Racers of the Night: Science Fiction Stories by Brad R. Torgersen Read online

  Ellen passed the helmet respectfully into Jane’s hands, then jerked her thumb over her shoulder a third time. No words. But the message was clear.

  Sally Tincakes stepped away from the wall, but stopped short as Ellen walked past Jane and stood in Sally’s path. With her fists balled on her hips, Ellen didn’t look over her shoulder as Jane felt a sudden urgency to move.

  Quickly, strength flowed back into Jane’s legs.

  It took a few broad strides to make it through pit door.

  She was already putting her helmet on.

  • • •

  Jane woke up trying to gasp, and couldn’t.

  She’d been in and out of the hospital a few times during her racing years, replete with scuffs and broken bones from spills on the junior tracks.

  But nothing could have prepared her to be seeing the inside of the coffin-like full-metabolic support unit that housed her now. A small window showed her the ceiling, while warm fluid gurgled around her ears. Several tubes felt like they fed into her mouth and down her throat—they were horribly uncomfortable.

  Jane lifted a hand weakly and scratched at the window with her fingertips.

  Quickly, several faces appeared in succession, each of them examining hers.

  Then, a hissing noise, and all the fluid began to drain away from around Jane’s prone body. The coffin came open, and several surgically-suited medical people were extracting the tubes from her esophagus. She coughed and sputtered, hacking violently, which caused tremendous pain in her ribs, until she was shaking like a leaf and breathing in huge gulps of air.

  Too disoriented to wave the medical people away, she let them towel her off and sit her up—which also hurt. But at least she was in one piece, or so things seemed. When she tried to talk, she croaked like a frog—her vocal cords soggy. Someone who had the officious demeanor of a physician began poking and prodding, shining his light into her eyes and asking her questions to which she answered by holding up either one finger, or two.

  Once they got her into a proper medical gown, they tucked her between the sheets of a rolling gurney which spirited her away from the critical care ward with its rows of identical, human-sized immersion capsules.

  Jane went through several brightly-lit hallways, her hand weakly raised to shield her eyes from the harsh glare. Then she was deposited in a softly-lit intensive care room. She felt them plug her into the monitoring and life support station that sat like a pillar in the room’s center. A pepper-haired male nurse spoke comforting words, then disappeared. Leaving Jane in a fuzzy stupor that could have lasted minutes, hours, or days.

  Clarity was achingly gradual. Staff came, and staff went. Always, they murmured encouragingly to her as they checked her connections to the monitor, and adjusted the intravenous tubes that snaked away from the tops of both wrists. Jane’s mouth became dry, and they let her drink water. When her stomach grumbled, they gave her soup. When her bowels complained, they ushered her delicately to the lavatory and back, her tubes and wires trailing behind her.

  Finally, the floor physician disconnected her from the ICU tower, and she was again whisked by gurney through a series of brightly-lit hallways, until she was left in a simpler, less mechanized room.

  She weakly depressed the stud on the gurney that would call the nurse, and was surprised when a familiar face poked through her sliding glass door.

  Bill wouldn’t look her in the eyes when he hesitantly entered her patient room.

  “I’m glad you came to see me,” she said, her voice soft and breathy.

  “I’ve been in and out of this hospital at least a dozen times since they brought you in,” Bill replied, hand wrapped tightly around the cup of coffee he’d brought. “I almost couldn’t take seeing you comatose in the critical ward. You looked as good as dead. The medics said your heart and lungs had stopped. That the machines were doing all the work, at least for awhile.”

  Jane nodded, and let her head fall back on her pillow while she closed her eyes, remembering the final instant before she hit ground.

  When she opened her eyes again, Bill was still there. Seated in the recliner at the gurney’s side. Watching attentively.

  “It’s a miracle that you landed where you did,” Bill said. “All that regolith they dug up and piled on the edges of the track, it’s like slushy snow. And meters deep. You soft landed. Or at least you landed and didn’t turn to insta-jelly. The other drivers, they weren’t so lucky.”

  “I bet the footage of the wreck was all over the news,” Jane said.

  “Biggest and most spectacular racing disaster in years,” Bill said, then snorted. “They replayed it for a week, even on Earth. As the only survivor, your name got the headlines. If you check your e-mail you’ll probably find several gazillion messages. You’ve suddenly become the best-known racer on the senior circuit. I’ve had at least a dozen companies contact me, wanting to know if they can hire you to be their spokeswoman—assuming you didn’t come out of the hospital a vegetable.”

  Now it was Jane’s turn to snort. Then she coughed, and lay still for a few quiet minutes.

  “I suppose I should feel lucky,” Jane said.

  “Damn right you should,” Bill replied. “You’ll have time for survivor’s guilt later. Trust me. I’ve been through a wreck or two in my day. Though nothing close to what you went through.”

  Jane simply nodded. Bill slowly sipped at his coffee. Not saying another word.

  “I still need you, old man.”

  He looked up.

  “For what?”

  “Sponsors and crash insurance should cover the medical bills, and they may even buy me a new bike.”

  “The race is over,” Bill said firmly.

  “For now, yes. But I’ll be back. Next season. Cazetti hasn’t seen the last of Jane Jeffords.”

  Bill almost dropped his coffee into his lap.

  “The damned track takes you out, and you want to go back?”

  “Of course,” Jane said, smiling. “Sally Tincakes already killed me. Once. She can’t rightly get me twice, can she? That’s double jeopardy. I swear to you, next year, this woman is hoisting the Armstrong Cup over her head.”

  Jane jabbed a thumb at her chest in emphasis.

  Bill looked like he was about to argue, then sighed—a long, tired sound.

  “How can you be so sure it won’t happen again?”

  “I’m pretty sure.”

  “How are you sure, though?”

  Jane swallowed hesitantly, considering whether or not to tell Bill everything she remembered from after the crash.

  “Let’s just say I think it’s what Ellen wants.”

  “Ellen? My daughter? What’s she got to do with this?”

  “Nothing. And everything. Maybe old Sally Tincakes has cursed Cazetti Raceway. But I think it’s time to put paid to the legend. For Ellen. For every racer who died.”

  Jane reached out a hand and laid it on Bill’s age-freckled arm. He flinched at her touch, but he didn’t move away. His old eyes had gone watery and several tears trailed down his age-weathered cheeks.

  “Ellen …” Bill whispered.

  “Yes,” Jane said.

  The room was quiet for several minutes. Then Bill stood up and used a towel from the patient room’s dispenser to wipe his face.

  “I doubt you’ll have enough for a new Falcon,” he said.

  “Maybe I can buy a used Firebee,” Jane replied. “Something that will get me back on the track. Until I get my winnings up enough to buy something more sophisticated. Or maybe you were right, maybe it’s not the crate, but the woman sitting in it that counts.”

  Bill looked at her with his eyes large and worried, still not quite accepting her determination. But then he closed them and shook his head slowly, the smallest of smiles creeping onto his thin lips. He put down his towel and began chuckling. It was an odd sound, gravelly and low. But it was the first time Jane remembered the old guy laughing since she’d first met him.

  “Ja
y-Jay,” he said between laughs, “did I ever tell you my daughter would have liked you?”

  “No,” Jane said. When Bill didn’t elaborate further, Jane clasped her hands in her lap and looked at him with raised eyebrows. “So what’s your answer, old man? Are you with me?”

  They studied one another for a moment—racer to racer. Then Bill crossed the tiled floor and stuck his palm out.

  “I’m with you,” Bill said.

  Jane grasped his hand in hers—and realized it was the first time they’d ever shaken. A good feeling. Strong. Solid.

  “We’ve got six months to get ready for next season,” he said.

  “Plenty of time,” Jane said. “Plenty of time.”

  “The Curse of Sally Tincakes” was a lot like my Hugo and Nebula nominated novelette, “Ray of Light,” in that “Tincakes” originated as a workshop story from one of Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s and Dean Wesley Smith’s short fiction workshops, up in Lincoln City, Oregon. Also like “Ray of Light,” this story got me a terrific cover—this time for Orson Scott Card’s InterGalactic Medicine Show. I liked the cover so much (raised glass to Nick Greenwood!) I knew I wanted it on my second short fiction collection; with “Tincakes” as the opening tale.

  The workshop assignment had been to write a story about curses. As I often do when I tackle such assignments, I try to look at the usual angles—in this case, I knew they’d largely be fantastical and/or horrific in flavor—and choose a path less traveled. Being somebody who pays attention to sports (while not being much of a fanatic of any given sport, outside of professional basketball) I knew that sports lore contained a lot of fertile ground for a potential story. At the same time, I wanted to make my story rigorously science fictional. Something I could pitch at an editor who knew my bona fides in that particular way.

  It hit me instantly that I ought to do a racing story.

  Once upon a time, the narrated musical fable group Celestial Navigations (fronted by actor Geoffrey Lewis) did a rather wonderful series of spoken word stories about space racing. I was definitely channeling some of their energy when I conjured up the imagery of Jane Jeffords and her Falcon hurtling along the concave lunar track at unspeakable speeds. Somehow, a good racing story is the kind of story that just never gets old. Whether it’s The Black Stallion or Chariots of Fire or The Last American Hero or Breaking Away, the visceral imagery and feeling of the underdog going up against the odds in a foot race, bike race, horse race, car race … these are all variations on a classic theme—a theme I enjoyed working with when I wrote this story.

  Of course, much credit goes to Edmund Schubert, who is something of a silent co-author. Ed liked “Tincakes” a lot when he had it sent up to him by Scott M. Roberts and the other junior editors at IGMS, but Ed had some specific ideas about how to re-shape the ending. After going back and forth a bit with it, I surprised Ed by taking “Tincakes” in a direction Ed did not expect—but which he liked anyway. And readers liked too, based on the feedback I got.

  ***

  The Bricks of Eta Cassiopeiae

  I was humming to myself as I checked the primitive gauge on the kiln. The song running in my head was an old tune. Something sweet, catchy, and which I’d not heard in a long time. I couldn’t help myself. It’s hard to not be happy when you’re getting short. A few more months and I’d make parole. Just the thought of it sent quivers of anticipation through my stomach. Freedom!

  The gauge’s needle hovered steadily in the red.

  “Still too hot,” I said over my shoulder. “Gotta wait another day.”

  “That’s nice,” said my fellow inmate, Godfrey. “So what do we do until then?”

  “You dig,” came the reply from Ivarsen, our lone guard.

  Godfrey frowned and spit at Ivarsen’s feet, missing just barely.

  Ivarsen allowed himself a small smirk and scrubbed the wad of saliva under a heel. Like the rest of us, he wore a broad-brimmed sun hat and wraparound sunglasses to protect against Eta Cassiopeiae’s blinding rays. Unlike the rest of us, his shorts and shirt were khaki—instead of prisoner orange—and he had a holster on his hip with a high-power pistol in it.

  In the two planetary years since I’d been assigned to Ivarsen’s care, I’d never seen him draw that gun. But with how Godfrey had been acting since his arrival one week ago, I wondered if even Ivarsen’s patience had limits.

  “Kid,” I said, “How in the world did you ever make this detail?”

  “I’ve got a winning personality,” Godfrey said, grinning.

  “Like hell,” I said under my breath.

  Godfrey snorted loudly—a long, thoughtful fricative of his nasal passages—and spit again. This time at my feet.

  Lisa Phaan put a hand to her mouth, appearing to suppress a chuckle. She was our site’s only female inmate: small, strong, and lightning-quick. Which explained why the two male prisoners who had preceded Godfrey had each been sent to the hospital prior to their being put back in exile on The Island. Nobody ever actually said it was attempted rape. I don’t think Lisa let it get that far. All I know is, each time I was awoken in the middle of the night to hear Lisa’s would-be suitor screaming … and then Ivarsen was calling for a medevac.

  When she wanted to, the lady could be a viper.

  But Godfrey—cocky and unaware—had been eyeing her since his arrival. I almost hoped he’d try for a piece. The boy needed some cutting down.

  “You know the drill, Prisoner Godfrey,” Ivarsen said. “Prisoner Fraccaro and you on the shovels. Prisoner Phaan on the dumper. Wait here while I drive it around.”

  Our guard turned and walked away into the white glare of midday, the broken and rocky landscape shimmering behind him.

  Godfrey leaned close and said, “Why don’t we just snuff him?”

  I turned and looked at the huge-bodied youth, my eyebrows raised.

  “And do what? It’s two hundred kilometers to anywhere. The sun will kill you before you get thirty. Besides, Ivarsen has a chip in his body that monitors his vitals and stays in constant contact with a Corrections satellite. All the guards at these remote projects have one. If his vitals quit, the satellite gets alerted. Then the cavalry comes. With rifles. Shoot first, ask questions later.”

  “Bull,” Godfrey said.

  “You really want to find out?”

  The kid kept looking at our guard while Ivarsen receded into the heat.

  “Look,” I said, “is it really that bad? Time served here counts triple what it counts on The Island. They feed us and give us shelter. We’re not at the mercy of the elements. Why ruin it?”

  Godfrey turned and looked at me, hands balling.

  “Screw you,” he said, and walked away.

  I shook my head, wondering if I’d ever been that incomprehensibly belligerent when I was in my twenties. Then I went over to slap shut the ceramic door that covered the kiln’s thermometer.

  As indigenous brick kilns went, ours was pretty standard: a four-meter-cubed box constructed from cut-rock slabs. It sat on the eroded central peak of a shallow crater whose expanse had been populated with automated mirrors. Currently, those mirrors aimed skyward. But when we put a batch of bricks into the kiln, and the computer angled all those mirrors towards the small hill at their center, the kiln lit up like a bug under a magnifying glass.

  Depending on the season and the weather, the kiln could take a full day to fire up—and the days on Eta Cassiopeiae’s fifth planet were very long, especially at this latitude.

  In the meantime there was always more clay. And the new settlements along the polar coast always needed more bricks. In a world with no large flora and relatively little accessible iron, what else was there to build with? It was a supply niche that would have been filled commercially, if the prison system hadn’t gotten there first. The work was arduous and filthy—the kind of soul-mending stuff reformists had been foisting on the incarcerated for many centuries, going all the way back to Earth. On Eta Cassiopeiae Five, nobody in their right mind wanted
to be this close to the equator, so the colonial government farmed the work out to Corrections. Thus everyone was kept happy—even us cons.

  It sure beat the crap out of The Island, where there were no rules and it was literally every man for himself. I’d lasted just long enough to decide that The Island was a slow death sentence, then made an appeal to a Corrections Magistrate during one of the random, heavily-armed inspection tours Corrections occasionally made. They’d liked my file—all of us under the watchful eye of Corrections had one, even those of us cast off utterly from civilization—so I’d been given the chance to go to work. And work I’d done. Happily. Eagerly. With a full stomach and boots on my feet and no fear that the gangs were going to roll me up in the middle of the night and poke holes in me. Or worse.

  A mechanized grumble broke me out of my reverie.

  I turned to watch as the dumper came rolling down the dusty main lane between the mirrors. The huge truck ran on a hydrogen fuel cell and was our primary means of transport; vital to weekly operations. Wet clay was extracted from the hills two kilometers to the east, then had to be moved via dumper to the forming pit. Once formed and dried, the “green” bricks were put on ceramic pallets which again went into the back of the truck for movement to the kiln. Fired and cooled, those bricks stayed on their pallets until they were moved to the staging area to await pickup by the monthly roadtrains headed north. Empty pallets came back from the settlements on roadtrains headed south, to be filled again. And so forth.

  Nobody was allowed to drive the dumper except Ivarsen, who kept the truck’s coded keycard on his person at all times. He handled the thing like he’d been born to it, and not for the first time I wondered where our guard had acquired such skill. The man didn’t talk about his past, though it often seemed like we were just his hardhats, and he just the foreman—not a bad way to operate, considering the temperament of some Corrections officers I’d known in my day.