Free Assignmnt - Ceylon by Edward S. Aarons Page A

pedal.
    The great old car leaped ahead. Aspara made a murmuring sound. The limousine that partially blocked their way was rolling forward to reach the middle of the intersection and leave no room to pass on either side. Durell swung the car to the right, as if he were automatically going to drive on the right-hand side of the street. Ceylonese traffic kept to the left. The limousine was moving that way to block him off. So that driver instinctively obeyed Ceylonese rules. It wouldn’t be Wells. But maybe it was. No way to tell. At the last possible moment, Durell swung the heavy touring car to the left again. There was not enough space to go through. Taillights flared red as the other driver braked. Behind him, the other car came up at a faster speed, only forty feet behind. Headlights blazed in the rear-vision mirror. Something made a sharp ping! along the side of the Rolls. Durell did not see the flicker of gun-flame from the car ahead. Then another bullet whipped the air overhead, and a third cracked the windshield. Aspara ducked and George yelled and stood up and swung one leg over the low rear door and stood on the running board. He waved his free arm and yelled something unintelligible to those in the car ahead. Durell wondered if, in spite of everything, he had managed to inform the PFM. He knew of no way George could have done so. At the same time, the young man apparently expected privileges from those in the cars ahead and behind. But he received none.
    There was a lurch, a crash, a pang of regret in Durell at the damage to the old Rolls as they came around the rear end of the big limousine. The car sawed back and forth, skewed half around, smashed into something in the rear, then responded beautifully as he swung the wheel to the right.
    He heard Aspara scream George’s name.
    George had vanished from the running board.
    Durell could not see him in the street behind them. He gave all his attention to handling the heavy car.
    “Stop, Sam! They have George! He fell off!”
    “No way. Not a chance.”
    “But you can’t just leave him here!”
    “I have to.”
    He saw the shock and dismay, the hostility in her slightly slanted eyes. Her pale brown face was a sudden mask, withdrawn, remote. He glimpsed a road sign, incongruously recalling British hegemony—Lady Horton’s Drive. He swung into it, disregarding Aspara now; she bent forward, a palm pressed to her forehead. Down another side street, there was a flash of bright lights, a glimpse of a Kandyan dance troupe; their bronzed bodies reflected white and scarlet and silver. Then the lake opened out below them, and he heard the thudding of the dancers’ drums recede. Near the Peak View Hotel Aspara said, “Left, now. Please. Be careful.”
    The two other cars rocketed doggedly along 3n their dust. The road curved between large private estates, some government buildings, a wooded area, then straightened for a rim uphill toward Katugastota Road and the bridge over the Mahaweli Ganga. The second car behind them vanished, its headlights cut off by intervening trees and houses.
    “There is a short cut to the top here. That one will try to beat us,” Aspara said. “Sam, I’m so worried about George.”
    “He can take care of himself.”
    “I know he’s apt to do you harm, dear Sam; but why does he hate you so?”
    “He hates himself really, not me.”
    The houses thinned out. The road lifted sharply again, with a ferny, bamboo-grown chasm to the left, and on the right the flickering groves of forest, the sudden iridescent gleam of the eyes of a tiny loris clinging to a branch overhead. Then they were out of the central area of the city.
    “We have to go over the bridge,” Aspara murmured. “If the police wait there, we can’t escape.”
    But the bridge was not blocked. The second car did not appear to intercept them. The Rolls streaked across the shimmering river, which reflected a full moon over Katugastota, where elephants bathed during the day. Now