Dancing With Myself

by Charles Sheffield

  “And can you—” I began.

  “No.” He interrupted me. “What I cannot do, Trace, to save my life, is tell you who will win. That will be, by definition, the best man.”

  I wanted to be that best man, more than I had ever wanted anything. I was thinking of Alberto Maimonides as I lifted open the shell of my bike and began to inspect the radiation shielding. It was all fine, a thin layer in anticipation of a quiet day without much solar wind. The final Stage was another matter—the forecasts said we would see a lot more radiation; but that was another day, and until we finished today’s effort the final Stage didn’t matter at all.

  The fuel tank came next. The competitors were not allowed to charge the fuel tank themselves, and the officials who did it always put in an exact fifty kilograms, correct to the microgram. But it didn’t stop every competitor worrying over the tank, afraid that he had been short-changed and would run out of fuel in the middle of the Stage. People occasionally used their fuel too fast, and ran out before the end of a Stage. Without ion drive fuel they were helpless. They would drift miserably around near the docking area, until someone went out and fished them in. Then they would be the butt of all the other competitors, subject to the same old jokes: “What’s the matter, Tish, got thirsty and been drinking the heavy water again?”

  “You’re four hours late, Sven, she gave your dance to somebody else.”

  “Jacques, my lad, we all warned you about premature ejaculation.”

  I climbed into the shell, and checked my trajectory. It was too late to change anything now, except how hard I would pedal at each time in the Stage. It would need something exceptional to change even that. I had planned this Stage long ago, how I would pace it, how much effort I would put in at each breakpoint. I slipped my feet into the pedal stirrups, gripped the handlebars hard, looked straight ahead, and waited. I was hyperventilating, drawing in the longest, deepest breaths I could.

  The starting signal came as an electronic beep in my headset. While it was still sounding I was pedaling like mad, using low gears to get initial torques on the Wimshursts. After a few seconds I reached critical voltage, the ion drive triggered on, and I was moving. Agonizingly slowly at first—a couple of thousandths of a gee isn’t much and it takes a while to build up any noticeable speed—but I was off.

  All the way along the starting line, other bikers were doing exactly the same thing. There were various tricks to riding the Tour in the middle part of a Stage, but very little choice at the beginning. You rode as hard as your body would stand, and got the best speed as early as possible. Once you were moving fast you could relax a little bit, and let the bike coast. At the very end of the Stage, you made the same effort in reverse. Now you wanted to hold your speed as long as possible, to minimize your total time for the Stage. But if you had been too energetic at the beginning, or if your strength failed you at the end, you were in real trouble. Then you’d not be able to decelerate your bike enough. Either you’d shoot right through the docking area and whip out again into open space, or you’d demolish the buffers by hitting them at far more than the legal maximum. These both carried disastrous penalties.

  After half an hour of frantic pedaling I was feeling pretty pleased. My leg was giving me no trouble at all—touch wood, though there was none within thirty thousand miles. I could see the main competition, and it was where I wanted it to be. Muldoon was a couple of kilometers behind, Rafael Rodriguez of the NASDA team was almost alongside him, and Tomas Lili was already far in the rear. I looked ahead, and settled down to the long grind.

  This was a Stage with few tricky elements. During the Tour we started from low earth orbit, went all the way to L-4 in a series of thirty variable-length Stages, and then looped back in halfway to the Moon before we began the drive to Earth. Some Stages were geometrically complex, as much in the calculations as the legs. This one was the sort of Stage that I was thoroughly comfortable with. The only real variables today were physical condition and natural stamina. I was in the best shape I had ever been, and I was convinced that if my legs and determination held out I had everyone beat.

  Twenty-six hours later I was even more convinced. We had passed the crossover point long ago, and I had done it without any complication. I could still see Muldoon and Rodriguez in my viewfinder, but they had not closed the gap at all. If anything, I might have gained a few more seconds on them. No one else was even in sight. There was a terrible urge to ease off, but I could not do it. It was cumulative time that decided the Tour winner, and Muldoon and Rodriguez had both started this Stage nearly a minute ahead of me. I wanted to make up for that today, and more. The yellow jersey might be enough for Tomas Lili, but not for me. I wanted the whole pie.

  I had taken my last liquid three hours ago, draining the juice bottle and then jettisoning it to save mass. Now my throat was dry and burning, and I’d have given anything for a quarter liter of water. I put those thoughts out of my head, and pedaled harder.

  It turned out that I left my final sprint deceleration almost too late. Twenty-five kilometers out I realized that I was approaching the final docking area too fast. I would slam into the buffers at a speed over the legal limit. I put my head down, ignored the fact that my legs had been pumping for nearly twenty-seven hours straight, and rode until I thought my heart and lungs would burst. I didn’t even see the docks or the final markers. I guess my eyes were closed. All I heard was the loud ping that told me of an arrival at legal speed. And then I was hanging on the handlebars, wishing some person would shoot me and put me out of my misery.

  My chest was on fire, my throat was too dry to breathe, my heart was racing up close to two hundred beats a minute, and my legs were spasming with cramps. I clung to the handlebars, and waited. Finally, when I heard a second ping through my helmet’s radio, I knew the second man was in. I looked up at the big board readout. It was Muldoon, following me in by one minute and seventeen seconds. He had started the day one minute and fourteen seconds ahead of me on the cumulative total. I had won the Stage—and I was now the overall Tour leader.

  I groaned with pain, released my harness, and cracked open my bike. I forced a big grin onto my face for the media—more like a grimace of agony, but no one would know the difference—and managed to climb out onto the docking facility just as though I was feeling light and limber. Then I sauntered along to where Muldoon was slowly opening his bike. One cheery smile for the benefit of the cameras, and I was reaching in to lift him lightly clear of the bike.

  He glared up at me. “You big ham, Trace. What was your margin?”

  “One minute and seventeen seconds.”

  “Ah.” It was more a groan of physical agony than mental as he tried to stand up on the dock. His thigh muscles, like mine, were still unknotting after over a day of continuous effort. “So you’re ahead then. Three seconds ahead. And with a new Stage record. Damn it.”

  “Thanks. You’re just a terrific loser, Muldoon.”

  “Right. And it takes one to know one, Trace.” He did a couple of deep knee-bends. “What about the others. Where did they finish?”

  “Schindell came in two minutes after you. He’s about four minutes behind us, overall. Something must have happened to Rodriguez, because he’s still not in.”

  “Leg cramps. We were riding side by side for a long time, then he dropped way behind. I’m pretty sure he had to stop pedaling.”

  “So he’s out of the running.”

  We stared at each other. “So it’s me an’ thee,” said Muldoon after a few moments. “Barring a miracle or a disaster, one of us will be it.”

  It. Overall Tour winner. I wanted that so much I could taste it.

  Muldoon saw my face. “You’re getting there, Trace,” he said. “Muscle and heart and brains will only take you so far. You have to want it bad enough.”

  I saw his face, too. His eyes were bloodshot, and sunk so far back that they were little glowing
sparks of blue at the end of dark tunnels. If I had reached a long way into myself to ride this Stage, how far down had Muldoon gone? Only he knew that. He wanted it, as much as I did.

  “You’re getting old, Ernie,” I said. “Alberto Maimonides says that the Tour’s a young man’s game.”

  “And what does he know, that little Greek faggot!” Muldoon respected Maimonides as much as I did, but you’d never know it if you heard them talk about each other. “He’s talking through his skinny brown neck. The Tours a man’s game, not a young man’s game. Go an’ get your yellow jersey, Trace, and show your fine profile to the media.”

  “What about you? They’ll want to see you as well—we’re neck and neck for overall Tour position. How long since nonteam riders have been one and two in Tour status?”

  “Never happened before. But I’ve got work to do. Weather reports to look at, strategy to plan. You can handle the damned media, Trace—time you learned how. And I’ll tell you what.” He had been scowling at me, but now he smiled. “You look at all the pretty young reporters, and you pick out the one who’d be my favorite. An’ you can give her one for me.”

  He stumped off along the dock. I looked after him before I went to collect the yellow jersey that I would wear for the final Stage, and pose with it for the waiting mediamen. Ernie hadn’t given up yet. There was brooding and scheming inside that close-cropped head. He was like a dormant volcano now, and there was one more Stage to go. Maybe he had one more eruption left in him. But what could it possibly be?

  I was still asking that question when we lined up for the beginning of the final Stage. Yellow jersey or no yellow jersey, I hadn’t slept well last night. I dreamed of the swoop towards the finishing line, with its massed cameras and waiting crowds. There would be hordes of space tugs, filled with spectators, and video crews from every station on Earth or Moon. And who would they be homing in on, to carry off and interview until he could be interviewed no more?

  In the middle of the night I had awakened and wandered off to where the rows of bikes were sitting under twenty-four hour guard. The rules here were very simple. I could go to my bike, and do what I liked with it; but I could not touch, or even get too close to, the bike of another competitor. The history of the rule was something I could only guess at. It made psychological sense. No competitor wanted anybody else touching his beloved bike. We suffered the organizers to fill our fuel tanks, because we had no choice; but we hovered over and watched every move they made, to make sure they did not damage so much as a square millimeter of paint.

  The bike shed was quiet when I got there. A couple of competitors were inside their bikes, fiddling with nozzles, or changing the position of juice bottles or viewfinders or computers. It was all just nerves coming to the fore. The changes they were making would not improve their time by a tenth of a second. Ernie Muldoon was inside his bike, too, also fiddling with bits and pieces. He stopped when he saw me, and nodded.

  “Can’t sleep, either?”

  I shrugged. “It’s not easy. Plenty of time for sleep tomorrow night, when the Tours over.”

  “Nobody wants to sleep when it’s over. We’ll all be partying, winners and losers.”

  “Wish it were tomorrow now.”

  He nodded. “I know that feeling. Good luck, Trace.”

  “Same to you Ernie.”

  I meant it. And he meant it. But as I sat at the starting line, my feet already in the pedal stirrups, I knew what that well-wishing meant. Neither of us wanted anything bad to happen to the other; all we wanted was to win. That was the ache inside. I looked around my bike for one last time. The radiation shielding was all in position. As we had surmised the day before yesterday, the weather had changed. There was a big spike of solar activity sluicing through the Inner System, and a slug of radiation was on its way. It would hit us close to the halfway point of the final Stage, then would diminish again when the Tour was over. The maximum radiation level was nowhere near as high as it had been in the Tour two years ago, but it was enough to make us all carry a hefty load of shielding. The prospect of hauling that along for twenty-six thousand kilometers was not one I was looking forward to.

  The electronic beep sounded in my helmet. We were off. A hundred and six riders—we had lost thirty-four along the way to injuries and disqualification—began to pedal madly. After half a minute of frenzied, apparently unproductive activity, the line slowly moved away from the starting port. The airlock had been opened ten minutes before. We were heading out into hard vacuum, and the long solitary ride to the finish. No one was allowed to send us any information during the Stage, or to respond to anything other than an emergency call from a competitor.

  The optimal trajectory for this Stage had been talked about a good deal when the competitors held their evening bull sessions. There were two paths that had similar projected energy budgets. The choice between them depended on the type of race that a competitor wanted to ride. If he were very confident that he would have a strong final sprint deceleration, then trajectory one was optimal. It was slightly better overall. But if a rider were at all suspicious of his staying power at the end, trajectory two was safer.

  The two trajectories diverged early in the Stage, and roughly two-thirds of the riders opted for the second and more conservative path. I and maybe thirty others, praying that our legs and lungs would stand it, went for the tougher and faster route.

  Muldoon did neither of these things. I knew the carapace of his red-and-black bike as well as I knew my own, and I was baffled to see him diverging from everyone else, on another path entirely. I had looked at that trajectory myself—we all had. And we had ruled it out. It wasn’t a disastrous choice, but it offered neither the speed of the one I was on, nor the security of the path most riders had chosen.

  Muldoon must know all that. So where was he going?

  I had plenty of time to puzzle in the next twenty-four hours, and not much else to occupy my attention. Before we reached midpoint where I reversed my drive’s direction, all the other riders in my group had diminished to dots in my viewfinder. They were out of it, far behind. I had decided that after today’s Stage I would take a year to rest and relax, but I wouldn’t relax now. I pushed harder than I had ever pushed. As the hours wore on I became more aware of the radiation shielding, the stone that I was perpetually pushing uphill. A necessary stone. Outside my bike was a sleet of deadly solar particles.

  Even though the group of competitors who had ridden my trajectory were just dots in the distance behind me, I didn’t feel at all relaxed. On the Tour, you never relax until the final Stage is ridden, the medals have been awarded, and the overall winner has performed the first step-out at the Grand Dance.

  At the twenty-third hour I looked off with my little telescope in another direction. If anyone in the slow, conservative group had by some miracle managed to ride that trajectory faster than anyone had ever ridden it, they ought to be visible now in the region that I was scanning. I looked and saw nothing, nothing but vacuum and hard, unwinking stars.

  The final docking area was at last in sight, a hundred kilometers ahead of me. I could begin to pick up little dots of ships, hovering close to the dock. And unless I was very careful, I was going to shoot right through them and past them. I had to shed velocity. That meant I had to pedal harder than ever to slow my bike to the legal docking speed.

  I bent for one last effort. As I did so, I caught sight of something in my rear viewfinder.

  A solitary bike. Red and black—Muldoon. But going far too fast. He was certainly going to overtake me, but he was equally certainly going to be unable to stop by the time he reached the dock. He would smash on through, and either be disqualified or given such a whopping time penalty he would drop to third or fourth place.

  I felt sorry for him. He had done the almost impossible, and ridden that inefficient alternate trajectory to within a few seconds of catching me. But it was all wasted
if he couldn’t dock; and at the speed he was going, that would be just impossible.

  Then I had to stop thinking of him, and start thinking of myself. I put my head down and drove the cranks around, gradually increasing the rate. The change in deceleration was too small for me to feel, but I knew it was there. The ions were pushing me back, easing my speed. I was vaguely aware of Muldoon’s bike moving silently past mine—still going at an impossible pace.

  And so was I. It was the mass of all the shielding, like a millstone around my bike. The inertia of that hundred extra kilos of shielding material wanted to keep going, dragging me and the bike with it. I had to slow down.

  I pedaled harder. Harder. The docking area was ahead. Hander! I was still too fast. I directed the bike to the fine instinctively, all my mind and will focused on my pumping legs.

  Stage line. Docking guide. Docking. Docked!

  I heard the ping! in my helmet that told of a docking within the legal speed limit. I felt a moment of tremendous satisfaction. All over. I’ve won the Tour! Then I rested my head on my handlebars and sat for a minute, waiting for my heart to stop smashing out of my rib cage.

  Finally I lifted my head. I found I was looking at Muldoon’s red and black racing bike, sitting quietly in a docking berth next to mine. He was slumped over the handlebars, not moving. He looked dead. The marker above his bike showed he had made a legal docking.