STAY OUT HERE AND FACE US

1563 4D

Rocking Jeddin, Marra and Deen gently, the fastcar hurtled through a poorly-lit tunnel. Now deep in the City, they approached the outer edge of the top layer of Rumchi Zone, their chosen destination. On the car’s datapanels, lights winked; its voice said, “Ahead the way is blocked: a militia checkpoint. Shall we continue or turn off?”

Jeddin awoke from his innerspace dream, the ecstasy of the joining with the aliens and the two women still warming him. He sat up; Marra and Deen stared ahead into the shadows, hypnotized and agog at the unaccustomed speed of travel. He stretched and said, “Other routes to Rumchi?”

The car answered, “That’s not clear. Next left is only possible turn.”

“Take it. Watch for the next way in.”

“Acknowledged.” The car slowed, banked left and went on into a new tunnel. Jeddin waited. These tunnels had been dug between the old layers of the City several decades earlier to accommodate heavy vehicle traffic, but then the Air Laws had reduced high-speed travel to a trickle of its projected levels. Now the only fastcar users were corp officers, high government officials on business, or corpos and militia on specific missions. A checkpoint would be a problem.

Access hatch doors whipped past them. Jeddin reached into a small compartment in the car’s floor and pulled out a long nanoprobe and a repair eyeface. “We’re gonna walk,” he said.

“Walk? In bare feet?” Marra sat bolt upright. “You can walk. I prefer to ride, just like this.” She patted the soft seat.

“We can’t walk any more,” Deen complained. “That last hike on the mountain road ruined our feet. See?” She held up a foot for Jeddin, showing him some red spots and a few scratches on its toughened sole, and a good patch of smooth thigh under the wrap she still kept around herself.

“Bear with me,” he said, to put them off. He plugged in the eyeface, whiskered around the car’s panel with the probe, and jabbed the probe deep and hard into a nexus of multicolored light. As he withdrew the probe, the car slowed and stopped. That would do it. He wondered how he would explain it all.

“What are you doing? Didn’t you hear us?” Marra‘s voice turned shrill.

Jeddin glared at her. “If we go on to another checkpoint, we’ll be taken and shot. There’s something wrong down here, the militia and the corpos are out in force, and I don’t want to get caught with this vehicle. It belongs to corporate police, and it was stolen.”

To his dismay, the women didn’t bat an eye. “That’s no problem,” Deen said, “because we know just how to handle them. You could trust us, you know.”

“You weren’t doing so well when I found you in the mountains,” he said, irritated. Difficult women. Maybe he shouldn’t have picked them up, except for what he learned from the aliens. That might almost have been worth it.

Marra took up the cry. “That was different. This is the City, not some hickside drughole. We lived down here. Now get this thing started again and get us to Rumchi.” She shook her head as if to throw back a mop of hair; then, looking confused, she rubbed her nascent scalp fuzz.

Jeddin‘s mind raced. “I don’t think I can. I smashed the master timing clock.”

“You did what?” Deen again, adjusting her skimpy wrap.

“Smashed the clock. It allows the car to coordinate its operation with other traffic.”

“What traffic? There’s no traffic. What’s the matter with driving it manually? Can’t you do that?” Now Marra.

“Yeah, can’t you at least get us in closer?” Both women looked him in the face with wide, interested eyes.

“Just a minute.” Jeddin ducked into innerspace and spotted Aoriver whispering to Oortonel. “Could you help me out with them? They won’t walk anywhere, and it’s too dangerous to take the car.” A pause, as the two glowing figures bent over their sleeping counterparts.

Aoriver said, “That didn’t help at all. We even offered to fix up their feet, and now they’re mad at us and you, and we need them for Qaqanhialh. Forget it.” The two aliens spread wings, flew up, tilted, and disappeared altogether.

Jeddin opened his eyes again. Deen‘s eyes flashed at him. She said, “You vat-cooked slug! What do you think you’re doing? Stay out here and face us.”

He capitulated. “All right. Let me see what I can do, before a repair droid comes along.” He danced his fingers across the car’s datapanel, getting some flashing yellow responses, and fumbled under the panel for the backup control yoke. It came up in his hands and he started the car forward. It lurched, slewed sideways, and crunched. He twisted the yoke savagely to the right and slammed it forward, and the car bounced to the middle of the roadway, spun three times, and jammed itself directly across the lane.

Several rarely-used andro curses came to his mind, and he sorted through them before screeching two in anjive and twisting the yoke again, this time more gently. Deen and Marra cowered. The car groaned, rose a foot into the air, turned until it almost pointed the right way, and settled to the road once more. Jeddin eased the yoke forward and slightly left, and the car moved on, wobbling slightly.

“You didn’t have to take it out on the car,” Deen said plaintively.

“I’ve just never had to run one of these by hand,” he grated through his teeth.

“But that was your fault, and you took it all out on us,” Marra added.

Yes, I did, Jeddin said, his mouth firmly shut, And I’ll do it again if I need to. He rammed the corners of his mouth into a smile and concentrated on accelerating.