When the senator’s car rounded the corner, Santos mashed the accelerator pedal.
One thing you had to give big gas-guzzling American V-8s — they had power to spare. He left tire rubber smoking on the asphalt as he took off.
He was doing almost fifty when he switched lanes and slammed into the senator’s compact car.
It was at a slight angle — he wanted to be able to drive his car away, if possible, and there was too much chance of rupturing the radiator in a head-on, even against a smaller car.
There was a hard thump! and crash, and a sense of time slowing down, almost of drifting through space. Even though he was braced and ready, the seat belt tight, he still went forward into the air bag as it deployed. The face shield and gloves saved him from a flattened nose and brush burns on his arms as he hit the bag, which immediately collapsed. Striking an air bag in an accident was not, as some people seemed to think, like being hit in the face with a soft feather pillow. It was more like being punched by a gloved boxer, hard.
The big car’s windshield didn’t shatter, that was good, but something shiny flew up from the impact and hit on the passenger side hard enough to crack the safety glass.
He saw the senator’s car spinning, saw the man’s head hit his side window, blasting the tempered glass into squarish little bits that burst outward in a glittering fan of shrapnel. The air bag in the senator’s car had gone off, but the deliberately angled impact had caused the senator to hit the bag well to the side, so the safety device didn’t do as much good as it would have — another reason to avoid the full frontal smash.
Once past, Santos stood on the brake, and his car, already slowed by the crash, skidded to a noisy stop. He looked back in time to see the senator’s car pinwheel into a fiberglass light pole that snapped off at the base and came down on top of the auto just as the car plowed into a row of bushes, wiped them out, and smashed the right rear panel into a thick oak tree. The tree shook violently, but held.
Santos put the car into reverse and backed up. Seemed to be driving okay, nothing scraping against the wheel, that was good.
He came abreast of the senator’s car. No way they were going to repair that, the whole front end was shifted to one side, the frame bent and badly distorted. Steam came from the ruptured cooling system.
The senator’s head lolled through his shattered side window. Blood welled from his head and dripped onto the ground, and from the angle of his neck, Santos thought it might be broken. Certainly it was wrenched enough to damage muscles. The front of the car was collapsed enough so that the man’s legs were probably pinned, maybe they were broken, too.
Good enough. Maybe he would die, maybe not, but he wasn’t going to be playing golf any time soon, if he survived. And he would not be a thorn in CyberNation’s side for a while, either.
Santos put the car into forward gear, and drove away. People were coming out of their townhouses to see what had happened. He kept his head down, knowing he was disguised by the helmet and face shield.
Once he was around the corner, he pulled the helmet and gloves off and spat the mouthpiece into his hand. He unbuckled the lifting belt, pulling it from under his jacket. He used a small pocket knife to cut the elastic on the jock and cup. With one hand he stuffed all the protective gear into a big shopping bag from Trader Joe’s.
Three miles away he came to a major bus stop. There was a movie theater across the street. He parked the car in a movie lot, damaged front end toward the building, got out, and dumped the bag in the nearest trash bin. Anybody who found the bag would probably not be the kind of person who’d run straight to the police, and even if they were, what was illegal about gloves, a helmet, and a lifting belt? By the time anybody found the hit-and-run vehicle, he would be long gone.
He walked to the bus stop. Smiled at an old black lady who saw him coming. She smiled back.
A good night’s work, this. Made a man proud.
Jay Gridley sat on a bench provided for pilgrims and watched the sunset. Fuji-yama was a walk-up, lots of people climbed it every day. It was a volcanic peak, a strato-volcano shaped like a squat cone, but more than twelve thousand feet high, in Fuji-Hakone-Izu National Park, near Honshu. The sacred mountain was the highest in Japan. It hadn’t had a major eruption since the early 1700s, but it vented steam and smoke now and again. Gave folks a bit of a thrill, maybe, to know it could possibly wake up and blow the climbers into the next world, however unlikely that was.
Most of the pilgrims started their ascent at the Fifth Station, about seventy-five hundred feet up, from where it took six or eight hours to make it to the top. The official climbing season ran from July to the end of August. Climbers on the north side used the Yoshidaguchi trail, which ran from Fujiyoshida City to the summit. The Fuji Subaru Line toll road met the trail at the Fifth Station, halfway up the mountain.
It was crowded — Fuji-yama was always crowded, sometimes hundreds of people walking in a long serpentine line, only a few inches apart, laughing, talking, enjoying themselves. It wasn’t Mount Everest. More than a hundred thousand people a year climbed the sacred mountain. Now and again, one would die making the ascent, usually from a heart attack, but sometimes from heat exhaustion or dehydration. It was cool, maybe ten degrees above freezing at the top today, but a steady climb produced a lot of heat, and the heavy jackets tended to come off pretty quick.
The old saying in Japan was you were a fool not to climb the mountain once, and a bigger fool if you climbed it twice.
Jay watched the pilgrims slog past, many with walking sticks — canes, staves — backpacks holding small children, even a seeing-eye dog leading a blind man. Old, young, fit, flabby, tourists, seekers, dressed in every color of the rainbow and a lot of hues not found anywhere in nature.
It was not a totally safe climb, however, even for those in good shape. Falling rocks injured or killed people, if rarely. Those who wandered off the trail had sometimes fallen. And now and again, a tourist would be hit by lightning, sometimes out of the blue. Jay carried a small transistor radio Velcroed to his backpack, tuned to a time sig from somewhere. Supposedly, if the radio started blasting out a lot of static, it was a good idea to hit the ground and lie flat.
Weather was not particularly stable from the base to the top, and what started out sunny could be foggy, rainy, or snowy in a matter of a few minutes. The place made its own weather.
The Climbing Safety Guidance Center was located at the Sixth Station, First Aid Station at the Seventh. Climbing during the off-season was not encouraged. Those who felt the need were required to clear their climbing gear with the Fujiyoshida Police Station. Failure to do so as a tourist would get you kicked out of the country if caught, heavily fined if you were a local.
It was a good idea to bring proper clothing, water, food, and toilet paper.
Assuming you made it to the top, you could visit the shrine, mail a postcard at the post office, and explore the volcanic crater. You could also buy souvenirs, very expensive, and the big show was to watch the sunrise above the sea of clouds that often shrouded the earth below.
Jay had made the climb five times. In VR, that is. He wanted to try it in RW some day. Since meeting Saji, he was no longer worried that the real thing might not live up to the artificial experience.