the pistol, he proceeded on, knowing that the road was leading him to that lighted area.

　And it was bright when he reached it, although no source was apparent. The road, too, seemed to vanish into it, and the entire surface appeared as smooth as glass. Damnedest thing he"d ever seen, maybe a thousand yards across. He stopped at the edge of it, and both he and the woman strained to see where the light was coming from, but the sky remained black—blacker than usual, since the reflected glow blotted out all but the brightest stars.

　"Now, what the hell... ?" he mused aloud.

　"Hey! Look! Up ahead there, almost in the middle. Isn"t that a man?" She pointed through the windshield.

　He squinted and nodded. "Yeah. Sure looks like somebody. I don"t like this, though. Not at all. There"s some very funny game being played here." Again he reached in and felt the comfort of the .38 in his pocket. He put the truck back in gear and moved slowly forward, one eye on the strange figure ahead and the other warily on the woman, whom he no longer trusted. It was a great sob story, but this craziness had started only after she came aboard.

　He drove straight for the lone figure standing there in the center of the lighted area at about five miles per hour, applying

　the hissing air brakes when he was almost on top of the stranger and could see him clearly.

　The woman gasped. "He looks like a vampire Santa Claus!"

　Her nervous surprise seemed genuine. Certainly her de- scription of the man who stood looking back at them fitted him perfectly. Very tall—six-five or better, he guessed—and very

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　large. "Portly" would be too kind a word. The man had a reddish face, twinkling eyes with laugh lines etched around them, and a huge, full white beard—the very image of Santa Claus on all those Christmas cards. But he was not dressed in any furry red suit, but rather in formal wear—striped pants, morning coat, red velvet vest and cummerbund, even a top hat, and he was also wearing a red-velvet-lined opera cape.

　The strange man made no gestures or moves, and finally the driver said, "Look, you wait in the truck. I"m going to find out what the hell this is about."

　"I"m coming with you."

　"Wo!" He hesitated a moment, then nervously cleared his throat. "Look, first of all, if there"s any danger I don"t want you between me and who I might have to shoot—understand? And second, forgive me, but I can"t one hundred percent trust that you"re not in on whatever this is."

　That last seemed to shock her, but she nodded and sighed and said no more.

　He opened the door, got down, and put one hand in his pocket, right on the trigger. Only then did he walk forward toward the odd figure who stood there, to stop a few feet from the man. The stranger said nothing, but the driver could feel those eyes following his every move and gesture.

　"Good morning," he opened. What else was there to say to start things off?

　 The man in the top hat didn"t reply immediately, but seemed to examine him from head to toe as an appraiser might look at a diamond ring. "Oh, yes, you"ll do nicely, I think," he said in a pleasant, mellow voice with a hint of a British accent. He looked up at the woman, still in the cab, seemingly oblivious to the glare of the truck lights. "She, too, I suspect, although I really wasn"t expecting her. A pleasant bonus."

　"Hey, look, you!" the driver called angrily, losing patience. "What the hell is all this?"

　"Oh, dear me, forgive my manners!" the stranger responded. "But, you see, you came here, I didn"t come to you. Where do you think you are—and where do you want to be?"

　Because, the man was right, it put the driver on the defensive. "Uh, urn, well, I seem to have taken a bum turn back on Interstate 10. I"m just trying to get back to it."

　The big man smiled gently. "But you never left that road.

　15

　JACK L. CHALKER

　You"re still on it. You"ll be on it for another nineteen minutes and eighteen seconds."

　The driver just shook his head disgustedly. He must be as nutty as he looked, that was for sure. "Look, friend. I got stuck over here by accident in a thunderstorm and followed the road back there to—what was the town? Oh, yeah, Ruddygore. I figure I"ll turn around there. Can you just tell me how far it is?"

　"Oh, Ruddygore isn"t an "it," sir," the strange man replied. "You see, I"m Ruddygore. Throckmorton P. Ruddygore, at your service." He doffed his top hat and made a small bow. "At least, that"s who I am when I"m here."

　The driver gave an exasperated sigh. "Okay, that"s it. Forget it, buddy. I"ll find my own way back."

　"The way back is easy, Joe," Ruddygore said casually. "Just follow the road back. But you"ll die, Joe—nineteen minutes eighteen seconds after you rejoin your highway. A second storm

　with hail and a small twister is up there, and it"s going to cause you to skid, jackknife, then fall over into a gully. The over- turning will break your neck."

　He froze, an icy chill going through him. "How did you know my name was Joe?" His hand went back to the .38.

　"Oh, it"s my business to know these things," the strange man told him. "Recruiting is such a problem with many people, and I must be very limited and very selective for complicated reasons."

　Suddenly all of his mother"s old legends about conjure men and the demons of death came back from his childhood, where they"d been buried for perhaps forty"years—and the childhood fears that went with them returned as well, although he hated himself for it. "Just who—or what—are you?"

　"Ruddygore. Or a thousand other names, none of which you"d recognize, Joe. I"m no superstition and I"m no angel of death, any more than that truck radio of yours is a human mou...