Latest / 3 Weird Science Fiction Stories by Fritz Leiber / X-Marks the Pedwalk

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X-Marks the Pedwalk · 3 Weird Science Fiction Stories by Fritz Leiber

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  Speaker 1: Story number two of three science fiction stories by Fritz Leiber.
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  Speaker 1: This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. X Marks
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  Speaker 1: the Pedwalk. This story was published in April nineteen sixty
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  Speaker 1: three in Worlds of Tomorrow. X Marks the Pedwalk based
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  Speaker 1: in material in chapter seven, First Clashes of the Wheeled
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  Speaker 1: and Footed Sex, a Volume three of Burger's monumental History
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  Speaker 1: of Traffic published by the Foundation for twenty second Century Studies.
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  Speaker 1: The raggedy, little old lady with the big shopping bag
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  Speaker 1: was in the exact center of the crosswalk when she
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  Speaker 1: became aware of the big black car bearing down on her.
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  Speaker 1: Behind the thick bulletproof glass. Its seven occupants had a
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  Speaker 1: misty look like men in a diving bell. She saw
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  Speaker 1: there was no longer time to beat the car to
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  Speaker 1: either curb. Veerying remorselessly, it would catch her in the gutter.
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  Speaker 1: Useless to attempt to faint and double back, such as
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  Speaker 1: any venturesome child executed a dozen times a day. Her
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  Speaker 1: reflexes were too slow. Polite, vacuous laughter came from the
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  Speaker 1: car's loudspeaker over the engine's mounting roar from her fellow
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  Speaker 1: pedestrians lining the curbs came a sigh of horror, the
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  Speaker 1: little old Lady dipped into her chopping bag and came
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  Speaker 1: up with a big blue back automatic. She held it
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  Speaker 1: in both fists, riding the recails like a rodeo cowboy
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  Speaker 1: on a bucking bronco, aiming at the base of the windshield,
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  Speaker 1: just as the big game hunter aims at the vulnerable
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  Speaker 1: spine of a charging water buffalo over the horny armor
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  Speaker 1: of his lowered head. The little old Lady squeezed off
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  Speaker 1: three shots before the car chewed her down from the
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  Speaker 1: right hand curb. A young woman in a wheelchair shrieked
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  Speaker 1: at obscenity at the car's occupants, smythe de Winter. The
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  Speaker 1: driver wasn't happy. The Little Old Lady's last shot had
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  Speaker 1: taken two members of his carpool, bursting through the laminade glass.
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  Speaker 1: The steel jacketed slug had traversed the neck of Phipps
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  Speaker 1: McKeith and buried itself in the skull of Harvindyl Harker,
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  Speaker 1: breaking viciously smite. The Winter rammed the car over the
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  Speaker 1: right hand curb. Pedestrians scattered into entries and narrow arcades,
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  Speaker 1: among them a youth bounding high on crutches, but smite
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  Speaker 1: the winter got the girl in the wheelchair. Then he
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  Speaker 1: drove rapidly out of the slum ring into the suburbs,
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  Speaker 1: a shred of ratan swinging from the flange of his
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  Speaker 1: right four bud guard for a trophy. Despite the two
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  Speaker 1: for two casualty lists, he felt angry and depressed. The secure,
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  Speaker 1: predictable world around him seemed to be crumbling, while his
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  Speaker 1: companions softly keened a dirge to Harvey and Phipps and
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  Speaker 1: quietly mopped up their blood. He frowned and shook his head.
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  Speaker 1: They oughtn't to let old ladies carry magnums, he murmured.
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  Speaker 1: Witherspoon Hobbs nodded agreement across the front seat corpse. They
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  Speaker 1: oughtn't to let them carry anything. God, how I hate feet,
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  Speaker 1: he muttered, looking down at his shrunken legs. Wheels forever
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  Speaker 1: he softly cheered. The incident had immediate repercussions throughout the city.
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  Speaker 1: At the combined wake of the little old lady and
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  Speaker 1: the girl in the wheelchair, a fiery tongue speaker inveighed
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  Speaker 1: against the white walled fascist the suburbia, telling to his
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  Speaker 1: hearers the fabled wonders of old Los Angeles, where pedestrians
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  Speaker 1: were sacro sanked even outside crosswalks. He called for a
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  Speaker 1: hobnail march across the nearest lawn bowling alleys, and perambulator
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  Speaker 1: traversed golf courses of the motorists. At the Sunnyside Crematorium,
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  Speaker 1: to which the bodies of Fips Sin Harvey had been conveyed,
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  Speaker 1: an equally impassioned and rather more grammatical orator reminded his
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  Speaker 1: listeners of the legendary justice of old Chicago, where pedestrians
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  Speaker 1: were forbidden to carry small arms, and anyone with one
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  Speaker 1: foot off the sidewalk was fair prey. He broadly hinted
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  Speaker 1: that a holocaust, primed if necessary, with a few tankfuls
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  Speaker 1: of gasoline, was the only cure for the slums. Bands
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  Speaker 1: of skinny youths came loping at dusk out of the
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  Speaker 1: slum ring into the innermost sections of the larger doughnut
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  Speaker 1: of the suburbs, slashing defenseless tires, shooting expensive watchdogs, and
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  Speaker 1: scrawling filthy words on the pristine panels of matrons runabouts
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  Speaker 1: which never ventured more than six blocks from home. Simultaneously,
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  Speaker 1: squadrons of young suburban motorcycles and scooterites roared through the
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  Speaker 1: outermost precincts of the slum, ring harrying children off sidewalks,
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  Speaker 1: tossing stink bombs through second and story tenement windows, and
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  Speaker 1: to face in hovel fronts with sprays of black paint.
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  Speaker 1: Incident a thrown brick, a cut corner, monster tacks in
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  Speaker 1: the portico of the auto club were even reported from
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  Speaker 1: the center of the city, traditionally neutral territory. The government
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  Speaker 1: harvidly acted, suspending all traffic between the center and the
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  Speaker 1: suburbs and establishing a twenty four hour curfew. In the
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  Speaker 1: slumbering government agents moved only by centipee car and pogo
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  Speaker 1: hopper to underline the point that they favored neither contending side.
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  Speaker 1: The day of enforced non movement for feet and wheels
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  Speaker 1: was spent in furtive, vengeful preparations behind locked garage doors.
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  Speaker 1: Machine guns that fired through the nose ornament were mounted
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  Speaker 1: under hoods illegal scythe blades were welded to oversize hubcaps,
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  Speaker 1: and the stainless steel edges of flange fenders were honed
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  Speaker 1: to razor sharpness. While nervous National guardsmen hopped about the
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  Speaker 1: deserted sidewalks of the slum Ring. Grimmed facemen and women
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  Speaker 1: wearing black armbands moved through the web work of secret
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  Speaker 1: tunnels and hidden doors, distributing heavy caliber small arms and
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  Speaker 1: spike studded paving blocks, piling cobblestones on strategic rooftops, and
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  Speaker 1: sapping upward from the secret tunnels to create car traps.
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  Speaker 1: Children got ready to soap intersections after dark, the Committee
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  Speaker 1: of Pedestrian Safety, sometimes known as robes pierres Rats, prepared
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  Speaker 1: to release its two carefully hoarded anti tank guns at nightfall.
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  Speaker 1: Under the tireless urging of the government. Representatives of the
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  Speaker 1: pedestrians and the motorists met on a huge safety island
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  Speaker 1: at the boundary of the slum Ring and the suburbs.
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  Speaker 1: Underlings began a noisy dispute as to whether Smith's de
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  Speaker 1: Winter had failed to give a courtesy hawk before charging,
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  Speaker 1: whether the little old lady had opened fire before the
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  Speaker 1: car had come within hawking discire how many wheels of
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  Speaker 1: smith Do's car had been on the sidewalk when he
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  Speaker 1: hit the girl in the wheelchair, and so on. After
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  Speaker 1: a little while, the high Pedestrian and chief motorists exchanged
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  Speaker 1: cautious winks and drew aside. The red writhing of one
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  Speaker 1: hundred kerosene flares and the mystic yellow pulsing of a
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  Speaker 1: thousand firefly lamps mounted on yellow sawhorses ranged around the
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  Speaker 1: safety island illuminated two tragic, strained faces. A word before
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  Speaker 1: we get down to business. The Chief Motorists whispered, what's
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  Speaker 1: the current sq of your adults? Forty one and dropping
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  Speaker 1: The high pedestrian replied, his eyes fearfully searching from side
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  Speaker 1: to side for evesdroppers. I can hardly get aids who
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  Speaker 1: are halfway. Compost mentis our own sanity. Quotion is thirty seven,
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  Speaker 1: the Chief Motorists revealed. He shrugged helplessly. The wheels inside
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  Speaker 1: my people's heads are slowing down. I do not they
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  Speaker 1: will be speeded up in my lifetime. They say, the
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  Speaker 1: government's only fifty two. The other said, with a matching shrug. Well,
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  Speaker 1: I suppose we must scrape out one more compromise, the
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  Speaker 1: one suggested hollowly, though I must confess there are times
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  Speaker 1: when I think we're all the figments of a paranoid's dream.
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  Speaker 1: Two hours of concentrated deliberations produced the new wheel foot
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  Speaker 1: articles of agreement. Among other points, pedestrian handguns were limited
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  Speaker 1: to a slightly lower muscle velocity and to thirty eight
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  Speaker 1: caliber and under, while motorists were required to give three
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  Speaker 1: honks at one block distance before charging a pedestrian in
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  Speaker 1: a crosswalk. Two wheels over the curb change a traffic
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  Speaker 1: kill from third degree manslaughter to petty homicide. Blind pedestrians
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  Speaker 1: were permitted to carry hand grenades. Immediately the government went
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  Speaker 1: to work. The new wheel foot articles were loud, speakered
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  Speaker 1: and posted detachments of police and psychiatric socials. Hoppers set
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  Speaker 1: pedaled and pogoed through the slumbering, seizing outside weapons and
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  Speaker 1: giving tranquilizing jet injections to the unruling. Teams of hypnotherapists
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  Speaker 1: and mechanics scuttled from home to home in the suburbs
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  Speaker 1: and from garage to garage, enchanting a conformist serenity and
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  Speaker 1: stripping illegal armaments from cars. On the advice of a
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  Speaker 1: rogue psychiatrist who said it with channel off aggressions. A
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  Speaker 1: display of bullfighting was announced, but this had to be
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  Speaker 1: canceled when a strong protest was lodged by the Decency League,
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  Speaker 1: which had a large mixed wheel foot membership. At dawn,
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  Speaker 1: curfew was lifted in the slumbering and traffic reopened between
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  Speaker 1: the suburbs and the center. After a few uneasy moments,
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  Speaker 1: it became apparent that the status quo had been restored.
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  Speaker 1: Smythe de Winter tooled his gleaming black machine along the ring.
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  Speaker 1: A fixed steel bolt with a large steel washer on
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  Speaker 1: either side neatly filled the hole a little old lady
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  Speaker 1: slug had made in the windshield. A brick bounced off
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  Speaker 1: the roof. Bullets pattered against the side windows. Smythe de
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  Speaker 1: Winter ran a handkerchief around his neck under his collar
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  Speaker 1: and smiled a blockhead. Children were darting into the street,
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  Speaker 1: cat calling and thumbing their noses behind. One of them
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  Speaker 1: limped a fat dog with a spiked collar. Smythe de
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  Speaker 1: Winter suddenly gunned his motor. He didn't hit any of
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  Speaker 1: the children, but he got the dog. A flashing light
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  Speaker 1: of the dash showed him the right front tire was
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  Speaker 1: losing pressure. Must have hit the collar as well. He
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  Speaker 1: thumbed the matching emergency air button and the flashing stopped.
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  Speaker 1: He turned toward Witherspoon Hobbs and said, with thoughtful satisfaction.
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  Speaker 1: I like a normal, orderly world where you could always
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  Speaker 1: have a little success, but not Champagne had he a
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  Speaker 1: little failure, but just enough to brace you. Witherspoon Hobbs
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  Speaker 1: was squinting at the next crosswalk. Its center was discolored
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  Speaker 1: by a brownish stain ribbon tracked by tires. That's where
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  Speaker 1: you bagged the little old ladies Smithter, he remarked, I'll
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  Speaker 1: say this for her now. She had spirit. Yes, that's
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  Speaker 1: where I bagged her. Smytheda agreed flatly. He remembered wistfully
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  Speaker 1: that the witch like face growing rapidly larger, her jerking
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  Speaker 1: shoulders in black bombasine, the wild white circled eyes. He
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  Speaker 1: suddenly found himself feeling that this was a very dull day.
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  Speaker 1: End of X marks the pedwalk