The Skids

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Continue Reading for a Preview of The Thread War The Next Chapter in the Johnny Drop Saga

  About the Author

  Acknowledgements

  Landmarks

  Cover

  Title-Page

  Frontmatter

  Start of Content

  Backmatter

  Contents

  The Skids © 2016 by Ian Donald Keeling

  Cover artwork © 2016 by Erik Mohr

  Cover and interior design by © 2016 by Samantha Beiko

  All Rights Reserved.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Distributed in Canada by

  PGC Raincoast Books

  300-76 Stafford Street

  Toronto, ON M6J 2S1

  Phone: (416) 934-9900

  e-mail: info@pgcbooks.ca

  Distributed in the U.S. by

  Consortium Book Sales & Distribution

  34 Thirteenth Avenue, NE, Suite 101

  Minneapolis, MN 55413

  Phone: (612) 746-2600

  e-mail: sales.orders@cbsd.com

  Library and Archives Cataloguing Data

  Keeling, Ian Donald, author

  The skids / Ian Donald Keeling.

  Issued in print and electronic formats.

  ISBN 978-1-77148-385-8 (paperback).--ISBN 978-1-77148-386-5 (pdf)

  I. Title.

  PS8621.E35S55 2016 jC813'.6 C2016-904212-X

  C2016-904213-8

  CHITEEN

  An imprint of ChiZine Publications

  Peterborough, Canada

  www.chizinepub.com

  info@chizinepub.com

  Edited by Samantha Beiko

  Proofread by Leigh Teetzel

  We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts which last year invested $20.1 million in writing and publishing throughout Canada.

  Published with the generous assistance of the Ontario Arts Council.

  For my Grandfather, Donald Keeling, for teaching me how to dream, and to my nephew Bruce, for showing me how to smile.

  Chapter One

  Johnny almost died when he missed a popper on the Slope.

  Crisp Betty, he thought, clamping a Hasty-Arm to a ledge just below the popper. Gotta catch that. Stupid way to lose a game. His entire body—an electric blue ball with tank treads and white racing stripes—quivered with disgust. He swung one of his three eyes around: where was Albert?

  Right there: a silver ball of hate dropping out of the sky for the kill.

  “Snakes,” Johnny swore, retracting the eyeball and hurling himself off the ledge. He had to launch with the Hasty-Arm so he didn’t have much speed, but fortunately he caught another skid on the way down. Stealing the skid’s kinetic energy, Johnny greased his treads flat and rebounded like a rocket in the opposite direction. Albert passed through the space that Johnny and the surprised skid just vacated, scorching dust and swearing like a sailor. Johnny absorbed the Hasty-Arm back into his body and swung his eyes around.

  One hundred metres below, nuzzled against the sixty-five-degree Slope, Johnny spotted a flat-top. Lousy points, but right now he needed to regain control more than he needed the points. He created a windshear with the left side of his body, dug in with the right side of his treads, bounced off a tree and angled onto the flat-top with a satisfying thud.

  Johnny peered up all two hundred kilometers of the Slope, one of the twelve games the skids lived to play. Scanning for action, he examined each rock, ledge and tree. Not a lot going on. Strange. He checked his internal speedometer for his last speed. Two hundred and eighty kilometers an hour. At least he’d hit the flat-top at a decent gas; that would count for a bit. He remembered a magenta-gold flash and realised the other skid he’d hit might have been Torg.

  Wonder if I popped him?

  A faint grinding sound. Learn to stealth your treads, squid, Johnny thought contemptuously, digging in. A wave of dust and a sudden elastic jolt, followed by a popping sound, cursing, and an orange-yellow blur, fading into the ether. No doubt about that one.

  Someone just got evaporated.

  Technically, the Slope was a race—with a start and a finish—but the real way to win was to pop other skids. Collide with another skid the right way and Pop!—away they went, sailing off into the ether, falling until they hit the killing sea far below. Johnny wouldn’t really have died if he’d been popped—they didn’t waste Level Eights; only the Level Ones and Twos who’d yet to learn full control of their molecules. But getting vaped still sucked. It usually took Johnny a couple of hours to pull his body back together, during which time he might miss a game.

  Plus, dying on the Slope meant losing and Johnny did not lose on the Slope. Not on any day if he could help it, but especially not today.

  Today, he was chasing immortality.

  Razor thin transparencies—shimmering like flames and knocked from the skid Johnny just vaped—drifted down and settled in the dust. “Somebody’s gonna need to buy new tatts,” he chuckled. Swinging an eye, he spotted Danica on a rounder, locked in and launched.

  A fantail of dust billowed out in Johnny’s wake. How GameCorps got the dust to stick to the Slope no one knew, but it looked good when the skids skid. And that meant ratings. And ratings meant that someone, somewhere . . . was watching.

  Johnny popped Danica—a Level Four—then scanned the Slope. He spotted a magenta-gold ball, covered in skins and tatts, resting on a pebble one hundred and fifty metres down and to the right. Didn’t think so, Johnny thought with a grin. You weren’t going to pop Torg on a clearslope, even in freeskid. Torg was a Level Nine, one of only five.

  There were no Level Tens. Hadn’t been in fifty years, not since Betty Crisp. Ten lifetimes since the only skid to hold two names.

  Since a skid had been remembered.

  Torg was balling in his direction. He winked when Johnny made eye contact. “Come get me, squid.” A squid was a Level Two skid. Torg was in a playful mood.

  “On a pebble?” Johnny laughed. “Not on your tread, you old panzer.” A panzer was a Level One.

  Torg was bluffing, one of the oldest Slope tricks. Attempting to pop any remotely experienced skid resting on a pebble was suicidal. Sure, pebbles were the smallest outcropping on the Slope and offered the most tenuous hold. Landing on one at any speed was tricky and
worth huge points. Theoretically, popping a skid off a pebble should’ve been easy.

  Theoretically.

  Johnny had seen Torg kill legions of skids simply by getting out of the way. A sly grin would cross the older skid’s ball as the inexperienced panzer or squid popped off the tiny outcropping into the ether. As Torg was fond of saying, “Even Betty Crisp couldn’t latch a pebble at dropspeed.”

  “That was some nice moves up there, son,” Torg drawled.

  “I was lucky,” Johnny admitted. “Never should have had to do it in the first place. I missed a popper.” A popper was the most common outcropping on the Slope: medium size, average friction. Most of the action took place on poppers; that’s where they got the name.

  Torg laughed. “Too much sugar at the bar, Johnny?” He extended a Hasty-Arm and waved it in the general direction of the sky. “Careful. All Out There’s probably watching today.”

  No skid really knew who watched the games they played. Whoever they were, they came from . . . Out There. No one knew how long the Skidsphere had existed. A few hundred years, maybe more. Maybe a lot more. And no one knew who’d created the skids, or why they’d been created this way, or why they lived for exactly five years . . . and then died. Perhaps if they lived longer, they could’ve asked more questions. Perhaps they could’ve found some answers.

  Perhaps that’s why they all died at five.

  Laughter drifted up the Slope. Johnny swung an eyeball down—keeping one on Torg and the third looking upslope—to find Albert resting on a popper a hundred metres below Torg.

  “Nearly popped you, Johnny.” Albert’s grin split his silver skin, stretching out to his eight razor-thin racing stripes. “Would have been a while.”

  “Keep dreaming, squinty.” Johnny smiled as he watched Albert’s chronically damaged third eye flinch. The grin on what had once been his best friend’s face faded.

  All most skids could do was play the games, eat some sugar, run a race, have some fun. Live fast, die fast, the saying went. After all, you couldn’t live forever. If you were lucky and good, maybe—maybe—you’d make it to Level Nine before you died.

  Except that fifty years ago, there’d been a skid named Betty. A skid who’d set records in every single game: who’d owned the Slope and the Rainbow Road. Who’d done the Leap. The only skid who, when she died, had made Level Ten and been given a second name.

  The only skid with two: Betty Crisp.

  That name was still talked about by skids—in the games or in-between—at the sugarbars where the skids came down and got high; on the highlight hollas that ran every day and everywhere. And if the skids still talked about Betty Crisp, and the hollas still talked about Betty Crisp, then maybe . . . somewhere . . . Out There. . . .

  Sometime in their third year, not long after they’d each made Level Six—months younger than any skid in memory—Albert and Johnny began to realize that while they were both special . . . Johnny might be more than that.

  Albert could’ve supported his friend. Instead, months later, on the night Johnny made Eight, Albert had loudly declared that Johnny was going to die the only Level Nine-Point-Nine in history.

  It took a lot to damage a skid permanently without killing them. On the night Albert coined the concept of Nine-Point-Nine—a phrase that for some reason hurt and terrified Johnny more than anything he’d seen or heard or felt before—Johnny had done a lot to Albert.

  The amazing thing, most skids agreed, was that it wasn’t the only reason they hated each other.

  Dust settled onto Albert’s third eye, which blinked rapidly several times. Then the silver and white grin swung into place again.

  “You don’t need to die today, Johnny,” Albert said. “Slope’s clear and I got three hundred metres on you. Betty Crisp’s record is going to see another year.” He waved a Hasty-Arm at the sky. “Do you think they’ll really care?”

  “More about me than . . .” Johnny stopped. “Wait—what did you say?”

  “Squid’s right, Johnny,” Torg drawled. “Think I’m sitting on my treads for a bleach? Slope’s clear. Danica was the last one. ’Fraid it’s just us three.”

  “Impossible.” Johnny scanned the entire slope. Nothing moving. But that wasn’t possible. They still had more than thirty kilometers left in the run. Johnny couldn’t even hear the sea yet.

  “While you were slipping off rocks, Torg and I were busy cleaning house,” Albert purred.

  Johnny checked his inner tally. You could win the Slope without hitting the finish line first—it happened all the time, even though most skids couldn’t seem to grasp that pivotal truth. First place got full points, but top fifty got partials. It was popping skids that mattered.

  Unless, of course, it was close.

  Johnny had done well on the upper slope, popped more than his share. He did the math. Way too close to tell. Especially with only three of them left and Torg and Albert cleaning house. If Albert hit the finish line first, he’d probably win. And all he had to do was hold a two hundred and fifty metre lead on a clear slope. Which meant . . .

  “Later, Johnny,” Albert said, and began the Drop.

  It was very rare. But if the upper slope cleared, leaving only a couple of skids near the bottom—a couple of high level skids who were too canny to be popped—then strategy evaporated and there would be a freeskid to the sea.

  The Drop.

  This is bad, Johnny thought, even as he hurled himself downwards. He’d never heard of a Drop starting this high on the Slope. Not that it mattered, after a certain point height became irrelevant. No matter how hard you launched, once everyone hit terminal velocity the race was basically over. And Albert had two hundred and fifty metres on Johnny. Which meant Johnny was going to lose.

  Had it been on the Skates, Johnny might have stomached a loss to Albert. Albert was murder on the Skates. But Johnny couldn’t lose on the Slope. He couldn’t.

  Of all the records Betty Crisp set, her greatest was on the Slope, by far the highest rated game. Two hundred and seventeen straight races, more than an entire season. That was the astounding thing about the record—you only got one shot at it.

  Most skids spent their first two years dinking around as Ones and Twos, learning to hold it together, happy to survive. Occasionally, they might get a top ten in something—Johnny had, several times—but for the most part, they were happy with not dying.

  Somewhere around the end of year two—at Level Three or Four when dying mercifully became more metaphorical—a skid might start winning games. Streaks rarely came before Level Five and up. So by the time a skid could put together a real streak on the Slope, they were into their fifth year, with no time to start again.

  Johnny’s current consecutive win streak on the Slope stood at two hundred and sixteen. If he won today, he’d tie Betty Crisp’s unassailable record. If he lost . . .

  There were nineteen Slope races left in the season. Next year, his fifth, a full season of one hundred and twenty.

  There would be no sixth year.

  Dust-tails from Torg and Albert threw up a cloud, bringing a second layer of protective thinlids down over Johnny’s eyes. He was dropping nearly blind now, but it didn’t matter. He’d telescoped in the milliseconds before he’d launched and had a clear line to the finish. He threw everything into his treads, desperate to gain on Albert and Torg. And he was gaining. He could sense it, metre by metre; he was stronger on his treads, he’d had the best launch. Maybe . . .

  He felt an unmistakable shift in his equilibrium. Terminal velocity, with Torg and Albert still ahead. Which meant he’d lost. You couldn’t go any faster.

  Unless . . .

  The truly terrifying thing for Johnny, the thought that had haunted him for months, was that he could win today, he could match Betty Crisp’s most impressive record . . . and it still wouldn’t matter. Because the records were important, but the
y weren’t why Betty Crisp was remembered.

  In the end, Betty Crisp was remembered for the Leap.

  She’d done it on the Rainbow Road, a five hundred kilometer long, twisting, looping, multi-coloured track, hanging in empty space. Her record on the line. Caught in the pack, kilometers behind the lead. Three-quarters done.

  Screwed.

  And then, in the most shocking move a skid had ever seen, Betty Crisp had committed suicide. She’d swerved violently to the left, off the track and into empty space. Half the skids got knocked out of the race this way: falling for seconds, sometimes minutes, into the eviscerating void.

  Betty Crisp had done it deliberately.

  To fall, not into the void, not to her death, but down about four hundred metres . . . onto another section of the winding, looping, multi-coloured, multi-level track.

  Four kilometers from the finish line.

  There wasn’t a skid alive who hadn’t told that story a hundred times. And the Out There had noticed: first, when a new game called the Leap had been added by GameCorps; and, finally, when Betty Crisp had died with a second name.

  Johnny needed to do more than break one of Betty Crisp’s records. He needed to do something that they’d talk about forever.

  This is such a bad idea, Johnny thought, even as he did something no skid had done before. He created a miniature windshear, shifting trajectory ever-so-slightly, and caromed into a tree at terminal velocity.

  Skids moved by stealing energy. Their treads might get them moving, might be good for a stroll, but they moved by stealing energy. Most often, kinetic energy from moving objects like other skids. But they were also engineered to steal potential energy. Which meant they could hit even stationary objects to increase their speed. Theoretically, without limit.

  Though there were other limitations besides energy.

  His third and last set of thinlids snapped into place as he caromed off another tree and—for the first time in his life—Johnny felt some serious pain from impact. His vision dimmed and blurred, which was going to be a problem. He had to see, because if he hit anything smaller than a tree it would pop him at these speeds. Johnny knew the Slope like the back of his treads, but everything was slashing at him with a quickness almost impossible to anticipate. He was trying to manoeuver during a Drop, praying he didn’t kill himself before the finish.