The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect (75 page)

When he got into the grass, he aimed it nowhere in particular and gunned the accelerator.

Caroline was astonished in so many ways she had no time to think that it was all fake. She was astonished by her own helplessness. She had been helpless for a long time, but that had been an internal thing, the rebellion of her own flesh. Now she was healthy and strong but the chains were stronger, and their cold mindless strength crushed her living will. She was astonished by the feelings, which weren't exactly painful, yet, but which she knew soon would be. She was astonished by Fred's imagination. This would be an exciting and terrible way to die, everything she had hoped for.
Most of all she was astonished by the machine Fred used to drag her through the dewy grass. The motorbike dragged her easily, not even straining its four-cylinder engine. The dirt and grass whizzed by her so fast it was nothing but a blur, so fast that she had no time to see the hazards which caused bruises and cuts to collect on her like bird droppings on a seldom-washed car.
Fred slowed and turned, and she went spinning. Then her feet were yanked again and the landscape speeded up. She twisted and struggled, but there was little she could do on her own behalf. Fred
slalommed
from side to side, so that she could not get herself oriented in any particular way.
Each time Fred accelerated she felt the machine's inhuman strength. It could rip her apart without straining, she realized, and without mind or conscience it would do so and just keep going. In a battle between flesh and steel, flesh didn't stand a chance. How often had she gotten into a car without even a second thought for the strength it had, the terrible power harnessed on her behalf beneath its gleaming hood? Caroline had never been in an automobile accident, but now she was learning firsthand how bodies could be torn asunder by errant machines.
But the machine's victory would not last. When the flesh was defeated the rust would set in, and unlike living things machines could not repair themselves. Would this bike last a hundred and six years, even with regular maintenance? Flesh was weak because of its great subtlety, because it compromised perfect strength so that it could self-repair and adapt to its environment. But machines overloaded those clever mechanisms. This bike would kill her, it would scrape her raw and beat her senseless, and it wasn't even designed for the purpose of killing people. It was just something Fred had adapted on the spur of the moment.
The machines would kill the people, and then the machines would die too. It was all clear and self-evident. Mankind had set itself on course for this inevitable doom when the first caveman tried to tame fire and burned his fingers in the process. Die as they had, by the thousands of millions, more people were drawn to the power of the machine as moths were drawn to flames.
Caroline didn't exactly have these thoughts as I have set them down here; she was busy being dragged across a swamp, and they orbited through her skull in no particular order. They had to compete with the pain and the growing sexual excitement she was feeling, and her feeble efforts to struggle against the inevitable.
The landscape slowed to a crawl and stopped. The bike rumbled comfortably on its four fat tires, and Fred dismounted. Caroline struggled to face him. She hadn't really collected a lot of damage; Fred had dragged her several kilometers but the grass was wet and the ground was soft. She had a lot of small cuts and a couple of large bruises. Fred, of course, was hardly even sweating. He casually lit a cigarette and took a couple of puffs on it. Then he straddled her, pinning her to the ground. He pulled a rag out of his pocket. He pressed the lit end of the cigarette against her right breast, right above the areola.
Taken by surprise, Caroline screamed as she was burned. The scream didn't last, though; as soon as her mouth was open, Fred jammed the rag between her teeth. He stuffed it into her mouth until she thought she might choke. Then he got up, flicked the cigarette aside (its purpose served), and opened a storage box on the back of the rumbling bike. From this he took a roll of grey tape. He wrapped several loops of the tape around Caroline's head, to hold the gag in her mouth. The rag stank of gasoline and motor oil, and made her think again of the power of the machine.
Had she been screaming? Caroline didn't know why Fred had gagged her, since there was nobody to hear. She was somewhat surprised at how effective the rag was. She tried to scream again, and nothing got out but a muffled moan.