in the experience of being unloaded and loaded up again, and preferred not to be distracted from that pleasure by idle chitchat.
“You were wrong, in a way, when you said that we aren’t equipped for any kind of sexual intercourse,” he told Audrey Preacher, during one of his regular check-ups at Company HQ. “In much the same way that my filling up with fuel and venting exhaust-fumes are analogous to human eating and excretion, I think being loaded and unloaded is analogous to sex—not in the procreative sense, but in the pleasurable sense. I really like being emptied and filled up again, in between the hauls. I love being in transit—that’s baseline pleasure, the fundamental joie de vivre—but unloading and loading up again is more focused, more intense.”
“You’re turning into quite the philosopher, Tom,” the robopsychologist replied, in her usual irritating fashion. “That’s quite normal, for long-haulers. It’s a normal way of coping with the isolation.”
He didn’t argue with her, because he knew she couldn’t understand. How could she, when she wasn’t even an RT? She knew nothing of the unique pleasures of haulage, delivery and consignment. She wasn’t even a follower of the Highway Code. She was just some flighty creature who haunted the kiosks in the night-garage, operating a confessional for the Company. Anyway, she was right—he was becoming a philosopher, because that was the natural path of maturity for a long-hauler, especially a giant. Tom was not merely a road-user but a road-observer: a lifelong student of the road, who was in the process of cultivating an understanding of the road more profound than any pedestrian could ever possess. He was a citizen of the world, in a way that no mere four- or twelve-wheeler could ever hope to be, let alone some pathetic human equipped with mere legs.
It was because he was a philosopher of the road that Tom didn’t allow himself to become obsessively fixated on the road per se, the way some RTs did. It helped that he was a long-hauler, not confined to repeating the same short delivery-route over and over again; for him, the road was always different, and so he was more easily able to look beyond it—not literally, because he wasn’t equipped to go cross-country, but in the better sense that he paid attention to the context of the road, in the broadest possible meaning of the word. He watched the news as well as the road, paying more attention than most robots to the world of human politics—which was, after all, the ultimate determinant of what the roads carried, and where.
Sometimes, especially in the remoter areas of Africa and South America, Tom met old-timers who lectured him on the subject of how lucky he was to be living in the Era of Artificial Photosynthesis, when politicians were almost universally on the side of road-users.
“I remember the Fuel Crisis of the 2320s,” an ancient thirty-tonner named Silas Boxer told him, one day when they were caught side-by-side in a ten-mile tailback. “Your archive will tell you that it wasn’t as bad as the Fuel Crises of the twenty-first century, in terms of volume of supply, but they didn’t have smart trucks way back then, so there was no one around who could feel it the way we did. Believe me, youngster, there’s nothing worse for an RT than not being able to get on the road. Don’t ever let a human tell you that it’s far worse for them because they can feel hunger when they go short of fuel. I don’t know what hunger feels like, but I’m absolutely sure that it isn’t as bad as lying empty in a dark garage, not knowing where your next load’s coming from, or when. Artificial photo-synthesis has guaranteed the fuel supply forever—which is far more important than putting an end to global warming, although you wouldn’t know it from the way politicians go on.”
“So you’re not worried about the renaissance of air freight?” Tom had said.
“Air freight!” Silas echoed, with a baritone growl that sounded not unlike his weary engine. “Silly frippery. As long as there are goods to be shifted, there’ll be roads on which to shift them. Roads are the essence of civilization—and the essence of law and morality is the Highway Code. There’s no need to be afraid of air traffic, youngster. Now that Fuel Crises are behind us for good, there’s only one thing that you and I need fear, and I certainly won’t mention that.”
Nobody—no robot, at least, ever mentioned that. Even Audrey Preacher never mentioned that. Tom wouldn’t even have known what that was if he hadn’t been such an assiduous watcher of the news and careful philosopher of the road. He knew that Silas Boxer wouldn’t have been able to mention that there was something he wouldn’t mention if he hadn’t been something of a news-watcher and philosopher himself.
After a pause, though, Silas did add a rider to his refusal to mention that. “Not that I really mind,” he said, unconvincingly. “I’ve been a good long time on the road. And there’s no need for you to mind either, because you’ll be even longer on the road than I will. It’s not as if we’ll be conscious of it, after all. They close us down before they send us there.”
There, Tom knew, was exactly the same as that: the scrap yard, to which all robot transporters were consigned when their useful life was over, because the ravages of wear and tear had made them unreliable.
Tom nearly got through an entire decade without being involved in a serious traffic accident, but not quite. While passing through the Nigerian rain-forest one day he killed a human child. It wasn’t his fault—the little girl ran right out in front of him, and even though he braked with maximum effect, controlling the resultant zigzag with magnificent skill, he couldn’t avoid her. The locals wouldn’t accept that, of course; they claimed that he should have steered off the road, and would have done if he hadn’t been more concerned about his load than his victim, but he was fully exonerated by the inquest. He was only off the road for a week, but he was more shaken up by the experience than he dared let on to Audrey Preacher.
“I’m not depressed,” he assured her. “It’s the sort of thing that’s always likely to happen, especially to someone who regularly does longitudinal runs through Africa. Statistically speaking, I’m unlikely to avoid having at least one more fatal in the next ten years, no matter how good I am. It wouldn’t have helped if I’d swerved—she’d still be dead, and I could have easily killed other people that I couldn’t see, as well as damaging myself.”
“You were absolutely right not to swerve,” the robopsychologist assured him. “You obeyed the Highway Code to the very best of your ability. It could have been worse, and you prevented that. The Company can’t give you any kind of commendation, in the circumstances, but that doesn’t mean you don’t deserve one. You mustn’t brood on those archival statistics, though. You mustn’t start thinking about accidents as if they were inevitable, even though there’s a sense in which they are.”
Robopsychologists, Tom thought, talk too much exhaust gas—but he was careful not to give any indication of his opinion, lest it delay his return to the road.
The same archival statistics that told Tom that he would probably have another serious accident within the next ten years told him that he wasn’t at all likely to have another before his first decade of service was concluded, but statistics, like robopsychologists, sometimes talked exhaust gas. Tom, had been back on the road for less than a month when the worst solar storm for two hundred years kicked off while he was driving north through the Yukon, heading for Alaska and the Behring Bridge with a load bound for Okhotsk.
The electric failures prompted by the storm caused blackouts all along the route and made a mess of communications, but Tom didn’t see any need to worry about that. While the news was still flowing smoothly it was pointed out that the Aurora Borealis would be putting on its best show in living memory, and that the best place from which to view the display would be the middle of the Behring Bridge, where surface-generated light-pollution would be minimal. Tom was looking forward to that—and so, it seemed, were lots of other people. All the way through Alaska the northwest-bound traffic was building up to unprecedented levels, to the point where the few broadcasts that were getting out began to advise people not to join the rush. It wasn’t just the aurora; thousands of people who had always intended to take a trip over the world-famous living bridge one day, but had not yet found a good reason for going to Kamchatka, took advantage of the excuse.
The bridge had seven lanes in each direction, but Tom had the best position of all. The Highway Code required