“Sorry about that,” the man said. “We’ll have to dilute that for a while. At least until we bulk you up a bit with glucotics.” He paused, looking at her thoughtfully. “Do you know, you really are a lucky little girl indeed.”
Trix just looked up at him. She didn’t feel particularly lucky. Then again, she didn’t have all that much to compare “luck” to.
“You’re a very lucky girl indeed because we’ve been looking out for you. We here at GenTech. Looking out for people just like you.”
The man did the thing with his mouth again.
“You can call me Masterton,” he said. “We’re going to do great things. Would I lie to you?”
13.
Up through Pasadena and then they hit the Glendale Blockade. Eddie hauled the Testostorossa back and let a modified Behemoth, the front end reinforced and fitted with hydraulic rams, take them through under main force.
The good citizens of Glendale scattered and the barrier went to pieces; the Brain Train made it through encountering nothing heavier than disorganised small-arms fire.
That gave the Brain Train a straight run west to San Fernando, before hitting what had once been Route 14 and turning north.
“I feel like some music,” Eddie Kalish told the Testostorossa. “Switch on the radio and find some tunes.”
“ What, are your hands tired? ” the Testostorossa asked him with heavy sarcasm. “ You poor thing. All that beating off guys’ cocks, I’ll bet. Fuckin’ do it yourself. ”
Eddie was wishing that whoever had programmed the Testostorossa’s AI had gone a little easier on the virtual personality. Or given it a completely different one, come to that. The relatively limited amount of processing power that a car, supercharged or not, was able to lug around led to semi-sentient entities with decidedly one-track character traits.
He was also, absolutely, not going to admit that while he had received a thorough grounding in the Testostorossa’s systems and controls by way of the Loup-in much the same way as it had allowed him to operate the data-systems back in the Factory-this had for some reason not extended to an ability to operate the built-in entertainment set.
The fact was, with a large proportion of the US population turning to a life on the move, the number of radio stations competing for bandwidth had skyrocketed. It took insanely complicated receiver-controls to pull anything at all out of this jumble of signals in the first place, let alone something which one might enjoy listening to.
The radio receiver crawled with knobs and dials, and Eddie didn’t have the first clue as to where to start.
“Just do it, okay?” he said. “It comes down to it, and it doesn’t go against the Mission Directives Masterton loaded you up with, you have to do what I say. So I’m fucking ordering you, okay? And if you dare put out ‘It’s Raining Men’, ‘Boystown’ or anything at all by the goddamn Village People, I shall personally open up your hood with a can-opener and see what your artificial brains look like after being fucked over with a monkey wrench. Are we clear?”
“ Suit your fucking self, ” said the Testostorossa. It squeal-blipped through the stations, most of which seemed to be playing the latest track by somebody called Freak-E and of whom Eddie had never heard, and settled finally on something with a pair of interminably duelling banjos.
Eddie decided that no music at all would be better than that, found the power switch and shut the radio off.
“What’s the matter,” said the Testostorossa. “Didn’t like it? Seems to me, you’d be a fan of Country with a big C. Something with a big C, anywise.”
Up around Mojave, they ran into a gangcult calling themselves the Long Reds-not, the Testostorossa’s HUD explained rather snottily, on its targeting profile, because of any perceived kinship with American Indians, but because’ of the long red stains they commonly left their victims in on the blacktop.
Eddie streamed the targeting data back to Trix in the Brain Train Command rig, then bugged out. Dodged through the Long Red horde with Al-assisted efficiency and put in some distance.
Some few minutes later, Trix Desoto broke in on the corn-sat link: “ Get your ass back here, Eddie, we need a bit of an assist. ”
“What?” Eddie said. “I thought I was strictly recon. Sort of trouble you got, what actual help could I possibly be?”
“ Get your fucking ass back here now, you little shit! ”
“Charming.”
Eddie slewed the Testostorossa round in a handbrake turn he would have never believed he could do-and which, incidentally, had the Testostorossa calling him a total fucking maniac-and headed south.
As the Brain Train hove into view, Eddie caught on to what the problem was. A lucky shot from a shoulder-mounted launcher had breached a Behemoth tanker and it was leaking the coolant that kept the cargo refrigerated-and more importantly, kept the hydrogen-fusion processes of its power cell at an optimum operating temperature for not leaving a huge hole in the ground.
What kind of idiot, Eddie wondered, as the Loup obligingly dropped a sense of the mechanical schematics into his head, would tie the systems directly together? In any event, harassed as it was by Long Red motorsickles, the Behemoth was in no position to stop and effect repairs.
“ There’s a shutoff valve on the linkage assembly,” Trix Desoto told him via the comsat link. “ You have to get up there and shut the flow down manually. ”
“Oh yeah?” said Eddie. “And wearing a fucking tit for a hat I am.”
“ What? ” Trix Desoto asked in what seemed like genuine puzzlement. “ What was that? ”
“Sorry,” said Eddie. “That came out wrong. I don’t quite know what I meant myself. The point is, what do I know about acrobatics on top of a speeding truck? Get one of the outriders to do it-they look like the sort who’ll do any dumb thing for a laugh.”
“Their job is to keep these jokers off you while you do yours. Besides, ever tried to stand up on a motorsickle while simultaneously pulling a lever that throws your balance off? Just do the job, okay?”
“No,” said Eddie. “And you can’t make me.”
It occurred to him that was the wrong thing to say, to a woman who had control of a Leash that was, currently, the only thing that was preventing him from turning into a monster and exploding on a twelve-hourly basis.
Then again, so what? The important thing, here and now, was immediate survival from being crushed under the wheels of a loudmouth Testostorossa with a profound streak of homophobia and/or a Behemoth.
It was at this point that he felt the Testostorossa lurch. It slowed and segued in, then gunned the acceleration to match speeds and drive in tandem with the stricken Behemoth.
“The fuck?” Eddie exclaimed.
“ I’m taking control under Emergency Override, ” Trix said via the comsat link. “ It’s locked in. The car itself couldn’t change it, even if it meant going against the mission directives. ”
“And you’re, like, totally fine with that?” Eddie asked the Testostorossa. “Totally surrendering all your individuality and volition and shit?”
“ Fine by me, ” the Testostorossa growled. “ The girl’s a total babe and I like her. You, I don’t care if you live or fucking die. ”
“I can just sit here,” he said. “I can sit here and just do nothing. In fact, I think that’s what I’ll do. Or won’t, if you get what I mean, and I’m sure that you do.”
“ Hey, well, fine, ” said Trix Desoto over the satellite link. “ I’ve got two words for you. Ejector and seat. ”
“Oh dear God,” said Eddie. “You wouldn’t. I mean, even GenTech wouldn’t do something so cheesy and fucking stupid as fitting a car with an ejector seat, right?”