He felt it, the thing that was slowly dying in Anna's eyes. This need to strike out, strike out hard and murderously at something real. This suppressed feeling had been growing in him now for too many miles to remember. He started forward. But the Indian slid the knife from his beaded belt. "I am sorry, and that is the honest truth," the Indian said. "But you have to move on now." The Indian stepped back toward the ancient symbols of his kind. "We have stopped moving. We stay here now no matter what. Now, White Doctor, it is your turn to move on."
He put his hand over his eyes as though to push something down. One act of violence, and the questionable "freedom" would be ended. That would be an admission of defeat. His hand still over his eyes, he backed away. Then he turned, choking and half blinded with smoldering rage.
Keep moving. Nothing else to do with them but put them on the road and keep them moving, never letting them stop over long enough to cause trouble, to stir up any wrong ideas. Hit the road, Crackpot. Head on down the super ten-lane Freeway into the second Middle Ages lit with neon.
Then he was running, yelling at Anna. She was past the shack and stumbling through sand toward the mountains. He coaxed her back and into the car, sickness gorging his throat as she kicked and screamed at him and he forced her into the corner of the back seat.
"Stan, we could run to the mountains."
"The Law wouldn't let us get very far. Remember, the Special's remotely controlled. If we leave the Freeway, they'd be on us in no time. They know when we stop, where we stop. They know if we leave the Freeway!"
"But we would have tried!"
"They're just waiting for us to do something legally wrong so they can put us away, honey. We can't let ourselves be goaded into doing anything legally wrong!"
"Stan—" she was shaking her head, and her eyes were wet. "Can't you see, can't you see? What they do to us doesn't matter now. It's what we do, or don't do—"
When she quieted down a little, he got back under the wheel. Within a hundred feet, the Special was going eighty-five miles an hour.