‘Well, whether you talk to us or not he’s still going to kill you,’ Mudge pointed out.
‘So fucking what? You know anyone over forty?’ Buck asked. Maybe Rolleston, I thought, but decided to keep that observation to myself.
‘That’s no reason not to talk to us,’ Morag said.
‘And it’s no reason to talk to you,’ he replied. ‘Unless you wanna work it off. darlin’,’ he said, grinning. I felt like hitting him. Morag didn’t; she felt like kicking him. I was worried that she was getting too violent. However, Buck managed to lean out of the way of the kick. Morag looked pissed off and Buck just grinned at her.
‘Maybe you want to watch the mouth-’ I managed to say before Rannu kicked Buck so hard it picked him up off the bike and knocked him to the ground. I cringed as the paintwork got another scratch.
‘Fuck!’ Gibby shouted. He sounded genuinely distressed.
‘Thanks,’ Morag said to Rannu. Buck clambered back to his feet looking livid.
‘You boys play nice now!’ Mrs Tillwater shouted from where she was standing with the rest of the Commancheros, presumably swapping recipes or something. Buck picked the bike up again, grimacing as he looked at the paintwork.
‘We’re finished here,’ Buck said. ‘You ain’t getting shit from us.’
‘You owe us,’ Mudge said.
‘How you figure that?’ Buck asked.
‘You fucking left us there to die.’
‘We didn’t like it none,’ Gibby said. ‘But we didn’t really have much of a choice.’
‘And so fucking what? That was then, this is now. I’m over it,’ Buck added.
‘You fucking over it if I come back and bugger you to death with an exhaust pipe?’ Mudge asked. Suddenly we were all looking at him. ‘What?’ he asked. ‘It’s a threat.’ Buck revved the engine again.
‘Like I said, we’ve all gotta go sometime,’ the cyberbilly said.
‘Yeah, but an exhaust pipe?’ Gibby said, looking a little disturbed. Buck gunned the engine.
‘This,’ he said, patting the bike, ‘this is what it’s all about.’
‘Look, I like bikes as much as the next guy, and that’s a sweet ride,’ I said, momentarily distracted. ‘But there’s more important things at stake here.’
‘No. There’s nothing more important. I know this and that’s why I’m free,’ Buck said.
‘Yeah, I’ve seen your freedom,’ Mudge said. ‘You guys are free to die of cancer, free to die of respiratory problems, free to have deformed kids and slowly rot away.’
‘Live free and die of cancer – John Wayne taught us that,’ Buck said.
‘Who?’ I asked.
‘I ought to have you horse-whipped,’ Buck snarled.
‘Can we talk or not?’ I demanded. Buck’s live free and die young crap was almost as irritating as Balor’s warrior crap. I wondered why people, men usually, couldn’t make it through life without developing some kind of crackpot code of ethics.
‘Maybe we should, man,’ Gibby said. ‘We’re fucked anyway. These guys might be jerks but Rolleston’s a real fucker.’
‘Rolleston never done marked up my bike,’ Buck said.
‘If you guys help us there’s a chance, a slim one, but a chance that things could change sufficiently that Rolleston might not be a problem any more,’ Pagan said.
‘You wanna talk to me?’ Buck said. I nodded. ‘Go get your bike. We’ll talk up there.’ He pointed up at the most distant high-rise.
20
Why was nothing ever simple? Why did everyone have to turn simple things into competitions? Didn’t anyone want a quiet life? I’d taken one of the pills and then a stim to pep me up a bit.
‘Well, that went well,’ Pagan said. ‘Did you have to try and kick him?’ he asked Morag. ‘I thought he was about to open up.’ I’d brought the bike back over to where we were standing. Buck, Gibby and some of their friends were standing round Buck’s bike.
‘Which conversation were you listening to?’ Morag asked. ‘Besides, everyone else gets to be a macho arsehole.’
‘Not everyone, just Mudge,’ I said as I ran a diagnostic on the bike. It was a good bike as far as it went, but it wasn’t set up for racing like Buck’s would be. I wished I had my Triumph with me. I was a pretty good racer and could hold my own in scheme races back in Dundee, as long as I picked who I raced carefully, but if Buck rode like he flew then I was outclassed both in ware and skills. Still, could be fun, I thought, looking at the course.
‘Rannu kicked him,’ Mudge pointed out in his own defence.
‘Yeah that helped,’ I said.
‘He was being disrespectful,’ Rannu said. Morag smiled at him and gave him a hug. Just concentrate on the bike, I told myself.
‘If we went around attacking everyone who was disrespectful we’d never get anything done and you’d have to kill Mudge,’ I told Rannu.
‘Hey, I’m not you. I would’ve kicked his arse in New York,’ Mudge said, apparently seriously.
‘See!’ Morag said. I was as ready as I was going to get. The starting point looked like a ramp leading up onto the roofs of the terraced flats. There was a ramp on either side of the street. Buck had the right side of the street; I was expected to take the left.
‘What’s the betting he’s given himself the easier side of the street?’ I asked nobody in particular. Straddling the bike, engine idling, I walked it over to the starting line accompanied by fast-paced, heavy western guitar riffs and pounding drums. Buck didn’t even bother looking at me.
Try not to fuck up,’ Mudge said encouragingly.
‘What’s the signal to start the race?’ Morag asked while Buck roared up his ramp and onto the roof of the terraced flats, as one of the cyberbillys fired a flare into the air. I gunned the low rider up the ramp, accelerating so fast I was only just able to keep the front wheel down on the deck. The bike jumped slightly as I hit the top of the ramp onto the flat roof about three storeys above the ground. I then had to swerve violently to avoid a huge hole in the roof. I’m sure that would’ve been hilarious for the crowd.
I was heading for a low wall at speed. I noticed there was a small metal ramp up against it over to my right, I veered hard, only just managing to straighten up as I hit it. I was airborne again, the bike bouncing on its shocks when I landed. I could see Buck ahead of me and off to the left. Basically the roof of the terraced flats was a straight sprint. All I had to do was avoid debris and holes and use the ramps over the low dividing walls. Then Buck disappeared.
I changed up a gear as the bike accelerated, spending more time in the air off the ramps and bouncing further when I hit the ground. Plugged into the bike I saw its performance in numbers on my internal visual display and could feel it in my head. I tried to get the feeling of merging with it like I did with my Triumph, but this wasn’t my bike and it wasn’t as elegantly engineered as the Triumph.
I hit the next wall and screamed as there was no roof on the other side of it. I hit a down-sloping ramp fighting for control of the low rider. The ramp took me into the interior of the flats. I hit the bottom of the ramp, swerving to avoid an interior wall and then riding through the next in an explosion of plaster, again only just staying on the bike. Ahead of me I could make out the course, a series of chicanes defined by interior walls and holes in the floor. I swerved from one side to another, getting down as low as I could in the cramped space. I didn’t like the give the floor had beneath my bike. Then I remembered I was dying anyway and sped up. Leaning down low over one of the holes in the floor, I could see it went down further than two storeys and into the sewers below. I swerved the other way, the top of my head just clipping the interior wall. I barely felt it. Part of the floor gave way behind my bike, and I felt it slow, but the wheel caught and I was away. I realised I was smiling as I hit the up ramp. I soared into the air as I came out of the flats back onto the roof. Buck was closer now.