Project Purple

55 - The Detective

Northward. Rigor had to hitchhike the rest of the way, because the truck slid off the road during the misunderstanding in the cab.

He had been traveling for two days in the back of the truck, freezing, even though he had the standard wear-the under things, the cap the scarf, the layers of mittens, the socks. Once he was over the border, somewhere around Omsk, it was time to reconsider the arrangement. Rigor didn't fully appreciate how strong the driver was, but he had it coming, in a way, and he just wondered how long he had before another new police agency began looking for him.

He got closer on a lumber truck that took him past Novosibirsk, hauling big fat larch logs for timber production. The branches and needles, the bark, had already been stripped off. And it was a lot warmer than the previous truck, though he still had to devise creative exercises to keep his hands and feet warm. He slept back there, too; the guy never seemed to eat, and he only stopped when his own spare tanks of diesel had dried up.

Thumbing, hiking, he got nearer. Somehow, he knew it was calling him. Rigor was being swept northeastward. It was inevitable now like the flow of a river, impossible to stop. It was probably forty below, and when he sucked in the air he thought of her, and that would quicken his heart rate.

Then a truck stopped for him, an old Landrover with quilted fabric wrapped around the hood. There were three people huddled in the front for warmth, and the back was all his.

All three of them, two men and a woman in the middle, spoke English well. "The cold splits the tires if it reaches minus seventy six," the driver said.

"I thought Russia was colder," Rigor replied.

They were pussies. Rigor was the only mountain man in the car. The windows were double paned to prevent frost build up, and there was an extra heater between the driver's seat and the passenger's seat.

"What is it now?"

But the driver waved his hand like they weren't even close. The road was icy and dark, but the driver had no worries. Rigor looked out the window sometimes at the bottom of the cliffs they traversed, and he could see little tombstones.

"Those are the careless drivers," the other guy said of the vehicles that had slid off the mountain curves.

"I know," Rigor answered, because he did. There was a dead man somewhere around Omsk confirming it. And the people in front grinned, as if they had just approved of something.

"The ferocity, it's in your spirit, isn't it? It's the American way," the woman, a good-looking young Eurasian gal, said, "What do Americans really know about their founding fathers? - From their childhoods they receive propaganda, that their revolution was a glorious event, some great blessing for America's future."

She was talking to the other two about Rigor. He didn't like that. He also didn't like that he was starting to get a taste of the political dimensions of the journey he was on.

"Most of the founding fathers of your America, they considered democracy a dangerous extreme to be avoided at all costs."

Rigor didn't know that, and he didn't really care. He just knew that they were going in the right direction. They were getting him closer. They were, of course, allowing him to get nearer, but he did not mind that. He would even let them talk, if they chose to.

"George Washington didn't really chop down a cherry tree," Rigor offered the conversation.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal-meant something else entirely."

Rigor shrugged, "Alexander Hamilton had a gay lover."

She looked back at him, and her eyes sparkled. Like she knew. Like she was there at that whorehouse called Angela's, and that was all she cared to know about him, which didn't amount to much.

"What if you had followed something closer to the Canadian path of peaceful, gradual evolution?" the driver asked, "Why does independence have to be all or nothing? What if you ran away from home and joined the circus at fifteen?"

"I would've overcome my fear of heights."

"You'd grow up with a different perception of the world-That's my point."

Rigor looked out the window. They were winding through more endless icy mountains, and he could see where they had come from below-the southern vista. His earlier levels were there, in the ice, and the steel, and the light. Everything was levels, but there were multiplicities - there were levels but there was no hierarchy, with no vertical or linear connections...

Yes, he was getting that. Maybe it was better to think of these damned levels as some kind of mishmash of rice terraces, all built at insane angles. And he was happy that this new knowledge was dawning, because it would get him closer to her-Of that he was dead certain.

"So we pulled away from the tit a little early and it stunted our development," Rigor said, "I get it."

"Do you?" she turned to him again. "This patriotism - it's a psychological condition that has damaged you."

All he heard outside the vehicle was the spanking of the chains on the ice, and he felt his strength growing; strength he would need soon. Because he would get all his answers soon.

"Do you really consider yourselves an indispensible nation?"

She really wanted to know. Rigor just looked out the window and tried to whistle, but gave up, realizing how idiotic it must have looked to her trying to whistle in this temperature when your lips are in real danger of freezing.

"I don't mean to insult you, I also find the idea rather exotic, your confident idealism. But don't you feel you may have an exalted sense of your own importance in the world?"

"That's our spirit." Rigor could see the searchlights now. They were close.

She nodded; again, he had confirmed something for her.

They finally arrived, slowing down, because of the traffic; and everyone was going to the same place, to the lights coming from the dazzling structure on the hill that was lit up like some gladiatorial dome.

"You will not be harmed here," the man said.

Rigor nodded, still absorbed in the dazzling spectacle of what they were creeping toward. That was good news to hear, though-The guy probably knew a great deal more than Rigor did.

"Good luck, Detective," she said, "for after."

Rigor wasn't surprised they knew him. They knew everything. It was like they had given him this new strength. After all, no one was killing-They were culling.

Rigor was their Spartacus.