"You're quite right, d.i.c.kie," he announces presently, still counting the flashes of the calculator's lights. "Ve can do as you say and indeed eefen return to za barracks before Monday zunrise. Venn is za test scheduled, may I ask?"

"Eight A.M. Sunday."

Von Neumann's mouth broadens in a liver-lipped grin.

"How zynchronistic. Ve'll be pa.s.sing White Sands just zen. I haff not vitnessed a bomb test since Trinity. And zis is za biggest one yet; zis bomb is, as you know, d.i.c.kie, za Ulam cascade initiator for za new hydrogen bomb. I'm for it! Let me reprogram za brain!"

Lernmore crawls over the front seat while the car continues its mad careening down the dizzy interstate, pa.s.sing crawling tourist Buicks and mom-'n'-dad Studebakers. He lugs the case of champagne into the front seat with him. Von Neumann removes the upright cushion in the backseat and pries off the panel, exposing the brain in the trunk. Consulting his calculator from time to time, von Neumann begins reprogramming the big brain by yanking switchboard-type wires and reinserting them.

"I'm tired of plugging chust metal sockets, Richard. Viz za next girl, I go first."

Now it's night, and the stoned beats are drunk and high on bennies, too. Neal, his face all crooked, slopes through Burroughs's shack and picks Bill's car keys off the dresser in the dinette where Joan is listening to the radio and scribbling on a piece of paper. Crossing the porch, thievishly heading for the Buick, Neal thinks Bill doesn't see, but Bill does.

Burroughs the beat morphinist, whose weary disdain has shaded catastrophically with the Benzedrine and alcohol into fried impatience, draws the skeletized sawed-off shotgun from the tube of hidden gutterpipe that this same Texafied Burroughs has suspended beneath a large hole drilled in the eaten wood of his porch floor. He fires a twelve-gauge shotgun blast past Neal and into Neal's cleaned and twisted box of Mary Jane, barely missing Jack.

"Whew, no doubt," goes Neal, tossing Burroughs the keys.

"Have ye hard drink, mine host?" goes Jack, trying to decide if the gun really went off or not.

"Perhaps a pint of whiskey in the writing desk, old top? A spot of sherry?" "To continue my afternoon fit of thought," says Burroughs, pocketing his keys, "I was talking about thermonuclear destruction and about the future of all humanity, which species has just about been squashed to spermaceti in the rictal mandrake spasms of Billy Sunday's pimpled a.s.s- cheeks."

He pumps another sh.e.l.l into the shotgun's chamber. His eyes are crazed goofball pinpoints. "I am sorry I ever let you egregious dope-suckin' latahs crash here. I mean you especially, jailbird con man Ca.s.sady."

Neal sighs and hunkers down to wail on the bomber Jack's lit off a smoldering sc.r.a.p of shotgun wadding. Before long he and Jack are far into a rap, possibly sincere, possibly jive, a new rap wrapped around the concept that the three hipsters a.s.sembled here on the splintery porch 'neath the gibbous prairie moon have formed or did or will form or, to be quite accurate, were forming and still are forming right then and there, an a.n.a.logue of those Holy B-Movie Goofs, THE THREE STOOGES!.

"Yes," goes Jack, "those Doomed Saints of Chaos, loosed on the work-a-daddy world to scramble the Charles d.i.c.kens cark and swink of BLOOEY YER FIRED, those Stooge Swine are the anarchosyndicalist truly wigged sub-Marxists, Neal man, bikkhu Stooges goosing ripea.s.smelons and eating fried chicken for supper. We are the Three Stooges."

"Bill is Moe," says Neal, hot on the beam, batting his eyes at Bill, who wonders if it's time to shed his character-armor. "Mister Serious Administerer of Fundament Punishments and Shotgun Blasts, and me with a Lederhosen a.s.s!"

"Ah you, Neal," goes Jack, "you're Curly, angelic madman saint of the uncaught mote-beam fly-buzz fly!"

"And Kerouac is Larry," rheums Burroughs, weary with the knowledge. "Mopple-lipped, lisped, muxed, and completely flunk is the phrase, eh, Jack?"

"Born to die," goes Jack. "We're all bom to die, and I hope it do be cool, Big Bill, if we goam take yo cah. Vootie-oh-oh." He holds out his hand for the keys.

"f.u.c.k it," says Bill. "Who needs this noise." He hands Jack the keys, and before you know it, Neal's at the wheel of the two-ton black Buick, gunning that straight-eight mill and burping the clutch. Jack's at his side, and they're on the road with a long honk good-bye.

In the night there's reefer and plush seats and the radio, and Neal is past s.p.a.ced, off in his private land that few but Jack and Alan can see. He whips the destination on Jack.

"This car is a front-row seat to the A-blast."

"What."

"We'll ball this jack to White Sands, New Mexico, dear Jack, right on time for the bomb test Sunday 8 A.M. I stole some of Bill's M, man, we'll light up on it."

In Houston they stop and get gas and wine and benny and Bull Durham cigarette papers and keep flying west.

Sometime in the night, Jack starts to fade in and out of horror dreams. There's a lot of overtime detox dream-work that he's logged off of too long. One time he's dreaming he's driving to an atom-bomb test in a stolen car, which is of course true, and then after that he's dreaming he's the dead mythic character in black and white that he's always planned to be. Not to mention the dreams of graves and Memere and the endless blood sausages pulled out of Jack's gullet by some boffable blonde's sinister boyfriend ...

". . . been oh rock and roll gospeled in on the bomb foolishness ..." Neal is going when Jack screams and falls off the backseat he's stretched out on. There's hard wood and metal on the floor. "... and Jack, you do understand, bucka-roo, that I have hornswoggled you into yet another new and unprecedentedly harebrained swing across the dairy fat of her jane's spreadness?"

"Go," goes Jack feebly, feeling around on the backseat floor. Short metal barrel, lightly oiled.

Big flat disk of a magazine. f.u.c.kin' crazy Burroughs. It's a Thompson submachine gun Jack's lying on.

"And, ah Jack, man, I knew you'd know past the suicidal norm, Norm, that it was . . .

DeVoutie!" Neal fishes a Bakelite ocarina out of his shirt pocket and tootles a thin, horrible note.

"Goof on this, Jack, I just shot M, and now I'm so high I can drive with my eyes closed."

Giggling Leda Atomica tugs at the shoulders of her low-cut peasant blouse with the darling pet.i.t-point floral embroidery, trying to conceal the vertiginous depths of her cleavage, down which Doctor Miracle is attempting to pour flat champagne. What a ride this juicy brunette is having!

Leda had been toking roadside Albuquerque monoxide till 11:55 this Sat.u.r.day night, thumb outstretched and skirt hiked up to midthigh, one high-heel foot perched on a little baby blue hand case with nylons and bra straps trailing from its crack. Earlier that day she'd parted ways with her employer, an Oakie named Gather. Leda'd been working at Gather's juke joint as a waitress and as a performer. Gather had put her in this like act wherein she strutted on the bar in high heels while a trained swan untied the strings of her atom-girl costume, a cute leatherette two- piece with conical silver lame t.i.t cups and black shorts patterned in intersecting friendly-atom ellipses. Sometimes the swan bit Leda, which really p.i.s.sed her off. Sat.u.r.day afternoon the swan had escaped from his pen, wandered out onto the road, and been mashed by a semi full of hogs.

"That was the only bird like that in Arizona," yelled Gather. "Why dintcha latch the pen?"

"Maybe people would start payin' to watch you lick my b.u.t.t," said Leda evenly. "It's about all you're good for, limp-d.i.c.k."

Et cetera.

Afternoon and early evening traffic was spa.r.s.e. The drivers that did pa.s.s were all upstanding family men in sensible Plymouths, honest salesmen too tame for the tasty trouble Leda's bod suggested.

Standing there at the roadside, Leda almost gave up hope. But then, just before midnight, the gloom parted and here came some kind of barrel-a.s.sing Necco-Wafer-colored Caddy!

When the radars. .h.i.t Leda's b.o.o.bs and returned their echoes to the control mechanism, the cybernetic brain nearly had an aneurysm. Not trusting Lernmore's promises, von Neumann had hard-wired the radars for just such a tramp-girl eventuality, coding hitchhiking Jane Russell T&A parameters into the electronic brain's very circuits. The Caddy's headlights started blinking like zfettah in a sandstorm, concealed sirens went off, and Roman candles mounted on the rear b.u.mper discharged, shooting rainbow fountains of glory into the night.

"SKIRT ALERT!" whooped Doctor Miracle and Little Richard.

Before Leda knew what was happening, the cybernetic Caddy had braked at her exact spot.

The rear door opened, Leda and her case were s.n.a.t.c.hed on in, and the car roared off, the wind of its pa.s.sage scattering the tumbleweeds.

Leda knew she was hooked up with some queer fellas as soon as she noticed the empty driver's seat.

She wasn't rea.s.sured by their habit of reciting backward all the signs they pa.s.sed.

"Pots!"

"Egrem!"

"Sag!" But soon Leda takes a shine to Doctor Miracle and Little Richard. Their personalities grow on her in direct proportion to the amount of bubbly she downs. By the time they hit Truth or Consequences, N.M., they're scattin' to the cool sounds of Wagner's Nibelungenlied on the long-distance radio, and Johnny is trying to baptize her t.i.ts.

"Dleiy!" croons Doctor Miracle.

"Daeha thgil ciffart!" goes Lernmore, all weaseled in on Leda's other side.

"Kcuf em won syob!" says Leda, who's gone seven dry weeks without the straight-on loving these scientists are so clearly ready to provide.

So they pull into the next tourist cabins and get naked and find out what factorial three really means. I mean ... do they get it on or what? Those stag-film stars Candy Barr and Smart Alec have got nothing on Leda, d.i.c.kie, and Doctor Miracle! Oh baby!

And then it's near dawn and they have breakfast at a greasy spoon, and then they're on Route 85 south. Johnny's got the brain programmed to drive them right to the 7:57 A.M. White Sands s.p.a.ce-time coordinate; he's got the program tweaked down to the point where the Cad will actually cruise past ground zero and nestle itself behind the observation bunker, leaving them ample time to run inside and join the other top bomb boys.

Right before the turnoff to the White Sands road, von Neumann decides that things are getting dull.

"d.i.c.kie, activate the jacks!"

"Yowsah!"

Lernmore leans over the front seat and flips a switch that's breadboarded into the dash. The car starts to buck and rear like a wild bronco, its front and tail alternately rising and plunging. It's another goof of the wondercaddy-von Neumann has built B-52 landing gear in over the car's axles.

As the Caddy porpoises down the highway, its three occupants are laughing and falling all over each other, playing grab-a.s.s, champagne spilling from an open bottle.

Suddenly, without warning, an ooga-ooga Klaxon starts to blare.

"Collision imminent," shouts von Neumann.

"Hold onto your tush!" advises Lernmore.

"Be careful," screams Leda and wriggles to the floor.

Lernmore manages to get a swift glimpse of a night black Buick driving down the two-lane road's exact center, heading straight toward them. No one is visible in the car.

Then the road disappears, leaving only blue sky to fill the windshield. There is a tremendous screech and roar of ripping metal, and the Caddy shudders slowly to a stop.

When Lernmore and von Neumann peer out of their rear window, they see the Buick stopped back there. It is missing its entire roof, which lies crumpled in the road behind it.

For all Neal's bragging, M's not something he's totally used to. He has to stop and puke a couple of times in El Paso, early early with the sky going white. There's no sympathy from Jack, 'cause Jack picked up yet another bottle of sweet wine outside San Antone, and now he's definitely pa.s.sed. Neal has the machine gun up in the front seat with him; he knows he ought to put it in the trunk in case the cops ever pull them over, but the dapperness of the weapon is more than Neal can resist. He's hoping to get out in the desert with it and blow away some cacti.

North of Las Cruces the sun is almost up, and Neal is getting a bad disconnected feeling; he figures it's the morphine wearing off and decides to fix again. He gets a Syrette out of the Buick's glove compartment and skin-pops it. Five more miles and the rosy flush is on him; he feels better than he's felt all night. The flat empty dawn highway is a gray triangle that's driving the car. Neal gets the idea he's a speck of paint on a perspective painting; he decides it would be cool to drive lying down. He lies down sideways on the driver's seat, and when he sees that it works, he grins and closes his eyes.

The crash tears open the dreams of Jack and Neal like some horrible fat man's can opener attacking oily smoked sardines. They wake up in a world that's horribly different.

Jack's sluggish and stays in the car, but Neal is out on the road doing dance incantation trying to avoid death that he feels so thick in the air. The Thompson submachine gun is in his hand, and he is, solely for the rhythm, you understand, firing it and raking the landscape, especially his own betraying Buick, though making sure the fatal lead is only in the lower parts, e.g. tires as opposed to sleepy Jack backseat or gas tank, and, more than that, he's trying to keep himself from laying a steel-jacketed; flat horizontal line of lead across the hapless marshmallow white faces of the rich boys in the Cadillac. They have a low number government license plate. Neal feels like Cagney in White Heat, possessed by total crazed rage against authority, ready for a mad-dog last-stand showdown that can culminate only in a fireball of glorious f.u.c.k-you-copper destruction. But there's only two of them here to kill. Not enough to go to the chair for. Not yet, no matter how bad the M comedown feels. Neal shoots lead arches over them until the gun goes to empty clicks.

Slowly, black Jack opens the holey Buick door, feeling G.o.d it's so horrible to be alive. He blows chunks on the meaningless asphalt. The two strange men in the Cadillac give off the scent of anti-life evil, a taint buried deep in the bone marrow, like strontium 90 in mother's milk. Bent down wiping his mouth and stealing an outlaw look at them, Jack flashes that these new guys have picked up their heavy death-aura from a.s.sociation with the very earth-frying, retina-blasting all-bomb that he and Neal are being ineluctably drawn to by cosmic forces that Jack can see, as a matter of fact, ziggy lines sketched out against the sky as clear as any peyote mandala.

"Everyone hates me but Jesus," says Neal, walking over to the Cadillac, spinning the empty Thompson around his callused thumb. "Everyone is Jesus but me."

"In," says Lernmore, "I'm sorry we wrecked your car."

Leda rises "up from the floor between von Neumann's legs, a fact not lost on Neal.

"We're on our way to the bomb test," croaks Jack, lurching over.

"Ve helped invent the bomb," says von Neumann. "Ve're rich and important men. Of course ve vill pay reparations and additionally offer you a ride to the test, ezpecially since you didn't kill us."

The Cadillac is obediently idling in park, it's robot-brain having retracted the jacks and gone into standby mode after the oil-pan-sc.r.a.ping collision. Neal mimes a wide-mouthed b.l.o.w. .j.o.b of the hot tip of the Thompson, flashes Leda an easy smile, slings the gun out into the desert, and then he and shuddery Jack clamber into the Cad's front seat. Leda, with her trademark practicality, climbs into the front seat with them and gives them a bottle of champagne. She's got the feeling these two brawny drifters can take her faster farther than science can.

Von Neumann flicks the RESET cyberswitch in the rear seat control panel, and the Cad rockets forward, pressing them all back into the deep cushioned seats. Neal fiddles with the steering wheel, fishtailing the Cad this way and that, then observes, "Seems like this tough short's got a mind of its own."

"Zis car's brobably as smart as you are," von Neumann can't help observing. Neal lets it slide: 7:49. The Cad makes a hard squealing right turn onto the White Sands access road. There's a checkpoint farther on; but the soldiers recognize von Neumann's wheels and wave them right on through.

Neal fires up a last reefer and begins beating out a rhythm on the dash with his hands, grooving to the pulse of the planet, his planet awaiting its savior. Smoke trickles out of his mouth; he shotguns Leda, breathing the smoke into her mouth, wearing the glazed eyes of a mundane gnostic messiah, hip to a revelation of the righteous road to salvation. Jack's plugged in, too, sucking his last champagne, telepathy-rapping with Neal. It's almost time, and Doctor Miracle and Little Richard are too confused to stop it.

A tower rears on the horizon off to the left, and all at once the smart Cad veers off the empty two lane road and rams its way through a chain-link fence. Nerve-shattering sc.r.a.ping and lumbering thumps.

"Blease step on za gas a bit," says von Neumann, unsurprised. He programmed this shortcut in. "I still vant to go under za tower, but is only three minutes remaining. Za program is undercompensating for our unfortunate lost time." It is indeed 7:57.

Neal drapes himself over the wheel now, stone committed to this last holy folly. Feeling a wave of serene, yet exultant resignation, Jack says, "Go." It's almost all over now, he thinks, the endless roving and raging, brawling and f.u.c.king, the mad flights back and forth across and up and down the continent, the urge to get it all down on paper, every last feeling and vision in master-sketch detail, because we're all gonna die one day, man, all of us - The Caddy, its sides raked of paint by the torn fence, hurtles on like G.o.d's own thunderbolt messenger, over pebbles and weeds, across the desert and the sloping gla.s.s craters of past tests.

The tower is ahead: 7:58.

"Get ready, Uncle Sam," whispers Neal. "We're coming to cut your b.a.l.l.s off. Hold the boys down, Jack."

Jack body-rolls over the seat back into the laps of Lemmore and von Neumann. Can't have those mad scientists fiddle with the controls while Neal's pulling his cool automotive move!

Leda still thinks she's on a joyride and cozies up to Neal's biceps, and for a second it's just the way it's supposed to be, handsome hard-rapping Neal at the wheel of big old bomb with a luscious brunette squeezed up against him like gum.

And now, before the guys in back can do much of anything, Neal's clipped through the tower's southern leg. As the tower starts to collapse, Neal, flying utterly on extrasensory instincts, slows just enough to pick up the bomb, which has been jarred prematurely off its release hook.

No Fat Boy, this gadget represents the ultimate to date in miniaturization: it's only about as big as a fifty-gallon oil drum, and about as weighty. It crunches down onto the Caddy's roof, bulging bent metal in just far enough to brush the heads of the riders.

And no, it doesn't go off. Not yet: 7:59.

Neal aims the mighty Cad at the squat concrete bunker half a mile off. This is an important test, the last step before the H-bomb, and all the key a.s.sholes are in there, every atomic brain in the free world, not to mention dignitaries and politicians aplenty, all come to witness this proof of American military superiority, all those s.h.i.t-nasty f.u.c.kheads ready to kill the future.

King Neal floors it and does a cowboy yodel, Jack is laughing and elbowing the scientists, Leda's screaming luridly, d.i.c.kie is talking too fast to understand, and Johnny. They impact the bunker at eighty mph, folding up accordian-style, but not feeling it, as the mushroom blooms, and the atoms of them and the a.s.sembled bigwigs commingle in the quantum instability of the reaction event. Time forks.

Somewhere, somewhen, there now exists an Earth where there are no nuclear a.r.s.enals, where nations do not waste their substance on missiles and bombs, where no one wakes up thinking each morning might be the world's last-an Earth where two high, gone wigged cats wailed and grooved and ate up the road and Holy Goofed the world off its course.

For you and me.

No Spot of Ground

WALTER JON WILLIAMS.