The Velocity of Revolution

by Marshall Ryan Maresca

  It struck true, and the tire blew.

  Renzi dropped back as the truck skidded to the side, toward the passdown. It had to go all the way down or hit the divider. With a hard jerk, the driver went for the highway exit.

  The back cab of the twelve-wheel tail wagged, clipping the side of Ajiñe’s cycle.

  She went skidding, and before she was able to get back in control of her cycle, she ramped up onto the divider, and she and her cycle went hurtling through the air.

  35

  Time stopped as Ajiñe hurtled through the air. She would crash face-first onto the concrete, her cycle on top of her. If she was lucky, she’d survive it with only most of her bones broken.

  But then Renzi’s hands were there, grabbing hers, pulling her up.

  Grabbing the handlebars, twisting her body around as the cycle and she both flew.

  He wasn’t holding her, though.

  He was driving her.

  Using her hands, her legs, her weight. She suddenly became a passenger in her own body as he took control over it, spinning it and twisting her and the cycle until she was on top and the wheels were down again.

  Then in a breath, the frozen ticks of time slammed back into gear, and Ajiñe landed her cycle with a hard jar on the rail guard; she kept control and dropped down onto the concrete, braking to a stop at the bottom of the passdown.

  “The shit was that!” Fenito shouted as he fired up his truck. He took off in pursuit of the twelve-wheel, skidding and racing on the main road toward the traffic circle, Renzi rocketing along with it.

  “You all right?” Gabrána asked in her ear.

  “Fine,” Ajiñe said, downshifting and getting back up to speed. She had never seen—felt—anything like that before in her life. “Get the job done.”

  “We’re ready,” she said.

  “Renzi?” Ajiñe asked.

  “Got it,” he said.

  Fenito gunned the truck to push parallel with the twelve-wheel, while Renzi zipped and wove around the other traffic to get in front of them both as they hit the circle. Ajiñe lagged behind as she built her momentum back up, catching up with the rest of them.

  “Block and blind,” Nicalla whispered in their heads, and the full plan materialized for all of them, clear as day in all their skulls.

  As one, they acted.

  Renzi curved into the circle against the flow, leaning hard into the turn, until he stopped right before the twelve-wheel, blocking the exit. Then he gunned the throttle, kicking up dust and gravel and smoke that filled the circle.

  Ajiñe came in behind them doing the same. The twelve-wheel screeched to a horrific stop in the middle of the mess of smoke and debris, with Fenito’s truck right next to it.

  Fenito jumped out of the truck as Mensi and Gabrána both moved on the twelve-wheel. Fenito, prybar in hand, cranked open the cab door of the twelve-wheel, and in a dash, the three of them pulled the driver out and threw him in the bed of the truck. Mensi jumped into the cab of the twelve-wheel, Gabrána got behind the steering wheel of the truck, and Fenito wrestled the driver down and bound him up.

  “Go!” Nicalla yelled to them all.

  Renzi took the lead, racing out the circle exit, with Mensi driving the twelve-wheel right behind him, Ajiñe taking up the rear. They flew off down a side road, away from the highway toward the edge of Miahez. Gabrána and Fenito in the truck turned off another fork, heading far away from them.

  “Where now?” Renzi asked as they raced away.

  “Three-quarter the next circle, then turn into a warehouse with a yellow roof,” Nicalla said. “I’m dropping from sync now.”

  Ajiñe tasted the sour blast of the ipecac Nicalla downed, and with the queasy twist of her stomach, Nicalla puked and vanished from her senses.

  “Does she usually do that?” Renzi asked as they approached the circle.

  “Most of the time,” Mensi said.

  Part of why Nicalla did it was because she hated the sync and the intimacy of that contact, but mostly because she was in contact with the other cells. She was aware of information the rest of them—out in the streets for a run, at risk to be nicked by the tories—couldn’t afford to know. Nicalla kept people safe by disconnecting from the rest of them.

  They pulled into the warehouse—the door was open and waiting—and as soon as the cycles and twelve-wheel were inside, the doors slammed down shut.

  A handful of jifoz folks were in position, coming up to the twelve-wheel and breaking the lock on the cargo hold. This must be the cell the goods were being passed to.

  Renzi parked his cycle and came over to Ajiñe. “You all right? That crash was pretty close.”

  “It wasn’t just close,” she said. “What . . . what did you do?”

  “I’m not entirely sure,” he said. He looked spooked. “It was like . . . you were going to die and in an instant, just for a moment that stretched out forever, I could feel every aspect of you, your body, and . . . I just knew how to move your body to land safely.”

  “And you did it,” she said. “You rode my body like a cycle.” She wanted to be mad about it—it felt like a violation—but at the same time, she didn’t want to think about what would have happened if he hadn’t. She might be a mangled mess of blood and bone at the bottom of the passdown.

  “I didn’t mean to,” he said. “I didn’t know that was . . . possible. That I could do that to you.”

  “You’ve never done anything like that before?” she asked.

  He chuckled. “I’ve never done anything like this before. And that was just . . . I don’t know, instinct.”

  “Yet you managed pretty well,” Mensi said as he came over. “So, Renzi Llionorco. Nice riding.”

  “More than nice,” Ajiñe said. “Miraculous.”

  The members of the other cell cracked open the cargo door. “Perfect!” one of them said.

  “What was this about?” Renzi asked.

  “See for yourself,” the woman from the other cell said. They were unloading boxes as icy mist wafted out of the back of the rig, each of them labeled “LLIPE QUALITY BEEF” or “RHIQUE QUALITY PORK.”

  “A meat truck?” Renzi asked.

  “I told you,” Ajiñe said. “This run meant people won’t go hungry.”

  “I expected, I don’t know, something more monumental.”

  “Full bellies are pretty monumental,” Mensi said, clapping Renzi on the shoulder.

  The other cell crew were unloading the rig, putting the cases of meat onto the back beds of their various trucks. One of them came over with a case.

  “Thought you all deserved some of this,” she said. “At least one case of the stuff they keep for the overcastes.”

  “And the rest of it?” Renzi asked.

  “We’ll get it out there,” the woman said. “Take that and roll your cycles out the door over there. Odds are tories didn’t track you here.”

  “No chance of that at all,” Mensi said.

  “Best take no chances,” Ajiñe said. She offered her hand to the woman as Renzi took the case of meat. “Break the cages.”

  “Open the roads,” the woman said back as she took Ajiñe’s hand and pulled her in for an embrace. “And ride with faith.”

  “Every day. Your spirits watch over you.”

  “And you.”

  They put the cycles into free gear and wheeled out the back. A quint of a kilo away, they came up on Fenito and Gabrána waiting in the truck.

  “The driver?” Renzi asked with concern.

  “We dropped them in a ditch a couple kilos away in the other direction. They’ll be all right.”

  “Good,” Renzi said. “I mean, they’re not the enemy here. Just someone working a job.”

  “Plenty of people working a job who are the enemy,” Gabrána said. She came over to Renzi. “We’ve not
been properly introduced, have we?”

  “Are we supposed to be?” Renzi asked. “I got the impression you were all hiding who you really are from me now.”

  “We’ve been swimming into each other’s heads enough not to pretend not to know each other,” Fenito said.

  “Plus you all stripped me naked and tied me up,” Renzi said.

  “How can we make that up?” Gabrána asked.

  “Will kisses work?” Fenito offered. “Or are you edoromé like Nicalla and you hate that?”

  “No, I’m a fan,” Renzi said, taking a long kiss from Fenito followed by Gabrána. Ajiñe was happy they were getting along, but she wasn’t in the mood.

  “We should move along here,” she said. She opened up the case of meat—frozen beef, vacuum-sealed in individual packets. She took out a few and put them in her coat pockets, and then handed a couple to Renzi. “He and I should get back home, and the lot of you should get back to your people. Have a nice meal with them all.”

  “Indeed,” Mensi said. “Though someone should bring a couple to Nicalla. This is something she would actually miss out on.”

  “I’ll get on that,” Gabrána said. She touched Renzi’s chin. “Another time, Llionorco.”

  “Look forward to it,” he said.

  The three of them piled into the truck and drove off.

  “So did I pass the test?” he asked.

  “You did all right,” Ajiñe said. Though she still hadn’t sorted her feelings about what he had done, even though it had saved her. She had known that speed brought the mushroom connection to another level. Had Renzi somehow unlocked a level beyond that?

  “I really didn’t mean to . . . take you over like that,” he said. “I’ve honestly never done anything remotely like that before.”

  “Try not to do it again,” she said. “Well, if you’re saving my life, I suppose. But not otherwise.”

  He nodded with a shy smile that was far too endearing. “Should we get these cuts of beef back to your place?” he asked. “I’m guessing your papa would appreciate them.”

  36

  Ajiñe was woken by the radio.

  “Time to live on, no regrets. Ride that streak of lightning.”

  There were times that, regardless of how much she believed in the cause, she wished Varazina would just keep shit in her mouth. No one—as far as Ajiñe knew—had any idea how Varazina cut into any radio, anywhere in the city, or why she only sent cryptic messages to the faithful. Ajiñe often wondered if Varazina saw everything, or at least could see the faithful, and knew where they were and what needed to be done.

  And if she did, why the shit she didn’t just let Ajiñe sleep.

  Ziva, sleeping next to her on the bed, must have felt the same way. Her hand flopped onto Ajiñe’s face. “Why does that happen?” she mumbled in her sleep.

  “Sorry,” Ajiñe said, pulling herself off the bed and stepping over Papa. He had slept through Varazina’s radio message. He had lived through the bombings of the Second Trans and the Tyrant’s War. He had spent more than a year in a purge camp, gunfire at any hour.

  Papa could sleep through anything.

  She didn’t know what time it was, but it was too dark out to even be zero on the naught.

  She stumbled to the water closet, got herself together, and pulled on her denim and boots. Eyes still filled with sleep, she went down the road to the phonebox and called the hardline to Nicalla.

  “Why?” was all she asked.

  “Big party coming,” Nicalla said. “Thundering down the rail right now, and we need every hand.”

  “How big?”

  “Every hand,” Nicalla said. “Top of the track.”

  That woke her up.

  “I’ll be on it,” she said.

  She ran back up the hill, over to the crystal shop and climbed up the wall to Renzi’s fasai. She didn’t bother to knock—hard enough while holding on to the side of the wall—and threw open the door to hop in.

  “Renzi, we—oh!”

  Renzi was already awake, and he wasn’t alone. Fenito and Gabrána were both curled up with him on his mattress.

  “Hoped you’d show up,” Gab said, giving a devastatingly wicked grin.

  For a moment she was a little hurt that they hadn’t called her over for this party, but she put that down. “Sorry to ruin things, but we just got a calling. Big score, gotta ride now.”

  “How big?” Fenito asked as he got off of Renzi’s cot.

  “Nicalla said all hands.”

  “Why didn’t we get the call?” Gabrána asked. She, like Fenito, was already getting dressed again. Renzi was being a bit slower to get his gears shifted to the new situation.

  “We’ve got another run?” he asked. “At this hour?”

  “The hour doesn’t matter,” Ajiñe said. “Do you even have a radio in here?”

  “Should I?”

  “That’s why there was no call for us,” Fenito said. He was fully dressed now and came over to Ajiñe. “We’re, um, already in sync.”

  “Hit me,” she said. He put a dose on his tongue and came in to kiss her. She welcomed it—she always did from him—and let the magic fill her body and connect it with theirs. “We need to get moving.”

  “What about Mensi?” Renzi asked as he got his boots on.

  “Have to assume he’ll get word and meet us,” she said. “How’d you two get out here? You have the truck?”

  Gabrána shook her head. “Cable cars and walked the hill,” she said.

  “You ride with me,” Ajiñe said, kicking the rope down. “Renzi, take Fenito.”

  “As you wish,” he said.

  Ajiñe scurried down the rope, followed by Gabrána.

  “I’m a little hurt,” Ajiñe said as they went down the alley to the shop door. “You never took a cable car out here to see me.”

  “First off, you share a bed with your little sister in the same room where your father is on the floor.”

  “Fair,” Ajiñe said. “Not that your—”

  “Not that my situation is any better,” Gabrána acknowledged. “We take our moments where we get them. And that boy has a room to himself. Fenito and I agreed there was no need to deprive ourselves another night, and we didn’t. I’m shocked you have.”

  “Gab, I’m just tired,” Ajiñe said as they reached the cycle. “We’re working the shop, Papa’s rations got cut. We’d be really drawn thin without the meat from the truck.”

  “I hear you,” Gabrána said. “We’ve got nine in my fasai, with ration cards for only six.”

  “Sorry.” She wheeled the cycle out of the shop to the alley.

  “We’re all in this for a little more, hmm?” She smiled brightly, but her weariness shone through. Through the sync, Ajiñe could feel it, deep in Gab’s bones. “All the more reason to spend my night with some joy.”

  “I’m all for that,” Ajiñe said as she mounted the cycle. Gabrána kissed her—warmly and deeply, reminding her of the memory and promise of something more when the moment was right—and got on with her. They rode down the hill, and as they got to speed, the sync with one other grew stronger. They were fully connected with the boys, cruising down on the ’goiz.

  This was peak time to get nipped by patrol, making checkpoints not only between each senja, but at key traffic circles throughout Outtown. They dropped off the road into an empty aqueduct, through the tunnels, to avoid getting spotted, but surely there were a few folks on patrol who would hear the roar of the cycles and come investigating.

  There was no way a call of all hands would go unnoticed.

  Even still, they were able to cross into Ako Favel without getting nipped, and from there to the racetrack.

  “Back here?” Renzi asked as they stopped, noting the large cadre of riders in the aqueduct. “Are we doing another race?”<
br />
  “I doubt it,” Ajiñe said. “If I understood Varazina correct, it’s going to be a train run.”

  “What do you mean? What did she say?”

  Ajiñe wasn’t sure how to explain it, but Gabrána stepped up. “The orders, the leadership, that comes from Varazina. She sends us messages over the radio. We didn’t get one—”

  “Because I don’t have one in my place.”

  “She can do it to any radio, any station, they say,” Gabrána said. “So that’s partly how we find the people to join us.”

  “That and the questioning,” Renzi said. “Shackled and naked.”

  “You quite liked that, I think,” Gab said. “You keep bringing it up.”

  “The point is, while Varazina is often cryptic in what she tells us—she knows the tories and the Alliance shitmouths are listening . . .”

  “Sure,” Renzi said.

  “You get to learn what she usually means. So if this is a train—”

  “It is.” Two people Ajiñe didn’t know came up: a smooth drink of a man and a smoky-eyed woman, but they gave off an air of authority, both of them about her father’s age, but both looking fit and vigorous. The man continued, introducing the two of them. “Casintel and Bindeniz. We’re in charge of this run.”

  “This is very against protocol,” Ajiñe said. Names were not to be shared between cells, and each was supposed to be led independently. Another group in charge put everyone in danger. “We’re not supposed to all meet openly like this.”

  “This mission is going to change several things,” Bindeniz said. She gave an appreciative glance to Renzi as she went on. “The next petrol tankers are coming racing in, and we’re going to get them. This the new fellow?”

  “Yeah,” Renzi said.

  “Word is you’re very good,” Casintel said.

  “We want to see it,” Bindeniz added.

  “We’ll need fill bladders,” Ajiñe said. “So we can siphon—”