Red Limit Freeway

Chapter 8

When climbed back into the cab, a yellow warning light leered at me from the instrumentation.

"The spare," I said. "Right?"

"Right," Sam said.

I expressed my displeasure in colorful terms. At some length.

"Curb your tongue, lad. There're ladies present."

"My apologies, Suzie, Darla." I looked back. "Winnie," I added.

"Oh, you should be proud," Susan said. "That approached the status of a work of art."

"Thank you."

I felt even better than I had after the previous tirade. I goosed the plasma flow and peeled out onto the Skyway.

The next few planets were wasteballs, barely habitable, but even here, human settlements clung, like lichen, to the rocks. Various odd-colored suns hung in lowering skies. On the third mudball, I decided we needed a palaver.

"Sam, see if you can raise Sean and Carl."

"Right."

I put on the headset while Sam put out a call on the special frequency we had decided upon beforehand. I prefer an old fashioned headset; why, I don't know, but I've always had this odd affinity for outmoded technology. Besides, I keep losing those 'stickum things you put on your earlobe and throat. I considered the bone-conduction transducer, implanted in my mastoid bone, a necessity despite my aversion to biointerface gadgets. I never used it for general communications; it was reserved for the hush frequency alone.

"Fitzgore here. Can you read me, Jake?"

"Sure enough. Carl?"

"Yeah."

"Okay, we're going to take the left fork up ahead. Right?"

"Affirmative."

"Roger-dodger."

"Roger-dodger?" I echoed.

"Affirmative, " Carl amended.

"Right. The next planet up is Schlagwasser. Carl, can you ask Lori―"

"I'm here, Jake. And I told you I don't want to see those people again."

"Lori, what you do after I drop you off is your business. It would've been dangerous to send you back to Seahome, and in good conscience I couldn't have put you out on that planet of alcoholic perverts-present company excluded, Sean and Liam-"

"On behalf of all perverts, alcoholic or not, I thank you."

"Sorry. Lori, you're much too young, and―"

"punk you!"

"―and I… Lori? Lorelei, honey, listen to me, please. I know you're not more than fifteen years old"

"I'm eighteen!"

"Sweet sixteen at the very most. I just can't take the responsibility of letting you come with us. We don't exactly know where we're going, and we really don't have the vaguest idea of how to get there. I have enough worries, honey, and I'm simply not going to―"

"Jake, please take me along. Please? I won't be any trouble. I promise! I can take care of myself, and I won't―"

"Lori, darling, it's not a question of that. Listen to me. You should be in school and going to proms and having boys pick you up in their roadsters… all that sort of stuff. Now, I don't know what Schlagwasser's like―right off, the name doesn't recommend it―but the fact that you had a foster family there speaks of at least a… Lori? Are you listening?"

Over the two-way hookup, I could hear her crying.

"Oh, great. Typical female tactics."

"Jake!" Susan was indignant. "That was uncalled for, and not true. She's a child. You said so yourself."

"Sorry. Sorry. Looks like I'm offending every sex and gender today. Lori, honey? Don't cry, please."

"You're forgetting the Reticulans, Jake," Roland said.

"No," I said. "If those nightmares pick up the trail again, they'll be after me. I can't believe they'd waste time and effort going after Lori."

"But wasn't she strapped to their cutting table? Doesn't that make her sacred quarry? They'll be after her, Jake."

"They're after me. It's hard to believe they'd want to hunt rabbit when there's bigger game."

"I agree with Roland," John said. "We don't know enough about the Reticulans' habits and customs to take the chance. They seem to be driven by these ceremonial obligations. It seems hideous to us, but in the context of their culture… after all, they're not human."

"Yeah, but that's neither here nor there. The point is, they're after me. And if she stays with me, it'll be more of a risk than if she hides out on her home planet, where her family can protect her. Reticulans won't go snooping around on a human world."

"They've been known to," Roland countered.

I had to admit to myself that Roland was right. And that knocked a few props out from under my argument.

"Jake?" It was Carl.

"Yeah."

"Lori can't go back there, to her foster parents."

"Why not?"

"I'd rather not say just now. She just can't."

"I want to know, Carl."

A pause. "Lori says to tell you." I heard him take a breath. "Her foster father raped her."

After a moment, I said, "Right. Um… Lori? I'm very sorry."

"It's okay."

"Yeah. Uh… over and out."

Rape seemed to be the national pastime of the Outworlds. Charming.

I replaced the headset in its rack on the dash. "Sam, take over for me, will you?"

"Sure, son. Don't feel too bad. You couldn't have known."

"I should have known that when a child cries, it usually means something hurts. I'm going into the aft-cabin. Raise the seat up for me. Hard for a two-inch-tall driver to see out the Port."

I went back and dumped myself, pile of rags that I was, into the bunk.

As it happened, we wound up stopping on Schlagwasser so Sean and Liam could fuel up. Sam was showing three-quarters of a tank, but we topped off anyway. This could be the last service station till the Big Bang, for all we knew.

"Don't need any gas," Carl averred. "I'm okay."

"Gas?" I said.

"I mean, whaddycallit. Deuterium."

"What's this thing run on, air?"

Sitting at the wheel of his 1957 Chevrolet Impala, Carl knitted his brow and shook his head. "Y'know, to tell the honest-to-God truth, I really don't know what the hell it runs on."

"Then what are all those fusion-monitoring readouts-the ones under the dash board?"

"Oh, those? They're dummies."

All I could do was grunt and scratch my face. Carl and Lori got out and walked over with me to the edge of the lot, where everyone was stretching their legs. Schlagwasser―this part of it―was a planet of marshlands and swamp, over which the starslab was borne by a causeway. The sky was a dome of slate. The world smelled of brackish water and wet, fetid things. In a pond of goo a few meters away, something sucked and gurgled. The undergrowth was a jumble of orange and purple, overhung by great brooding, purple-leaved trees.

"These planets are getting less and less Earthlike," I said. "And what happens when we get out of human-occupied territory?"

"According to Winnie," Darla said, "there'll always be earthnormal planets along the way. There may be stretches where they'll be few and far between, but we'll be able to get out every now and then to move around a bit. Maybe even camp."

"But we should be prepared for hostile enviornments. Sean, did you guys pack full-pressure suits?"

"Yes, they're in the trailer."

"Fine. Now, I have two… Carl?"

"Yeah, I got one in the trunk."

"The what?" John asked.

"Storage compartment, in the rear, there."

"Oh, the boot."

"Boot?"

"Boot."

"Boot," Carl repeated. "You people sure talk funny."

Everyone looked at Carl for a moment.

"Okay," I said. "Maybe we can make do with five. And if you guys have to exit your vehicles in an airless environment, we can use the trailer as an air lock."

"Maybe we should blow all our cash and outfit everybody," Carl suggested, "just to be safe."

"A good idea," Roland seconded.

"How're you fixed for money, Carl?"

"Me? I got plenty of consols left. Might as well shoot the whole wad, since they won't be worth anything outside the Outworlds."

"'Well," I said, "you could convert them back to gold."

"Oh, I've got loads of that, too. Really, I'm bankrolled pretty well. Let's get everyone outfitted and squared away, so there won't be any problems downroad."

"Well, maybe we should look for a general store, just to make sure we haven't forgotten―"

Sam's key was beeping in my pocket.

"Yeah, Sam?"

"Jake, I' m painting three fast-moving objects coming from uproad."

"Aren't you getting too much ground clutter? Oh, I see."

I hadn't noticed, but Sam had launched an earlybird. It was hovering about a hundred meters above.

"I don't like the looks of 'em. Maybe it's best we skedaddled."

The service people were finishing up with the vehicles. The station sat on a slender finger of dry land in the middle of a vast marsh. There was no possibility of going off road and hiding.

"Right, Sam. Let's move." I turned around and faced my fellow voyagers. "You heard 'im, people. We scramble."

We scrambled. We had the attendants disconnect immediately, and to save time, I paid Sean's minuscule bill along with my own.

"Thanks, Jake."

"You owe me a couple beers. Whoa, there!"

I caught Lori by the sleeve of her pretty, but rumpled, redstriped sailor suit.

"Jake, please let me go with Carl."

"Into the cab, hon," I said firmly.

Her attitude seemed to have changed. She gave me no lip, and started clambering up the ladder to the cab. But suddenly I remembered the Chevy's astonishing capacity to absorb punishment and its stunning ability to inflict it. I grabbed Lori and yanked her down.

"Sorry, hon. You were right. Go with Carl." I swatted her skinny rump (though as rumps go, it was coming along rather nicely) and sent her on her way.

"What made you send up the bird, Sam?" I asked when I was inside the cab.

"Oh, a hunch. Thought I saw something sneaking around back there for the last hour or so. Seemed to be deliberately staying out of ground-scanner range. I'm painting a tiny airborne blip that could be their drone."

"Good work. Certainly sounds suspicious." I put on the headset as I vectored the rig out onto the Skyway.

"Carl, I'll take the bow and you take the stern."

"Check."

"Sean? You get in the lifeboat."

"Affirmative, and it's a damn good thing I know a bit of starrigger's lingo. 'Lifeboat,' indeed."

I kept one eye on the rearview screens as Sean and Carl configured themselves correctly.

"Okay, here's more starrigger's lingo for you. We're gonna squeeze hydrogen and let the neutrinos fly."

"We're going to 'grab slab,' is that it?"

"Right you are. Translation: let's get the hell moving."

"Well, the spirit is willing, Jake, but Ariadne's not herself today."

"Well, do the best you can."

"Affirmative."

Ariadne, I thought. Oh, my.

I eased the pedal down and watched the groundspeed readout until it showed 240 km/hr. A good clip, but still on the sane side. Sean began to drift back, so I feathered back to 210. I could see that Ariadne would hobble us until she was overhauled or until I could talk Sean and Liam into stashing her in the trailer. And now that we were about to leave human-occupied territory, opportunities for accomplishing the former would soon reduced to zero. I doubted that I could persuade two proud loggers to demote themselves to the status of starhikers. Our only hope was that the approaching blips weren't hostile.

But they were.

"They've recovered the first drone and put up another," Sam announced. "Which reminds me, I have to do the same thing."

Recovering a drone on the fly was a difficult proposition, and we had lost our share of them trying it. Damn little things were expensive.

"Sounds like they're very interested in what's going on downroad," I said.

"Oh, they're tracking us, all right. We're getting scanned with everything in the spectrum."

"Pendergast's cops, you think?"

"Probably, though it could be anybody back there. We stepped on a lot of toes."

"Right."

The Skyway continued straight for a few kilometers, gliding over marsh and meadow, occasionally cutting across patches of dry land. The water in the swampy areas was a dark bluegreen, mottled with rainbowed oil slicks. The tall trees weren't really trees. The trunks were masses of intertwined separate filaments, looking like a tangle of battling snakes. From the waters rose pink and purple grasses. Oval pads bearing evil yellow flowers floated on the surface.

"Hey, Carl? Ask Lori what it was like living here."

"Ask her yourself. She can hear you."

"Lori?"

"It bit the big kishko."

"I see."

"Jake?"―Carl again―"That's an Intersystem word I've never heard before. Does it mean what I think it means?"

"Yeah.

"Oh."

Behind me, Susan said, "I never understood what's so wrong with biting the big kishko."

Darla had to laugh.

I said, "Sam, what're they doing now?"

"I'm sure their drone spotted our drone. They've gained a little on us, but they're still hanging back. Probably waiting till we get on firm ground to make their move."

"Right, on the next planet up, which is supposed to be another desert world. Right, Darla?"

"Yes. And remember, Jake, you're to bear right at the fork."

"Got you. Should be coming up pretty soon."

A red light began blinking on the instrument banks.

"Son of a mother-punking bitch! Sam, it's that spare roller!"

"Yep."

"Dammit, I didn't know it was that bad."

"Well, I hate to say I told you so―"

"So don't say it!"

"―but I told you to spring for the new one. But nooo, you can get a better price down the road. Plenty of time, you said."

"Well, I could have gotten a better deal, dammit, if only ―"

"Out in the middle of nowhere, and you have to go windowshopping."

"Oh, for Christ's sake, Sam, get off my back!"

"Son, it's just that you forget sometimes―"

"Sam, it would have cleaned us out! Look what that backwoods barracuda charged us for fixing the stabilizer foil."

"Well, we can't spend consols where we're going."

"I'm talking about our gold reserves! I could've bought half a new rig for what he wanted on that pair of newbies!"

"That right-front roller isn't in the best shape, either, you know. Ever think of what happens down the road if that one goes, too?"

"Ohhh, the hell with it."

"Very intelligent reply."

"Can it Sam!"

"Okay, I'll can it. That's what canned-up people do best." I felt horrible. I hadn't argued with Sam in… I didn't know how long. Recent events were definitely getting the better of me. I exhaled slowly and tried to absorb the adrenaline.

"Jesus, Sam, I'm sorry."

"So am I, son. My fault. This is no time for petty recriminations."

"No, no, you're programmed to advise on those decisions, and you were right. Should've sprung for the new pair-only thing, if we'd gone to a new size, it would've left us with no spare, and I didn't…" I scratched my head, remembering. "Oh, that's right. He said he'd thrown in a spare, the relayered one in the back. Merte. Sam, you were totally right."

"Forget it, Jake. You had a good point about the gold, and if people would stop chasing us all over the known universe, maybe we'd have time to think these things out. Actually, I thought for sure we'd be able to stop and shop around, too."

"Well, hell."

"Better get your helmet on, son."

"Yeah, I… hey, is that the fork coming up?"

"Looks like it."

"You know, Sam, I was thinking―"

I quickly forgot what I'd been thinking as the rig suddenly lurched to the left. The red light stopped blinking and a loud warning buzzer sounded. I fought the control bars, at the same time thumbing the trim tabs for the stabilizer foils. We were heading straight off the causeway, and the Roadbuilders didn't believe in guard rails. Letting up on the power pedal, I twisted the traction control on the right bar. The fork was dead ahead, and we were clear over in the extreme left lane. The rig straightened out just in time to save us from flying over the edge of the causeway. We wanted the right fork but I could see now that we'd never make it. With the failed right-front roller, I couldn't get back over to the other side of the road in time. The rig was under control for now, but… I angled my head toward the side port to get a view of the roller. It had turned the color of confectioner's sugar, trailing a plume of white powder. A flaky piece of it broke off, flew up and nearly hit the cab. I had to slow down; no choice.

And we had missed the turn-off. Turning around was going to be a problem for two reasons. The Skyway is four lanes across, counting the two narrower "shoulder" lanes. It's wide, but not nearly wide enough for the rig to turn around in without backing off the road. Only here, there was a two-meter drop to mud or water. And even if a dry patch came up, I was not about to give our pursuers a chance to catch us broadside to the road. I had to keep moving.

However, there was a problem with that, too.

"Jake! Jake, can you read me?"

"Yeah, Carl."

"What happened?"

"We had a roller go sugar-doughnut on us. That's why I missed the turn-off."

"Jake?" It was Sean.

"Yeah."

"Jake, according to our maps, this road leads to a potluck portal."

"I know."

And this time, it wasn't one on Winnie's Itinerary.

This time, It could lead to oblivion.