Suddenly the three lizards whipped about, peering into the darkness, their bodies straining against or toward something invisible.

“What is it?” Tibor said; again he clutched at the pistol concealed on his person.

“Bugs,” Potter said laconically.

“The dumb bastards,” Jackson said.

Bugs, Tibor thought. How horrible. He had heard of them many tunes, them and their multifaceted eyes, their gleaming shells—a weird conglomeration of unhuman parts. And to think that they bred their way out of mammals, he thought, and in such a few short years. Speeded up frantically by the radiation. We’re related to them and they stink. They offend the world. And surely they offend God.

“What are you doing there?” a metallic voice buzzed. Tibor saw them moving, upright; they lurched toward the.light. “Lizzys,” the bug said scathingly. “And—Frebis forbid!—an inc.”

Five bugs stood by the light now, warming their—Christ, Tibor thought. Warming their brittle bodies; if a bug was hit directly in the breadbasket, it broke in half. So much for bugs: they depended mainly on their facile tongues to get them what they wanted. Bugs talked their way out of a good deal of trouble; they were the lie-spinners of Earth.

These were unarmed. As near as he could make out. And, standing by his cart, the three lizards relaxed; their fear had departed.

“Hey, bug,” Jackson said, nodding toward one of the chitin-shelled creatures. “How come you have lungs? Where’d you get them? Vermin shouldn’t have lungs. It’s against nature.”

Potter said, “We ought to cook us up a little bug soup.”

Incredulous, Tibor said, “You mean you eat them?”

“Right,” the third lizard said, his arms folded, leaning against Tiber’s cart. “When times are tough… they taste awful.”

“You rotting obnoxious freak,” one bug said. They did not seem frightened; they made no move in the direction of escape.

“Does your tail come off?” another bug said to the three lizards.

“What tail?” another bug said. “That’s its pecker hanging down behind it. Lizards’ peckers stick out behind, not in front.”

The bugs laughed coarsely.

“I saw this lizard once,” a bug declared, “who had an erection—and he got scared off, I guess her husband came back, and he tried to run, and all the husband had to do was tromp down with his foot on that great hard pecker sticking out behind.” All the bugs laughed; they seemed to be enjoying themselves.

“What happened after he tromped down on it?” a bug asked. “Did it come off then?”

“It came off,” the other bug continued, “and it lay there twitching and flopping in the dirt until sundown.”

Potter said, “Let’s take these insects down a peg or two. Listen to them—they’re uppity.” He glanced around him, apparently seeking something to use as a weapon. He took his tune and the bugs did not move; they seemed relaxed and confident.

And now Tibor saw why. The bugs had not ventured out alone. A score of runners had accompanied them.

This was not his first encounter with runners. Back in Charlottesville, runners came and went unmolested. Wherever runners could be found, a kind of peace prevailed, an idiomatic tranquility, engendered by the benign habits of the runners themselves.

The good-natured little faces peered up at Tibor. The creatures were not over four feet high. Fat and round, covered with thick pelts… beady eyes, quivering noses—and great kangaroo legs.

Amazing, these swift evolutionary entelechies, cast forth from what were essentially poisons. So many and so fast; so many immediate kinds. Nature, striving to overcome the filth of the war: the toxins.

“Clearness be with you,” the runners said, virtually in unison. Their whiskers twitched. “How come you don’t have any arms or legs? You’re very strange as a life-form.”

“The war,” Tibor said vaguely, resenting the pushiness of the runners.

“Did you know your cart is malfunctioning?” the runners asked.

“No,” he said, taken by surprise. “Doesn’t it run? It got me this far; I mean—” Panic flew up inside him.

“There is an autofac near here that still works a little,” the largest of the runners said. “It can’t do very much—not like it could in olden tunes. But it could probably replace the wheel bearings in your cart that are running dry. And the cost is not all that great.”

“Oh yes,” Tiber said. “The wheel bearings. They probably are running dry.” He lifted one wheel off the ground and spun it noisily. “You’re right,” he admitted. “Where’s the autofac?”

“A few miles north of here,” the smallest of the runners said. “Follow me.” The other runners scampered into a group that eased itself off. “Or rather,” the runner amended, “follow us. Hey, are you guys coming along, too?”

“Sure,” the body of runners said, whiskers twitching. They obviously did not want to miss out on any of the action.

To Potter and Jackson, Tibor said, “Can I trust them?” He held in his mind, at this moment, a nebulous fear: Suppose the runners led him off to some desolate region, then killed him and stole his cart? It seemed a distinct possibility, the times being what they were.

Potter said, “You can trust them. They’re harmless. Which is more than you can say for these damn bugs.” He kicked at a cluster of bugs; they scuttled away, avoiding his scaly foot.

“An autofac, an autofac,” the runners chanted happily as they raced off. Tibor cautiously followed. “We’re going to the autofac and get the limbless man a cheap repair. It’s guaranteed for a thousand years or a million miles; whichever comes first.” Giggling to themselves, the runners disappeared for a moment, then reappeared, beckoning Tibor genially on.

“Catch you coming back,” Jackson yelled after Tibor. “Make sure you get a written guarantee, just to be safe.”

“You mean,” Tibor said, “that I can expect tarrididdle from an autofac?” It must be a Russian one, he thought. The Russian autofacs were Byzantine in their convolutions of intellect. They seemed for the most part to be excellently built, however. If this one still functioned at all, it could undoubtedly repair his dry-running wheel bearings.

He wondered how much it would charge.

They reached the autofac at dawn. Brilliantly colored clouds, like the fingerpaintings of a baby, stretched across the sky. Birds or quasi-birds chirped in the weedy bushes growing on all sides of the runners’ fire-path.

“It’s around here somewhere,” Earl, the leader of the runners, said as he halted; his name, stitched in red thread on the bosom of his worksuit, declared itself to Tibor. “Wait; let me think.” He pondered at length.

“How about a bite to eat?” a runner asked Earl.

“We can get something from the autofac,” Earl said, nodding his shaggy head wisely. “Come on, inc.” He jerked an abrupt arm motion at Tibor. During the night, the click-clacking of the dry wheel bearings had become hideously loud; the assembly would not function much longer. “We make a right turn here,” Earl said, advancing toward a yarrow thicket, “then a sharp left.” Only his tail could be seen as he struggled into the stiff brush of the thicket. “Here’s the entrance!” he called presently, and waved Tibor to follow him.

“Will it cost very much?” Tibor said apprehensively.

“Won’t cost,” Earl said, thrashing about in the shrubbery a short distance ahead of Tibor. “Nobody comes this way anymore; it’s perishing. It’ll be glad to see us. These things, they have emotions, too. Of sorts.”

An opening appeared ahead of Tibor as he floundered about in his unwieldy cart. A weedless place, as free of grass as if it had been shaved. In the center of the open place he could make out a flat, large disc, evidently metal; clamped shut, it greeted him soundlessly, confronting him with its meaningful presence. Yes, he thought, it’s a Russian autofac that landed here in seed form from an orbiting satellite. Probably in the last days of the war, during which the enemy tried everything.