Part 2:

"On the railhead, number 1074."

"The railhead?"

Phillips looked uncomfortable. "The railhead."

Arvius nodded and turned to pick up Janice, but then he remembered and he said, "Thanks, Phillips, I won't forget."

Phillips nodded. "See you on the road, Arvio."

Just then, a Peterbilt came sailing around the warehouse, and she was pulling a flatbed with two outsize crates, already tied down. The cruiser was black, and it looked just like Gutley's, but she was so clean, her flanks dazzlingly resplendent, her metalwork all twinkling and aglitter – surely this wasn't Luta, Gutley's grizzled wreck.

But she was, for on the side of the door, painted in white, was the legend: Luta II. As Arvius watched, the cruiser weaved her way through the Hysters and tugs, rumbled over the tracks of the yard, and halted by the gate. Then she was signaling, and gone, headed for the Interstate, and Arvius was left with the page of his manifest in hand. He could hear the big Cummins diesel engine shifting as Gutley took her away along the perimeter road. He stood and listened until the sound of her leaving blended with the noise of the yard, and then was gone, and he suddenly turned to face Phillips.

But Phillips had disappeared. Arvius had thought to confront him and ask if Gutley had been helped too, and by his sudden absence, Phillips had given him his answer. "Another lesson learned," Arvius said bitterly, and he went over to pick up Janice.

Shortly, the soft pop of a turbine starter rose up over the tumult of the yard. Arvius sat quietly in the cab, waiting for the air pressure to come up. While he waited, he thought about the changed appearance of Luta, and he reasoned that her change had something to do with the innovation Gutley had mentioned. He thought about the new Luta II, splendidly glossy, blazing with luster, and he shook his head. This from the man who said he loved road dirt, and wasn't ashamed to let the world see that he had been working.

Janice's air pressure warning buzzer fell silent, and he put her in gear. The whine of her turbine was pitched low as she rolled smoothly forward. Arvius guided her back around the rear of the R&C building, where the trailers were parked by the railhead. He wasn't overly worried about the jump Gutley had on him. With his powerful newer engine, acceleration was much better than Gutley's diesel could provide.

He did consider the fact that the old man was not above a little sabotage, and that worried him more than a little. Arvius had no trouble finding number 1074, and as he backed up, he thought about the rumors concerning Gutley, and the old man's almost supernatural ability to foil his catalyst.

Along the three-foot repelectric fence of the Interstate, there were little crystal squares and tags which the cruisers keyed on. When the Interstate repelectric was first introduced, the lead man in a catalyst run often would pull over, and remove a few tags. Then the company, because it had been losing valuable freight, cruisers and operators, came up with the Key Signal Concept. The KSC was a dead man's control sort of affair.

If anything went wrong, if anything was amiss, a rectangular amber light would come on, and it was the driver's job to punch it out within a time limit which varied according to the degree of the problem. If the operator failed to get the KSC on in time, a buzzer sounded, and the cruiser would shut down.

The Key Signal Concept had defeated a lot of the tag pullers, but not John Gutley. They said the old man could read the tags, and he pulled them in such a way that even the KSC of the following cruiser would be fooled. "Never get behind John Gutley," all the men said.

Arvius' thoughts were interrupted by the wang of number 1074 rising up along the groove in the fifth wheel and dropping in, coupling complete. He climbed down from the cab and, pulling on his gloves, coupled up the tractor's air hoses. As he cranked up the trailer dolly, he thought with bitterness about the way Phillips had worked a deal with him, and at the same time, worked out something even better with Gutley. "No wonder he's getting promoted," Arvius said to himself.

At last Janice was ready, and he climbed back into the cab, released the brakes and put her in gear. Her turbine engine growled, low and throaty, a rumbling, powerful bass whistle, and Arvius was glad. He felt closest to Janice when stopping and starting, and control was his.

They rolled out from the line of parked trailers, toward the gate and the perimeter road. Her tandem axles juggled prettily over the ruts and dirty busy surface of the Detroit Terminal. The RD had Arvius and he gritted his teeth, yielding helplessly to the tension with which he was filled. At last he was on his way.

Within the one-way windows of Luta II, Gutley sat, happy and comfortable, on the red leather operator's chair. When he left the yard, he had seen the kid, standing and talking with Phillips, and he had started grinning and hadn't stopped since. It wasn't that he needed or believed in good omens, but it was a good sign to get away with beginning the run before Arvius even picked up his trailer.

Now Gutley frowned as he depressed Luta's heavy clutch, and moved the gear lever with a snap. The big Peterbuilt seemed to pause and lurch a little, gather and rush. He glanced in his rear-viewer, and there was no sign of Arvius. That was good. Luta II was most vulnerable during acceleration; the slick new turbines all had automatic transmissions. The old man had no doubt about the outcome of this contest. He was certain he would be in Denver hours before Arvius.

Records would be set, yes, but his seasoned crafty mind was certain Arvius would lose. His load was light, for one thing. The man with the least weight to pull had an advantage, however small. Gutley knew what Arvius was carrying: three pallets, each one groaning with the burden of peak stress.

If Arvius only knew his cargo had been carefully selected by his nemesis. The old man giggled at the thought. There was Arvius, prancing around the yard, making deals with the warehousemen while he had watched, at peace, from the diner window. If Arvius had come to him for help, Gutley would have suggested he go to the foreman, and the bosses. But of course, Arvius was too proud to look to the Top Operator for help, and he would never dream of turning to the company. After all, the kid thought that he was the Top Operator, not just the number-one catalyst. "That," whispered Gutley, "will be his downfall."

Luta II was moving faster now, and the perimeter road had become the service road, parallel to the Interstate. Gutley sighed and wet his lips nervously. There was still no sign of Arvius back there. He looked up from the rearview screen, and the first Interstate marker appeared along the side of the road. It was a blue and red shield-shaped tag, a sparkle whisking by, to the past, to Arvius' future.

Gutley gave the big wheel a gentle tug, and Luta II rolled across the road to the entrance ramp. Soon they were at the first strip of repelectric fencing, and Gutley, still glancing occasionally at the rear-viewer, prepared to shut down the manual controls. The more the computer of Luta II warmed to the pre-strip, the more Gutley relaxed, although he kept a sharp watch over the instruments.

She labored up to sixty, and Gutley observed critically as the computer, chattering softly, switched them to the center lane. The repelectric was uninterrupted now, and he cranked back his seat, assuming the old monitor position. Luta was on the verge of peaking, and she winked her signals and began to slip over to the third section, the high-traction plastipumice. Immediately, a louder note sailed out from her spinning wheels. This was the romanticized sound, the roar and whistle of hard and fast rolling. It was the sound they meant when they sang songs about trucking; it was the operator's lullaby.

Now the computer's control of Luta was complete, and Gutley knew he was driving right. There would be no challenge from Arvius until his first stop, when the blue Kenworth would have the acceleration advantage, but until then, Gutley felt he was in the clear. Even after that, Arvius would have no chance. It was Gutley's plan to let Arvius pass him. He still had his innovation to work. His hand dropped to the console ledge beside him, where it encountered a small box, metal and latched, about the size of a tackle-box. Idly, his fingers found the catch and began to fasten and unfasten it, as though they were anxious to spill out the contents and get it on: The Innovation.

Arvius was coming, rolling slowly at first, then faster and faster along the perimeter road. The fence around the yard appeared to jump and wink crazily, up and down, suddenly closer, now back again, up and down. Arvius peered into his viewer, set to maximum magnification, hoping against hope he would see the receding bulk of Gutley's rig. He knew Luta II was far ahead, but he knew too that the turbine engine of Janice gave him a chance to catch him. Gutley couldn't have been doing more than fifty or so at this point, and here he was, holding Janice down. She was ready to peak now, and they were nowhere near the repelectric.

If only there was a way to switch control of the rig to the computer, without the repelectric. Then the only problem would be traction, and that could be handled easily: just lay the pumice everywhere. But now, he had to hold Janice back. He didn't dare allow her to push peak while at manual.

Arvius had no idea what it would be like to handle a cruiser moving at better than eighty. Some of the old-time operators insisted such speeds happened all the time in the pre-computer days. Arvius didn't know about that, but he did know that if it was true it must have been a frightening thing. The closest analogy he could make was to suppose he was on the plastipumice, and he suddenly lost his computer.

He shook his head. No way. He would literally die. "But wouldn't everything simply shut down?" he asked himself. The first Interstate maker appeared, and Arvius put aside his one-man, road-druggish conversation for later. The marker triggered something in Janice. He could hear her relays fidgeting over the whine of the engine.

She was a tall, somewhat boxy, cab-over-engine Kenworth, pearl blue, lustrous and shining, a twinkling tribute to hours of work, rubbing and buffing. Arvius knew next to nothing about the mechanics, and he took out the frustration his ignorance brought him on the finish of his cruiser. She was the antithesis of Gutley's philosophy, which was: Simple, Honest Dirt. Janice seemed eager to roll; Gutley's Luta– even Luta II – appeared to be a resistant, heavy piece of machinery, something only an expert would dare attempt to master, something longsnouted, mean, and lean, a rig in which you could never relax, unless you had a death wish.

But Janice was as sleek as a teardrop, and she looked like flight. To Arvius, she had a mind of her own, in perfect harmony with his. She wanted what he wanted: to beat John Gutley. Arvius loved her as all operators loved their units. He'd never forgotten that Gutley was in love with Luta II also. It was just that he couldn't understand how Gutley could be in love with that particular piece of machinery.

Sometimes, when he was on the pumice, it frightened him to watch how Janice worked, straightening out curves, applying just the right amount of power, sailing up an incline, and whistling down. When he was in the Road Drug state, it didn't matter if they were in Kansas or Maine, time was nothing but a ticking somewhere else, and he would adoringly watch her perform. Only vaguely aware of what she was doing, he would see vast amounts of road gulped and swallowed, even as he consumed the drug, ingested through speed, spewed out seemingly in a perpetual rush over the rear-viewer; the air a whamming, tangible force, so that appendages such as mirrors or antennas would have to be withdrawn or swept off; and he would want to shout for joy, and love, because somehow, wherever they were, Janice was with him; and Janice, above all, was capable of getting the job done.

She could cruise at better than two-fifty. Arvius shook his head. Only numbers. The fence on his right disappeared. The terminal was behind them now. Private homes, packed together, no details readily discernible, whistling past. Images frozen, picked up and lingering on the screens: a boy swinging in a tire; a woman, her hair in curlers, doing something in a floppy dress, stooping at work along the side of her house: a school yard, jumping with patches of bright color, children playing, it seemed, all at the same game.

A sprawling shopping center under a tinted dome, green fluorescence fuzzy therein. Ahead, the access road turned slightly, and Arvius knew he would be on the service road next. He shifted his butt from side to side in the chair, anxiously wriggling, looking ahead in the viewer, searching for Gutley. Janice was doing seventy now. Arvius held her there, not wanting to hold her back, but not daring to let her go. "Not yet, not yet," he said. "Come on Interstate."

Arvius swung the wheel, and he couldn't help smiling as the big cruiser bit, settled low and fairly banked into the sweeping turn. Nothing was as pretty to Arvius as the massive boxy weight of a Kenworth such as Janice, booming along with the marker lights of her trailer up, like Christmas, and moving, moving.

The houses and schools were beginning to thin out along the side of the road. Arvius picked up another Interstate marker, and again Janice noticed, whirring and clicking as she contentedly digested information.

Then ahead, he saw the spidery concrete pillars of the Interstate overpass. The way to Denver. Its multicolored width stretched high over the access road like a rainbow. Arvius fought back a rush of anxiety, and cranked up his nerve with another dose of RD. Janice, having scented the repelectric, hit her signals, and began to edge over.

The Key Signal came on and Arvius, putting aside the drug, immediately tapped it out. Janice was on the ramp and Arvius, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, observed critically as they sailed on up. He thought of Luta II somewhere ahead, and he pictured the diesel Peterbuilt laboring over this same stretch of incline. The thought made him feel good.

Janice executed the tricky maneuver of switching to the plastipumice with steady precision. The catch about going to the pumice was the difference in traction between the center lane and the pumiced surface, which resembled a strip of frozen sponge. The traction difference wouldn't have mattered at conventional speeds, but at a cruiser's rate, it was a critical phase of every run every operator was glad to have under his belt. Handled sloppily, the transition could result in disaster.

As Janice slung her left side across the line between the two textures, Arvius' mouth was straight, grim and tight. His fingers were curled tightly around his mug of RD, and he did not relax until phwitt, phwitt, phwitt, they flashed by the series of columns that were a part of the interchange he was now leaving behind.

He reminded himself that the Top Operator had an inferior rig, and he was moving against him with a good chance to win. He told himself it would be wise to take things easy, but the RD forced him to press, and he shifted restlessly in his seat, peering ahead in search of Gutley

But the faster he moved, the more the countryside blurred, and Arvius had to scan farther and farther out toward the horizon in order to pick up any details. He could barely make out the shape of the repelectric, doing its high speed, jerky, back and forth, up and down dance. The tags which studded the fence winked and flashed as he raced along. If he had been able to see them clearly, he would have been at a loss to explain their specific meaning. They were for Janice and the cruisers, and Arvius doubted even Gutley could read them.

It was true that a man might be able to assess their general message by looking at the condition of the surrounding road, but the information the crystal tags bore was constantly updated, with tapes from each record run. An area which triggered brakes one week might call for power the next, and it was useless to try to interfere with the system, in Arvius' view.

Gutley too had begun to settle down. Secure in his lead, he allowed his mind to wander, and he recalled the day about a month earlier when Sid had informed him the bosses wanted him to report.

All right, it was true, Gutley was the company man; still, despite the rumors, he had never met the bosses. And now, Sid eagerly told him, he had been requested. They walked together, Gutley outwardly calm, his pace measured and steady, Sid portly and nervous.

When they arrived, Gutley made a motion with his hand, and Sid stopped while the Top Operator paused, took a deep breath and pushed open the door. From out in the hall, Sid caught a glimpse of green carpet, a long table, an immaculate and silent room, a huge telewindow covering one entire wall; and he caught the quickest suggestion of people, twelve or more, before the door swung shut, silently and efficiently resealing the barrier between Sid and the bosses. There was nothing to do but wait, and Sip plopped down in the hall for what seemed an interminable length of time.

When at last the door opened and Gutley reappeared, Sid quickly stood and held out his hand. Gutley walked past him without looking down. "Hey!" Sid exclaimed, and he fell into step beside the Top Operator. Gutley took long strides and Sid was waddling vigorously in order to keep up. Exasperated, he finally grabbed Gutley's arm, and the taller man halted then, turning slowly to face the foreman. "What the hell happened in there, John?"

Gutley was silent.

"What'd they want?"

"I'm to report to Engineering with this," Gutley replied, holding out his arm, and there was the box. Sid's eyes widened. Gutley looked dispassionately at the thing.

"An innovation," he said. "I've accepted an innovation."

The big hangar-size shop where Luta had been rejuvenated was fresh in Gutley's mind. The white coated technicians worked every night, and Gutley became a familiar part of their job; always lingering by the huge doors of the shop, leaning over their shoulders, itching obviously to help, and always almost, almost in the way. Watching as they broke Luta down, laying her thousands of parts out on clean white cloth, it seemed to Gutley they whispered as they made notes and jabbed at clipboards with sharpened pencils. Gutley recalled wondering at the fact that they all wore glasses, their pencils were always sharp, yet no one ever seemed to sharpen them, they all seemed to have clipboards, and their immaculate lab coats never got dirty.

And bit by bit, they took apart his precious cruiser – youngsters all, they reassured him almost patronizingly, hinted that he wasn't needed, and yet, night after night he would appear. Gradually, they accepted him; he didn't have their formal education, but he knew all about Luta, and he had made changes in her that were not in their myriad texts. They began to respect him, without being aware their attitude was changing.

He helped them more and more, and they presented him with a white coat, which he refused to wear but took home proudly. Gutley did his courtly act for them, and they laughed and unconsciously imitated his supposedly country ways. Gutley was flattered, and they all had a good time as the work was done.

One night when he came in, Luta was ready. They had reassembled her, and they stood around nervously, waiting for him to arrive. When he did appear, they greeted him shyly, and they kept pointing out little touches for him, things they had done. How this would work, what that would do. Luta gleamed and sparkled like new – even better, because when she was new, he hadn't known her. Now every bolt, every rivet shimmered and glowed under the overhead lights, and Gutley to his shame felt tears come to his eyes.

One of the technicians came forward with a can of white enamel and a brush, and on the cruiser's door he painted her name, and after that, the Roman numeral II. Gutley remembered nodding and leaving, beyond words, but he would always know that although he hadn't actually thanked them, they understood.

Running a few miles behind Gutley, Arvius was thinking about Phillips, the forklift operator, and the fact that soon Phillips would be on the road too. He was confident that he would beat Gutley, and he was looking forward to someday creaming Phillips. He had worked against rookies before, but none as fresh as Phillips. There was something about Phillips, maybe it was the way he was coming up, which reminded Arvius of himself.

Janice was rocketing over the road, in a lane-wide blur, mile after mile. There was nothing but the sound of the wind scrubbing past the cab, and the howling of the turbine engine beneath him. The wheels made a roaring whistle on the pumice, and all was so steady, so regular that Arvius took some more of the RD. The road wound through the country ahead, and in the viewer, it looked like a strip of tricolored toothpaste.

His brain was filled with pleasing images and memories. He felt himself drifting and he relaxed. It seemed to Arvius that he could feel Janice knifing ahead, for Denver, through curve and variation, chuckling and humming, all automatic. As they blasted into the flat receptiveness of the Plains States, the sun began to go down ahead. Arvius was too tired to yawn, his mind was speeding, drawn to Denver through a sort of psychic ether which was mostly Road Drug.

At times like these it was his habit to review good periods of the past, event by event, carefully and he always delighted in the conclusion, like a child, as pleased as if he was hearing a story for the first time.

The Kenworth's headlights popped whitely to life, sweeping far ahead, back and forth as the great cruiser shifted and raced, fairly flying on the repelectric road. In the web of the drug, Arvius sank back and relaxed, remembering.

He recalled his time as a warehouseman, when like Phillips his only ambition had been to become an operator. Those were the days when Gutley had just risen In his new Peterbuilt, the old man had beaten the reigning Top Operator soundly. Luta had been the second cruiser to incorporate the repelectric systems. The first had been the man Gutley beat, who, it was said, died of fright. Arvius remembered seeing Gutley once or twice, and working for him too, even as Phillips now hustled for the operators.

Life was so much simpler then. Arvius thought about the electric pallet jack he'd operated in those days. Then MHE meant more than Material Handling Equipment; it meant men, work, sweat and fun. The tongs of his pallet jack were double length, long enough to carry two pallets. There was a little platform for the operator, and he steered with a tiller with a twist grip. Three forward speeds, three reverse, and a single rubber-covered push button for overdrive.

Depress that button, and any speed you had was doubled. In his stupor, Arvius smiled, recalling sharply the way he used to whiz up and down the wide aisles in the warehouse, and his expertise at whipping the tiller around and jerking abruptly into an almost right-angle turn, down a side aisle, and into the rectangular opening of a pallet, as if the big jack was running on tracks. Rumble, rumble, the tongs of the jack would roll in, and Arvius would stop only then, and back out just as quickly as he had entered, this time with a pallet full of merchandise.

Part III