Tally Road Original Story- Chapter 8

In a strange way, 320 was peaceful. The headsets worked diligently to cancel the noise and synthesize a virtual sound-picture of the surrounding environment, but all through the feeder road system, this had proved distressingly strange. Other traffic, sounds from buildings and the pedestrian walkways, twisted by doppler effect, produced an eerie nightmare sound-picture continually overlaid by the brassy shriek of their unmuffled turbines. Boodins was near panic the whole time, trying to keep up with the crazed nerd-wolf and lightning-reflexed ninja-kitty, all the time expecting police to race up and capture him, or shoot him, or whatever it was they did. He nearly collided with other vehicles three times, and nearly ran off the road twice, to the dismay and expostulation of Dene, who was herself becoming frazzled trying to break speed records for reaching the conduit while watching Boodins' progress.

The high-speed conduit was a big improvement- and it wasn't just the fact that within ten seconds it officially became uncontrolled area, and the unmuffled bikes were free to wind out with no objection to the noise.

Boodins had been expecting some type of laned highway, but as his bike shot out of the last feeder road, he gaped in astonishment behind the tough windscreen- and then grimly cranked on the throttle as never before, because Dene had been saving it for this moment, and she instantly went flat out, far beyond anything possible in the city or on the feeder roads.

The conduit was a huge expanse of perfectly smooth pavement, as wide as several big parking lots, stretching out endlessly to the horizon. A central concrete wall protected one side from the other, and furnished illumination and a reference of position. There were no lines or position marks on the road at all, but streaks of rubber flickered sporadically under the wheels of the bikes, from unknown accidents or desperate skids. Seemingly the only vehicles on the road in the middle of the night were vast, streamlined trucks, handling the Runge worlds' brutal cargo demands. These appeared to follow a rigid behavioral code- only the fastest got anywhere near the central wall, and most stayed far enough to the side that Boodins had to ask, "How do they keep pointed in the right direction?"

"Virtual lane markers," replied Dene tersely, which didn't mean much to Boodins.

At 320, the world whipped by like an imaginary landscape, pavement so close underneath and the concrete wall to the left. It was impressively steady at 320, as if its position had been carefully designed to provide a stable physical reference at even higher speeds. There weren't any other references- even the landscape was stark, only occasionally revealing structures far to the side that swept out of the darkness and were lost to sight.

At 320, the sound was quiet- on the other side of the concrete wall, you could just barely hear the erratic zippings of vehicles lashing by, unthinkably fast with the combined speed, glimmers of light occasionally showing over the wall as the unseen vehicles passed. The wind noise was mostly cancelled by the headsets, and the unthinkable velocity left the shriek of turbines behind you. The world became a simple geometry of road and wall, the two other bikes ahead of you, your long range sensors watching for possible surface irregularities, and there was nothing but the whine of the turbines growing louder and louder in your ears...

Dene cursed, over the headset. "Right! Right! Wake up! Follow me!"

Boodins blinked, to notice Dene's bike heading out rapidly into the vast area of the pavement without guiding marks. His bike was beeping and showing some sort of change in the displays. Rairate could be seen to glance back at him, and then swoop off quickly following her. The air roared with turbine whine, and he began to nervously follow suit, with Dene screaming at him over the headset. when a wall of bikes blasted by him on the left as if he were standing still.

Boodins panicked, and it was his panic that saved him- tires screeching, he cut right as hard as he could, barely ahead of the crowd of vehicles trying to squeeze between him and the wall. There were too many of them- the leaders couldn't brake without being overrun, and the massive group had not bargained on Boodin's inexperience and now found themselves trying to thread the needle. Amazingly, nobody wiped out- a few seconds later, Boodins found himself hurtling towards the side of the road, and the crowd passing to the left was still widening even as he drew away from it.

Ahead of him, Dene and Rairate were braking, heading for a refueling station, its lights emerging from the gloom. Boodins realized he was hurtling towards the unpaved roadside and wrenched his bike left again with a shriek of tires and a bucking of distressed servomotors as the thing fought a tendency to fling him off. The next thing he knew, Rairate was hissing over the headset, "Quick, to either side!" and Boodins shot between his two companions, still trying to bring the bike under control, smelling burning insulation under him as the vehicle gradually slowed. He clung onto the brakes and the bike grabbed pavement, dropping to manageable speed with a chatter of traction-controlled braking, servos whining and jerking as it held itself stable. The smell of burning insulation wasn't going away.

Dene and Rairate pulled alongside, and the three of them headed for the refueling station. Ahead, the vast horde of high-performance bikes disappeared into the darkness, leaving a reverberating scream of turbines, fading to unsettled air with a ghost of that shriek lingering as the three passed between the concrete guard-towers and bumped over the tire-choppers, lying quietly in their steel casings. That pack would not be stopping here unless they came in peace- or, more accurately, if they stopped here to cause trouble they'd stay stopped for a long time...

Dene led the way towards a central concrete building topped by more guard-towers. Rairate's ears went back, as automated lights tracked and followed the three- you couldn't look directly into them, but he didn't have to look to be certain that weapons tracked the beam of light, locked onto an automated movement sensor that would save a defender the trouble of aiming. Intelligence was cheap- being in the sights of a computer-controlled turret was as expensive to you as they wanted to make it. Nothing happened, apart from the light continuing to track as the three bikes approached the building.

Boodins remarked into his headset, "My bike smells funny. Is it supposed to do that?"

"Do what?" came Dene's voice.

"Smell like something's on fire."

"Yiii! No!" said Dene. "Stop right over there and get off it now!"

They stopped some distance short of the building, still tracked by bright spotlights, and dismounted, and Dene rushed awkwardly over, fighting cramps in her legs, to look at Boodins' vehicle. Her ears at first were flattened in alarm, but gradually came forward in perplexity, and finally she looked at Boodins and said, "What smell? Maybe it's the fuel smell around here, but I don't smell a thing. Are you sure?"

"Sure I'm sure! It's right..." said Boodins, going over the shiny cowling of the vehicle, "here!" He indicated a spot.

Dene sniffed it. "Huh! You smelled that at speed? Let's have that panel off." She proceeded to do just that, and immediately yelped, "Aha!"

"Can we fix that?" asked Rairate.

Dene scrutinized the wire. It was a heavy wire, but perhaps not up to the demands placed on it by the unmuffled generator- and the kink in the wire was plain to see. It wouldn't have been built that way- someone had been maintaining the vehicle and screwed up.

"I bet you wouldn't have noticed a thing if it wasn't for that panic maneuver." said Dene. "That's what happened. Going flat-out might have heated it up, but when you did that I thought you were going to wipe out. I saw what the bike did, and you threw it into full servo output while still keeping full throttle. God! We're lucky you didn't burn it out- you wouldn't be here now if you had."

Boodins whined quietly in dismay. "Can we fix it? Is it gonna blow up on me now? Maybe we shouldn't be..."

"Hold on!" said the wolfess, and she reached in, cursing at the awkward layout of the bike's internals, and twisting the stiff wire around in her hands. "There! Fixed it. We couldn't splice it anyway, not at a place like this- the splice would melt under these kinds of loads, you have to replace the wiring harness with factory parts. Think about it, if the wire's under-rated so bad that a kink would burn the insulation..."

Rairate looked at her sharply. "Are you sure? I won't have Boodins endangered. He's my responsibility."

Dene's ears went back at the challenge to her nerdly comprehension of electronic devices. "Of course I'm sure! Look, someone kinked this wire. That's going to locally increase the resistance- or is it inductance? Call it both- anyhow I've unkinked it and it didn't feel brittle. Let me check your bike, and mine, to make sure they didn't screw up ours too. That damn access hatch, such an obnoxious design, it's like it's just waiting to kink the wires."

Rairate was uncomfortable. "If it's harmed the insulation, could it short out?"

"Against glasstic structural elements? Not likely. That doesn't even conduct electricity. We're losing time, come on, let's get on the move again."

A vast multi-trailer truck, streamlined and articulated like a huge technological snake, pulled in behind them, passing by and drawing one of the computerised targeting lights, and the bass roar of its turbines and rumble of its passage drowned out further discussion as Dene replaced the panel on Boodins' bike, and quickly checked Rai's and her own for the problem. It evidently wasn't shared by the other two bikes, for she didn't even have to reach inside, just slapped the panels back on hastily. She, Rai, and Boodins remounted, Boodins a little nervously.

The headsets fought against the roar of the nearby truck, producing a peculiar sputtering sound as the internal speakers were driven beyond their excursion limits. Through this blast of distorted noise, Dene's voice crackled.

"Come on, we're going to be late!"

With that, she took off, the staccato chirp of traction control interrupted as she hit a patch of grease on the pavement. This gave Rai and Boodins a chance to catch up more easily, and they rolled on the power as the three headed out onto the conduit again, Dene's bike gradually kicking in more acceleration as the grease was steadily scrubbed off her tires. Before long, they were howling down the road at top speed again, blowing past trucks and making for the open area near the central wall- this time, keeping an eye on the motion sensors for overtaking traffic.

Over the headset, Rairate's voice asked, "Boodins, do you smell anything now?"

The young Resten concentrated. "No- not now. I think it's better. Maybe a tiny bit? I could be imagining it."

"It's not as much as before?"

"Nothing like it. I think it's OK."

Dene came over the headset- "If you're worried, drive smooth. What got you the first time was a wild maneuver. All the servos had to run at full torque for a moment there. Just drive smooth..."

The road unwound beneath them featurelessly, the familiar abstraction taking form again- at 320, pavement blurred completely, and the central concrete wall was the only physical reference- without it, one might almost be blasting through space, past huge, trundling cargo vessels, for the ground was impossible to focus on.

Twice, other vehicles overtook them, each time with enough advance warning to permit evasive maneuvers. The first time, it was a small group of faster bikes, only about ten or so in single file. The second time, it was a single bike that appeared to be powered by direct jet engine thrust, something that could not possibly exist in cities or controlled areas- it came up from behind with distressing speed, waited until the three bikes were well out of the way, and then took off as if they were standing still, leaving a blast of turbulence and a stink of burned fuel in its wake.

The hypnotism of the road began to set in again, and Dene and Rai took to name-checking Boodins to be sure his attention was holding out. He responded, but in an increasingly dreamy way, which was worrying, but there was no time to stop again.

Dawn began to break over the flickering, blurred image of the road, and as the light grew, it placed the three bikes in a surrealistic landscape, blasting across featureless pavement alongside the featureless wall with a post-apocalyptic wasteland unreeling to the side, illuminated by dawn's smoggy haze. For a while there was nothing but the road- nothing on the motion sensors ahead or behind, not even any trucks for a change, nothing but the unyielding velocity and a shadow falling across the sun.

"PULL OVER, PLEASE."

When the command burst out from above, all three riders looked about in a panic and swerved- but Boodins jerked around so violently that his bike nearly hit the wall. Alarmed, he flung it back away from the wall again- and the bike writhed under him, servos grinding- and all its lights went out, a faint wisp of smoke whipping from under the cowling and immediately lost to the wind.

Boodins found himself balancing atop a pile of dead metal and glasstic, at 320- holding on to handlebars that were a fixed part of the cowling, not actually connected to the front wheels at all. Servos did the steering- but not now.

Dene shrieked, "Lean! Shift your weight!" so wildly that Rai winced, but Boodins' headset was dead as well. She looked frantically back at him, and slammed on brakes, matching pace with the freewheeling bike. Overhead, the shadow drifted forward, and revealed itself to be an aircraft, which put out landing gear and prepared to land right on the highway.

Boodins seemed rigid with panic, but was still hanging on to the bike. Dene shouted to him, but he didn't hear. His path wandered a bit as his weight shifted, no longer affected by the servos and autostabilizing. Then, Dene saw him get the idea. Boodins hung onto the useless handgrips, and lifted off the seat slightly. She backed off a way, and saw him grin as he realized he could survive, that the bike was going to roll but could be steered in a simple way, thanks to the gyroscopic forces of the wheels to balance it, and the geometry of the front suspension.

Ahead, the aircraft was coming in to a landing. Dene and Rairate flanked Boodins and kept pace with him as he made his way gradually over to the side of the road. The plane put on brakes and cut speed, and Dene, Rai and Boodins cut to the right of it, shooting out ahead as Boodins' bike freewheeled and slowly lost speed. Eventually, it slowed enough that the other two could press alongside of it, and the three bikes, one dead and two whining with the exertions of their servos, braked to a halt.

The aircraft rolled up behind, and the voice spoke again, much more quietly. "Sorry about that. Nice save..."