Nine princes in Amber by Roger Zelazny Page B

him, but he flipped the safety catch off and pointed.
    The guy turned around and started to run, a look of fear widening his eyes and loosening his jaw.
    Random raised the pistol and took careful aim at the man’s back, and I managed to knock his arm to the side just as he pulled the trigger.
    It scored the pavement and ricocheted away.
    Random turned toward me and his face was almost white.
    “You bloody fool!” he said. “That shot could have hit the tank!”
    “It could also have hit the guy you were aiming at.”
    “So who the hell cares? We’ll never pass this way again, in this generation. That bastard dared to insult a Prince of Amber! It was your honor I was thinking about.”
    “I can take care of my own honor,” I told him, and something cold and powerful suddenly gripped me and answered, “for he was mine to kill, not yours, had I chosen,” and a sense of outrage filled me.
    He bowed his head then, as the cab door slammed and the truck took off down the road.
    “I’m sorry, brother,” he said. “I did not mean to presume. But it offended me to hear one of them speak to you in such a manner. I know I should have waited to let you dispose of him as you saw fit, or at least have consulted with you.”
    “Well, whatever,” I told him, “let’s get back onto the road and get moving, if we can.”
    The rear wheels were sunken up to their hubcaps, and as I stared at them, trying to decide the best way to go about things, Random called out, “Okay, I’ve got the front bumper. You take the rear and we’ll carry it back to the road-and we’d better deposit it in the left lane.”
    He wasn’t kidding.
    He’d said something about lesser gravitation, but I didn’t feel that light. I knew I was strong, but I had my doubts about being able to raise the rear end of a Mercedes.
    But on the other hand, I had to try, since he seemed to expect it of me, and I couldn’t tip him off as to any gaps in my memory.
    So I stooped, squatted, grasped, and started to straighten my legs. With a sucking sound, the rear wheels freed themselves from the moist earth. I was holding my end of the car about two feet above the ground! It was heavy, damn! it was heavy!-but I could do it!
    With each step that I took, I sank about six inches into the ground. But I was carrying it. And Random was doing the same with his end.
    We set it down on the roadway, with a slight jouncing of springs. Then I took off my shoes and emptied them, cleaned them with swatches of grass, wrung out my socks, brushed off the cuffs of my trousers, threw my footgear into the rear seat and climbed back into the front, bare footed.
    Random jumped in, on the passenger’s side, and said, “Look, I want to apologize again-“
    “Forget it,” I said. “It’s over and done with.”
    “Yes, but I don’t want you to hold it against me.”
    “I won’t,” I told him. “Just curb your impetuosity in the future, when it involves life-taking in my presence.”
    “I will,” he promised.
    “Then let’s get rolling,” and we did.
    We moved through a canyon of rocks, then passed through a city which seemed to be made entirely of glass, or glass-like substance, of tall buildings, thin and fragile-appearing, and of people through whom the pink sun shone, revealing their internal organs and the remains of their last meals. They stared at us as we drove by. They mobbed the corners of their streets, but no one attempted to halt us or pass in front of us.
    “The Charles Forts of this place will doubtless quote this happening for many years,” said my brother.
    I nodded.
    Then there was no roadway whatsoever, and we were driving across what seemed an eternal sheet of silicon. After a while it narrowed and became our road, and after another while there were marshes to our left and our right, low, brown, and stinking. And I saw what I’d swear to be a Diplodocus raise its head and stare down upon us. Then, overhead, an enormous bat-winged shape passed by. The