K Jeter: Farewell Horizontal

After following Sai long enough to feel his back going into spasms, Axxter was finally able to stand straight up. They’d stepped out of the low tunnel into a larger space, the ceiling, if there was one, beyond his sight.

“How’s that?” Sai’s voice echoed off the nearest wall. “What is it?” He watched the beam of Sai’s flashlight moving across a flank of metal.

“Transport, man. Wheels – well, sort of; in the metaphoric sense, at least. It actually works on mag-lev technology, just zooms along, no friction. If you’re into pre-War high technology, this one’s a beauty; it’s the fastest thing in or on Cylinder.” Sai looked around and caught Axxter’s uncomprehending look. “It’s a train , man – that’s what things like this were called. Runs on tracks. See?” The flashlight beam played along two massive girders, tall as a man, stretching out in front of the machine’s bullet nose. “Like transit cables, only on the horizontal – you understand that much?”

“Yeah, I guess.” Axxter looked up at the windows set flush in the train’s front cabin. “Where’s it go to?”

Sai smiled. “This is your lucky day. Finally. You’re looking at part of Cylinder’s former transportation network. There used to be hundreds of these babies running straight through the building. That’s how people and stuff used to get from one side to the other.”

“Wait a minute. This thing – right here – goes to the other side? The morningside? Is that what you’re saying?”

“Yeah, it’ll get you within a couple kilometers of the surface. The tracks run right up to where the barriers were constructed. You’d have to hoof it the rest of the way from there.”

“But it’s out of commission – is that the deal? It doesn’t work anymore, it’s just a hunk of rust sitting here.”

“Oh, no. It works fine.” Sai stepped over to the train and rapped it with his fist. “We’ve kept it in good shape – me and a couple of my friends. It wasn’t hard to do. It’s got a lot of autonomic maintenance equipment built in.”

Axxter looked at him in amazement. “You mean to say, you’ve got this thing sitting right here, it’s ready to go, it can zip me back to the other side now – and you’ve been wasting my time, gassing on about a bunch of weird metaphysical junk? I don’t believe this.”

“‘Gassing on’ -” Sai snorted. “You know, you got this problem: people try to do you favors, and this is how you act in return. Saying rude things. That other stuff is important, too. More than you know. You’re going to have to think about it sometime.”

“Yeah, right; anything you say.” Axxter stood on tiptoe, trying to peer into the train’s window. “How does this thing work?”

“It’s simple, practically runs itself. You’ll have no problem with it. People like you have a knack for ripping off other people’s technology. You’re like magpies with brains, or something. If it’s metal and flashy, you glom right onto it.”

Axxter ignored him, walking around the front of the train to the other side. “What’s this other stuff over here?”

Sai followed him “You know, just getting over to the other side isn’t going to solve all your problems. You’re still going to have the same people looking to kill you. More now than you originally thought you had gunning for you.”

“I’ll worry about that when I get there. I can only deal with all this one step at a time.” Axxter squatted down beside another machine, a smaller one. “What’s this?”

The flashlight beam played over it, revealing the lineaments of wheels and engine, chrome and black enamel. A motorcycle of a make – either the original or a replica – that Axxter didn’t recognize. There was no emblem painted on its tank, or other identifying mark. The machine hulked, brutish and dangerous-looking, in the darkness.

“What’s it look like?” Sai pointed the flashlight away from it, down a line of other machines. “There’s tons of this pre-War technology around here. See what you’ve all been missing by being afraid to come inside and look around? Think of all the fun you could’ve been having with this stuff.” The sarcasm was plain in his voice.

“Does this thing run, too?”

Sai reached past him and pressed a starter switch below the handlebars. The engine roared into life. “Pretty big displacement -” Sai shouted over the noise. “This thing’s built for speed.” He switched off the engine. “Probably not a good idea to call attention to where we are.”

Axxter ran his hands over the motorcycle’s tank. “I could use this. Over on the other side.” The memory of his poor Norton, crumpled and spinning through the air, was still strong. “I’d have to get it adapted, get the grappling wheels put on and stuff…”

“You’re getting way ahead of yourself. You’re not at the point where you need to be scoping out a new set of wheels. You can bet that the Havoc Mass has already figured out your plan of action and where you’re going to pop out on the morningside. It’s a sure thing they’ve sent their own megassassin around to that entry site you’re aiming for. You show your head over there, and you’ll be hash in a minute, It won’t matter that you’ve managed to get away from the Grievous Amalgam megassassin that’s stomping around over here.”

He knew it was true. Deflated, Axxter leaned his weight against the motorcycle. It was exactly the sort of thing that General Cripplemaker and the rest of the Havoc Mass would think was funny, to stake out the entry site with the megassassin that he’d worked on.

Sai switched off the flashlight, leaving them in the gloom provided by the intermittent blue fixtures above. “What you need – right now – is some way of getting the Havoc Mass off your ass. Then you could head on out of here, and you’d be home free.”

“Sure -” He nodded glumly. “That’d be real fine. But you can’t talk with people like that. They’re all nuts, and hopped up all the time. A simple apology, or an explanation or whatever, isn’t going to cut it with them.”

“So? You just have to come up with something else. Something that’s so valuable to them that it wipes out whatever grudge they’ve got simmering against you. Think about it.”

Think – His brain shifted reluctantly into gear. It’d be so much easier to just lie down on the floor and wait for whatever was going to happen. Even if it was going to be gruesomely unpleasant. All the stuff he’d found out had fatigued his head, as though it had been crammed to the bursting point with useless knowledge. What good did it to do to discover these things?…

He saw it then, perfect and luminous, right in front of him He raised his head, looking straight at Sai. “They don’t know. The Havoc Mass – they don’t know. They don’t know what’s going on . And I do. About the Grievous Amalgam screwing around with Ask & Receive. About all the information they rely on being contaminated. And I’m the only one who can tell them.”

In the darkness, he saw Sai’s smile.

Axxter looked above him, as though the idea had become buoyant, floating over their heads. “And if I told them that – then they’d believe me, about being set up.”

Another realization had hit him. “Because it wasn’t DeathPix that screwed me over, that overrode the animating signal for the graffex work I did. It was the Grievous Amalgam. They wanted to snuff me, to shut me up about whatever I might’ve seen where they raided that entry site, only they couldn’t get to me inside the Havoc Mass camp. But they found a way; they just had to get the Mass pissed off enough at me, and the Mass would kill me. They’d have done the Amalgam’s work for them.”