Lowball

Part One
Prologue

Since he was eleven, when the terrible thing happened, he had been called Chahina instead of Hasan. Chahina was a most unusual name for a Berber boy, but fitting, translating loosely as “Wheels” or “Transport.” At the age of eleven, Hasan had been brutally transformed into a joker who resembled a small motor truck.

His body had doubled in size and mass-during the feverish transformation he had eaten enough food for ten Hasans-becoming cube-like, with a swale on his back and a hunched, neckless formation where his head and shoulders used to be.

His hands and feet had become horny pistons with flat, circular “hands” that cracked off every few months-or, he learned, with wear-yet remained a part of him, like bracelets around a girl’s wrist. Chahina learned that if he locked his four piston-like appendages just so, the free-rolling circular “hands” could act like … well, like wheels.

Wheels that allowed him to move down a city street or a dusty Moroccan highway much like a truck, with one obvious difference.

Chahina used his back legs to propel himself forward, giving him the appearance of a truck with a broken suspension as he swayed from side to side-

“Ah,” said one of his customers, a burly Dutch weapons smuggler named Kuipers, seeing Chahina in action for the first time, “you are like Hans Brinker!”

Chahina’s lack of comprehension must have been clear, even on his grille-like face.

“A skater,” Kuipers had said. And, looking like a demented clown, had mimed the side-to-side motion of a boy on blades on ice.

Hans Brinker? Chahina wasn’t sure … but from that day on he referred to his movements as “slip skating.”

And, over the past eleven years, he had slip-skated his way to a decent career as a transporter of illegal substances, contraband, and, yes, weapons, from one point to another, usually at odd hours in great secrecy, frequently on less-traveled routes. His ability to combine stealthy movement with common sense won him many fans in the criminal underworld of northern Africa and southern Europe, so much so that when one of his primary customers expanded his operations to the United States, Chahina was “invited” to come along, traveling as-what else? — Deck ballast on a freighter.

Once he had adjusted to the rigors of life in New York and environs as an illegal joker immigrant, Chahina had grown to appreciate the relative ease of his new smuggler’s life. Roads were better. Law enforcement was usually more predictable and honest (Chahina did not break speed limits, and so never got stopped).

And there were no hijackers! Chahina’s time in America had been lucrative; the future was promising.

But on the evening of Monday, May 7, 2012, he made a mistake.

Chahina frequently looked down on human drivers and their vehicles, finding them an inferior breed, each half useless without the other. He, after all, was both brains and automotive brawn.

But there were times he wished he had a bit of navigation help, so he would have avoided that wrong turn coming north out of Tewksbury, where 519 and Old Turnpike overlapped: he had wasted ten minutes going west on OT when he should have continued north.

Normally this slight detour wouldn’t have been a problem, but Chahina had a deadline: by eight P.M. he was to deliver his cargo to the customer on the edge of Stephens State Park.… The address did not appear to be either a commercial property or a residential one, but rather an open field.

In order to make up lost time, Chahina broke his self-imposed rule about speed limits, a risky move because in order to go faster, he had to make more exaggerated slip skates.

He noted the startled reactions of a pair of oncoming drivers, but knew from experience they would simply assume he was some foreign-model truck with unusually sleek, rounded lines. And possibly an intoxicated operator.

(One thing that night trips forced on Chahina was the addition of “headlights,” in his case, literally: he had to strap lamps to the outside rim of each eye for basic illumination, and to ensure that he looked like a truck to other vehicles. There was no quicker way to draw attention from highway patrol than to be racing down a rural road with no lights.…)

What Chahina hated most was what he’d been driving through almost every day for the past two months … and that was rain.

First of all, it was simply uncomfortable. Chahina’s transformation to joker had left him looking like a vehicle-and naked, which was a shocking situation for a boy who had never worn any garment more revealing than a T-shirt and long pants in public. His older brother Tariq had helped him sew canvas “trousers” that covered his nether regions and looked, to other eyes, like the fabric enclosing the cargo beds of real trucks. Chahina had improved on this early solution, however, fabricating better-fitting and vari-colored “trousers” to suit any environment. Tonight’s, for example, were plain gray.

But they weren’t waterproof, and Chahina slip-skated along with the uncomfortable feeling that he had just sat in a puddle while rain spattered his neck and back.

Worse yet, the rain made it more difficult to see. And it almost destroyed traction. (His “hands” and “feet” had none of the radial grooving found in tires.)

The rain had started fifteen minutes after he’d left Staten Island, before he even crossed the Goethals Bridge from Staten Island into New Jersey.

It never got heavy-but it didn’t take much to make things uncomfortable for Chahina.

Fortunately, his load was just two dozen plastic containers. A little moisture wouldn’t hurt them.

Safely out of Hackettstown now, just passing Bilby, the developments gave way to old farms and woods.

What little traffic willing to brave the rain vanished with the loss of daylight. Wheels took a breath and skated harder. He knew he was pushing both speed limit and energy reserves-why hadn’t he eaten more? His roommates were always teasing him about what he consumed, and how much.…

Suddenly there was a man lying in the road-!

Wheels rode right over him. It was much like the impact on a suburban speed bump … if the bump squished like a human body.

And it hurt. Calloused as they were, his wheels were essentially bare hands and feet. Hitting that body was like stubbing your toe on a curb.

He lost traction, lost control, skidding and sliding like a drunk on an icy sidewalk until he hit a left turn a hundred yards farther up the highway-

And slammed into a ditch backed by trees.

The impact flattened his nose. He had not felt such pain since the time-pre-wild card-that Tariq had punched him for stealing a candy bar.

He was so stunned he wasn’t sure how long he sat there, head down, rear high, leaning to his right. With darkness, it was impossible for him to measure time. Had it been a few seconds? Minutes?

He sure hoped it wasn’t an hour.

Extricating himself from the ditch took patience. He was like a football player with a cracked rib: every attempted movement was painful.

Eventually, however, he had himself upright … and had used his good left front “hand” to push himself out of the ditch far enough to let his back “feet” find traction.

It was only when he was finally upright, on the highway surface, that he realized he had lost one of the containers he carried. He couldn’t see it anywhere; even if he could, he was not capable of picking it up and replacing it.

It was like losing a tooth-but likely to be far more painful, once he met his customers.

Well, Wheels had lost items before … had been beaten and otherwise mistreated. But he knew it was better to show up with nineteen of twenty items than to try to avoid the confrontation completely.

There was another matter, however.

Slowly, painfully, Wheels skated a dozen yards back down the highway, to where he had run over the body … there was little he could do to help the victim, assuming he lived. And now time was truly critical.

But Wheels had been maltreated so many times in his short life. He couldn’t bear to just … skate away-

Suddenly there were lights far to the south … another vehicle!

Wheels did not want to answer questions, nor did he want to be seen anywhere near a body in the middle of a road.

He turned and slip-skated into the rainy night.