Roadmarks

"Hey! What's going on in here?"

The two technicians he had passed on the way in had just come into the hall.

"Reverse it! Reverse it!" one of them screamed, and began ru

The marquis raised the helmet and placed it on his head. There followed a moment of delightful disorientation. He closed his eyes.

... The wall was sinking all about him. He beheld his own diminutive, helmeted form. He saw the first white-coated figure arrive at the console, the second close behind it. "Don't do that!" he tried to say. But a button was pushed. All at once, the walls ceased their movement. He sprang. God! the power! The guard rail collapsed. He swayed on the edge of the pit, then moved forward. The console and the technicians vanished beneath him. He bellowed... Lower your head, he/they willed, that I might mount. Clumsily, he straddled the neck of the great beast. Now we are going to take a walk. You are my guest artist for today.

The doorway was too small, for a few moments. As he moved up the mall paralleling the belts, screaming sounds began, here and there. A slow-moving vehicle halted and discharged its colorfully garbed passengers, all of whom fled. The breezes, the sunlight, the birdcalls, were no longer disturbing. In fact, they were barely discernible. He overturned the vehicle and bellowed a song. Chadwick's main building lay ahead.

He would be in the a rebours room at this time of day...

With each lurching step forward, his feelings rose. Parceling out terror, he left the mall and headed into the park. He passed through its elegant periphery of trees, shrubs, flowerbeds, like wind through a sieve. The holograms closed upon themselves behind him, to rustle in their imaginary breezes. Hidden below the level of fictitious tulips, a pair of lovers were crushed at the moment of orgasm. A genuine bench splintered, a trash container crumpled as he passed. His bellowed song drowned all other sounds.

As he emerged at the side of the park nearest his destination, he tried to smash a small black car which had slowed and seemed to be aimed to park beside the

blue truck which he had not noted earlier. It swerved about him, however, and vanished rapidly up the road.

He continued on, passing to the right of the entrance, rounding a comer, unaware of the play of shadow now behind him, so like that which had lain upon the truck.

He ceased his bellowing as he counted windows, seeking the proper section of wall. Stalking, panting, chuckling, he did not hear the sounds of more vehicles approaching the front of the building. If he had, it

really would not have mattered.

His joy rising to a new height, he struck. The facade shattered, and on his third blow he burst through the large-grained crushed morocco leatherbound wall. The ceiling tore apart and fell down around him as he advanced upon Chadwick and the other man who stood at the fireplace before the sphinx, regarding a lengthy tongue of tape. His forelegs clawed at the air. His

tongue darted forth.

"The death of Chadwick!" he shouted. "By Tyra

Sade!" "Really," Chadwick replied, flicking an ash from his

cigar, "there are simpler ways of submitting your

resignation."

The beast halted. The shadow fled from beneath its tail, centimeters ahead of a copious quantity of urine.

The forelegs twitched.

"The marquis has already introduced himself," Chadwick stated, throwing his arm about the other man's shoulders, thrusting him forward and stepping behind him. "Marquis, I would now like you to meet my former partner. Red Dorakeen."

The marquis's smile vanished. The beast shifted uneasily.

"Take off your hat," the marquis ordered.

Red doffed his baseball cap and smiled around his cigar.

"You do look like your photo in the hit file" the marquis acknowledged as Chadwick slipped over and tore the printout from the teeth of SPHINX. "So what are you doing here? That man has designs on your life "

"Well, yes-"

Across the room, at the point to which the shadow had lifted, there was an implosion. Writing desks. chairs, oriental rugs, drink carousels were sucked into a dark tornado, along with debris from the walls and ceiling, the remains of a large lunch, a stuffed leopard, an owl and the remains of a cat which had expired some time before in a curtained alcove. The curtains also swirled and were drawn into the vortex. The three men watched with interest, the tyra

The dark column grew, absorbing the mass of almost every loose item in the room. At some point in its progress, it began to emit a humming noise. This rose in pitch as it increased in volume.

"I take it this is not a local meteorological effect?" Red inquired. "Hardly," said Chadwick.

An enormous outline took shape within the mass. The humming noise ceased. A huge figure began to coalesce before them, giant wings outspread. It remained motionless until it had solidified to a point where there could be no doubt as to its nature.

It was almost the size of the tyra

strangely nasal, and accompanied by soft gray plumes, and it was neither Red nor Chadwick that it addressed.

"What have you done to this poor beast?" it asked.

The marquis shifted uneasily.

"Sir, or madam," he stated, "I am in phase with his nervous system and I can assure you that he feels no discomfort whatsoever. As a matter of fact, there is an implant in his pleasure center which, if you insist, I will stimulate so as to give him as much joy as the poor beast is capable of—"

"Enough!"

"Frazier? Dodd?" said Red.

"Yes," it replied. "But I am not addressing you now. It was Chadwick that I sought, and you have brought me to him. But first—" Flames rolled about its mouth, subsided. "It is an abomination to have wired this

handsome creature so!"

"I agree with you fully," said the marquis, "and I am pleased it was not I that did so."

"You have compounded the crime against his magnificent person! You manipulate him!"

"I assure you it is only a brief borrowing. My intentions—"

Chadwick seized Red's sleeve and tugged him along as he backed slowly toward the door.

"Your intentions be damned, sir! Release him and apologize to him!"

"I would do that at peril to my life!"

"Your life—and more—is already at peril! Release him!"

Chadwick edged the door open with his foot just as the tyra

"You're parked out that way, aren't you?" Chadwick asked, gesturing.

''Yes."

"Come on! They could break out of there any minute."

As they hurried up the corridor, heavy crashing noises were heard and the floor shook.

"We'd best get this trip under way immediately" Chadwick remarked. "I had not anticipated an employee grievance at this time—or on this scale. We can stop for necessaries sometime else."

From behind them came a sound like an explosion a moment's silence, then a resumption of noisy activity. Glancing back, they saw a falling wall in the vicinity of the room from which they had fled. Smoke emerged and the air purifiers sucked it away.