Bugs by John Sladek Read Free Book Online Page B

another along with things like this as they waited, nervous, sweating, for their baggage.
    And waited.
    Someone on the plane had warned them that there was a strike of Customs officers, and the baggage-handlers were out in sympathy; the full planeload of passengers stood waiting by a roundabout where one purple suitcase revolved alone for an hour. The airport was full of male and female officials in uniforms. Though the uniforms varied, all of these hard-faced people wore revolvers, and some carried truncheons. One such official searched their bags thoroughly. He pounced on a can of talcum in Susan’s luggage, prised it open and tasted it. When he had replaced it, spilling powder on Susan’s clothing, he murmured something.
    ‘Sorry?’ she said. ‘I didn’t catch that.’
    ‘I said, welcome to Amurrica, folks.’
    The man’s accent was so thickly New York that the word ‘folks’ sounded faintly obscene. Folks? Fred wondered if the regional barriers of the American language were breaking down. New Yorkers were supposed to call everyone ‘mac’ and ‘lady’. Everyone knew the only people who should be allowed to say ‘folks’ were cowpokes sipping coffee by their smoking camp-fires. Howdy, folks. Pull up a brandin’ am and set a spell. Latigo and Durango are jist a-roundin’ up some strays, then we’ll mosey own into town …
    No time for moseying own, however, for now everything was speeding up: moving as if to big-city music, they followed the crowd outdoors into kiln heat. Susan – in the New York spirit already – began to mutter curses as they looked for a cab. The air was suffocating, and oddly irritating to the throat.
    A short man wearing a vivid red and pink golf cap was waving his hairy arms at them. He wore a short-sleeved shirt, probably to show off the thickly pelted arms, which really were remarkable. ‘Cab, right dis way. You got bags,’ he said. He unlocked the boot of a battered yellow cab and lifted the lid with a flourish of arm hair. Fred started to hand over the bags, but the man made no move to take them. ‘In dere,’ he said, pointing. ‘Let’s move it, Jack.’
    Susan did not suffer in total silence.
    ‘Just tell me what we are doing in this bloody place,’ she whispered, as they got into the battered cab. ‘Look at these bloody signs.’
    Fred read the hostile notices:
    VINCE GOLIARDI THANKS YOU FOR NOT SMOKING
NEW YORK • IT OR LEAVE IT
NO CHECKS OR PLASTIC
TAKE YOUR GARBAGE WITH YOU
LEAVE THIS CAB THE WAY YOU’D LIKE TO FIND IT
IF YOU DON’T TELL ME HOW TO GET THERE, I WON’T TELL YOU
WHERE TO GO
    ‘You’ll feel better when we get settled.’
    ‘What?’ The taxi-driver craned around to join the conversation. ‘Oh, I thought you was talkin’ to me.’ The cab jerked into motion, and immediately swung into a traffic jam. The jam continued all the way into Manhattan, where the streets were full of bomb craters; they jolted and jerked their way into the city. Fred noticed that the driver chewed gum to protect his teeth from jolting.
    ‘English, huh?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘My wife is crazy about the English, you know? She always watches “Masterpiece Theater”. She says the English are real civilized; she keeps tellin’ me how civilized the English are. I always say, yeah, too bad their country’s fallin’ apart, ha, ha! No offence.’ He turned around to look at them, letting the cab steer itself. It jolted along, the wheel whipsawing as it hit more craters.
    Fred felt obliged to respond quickly. ‘No, not at all,’ smiling. Susan clutched his arm.
    ‘I mean, a country run by a queen …’ The driver reeled out a litany of real and imaginary reasons for hating the English, now and then protesting that he had nothing against them. Then he would turn to see how they were taking it. Atevery traffic light, the driver adjusted his vivid hat, flexing the chimpanzee arms.
    They jolted past a corner where a group of police cars had drawn up, their blue and red lights