Part 2

Some hundred and fifty miles farther into the mountains, at an altitude that bit into their lungs, they saw the marker almost buried in rocks at the left of the road. The place where the old man had told them to stop and wait.

But they didn't have to wait. A man, lean and healthy for his age--which must have been at least sixty, Stan thought--stepped from behind a rock, and came toward the Special. He was smiling and he extended his hand.

"Doctor and Mrs. Morrison," he said. Anna was already out of the car, shaking his hand. Stan got out. He took a second look, then whispered: "Doctor Bergmann!"

The man wore levis and a mackinaw, and he carried a rifle slung under one arm. "I wasn't expecting you to recognize me," he said as they shook hands. "I've lost about thirty-five pounds." He smiled again. "It's healthier up here."

He walked around to the driver's side and opened the door. The motor was still running. Stan realized then what Bergmann was doing, and for some reason without definition he started to protest. Bergmann was setting the automatic clutch and releasing the brake. The Special started moving up the road, but there was no one inside to turn the wheel when it reached the hairpin turn about fifty feet ahead.

Stan watched the car gaining speed, its left door swinging like the door in a vacant house. He thought of stories he had heard about convicts finally released after many years, stunned, frightened by reality, begging to be returned to the restricted but understandable cell. Then he smiled. Anna smiled.

The Special, once you pushed the right button, could do almost everything by itself, feed itself gas, gain speed, shift its gears; but it didn't know when to turn to avoid self-destruction.

Stan winced slightly as the car lurched a little and then leaped out into space. He felt the black void opening under him as though he were still in the Special. Fifteen months.

His ears were filled with the sudden screeching whine of the wheels against unresisting air, then the world seemed to burst with a thundering series of solid smashing roars which were quickly dissipated in the high mountain air.

Doctor Bergmann went over to the edge and looked down. "That's the tenth one," he said. "We're going to send a work party down there in a few days to cover it all over with rocks. Still, I doubt if we have to worry about them spotting the wreckage."

He turned. "Well, let's start hiking. It's still a few miles."

"Where," Stan asked. "I've gone along this far. I've had no choice. But now what's it all about?"

"Didn't the old man tell you?"

"No."

"Just remember, Morrison. We're not running away. This is an old Mormon trail. A lot of the old pioneers took it. That marker says that the Williams-Conner Party camped here and was massacred by Indians in 1867. There's an old Indian city at about three thousand feet. I guess we're the first ones to use it for maybe a thousand years. We've got an archeologist up there--Michael Hilliard--who's been going slightly crazy. Anyway, we've got books up there, we raise most of our own food, and we've plenty of time to study and try to figure out where we made the big mistakes. We're really doing very well."

"But what about the old man?" Anna asked.

Bergmann chuckled. "Arch has turned into a regular man of a thousand faces. He works along the Freeways and watches for those who are at the breaking point and can't stay on the road any longer. Some of those condemned to the Freeways are criminals, others are fools or misguided zealots; and we've got to be careful not to wise those birds up by mistake. Arch has an unerring instinct, and sending our people to us is his job."

The three of them started walking up the old pioneer trail.

"We made a lot of mistakes," Bergmann said. "All of us, some more than others. You can't blame people for being afraid, suspicious of us. We _did_ unleash the potentialities for total destruction without ever thinking about the social implications or ever bothering to wonder about how our contributions would be used and controlled.

"So we're off there waiting now. Waiting and studying. Someday they'll need us again. And we'll be ready."

"But who was the old man?" Anna asked.

Bergmann laughed. "Only the greatest physicist of the age. Remember Arch Hoffenstein?"

Stan put his arm over Anna's shoulders and they walked on, and up. He had almost forgotten. But now he never would. Somewhere, Arch Hoffenstein was hitch-hiking along the Freeway with the ghost of Galileo.