by Brom Kearne
9
The following morning, after Thorn sweated out his hangover in a lengthy run through the forest, he made another trip to Herrickstead, this time with his former buggy and the motorcycle in tow. First he stopped by Marshal Wolcott’s office to see if there was a reward for the return of the motorcycle. There was, but only if it was returned in good condition. Thorn and Marshal Wolcott exchanged glances and both of them shook their heads at the same time.
So Thorn dragged them to his mechanic instead. He was dreading this meeting.
Rich Tanning lived on several acres a few miles south of town in the midst of a salvage yard. He had hundreds of buggies in various states of deterioration, many of them propped on blocks midst piles and piles of parts. Rich was the sort of person who couldn’t get rid of anything because he knew, he just knew, that someday he would find a use for even the most seemingly useless of items. And so he collected everything that crossed his path. Most of these buggies represented projects that Rich Tanning had bought with the intention of fixing up into a wonderfully-creative design before he had gotten distracted by the next big idea. He scoured junkyards and the trade caravans for buggies, parts, and machines, and if you asked him about any one of the rusted old heaps scattered about his property, he’d swear he was only about a week from jumping headfirst into working on it, and then he’d give you a detailed description of what he was going to do. And of course that description would segue seamlessly into a description of the new chassis design he was going to build for the buggy he had picked up a few days ago. He was someone cursed with too much imagination and not enough focus, and while he had some brilliant ideas, very few of them ever came to fruition.
Rich heard the rumbling approach of a slop engine and slid out from under the buggy he was working on. He wiped his greasy hands on his coveralls, although the gesture didn’t accomplish anything as his coveralls were equally covered in grease. He broke into a confused smile when he recognized Thorn, but that smile faded as he took in the picture of what Thorn was riding . . . and what he was pulling.
“What . . . what did you do?” he stammered. “This was a two-seventy hand-bored liquid-fuel injected . . . and a motorcycle? Where did you pick that up? How in the . . . a motorcycle buggy! Single occupancy, right in the middle, two wheels. Or maybe three. Might have to go three for stability. It would require a new drive design, of course, but it might take a bigger engine. We could put it in the back. That would require a whole remodified everything, but it might catch on. It’d be better than these damn slop engines everyone seems to drive. Including you, it seems. Thorn, what in the hell did you do? I never thought I’d see the day that you rode in here on a slop engine. And could there be any more rust on there? I don’t know what I could do with it, but I might be able to give you twenty dollars. At least the engine works, but I don’t know for how long.”
“It’s good to see you too, Rich. And she may be an old bucket of slop gunk, but right now she’s my only ride so be respectful. I’d hate for the old lady to hear you.”
“Oh of course, I meant no offense,” Rich said, lowering his voice as if the buggy could actually have heard him. “But what did you do?”
He walked around the slop engine to have a look at Thorn’s totaled buggy. “There isn’t even anything here worth saving. Even on the motorcycle. My goodness look at this thing. That’s the biggest engine I’ve ever seen.”
He took a magnifying glass out of his pocket and leaned in to look. The glass was smudged, and though he attempted to wipe it off on his coveralls he only managed to make it worse.
“The block is cracked. Look here, do you see that? It must have thrown a rod. This is completely useless. To be honest, I don’t think this motorcycle was intended for street use to begin with. It looks like it was built for show and wasn’t meant to handle the stress of heavy revving.”
“It certainly did experience some heavy revving.”
Rich continued examining the wreckage through the smudged magnifying glass. “Did you . . . Thorn, don’t tell me you did this on purpose. If I didn’t know any better I’d say this crash occurred as a result of a head-on collision, like a game of chicken.”
“You hadn’t heard?”
“Heard what? I’ve been out of the loop for a little while now. Things on my mind, and whatnot.”
“I thought that’s why you were looking for me at Nate’s. You didn’t want to see me about the buggy?”
Rich looked up at Thorn. “No, I wanted to see you about a different matter entirely. This is the first I’ve heard of this travesty.”
“Ah, well, in that case, I thought maybe I’d be able to soften the blow by commissioning a new buggy.”
Rich’s hazel eyes went out of focus. “A new buggy? Well why didn’t you say so? It’ll have to be bigger, of course. Off-road tires. Big tires. I’ve been tinkering with a new design that’ll add extra support. Independent suspension, of course. Lightweight frame, but not too light. We don’t want you getting blown away by a desert storm. I imagine you won’t want to stick with a slop engine?” Rich chuckled. “Big engine. I’ve been working on a few designs. For example, I noticed that in your typical liquid-fueled engine there is a significant part of the fuel that never combusts. It goes right out the exhaust with the rest of the waste. See where I singed my hand testing this theory? But I asked myself, what could I do to make this more efficient? And my answer was to feed the exhaust right back into the engine. I haven’t fully gotten everything worked out yet, but I’m on track and it should boost your efficiency and horsepower by, I don’t know, fifty percent, if not more.”
“I don’t know,” Thorn said. “That sounds awfully claustrophobic to have the engine feeding on its own waste like that. I like them to breathe.”
“You know, I might have something.”
Rich walked briskly into the garage, muttering quietly under his breath. The inside of the garage was as cluttered as the outside, with at least half a dozen unfinished projects, partially built engines, and experiments cluttering up most of the floor. Thorn stood near the door as Rich waded through the clutter. He made his way to a cabinet against the wall and gingerly set aside an alternator that was soaking in some cleaning fluid so he could open the cabinet door. He pulled out a canister with red stripes painted horizontally around it.
“This here,” Rich said proudly, “is hobby gas. It atomizes far more easily than liquid fuel, it combusts more completely, and it’s cleaner. And here’s the best part: it will add about eighty percent to your horsepower, with bursts capable of reaching over a hundred. Only problem is that it’s very rare, and therefore very expensive. It’s only found in pockets of hedrous crystals.”
“This is tetrous?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“They use this in Collective City, er, Crimson City, this and their hedrous crystals. That’s why they built where they did, over the largest hedrous deposit in the lands. This is powerful stuff. Where did you get it?”
“Trade caravan, like most everything else.”
“Browning?”
“No, Goldsmith. They came through last month. I bought a few canisters as kind of an investment, thinking I’d get around to building a super-powered hobby gas buggy. Rumor is that someone found a hedrous crystal deposit up in the Fiann. They’re saying it’s a pretty big find, maybe even bigger than the one under Crimson City. I bought a few of the designs they were selling from Crimson City’s trash to see how this stuff functions. I figured if I could get a jump on designing an engine that utilizes hobby gas I’d have the market cornered when everyone else got around to using it.”
“Maybe this is your chance,” Thorn said.
Rich’s eyes went unfocused again as a grin spread slowly across his face. “I’ll have to redesign the frame to handle the extra torque, and I don’t mean just reinforcing everything. I mean a complete redesign. I was looking at some plans that could channel the excess energy back into the engine. There’s a lot of wasted potential that’s just
thrown aside. If we could harness that and turn it back into kinetic energy we could conserve fuel and boost power. It’s kind of like what I was talking about with the exhaust, but mechanical.”
“I want it tough, in case I ever come across anymore crazed bikers. And of course my profession dictates that I’ll need a pull-down cage, maybe with some backwards-facing seats, for transporting bounties.”
Rich was nodding. “That’ll add to the weight, of course. I’ll have to take that into consideration. I was imagining something a little more streamlined, but yes, as you say, a professional requirement. Um, Thorn, you do realize that this is going to be very expensive, don’t you?”
Thorn nodded grimly. Yes it had occurred to him, but he, like Rich Tanning, was swept up in the fantasy of having a brand-new super-powered buggy. The practical matter of the cost was something that hadn’t fully sunk in yet. “How much are we talking?”
“Rough estimate? Over a thousand dollars. Maybe more.”
Thorn whistled.
“But,” Rich said quickly, “I might be able to help you out, if you can help me out.”
The tone of Rich’s voice had shifted in an instant. He sounded almost apologetic and was looking at his hands instead of making eye contact. It was clear to Thorn that they were about to start talking business, and that this was the real reason that Rich had wanted to see him. Thorn hooked a nearby stool with the instep of his foot and slid it towards him.
“What’s on your mind?” he asked.
Rich knelt to replace the canister of hobby gas in the cabinet before sitting on the stool. He took a few moments to collect his thoughts. “I’ve gotten myself into a bit of trouble. Family trouble. You’ve met my son?”
“I believe so, but it’s been a few years. Isn’t he living with his mother?”
“He was, yes, in Bradenfield. She remarried about a year ago and sent Sandy to live with me. Scott’s his real name. He hates it when I call him Sandy. He says it’s a girl’s name. I told him it’s not, but he doesn’t like to listen to me. He was born with a big patch of sand-colored hair so I’ve always called him Sandy. Kind of like mine before it started turning grey and falling out.”
Rich tousled his hair, thoughtlessly smearing grease into it.
“I’m the only one who calls him that. But we haven’t exactly been getting along. In fact, Thorn, between you and me, it’s been hell. I don’t know how to raise a kid. He’s been hers all this time and she’s let him get away with anything he wants. No discipline whatsoever. You know how it is with city kids. I wanted him to learn a trade, my trade, you know? Help around the garage, maybe take over the place when I get older. But he doesn’t want anything to do with it. He doesn’t want to work. He just wants to hang out with his friends all night and sleep all day. We’ve been at each other’s throats practically from the moment he got here. But you know how kids are. They don’t know what they want and by the time they decide they’ve squandered years trying to figure it out. I wanted things to be easier for him. Well, easier than it was for me, anyway.”
“No, I don’t know how kids are. How old did you say he was?”
“Fourteen.”
“That’s practically an adult, isn’t it?”
Rich laughed. “You’re right, you don’t know how kids are. But then again neither do I. We’ve been arguing nonstop. He resents that he had to come live here from his mother’s. He resents that I’m trying to help him out. He resents everything about me. And then I said to him the one thing you should never say to a kid his age. I told him as long as he’s living under my roof he’s going to do what I say. So he left.”
“That’s too bad, but I don’t know what any of this has to do with me. I have no idea how to be a parent. Hell, I didn’t even have parents.”
Rich was looking at his hands again. They were bruised and stained with grease, flecked with cuts and abrasions, some healed over as scabs and some bright red.
He said, “It’s the crowd he’s running with. His friends. He’s an impressionable kid, but these others . . . I’m afraid he’s joined a gang. They ride bikes, dune bikes, painted yellow, and some of them have tattoos under their eyes, the right eye. It’s a little skull with crossed skeletal hands under it.”
Rich crossed his wrists with his fingers splayed to mimic the tattoo.
“I’ve never heard of them,” Thorn said.
“I’ve asked around and no one else has either. But I looked into it and some other kids in other towns have gone missing. Teenagers, I mean. But I’m afraid, Thorn. I’m afraid of what he’s getting himself into, and I’m afraid that I’ve failed him as a father, that I pushed him into doing something very dangerous.”
Thorn recalled seeing the signs advertising missing teenagers when he was in Crooked Crag and wondered if they were indeed related. “What do you expect me to do?” he asked. “At fourteen he’s adult enough to be on his own and I can’t bring him back if he doesn’t want to come. That’s kidnapping.”
“I know. I understand. But maybe, well, just take him a message? Find out where he is and make sure he’s ok? Tell him I love him and I want him to come back? Tell him I’m sorry and I’ll try to do better? I don’t know, whatever it takes. I just want to know he’s ok and that he’s not in any danger.”
“You alluded to some kind of reciprocation if I was able to help you.”
“How does half sound?”
Thorn was unable to contain his surprise as he nearly fell off the stool he was leaning against. “Half? Did you say half?”
“This is very important to me. Here’s a picture of him.”
Rich pulled a wrinkled photograph out of his breast pocket. He straightened it with the back of his hand so he wouldn’t get any grease on it.
Thorn looked at the photograph, which showed Rich and Scott Tanning in front of the salvage and repair shop. The photograph was black and white, although Thorn could clearly make out the patch of sandy-brown hair and hazel eyes on Scott, which were mirror images of his father’s. Scott had a swarm of boyish freckles over his nose and cheeks.
“Ok, ok,” Thorn said. “Do you mind if I take this?”
Rich shrugged and handed it over. He seemed reluctant to do so.
“I’ll find him and I’ll get him your message, but I can’t promise he’ll come back with me. That will have to be his choice and his choice alone.”
Rich nodded grimly, and Thorn was touched by the despair that momentarily crept into his eyes.
“But I’ll do what I can,” Thorn added quickly. “I’ll look into this gang, too. With markings like that they shouldn’t be too hard to find. I’ll see if they’ve got any bounties out for their arrests, find out what they’re into.”
Rich had turned away. He was tidying up some of the parts that were cascading off one of his workbenches. “I’ll just keep busy, like I always do. I’ve got to work on making those fuel systems more efficient. I’ve got to do something to keep my mind from wandering and imagining the worst, you know? Just deliver my message for me and let me know he’s ok.”
