"Damn it, Red! Don't you know the seriousness of what you're doing?"
"Yep." "Admitted, nothing will happen to us if you can pull
it off. You will create another branch in the Road, though. Or another exit."
"What's wrong with that—really?"
"Who knows who might start traveling it from that point."
"A lot of weird fish travel it already. Tony. Look at us."
"But you're a devil we know. Everybody knows you. Why do you want that other goddamned branch anyway?"
"Because it was that way once before, but that sideroad is now blocked. I am trying to re-create a set of circumstances."
"I don't remember it."
"You're young. Tony."
"I don't understand you. Red. Come on, give me a hand with these weapons."
"Okay."
They began transferring the pieces.
"You know you have to stop this sort of thing."
"I know that watching for it is a part of your job, yes."
"But you don't give a damn. Supposing you were to open the route to some really rotten place, full of dangerous, vicious creatures with the ability to move along the Road? We'd all be in trouble then. Why not lay off this business?"
"I'm looking for something I haven't been able to find any other way."
"Mind telling me what?"
"Yes, I do. It's personal."
"You'd foul up the whole traffic pattern just for some selfish little whim?"
"Yep."
"Don't know why I asked. I've known you for about forty years. What's that come to for you?"
"Five or six years. Thirty, maybe. I don't know. You doing a lot of office work in between?"
"Too much."
"Probably where you got those notions about new branches."
"As a matter of fact, I did pick up a lot of the theory, and it is more complicated than you probably think."
"Hogwash! It was that way once, it can be that way again."
"Have it your way, but we won't have you messing around like this."
"People do it every day. Why else would they travel the Road? Everywhere they go, they alter the branches some way or other."
Tony's teeth clicked.
"I know, and that's frightening enough. This whole thing ought to be better controlled, check points set up—"
"But the Road has always been here, and those of us who can travel it always have. The world goes on, the Road goes on—from creation to destruction, amen, for all you know. What's your point?"
"I've known you for forty years—or thirty, or five or six. You haven't changed. I can't talk to you. —Okay. We can't control most of the traffic, we can't stop the minor changes. We can look out for big things, though, and we do. You're always involved with the big ones. I'm trying to be nice and let you go with another warning."
"That's all you can do, and you know it You can't prove where I was headed with this equipment. You can confiscate, you can lecture, you can make things rough for me for a while. But it won't last—and you know as well as I do that you are handing me another line. This isn't policy or guarding the peace or anything like that. You are harassing me, personally, for a particu, lar reason. Someone's down on me and I'd like to know
who, and why."
Tony reddened. His partner passed them with a carton of grenades.
"You're getting paranoid. Red," he finally said.
"Uh-uh. Care to give me a hint?" His eyes were fixed on the other's as he struck a match on an ammo box and relit his cigar. "Who could it be?"
Tony glanced at his partner, then, "Come on. Let's get the rest of this stuff loaded," he said.
It took another ten minutes to transfer the balance of the arms. When this had been done. Red was permitted to enter his truck.
"Okay. Consider yourself warned," Tony said.
Red nodded.
"... And be careful."
Red nodded again, more slowly.
"Thanks." He watched them mount their shining vehicle and
speed off.
"What was that all about?"
"He just did me a favor. Flowers. He came looking, to let me know we're in trouble."
"What kind?"