They crossed a section of the roadway planted with poppies, the vivid but sinister flowers extending in front of them for three hundred yards. The bumper of the truck scythed through the flowers, and a dense cloud of petals billowed into the air, staining the sky like a miniature sunset. Halloway turned and made a second run through the poppies, almost standing at the wheel as they hurtled through the whirling petals.
As they approached the centre of the city Halloway drove around the side-streets, hunting out any other of these floral tracts planted here in the broken asphalt by some aberrant gardener. Soon millions of leaves were drifting through the coloured air. There were white streets where they found daisies, yellow avenues filled with a mist of crushed buttercups, blue boulevards which wept a rain of forget-me-nots.
Then, as they emerged from a storm of daffodil petals, Halloway nearly collided into a large industrial tractor moving along the roadway in front of him. Pulling to a halt behind its high rear assembly, he flung Olds on to the dashboard. Halloway switched off the engine, and watched this massive tracked vehicle lumbering slowly through the haze of petals. A hydraulic ram was mounted in front of the motor, fitted with an immense claw that now held a single automobile, carried in the air fifteen feet from the ground.
In the control cabin a dark-haired man in a black plastic jacket emblazoned with silver studs was operating the steering levers. His face was barely visible through the whirling petals, and he seemed unaware of the truck stalled behind him. However, when Halloway restarted his engine, intending to overtake the tractor, the driver swung his claw to the right, blocking Halloway with the swinging automobile. Looking up at the man’s handsome face, with its hard mouth like a piece of gristle, Halloway was certain that it was this driver, and this terrifying machine, which had destroyed the garment store mannequins the previous day.
Halloway began to reverse the truck down the street, but Olds held his arm warningly.
Follow him. Stillman needs to be given his own way.
As Halloway moved forward, following the tractor, Olds sat back. He had switched off the calculator, and seemed to have forgotten their exhilarating race through the flowers, his mind moving elsewhere, bored by the prospect of whatever was to come.
They emerged into ai open square, set in the heart of one of the oldest sections of the city, an area of theatres, bars and cheap hotels. Rising from the centre of the square was the largest of the eccentric memorials to Twentieth-Century technology that Halloway had seen so far. At first glance it resembled a gothic cathedral, built entirely from rusting iron, glass and chromium. As they crossed the square, following the tractor, Halloway realized that this structure was built entirely from the bodies of automobiles. Stacked one upon the other, they formed a palisade of towers that rose two hundred feet into the air.
A group of heavy cranes and a buttress of scaffolding marked out the working face, overlooked by an observation platform reached by a simple elevator. Standing at the rail, and waiting for the tractor to carry its latest contribution to the memorial, was a small, pugnacious man of advanced age. Although well into his eighties, he was dressed like a physical education instructor in immaculate white sweater and well-creased trousers. Inspecting Halloway’s glider with a critical eye, he picked up an electric megaphone and began to call out instructions in a high voice to the driver of the tractor.
Olds was gazing up at the monument of cars, shaking his head as if ruefully aware that he and this odd old man were in the same business. He switched on the calculator.
I’ll wait for you here. You’re about to meet Mr Buckmaster. Viceroy, czar, and warden of this island.
Halloway waited as the driver climbed down from his cab. Deliberately taking his time, he sauntered over to Halloway, pointing to his red, white and blue sneakers, yellow trousers and shirt covered with petals.
‘The Rainbow Kid — you come down from the sky and have yourself a time…’
Although twice Halloway’s age, with slicked-back hair and a pale skin that would always appear dirty, he had a lazy, youthful aura, as if a large section of his life had passed in his absence and he himself had never aged beyond his twenties. For all his sarcastic manner, he seemed watchful and ready to ingratiate himself at a moment’s notice. With his self-directed aggression and stylized swagger he was a type Halloway had never known at Garden City, but which all his reading confirmed was a classic specimen of metropolitan man.
‘Take the elevator,’ he told Halloway. ‘Mr Buckmaster has been waiting to meet you. He’ll want to induct you into his workforce.’
‘This monument — and the others? He built them all?’
