The Crossroads

As soon as he got to the top of the boulder-strewn hill, it became dark and he could not find any trees. As soon as he walked around the cliff on the white road and found the graves there he abandoned that section. He was just about to explore the metal road when something was seen to be moving along it. Eben went back to his wagon and waited.

It was the strangest kind of a vehicle he had ever seen for it had no wheels. It was just a big, gleaming box which scudded along the surface without a sound. There was something frightening about it.

When it came abreast of the wagon it stopped and a section of it clanked outward. A thing which was possibly a man, leaned out, staring at Eben. Its head was nearly as big as its body and it had two antennae waving above its brow as well as its huge, pupilless eyes.

“Musta escaped from some carnival,” muttered Eben to himself.

“ERTADU BITSY NUSTERD HUABWD UDF IUWUS KSUBA NADR,” said the driver.

“Reckon you must be some furriner,” said Eben. “I don’t understand you.”

 

“RTFD HRGA BJBKUT BTSFRD KTYFTY?” said the driver.

 

“Can’t you talk English?” said Eben curiously.

 

The driver got out. His spindly legs did not lift him to a height in excess of Eben’s shirt pocket. He began to rummage around inside the cab of the wheelless vehicle and finally produced some tubes and coils which he assembled rapidly into some sort of instrument. This he plugged into a hole in the side of the vehicle and then aimed a sort of megaphone at Eben.

 

“RTDR UTDF BJYSTS JIRFTC GYTFCV HUBJYT?” said the driver.

 

“That’s a funny-looking outfit you got there,” said Eben. “But shucks, I seen a lot of radios that was better. The thing don’t even play.”

 

The driver twiddled the dials while Eben spoke and then, much mystified, left off. “BRSD TYRT RTFDAY!”

 

“Don’t do no good,” said Eben. “I can’t understand a word of it.”

 

On that the driver beamed. He tuned one dial sharply. “Then you speak elementary English,” said the phone.

 

“Of course I do. And if you do too, why didn’t you do so in the first place?”

 

“I think you will not be insulted if I do. But usually, you know, it is considered vulgar to talk plain English. Tell me, can’t you really encipher?”

 

“Don’t reckon I ever caught myself doing it,” said Eben, amused.

 

The driver walked around Eben, examining him. “In our language schools, you know,” said the phone, “we encipher and decipher as we speak. It is grammatically correct. But you seem to be from some very distant land where plain English is still spoken. It must be a very dull place.”

 

“I reckon we get along,” said Eben. “What you got in that thing, there?”

 

“The truck? Oh, some junk. I was taking it down to the city dump. What have you got in that thing?”

 

“Well,” said Eben, “I got some brandy and I got some vegetables but they’re both pretty valuable.”

 

“Brandy? Vegetables? I don’t know those two words.”

 

Eben chuckled to himself. And this feller was accusing him of being ignorant! “Well, I’ll show you.”

 

He gave the fellow an apple and the driver immediately pulled a small lens of a peculiar color from his pocket and looked it all over.

 

“It’s to eat,” said Eben.

 

“Eat?” blinked the driver, antennae waving in alarm.

 

“Sure,” said Eben.

 

More anxiously than before the driver remade his examination. “Well, there’s no poison in it,” he said doubtfully. And then he bit it with his puny teeth and presently smiled. “Why, that is very good indeed! RTDA HRTA—”

 

“Now don’t start that again,” said Eben.

 

“It’s excellent,” said the driver. “Do you have many of these?”

 

“They’re pretty rare,” said Eben.

 

“What is that in the jars?”

 

Eben gave him a drink of the brandy and again the driver beamed.

 

“How this warms one! It’s marvelous! Could I buy some from you?” And he took out a card which had holes punched in it.

 

“What’s this?” said Eben.

 

“That’s a labor card, of course. It shows my value. Of course as the driver of a waste wagon I don’t earn very much, only forty labor units a week, but it should be sufficient—”

 

“What kind of junk have you got in that wagon?”

 

“What does that have to do with my buying some of this?” said the driver.

 

“Mebbe we can cook up a trade,” said Eben.