Tally Road Original Story- Chapter 7

The question was whether Boodins could handle a bike. Speed and maneuverability would be important, and they didn't need to carry much in the way of luggage- that made it simpler, as it reduced the buying decision to matters of weight class and the ability to handle the machine.

The bikes were fairly sophisticated vehicles- on a Runge homeworld, that said a lot. They were four-wheeled and narrow-set, balancing like a virtual two-wheeler with computer autostabilizing. Intelligence was cheap. They were electrical, powered by tiny turbine generators optimised to the turbine's best internal speeds, and extraordinarily light. Sometimes raw speed was also cheap- when you got it out of inspired design and minimal materials, and on these worlds it was trivial to design a piece of disposable high-performance equipment, if all it would take was intelligence and computer fabrication. It was even cheaper to make 'bikes' than it was to recycle the things- many of the parts were modular and found uses everywhere, and breaking technological artifacts down into raw materials was no more trivial than producing them in the first place.

They couldn't afford larger vehicles that would allow Boodins to be a passenger, but still be up to the possible demands of the road. It wasn't so much about the concept as the materials- wind resistance, structural integrity, all required far more in the way of physical structure. The bikes sacrificed all that to lightness, efficiency, and simple velocity. There wasn't a lot of time to debate it, either- it was later in the day, and what natural light made it through the smoggy overcast and the ubitiquous buildings was already fading. They'd gone to a dealer on the outskirts of sector 54, bordering the city of Kiesens in which they were staying, and Kiesens was so large that it was dusk by the time they got there. Buying the vehicles on Voustret's credit was simple, but being certain Boodins would be safe was quite another story. The young Resten had no idea what was being asked, and reacted towards the vehicle as if it were a toy, or some sort of village motor-scooter.

"Yes, but do you think you can deal with it at speed?" asked Rairate.

Dene nodded. "Seriously, have you ever driven anything like that before? These are dangerous."

"How fast could it go? It's barely bigger than I am." said Boodins, wonderingly. "Where do you even sit?"

"You put your feet here and tuck your head behind this windscreen." Rairate demonstrated, balancing on the lightweight machine, which made no attempt to help him balance, as it wasn't powered up.

"Next question," said Boodins, "where are we supposed to be going on these? Obviously somewhere with roads, right?"

Dene commented wryly, "You'd be surprised."

"These don't look like they want to drive off-road."

"These are disposable. People drive them off-road anyway. See the deep knobbly treads on the sides of the tires? If they break, you get new ones."

Boodins blinked. "That's not going to be very helpful if we break them in the middle of the desert or wilderness or whatever it is you have on this planet."

"It's basically desert," said Dene. "There isn't really anything alive out there that isn't cultivated. It's not like you can just grow stuff without furnishing the correct ecosystem and support network. Making crops is very challenging work- you're balancing your output on a very narrow peak of optimization between energy and nutrient inputs. It's extremely sophisticated technology..."

Boodins interjected smugly, "Back home we have forests, and we can grow stuff using just nature."

Dene's hackles rose a bit. "Yeah, well, all of you together would feed maybe one of our towns, so don't even..."

"Please, both of you!" said Rairate. "Don't fight. We may have hundreds of miles to travel before we find these people."

Dene blinked. "As little as that? Um, Rairate, that will barely get you out of the fringe areas. Though admittedly we might want bike speeds in getting through those areas... where are we going? Since you seem to know."

"I was told that roughly halfway between Verss and Kiesens, where we are now, we'd be intercepted. There were no directions beyond that, so we only need to be travelling that road- it is a road, Denenke?"

Dene nodded, looking uneasy. "Yeeeees... it's a big road, a high-speed conduit... did he say WHEN we would be intercepted?"

Rairate nodded. "Around dawn, so we should leave tonight... what?"

Dene just stared at him, her jaw hanging open, her ears flattened back as if he'd taken a swing at her. Then she gulped. "We have to leave now. Right now. Do you know the layout of the feeder roads?"

"No." said Rairate. "Do you?" Beside him, Boodins began to grin.

"Um, yeah. Are your reflexes good? I'm going to have to go flat out and it won't be pretty. We go now."

Rairate just looked at her. Then, they both turned and looked at Boodins, who grinned, wagging his tail. There wasn't really anything to say, apart from perhaps an earnest prayer for anyone unfortunate enough to share the road with the excited young Resten, and there wasn't time for that.

"Your stuff, in your apartment?" inquired Rairate.

"Voustrets promised to replace anything I lost. There's no time. We go NOW!"

"Trust the fox!" added Boodins helpfully, at which both Rai and Dene stared at him. "Sorry, that was a dumb thing to say, wasn't it?"

Dene didn't care- the prospect of meeting the fabled Ungovernment excited her, but the intercept time tweaked every one of her traffic-management instincts, and she had no idea what Ungovernment could do to you if you missed the appointment. Rairate and Boodins didn't have much in the way of possessions at their hotel- largely the sort of temporary junk hotel-dwellers accumulated, all horribly overpriced, an exaggerated version of the tawdry possessions Dene had accumulated in her series of rented rooms. Seen through the prism of their immediate need to be halfway to Niebern by dawn, it all seemed startlingly shallow, unimportant.

Rairate nodded. "We go now."

He began to lift one of the bikes, pointing it out at the waiting road, but Dene said, "Wait!" She dashed about, flicking on the computers for each vehicle and punching in a distinct arrangement of running lights, tuning the radio headsets to a common band.

"Thank you, Dene." said Rairate. "Are they ready now?"

Dene paused, and a rebellious look stole over her lupine face. The skinny Runge lady looked up and down the street huntedly, glanced at a nearby video camera watching the scene, apparently decided it would be nothing Voustrets couldn't handle, and approached the side of her bike with a calculating air. The engine was largely concealed in the cowling that streamlined the vehicle, but sure enough, there was a considerable protrusion that almost looked part of the cowling until you examined it closely.

"Don't either of you start your bikes yet, or I'll burn myself."

To Boodin's mingled fascination and dismay, Dene produced a pocket fold-up tool, and began to attack the muffler of her bike. It didn't take much- a screw here, some snips of light, heat-resistant metal there- and the muffler fell to the ground, revealing an ominous metal hole and yellow-and-black markings along the cowling where the muffler had been.

"Now yours. Move!" said Dene.

"Vraonse." added Rairate, seeing Boodin's unease. As Dene attacked the bikes' mufflers, Rai asked, "What's troubling you?"

"She's acting like this is... illegal. But there's something exciting about it, too- so dramatic. And they sure look meaner that way. What's the hole for?"

Dene smirked, removing the last muffler and returning to her bike. "Stand back. Farther!"

She fired the engine, and hidden turbines rapidly spun up to a ear-numbing scream. There was no question why the mufflers were mandated by law- the unmuffled turbine had a nagging, insistent quality that had to carry for blocks, despite its high pitch. Dene blipped the throttle abruptly, holding onto the bike, and it bucked in her hands and emitted a shattering bang out of the turbine's exhaust, a small blast of flame accompanying the action. Boodin's eyes went very wide.

"Back pressure. We're going to need to generate all the voltage this thing can make if we want to get there on time. Don't come alongside too closely or it will burn you unless we're going over 200. Don't get jerky with the throttle or it will throw you across the street. We go now, and we go fast. By the time anyone gets here to investigate the sound we'll be outside city limits, and this isn't illegal in uncontrolled areas."

She straddled the machine, taking the lead, and Rairate and Boodins fired up their bikes in turn, falling in line behind her. Boodins' expression was something to behold, as he nervously blipped the throttle and felt the fierce way the bike tried to yank itself out of his hands. Three unmuffled turbine generators idled their highpitched, ear-mangling whine.

Denenke Tieschtet, no longer an employment-agency computer wrangler, turned and looked back at the unruffled Nerre and near-terminally awed Resten, looked ahead at the road leading through complicated feeder roads to the main high-speed conduit to Verss and points west. She licked her muzzle, and gulped, glancing at the time on one of the bike's readouts. Everything was up and running, the locators on each bike set to track the two others, the headsets online.

She settled against the humming, whining machine, lifting her feet as servos revved and compensated for her slight imbalance, taking the handlegrips, projections of the instrument panel that didn't actually move, but sensed pressure and translated that into the rider's intent.

Over Rai and Boodin's headsets came two words, chilly and stark.

"Keep up."

With that, Dene's bike exploded in a howl of turbines and a blast of blue flame out the side-mounted exhaust, and Dene disappeared down the street with a steady chirping of traction-controlled tires clawing madly at the road, four contact patches straining the limits of physics to fling the wolfess into the distance.

Rairate launched his vehicle after her with feline determination, and over the headset came Dene's yelp...

"Keep UP!"

Boodins gulped and cranked on the throttle, and he, too, was on his way, bike flinging itself madly all across the quiet back road as the young Resten inexpertly chased his companions.