Racers of the Night: Science Fiction Stories by Brad R. Torgersen (4 page)

The old man was agitated to the point of fidgeting, his tablet and stylus appearing like foreign objects in his hands as he nervously shuffled them back and forth, one hand to the other.

“Every time you go back out on that track, you’re just daring her to notice you. It might not happen now, it might not happen tomorrow, but before this series is over …”

“Enough,” Jane said, sharply. “Quit, and let someone else run the crew. Or shut up and bring me home for the win.”

“You really think you’re good enough?” Bill said. “I was full of beans in my day, and even I couldn’t make it past the third heat.”

“Maybe that’s your problem,” Jane said, letting the techs check her vacuum suit’s fittings. “Because you haven’t climbed this particular mountain to the top, you’re afraid it can’t be done?”

Bill’s face flushed brightly.

“I’m a lot of things, lady, but I ‘aint a jealous man.”

“Prove it. Put the curse in the trash where it belongs, and make some good things happen.”

Bill didn’t look convinced as she went out the airlock for the third heat, but he did look relieved when she came back two hours later, a second-place finish notched.

• • •

The fourth heat meant press both before and after the run. The competition was down to 80 drivers now, and after the day was done, there would be only 20 remaining for the final, championship heat—and the crowning of the Armstrong Cup winner. As the only female in the bunch, Jane got more than her share of attention, including several in-depth interviews during which the inevitable history of the track—the five female deaths, the dearth of female competitors overall—came to the surface.

Jane blew it off. Bravado was a prerequisite for all drivers. But by the time she was suiting up for the heat, she had to admit even she’d been rattled. They’d showed her some of the old footage of the accidents from the past—news people generally having no clue whatsoever about what’s appropriate to show a person right before they’re about to do something hazardous.

Jane laughed her way through it, but was quiet during the race prep.

“Not so funny when you see what’s possible, is it?”

Jane glared at Bill.

“I noticed they didn’t even censor the footage of your daughter’s death,” she said.

“Those bastards don’t care about me now, if they ever did in the first place. It’s ratings. Crash movies are part of what make the sport fun for the crowds. Money. All that bull.”

Jane nodded, and went back to checking her wrists and ankles for complete air seals.

“It’s not too late—” Bill began.

But Jane cut him off.

“Oh yes it is. I’m not going to go down as the woman driver who chickened out. Everyone’s paying attention to me now.”

Bill took a step back, his face gone suddenly white.

The stylus and tablet hit the floor, albeit gently in the lunar gravity.

“What?” Jane said.

“That’s
exactly
what Ellen said to me, before …”

Jane literally bellowed, her helmet clenched in one fist.

When she stopped, everyone was blinking and looking strangely at her.

“No more!” she said. “I can’t take one more word!”

She looked to one of the young techs. “Is my Falcon ready?”

“Yes ma’am,” he said, gulping.

“Then let’s go!”

• • •

The fourth heat was by far the most competitive. All of the inexperienced and tentative drivers had been pruned away, leaving the calculating, the experienced, the determined, and the creatively diabolical—to challenge each other for the coveted final 20 spots on the championship grid.

Facing these odds, Jane scrapped through all but the final two laps—just a couple of minor brushes with opponents’ vehicles, and the certain knowledge that she’d be wringing a gallon of water out of her undersuit when all was said and done.

Second to last lap, and Jane was in a familiar spot with the leaders at the front of the pack. Having gamed her way into the elite group—same strategies and tactics as always—she’d almost considered her advancement to the final heat to be a foregone conclusion, when one of the other drivers from the middle of the pack made a particularly dangerous—and gutsy—move. Trying to copy Jane’s technique as they entered a turn, the man began spinning out of control, first pinballing off one bike, then another, then a third, until suddenly the track was alive with wildly spinning bikes, their riders trying desperately to regain control—overcorrecting—and then either smashing down into the safety barriers nearest the domed-over crowds, or pinwheeling up and off the track altogether, arcing out across the sun-blasted regolith, legs and feet come loose, flailing.

Jane experienced a moment of surreal calm, where all sensation ceased and she could see clearly all the other riders around her, as if in extreme slow motion. Then her Falcon was being smashed down into the safety barriers, the metal grinding on the lunar rock for just an instant.

The controls were frozen as Jane tried to steer up off the wall. She was pinned by her neighbor, who’d nosed into her T-bone style, and was having no success reversing course. They looked at each other for a split second, raw panic passing between them, and then the bikes were flipping, and Jane was thrown high into the airless sky.

Again, a moment of surreal calm: the track, passing swiftly underneath, and the crowd, faces upturned and mouths open wide with astonishment.

Many drivers and bikes spinning, rolling, whirling. One or two skating ahead of the scrum, their drivers raising their fists and pumping them.

Somewhere, Bill’s voice was screaming.

Jane started to come down. In the moon’s gravity, it wasn’t as fast as it might have been on Earth, but with the velocity imparted to her by her bike, there was more than enough kinetic energy to kill her when she hit. Jane caught a glimpse—just a tiny glimpse—of Sally Tincakes: the rocket booster over the statue’s head, the exaggerated bustline, the glamour model smile, and then Jane was smashing down into the regolith beyond the track.

• • •

All was white. Jane sat in the ready room. No pit crew. Not even the noise of the crowd reverberating through the walls. Her helmet was clutched in one hand, her elbows on her knees. It was time to go. She felt it in her bones. The race was on. And yet, not. Standing up, she started towards the door to the pit—and stopped short as someone else walked in from the door on the opposite side.

The visitor wasn’t in coveralls. Instead, she wore a vintage evening gown styled like those worn by glamour models at the tail end of the previous century: slit high on one thigh, strapless, low-cut, and strategically boned so as to create a gravity-defying silhouette with plenty of cleavage. The dress’s satin fabric was embedded with fiber optics that swirled and rippled in various tints and hues of bright blue light.

“Sally,” Jane said softly.

The ex Mrs. Cazetti smiled, but didn’t say anything. She walked skillfully on a set of platform heels across the ready room to the opposite wall, turned, and leaned against it.

Recent memory swirled: the Falcon had been pinned, then flipped, followed by a long, frantic parabola over the track towards the surface of the Moon just beyond …

Jane felt herself begin to tremble as she stared at the silent apparition whose likeness had towered over Cazetti Raceway since before Jane had been born.

Death—the possibility of it—had always haunted Jane as long as she’d driven the lunar tracks. Yet at the same time, somehow, it never bothered her. She’d been too busy winning. Victory upon victory, each purse growing a little larger. Each season, her horizons broadened a little bit more.

But now …

“Why?” Jane said at Sally, slamming her helmet to the white floor. “I was going to do it. I was going to take the Armstrong Cup. I was going to
win.”

Sally seemed untroubled by the outburst. Her artfully shadowed eyes glanced past Jane’s shoulder, in the direction of the pit door.

Jane glared at her nemesis, fuming, then slowly turned her head as a second figure entered the ready room.

Like Jane, the second visitor was clad in a racer’s suit. Its colorful vacuum-tight fabric hugged the racer’s athletically feminine body, in spite of frumpy insulation and hoses.

The other racer looked whisperingly familiar, but in a way Jane couldn’t quite put her finger on.

The racer’s free hand jerked a thumb towards the pit door behind her.

Time to go.

“I know, I know,” Jane said, but couldn’t move. Her eyes remained locked on the racer’s face. So similar to someone Jane knew. Yet, different too.

“Ellen,” Jane finally breathed. The racer had Bill’s nose, and his prominent cheek bones. She was younger than Jane, and had a bit of cockiness in the way she stood, her eyes staring sympathetically down at Jane’s confused and angry face.

Ellen jerked her thumb over her shoulder a second time.

Jane looked to the pit door, which remained open. Then back at Ellen, who had begun to stare at Sally across the ready room. A coldly invisible beam of acknowledgement seemed to pass between the two—opposed ghosts conjured for Jane’s benefit, or peril. It was crazy, but it also made perfect sense too. Somehow, it all made perfect sense. Like a waking dream.

Jane felt questions tickling at the back of her tongue, but her mouth made no sound. She simply watched the two spectral women. They stared forcefully at one another for several long, agonizing seconds. Then Ellen walked purposefully to where Jane stood, bent to the floor, and retrieved Jane’s helmet.

Ellen passed the helmet respectfully into Jane’s hands, then jerked her thumb over her shoulder a third time. No words. But the message was clear.

Sally Tincakes stepped away from the wall, but stopped short as Ellen walked past Jane and stood in Sally’s path. With her fists balled on her hips, Ellen didn’t look over her shoulder as Jane felt a sudden urgency to move.

Quickly, strength flowed back into Jane’s legs.

It took a few broad strides to make it through pit door.

She was already putting her helmet on.

• • •

Jane woke up trying to gasp, and couldn’t.

She’d been in and out of the hospital a few times during her racing years, replete with scuffs and broken bones from spills on the junior tracks.

But nothing could have prepared her to be seeing the inside of the coffin-like full-metabolic support unit that housed her now. A small window showed her the ceiling, while warm fluid gurgled around her ears. Several tubes felt like they fed into her mouth and down her throat—they were horribly uncomfortable.

Jane lifted a hand weakly and scratched at the window with her fingertips.

Quickly, several faces appeared in succession, each of them examining hers.

Then, a hissing noise, and all the fluid began to drain away from around Jane’s prone body. The coffin came open, and several surgically-suited medical people were extracting the tubes from her esophagus. She coughed and sputtered, hacking violently, which caused tremendous pain in her ribs, until she was shaking like a leaf and breathing in huge gulps of air.

Too disoriented to wave the medical people away, she let them towel her off and sit her up—which also hurt. But at least she was in one piece, or so things seemed. When she tried to talk, she croaked like a frog—her vocal cords soggy. Someone who had the officious demeanor of a physician began poking and prodding, shining his light into her eyes and asking her questions to which she answered by holding up either one finger, or two.

Once they got her into a proper medical gown, they tucked her between the sheets of a rolling gurney which spirited her away from the critical care ward with its rows of identical, human-sized immersion capsules.

Jane went through several brightly-lit hallways, her hand weakly raised to shield her eyes from the harsh glare. Then she was deposited in a softly-lit intensive care room. She felt them plug her into the monitoring and life support station that sat like a pillar in the room’s center. A pepper-haired male nurse spoke comforting words, then disappeared. Leaving Jane in a fuzzy stupor that could have lasted minutes, hours, or days.

Clarity was achingly gradual. Staff came, and staff went. Always, they murmured encouragingly to her as they checked her connections to the monitor, and adjusted the intravenous tubes that snaked away from the tops of both wrists. Jane’s mouth became dry, and they let her drink water. When her stomach grumbled, they gave her soup. When her bowels complained, they ushered her delicately to the lavatory and back, her tubes and wires trailing behind her.

Finally, the floor physician disconnected her from the ICU tower, and she was again whisked by gurney through a series of brightly-lit hallways, until she was left in a simpler, less mechanized room.

She weakly depressed the stud on the gurney that would call the nurse, and was surprised when a familiar face poked through her sliding glass door.

Bill wouldn’t look her in the eyes when he hesitantly entered her patient room.

“I’m glad you came to see me,” she said, her voice soft and breathy.

“I’ve been in and out of this hospital at least a dozen times since they brought you in,” Bill replied, hand wrapped tightly around the cup of coffee he’d brought. “I almost couldn’t take seeing you comatose in the critical ward. You looked as good as dead. The medics said your heart and lungs had stopped. That the machines were doing all the work, at least for awhile.”

Jane nodded, and let her head fall back on her pillow while she closed her eyes, remembering the final instant before she hit ground.

When she opened her eyes again, Bill was still there. Seated in the recliner at the gurney’s side. Watching attentively.

“It’s a miracle that you landed where you did,” Bill said. “All that regolith they dug up and piled on the edges of the track, it’s like slushy snow. And meters deep. You soft landed. Or at least you landed and didn’t turn to insta-jelly. The other drivers, they weren’t so lucky.”

“I bet the footage of the wreck was all over the news,” Jane said.

“Biggest and most spectacular racing disaster in years,” Bill said, then snorted. “They replayed it for a week, even on Earth. As the only survivor, your name got the headlines. If you check your e-mail you’ll probably find several gazillion messages. You’ve suddenly become the best-known racer on the senior circuit. I’ve had at least a dozen companies contact me, wanting to know if they can hire you to be their spokeswoman—assuming you didn’t come out of the hospital a vegetable.”