Part 14 (2/2)

'What you need is more padding, man,' said Ray from the back of the jeep.

'You should be more like me. Have plenty of padding to sit on. That's always been my philosophy. A fat cat is a happy cat.'

'So long as you've got your music,' said Ace.

'That's right, man a comfortable seat to sit on and music to listen to.'

'I'm surprised you didn't bring a portable gramophone with you,' said the Doctor, steering quickly and nimbly around a long shallow ditch that suddenly appeared in the ground ahead. The jeep lurched, regained its traction, and roared along, paralleling the ditch.

'No way, man. I wouldn't bring my music out here in the savage splendour of New Mexico. Dust is the enemy of the LP, baby.' Then Ray hastily corrected himself. 'I mean of 78s, I mean of sh.e.l.lac discs. Records.'

'I'll remember that.' Ace leaned back in her seat and took a deep breath of the racing wind. It smelled of a mixture of petrol from the jeep and wild desert sage. The sun shone benignly down on her face. Despite the bruising brutality of the jeep ride, she was enjoying herself. Or at least she would be if her hair didn't keep getting in her eyes, swaying with the motion of the vehicle. She brushed it aside and turned to the Doctor. 'This is all very nice, getting away from Los Alamos and all that. But I thought you were supposed to be busy arguing with Teller.'

'Apparently our last discussion gave him so much to think about that he wants all day to ponder it.'91.

'Good for you,' said Ace. She took a rubber band out of the pocket of her denim jacket and used it to secure her hair.

The Doctor peered out over the steering wheel. He hardly seemed to move the wheel, but he was keeping them clear of obstacles despite their high speed.

He was obviously enjoying the drive. 'In fact it probably just means he's sick of me and wanted to avoid seeing me.'

'That Teller is one anti-social cat, man,' said Ray from the back seat.

'Nevertheless, tomorrow I shall renew my attack.'

'Attack?'

The Doctor smiled. He peered into the distance. 'Just a figure of speech.'

Events seemed to conspire to prevent Butcher getting away from the Hill. Receiving official permission had been the least of his problems. What should have been the simple business of delegating to his sergeants, for what after all promised to be only a few hours' absence, took a few hours in itself. And then, just when he was about to set off, he was ambushed by some last-minute additional paperwork concerning release of Rosalita's body to a civilian coroner.

More hours proceeded to grind slowly by as he unravelled the necessary red tape.

Then, when he finally managed to get changed and get to the motor pool, he had endless problems with vehicles. The first jeep he chose had a flat tyre, the second a ruptured fan belt, the third some kind of untraceable blockage in the exhaust system. 'Don't any of your jeeps work?' demanded Butcher of Lisetti, the motorpool chief, a greasy grinning Buddha of a man, who had a monkey wrench in one s.h.i.+rt pocket and a bar of Red Indian brand chewing tobacco in the other.

'They tend to the temperamental, that's for sure. They're supposed to be built for desert work, but I find they never really perform good in all this dust and fine sand. But there's one vehicle that always runs real sweet. Never had a single problem with her.'

'Then give me that one,' said Butcher.

Lisetti smiled and spat a stream of tobacco juice. 'Sorry. No can do. Already signed her out. To a little English gent called Dr Smith. Had a girl with him and that big Chinese fellow.'

'j.a.panese,' said Butcher.

'Hey, really. You don't say. Why isn't he behind bars?'

'You might well ask,' said Butcher. He waited another half an hour on the endless business of the first jeep having it's tyre changed, only to have it taken away from him at the last instant for use by General Groves' staff. That left Butcher with either the broken fan belt vehicle, or the one with the mystery exhaust problem. Two fan belts later he was finally driving down the Hill.

92.

Ace's predictions about her bruised b.u.t.tocks proved to be amply fulfilled by the time the Doctor announced that they were finally approaching their destination. He was steering the jeep towards a range of low hills that looked, to Ace, no different from the many other ranges of hills they had already pa.s.sed in the repet.i.tive desert landscape. The sun was now sinking behind the mountains in the west and the sky was painted with bright, garish, sunset colours.

The Doctor skirted the base of the hills until he found a narrow track leading upwards that looked like it might give the most surefooted mountain goat pause. But he drove the jeep up it without hesitation, expertly s.h.i.+fting the gears and altering the engine's roar in an almost musical modulation as the engine laboured in various cycles of revolution against the steep incline. Dust boiled up off the track and Ace closed her eyes and held her breath. Then suddenly the noise of the engine died, the dust stopped, and the jeep came to a halt.

Ace opened her eyes. They were on the brow of a low hill with the slope of a higher headland rising in front of them. There were pine trees on the hillsides and these gave off a cool intense odour in the dying heat of the day.

Ace wiped the dust off her face.

'Oh man,' said Ray, from the back of the jeep. 'I hope this was worth the trip.'

'I think you'll find it interesting,' said the Doctor, fastening the brakes and hopping out onto the hillside. Ace joined him, breathing the cool pine-scented air and enjoying the sensation of walking on her own two feet again after the hours of jolting and bouncing in the jeep. The Doctor took her arm and guided her across the rocky ground covered with a soft blanket of pine needles. 'Do you notice anything about that hill slope opposite us?'

Ace studied the area he indicated. It was a hill with trees growing on it, their shadows stretching like long black fingers as the sun went down. There were no signs of life or any indication that man had ever intruded on it. It was a primal scene that might have remained unchanged for millions of years.

'Nope,' said Ace.

'Do you see anything in those shadows among the trees?'

'Nope.'

'Look more carefully.' The Doctor sounded a trifle impatient. 'Some of those shadows are in fact the mouths of caves.'

'Caves?' said Ray, coming up behind them, his feet crunching on the bed of pine needles. 'Who lives in them, man?'

'Oh, no one,' said the Doctor. 'Not for many, many centuries.' His head suddenly jerked up as he looked past Ray, peering at something with an expression of bright interest. Ace followed the direction of his gaze and saw that three men had stepped out of the shadows of the pines behind them and were 93coming down the hill, past the jeep, towards them.

They were all carrying guns.

'Which is not to say, of course, that these hills are uninhabited,' said the Doctor.

Butcher drove down the Hill along the winding rocky road, past the shadowed pines of Los Alamos canyon and the Omega lab, where Fermi maintained his reactor and performed dangerous experiments with plutonium.

By now the sun was declining steeply in the sky and the desert night was approaching fast. Butcher drove swiftly and efficiently but he couldn't outrace the setting sun. Soon the lengthening shadows of the broken landscape had swallowed him and the jeep whole.

Butcher kept driving, belting along in the desert darkness, with a growing sense of futility. He'd had a pretty good idea of the Doctor's initial route because he'd spoken to the MPs at the checkpoint who'd watched them leave.

He'd even managed to find the spot where the Doctor's jeep had left the road.

The tracks had been too fresh to belong to any other vehicle. Butcher had already followed them for about ten rough miles of broken terrain.

But now, caught in the darkness, the only way to make progress was to hazard a guess about the other jeep's direction of travel, drive for a half mile or so, stop, get out of the jeep and use a flashlight to check the ground and see if he could discern any tracks in the dirt. At first he'd got lucky, following them for another two miles. But then he'd lost the track and had to double back on himself, doing a sweep.

Now he'd lost the track completely. He was on the verge of throwing in the towel and heading back for the Hill, taking off his shoes, collapsing on his bunk and drinking half a bottle of whiskey. Then he saw the light in the distance, in the crevice of a line of hills whose dark bulk cancelled the stars hanging low in the night sky.

He pointed the jeep in the direction of the light, put his foot down hard on the gas, and drove towards it.

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