As Is

III

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 shack. 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 hot 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 a dozen times 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 a 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.

Why the rope, though?

Some kind of grisly joke? Was the trunk telling him to go string himself up? He couldn’t even do that properly here; there wasn’t a telephone pole. Norton felt like kicking himself. Here he was, and here he’d remain for hours, maybe even for days, until another car came along. Of all the dumb stunts!

Angrily he hurled the rope out of the trunk. It uncoiled as he let go of it, and one end rose straight up. The bottom of the rope hovered about a yard off the ground, rigid, pointing skyward. A faint turquoise cloud formed at the upper end, and a thin, muscular olive-skinned boy in a turban and a loincloth climbed down to confront the gaping Norton.

“Well, what’s the trouble?” the boy asked brusquely.

“I’m—out—of—gas.”

“There’s a filling station twenty miles back. Why didn’t you tank up there?”

“I—that is—”

“What a damned fool,” the boy said in disgust. “Why do I get stuck with jobs like this? All right, don’t go anywhere and I’ll see what I can do.”

He went up the rope again and vanished.

When he returned, some three minutes later, he was carrying a tin of gasoline. Glowering at Norton, he slid the gas-tank cover aside and poured in the gas.

“This’ll get you to Roswell,” he said. “From now on look at your dashboard once in a while. Idiot!”

He scrambled up the rope. When he disappeared, the rope went limp and fell. Norton shakily picked it up and slipped it into the trunk, whose lid shut with an aggressive slam.

Half an hour went by before Norton felt it was safe to get behind the wheel again. He paced around the car something more than a thousand times, not getting a whole lot steadier in the nerves, and ultimately, with night coming on, got in and switched on the ignition. The engine coughed and turned over. He began to drive toward Roswell at a sober and steadfast fifteen miles an hour.

He was willing to believe anything, now.

And so it did not upset him at all when a handsome reddish-brown horse with the wingspread of a DC-3 came soaring through the air, circled above the car a couple of times, and made a neat landing on the highway alongside him. The horse trotted along, keeping pace with him, while the small white-haired man in the saddle yelled, “Open your window wider, young fellow! I’ve got to talk to you!” Norton opened the window.

The little man said, “Your name Sam Norton?”

“That’s right”

“Well, listen, Sam Norton, you’re driving my car!”

Norton saw a dirt turnoff up ahead and pulled into it. As he got out the pegasus came trotting up and halted to let its rider dismount. It cropped moodily at sagebrush, fluttering its huge wings a couple of times before folding them neatly along its back.

The little man said, “My car, all right. Had her specially made a few years back, when I was on the road a lot. Dropped her off at a garage last winter account of I had a business trip to make abroad, but I never figured they’d sell her out from under me before I got back. It’s a decadent age.”

“Your—car—” Norton said.

“My car, yep. Afraid I’ll have to take it from you, too. Car like this, you don’t want to own it, anyway. Too complicated. Get yourself a decent little standard make flivver, eh? Well, now, let’s unhitch this trailer thing of yours, and then—”

“Wait a second,” Norton said. “I bought this car legally. I’ve got a bill of sale to prove it, and a letter from the dealer’s lawyer, explaining that—”

“—Don’t matter one bit,” said the little man. “One crook hires another crook to testify to his character, that’s not too impressive. I know you’re an innocent party, son, but the fact remains that the car is my property, and I hope I don’t have to use special persuasion to get you to relinquish it.”

“You just want me to get out and walk, is that it? In the middle of the New Mexico desert at sundown? Dragging the damned U-Haul with my bare hands?”

“Hadn’t really considered that problem much,” the little man said. “Wouldn’t altogether be fair to you, would it?”

“It sure wouldn’t.”

“And what about the two hundred bucks I paid for the car?”

The little man laughed. “Shucks, it cost me more than that to rent the pegasus to come chasing you! And the overhead! You know how much hay that critter—”

“That’s your problem,” Norton said. “Mine is that you want to strand me in the desert and that you want to take away a car that I bought in good faith for two hundred dollars, and even if it’s a goddam magic car I—”

He paused helplessly.

“Hush, now,” said the little man. “You’re gettin’ all upset, Sami We can work this thing out. You’re going to L.A., that it?”

“Ye-es.”

“So am I. Okay, we travel together. I’ll deliver you and your trailer there, and then the car’s mine again, and you forget anything you might have seen these last few days.”

“And my two hundred dol—”

“Oh, all right.” The little man walked to the back of the car. The trunk opened; he slipped in a hand and pulled forth a sheaf of crisp new bills, a dozen twenties, which he handed to Norton. “Here. With a little something extra, thrown in. And don’t look at them so suspiciously, hear? That’s good legal tender U.S. money. They even got different serial numbers, every one.” He winked and strolled over to the grazing pegasus, which he slapped briskly on the rump. “Git along, now. Head for home.”

The horse began to canter along the highway. As it broke into a gallop it spread its superb wings; they beat furiously a moment, and the horse took off, rising in a superb arc until it was no bigger than a hawk against the darkening sky, and then was gone.

The little man slipped into the driver’s seat of the car and fondled the wheel in obvious affection. At a nod, Norton took the seat beside him, and off they went.

“I understand you peddle computers,” the little man said when he had driven a couple of miles. “Mighty interesting things, computers. I’ve been considering computerizing our operation too, you know? It’s a pretty big outfit, a lot of consulting stuff all over the world, mostly dowsing now, some thaumaturgy, now and then a little transmutation, things like that, and though we use traditional methods, we don’t object to the scientific approach. Now, let me tell you a bit about our inventory flow, and maybe you can make a few intelligent suggestions, young fellow, and you might just be landing a nice contract for yourself—”

Norton had the roughs for the system worked out before they hit Arizona. From Phoenix he phoned Ellen and found out that she had rented an apartment just outside Beverly Hills, in what looked like a terribly expensive neighborhood but really wasn’t—at least, not by comparison with some of the other things she’d seen, and—

“It’s okay,” he said. “I’m in the process of closing a pretty big sale. I—ah—picked up a hitchhiker, and turns out he’s thinking of going computer soon, a fairly large company—”

“Sam, you haven’t been drinking, have you?”

“Not a drop.”

“A hitchhiker and you sold him a computer. Next you’ll tell me about the flying saucer you saw.”

“Don’t be silly,” Norton said. “Flying saucers aren’t real.”

They drove into L.A. in mid-morning, two days later. By then he had written the whole order, and everything was set; the commission, he figured, would be enough to see him through a new car, maybe one of those Swedish jobs Ellen’s sister had heard about. The little man seemed to have no difficulty finding the address of the apartment Ellen had taken; he negotiated the maze of the freeways with complete ease and assurance, and pulled up outside the house.

“Been a most pleasant trip, young fellow,” the little man said. “I’ll be talking to my bankers later today about that wonderful machine of yours. Meanwhile here we part. You’ll have to unhitch the trailer, now.”

“What am I supposed to tell my wife about the car I drove here In?”

“Oh, just say that you sold it to that hitchhiker at a good profit. I think she’ll appreciate that.”

They got out. While Norton undid the U-Haul’s couplings, the little man took something from the trunk, which had opened a moment before. It was a large rubbery tarpaulin. The little man began to spread it over the car. “Give us a hand here, will you?” he said. “Spread it nice and neat, so it covers the fenders and everything.” He got inside, while Norton, baffled, carefully tucked the tarpaulin into place.

“You want me to cover the windshield too?” he asked.

“Everything,” said the little man.

There was a hissing sound, as of air being let out of tires. The tarpaulin began to flatten. At it sank toward the ground, there came a cheery voice from underneath, calling, “Good luck, young fellow!”

In moments the tarpaulin was less than three feet high. In a minute more it lay flat against the pavement There was no sign of the car. It might have evaporated, or vanished into the earth. Slowly, uncomprehendingly, Norton picked up the tarpaulin, folded it until he could fit it under his arm, and walked into the house to tell his wife that he had arrived in Los Angeles.

Sam Norton never met the little man again, but he made the sale, and the commission saw him through a new car with something left over.

He still has the tarpaulin, too. He keeps it folded up and tied and wrapped and retied and carefully locked away in his basement He’s afraid to get rid of it, but he doesn’t like to think of what might happen if someone comes across it and spreads it out.