Futuretrack 5 (13 page)

He relaxed—a bit. “Idris was mad toward the end.” But I could still feel his hands trembling on my shoulders. “Kit, promise me one thing. Never mention that name to anybody again. You mightn’t have much life left, riding bikes, but if someone hears you asking about Scott-Astbury, you’ll have no life left at all.”

“You
know
Scott-Astbury? You
know
what he’s doing?”

I felt him nod. “I’ve been trying to stop him for thirty years. And failed.”

“Tell me. Tell me. TELL ME!”

“No, Kit.”

“Why won’t you tell me? You’re
ashamed
to tell me, because you
failed.”

“I failed, Kit. I had a lot of friends, twenty years ago. Big, powerful friends. But I still failed. What chance would you have, with a handful of Unnems? You wouldn’t last a week. But if I told you what’s he’s doing, you’d go mad. You’d have to try and stop him, even with a few Unnems, and that would be the end of you … I can’t do that, Kit, I can’t. You’re all I’ve got. …”

“Why
did you fail? Who were these great big friends of yours?

“The Liberals in Parliament… Morse, Trethowan, Little… quite a few more … in the universities.”

“And what happened?”

“Morse got old. Little was ruined by a scandal. I think they had Trethowan killed. There are still a few of us left, but less every year. The Ests won’t listen to us anymore. People get old and fat and lazy. Or they stay on their estates and grow roses. Or take to drink. It’s all folding up, Kit. What did they use to say, in the First World War? The lights are going out, all over Europe? Well, now they’re going out all over England. Soon Scott-Astbury and his mob will walk all over us.”

“Dad, for God’s sake, you’re still a young man. You’re not fifty yet. I’ll help you. …”

“Kit, Kit… don’t you think I’ve tried everything I know? What difference would you make? Except to get yourself killed. Go away and ride your bike, while you can.

“Thanks.” I began to push the bike down the drive, too upset to fiddle with it. He kept on following me.

“Grab what fun you can, Kit… that girl—is she an ex-Est? If I could get her out of it, too, would you marry her and settle down with us here? We could make you a flat. …”

“She’s
Unnem,”
I shouted. “Born and bred.
Proud
of it. She says what’s so marvellous about being a bloody Est?”

Somehow, a hint of Keri’s broad Cockney came through on my voice.

Father drew in a little breath of pain, in the dark. Then he was gone into the house, and I could only ride away.

Easier said than done. I pressed the starter button. Dim lettering glowed up on the big, curved fighter-plane windscreen: fasten your safety belt.

I knew better than to argue; fastened the yielding lap belt across my belly. Immediately, she started, silently, only the tiniest vibration coming up through the seat. Another image grew on the windscreen; the road plan round my father’s house with me sitting, a glowing red dot, smack in the middle. Other cars moving as green dots…

STATE DESTINATION.

I tapped out London. The first section of route map glowed up, adjusted its brightness.

BATTERY CHARGE FULL NO FAULTS DEVELOPING AIR TEMPERATURE 2° NO ICING GREASY PATCHES WET LEAVES UNDER TREES ALL THAMES VALLEY. SINGLE-LANE WORKING OXFORD BYPASS. ABNORMLOAD 3 MILES W OF ABINGDON EASTBOUND 15 MPH.

I had to tap acknowledgments before she’d move. I called her Mitzi, after Mitsubishi.

Riding her was beautiful. Below seventy she ran so silently I could hear myself breathing. No gears—just twist the throttle and feed on the juice. She was low and broad, with low broad tires. Her weight was low down, in the batteries. The heated seat adjusted itself and hugged your bottom as you sat on it. Windscreen and panniers were molded round you, so you never felt the wind. Doing a ton was like sitting on a sofa.

She taught me to ride her. If I leaned too far into a corner, she bleeped. If I didn’t lean far enough, she pinged. If I went too fast for a bit of road, she wailed like a cat in heat. But she was no scaredy-cat. On a straight approaching Reading she did a hundred and sixty while relaying the latest Helen Choy disc from Hong Kong and dipping her own headlights as cars approached.

On and on we went, getting chummier and chummier like a hand in a glove. She chattered and scolded, tremendously on my side, like any computer. Feeling invulnerable, all-powerful, I dreamed wild, boyish, Est-ish dreams. Of rescuing Keri and riding off with her through the night forever…

Then the hard-headed Tech in me took over and screwed out of those dreams a realistic plan that just might work.

The moment I had a plan to save Keri, to get her for myself, I grew terrified that she might be dead already, and her funeral in the morning.

I reached the London gate before dawn.

There was no official racing that day. But Keri raced the back streets every day, that most fabulous of things, an Open Champion. Anybody could challenge her at any time…

They told me at the racetrack she was down Lambeth way, racing the demolition sites. The Lambeth Estate had been emptied. The Archbishop of Canterbury was landscaping it into a deer park…

At least she was alive—an hour ago.

I rode up to massive jeers.

“What’s that?” she asked. “A sofa with extra-large castors?”

“Jap crap,” sneered the hangers-on. “Diddums Daddy buy it for Christmas?”

I tried to tell Keri what Mitzi could do.

“Be a man,” she said. “Ride British.” She put her helmet back on; she was never still for five minutes. In a second, my chance’d be gone.

I pointedly looked at her bike. Nearly new, well serviced. Gold-plated petrol tank and handlebars. But the same old killer design.

“Mine’ll go faster than your old junk heap,” I said.

“Like my Aunt Fanny it will.” Anger flared in her cheeks. A nerve twitched in her left eyebrow. Silence had fallen.

“Prove it,” I said.

“Right.” She revved. “Let me show you our race course. Just so you can’t say afterward that you got lost.” She showed me the course in every detail, pointing out road cambers and loose surfaces with the greatest sarcastic politeness. Kept saying, “Do you understand?” as to an idiot child. Then she snapped down her visor and went for a fill-up of petrol.

The hangers-on closed in.

“She’ll break her neck rather than be passed.”

“We’ll break yours afterward.” I managed a careless shrug.

Then she was back; a light in her eyes, a perkiness in her back, and that tic in her left eyebrow. She lined up alongside, tucking a strand of newly washed hair under her helmet with a gesture that nearly broke my heart…Then shouted, “Start,” put her bike into gear in the same breath, and wheelied off across the brick-strewn demolition site leaving me standing. I kept hitting loose bricks. By the time I reached the road, she was fifty yards ahead and the crowd was already laughing.

Fortunately, there was a long straight. Mitzi caught up for me, in a long surge of power that pressed me deeper into the saddle.

Big left-hand bend; she swung out nearly to the opposite curb, leaning out as far as she could, watching for robo-trucks coming the other way. Was it safe to follow? Might she squeeze into one of her shadow cracks, leaving me plastered all over the front of something?

No, she wouldn’t want me dead: she’d want me to laugh at afterward. With my heart in my mouth I followed her line, hit another loose brick that made Mitzi bounce like a trampoline, lost another forty yards.

On the straight, she looked back, laughing. Knew me for the nig-nog I was.

That suited me: she hadn’t sussed out Mitzi at all.

She played with me after that; constantly looking back over her shoulder and laughing. I let myself ride even more badly. She actually throttled back to keep me interested.

Oh, Keri, Keri, I love you. Don’t forget you’re riding against a Tech; Techs are cunning bastards.
… I edged up on her a little, as the last bend came in sight. Joggling my elbows as if coaxing the last effort out of my bike.

It had her in fits.

Last bend. Out she swung, wide, wide, as she had to, on that deadly rattletrap. I took a deep breath, chose a line far inside her, turned on the juice and
prayed.

Mitzi bleeped at me, suddenly frantic. I leaned in deeper and deeper to the bend. Just for a horrible second, I nearly broke away and went flying all over the road. Then I was alongside Keri, riding boot to boot.

And she, caught in her chosen line, could do nothing except go suicidally faster and faster. Leaning so hard in toward me that it seemed for a moment as if that wing of her golden hair was going right down under my front wheel.

We’ll die together,
I thought, and that didn’t seem too bad.

The bend was over; we were straightening out, coming upright. She was still alongside, twisting her throttle so hard I could see her jaw clenched inside her helmet. Shouting at her bike as if it was a horse.

But I piled the juice on (I nearly forgot, I so much wanted to be close to her), and she just faded back over my right shoulder.

I shot past the fist-shaking hangers-on. One leaped out at me, making me swerve so badly that I did a zigzag that lasted all of two minutes and ended up on my knees, facing the wrong way, with no cloth left in the knees of my denims.

Keri, too, was lying inert beside her roaring, wheel-spinning bike. I ran back, terrified I’d killed her. The hangers-on were all walking away… But she was still breathing, back rising and falling in great heaves.

She raised her head. Behind the scarred visor, tears were streaming down her face.

“You hurt?” I rushed to pick her up.

She let me lift her, then punched me in the gut with all her might.

“Cheating Est bastard!”

She picked up a half-brick and threw it.

I knew why the hangers-on were making themselves scarce.

“I’ll beat you tomorrow—
officially.
You won’t stand a prayer. They’ll all beat you—they’ll
kill
you.”

“I know,” I said humbly. “I’m no good at all.”

She looked at me, suspecting another Est trick. She had finally stopped throwing bricks.

“I’m no good at all,” I repeated. “My bike beat you. You didn’t know how good it was.”

“Yes,” she snapped, with a brisk nod of her head.

“Like to have a ride on her—no catch?”

She glared, like a wildcat that’s just been offered a bit of fresh steak. She’d have liked to have said no. But she could never resist a bike, Keri. She pulled Mitzi upright with a heave of her broad shoulders. “You’ve scratched it.”

“One of your little mates made me crash.”

“Serve you right. How do you start it? No, you’re not riding pillion. Just show me how to start it.”

I tried showing her other things but she was already gone. Round the course again…

She came past the first time, cranking over so fast and hard I said good-bye to her and Mitzi both. Mitzi thought her last hour had come, too, the amount of bleeping she was putting up.

The second time, I just shut my eyes and waited for the scrunch of metal.

There was a snigger.

She’d idled up to me, so slowly I hadn’t heard a thing.

“Good bike. Touched a hundred and twenty down Vauxhall Bridge Road.”

“She can do more.”

“Not in this dump. I don’t want to wreck her. I like the way she chirrups. Like a pet canary.”

“Tried the radio?”

She played with the buttons. When she got Tokyo, her face lit up like a child’s. “She must be lonely, so far from home.” Talking about the bike as if it was a living thing; stroking the handlebars.

“Keep her,” I said. “As a present.”

She just stared.

“I’m no Racer,” I said, fiddling with the zip of my leathers.

“You’re not bad,” she said. “You might shape up.”

“I want you to have her.”

“Why, for Christ’s sake?”

“Because your bike’s a death trap. I don’t want you getting killed.”

“Naff off. What do you care about me?”

“I think I’ve fallen in love with you.”

She reached for another half-brick…

“Look,” I said, when she finally stopped. “Let’s go for a drink and talk things over. You ride Mitzi and I’ll ride yours.”

“I’ll come for the ride.”

We found a snack bar by the Lambeth Gate. Closing down, nearly empty. She bought her own Coke. “My old Dad always said, when somebody gives you something, they expect something back. …” But she kept on examining me, as if I was the Loch Ness Monster. “Ain’t you got no Est girls keen on you? You’re not bad looking.

“Neither are you.”

She twisted her face into a hideous mass of wrinkles. “Yeah, I use sump oil for foundation cream and gunk for mascara! Sorry, Kitson—love’s just not my zone—makes yer soft for racing. Feller starts hangin’ round the pits making goo-goo eyes, yer start worryin’ about crashing and spoiling yer looks, and yer dead. Push off, Kitson. I can’t do with yer hangin’ around.”

“Why don’t you push off with me?”

“Wotcher mean?”

“We could share the bike—see a few places. Birmingham, Leeds, Glasgow. Have a holiday. …”

“What the hell’s a holiday?” Her face set hard. “By the time I got back here, there’d be a new Champ. They’d’ve forgotten me.”

“You could make them remember you—if you had Mitzi.”

“I wouldn’t ride Mitzi—that’s cheating. Still, I’d like to see what she could do on a motorway. …”

“Come for a week,” I coaxed. “They won’t forget you in a week.”

She giggled. “Champ and ex-Champ vanish on dirty weekend. That’d make the telly-gogglers’ hair stand on end. They’d have to start preliminary heats all over again. And by the time they’d finished, I’d be back. Okay, I’ll come. But no beddy-beddy, right? I’m as tight as a GKN locknut.”

“Right!”

I picked her up at ten; she wouldn’t start before. All Unnems were dopey in the mornings. I was starting to notice the effect myself. At Cambridge, my feet had hit the floor the moment my baby-blue eyes opened. Here there was a swamp time, between sleep and waking; a swamp in which you lay feeling you’d never move again. Once up, you felt better; by mid-morning, the feeling was gone.