The air was cold, colder even than at the glacier, and the light hazier, as though too far from its source. Weeds were persistent, but colorless and sickly. His foot came against something harder than the dry earth; he kicked the weeds aside to reveal a railroad track, crusted and pimpled with rust. There were two tracks, eight, twelve, twenty, an inestimable parallel multitude of them, the steel flaking, the ties rotted, the spikes and plates worked loose. He walked between them.
The skeleton of a model T Ford stood crosswise on the rails. The body was gone, and the hood; the brass radiator, capless, had turned green and brown. A wooden box was athwart the chassis in place of a seat, its ends sticking out over both sides. The tires were flat and shredded.
Lampley lifted the front end and shifted it so that it headed along the right-o-way. He turned the ignition key, pulled down the gas lever, stood in front of the radiator, pulled the choke-wire and twirled the crank several times. Then he went back and sat on the box, but not under the steering wheel.
The motor coughed and started, the engine missed in syncopated rhythm, shaking and rattling the frame, failing and fading, catching again. The car bumped slowly over the ties. The Governor, satisfied, made no move to take the wheel. The tracks came together in a series of multiple switches. The Ford stopped, the motor clanked and quit, steam spouted up from the radiator.
Lampley got out. The surface of the rails was no longer rusty but bright with wear. The ties were new, reeking with fresh creosote. They were too close together for his stride; he walked partly on them, partly on the roadbed.
The single diesel car panted on a siding, its garish paint flecked and peeling. He climbed aboard, walked between the rows of plush-covered seats to the front. The clerk sat in the cab, reading a comic book. He nodded when he saw Lampley. "Board," he shouted. "Aw-a-booooooard!"
The diesel started smoothly. The Governor sat down just behind the clerk and looked out the window. They were running through a petrified forest. Some of the trees were riven down the middle, showing the dark, livid heart, the gleaming saffron sapwood, the red-brown bark. Fallen trunks lay in shallow oil, black, broken by lurid rainbows. The car heeled over slightly as it rounded a curve, then more steeply on the opposite side as it picked up speed and took another.
The clerk said, "The island under the world, ay? Good or bad?"
"You can't simplify like that," protested the Governor.