Short Fiction · Friends and Enemies (3/3)

Ellenby lurched as a hand clutched his shoulder and a staggering Madson howled in his ear through the tumult, “Now you’ve got your rotten bombs!” Between him and the car Harvey’s bullet head reared up and as suddenly dropped away. Looking down, Ellenby saw that a chasm four feet wide had split the road between him and the car. Its walls were raw, smoking earth and rock. Down it Ellenby saw vanishing, in one frozen moment, Harvey and the Keats and the little brass spectroscope.

Then Ellenby realized he had grabbed Madson by the shoulder and thrown the two of them forward and shouted “Jump!” For a moment the chasm gaped beneath them and a white little face stared upward. Then the chasm closed with a giant crunch and Ellenby’s hand caught the side of the heaving car and he pitched into the back seat.

Through the diminishing thunder and shaking there came the toy roar of the car’s jet and a new movement tipped him backward and he was looking toward the hill and it was getting bigger. He tried to put his feet down and felt something bulk under them. For a moment he thought it was Madson, but Madson was beside him on the seat, and then he saw it was George. He looked up and Rickie Vickson was watching him from where she was crouched in the front seat, her eyes without the teleglasses looking as foxy as Widgie’s, whom she was holding close to her wrinkle-etched cheek.

“Vera-Ellen had to conk him,” she explained, her gaze dipping to George. “The bum tried to betray us.”

The pitching of the car had given way to a steady forward lunge. Ellenby nodded dully at Rickie and hitched himself around and looked back.

Harvey’s people were scattering like ants through a dust cloud rising from the road.

The house on the hill still stood, though there were more and larger cracks in it and a nimbus of whiter dust around it.

By the bridge the copter had crashed and was flaming brightly. A tiny figure was running away from it.

Ellenby’s face slowly lightened with understanding.

“We were on the San Andreas Rift,” he said softly. “Madson, that wasn’t the bombs at all. That wasn’t Technology or Man.” A smile trembled on his lips. “That was Nature. An earthquake.”

Madson was the first to comment. “All right,” he said, “it was Nature⁠—Nature showing her disgust for Man.”

“An idea like that is the sheerest animism,” Ellenby reacted automatically. “Now if you try analyzing⁠—”

“Analyzing!” Madson snorted with a touch of the old fire. “You scientists are always⁠—”

“Whoa, boys,” Rickie Vickson interrupted. “If it hadn’t been for that little quake to confuse things, Vera-Ellen couldn’t have snatched you out no matter how pretty she tried. And I’m in no mood for arguments now. I’m not the arty type and all the science I know is what my psychic counselor tells me. Widgie, quit pounding your heart; it’s all over now.”

Ellenby touched her arm. “Do I understand,” he asked, “that Vera-Ellen made you turn back just to save us?”

“Of course not,” Rickie assured him. “Her father and his pals tried to stop us a couple of miles back. They’d been radioed by a farmer in a copter and had the road blocked. George wanted to hand you all over to Vera-Ellen’s father, but we conked George⁠—he’s such a weakling⁠—and got away. Picking you up was an afterthought.”

Vera-Ellen flashed a wicked smile over her shoulder.

Ellenby realized he was feeling vastly contented. He started to lift his feet off George, then settled them more comfortably. He looked at the violet-topped new chauffeur handling the Lunar as if she’d never done anything else, and she picked that moment to flash him another half friendly, half insulting grin. He nudged Madson and said, “We’ll continue our argument later⁠—all our argument.” Madson looked at him sharply and almost grinned too. Ellenby wondered idly what jobs they had for poets and physicists in 3D and handie studios.

Rickie Vickson’s eyes widened. “Say,” she said, “if they were just warning us about that little old earthquake, then Old Angeles isn’t radioactive⁠—I mean any more radioactive than it’s ever been.”

“Oh boy,” Vera-Ellen crowed as the car topped the hill and the blue spires came back in sight, “New Angeles, here we come.”