The Skids Page 14

  The gap between him and the group was a small but important distance. It was all a lot to absorb and, right now, Johnny needed space.

  Nearby, Albert rolled alongside Torres, the younger skid pointing at something new every few seconds. Albert remained largely silent, although that wasn’t surprising: Albert saved most of his talk for inside the games; outside he tended to roll quiet. Johnny had always been the loud one.

  Surreptitiously, he glanced at the scar running the length of Albert’s body, splitting his stripes. Half his thoughts followed a familiar path: Serves you right, gearbox. The other half . . . he grimaced.

  He hated feeling sorry for Albert.

  Johnny knew he wasn’t completely rational about his feelings for the silver skid. But way too many skids seemed to forget that Albert was the one who’d attacked Johnny first, not the other way around. Had anyone else made the nine-nine comment, Johnny probably would’ve laughed, popped whoever it was in the next game, and then forgotten about it. Coming from Albert, though . . .

  “Betty’s right,” he sighed, looking around. “This place is depressing.”

  They rolled past a derelict mechanical arm. The arm was big enough to pick up an entire Mart, but it hung at an awkward angle. He wondered how long it had hung that way and why. Because no one’s coming to fix it, he thought, two eyes trailing as they left the arm behind. The Out There was gone. In a place like this, it was hard to deny.

  He put a little more distance between himself and the group, trying to sort out the thought. On many levels, he couldn’t accept it. No one was watching? The whole reason skids played the games was to be watched. Sure they enjoyed the competition—they lived for it—but the first thing every skid did after a race was check the boards. Look for yourself on the hollas. You didn’t need to see the Out There to know that it was . . . out there. Watching. Otherwise, what was the point?

  And if every skid had hoped for the Out There’s recognition, then Johnny . . .

  He couldn’t remember a time when he hadn’t dreamed of a second name. But he could remember being less than a month old and popping a Five—and month-olds never tried popping any skid on the Slope, let alone a Five—then rushing to check the hollas, screaming when they’d shown the play. If the other skids wanted the Out There’s approval, then Johnny had bled for it from all three eyes.

  So if there was no Out There out there . . . then who the hole was Johnny Drop?

  Johnny . . .

  Instantly, all of his eyes came up. In time to see a pink-red flash disappear behind a stack of crates.

  “Oh, snakes . . .” he whispered, looking around. No one else reacted. Up front, Betty was still talking with Bian and Torg. Wobble was rolling up to random pieces of machinery, examining them as if they were long lost relatives. A dozen metres away, Torres continued to pester Albert.

  “You’re imagining things, squid,” Johnny muttered, even as he dropped back. “This place has got you—”

  Johnny . . .

  Down a corridor between the crates, a flash of pink . . .

  “I’m going crazy,” Johnny sighed, sprinting down the corridor. He followed the flash of colour around a corner, only to discover it had gained on him, fleeing behind a crane. “Peg!” he hissed, gunning it. Again, the flash of pink and red had increased the distance, darting behind a bin.

  “Peg!” he cried, louder now. Last one, Johnny thought grimly. I am not going to be . . .

  Not far from the bin, resting under a conveyor belt, a skid sat with her back to Johnny. Six cherry-red stripes pulsed against bright pink skin.

  Johnny . . .

  “Peg,” he said, reaching out as he rolled forward.

  The skid vanished.

  “No!” Johnny barked, reaching . . .

  “Johnny?”

  Johnny swung his trail-eye back where it belonged, too keyed up to care that he’d had all three looking forward.

  Torg sat by the bin, stripes cocked. “You all right, squid?”

  Keeping his trail-eye on Torg, Johnny swept the area under the conveyor belt with the other two. Nowhere to hide . . .

  “Johnny?”

  “Yeah, just a minute.” Nothing. No pink, no cherry-red . . . “You see anything? Other than me?”

  “I’m seeing a lot of things, Johnny,” Torg drawled, swinging an arm to encompass the ghostyard. “Did you mean something more specific? You took off pretty quick back there, sport.”

  “No, I . . .” Johnny bit his lip, then swung an eye and turned. “Never mind. It’s nothing.”

  “All right,” Torg said, eyeing his friend. “Just be careful taking off. Everyone’s scans are going spare. Easy to get lost.”

  “Yeah,” Johnny said, his trail-eye now on the conveyor belt, bathed in hazy white light. “I guess it is.”

  “You sure you’re all right?” Torg said, as they started to tread back to the group.

  “Yeah, I’m just . . . it’s a lot to absorb. I mean . . . Betty Crisp.”

  Torg chuckled. “I hear that. Put all the weird stuff together—all the Everything’s-Just-Data-Wobble-Talk—and the freakiest thing is that five minutes ago I was talking to the chick who did the vaping Leap.”

  “Yeah,” Johnny agreed. “Hey, you notice she’s only got one stripe?”

  “I did. Maybe after Ten you go back to being a panzer.”

  Johnny thought about Betty popping her arm, her hand filled with light as it sliced into an Anti . . .

  “I don’t think that’s what happens,” he said dryly. “I mean, she’s supposed to have been dead for fifty years. Hole, if she’s still alive, maybe . . .” He gazed up through the holes in the distant ceiling. The Thread was so large it contained hundreds of ghostyards. So huge, the Skidsphere was considered small. Surely, it was possible that somewhere in it . . .

  Torg had stopped. “You still on that, Johnny?” he said softly.

  Johnny’s gaze came down from the sky. They were in an intersection between crates, not far from the centre causeway.

  “Let it go, brother,” Torg said, his voice somehow both gentle and firm. “She’s dead.”

  “We don’t know that.” The words came automatically.

  “Yeah, we do.”

  “If Betty Crisp—”

  “Betty Crisp was a Level Ten,” Torg said. “Maybe higher. No one knows what a Ten can do, Johnny. Even you don’t know that yet. Peg was a Six when she died. A Six. And . . .” He hesitated. “And she wasn’t you.”

  “What the hole is that supposed to mean?” Johnny said, his stripes flaring.

  “It means that even if she was the most beautiful skid on the Skates I ever saw, she wasn’t as strong as you. Or Albert.”

  “Torg—”

  “No, listen. I’m not vaping her memory for Crisp’s sake. The truth is none of us are as strong as you or Albert. You were better than me when I was an Eight and you were a Five.” Torg took a deep breath. “Johnny, without you there, I don’t make it through the black. And I’m a Nine. Peg was a Six. She’s dead, brother. Let it go.”

  Looking away from Torg, Johnny studied the ground. “Maybe she didn’t fall into the black.”

  “You serious?” Both eyes facing Johnny rolled and the third twitched. For the first time, the older skid looked angry. “Are you talking about Albert? Are you still on that? After all we’ve seen, everything we now know, are you seriously going to stay on his skin about Peg?”

  “We don’t know . . .” Johnny began, but his voice trailed off. Deep down, in a place he didn’t want to admit existed, he knew he was just repeating the same arguments he’d been making for the past six months, arguments that no longer made any sense at all.

  Torg stared at him, his eyes set. “You know, squid, I’m going to say something I’m pretty sure skids don’t say to each other too often—you’re my friend. I mean that
. Whatever plays out here, whatever we have to do to get out of this alive and save the sphere, I’ll stick with you all the way to the sea.” He paused. “But sometimes you’re a jackhole.”

  Watching Torg roll away, Johnny found it hard to argue with him.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Johnny came back to the main artery about twenty metres behind the pack. Torg had gone to the front. Wobble tread along not far from Johnny, emitting a low keening noise, followed by barely spoken words, rapid and sparse.

  Wobble was talking to himself.

  “Wobble?” Johnny said, pulling up. “You all right, buddy?”

  Gears whirred and Wobble’s head spun. The lens-shutters twisted. “It breaks slow-slow-slowly,” the machine said softly, his voice a high, tight whine. “A thousand-thousand years before the shelf fell into the sea. Valporin still looks like a moon.” His fractured arms twitched. “It hurts.”

  “What hurts?” Johnny asked. Whatever he was suffering through, it was a lot more than a damaged limb. “What’s breaking, Wobble? The Thread?” Can he feel the Thread breaking?

  A chill went through Johnny’s entire body. He thought of the black void attacking the Pipe. Whatever had hit the city of hollas, wiping out millions of mems. The yellow data-box, plowing into one of Wobble’s own fire-wheels.

  Daytona.

  He tried to calc how many Vies they’d seen since landing in the white. Failed miserably. Had Wobble felt all of that? Johnny gazed down the ghostyard, stretching out for kilometers. They seemed no closer to one end than when they started. Already, they’d seen so much, but that was a fraction of the Thread’s true breadth. And if the damage matched proportionally . . .

  What if Wobble felt it every time something, somewhere broke?

  As if reading his thoughts, Wobble’s lenses suddenly focused on Johnny. “Can you make-make it stop?”

  Johnny stared back, his heart full. “I’m sorry, Wobble. I don’t think I can.”

  Wobble’s lenses retracted and his head turned away. “Somebody should,” he said, in a voice that didn’t waver at all.

  Johnny watched him tread away as Betty dropped back from the group. “It’s all right,” she said, keeping an eye on Wobble. “There’s nothing you can do for him right now. He’ll . . .” She took a deep breath. “Well, he’s tougher than he looks.”

  “I heard that,” Johnny said. “I’ve known him a day and he’s already saved my skin . . .” He tried to math it. “Three times? Four?” He shook his stripes. “Where’d you find him, anyway?”

  “Actually, I prefer to think we found each other—saved each other, really. I honestly don’t know what I would’ve done for fifty years without him. I’d have gone crazy. Probably would have ended up talking to the boxes.”

  Johnny glanced at Wobble, his stripes tilting.

  “He doesn’t count,” she said, following his gaze and rolling her eyes. “Lesson for Johnny: it’s all right if a lady calls herself crazy—it’s less wise for the man to point it out.”

  Johnny grinned. “If you say so.”

  Betty’s laugh was sharp and echoed off the ghostyard. “Kinks, you’re like I was. Cocky little spare.”

  She was still smiling so he took it as a compliment. He grinned back . . . and that’s when it hit him. I’m flirting with Betty Crisp. You dumb squid.

  “Stop that,” she snapped.

  Johnny blinked. “Stop what?”

  “Hero worship. You look like that Two when she saw you at the Combine.”

  “Oh. Sorry.”

  “You don’t have to apologize, I get it, just . . . try not to make it a habit. We don’t have time for it, and, yeah—I am Betty Crisp—and given that I’m fifty years past my due date I guess that makes me special . . . but I’m not that special.” She chuckled. “In a weird way, Bian’s attitude is kind of refreshing.”

  Rolling his eyes, Johnny said, “That’s one way of putting it.”

  “No really,” Betty said. “I get it: at her level, I would’ve acted the same if I met someone like me.” Her stripe tilted. “We’re designed for jealousy, we skids—girls, boys, doesn’t matter. Made for good watching.”

  “When somebody was.” Johnny’s gaze wandered up to the holes of light, silhouetting the ceiling.

  “Yep.” Betty studied him for a moment. “You going to be okay with that?”

  His gaze wandered down the underside of the roof until it disappeared into the haze. The place was so huge. So empty.

  “I don’t know,” he said softly.

  Betty bobbed an eye. “That’s fair. By the time I had to deal with it, I’d already moved a little past the glory-seeking stage. But when it’s been a part of your entire life . . .” Now her gaze wandered. “For the first five years of my life I was so desperate to do something . . . different. By the time I hit Eight, I wasn’t competing with the skids around me, I was aiming somewhere else. I’d started to move past that by the time I left the Skidsphere, but it still hit me hard. Took me years before it didn’t bother me.” She paused. “The personal aspect of it. The rest still vapes my gears.”

  They rolled in silence for a bit. Ahead, Albert had taken the lead with Torres and Aaliyah in tow. Bian remained near Shabaz and Brolin. Torg rolled near the back, leaving Betty and Johnny their space.

  “How’d you do it?” Johnny said suddenly. “Leave the Skidsphere?”

  Betty pursed her lips. Looked ahead to the group. Then her stripe tilted and she sighed. “I have a feeling you already know. I’ve seen you contemplate it a few times in the last few months.”

  Yeah, he knew exactly where she was talking about. “The woods?”

  “The woods,” Betty agreed. She hesitated, then said, “It was about three weeks shy of my birthday. You know which one. Five years. Game over.” Her pink stripe darkened until it was almost as black as her skin. “Most skids think the Rainbow Road happened and I died right away, but I actually had two months left. Got my second name that night. You’d think it would’ve made me happy. Not so much.” She looked at Johnny. “Sound familiar?”

  “Yeah,” Johnny said. He remembered watching hollas in the pit, then screaming at Albert like he wanted to kill him.

  “Don’t know why,” Betty continued, “but it just pissed me off. Almost immediately I thought: is that it? That’s when I started going out to the Spike every day.”

  Above them, vast machines hung, bathed in a ghost-white haze.

  “I’d been having odd thoughts for a skid for some time. You’re not the first Nine to stop by the Combine, although I never went so far as to actually help another skid.” She frowned. “Why’d you do it?”

  “I don’t know.” He caught her look. “I really don’t.”

  “But it felt good, didn’t it? Helping?”

  “Yeah,” Johnny said, thinking about that moment and how it had surprised him. “It did. Weird.”

  “It is weird. We’re not supposed to do that: care. Certainly not for panzers and squids. Friendly rivals, sure—bump-and-gos with the other sex every few months, hey, that’s great watching. But caring . . . that’s a whole deeper level of relationship.”

  Johnny’s stripes twitched. He hadn’t thought about it that clearly before, but it echoed some of what he’d been feeling lately.

  “It’s like death. We’re not happy about it but we never really think about it. Sevens spend most of their energy trying to get to Eight before they die; Eights worry about making Nine. Only the Nines who get there early think about dying, because they know they’re not going to make Ten. No sane skid really thinks they’re going to make Ten.” She smirked as she said this, deliberately not looking his way.

  “Hey . . .” he protested.

  “It’s all right, Johnny, I was the same. Still, like I said, most Nines given the time stop thinking about advancing. They think about how they’re not going t
o advance. Here, I’ll show you. You got a count?”

  “Sorry?”

  “A count. How many days until you die?”

  Johnny blinked. “Uh, more than a year?”

  “Right. Watch this.” Betty’s eyes swung towards the pack. “Torg, do you have a count?”

  “Of what?” When Betty remained silent, his eye-stalks dipped. “Oh, right. Huh.” His stripes tilted slightly. “Four months, sixteen days.”

  Johnny’s eyes widened as Betty said, “They go fast, don’t they, Torg?”

  The gold stripes dimmed a little. “Yeah. They come quick. Least recently they do.”

  Johnny stared at Torg, a sudden wave of sorrow washing over him. He’d never thought about death seriously. It was like Betty said: there were races to run. Live fast, die fast: it was their motto for a reason. Even after Peg died, he’d never considered his own death. He’d only thought about Peg.

  Torg’s stripes remained dim for a moment, then a smirk split his face. “You boys and girls are having a conversation just filled with sugar.”

  “Come join us,” Betty smiled back. “Johnny asked me how I got out of the Skidsphere and we got a little off topic.”

  “Just a little,” Johnny grinned, as Torg dropped back.

  “Not as far as you might think,” Betty said. “My point is that I was thinking differently than most skids think—than most skids get a chance to think. And most of it was death.” She took a deep breath. “For more than a month after the Rainbow Road, I would go out to the Spike, any time I could. And every time, I got angrier and angrier. I’d accomplished everything that a skid could ever possibly hope for in my lifetime, but I was pissed off I was going to die. Despite everything I’d done, I didn’t feel done. So . . . I went for a roll.”

  “Into the woods,” Johnny said. He could see it. He might never have consciously considered it, but the thought had been there, at the back of his mind. He could see it.

  “Into the woods,” Betty agreed. “I’m sure thousands of skids have wondered how far back they go. I’m sure I’m not the first skid to have tried it. But I doubt if any skid ever wandered more than a few hours.” She paused, her stripe darkening once more. “I rolled for a little longer than that.”