Smart Dragons, Foolish Elves Read online

  He slouched down behind the wheel, let his foot rest lightly on the accelerator, and sped westward at a sane, sensible forty-five miles per hour. That was about as fast as he dared go with the bulky U-Haul trailing behind. He hadn’t had much experience driving with a trailer—he was a computer salesman, and computer salesmen don’t carry sample computers—but he got the hang of it pretty fast. You just had to remember that your vehicle was now a segmented organism, and make your turns accordingly. God bless turnpikes, anyhow. Just drive on, straight and straight and straight, heading toward the land of the sunset with only a few gentle curves and half a dozen traffic lights along the way.

  The snow thickened some. But the car responded beautifully, hugging the road, and the windshield wipers kept his view clear. He hadn’t expected to buy a foreign car for the trip at all; when he had set out, it was to get a good solid Plymouth or Chevvie, something heavy and sturdy to take him through the wide open spaces. But he had no regrets about this smaller car. It had all the power and pickup he needed, and with that trailer bouncing along behind him he wouldn’t have much use for all that extra horsepower, anyway.

  He was in a cheerful, relaxed mood. The car seemed comforting and protective, a warm enclosing environment that would contain and shelter him through the thousands of miles ahead. He was still close enough to New York to be able to get Mozart on the radio, which was nice. The car’s heater worked well. There wasn’t much traffic. The snow itself, new and white and fluffy, was all the more beautiful for the knowledge that he was leaving it behind. He even enjoyed the solitude. It would be restful, in a way, driving on and on through Ohio and Kansas and Colorado or Arizona or whatever states lay between him and Los Angeles. Five or six days of peace and quiet, no need to make small talk, no kids to amuse—

  His frame of mind began to darken not long after he got on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. If you have enough time to think, you will eventually think of the things you should have thought of before; and now, as he rolled through the thickening snow on this gray and silent afternoon, certain aspects of a trunkless car occurred to him that in his rush to get on the road he had succeeded in overlooking earlier. What about a tool kit, for instance? If he had a flat, what would he use for a jack and a wrench? That led him to a much more chilling thought: what would he use for a spare tire? A trunk was something more than a cavity back of the rear seat; in most cars it contained highly useful objects.

  None of which he had with him.

  None of which he had even thought about, until just this minute.

  He contemplated the prospects of driving from coast to coast without a spare tire and without tools, and his mood of warm security evaporated abruptly. At the next exit, he decided, he’d hunt for a service station and pick up a tire, fast. There would be room for it on the back seat next to his luggage. And while he was at it, he might as well buy— The U-Hall, he suddenly observed, was jackknifing around awkwardly in back, as though its wheels had just lost traction. A moment later the car was doing the same, and he found himself moving laterally in a beautiful skid across an unsanded slick patch on the highway. Steer in the direction of the skid, that’s what you’re supposed to do, he told himself, strangely calm. Somehow he managed to keep his foot off the brake despite all natural inclinations, and watched in quiet horror as car and trailer slid placidly across the empty lane to his right and came to rest, upright and facing forward, in the piled-up snowbank along the shoulder of the road.

  He let out his breath slowly, scratched his chin, and gently fed some gas. The spinning wheels made a high-pitched whining sound against the snow. He went nowhere. He was stuck.

  The little man had a ruddy-cheeked face, white hair so long it curled at the ends, and metal-rimmed spectacles. He glanced at the snow-covered autos in the used-car lot, scowled, and trudged toward the showroom.

  “Came to pick up my car,” he announced. “Valve job. Delayed by business in another part of the world.”

  The dealer looked uncomfortable. “The car’s not here.” “So I see. Get it, then.”

  “We more or less sold it about a week ago.”

  “Sold it? Sold my car? My car?”

  “Which you abandoned. Which we stored here for a whole year. This ain’t no parking lot here. Look, I talked to my lawyer first, and he said—”

  “All right. All right. Who was the purchaser?”

  “A guy, he was transferred to California and had to get a car fast to drive out. He—”

  “His name?”

  “Look, I can’t tell you that. He bought the car in good faith. You got no call bothering him now.”

  The little man said, “If I chose, I could draw the information from you in a number of ways. But never mind. I’ll locate the car easily enough. And you’ll certainly regret this scandalous breach of custodial duties. You certainly shall.”

  He went stamping out of the showroom, muttering indignantly.

  Several minutes later a flash of lightning blazed across the sky. “Lightning?” the auto dealer wondered. “In January? During a snowstorm?”

  When the thunder came rumbling in, every pane of plate glass in every window of the showroom shattered and fell out in the same instant.

  Sam Norton sat spinning his wheels for a while in mounting fury. He knew it did no good, but he wasn’t sure what else he could do, at this point, except hit the gas and hope for the car to pull itself out of the snow. His only other hope was for the highway patrol to come along, see his plight, and summon a tow truck. But the highway was all but empty, and those few cars that drove by shot past him without stopping.

  When ten minutes had passed, he decided to have a closer look at the situation. He wondered vaguely if he could somehow scuff away enough snow with his foot to allow the wheels to get a little purchase. It didn’t sound plausible, but there wasn’t much else he could do. He got out and headed to the back of the car.

  And noticed for the first time that the trunk was open.

  The lid had popped up about a foot, along that neat welded line of demarcation. In astonishment Norton pushed it higher and peered inside.

  The interior had a dank, musty smell. He couldn’t see much of what might be in there, for the light was dim and the lid would lift no higher. It seemed to him that there were odd lumpy objects scattered about, objects of no particular size or shape, but he felt nothing when he groped around. He had the impression that the things in the trunk were moving away from his hand, vanishing into the darkest comers as he reached for them. But then his fingers encountered something cold and smooth, and he heard a welcome clink of metal on metal. He pulled.

  A set of tire chains came forth.

  He grinned at his good luck. Just what he needed! Quickly he unwound the chains and crouched by the back wheels of the car to fasten them in place. The lid of the trunk slammed shut as he worked—hinge must be loose, he thought—but that was of no importance. In five minutes he had the chains attached. Getting behind the wheel, he started the car again, fed some gas, delicately let in the clutch, and bit down hard on his lower lip by way of helping the car out of the snowbank. The car eased forward until it was in the clear. He left the chains on until he reached a service area eight miles up the turnpike. There he undid them; and when he stood up, he found that the trunk had popped open again. Norton tossed the chains inside and knelt in another attempt to see what else might be in the trunk; but not even by squinting did he discover anything. When he touched the lid, it snapped shut, and once more the rear of the car presented that puzzling welded-tight look.

  Mine not to reason why, he told himself. He headed into the station and asked the attendant to sell him a spare tire and a set of tools. The attendant, frowning a bit, studied the car through the station window and said, “Don’t know as we got one to fit. We got standards and we got smalls, but you got an in-between. Never saw a size tire like that, really.”

  “Maybe you ought to take a closer look,” Norton suggested. “Just in case it’s really a sta
ndard foreign-car size, and—”

  “Nope. I can see from here. What you driving, anyway? One of them Japanese jobs?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Look, maybe you can get a tire in Harrisburg. They got a place there, it caters to foreign cars, get yourself a muffler, shocks, anything you need.”

  “Thanks,” Norton said, and went out.

  He didn’t feel like stopping when the turnoff for Harrisburg came by. It made him a little queasy to be driving without a spare, but somehow he wasn’t as worried about it as he’d been before. The trunk had had tire chains when he needed them. There was no telling what else might turn up back there at the right time. He drove on.

  Since the little man’s own vehicle wasn’t available to him, he had to arrange a rental. That was no problem, though. There were agencies in every city that specialized in such things. Very shortly he was in touch with one, not exactly by telephone, and was explaining his dilemma. “The difficulty,” the little man said, “is that he’s got a head start of several days. I’ve traced him to a point west of Chicago, and he’s moving forward at a pretty steady four hundred fifty miles a day.”

  “You’d better fly, then.”

  “That’s what I’ve been thinking, too,” said the little man. “What’s available fast?”

  “Could have given you a nice Persian job, but it’s out having its tassels restrung. But you don’t care much for carpets anyway, do you? I forgot.”

  “Don’t trust ’em in thermals,” said the little man. “I caught an updraft once in Sikkim and I was halfway up the Himalayas before I got things under control. Looked for a while like I’d end up in orbit. What’s at the stable?” “Well, some pretty decent jobs. There’s this classy stallion that’s been resting up all winter, though actually he’s a little cranky—maybe you’d prefer the bay gelding. Why don’t you stop around and decide for yourself?”

  “Will do,” the little man said. “You still take Diner’s Club, don’t you?”

  “All major credit cards, as always. You bet.”

  Norton was in southern Illinois, an hour out of St. Louis on a foggy, humid morning, when the front right-hand tire blew. He had been expecting it to go for a day and a half, now, ever since he’d stopped in Altoona for gas. The kid at the service station had tapped the tire’s treads and showed him the weak spot, and Norton had nodded and asked about his chances of buying a spare, and the kid had shrugged and said, “It’s a funny size. Try in Pittsburgh, maybe.” He tried in Pittsburgh, killing an hour and a half there, and hearing from several men who probably ought to know that tires just weren’t made to that size, nohow. Norton was beginning to wonder how the previous owner of the car had managed to find replacements. Maybe this was still the original set, he figured. But he was morbidly sure of one thing: that weak spot was going to give out, beyond any doubt, before he saw L.A.

  When it blew, he was doing about thirty-five, and he realized at once what had happened. He slowed the car to a halt without losing control. The shoulder was wide here, but even so Norton was grateful that the flat was on the right-hand side of the car; he didn’t much feature having to change a tire with his rump to the traffic. He was still congratulating himself on that small bit of good luck when he remembered that he had no spare tire.

  Somehow he couldn’t get very disturbed about it. Spending a dozen hours a day behind the wheel was evidently having a tranquilizing effect on him; at this point nothing worried him much, not even the prospect of being stranded an hour east of St. Louis. He would merely walk to the nearest telephone, wherever that might happen to be, and he would phone the local automobile club and explain his predicament, and they would come out and get him and tow him to civilization. Then he would settle in a motel for a day or two, phoning Ellen at her sister’s place in L. A. to say that he was all right but was going to be a little late. Either he would have the tire patched or the automobile club would find a place in St. Louis that sold odd sizes, and everything would turn out for the best. Why get into a dither?

  He stepped out of the car and inspected the flat, which looked very flat indeed. Then, observing that the trunk had popped open again, he went around back. Reaching in experimentally, he expected to find the tire chains at the outer edge of the trunk, where he had left them. They weren’t there. Instead his fingers closed on a massive metal bar. Norton tugged it partway out of the trunk and discovered that he had found a jack. Exactly so, he thought. And the spare tire ought to be right in back of it, over here, yes? He looked, but the lid was up only eighteen inches or so, and he couldn’t see much. His fingers encountered good rubber, though. Yes, here it is. Nice and plump, brand new, deep treads—very pretty. And next to it, if my luck holds, I ought to find a chest of golden doubloons—

  The doubloons weren’t there. Maybe next time, he told himself. He hauled out the tire and spent a sweaty half hour putting it on. When he was done, he dumped the jack, the wrench, and the blown tire into the trunk, which immediately shut to the usual hermetic degree of sealing. An hour later, without further incident, he crossed the Mississippi into St. Louis, found a room in a shiny new motel overlooking the Gateway Arch, treated himself to a hot shower and a couple of cold Gibsons, and put in a collect call to Ellen’s sister. Ellen had just come back from some unsuccessful apartment hunting, and she sounded tired and discouraged. Children were howling in the background as she said, “You’re driving carefully, aren’t you?”

  “Of course I am.”

  “And the new car is behaving okay?”

  “Its behavior,” Norman said, “is beyond reproach.” “My sister wants to know what kind it is. She says a Volvo is a good kind of car, if you want a foreign car. That’s a Norwegian car.”

  “Swedish,” he corrected.

  He heard Ellen say to her sister, “He bought a Swedish car.” The reply was unintelligible, but a moment later Ellen said, “She says you did a smart thing. Those Swedes, they make good cars too.”

  The flight ceiling was low, with visibility less than half a mile in thick fog. Airports were socked in all over Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio. The little man flew westward, though, keeping just above the fleecy whiteness spreading to the horizon. He was making good time, and it was a relief not to have to worry about those damned private planes.

  The bay gelding had plenty of stamina, too. He was a fuel-guzzler, that was his only trouble. You didn’t get a whole lot of miles to the bale with the horses available nowadays, the little man thought sadly. Everything was in a state of decline, and you had to accept the situation.

  His original flight plan had called for him to overtake his car somewhere in the Texas Panhandle. But he had stopped off in Chicago on a sudden whim to visit friends, and now he calculated he wouldn’t catch up with the car until Arizona. He couldn’t wait to get behind the wheel again, after all these months.

  The more he thought about the trunk and the tricks it had played, the more bothered by it all Sam Norton was. The chains, the spare tire, the jack—what next? In Amarillo he had offered a mechanic twenty bucks to get the trunk open. The mechanic had run his fingers along that smooth seam in disbelief. “What are you, one of those television fellers?” he asked. “Having some fun with me?”

  “Not at all,” Norton said. “I just want that trunk opened up.”

  “Well, I reckon maybe with an acetylene torch—”

  But Norton felt an obscure terror at the idea of cutting into the car that way. He didn’t know why the thought frightened him so much, but it did, and he drove out of Amarillo with the car whole and the mechanic muttering and spraying his boots with tobacco juice. A hundred miles on, when he was over the New Mexico border and moving through bleak, forlorn, winter-browned country, he decided to put the trunk to a test.

  Last Gas Before Roswell, a peeling sign warned. Fill Up Now!

  The gas gauge told him that the tank was nearly empty. Roswell was somewhere far ahead. There wasn’t another human being in sight, no town, not even a sh
ack. This, Norton decided, is the right place to run out of gas.

  He shot past the gas station at fifty miles an hour.

  In a few minutes he was two and a half mountains away from the filling station and beginning to have doubts not merely of the wisdom of his course but even of his sanity. Deliberately letting himself run out of gas was against all reason; it was harder even to do than deliberately letting the telephone go unanswered. A dozen times he ordered himself to swing around and go back to fill his tank, and dozen times he refused.

  The needle crept lower, until it was reading E for Empty, and still he drove ahead. The needle slipped through the red warning zone below the E. He had used up even the extra couple of gallons of gas that the tank didn’t register—the safety margin for careless drivers. And any moment now the car would—

  —stop.

  For the first time in his life Sam Norton had run out of gas. Okay, trunk, let’s see what you can do, he thought. He pushed the door open and felt the chilly zip of the mountain breeze. It was quiet here, ominously so; except for the gray ribbon of the road itself, this neighborhood had a darkly prehistoric look, all sagebrush and pinyon pine and not a trace of man’s impact. Norton walked around to the rear of his car.

  The trunk was open again.

  It figures. Now I reach inside and find that a ten-gallon can of gas has mysteriously materialized, and—

  He couldn’t feel any can of gas in the trunk. He groped a good long while and came up with nothing more useful than a coil of thick rope.

  Rope?

  What good is rope to a man who’s out of gas in the desert?

  Norton hefted the rope, seeking answers from it and not getting any. It occurred to him that perhaps this time the trunk hadn’t wanted to help him. The skid, the blowout— those hadn’t been his fault. But he had with malice aforethought let the car run out of gas, just to see what would happen, and maybe that didn’t fall within the scope of the trunk’s services.