Anti-Grav Unlimited

by Duncan Long

  No sooner had the Happy Dogs finished than the bikers came around the corner of the building to snarl at me since I was between them and their order of synthjuana. They quit griping when I stood up to face them for a moment and pulled back my jacket to reveal the Beretta I’d stuffed into my waistband. I put the worst look I could on my face—which wasn’t hard since I was down-wind of the bikers (most bikers must develop body odor to attract attention).

  The sight of the firearm brought a quick mood change; one of the greasers even flashed a reasonable imitation of the Happy Dog smile at me. Bikers can be friendly given the proper motivation. The old saw that an armed society is a polite one quickly was proven.

  I didn’t hang around to see how long the transformation would last. Life in the Twenty-first Century isn’t all it’s cracked out to be, I decided as I kicked a Happy Dog bot which had apparently broken down out of the back of the van. I slammed the cargo door shut and got into the van, speeding off before the bikers could retrieve their stash.

  * * *

  I spent the next two hours hitting every store that had any type of supplies I might be needing.

  Soon my shopping spree had the van pretty well stuffed with loot. My final stop was at a hardware store where I picked up some carbonylon rope, managing to get out just before the place was held up. No sooner had I eased through the door than the store sealed itself up with the criminals, customers, and owner inside its structure to wait until the police finally got around to checking things out. Knowing it could be days before the law arrived, I left the van parked and carefully tied everything down inside the van so that things wouldn’t fly about if I should have to do a little impromptu flying. While I wasn’t anxious to do any flying (not after seeing the world government’s fighters in the air the last time I played birdie), I figured it might allow me to shake a hi-pee if I ran into any trouble on the road.

  With the gear stored as securely as I could get it (Boy Scout knots never being one of my fortes since I was always interested in the Girl Scouts), I left the Kansas City Dome and the drizzle which was starting to fall as the moisture from the hot air collected on the dome’s cool metallic under surface to drip back down onto the city. The dirty drops of rain splattering against the windshield abruptly stopped as I left the protection of the dome and was again under the open sky.

  As I ventured from the area guarded by the KC police, again heading for the route that would take me to New Denver, things became wilder and slummier. Finally I was in “Troll Country,” in the no-man’s land of the old interstate 70. The four-lane wasn’t much worse than when it had been put down in the middle of the last century, but traveling the open road is always a scary proposition. And at night, it’s downright treacherous because the Night Creeps were just as bad as I’d heard.

  One plus was the speed I could get out of the van with the new power system I had created.

  Since there weren’t any police eyes—in working condition—on the interstate and the hi-pees didn’t patrol at night because of the danger, I didn’t have to worry about attracting undue attention. So I kept the van at an even 100 kilometers per hour with occasional peaks of 150 when it looked like it would be good not to stay in an area too long. That was my top speed since I figured any faster and I would probably plow into one of the wrecked vehicles that littered the road; any slower, I chanced getting stopped by the Night Creeps. (And even with my speed, I was forced to clip a couple of them just after I got up on the highway; that’s hard on the body of a van and leaves a nasty dent.)

  The Night Creeps were out in full force. The few new vehicles that I saw on the road had been stopped by the Night Creeps; stretches of darkness were broken by the red glow of fires along the way as the vehicles were slowly dismantled and bits of their plastic bodies burned. I didn’t see any victims and didn’t slow to look. I figured it was everyone for himself for those of us who were crazy enough to be out on the interstate at night. Each of us knew we risked being eaten.

  After several hours of dodging and weaving and holding my gun in sweaty fingers from time to time, I was pretty well worn out. And that meant I was starting to be careless.

  I just missed hitting a black truck that was all but invisible to my headlights. It was turned on its side and blocked all of the lane I was in and extended into the shadows of the ditch. I wove around it with a screech of rubber.

  As I got up my nerve and speed again and had just started to relaxed, I discovered that a group of crazies had apparently removed the bridge ahead of me. Or maybe there had been some road work the day before… If so, the Night Creeps had removed the warning signs if there had ever been any.

  All of a sudden, the road ahead of me was gone and my lights showed only an empty expanse between me and the roadway across a large, shadowed chasm.

  I didn’t feel at all sleepy any more. Nothing like an unexpected plunge into empty space to wake a guy up. And at 100 clicks per hour, things happen quickly.

  As my van hurtled toward the edge of the abyss, I slammed on the breaks. In a long skid, I could see that there was no way I could stop in time. A group of Night Creeps was standing at the side of the road croaking and cheering as I whizzed by.

  Words of wisdom formed in my mouth. Repeat your favorite four-letter word five or six times and you’ll have the general idea of what I shouted in a very heroic manner as the space between me and the end of the road quickly vanished.

  Then I realized that I did have one chance: Fly! Like a bat out of Hell. At this point, I would have flapped my arms but, fortunately, had a better idea: “Computer on,” I sputtered above the squeal of the rubber.

  “Yes.”

  “Anti-grav mode,” I said, wishing that I hadn’t made a code to keep other people out. The road sounds quit and we were suddenly falling, weightlessly.

  “Code, 3… Uh… 4… 6,” I gasped with a dry mouth. I pushed the turn signal up—the direction I wanted to go. It started blinking crazily since the anti-grav units weren’t engaged yet.

  The front of the van was now pointing down as I arched through the darkness. The headlights revealed the ground that raced up to smash me. All I could hear was the purring of the engine and the sound of the wind whistling outside the van as it plunged downward.

  Suddenly, the turn signal stopped blinking; the anti-grav units were in operation. I was thrown against the seat harness and felt my eyes trying to bug out of their sockets as the earth continued to rush toward the front of the van. This ignoble situation resulted because I’d programmed the computer to avoid a crash at all costs—my greatest worry in flying—and it was now busy doing its job. At the moment I had to reflect as to whether crashing might have been a better option. As I pondered this weighty situation, the seat harness cut into my skin and my eyes continued to head for the ground in the rapid deceleration. Along with this active demonstration of inertia, a rain of small candies sprinkled onto the inside of the windshield, followed by a hail of small freeze-dried food containers as a plastic grocery sack behind me gave way. I steeled myself, preparing for some of the larger gear stored in the van to come loose and come smashing into me from the rear. A vision of my skull with a large screwdriver poking out of the back of it formed in my brain.

  Fortunately, that didn’t happen.

  Instead the van righted itself and hurtled upward; my eyes blacked out as the blood left my brain and headed for all points south. I struggled to lift my hand, placing the turn signal into its middle, hover position and the van slowed, my vision coming back as we decelerated.

  I was in one piece! I sat there a moment, remembered to breathe, and listened to my hair turn gray.

  As my anger replaced my fear, I was tempted to try out my rifle marksmanship on the Night Creeps I could hear hooting behind me.

  It would just be a wasted effort, I decided. There were plenty more to take their places and I had neither the time nor ammunition to spare in venting my anger. Stones were starting to ding off the van, too. I pushed the accelerato
r down and flew to the other side of the overpass, hovered over the road a moment, and did a 360-degree turn to be sure the area was clear of Night Creeps on the side of the Great Divide I was on; then I set the vehicle down.

  The howls of rage on the other side of the chasm continued. I wiped off my shaking, sweaty palms, and spoke with a quavery voice, “Anti-grav off.”

  “What?” the computer replied.

  I cleared my throat, “Anti-grav off.”

  The signal started flashing a left turn (rather than its downward travel sign) and the van settled down with its full weight on the road. I floored the accelerator to put as much distance as I could between me and the monsters on the other side of the divide behind me, wondering how many people they’d catch before sunrise.

  Fear is a great stimulant; it took several hours before I became sleepy again. At dawn, I turned off the roadway, floated the van over a stretch of burnt grass, and headed down a small gully toward a grove of Cottonwoods that glistened in the morning light. There I put the van into a hover at the top of one of the giant trees where I could be hidden and out of reach to anyone on foot. As the van was gently rocked by a low-moaning breeze, I reclined the driver’s chair and almost instantly fell asleep.

  * * *

  Several hours later, I awoke to the noise of traffic on the interstate. The sun shone through the cottonwood leaves, creating patterns of gold and green; the heavy leaves sounding as if drops of rain rattled through them as the wind clapped them against one another.

  After opening the door and relieving myself, I brought the van back down and tried to decide-

  -as I ate some Munchies—how to get back to the road without being seen. There was no easy way to do that. I carefully drove over the rough terrain and waited at the gully edge until no traffic was within sight, then flew across the chasm and nearly scraped the far rim in my haste to get across. Settling the van down, I drove on over the sand, up the grade, and pulled onto the interstate as a road train went thundering by. I followed it into New Denver to meet Nikki.

  Chapter 7

  When I’d finished my story, Nikki just said, “Anti-grav rods? Phil, are you feeling all right?”

  “Yes… No!”

  We both laughed.

  “Well,” Nikki said, “crazy or not, it looks like you’re my best bet, even though you seem to be a real lightning rod for trouble.”

  “What? No. You need to get as far away from me as you can. I’m trouble and—”

  “I was already leaving. I’m packed. No doubt whoever’s after you will figure you’ve told me your story—which you have, you dummy.”

  “Sorry.”

  “So, now I’m a marked woman. And you’re my fastest ticket out of here. I’ve nothing to lose at this point by going with you.”

  “But—” I argued with all the intellect I could muster.

  “Let me get dressed.” She got up.

  “But—” I expounded.

  “No ‘buts.’ You’re the only chance I’ve got. And quit looking at me like that. This towel is anchored on very securely.”

  I blushed. It was hard not to stare at a body like Nikki’s. I knew better than to try to talk her out of coming with me. She had a mind of her own. And, quite frankly, I was glad to have a partner in my lunacy. I just regretted the danger that I’d managed to get Nikki sucked into.

  In a few moments, Nikki returned fully dressed in a tight in all the right places, green jump suit, “Come here.”

  She handed me a men’s shirt and unlatched the shirt I had on, “Take off your shirt and see if this fits. It’s one of Craig’s. He has dozens squirreled away here.”

  It fit.

  “OK,” Nikki said, “We’ll pack up a bag for you. Bet you haven’t any other clothes judging from your outfit.”

  “That bad?”

  She nodded. “One more thing. Come in here.” She led me into the dressing room. “Since your van’s been changed and you were careful coming here, I have a feeling you got spotted by your sorry face. Maybe they’ve stationed an agent at each area where they thought you might show up.

  Whatever happened, you need a change of face.”

  “What?” Then I saw what she had in mind. “Oh, come on, Nikki—”

  Before I could do anything she had the instaface kit slapped on me. “Any preference?” she asked.

  “Just make me look handsome,” I muttered through the machine.

  She snickered. “Don’t ask the impossible.” I felt the synthaskin growing into my face. It felt foreign for a moment then became a part of me. “Now open your eyes,” she said.

  “Nikki—”

  Too late, I didn’t blink in time and felt the lens pop onto the surface of my eyes.

  “What color of hair?”

  “Green.”

  “OK—”

  “No, wait—”

  She just laughed. Fortunately it only became blond. She removed the machine from my face.

  “Now not even your own mother would recognize you.”

  I studied my face in the mirrored wall, “My own mother wouldn’t want to recognize me.”

  Nikki changed her own face as well. In reality neither of us looked a lot different. Just different. And plain. Both of us were blond which caused—I hoped—a person’s eye to notice our hair rather than our plain faces. Nikki had done a good job. And it would stay that way for at least a couple of weeks until our bodies rejected the synthaskin and it sloughed off our faces.

  Fifteen minutes later we sneaked out the rear service door of the building with three bags—

  one filled with Craig’s clothes that had been appropriated for my use—and two of clothing and odds and ends for Nikki. We also had two bundles: one a slightly used needle rifle and the other an industrial laser. Each “tool” was wrapped in a pillow case. If nothing else, I was picking up quite an arsenal.

  No one was on the street. That looked good but I figured someone might be hiding, waiting to nab us when we got into the open. We waited a moment. “Stay here,” I finally ordered Nikki. ”

  I’ll pick you up in a minute.”

  “No way,” she said and stepped out onto the street with me. I stood there a moment with two bags and the needle gun and decided it was useless to argue. A bag lady came around the corner a block away and looked at us.

  “Come on,” I whispered and tugged Nikki in a brisk walk toward the van, somehow managing to resist the urge to run like a scared rabbit.

  After enough lifetimes to make a cat feel lucky, we reached the van. We looked back. Now one was on the street. We eased away from the curb and drove down the street.

  We hadn’t gone many blocks when the next problem appeared.

  “I want to see you fly this thing,” Nikki announced.

  I had seen it in Nikki’s face the first time I’d mentioned flying the van. It was that we’re-going-to-do-that-first-thing look. I new I might just as well have been trying to talk a Seeker out of using his joy circuit. Nikki wanted to fly. So Nikki was going to fly.

  I tried to explain to her again about my experience with the two fighters that had tried to down my flying turkey.

  But she refused to take “no” for an answer.

  She had even figured out a safe way to fly without being detected by radar.

  And what red-blooded man is going to not give in to anyone as beautiful as Nikki?

  “Look, Phil,” she said. “This would be safe to do. The new rockets—which I was flying on as navigator before I got sacked—use powdered aluminum in their fuel to pep up their lift-off. The metal in the rocket’s exhaust messes up the radar.”

  “Say no more,” I said. It didn’t take an Einstein to figure out the possibilities there. “Just because it is possible doesn’t mean we’ll do it. That’s final,” I added, as forcefully as I could.

  After stopping near the ruins of what must have once been a large home, we repainted the van (a nice pink—yes, Nikki picked it), changed the van’s license imprint, had a
picnic, and tried to stay cool during the hot afternoon that’s so common in the thin air of the Denver area.

  By the time night fell, Nikki knew the vehicle inside and out and had even done some reprogramming of the computers to make the van fly a bit more faster. And a bit more safely.

  I hoped.

  She was a navigator and knew what she was doing with the computers; but flying in a vehicle designed to hug the ground is not without its more terrifying—if challenging—aspects. My limited experience had suggested that white-knuckle flights are the norm in a flying van.

  As the sun set behind the distant, snow-topped mountains, we drove over a worn, plastic road to get as close as we could to the rocket port. We parked the van next to the barbed ribbon-wire fence surrounding the field. I used the needle rifle to put out the few flood lights in the area so that no one could see us.

  We waited.

  Nikki tried out the controls and took the van up ten feet—still below the ground clutter which would keep us hidden from the radar—then went through a few maneuvers to get the hang of things. My stomach stayed on the ground somewhere below us then jumped into my throat as I heard, in the distance, the crackling thunder of rocket engines becoming super-hot. The boom carried through the night as the sky in the direction of the rocket port glowed red. I sat back in my seat and tried to relax, muttering, “She knows what she’s doing. She knows what she’s doing. She knows what she’s doing.”

  “Do you know what you’re doing,” I asked.

  “Relax. Here we go.”

  We took off at a speed that I hadn’t imagined possible. Not black-out acceleration, perhaps, but certainly fast enough to put permanent wrinkles into the side of my skin facing the seat. Nikki had certainly changed the computers’ programs, I reflected in what I was sure would prove to be the last moments of my life.