Keith Laumer - Keith Laumer: The Lighter Side

By Keith Laumer

THE RUTABAGA THAT
WALKED LIKE A MAN

The girl lay in the rain by her crumpled motorcycle. "You must help me," she whispered. "Deliver the message: Beware the Rhox!"

"What rocks?" Roger looked around wildly. "I'll go for a doctor!"

Her voice faltered. "No time... to explain... take... button... put it in... your ear...." The green eyes held on Roger's, pleading.

"Seems like a funny time to worry about a hearing aid," Roger gulped, "but..." He held the button to his ear. Did he hear a faint, wavering hum, or was it his imagination? He pushed it in.

"Drive to Pottsville," the girl's voice said in his ear. "Start now. Time is precious!"

There was the sound of a motor. The headlight of a second motorcycle was approaching. As it shot past, he saw the shape behind the handlebars: a headless torso, bulbous, ornamented with two clusters of tentacles. Through the single goggle, an eye as big as a pizza swiveled to impale him with a glance of utter alienness.

With a strangled yell, Roger leaped back and saw the motorcycle veer wildly, hurling its monstrous rider clear, then skid to a stop in the center of the highway. Roger could see that the rider's upper portion was smashed into a pulp.

"I should go to the police," he said. "But what can I say? That I was responsible for the death of a giant rutabaga?"

"Time is of the essence," the girl's slightly accented voice said. "Get going! Take the motorcycle!"

"That would be stealing!"

"Who's going to report it? Relatives of a giant rutabaga?"

"You have a definite point there," Roger said...

from Time Trap

BAEN BOOKS by Keith Laumer:

The Compleat Bolo
Retief!
Odyssey
Keith Laumer: The Lighter Side

The old man fell just as Farn Hestler's power wheel was passing his Place in Line, on his way back from the Comfort Station. Hestler, braking, stared down at the twisted face, a mask of soft, pale leather in which the mouth writhed as if trying to tear itself free of the dying body. Then he jumped from the wheel, bent over the victim. Quick as he was, a lean woman with fingers like gnarled roots was before him, clutching at the old man's fleshless shoulders.

"Tell them me, Millicent Dredgewicke Klunt," she was shrilling into the vacant face. "Oh, if you only knew what I've been through, how I deserve the help"

Hestler sent her reeling with a deft shove of his foot. He knelt beside the old man, lifted his head.

"Vultures," he said. "Greedy, snapping at a man. Now, I care. And you were getting so close to the Head of the Line. The tales you could tell, I'll bet. An Old-timer. Not like these Line, er, jumpers," he diverted the obscenity. "I say a man deserves a little dignity at a moment like this"

"Wasting your time, Jack," a meaty voice said. Hestler glanced up into the hippopotamine features of the man he always thought of as Twentieth Back. "The old coot's dead."

Hestler shook the corpse. "Tell them Argall Y. Hestler!" he yelled into the dead ear. "Argall, that's A-R-G-A-L-L"

"Break it up," the brassy voice of a Line Policeman sliced through the babble. "You, get back." A sharp prod lent urgency to the command. Hestler rose reluctantly, his eyes on the waxy face slackening into an expression of horrified astonishment.

"Ghoul," the lean woman he had kicked snarled. "Line!" She mouthed the unmentionable word.

"I wasn't thinking of myself," Hestler countered hotly. "But my boy Argall, through no fault of his own"

"All right, quiet!" the cop snarled. He jerked a thumb at the dead man. "This guy make any disposition?"

"Yes!" the lean woman cried. "He said, to Millicent Dredgewicke Klunt, that's M-I-L"

"She's lying," Hestler cut in. "I happened to catch the name Argall Hestlerright, sir?" He looked brightly at a slack-jawed lad who was staring down at the corpse.

The boy swallowed and looked Hestler in the face.

"Hell, he never said a word," he said, and spat, just missing Hestler's shoe.

"Died intestate," the cop intoned, and wrote a note in his book. He gestured and a clean-up squad moved in, lifted the corpse onto a cart, covered it, trundled it away.

"Close it up," the cop ordered.

"Intestate," somebody grumbled. "Crap!"

"A rotten shame. The slot goes back to the government. Nobody profits. Goddamn!" the fat man who had spoken looked around at the others. "In a case like this we ought to get together, have some equitable plan worked out and agreed to in advance"

"Hey," the slack-jawed boy said. "That's conspiracy!"

"I meant to suggest nothing illegal." The fat man faded back to his Place in Line. As if by common consent, the small crowd dissipated, sliding into their Places with deft footwork. Hestler shrugged and remounted his wheel, put-putted forward, aware of the envious eyes that followed him. He passed the same backs he always passed, some standing, some sitting on canvas camp stools under sun-faded umbrellas, here and there a nylon queuebana, high and square, some shabby, some ornate, owned by the more fortunate. Like himself: he was a lucky man, he had never been a Standee, sweating the line exposed to the sun and prying eyes.

It was a bright afternoon. The sun shone down on the vast concrete ramp across which the Line snaked from a point lost in distance across the plain. Aheadnot far ahead now, and getting closer every daywas the blank white wall perforated only by the Window, the terminal point of the Line. Hestler slowed as he approached the Hestler queuebana; his mouth went dry as he saw how close it was to the Head of the Line now. One, two, three, four slots back! Ye Gods, that meant six people had been processed in the past twelve hoursan unprecedented number. And it meantHestler caught his breathhe might reach the Window himself, this shift. For a moment, he felt a panicky urge to flee, to trade places with First Back, and then with Second, work his way back to a safe distance, give himself a chance to think about it, get ready...

"Say, Farn." The head of his proxy, Cousin Galpert, poked from the curtains of the three foot square, five foot high nylon-walled queuebana. "Guess what? I moved up a spot while you were gone."

Hestler folded the wheel and leaned it against the weathered cloth. He waited until Galpert had emerged, then surreptitiously twitched the curtains wide open. The place always smelled fudgy and stale after his cousin had spent half an hour in it while he was away for his Comfort Break.

"We're getting close to the Head," Galpert said excitedly, handing over the lockbox that contained the Papers. "I have a feeling" He broke off as sharp voices were suddenly raised a few Spaces behind. A small, pale-haired man with bulging blue eyes was attempting to force himself into Line between Third Back and Fifth Back.

"Say, isn't that Four Back?" Hestler asked.

"You don't understand," the little man was whimpering. "I had to go answer an unscheduled call of nature... " His weak eyes fixed on Fifth Back, a large, coarse-featured man in a loud shirt and sunglasses. "You said you'd watch my Place... !"

"So whattaya think ya got a Comfort Break for, ya bum! Beat it!"

Lots of people were shouting at the little man now:

"Line-ine-ucker-buckerLine bucker, Line bucker... "

The little man fell back, covering his ears. The obscene chant gained in volume as other voices took it up.

"But it's my Place," the evictee wailed. "Father left it to me when he died, you all remember him... " His voice was drowned in the uproar.

"Serves him right," Galpert said, embarrassed by the chant. "A man with no more regard for his inheritance than to walk off and leave it... "