“Jeezis!” the guard grunted disgustedly. “Read ’em and find out.”
When Paul finished shaving, Jim stood up, stretched, then bounded off the platform and picked up his bicycle.
“Where do I go from here?” Paul called.
The man gave him a contemptuous snort, mounted the bike, and pedalled leisurely away.
Paul gathered that he was to read the rules.
He sat down beside the rain barrel and began studying the mimeographed leaflet.
Everything was cut and dried.
As a probie, he was confined to an area six blocks square near the heart of the city.
Once he entered it, a blue mark would be stamped on his forehead.
At the two-week inspection, the indelible brand would be removed with a special solution.
If a branded probie were caught outside his area, he would be forcibly escorted from the city.
He was warned against attempting to impersonate permanent personnel, because a system of codes and passwords would ensnare him.
One full page of the leaflet was devoted to propaganda.
Houston was to become a “Bulwark of health in a stricken world, and the leader of a glorious recovery.”
The paper was signed by Dr. Georgelle, who had given himself the title of Director.
The pamphlet left Paul with a vague uneasiness.
The uniforms—they reminded him of neighborhood boys’ gangs in the slums, wearing special sweaters and uttering secret passwords, whipping intruders and amputating the tails of stray cats in darkened garages.
And, in another way, it made him think of frustrated little people, gathering at night in brown shirts around a bonfire to sing the Horst Wessel Leid and listen to grandiose oratory about glorious destinies.
Their stray cats had been an unfavored race.
Of course, the dermies were not merely harmless alley prowlers.
They were a real menace.
And maybe Georgelle’s methods were the only ones effective.
While Paul sat with the pamphlet on the platform, he had been gazing absently at the stalled truck from which the men had emerged.
Suddenly it broke upon his consciousness that it was a diesel.
He bounded off the platform, and went to check its fuel tank, which had been left uncapped.
He knew that it was useless to search for gasoline, but diesel fuel was another matter.
The exodus had drained all existing supplies of high octane fuel for the escaping motorcade, but the evacuation had been too hasty and too fear-crazed to worry with out-of-the-ordinary methods.
He sniffed tank.
It smelled faintly of gasoline.
Some unknowing fugitive had evidently filled it with ordinary fuel, which had later evaporated.
But if the cylinders had not been damaged by the trial, the truck might be useful.
He checked the engine briefly, and decided that it had not been tried at all.
The starting battery had been removed.
He walked across the street and looked back at the warehouse.
It bore the sign of a trucking firm.
He walked around the block, eyeing the streets cautiously for other patrolmen.
There was a fueling platform on the opposite side of the block.
A fresh splash of oil on the concrete told him that Georgelle’s crew was using the fuel for some purpose—possibly for heating or cooking.
He entered the building and found a repair shop, with several dismantled engines lying about.
There was a rack of batteries in the corner, but a screwdriver placed across the terminals brought only a weak spark.
The chargers, of course, drew power from the city’s electric service, which was dead.
After giving the problem some thought, Paul connected five of the batteries in series, then placed a sixth across the total voltage, so that it would collect the charge that the others lost.
Then he went to carry buckets of fuel from the pumps to the truck.
When the tank was filled, he hoisted each end of the truck with a roll-under jack and inflated the tires with a hand-pump.
It was a long and laborious job.
Twilight was gathering by the time he was ready to try it.
Several times during the afternoon, he had been forced to hide from cyclists who wandered past, lest they send him on to the probie area and use the truck for their own purposes.
Evidently they had long since decided that automotive transportation was a thing of the past.
A series of short whistle-blasts came to his ears just as he was climbing into the cab.
The signals were several blocks away, but some of the answering bleats were closer.