Street Freaks

by Terry Brooks

  Ash shakes his head but doesn’t answer. Holly helps him over to join them, freeing his arm when he is safely in place so he can lean against the half wall. He is already starting to recover, the feeling returning to his limbs and his head clearing.

  He sees Starfire right away, moving slowly into place at the starting line.

  The volume of noise that emanates from the crowd reaches a new level. The roar is deafening, the sustained fury of it—because “fury” is exactly the right word, the sound ferocious and

  maddened—sufficient to cause the viewing stands to shake beneath those who occupy them. Ash has never heard anything like it. The decibel level increases as the competitors are announced and the growls of their machines rise briefly in response.

  Starfire is paired against a vehicle very similar in look, a fiery-red racer that mirrors her sleek lines and contoured surfaces. Many in the crowd wonder if Starfire has met her match. The thunder of screaming voices, stamping feet, and clapping hands could be for either or both of the competitors. It is impossible to tell. But it continues unabated as the pair nudges up to the starting line, snarling and spitting fire, shaking like animals ready to run, ready to fight.

  “Holly!” Woodrow exclaims, looking at her.

  “Shut up, Woodrow,” she snaps angrily.

  Jenny leans over to Ash and says, “Lonnergon’s entry.”

  He stares at her.

  “Penny-Bird,” she says.

  When the flag drops, the machines are mirror images of each other. They fly down the Straightaway side by side, straining to gain speed, each struggling to get an edge over the other. Neither can manage it. T.J. is good, but Penny-Bird is his equal. Sapphire blue and blood red, the racers tear down the synthetic surface of the racecourse, engines screaming as loudly and wildly as the crowds pressed up against the walkway railings. Sunlight glints off their mirror-bright surfaces in starbursts.

  The finish line approaches, coming up fast—too fast, too soon—both racers flying toward it, still locked in combat, neither one able to get ahead of the other . . .

  Until they thunder beneath the checkered flag, swept to victory as one by the howls and shrieks of the crowd.

  It is over, but no one knows who won. No announcement is made. The racers pull up and await a decision. Vidcams will have captured the moment when they crossed the finish line and will determine which, if either, has found the extra few seconds needed to claim the victory. Instruments will have measured speed and elapsed time electronically, and the data will be examined. The crowd noise fades to a dull murmur as everyone awaits the announcement. The decision takes long minutes, endless minutes.

  If Starfire has lost, Ash thinks, that will take T.J. out of the race and put an end to this whole charade.

  A massive roar rises from the crowd. The huge viewing screens lining the Straightaway fill with not one but two names.

  Starfire and the Lonnergon’s entry.

  It is a tie.

  The roar of the crowd builds to a fresh crescendo that washes over the whole of the racetrack.

  Ash feels his heart sink.

  The outcomes of the rest of the races, although many are close and some sensational, feel anticlimactic. The crowd is excited each time, but its enthusiasm does not approach previous levels. When all the races are run, twelve winners are declared and will race against each other in pairs. The second round is scheduled to begin after a short intermission. Down along the racetrack, refreshments and souvenirs are sold by roving vendors while hearts are allowed to drop from throats and pulse rates are given an opportunity to settle.

  The winners selected from the first round are matched in new pairings for the second race. Starfire’s new adversary is the Chronos. They are positioned next to last. Time seems to drag endlessly as everyone waits for the competition to begin anew. But the second round goes much more quickly than the first, the winners in all of the rounds advancing easily. Even Starfire’s battle against the Chronos is never in doubt, the blue-and-silver racer winning by almost two lengths.

  Now only six remain. Among them are Starfire, the Lonnergon’s entry, and the water bug. There is another intermission, this one longer than the first, ostensibly so that the drivers can ingest liquids and catch a few moments of rest, but it’s actually to allow the audience to spend more of their hard-earned credits in the Zone. Ash stares down helplessly from atop the Street Freaks building. He wishes he could speak to T.J. To tell him to stop now, to drop out. To tell him this is a mistake. His hand is a mess.

  But he can do nothing, and all too soon, the third race is ready to start. This time only the two fastest will advance to the championship round.

  Starfire is in the first pairing. She is matched against a long, needle-nosed emerald retro that harkens back to the machines from races that were held several hundred years ago in the old United States. These machines were called “dragsters,” and they raced with their engines uncovered and much of their framework exposed. They were all engine and tires, odd-looking hunkered-down machines with big shoulders and raked bodies that narrowed sharply toward the front end. Starfire’s competitor is one of those.

  The start flag drops, and they fly off the line and tear down the Straightaway in a roaring surge that causes the dragster to veer into Starfire’s gleaming body. There is contact, but it is minimal, and the dragster straightens out again almost instantly. But any contact is sufficient to disqualify the vehicle causing it, and when the race is finished—a race Starfire wins easily—the dragster is eliminated by rule.

  The other machines race afterward, and now it becomes a question of whether Starfire’s run was fast enough to put her in the final pairing. If the contact with the dragster slowed her sufficiently, she will be out of the running. There is a long delay as the officials examine the results. The crowd is restless, their muttering growing steadily louder, their dissatisfaction evident. Starfire didn’t cause the contact, but that isn’t the issue. What matters are the comparative times and whether Starfire is one of the fastest two.

  When the announcement is finally made, a roar rises from the crowd. Starfire and Penny-Bird’s crimson racer will race for the championship. Once again, both have finished the round with identical times.

  The crowd loves it. Hundreds of thousands of voices shout their approval, and the air vibrates with the sounds of their enthusiasm. The racers pull up to the starting line, revving their engines in a guttural growl that with each fresh burst of barely restrained power surpasses the roar of those watching. It feels as if the ground is shaking; Street Freaks is vibrating all the way down to its foundation. The air itself quivers with the volume of noise being generated. The giant screens fill with images of the challengers, the faces of the drivers within the cockpits and the machines themselves as they ready for the start.

  The anticipation builds, and time slows to a crawl. The starter waits patiently, his red flag raised.

  When it falls, it is as if the earth itself explodes. The machines leap forward as one, engines roaring and oversized tires screaming as they seek purchase on the smooth synthetic surface of the Straightaway. For the first few seconds, they remain locked together, as if tethered by invisible bonds, keeping pace with one another as they hurtle down the track.

  Then Starfire begins to pull away from her competitor, a lead measured by inches, then a foot. On the big screens, you can see it. The cameras show clearly what the eye cannot.

  Starfire has taken the lead. Ash can’t believe it. T.J. is going to win!

  They are almost halfway down the track by now, but it seems to have taken them forever to get there. Ash goes still, his eyes glued to the track, watching the racers flit between gaps in the giant viewing screens. On the screens, the gap between Starfire and the crimson racer widens. And then, abruptly, it begins to close. Penny-Bird is catching up.

  They are past the halfway mark, the roaring of the engines a booming thunder that engulfs the whole of the visible world. Penny-Bird draws even with T.J
. They are locked together once more in a repeat of the first race, screaming toward the finish.

  Then Ash sees it. A screen of smoke is coming off Starfire’s sleek body, wisps of it rising and evaporating in the heat of the wash she creates with her passing. Something is wrong. Ash blinks against the sun’s glare. Are those flames he sees? Those tiny blue flickers of light? Are his eyes deceiving him?

  She’s on fire, he realizes.

  And in the next instant, Get out, T.J.!

  But there is no getting out. Starfire is doing two hundred miles an hour and flying toward the finish line. Even if T.J. wanted to escape, there’s not enough time. In the last three seconds before Starfire and her crimson opponent scream across the finish line, the checkered flag dropping in a series of sweeping figure eights, T.J. summons one final burst of power from his racer and pulls ahead.

  But by now Starfire is engulfed in flames. Pinpricks of fire dance across her brilliant surface with wicked glee. She is still traveling at nearly two hundred miles an hour when the flames reach the fuel tank.

  An instant later, she explodes in a pillar of fire.

  Ash stands at the wall, staring down the Straightaway to where the smoke and ash plume skyward. There is a rent in the fabric of time, and he has fallen into it, blasted and emptied. He has quit breathing. He hears the sounds of horror and disbelief rising from the crowd. Thousands are surging toward the site of the explosion. They press against the barriers that form the force field, and eventually the railings give way to the pressure and the crowd pours into the street.

  “I’m going down there!” Holly shouts.

  Without waiting for a response, she disappears into the stairwell. How will she get there with so many people surging in the streets? Ash doesn’t know. Maybe she will walk on air. Tears fill his eyes. Tommy Jeffers is gone. It isn’t possible. His throat tightens. It was supposed to be him. He was supposed to be driving.

  Behind him, Jenny Cruz is crying. Woodrow wheels up beside him and parks at his elbow. The bot boy says nothing, but a quick glance down reveals that his face is stricken.

  A moment later, both Jenny and Woodrow are gone, and Ash is left alone. He stares down at the chaos on the Straightaway and smoke from the crash sight.

  On the giant viewing screens, the vidcams are capturing reactions from those gathered in the viewing stands. Most are standing, their gazes locked on the debris from the explosion. A few are starting to leave.

  The camera shifts to dignitaries and officials. A jolt of recognition shakes Ash as a familiar face comes into focus. Cyrus Collins. His shaved head, his robust muscular body, and his craggy face—his uncle radiates strength.

  He also recognizes the girl clinging possessively to his arm, a girl so strikingly beautiful he cannot mistake her.

  It is Cay Dumont.

  A moment later, the vidcam shifts away.

  - 21 -

  Ash has quit breathing. He cannot speak. He listens to the sounds of horror and disbelief rising from below without hearing them. The crowd, which has milled about aimlessly since the explosion, finally begins to break up and move toward the substems or the boundaries of the Red Zone to make its way home again. The Sprint is finished, and they are anxious to escape the aftermath of a tragedy so terrible it will be replayed on vidviews for days to come. The big screens are already showing it over and over, sandwiched between interviews and commentaries and the usual suspicions and speculations of how it happened and what it means for the future of the annual Sprint competition. But in minutes, the race car’s crash and the driver’s death will become just another news story in an endless progression of news stories.

  Ash stays where he is. The sadness he feels is deep and pervasive. But there is anger too. Anger at what happened, no matter the cause. Anger that he could do nothing but stand there and watch. Not that there was anything he could have done; there wasn’t. But the feeling of powerlessness is maddening, even now. He wishes he could have done something to stop this from happening. He feels this might be his fault in some inexplicable way, another consequence of his coming to Street Freaks.

  His anger shifts abruptly to Cay.

  In his mind, he sees her arm linked to his uncle’s. He sees her as an adornment, a bauble to flash. He imagines her as a plaything for his amusement. The pain he feels is enormous. Why is she with him? Why did she lie about coming to the Sprint?

  He gives his emotions free rein for a long time, waiting until the worst of them have emptied out before going back downstairs to join the others.

  There is no sign of the Shoe, but Holly has returned and is sitting with Jenny and Woodrow at the dining room table. He joins them, anxious to hear what she has to say. The cyborg girl drinks deeply from a bottle of soda, her smooth synthetic features hard and set.

  “They aren’t sure about the cause. Still investigating, they claim. But they’re already calling it an accident. Something in Starfire malfunctioned, causing a fire. The flames spread to the fuel tank. End of story.”

  “Nothing malfunctioned,” Woodrow snaps, his young face suddenly angry. “We checked everything. It was all working when Starfire rolled out of here. There were fire retardants installed everywhere. There were diffusers to smother flames. Automatic release valves. That wasn’t what happened!”

  His words are insistent and a bit defensive. Holly shrugs. “Maybe something ruptured when that dragster clipped Starfire on the track. T.J. got through that race, but it all caught up with him in the final.” She shakes her head. “They just don’t know. They might never know. There’s hardly anything left that could help . . .”

  She chokes on these last words. Ash and the others look away.

  “Let’s get back to work,” Jenny says suddenly. “It might help take our minds off what’s happened. The Shoe wants that Regal Flyer in Bay 3 ready by the end of the week, and it won’t happen on its own. So let’s get to it. Not you, Ash. You come with me.”

  She gets up and walks from the room, not bothering to look back. The others stare after her in disbelief and then slowly rise.

  Ash follows Jenny into her office, where she is already seated behind her desk. “Close the door and sit down,” she says without preamble.

  Her face is grim, her voice clipped. Ash does as he is told. He has a feeling something is coming.

  “It wasn’t an accident,” Jenny says when he is seated. “It was deliberate.”

  He stares at her. “How can you be sure?”

  Jenny’s eyes fix on him. “We know Starfire was in perfect condition when she left the garage. There was nothing wrong with her, nothing that should have malfunctioned. Preventatives against such failures are built into her components. Being clipped by that dragster might have damaged the body, but it would not have ignited the fuel tank or the feeds. The sideswipe happened nowhere near either.”

  She pauses. “So it’s something else. By process of elimination, if it wasn’t an accident, it was deliberate. If it wasn’t a malfunction, it was sabotage.”

  “How is that possible?” he asks at once. “No one’s been near her but us. You’re not saying that one of us . . .”

  “No, not one of us,” Jenny snaps, her voice suddenly angry. “Someone else.”

  He stared at her. “My uncle.”

  “Let’s go with that for a moment. Assume you’re right. Let’s assume he wanted the driver dead. How did he know who would be driving Starfire? It was only decided a day ago that it would be you and not T.J. So if the plan was to kill T.J., there had to be a reason for it. What would that reason be? Why would your uncle want T.J. dead?”

  She pauses. “But if it wasn’t T.J. he was after, it had to be you. How do you explain his decision to do it like this? Didn’t that require him to go to an awful lot of trouble? He had to arrange for the car to be sabotaged, and he couldn’t have done that before knowing you would be driving. Someone who knew—which means one of us—had to have told him.”

  He thinks immediately of Cay and feels sick. But t
hen he realizes Cay hasn’t been back to Street Freaks since the decision was made, so how could she have known T.J. was out and Ash was taking his place?

  “Here’s something else to consider,” she continues. “Your uncle has had more than one chance to see you dead, but in each instance it appears he wanted you brought to him alive, not killed. When he got his hands on you at ORACLE, he just locked you in a room and left you for later. If he wanted you dead, why didn’t he kill you right away? Why wait until now and then try to make it look like an accident? Wouldn’t it have been simpler just to make you disappear?”

  “What if he didn’t care which of us was driving?” Ash asks. “What if wants both of us out of the way?”

  She gives him a look. “Think about that. Why would he destroy two million credits’ worth of valuable property just to get rid of you? Again, there were simpler ways to get the job done.”

  “So that would mean he was targeting me specifically, since targeting T.J. doesn’t make sense?”

  She purses her lips. “Let’s review what we know. Street Freaks took you in. We hid you from Achilles Pod and the L.A. Preventatives when they were hunting you. We kept you safe. Even after they got inside the compound using that negation order, bypassing our writ of exemption, they couldn’t get their hands on you.”

  “What’s your point?”

  Jenny gives him a careful look. “BioGen, your uncle, the authorities, whoever—they still think you have information your father gave you. Information they don’t want you to have. Information so toxic they can’t afford to risk you keeping it. So they’re hunting you, and somehow they’ve found out you’re here.”

  He shakes his head. “I still don’t get it. What does this have to do with what happened?”

  Jenny shifts her gaze to her desktop, as if the explanation lies there. “You know I’ve been searching the computer for days, trying to find out something more about your father’s death. Ever since Achilles Pod showed up with that negation order, I’ve been suspicious.”