“Soon.” She pointed. “Gretyl’s got an admirer.”
Etcetera made an impatient noise. “That’s great, but we need to hit the road. It’s three, four days’ walk from here, assuming we don’t get bikes or a ride.”
“I know. We still have to say good-bye to the Gil, hello to these people, and good-bye to them. It’s called sociability, Etcetera. Accommodate yourself.”
Seth snorted. Etcetera was silent, possibly sulking. Tam imagined that he was saying unkind things about the living in his internal monologue. She recalled his on-the-record statements about Limpopo’s choice to live as a house spirit. She crossed her eyes and stuck her tongue out, and heard Hoa and Gretyl laugh and turned to see them looking.
She gave them the face, making a Harpo googie of it. Hoa responded with her own, and rubber-faced Gretyl made one that put theirs to shame.
“You win. You two made the world safe for calculus yet?”
“Done.” They grinned.
“When do we start?” Tam looked at the boys, now in a relatively zeppelin-free corner of the field with some local kids and some aerialists, kicking a ball around in a game that involved a lot of screaming and tackling and possibly no rules.
“You’re covered,” Hoa said. “We’ve got bikes coming out of our assholes here.”
“Sounds painful,” Seth said. Hoa made her face.
“We’re into deconstructed bikes, minimal topologies.”
Tam saw Gretyl and Seth nodding. She suppressed her irritation. She tried to understand the attraction of minimal topology, but it just looked... unfinished. The drive to reduce overall material volume of mechanical solids had been a project in both default and walkaway for decades, minimizing feedstock use in each part, getting better at modeling the properties of cured feedstock. Familiar things grew more improbably gossamer. Everything was intertwingled tensegrity meshes that cross-braced themselves when stressed, combining strength and suppleness. It was scary enough in bookcase or table form, everything looking like it was about to collapse all the time. When applied to bicycles, the technique nauseated her with fear, as the bike deformed and jiggled through the imperfections in the roads.
“Great,” she managed.
Hoa nodded. “We’re ahead of everyone else. I did one last month that only weighs ninety grams! Without the wheels. You’d get seven hundred kay out of it before it flumfed.”
That was the other thing about minimal topology. It had catastrophic failure modes. A single strut giving way caused a cascade of unraveling chaotic motion that could literally reduce a bike frame to a pile of 3D-printed twigs in thirty seconds. People swore the bike’s self-braking mechanisms would bring it to a safe halt before it disintegrated. But if they could model the cataclysmic collapse so well, why couldn’t they prevent it?
“Great.” She caught Gretyl and Seth playing sarcastic eyeball hockey. She glared at them and Seth gave her a squeeze.
“You’ll love it. Worse come to worst, we’ve got your scan on file, right?”
“It’s a hell of an afterlife,” Etcetera said. “I’ll show you the ropes.”
She considered her options – epic grump, sarcasm, capitulation – grinned and said, “Looks like we’re riding!” Seth hugged her. She heard Etcetera whisper praises of his choice in romantic partners.
[V]
THEY ARRAYED THE bikes in the field, ranged smallest to tallest, and scrounged a trailer the boys could sit in that their half-sized bikes could clip to. There was general hilarity while they tried and swapped helmets, taking group photos. The aerialists, unloaded, looked on, gave advice, and tinkered with the bikes.
They reached a moment when everyone was impatient to go and no one could name a reason not to – everyone’s bladder emptied and so on. They formed up and rode. Tam grit her teeth as she started to ride, but it was smooth. The bike had the combination of rigidity and springiness of tensegrity designs, absorbing shocks with ease, but still rigid enough for steerability.
Stan and Jacob set the pace for the first eight kilometers, a slow ride. Hoa and her friends kept up, hanging on Gretyl’s every word. When Stan and Jacob ran out of steam (red-faced, panting) they climbed into the trailer. The rest of the party took the opportunity to pee, drink water, snack, kibitz, trade bikes and adjust helmets. When they started again, Hoa and friends made their good-byes and turned back.
They pushed themselves hard, three abreast, sometimes passed by the odd car – most of the vehicle traffic rode on the 401, which was pure default and heavily patrolled – stopping early in a Mohawk reservation where there was a diner with pressure-cooked potato wedges served with cheese-curds. The proprietor was second-generation Idle No More. They quickly figured out which friends they had in common.
The sun was low. They agreed that if they pushed it, they could be in Kingston by nightfall, maybe even have a midnight feast with Limpopo, a prospect that fired their imaginations and enthusiasms, except for Jacob and Stan, who were already asleep in their trailer, curled like a yin-yang. Iceweasel loosened their clothes and popped a shade over them and then stared at them smiling in a way that Tam could understand, but not relate to.
Seth caught her and gave her a hug and a smoldering kiss, adding sneaky tongue and an earlobe nibble; she got one hand up his sweaty back and then slid it over his butt and gave it a squeeze.
“Quickie in the bushes?” he whispered.
“Jeez, you two,” Etcetera said. She remembered he was a cyborg today and jerked away.
“You sure know how to enhance a mood.” Seth gave her one more hug. “Sorry, darling.”
“Don’t worry about it,” she said. “Let’s get this show rolling.”
She was a walkaway, had been a walkaway since she was fourteen, though she’d come and gone from default – back to her parents, then an aunt, then her parents – until she was seventeen, when she’d gone for good. She had big thigh muscles and calves that bulged, even now she was saggy and middle-aged. There had been a time when she thought nothing of walking ten hours a day, day after day. In those days, a bicycle was practically cheating. She could have ridden without breaking a sweat. It was a luxury reserved for the confluence of great roads and good fortune.
Muscles or no, those days were behind her. After the first hour, she was panting. The wicking fabric of her shirt felt sticky. There were times when her calves and feet cramped and she had to do awkward stretches while riding, grimacing and suppressing groans. She could have called a stop, but there was the thought of dinner with Limpopo. Besides, Seth was grimacing too, and so were Iceweasel and Gretyl. None of them was calling stops. She wouldn’t be the first one to cry off.
“Goddamnit!” Seth howled and shook his leg, laid down the bike and rolled in the grass on the verge. He clutched his leg. They all got off and stretched and complained and sheepishly smiled at each other. Jacob and Stan woke from their naps and ran circles around them and demanded to be allowed to ride. They all agreed it would be unfair not to let the boys ride, so there were hours of slower-paced riding. It was much better.
The sun was a bloody blob on the horizon behind them, staining the road red, when Jacob and Stan climbed back into their trailer. Iceweasel checked their helmet straps. Gretyl did it again. The two women shot each other daggers and laughed at themselves. They were all old, and were on a long journey together. Something was changing. One era giving way to another. The sense of a change crackled through the cooling air. They ate mushy watermelon slices and squeezy pouches of chocolate scop and electrolyte. They checked the distance and by unspoken consensus got on their machines and started cranking.