The Talisman not only ran like a dream, it seemed to know its own way back to Storrow Drive and the turnpike north. Every now and then the turnblinkers went on by themselves. When this happened, Ace simply made the next turn. In no time at all the creepy little Cambridge slum where he had found the Tucker was behind him, and the shape of the Tobin Bridge, more familiarly known as the Mystic River Bridge, was looming in front of him,-a black gantry against the darkening sky.
Ace pulled the light-switch, and a sharply defined fan of radiance at once sprang out before him. When he turned the wheel, the fan of light turned with it. That center headlight was a hell of a rig. No wonder they drove the poor bastard who thought this car up out of business, Ace thought.
He was about thirty miles north of Boston when he noticed the needle of the fuel gauge was sitting on the peg beyond E. He pulled off at the nearest exit and cruised Mr. Gaunt's ride to a stop at the pumps of a Mobile station which stood at the ramp's foot. The pump jockey pushed his cap back on his head with one greasy thumb and walked around the car admiringly. "Nice car!" he said. "Where'd you get it?"
Without thinking, Ace said, "The Plains of Leng. Yog-Sothoth Vintage Motors."
"Huh?"
"Just fill it up, son-this isn't Twenty Questions."
"Oh!" the pump jockeysaid, taking a second look at Ace and becoming obsequious at once. "Sure! You bet!"
And he tried, but the pump clicked off after running just fourteen cents into the tank. The pump jockey tried to squeeze more in by running the pump manually, but the gas only slopped out, running down the Talisman's gleaming yellow flank and dripping onto the tarmac.
"I guess it doesn't need gas," the jockeysaid timidly.
"Guess not."
"Maybe your fuel gauge is bust-"
"Wipe that gas off the side of my car. You want the paint to blister? What's the matter with you?"
The kid sprang to do it, and Ace went into the bathroom to help his nose a little. When he came out, the pump jockey was standing at a respectful distance from the Talisman, twisting his rag nervously in both hands.
He's scared, Ace thought. Scared of what? Me?
No; the kid in the Mobile coverall barely glanced in Ace's direction. It was the Tucker that kept drawing his gaze.
He tried to touch it, Ace thought.
The revelation-and that was what it was, exactly what it wasbrought a grim little smile to the corners of his mouth.
He tried to touch it and something happened. What it was don't really matter. It taught him that he can look but he better not touch, and that's all that does matter.
"Won't be no charge," the pump 'ockeysaid.
"You got that right." Ace slid behind the wheel and got rolling in a hurry. He had a brand-new idea about the Talisman. In a way it was a scary idea, but in another way it was a really great idea. He thought that maybe the gas gauge always read empty... and that the tank was always full.
7
The toll-gates for passenger cars in New Hampshire are the automated kind; you throw a buck's worth of change (No Pennies Please) into the basket, the red light turns green, and you go. Except when Ace rolled the Tucker Talisman up to the basket jutting out from the post, the light turned green on its own and the little sign shone out:
TOLL PAID, THANK U.
"Betcha fur," Ace muttered, and drove on toward Maine.
By the time he left Portland behind, he had the Talisman cruising along at just over eighty miles an hour, and there was plenty left under the hood. just past the Falmouth exit, he topped a rise and saw a State Police cruiser lurking beside the highway. The distinctive torpedo-shape of a radar gun jutted from the driver's window.
Uh-oh, Ace thought. He got me. Dead-bang. Jesus Christ, why was I speeding anyway, with all the shit I'm carrying?
But he knew why, and it wasn't the coke he had snorted. Maybe on another occasion, but not this time. It was the Talisman. It wanted to go fast. He would look at the speedometer, ease his foot off the go-pedal a little... and five minutes later he would realize he had it three quarters of the way to the floor again.
He waited for the cruiser to come alive in a blaze of pulsing blue lights and rip out after him, but it didn't happen. Ace blipped past at eighty, and the State Bear never made a move.
Hell, he must have been cooping.
But Ace knew better. When you saw a radar gun poking out of the window, you knew the guy inside was wide awake and hot to trot. No, what had happened was this: the State cop hadn't been able to see the Talisman. It sounded crazy, but it felt exactly right.
The big yellow car with its three headlights screaming out of the front was invisible to both high-tech hardware and the cops that used it.
Grinning, Ace walked Mr. Gaunt's Tucker Talisman up to a hundred and ten. He arrived back in The Rock at quarter past eight, with almost four hours to spare.
8
Mr. Gaunt emerged from his shop and stood beneath the canopy to watch Ace baby the Talisman into one of the three slant parking spaces in front of Needful Things.
"You made good time, Ace."
"Yeah. This is some car."
"Bet your fur," Mr. Gaunt said. He ran a hand along the Tucker's smoothly sloping front deck. "One of a kind. You have brought my merchandise, I take it?"