“ You’ll never know, ” said Trix Desoto. “ Or at least-you’ll know for about two seconds before your head hits the blacktop. So are you gonna do the job or what? ”
Eddie slithered into the shotgun seat and racked open the door. Scrambled up on to the roof of the Testostorossa and stood there in a semi-crouch.
It was easier, actually, than he had imagined. They were in the lee of the slipstream generated by the Behemoth and the air seemed, for the moment, still. And the Testostorossa’s suspension was a dream-albeit the kind of dislocated and horrific dream from which you are desperate to wake up.
Willing himself into a the kind of terrified calm that has you moving very slow and sure in the knowledge that any sudden move might break the spell, Eddie turned to survey the tubes and cables of the Behemoth’s linkage system that connected the cargo tanker to the cab. The shutoff lever for the coolant was plainly marked and visible-just well out of reach for someone who didn’t have springs in his heels.
Eddie leaned in. Maybe he could get some purchase on the rig and haul himself over… and it was at this point that a Long Red zipped in around from the blindside, on a four-wheeled arrangement that seemed to consist of a pair of motorsickles lashed to either side of an aviation turbine, and levelled a sawn-off twelve-gauge directly at his head.
Then a GenTech outrider slammed in to broadside the Long Red, spearing him and his vehicle with the reinforced polycarbon blades that served both as impact-protection and offensive weapon-and which gave motorsickles their name as opposed to the more literal and prosaic motorcycles.
Presumably, the outrider had been counting in the impact-resistance aspect of those blades to protect him from damage-but those same blades now caught in the Long Red’s mechanics and hauled the outrider over, sending both of them spinning off down the blacktop and on fire.
“Screw him,” Eddie muttered to himself. “That’s his job.”
Now he realised that, in his alarm, he had just flung himself desperately into the Behemoth’s connecting rig. He was hanging from a tangle of data-transfer cables, fortunately of the sort designed for rough and heavy duty treatment and thus could bear his weight.
The shutoff lever for the coolant was directly before him. He reached for it and yanked it.
The lever came off in his hand.
Eddie said a bad word.
Behind him, he heard a complicated, tearing crash as a number of vehicles collided in any number of interesting configurations. Eddie had no idea what had actually happened, and who might have died on either side, and quite frankly he didn’t care.
The shutoff valve, despite the lack of a lever, still seemed more or less functional. Oh, well. It was worth a try. He grasped it with his free hand and attempted to twist it.
For a moment, it seemed that he was tearing the skin, and the meat for that matter, off his hand. Then, somehow, it was as if the skin and flesh had just hardened. The valve turned, then got a grip and lodged. Eddie Kalish had the distinct thought that he might have twisted it still further and torn it out, had he wanted.
In any case, he thought now, he’d done the job to any point of which he was capable-and if anybody like Trix Desoto, for example, wanted any more then they could just shove it.
Eddie let go of the cables, boosted himself off and dropped back into the Testostorossa, doing a neat little flip around the sill of the door that he would never know had looked incredibly impressive to anyone who might have seen it.
“All right,” he said to the world in general. “I’ve fucking done it, okay? Good enough? Can I go, now?”
“ Good enough, ” the voice of Trix Desoto admitted over the comsat-link. “ For long enough. ”
The Testostorossa lurched again on its suspension.
“ I’m back under your masterful control, ” it said. “ You know, incidentally, just so’s you know. So are you gonna drive me or what? ”
Eddie Kalish drove, running the last remaining Long Red off the road without even particularly thinking about it.
And it would only be later, yet again, that he realised that he had just done three separate things that it would have been impossible, for a human being, to do.
14.
After finishing off the Long Reds, the Brain Train hit nothing more than minor skirmishing. It was simply too big a target for any but the largest, well-supported or clinically insane gangcult to think it worth having a shot.
The Brain Train hit the Lone Pine ghoul-town and went through it slow, in silent running, while shark-like cars cruised the streets, driven by what appeared to be shapeless forms under sheets.
North through Bishop on Route 6, “Home of the World’s Biggest Ball of Ear-wax!”, only nobody wanted to see it. Then the State Line south of Boundary Park, where Trix Desoto decided to take advantage of the National Parks Service customs check to stop and repair the damaged Behemoth.
The net result was that, momentarily, Eddie Kalish found himself at a loose end. Masterton had given him a GenTech-issue credit chip-the first such thing he had ever owned-and it was burning a hole in his pocket.
The problem was that, here and now, there was nowhere and nothing to spend it on.
Eddie hauled the Testostorossa up next to a small convenience store a little way off from the Customs checkpoint. He debated with himself as to what might be the most expensive thing it stocked, but the exercise was probably pointless. He suspected he could buy the entire store, freehold, on GenTech credit.
A couple of girls, not wearing very much, were lounging by a vintage hydrogen-converted Caddy and chatting with a black guy in a long leather coat. They had Hollywood looks-that is, they looked how, in your dreams, hookers were supposed to look, as opposed to the way they actually do look in any real life.
One of the girls shifted round as he shot the door and clambered out of the Testostorossa.
“Hey, guy, nice ride,” she said. “You feel like a good time?”
Eddie thought about this-and it must be said, he considered it in more or less the same terms you might consider going on a theme-park ride, or going to a movie. The unworldly perfection of these Californian girls was utterly at odds with, say, backroom girls in Las Vitas; it was difficult to think of them in the same connection.
“Yeah, sure,” he said after a moment. “What do you do for a couple of grand?”
“We arrest you for soliciting,” the black guy said, slapping a pair of smack-shackles around Eddie’s wrists and then showing him his badge. “California State Cavalry Vice Squad.”
“The fuck?” Eddie bellowed. “This is entrapment!”
“No it isn’t,” one of the girls smirked. “We just asked you if you wanted a time. Didn’t say a thing about money.”
Much as he didn’t want to make assumptions about good-looking girls-whether hookers or vice cops-and their general level of intelligence, Eddie got the distinct impression that this was the most brilliant trick that had ever been thought up, so far as she was concerned, and she wondered how anyone could have thought up such a brilliant trick.
“Okay, okay,” he said wearily. “Write me a ticket or whatever. What’s the fine?”
“Mandatory jail time,” said the black guy. “Twenty-four hours.”
“Shit,” said Eddie, dispiritedly.
This altercation, meanwhile, had drawn the attention of Trix Desoto, who had left the roadside-maintenance of the damaged Behemoth and now stormed over.
“What’s happening?” she demanded. “What’s going on?”
The vice cops took one look at her, in her strategically-ripped PVC, and arrested her too.
“Idiot!” Trix Desoto seethed. “You’re an idiot. What are you? A fucking idiot, that’s what you are.”
“Sorry,” said Eddie.
“I mean,” Trix Desoto continued, “Nevada’s famous for its legal prostitution industry. What on earth would have you trying to pick up hookers, two hundred yards the wrong side of the State Line? How could you not have realised it was a Moron Patrol?”