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."What do you mean by 'the far end'? What do youremember? Have you any idea at all as to the nature of the process you are undergoing?"Red sighed.He located a cigar and chewed on it, but he did not light it."All right, I remember being an old man," he began."Very old.I was walking through a rockywasteland.It was nearly morning, and it was foggy.My feet were bleeding.I was carrying a staff, and Ileaned on it a lot."He shifted the cigar from one comer of his mouth :to the other and looked out of the window."That's all," he said."All? That can hardly be all," Flowers broke in."Are you trying to say that you grew up or grew towherever you are backwards? That you started out as an old man?""That's what I just said.Yes," Red answered irritably."Watch the curve. You mean that you remember nothing whatsoever before being old and walkingthrough a waste? Or What did you gain this time?""Nothing rational.Just a few delirium-dreams of odd shapes moving about me in the fog, and fear and soforth and I kept going."Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html"Did you know where you were going?""No.""And you were alone?.""At first.""At first?""Somewhere along the way, I acquired company.I'm still hazy about the circumstances, but there wasan oldwoman.We were helping each other over the roughspots: Leila.""There was a Leila with you years ago, on one occasion when you visited me.But she was not an oldwoman."The same.Our ways have parted and rejoined manytimes but her situation has paralleled my own with respect to the reversed aging business."She was not involved in your dealings with Chadwick?""No, but she knew him."Do either of you have any idea where you are headed in your strange course of growth?""She seems to think that this is only a phase in a larger life cycle.""And you do not?""Maybe it is.I just don't know.""Does Chadwick know all this about you?""Yes.""Could he possibly know more about it than you do?"Red shook his head."No way to tell.I suppose anything is possible.""What is his reason for being so down on you?""When we parted company, he was upset that I was destroying a good business arrangement""Were you?"Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html"I suppose so.But he'd changed the nature of the business and it wasn't so much fun anymore.I messedup the operations and left."''But he is still a rich man?""Very wealthy.""Then I suspect the possibility of a motive other than the economic.Jealousy, perhaps, at your improvingwell-being."Possibly, but nothing turns on it.It is his objective rather than his motive that concerns me.""I am just trying to understand the enemy, Red." "I know.But there isn't much else to tell."" '^He swung through the underpass and turned left upthe access ramp.A shadow which fell upon the vehicledid not depart when he entered the light, "Your room was quite a mess this morning," Monda mayobserved.^ "Yes, it was.That always happens.""What about that design that looked like a Chinesecharacter burned into the door? Is that a customaryaccompaniment?" "No.It was just a Chinese character.It meant'good fortune.'" "How do you explain it?" "Don't.Can't.Strange." Mondamay made a high-pitched,broken whistlingnoise."What's funny?" "I was thinking of some books you once left withpictures you had to explain to me." "I'm afraid." "Cartoons, with captions." Red relit his cigar."Notfunny," he said.The strange shadow clung to the truck's bed, Monda may whistled again.Flowers beganto sing.TwoRandy watched the day pulse on and off, each beat growing longer, until a chill, drizzling morning hungabout them as they entered the service plaza.Golden and red-leafed maples dripped beside thefrost-paned buildings.They drew up beside a fuel pump."This is crazy," he said."It's summer, not autumn.""It is autumn here.Randy, and if you wanted to take the next exit and keep heading south, you could getyourself shot at by the Army of the Confederacy or the Union Army, depending of course on justwhere you wind up."Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html"You are not joking?""No.""I didn't think so.Unfortunately, I'm beginning to believe you.But what's to prevent Lee's men frommarching along the shoulder there and taking Washington say, Coolidge's Washington? OrElsenhower's? Or Jackson's?""Did you ever come upon the Road by yourself, or even hear of it?""No.""Only certain people or machines can find it and travel it.I do not know why.The Road is an organicthing.This is a part of its nature, and of its travelers'.""What if I hadn't been one of them?""I might have been able to bring you, anyhow.Much can depend on the guide.""Then I still don't know whether I could have traveled it solo?""No.""So, supposing one of Lee's officers did know about it and could travel it? What then?""Those who know about it tend to keep it to themselves, as you will learn.But even so, supposing hecould? Supposing you took the next exit, as I'd suggested, and kept heading south? Supposing you'd runover Stonewall Jackson?" :"Okay, I'm supposing."".And then you had turned around and come back.You would have noticed a fork in the Road wherethere had been none before off there somewhere in the hinterlands another way merging with yourown, to form the route back here.Thereafter, on re;turning this way, you could take the branch to the place where that accident had occurred, or the other,to the place where it did not.The former would be a very bad road, however, and would probablydisappear through disuse before too long.On the other hand, ifit became sufficiently well-traveled, then the other might fade.This is unlikely, but if it were to occur, youwould find it increasingly difficult to locate various later routes Cs back up the Road and there wouldbe new ones, somewhat different from those you had known.It would be possible to lose yourself downsome byway and never get back to your point of departure.""But traces of the other routes would still be there, fallen into disuse?""Theoretically, yes rutted, weed-grown, cut by rivers, smothered by fallen rock but the traces shouldremain.Finding them is the trick, though.""It would seem easier to try to reopen them by un doing whatever had been done or doing somethingGenerated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.htmlelse." "Try it sometime.Go back to the place that is nolonger as you recall it and try to subtract everything that makes it different.Altering the single pivotalevent may no longer be sufficient [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]