The Deadlier Weapon

Larry Niven

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The Deadlier Weapon

He was standing just off Overland Drive, at the mouth of the on-ramp to the Santa Monica Freeway, eastbound. He waited with an air of ready confidence, and his thumbsmanship seemed practiced. His placement was perfect. A few yards further up the ramp, and no car could have stopped for him without being hit by the car behind. A few yards closer, and no driver would have known which route he wanted: the freeway, or the street going past the ramp.

That was what caught my attention: the perfect placement, not too far, not too near. A traveler, for sure. I dropped my arm out the window to signal, hit the brakes, and pulled up an easy foot and a half beyond him.

He was running before the car stopped. I pulled the lock knob and he threw the door open and was in, grinning, wasting no time. Good again. Nobody waits for a lazy hitchhiker; you trot or you don't ride. As soon as he was in I swung between two cars and headed up the ramp, accelerating.

The traffic wasn't bad, not at three in the afternoon. Still, when you enter a freeway you concentrate on the traffic. Everything else gets ignored. I hardly knew what my passenger looked like; I'd seen only a poised silhouette with its thumb raised against the afternoon sky. But I gave him points again. He didn't speak until I was firmly settled in the middle-right lane and could afford to relax a little.

I don't pick up riders often. When I do, I follow the whim of the moment. The ones who look chatty when I want peace and quiet, and the ones who look glum or taciturn when I'm after conversation-- these get left standing. I like the unusual ones, the ones who seem to have a kind of salesmanship.

Six months ago there'd been a college girl on Wilshire, carrying a bright red Christmas package almost as big as she was. She was homesick for Kansas. She'd told me what freezing rains are like, when water falls from the sky at night and freezes where it hits, so that in the morning all the trees and bushes are tinkling crystal, crackling in the wind. That would be something to see. But I expect I never will.

Once there'd been a Negro on the freeway, carrying a gas can and smoking. As soon as he was in the car he'd tipped the ash off his cigarette into the gas can. "Okay," I'd said, to prove I was alert. "So you didn't run out of gas. Where you heading?"

"San Francisco," he'd told me. He'd started in Louisiana.

There was the guy who did run out of gas, stranded on the left of the freeway with his wife and four kids. "Oh, the kids are no trouble on a trip," he'd told me. "We know how to keep them interested. We play a game. The first kid to spot an Edsel gets a double ice-cream cone, immediately."

"Must make for frequent stops."

"How long since you last saw an Edsel?"

Right. I'd never seen two in the same day.

The hitchhiker said, "Thanks for the lift."

Traffic was fast and easy, the cars evenly spaced. I risked a look to the side.

He was young, somewhere in his mid-twenties. His nose was a touch too large and a touch too pointed, and his brown hair a touch too long. Gray plastic sunglasses, dark blue windbreaker over a white shirt, serviceable gray slacks. Shoes which looked rugged enough but which were not hiking shoes. He'd shaved recently. Despite the long hair, he looked too neat to have been on the road long. Perhaps he was just starting a trip.

"That's okay," I said. "You've used that thumb a lot, haven't you?"

"That's true." I heard a click then, but it didn't register until later. His voice was college educated, with a little too much tenor.

"How far you going this time?"

"Just far enough."

An odd answer. I glanced over at him and found the point of a knife just touching my larynx. "Watch the road," he said.

I turned back. Now I remembered the click. The knife was a switchblade with a six-inch blade, not very clean, but sharp, with the marks of a whetstone along the edge. I'd caught all of that in one glance.

"Neither of us is going to get hurt," the man with the knife said soothingly. He held the point at the side of my neck, just touching. "When you get the chance, you're going to pull over to the side, and I'm going to take your watch and the money in your wallet. Nothing else. I'll leave the wallet. I don't want your credit cards."

The lane to my left was clear. "Imagine how relieved I must be to hear it," I said, and eased over.

My passenger pushed gently with the knife point. "Wrong direction," he told me. "You want to go right."

I shifted into the far left lane, a little too fast. The knife point was an itch over my carotid artery. My hands wanted to scratch it, and I had to fight to keep them on the wheel. "You've done this before," I said, keeping my voice light.

"What makes you think so?"

"Your wording seems too practiced. On the one hand, the knife. On the other, you've told me just what you'll take, and you'll leave me the rest. The other cars will be going too fast to notice us, right?"

"That's right." He'd kept his voice soft and slow while making his pitch, but now an edge crept in. "This isn't rush hour. Even if someone notices something, he'll be a mile past us before he decides to stop and do something about it. Now--" He put on a touch more pressure, and the itch became a burn. "Move over."

"Don't do that," I said. At the increase in pressure I'd turned to look him full in the face. He set his jaw and held the stare, and the knife was still at my throat. Except for that, and one other thing, it would have been a comic scene: two grown men trying to outstare each other.

"Watch the road," he said, not soothingly. And then, "I said watch the road. Dammit, watch the damn road!"

Suddenly he turned and braced himself against the padded dash with both hands. I looked forward, hit the brake and swerved. A navy blue Riviera missed us by a foot and dropped behind, weaving, the driver shouting soundlessly and leaning on his horn.

"Keep that knife out of my neck," I said. Some of the itch remained, and I reached up to scratch it. For my trouble I got a sharp stab of pain, and a film of blood on my fingertips. "And you can tell me something else. How do I know you won't kill me before you take my wallet?"

"Cooperate and you won't get hurt."

"Why not?"

He lost patience. With a smooth, quick motion, too fast for me to grab at his arm even if I wanted to, he had the knife tip at my neck. "Now pull over. Yeee!" He jerked back as if he'd touched something red hot.

Because I'd been less quick, but I didn't have as far to move. At the touch of the knife I'd yanked the wheel sixty degrees left and instantly back again. I pulled the car out of the emergency lane at the left of the freeway, fighting the drag of the gravel.

"Don't do that," I told him.

"What's with you?"

"Just in a bad mood, I guess."

He was backed up against the right front door of the Cadillac. He held the knife at ready, as if he were the defender and I the attacker. He licked his lips and asked, "Do you always drive this way when you're in a bad mood?"

"I've never been in this bad a mood before." I was trying to sound neither frightened nor belligerent. My smile must have looked peculiar, twisted, as if I'd put it on wrong.

"Look, all I want is your--"

"Shut up."

"You can keep your watch."

"Imagine my gratitude. Now will you shut up? You've got nothing to do with this."

"I--" He couldn't speak; he was half strangling on his own indignation. And I saw the overpass ahead, and I came alert, more than alert.

I'd passed here before, ignoring the scenery. Now I peered forward to get details. Some major highway crossed the freeway here. The overpass rose gently up a landscaped slope, leaped across eight lanes of empty space, and dropped as gently back. Halfway across the gap, between the eastbound and westbound lanes, were massive concrete pillars. Ramps curved out to join freeway with highway, and there were green signs to tell what turnoff this was, if I'd cared.

"What's wrong?" my passenger said edgily, and I realized how rigidly I was sitting and how hard I was gripping the wheel. I didn't relax. "See that bridge?"

"Sure."

"Okay."

"What about it?"

"Nothing." I wasn't even trying to smile now.

"All I want is some cash," the hitchhiker explained patiently. "You pull over to the side and stop, and--"

"And you cut my throat and take the car too. The cops get nothing but a missing-person report."

"No, no, no. Honest. All I want--"

"I don't care what you want."

"What do you want? Do you want to live?" Amazing, how his voice had lost those soothing overtones.

I didn't answer. The overpass was closer.

The hitchhiker clamped his lips together, nerving himself to something. Suddenly, snakelike, he reached with the knife. I jerked the wheel, and he pulled back against the door. The wheel damn near jerked out of my hands as we hit gravel. To make it worse, the freeway was curving right. I fought us around, and the bridge was almost on us.

There were no cars near me. Maybe they didn't like the way I drove.

Still the freeway curved right, gently as always. I didn't curve with it. I had the accelerator on the floor, and we went faster and faster, the hitchhiker and the Cadillac and me, edging over onto the gravel. Up ahead, the gravel safety lane ended, and there was the concrete supporting pillar of the bridge, with two red-faceted reflectors shining in the mid afternoon sunlight.

I aimed the car right at the reflectors.

My passenger seemed frozen. Only his head moved, swiveling to look at the supporting pillar and then back to my face and then to the pillar and back to me. The pillar was coming up like a cream-colored wall. I was terrified. I made no attempt to hide it. Considering the way the wheel was jumping, trying to pull across the gravel and into the divider fence before we could reach the bridge support, I must have looked like a man wrestling an alligator. There was sweat in my eyes, and at the last moment I whipped the edge of my right hand across my forehead and back to the wheel. Now my hand was dripping wet.

The concrete came at me.

I whipped the wheel hard over, putting my whole body into it. The car slewed, tried to move sideways, tried to roll over. We were going to hit sideways, through the fragile guard rail and into the supporting pillar. Then, with utmost reluctance, the car moved skidding to the right. Suddenly the concrete was behind us. My passenger made a high, whimpering sound.

"Hesitation marks," I gasped. I couldn't get enough air. Reality was a blur. Was I about to faint? I certainly didn't want to faint.

"You're crazy. Crazy!"

I fumbled for a cigarette and managed to get it to my mouth. "There's always hesitation marks. A man shoots himself in the head, you find holes in the wall where he jerked the gun away the first four times. If he cuts his throat you find three or four slashes where he didn't cut deep enough." I was gasping out the words, fighting for air. I had to have air.

"You're out of your mind."

"The thing is, if I have to die, I might as well pick the way I want to go. Right?"

"What are you talking about?"

"I was going to marry a girl."

"Congratulations." If my passenger was trying for sarcasm, it didn't come through. He only sounded scared. He sat facing straight toward me, with one leg on the seat and his back hard up against the door, watching.

"Thanks. Thanks a whole hell of a lot. Only she decided I wasn't her type. She-- she tried to tell me we'd both known it all along. We'd just been fooling ourselves, she said. Liar."

"They do that," said my passenger.

"Everybody does that. You know how my dad told me he and Mom were getting divorced?" My cigarette was still in my mouth, unlit. I reached and stabbed at the car lighter. "I was fifteen. They called me into the living room and--"

"I don't care what your father told you when you were fifteen!"

"I do. My dad walked a few times around the room and then finally he said, 'I suppose you know your mother and I are separated.' Liar. They'd kept it from me because they thought it might interfere with my finals at school."

All I saw of him, I saw with the corner of my eye. But I saw him start to say something, stop, close his eyes tight to think.

The lighter popped out.

He blurted, "You're crazy! You can't kill yourself just because some bitch gives you the shaft!"

I pulled the lighter out and reached across the seat to touch it to the tip of his nose. He never moved to stop me. He couldn't believe what I was doing, not until he actually felt the heat. Then he screamed and threw his arms over his face. He missed grabbing my arm because I'd already pulled it back and was lighting my cigarette.

"She's not a bitch," I told him. "And if she was, you wouldn't be the one to say it. Keep your dirty mouth off her."

"Let me off," said the hitchhiker. He'd forgotten he had the knife. He'd tried it before and it hadn't worked.

"Why should I?"

"I never tried to kill you. It's not fair."

"Who said anything about fair?" My grin felt natural now. After all, we were even. The blood on my neck matched the burn on his nose.

"Look, you don't want to kill yourself. You don't want to die. You're just kidding yourself. Just wait. Just wait until tomorrow. You'll feel different, really you will. I've felt like that myself, I really have but it always went away, sometimes it lasted for days but it always--"

"It's too late."

"It's not too late! You're still alive!"

"This isn't my car."

"What?"

"Do I look like a Cadillac driver?"

Eyes see what they're trained to see, what they expect to see. A polo shirt is just a T-shirt with a collar, except for the material. Pants are pants, except to the guy who wears them. He knows if they bind, or if they're too loose, or if they're tailored to fit just right. If the seat looks shiny, then they're too old, but how can you tell when he's sitting down?

"You stole it," he said.

I bobbed my head a couple of times, jerkily.

"Let me out."

"I don't want to get knifed."

"Please."

"Fasten your seat belt."

"Why?" But he knew. He knew.

"We're going to have an accident."

"Let me out first. Look, I-- will you please look?" I found I was strangling the wheel again. Because up ahead was where the freeway became a bowl of concrete noodles. I'd driven this route before. Here in downtown Los Angeles was where the Santa Monica Freeway led into the Harbor, Santa Ana, and San Bernardino Freeways. The ramps led up and over and around and under each other, and most of the time there was nothing but empty space to left and right. Speeding cars and empty space, separated by fragile metal rails and common sense.

My passenger knew it too. He was swiveling his head, toward the road, toward me, toward the road, toward me. Then he snapped out of it. He yelled, "Will you look at me?"

I looked, and he twitched, because now I wasn't watching the road. He was holding the knife out the window, holding it with two fingers around the tip of the handle. He let it drop, ostentatiously, and I saw it bounce once in the mirror. "I dropped the knife," he said. "You saw it. Now let me out."

I nodded. I braked and swung to the left. The car lurched and jerked and tried to pull free and slowed and stopped, not too far from where there wouldn't have been gravel to stop on. Cars whizzed past, and the wind of their passing sounded like blows against the side of the Cadillac.

"Not here! I'll be killed!"

I touched the accelerator and the car jumped forward. He was out and around the side and behind the trunk in one smooth, lithe motion, and if there'd been a car coming it would have hit him. I touched the accelerator again to get beyond him, then reached across to slam the door he'd left open.

At the next gap in the traffic I was off, accelerating hard to keep from being hit from behind. The last I saw of the hitchhiker, he was hunched over the guard rail, actually using it for support, not looking at the four lanes of traffic he'd have to pass alive.

I edged to the right across four lanes of hurtling cars, being careful. I saw no point in getting killed now. I took the next turnoff, slowing, feeling my hands begin to shake. My cigarette was still going, and I dragged on it, practically breathing through it. Amazingly, it was mostly unburned. I turned in at the first gas station I saw, stopped alongside the pumps, and rested my head on the wheel. I rubbed my forehead against the smooth surface, harder and harder, because the sensation told me I was still alive.

"What can we do for you? I said-- hey, mister, are you all right?"

"I'm fine. Where's a telephone?"

"Over there." They were in plain sight. I couldn't have missed them if I'd bothered to look first.

"Good. Fill it up. I've got to call the police."

I had trouble getting the coin in the slot.

"About his height," I told the desk sergeant. "Five eleven, say. You wouldn't call him skinny, but he's not fat. Brown hair, a little too long, parted on the left. Long, thin face. By the time you get to him he should have a great big blister on the end of his nose."

"Why?"

"At one point I touched him there with a cigarette lighter."

"You did!" Ha! I'd surprised him. At first he'd sounded like someone who could never be surprised by anything. "Go on, Mr. Ruch."

"He's wearing dark glasses, a dark blue windbreaker, gray slacks. I left him stranded on the wrong side of the eastbound lane, just west of the Olympic turnoff."

"We'll find him, Mr. Ruch. Can you come down to the station and give us a signed statement?" He told me how to get there.

"Okay, fine, but will you give me an hour and a half? I need a drink."

"I can believe that. No hurry, Mr. Ruch. But we do need that statement."

One fast drink stopped my shakes, at least on the outside. I thought I could trust my voice now, so I called Carla in Garden Grove. "I've had some car trouble, honey. Nothing expensive, but I won't be home for dinner. Tell Stan and Eva I'm sorry, and I'll be in around eight if I'm lucky."

"Oh, that's a shame. What kind of trouble?"

"Tell you later."

"You have to get up early tomorrow, remember? Rehearsal."

"No problem. I'll be home in plenty of time."

By the time I got home I'd know how to tell Carla the truth in a way that wouldn't scare the pants off her.

Two drinks and I began to giggle, thinking about the blister on the end of the hitchhiker's nose, thinking about the hopeful look on his face when he dropped the knife out the window, how he had to make so damn sure I was watching him. Giggles was too much of a good thing, so I had a sandwich and a glass of milk to drown the second drink.

I could legitimately tell Carla that the hitchhiker had never had a chance. It would reassure her, and it was true. I'd been better armed from the beginrung. He'd had nothing but a knife. I had had a car. Much deadlier.

I reached the station half an hour late. They'd changed desk men. I was explaining why I was there when they brought in the hitchhiker.

He wasn't struggling. He seemed completely exhausted. He actually had trouble walking. But his head came up when he saw me. The tip of his nose was a small white bubble surrounded by angry red flesh.

"So you didn't have the guts!" he snarled. "You chickened out! You yellow-bellied--" He paused to think up an adequately insulting noun, ignoring the police officer who jerked warningly at his arm.

"I couldn't go through with it," I admitted, and looked sheepishly down at the toes of my shoes. Why tell him? He had enough troubles.

****

The preceding story was not autobiographical. I daydreamed it while driving the Santa Monica Freeway.

The guy who asked me that question tells me that he was once threatened by a hitchhiker with a knife... and that a friend of his tells the same story. Neither of the two tried that fancy suicide approach. They explained to their assailants that if they didn't see total surrender damn quick, they were going to obliterate the right side of the car against a tree at sixty mph. The left side of the car would have to take its chances.

It worked for them. I hope I won't ever have to try that approach myself.