The Longthorn is a thing of beauty. A wonder-machine.
She elongates on the flat, reducing air resistance for speed. On the dirt jumps, with a slick gear shift, she cinches up, providing maximum control. The byke borrows her power from the elements—the wind and the sun—trapping and storing energy through air ducts and solar panels, concentrators and photosensors. A control panel, set between the handlebars, has a gauge showing cumulative charge capacity and another indicating bursts of charge, delivered by a flash of sunlight, a strong wind or even movement.
The byke works in sync with him. Feels him, feeds off his movements.
If he takes evasive action and swerves, the byke remembers, she learns. And the next time he leans for a sharp turn the byke is one step ahead, keeping him safe, keeping him alive. From the byke he draws what he always does. Resilience. A cold resolve. Frank told him never to ride for too long. It will take over, this hardness. It will engulf and it will corrode.
He glances at the Longthorn’s dashboard.
His digital timer is set to countdown mode. Just forty-one hours.
His capacity gauge blinks seven bars. Maximum charge. This gives him another seven or eight hours of riding, depending on how he rides and where he goes. The byke will carry her charge into the dark, losing power after the sun dies when the wind is still.
But night is a far-off thing. Now there is only blazing heat.
He rides with a keen sense of instinct. A sixth sense. He could ride blind he knows the byke so well.
The gears click and take and Adam feels resistance in her shocks as they careen down a hill. The byke wallows and floats. She needs a tune-up.
The Longthorn isn’t new. She isn’t anywhere close. Father to son, brother to brother, mother to daughter—bykes are passed through the family line. He knows they were gifted to the planet by Sky-Base back when the Races were first conceived and that each byke carries an echo of her previous Riders—all of them through the bloodline—fading as time passes.
He can sense his brother’s echo now, running through the machine. He can feel him. And, further back, a residue of someone else. Pa.
Adam powers forward, eyes on the road. Bony tree limbs point the way and he follows, as if in a trance. This is how riding makes him feel. In the zone. A different dimension. That place he goes when he rides. The road is a tunnel and he floats along it, without consciousness.
He’s free. Free of this dead place.
The cracked white cement comes at him and his tires grip. He plunges onto a gravel path. He carves through a rutted track. He knows it by heart. Every stone. Every turn. He comes sweeping full tilt up the trail, pulling wheelies and charging tree stumps. He swerves at the last second. Rubber burns as he brakes. Then he belts it round a bend, exploding out of the turn, towards the jetty. One false move and he’s in the scrub.
He smells the silt now and feels the air cool. Blackwater Lake.
He thinks of the money in the sole of his boot and he feels a wild excitement build. But then his thoughts turn to Frank. And Sadie. Beautiful, determined and dangerous Sadie. Adam feels something altogether different. A dull ache in his stomach.
Guilt.
He’s free. But he’s not free at all.
—
He strips to his underwear, folds his clothes into the dry grass. Now he stands at the end of the jetty and watches the dark water. He knows what lies beneath the surface. But he runs to it anyway. He gulps a breath, and leaps feetfirst.
Cold grips him. He pinches his nose to equalize the pressure, then he jackknifes and down he goes. Down deep where it’s quiet and dark and green weeds drift.
Frank taught him how to swim. Taught him the mean way. Swung him round by an arm and a leg…and let go. Adam remembers the feeling. The frantic panic in his chest. The water in his mouth, in his nose. Thrashing his arms and his legs. He kicked and he pulled and he screamed. Somehow, he made it back to the bank and his brother stood over him, watching him suck air. Adam didn’t speak to him for weeks after that.
He floats now, hanging limp, arms outflung, head spinning. He’d sink to the bottom if he could. Down to the lake bed. He can see it beneath his pale feet, out of reach, shimmering like a face in the darkness. A ghost face. A cold feeling stirs in him. Colder than the water.
Frank warned him. Told him never to come back. But if he didn’t want him coming to the lake then he shouldn’t have taught him to swim.
Bubbles rise from his nose. He feels a movement in the water and turns. Fast. His heart hammers. He pushes himself through a one-eighty arc.
He’s alone.
The burning in his lungs is fierce.
He can feel the Blackness rising.
Up through his legs. Deadness in his calves. Spots of light in his vision. A tiny dart of pain in the back of his head. He feels tired. Bone-tired. His eyelids droop.
No! Pass out now and I’m dead. Just like Pa.
He stares at the warping surface. Cranks himself out of the stupor. Rises with slow and steady kicks. He bursts out of the water with a showering spray and a gasp. He throws up his arms, shouts at the hazy sky, at the white sun with its rainbow halo in the blurry light.
That’s when he sees him.
At first, just a vague outline. A shadow.
Then a kid. Sitting on his haunches. Looking at his byke.
“This your byke?” the kid says in a flat tone. Head down, eyes in shadow.
Adam blinks and wipes the water from his eyes. He looks up the trail, through the skeleton trees. Then glances at his boot, where he hid the money. “Who’s askin?”
The kid shifts on the balls of his feet and looks down at him. “Nobody else here.”
Adam makes him out to be near the same age as him. Maybe a summer or two older. Seventeen most likely. Darkly tanned skin. Crazy wolf-yellow eyes, quick and calculating. And low on his skull, behind his left ear, a jutting metal tube.
Adam feels his jaw tighten. A twinge of panic in his gut.
A Circuit Rider.
“She’s a nice byke,” the kid says.
“I know. She’s mine.”
Stupid. I should’ve been watching.
Adam treads water, playing it cool. “Who are you?”
“They call me Kane,” he says, rising off his haunches.
He wears a black riding suit, frayed at the seams. He’s tall. Maybe five eleven. And well-built with broad shoulders. His face is handsome, regular…if not for the ugly scar running up his cheek, from his lip to his eye. Adam wonders what left him this terrible memento and what he might have looked like before.
Kane’s eyes are impossible to read. These are eyes that miss nothing and hide everything.
“Just Kane?” Adam asks. “Nothin else?”
“Nothin else.”
“You from Monument?”
“Nope.”
“Providence?”
“Hell, no.”
Adam hesitates. He’s running out of towns. “What are you doin here?”
Kane undoes the zip on his suit and peels it from his shoulders. “Come to swim.”
Adam watches him pull off his boots, one by one. “This is where I swim.”
Kane dumps his riding suit in a heap, flings down his underwear. “It’s a free world, right?”
He stands buck naked on the jetty edge.
His body is lean and toned and his skin is tanned. His dark hair—like every other Rider Adam has ever known—is shorn close to the bone. But this is normal. What sets him apart are his amber-colored eyes…and the scars. He’s covered in wounds and welts. A mean-looking suture, long healed, runs under his shoulder. Another traverses the left side of his abdomen, under the ribs. But he’s clean of ink. No crude tattoos.
He’s a loner. Just like Adam.
Kane glares down at the glittering water and there’s something in his look that makes Adam feel a spurt of fear. The way he scowls at the placid lake as though its dark water has done him some injustice and he’s come to e
xact revenge.
“How far down does it go?” he says.
Adam looks at him. “To the bottom, I guess.”
Kane smiles. “How deep?”
“Deep enough.”
Kane stares at the water. His face—with his yellow-colored eyes, his high cheekbones and his straight jaw—has an alarming, fearsome beauty. Despite the scar. Maybe because of it.
“Dive down and see,” Adam says. “I dare you.”
Kane turns and walks back down the jetty. His back is crisscrossed with scars.
Adam spits water and laughs. “Whatsamatter? Chicken?”
But it’s a forced laugh. He paddles at the surface, feeling the panic rise. He’s taking risks, but he has to. He has to show he isn’t scared.
Keep it steady. Don’t lose it.
The jetty rumbles and the planks rattle. Kane comes slamming down at a hard run. He leaps off the edge. Dives right over Adam—a flash of bronze flesh—then a sucking sound, not even a splash, and the black water swamps him.
Adam spins round. He’s gone.
He gulps a breath and ducks underwater. He searches through the roiled sediment, but he can’t see a thing. He surfaces, climbs the jetty stairs, streaming water. Stands on the edge, hands at his crotch, shivering. The water churns and ripples, then slowly turns flat calm.
Nothing moves.
How long can someone hold their breath? One minute?
Adam checks the money in the sole of his boot. All there. He shucks on his jeans and sits on the jetty edge, dangling his bare feet. Nothing disturbs the surface of the lake. Not even bubbles. Whenever he times himself, all he can manage is forty-five seconds.
He checks his watch. It’s a solar-powered antique—but it works. He shakes his wrist. Two minutes.
Two minutes without breathing. Adam stands up. A sick feeling churns in his stomach. He can’t see a thing beneath the black surface. Not a thing.
He paces, wondering what the hell to do. But he does nothing. He waits. You don’t survive long in Blackwater by sticking your neck out. Not for Outsiders. Not for anyone.
The sky has turned overcast and the water is darker. Like oil.
Maybe he’s stuck in the weeds. Tangled up. Maybe he’s down there, kicking and fighting.
Then the water explodes, and a figure bursts out.
Kane gasps and waves his fist in the air. His yellow eyes are wild and defiant. Pale sand spills through his fingers, runs down the side of his forearm.
Adam comes to the edge and looks down. “No way you reached the bottom.”
Kane throws the clump of sand from his fist. It hits the jetty stairs, slides and drops into the lake. “How you figure on that sand, then?”
“Took it with you.”
“Saying I’m a cheat?”
“Nobody swims that deep.”
Kane shrugs. “Just did. Sand’s the proof.”
He’s calm. Composed. Breathing easy. Not at all bothered by his descent into the black lake.
Adam leans forward and offers his hand, despite himself. “Name’s Adam.”
It’s a stupid gesture, and he knows it, but it’s too late to pull his hand back. And when Kane ignores him and hauls himself up the stairs and out of the water, Adam feels like an idiot. His cheeks burn as Kane brushes past him, utterly naked.
He watches him stamp down the jetty, leaving wet footprints that fade quickly. Kane pulls on his black riding suit and stretches. There’s danger in him. Maybe it’s the way he moves—light on his feet, lithe and strong. Or the weals and scars on his body.
Hoping Kane won’t see his scrutinizing, he approaches their bykes. “You ride a Drifter.”
Kane nods, without turning, pulling on his boots.
Kane’s byke is lightweight and powerful. Streamlined. Built for speed. A Drifter is one of a kind. No byke can touch her on the flats and she can generate massive acceleration, like a rocket. Adam notices evidence of soldering work. The byke is scarred and dented. This is a byke grown accustomed to long, hard roads. But nobody owns a new byke.
Adam admires the lines. “Sky-Base don’t make ’em like this anymore.”
“That’s a fact.”
“Your pa’s?”
“Nope.”
“Brother? Sister?”
“Them either.”
“Where’d you get her, then?”
Kane takes a step towards him. “From someone who won’t be needing her anymore.”
Adam feels a twinge of panic again. “Why’s that?”
“Broke his back coming down a big jump.” Kane stoops to lift a smooth stone. He flips it up and down in his hand. “It happens.”
Adam stares at him. “You stole her?”
Kane shakes his head. “He gave her to me, ’fore he died. Got the script of sale.”
“It’s not possible. Not to ride someone’s byke who don’t have the same genes as you.” Adam points at his own byke. “No one but a Stone rides the Longthorn.”
Kane smiles. “It can be done. Just gotta deal with the Rider’s echo running through the machine. Gotta understand him. Think like him. Move like him. Then the byke will let you ride.”
“I’ll stick with the Longthorn.”
Kane nods. “A person can ride a good race on a byke like that.”
Adam’s byke—a beat-up dark blue Longthorn—is solid and durable, but heavy. A dinosaur in comparison to the Drifter. But she’s his, and Adam rides nothing else.
“She’s no Drifter, but she’s tough,” he says. “She can take a knock.”
“Yep. Saw you riding in on the towpath. Got some skills.”
Adam looks at him. He doesn’t like the idea of being watched.
Kane hurls the flat stone and they watch it skim across the lake surface, hopping one…two…three, four, five, sixseveneightnine times.
Adam bends to collect a pebble and follows suit. He flings it low across the surface, but it only manages a disappointing four hops before splashing into the lake, disappearing from sight. He tries another, and then another, but the most he manages are six feeble hops.
Kane watches him without saying a word.
Adam rounds on him. “Where you from?”
“Other side,” Kane says, waving his hand in a vague way.
“Other side the lake?”
Kane shakes his head. He stoops to collect more stones and places them in a leather pouch tied to his waist. Adam watches him. He sees the sling. A braided cord hanging loose at his belt.
“Where, then?”
“Other side the desert,” Kane says, as though it’s the most obvious thing in the world.
Adam feels himself clench and unclench his fists. “There’s nothin other side the desert.”
Kane looks at him. “You know why I’m here, don’t you?”
Adam knows. There is only one reason a Circuit Rider comes to Blackwater.
“Sure,” he says. “You’ve come to swim.”
Kane smiles and says nothing.
—
It’s the last thing he needs. More competition. Especially someone who rides a Drifter. Adam wishes Kane had drowned in the lake. He puts dark thoughts to bed as they ride into Blackwater.
The town is built in a basin carved by ancient glaciers.
Blackwater Lake is wide and long, running north to south for ten klicks. It looks like a hand from the top of the escarpment wall, contouring its western shore. A dark hand, reaching out, holding nothing but dust. No river feeds the lake. It’s cut off. The water seeps up from below.
The town is crescent-shaped and it pincers the lake.
The two boys cruise through Blackwater’s Outer Ring on one of six roads that cut through to the core. This is where the Freemen live, those too old and infirm to work the mines. And Riders, past and present, who win the right—through racing—not to work the mine. A Blackwater Law. You race, you get to stay clear of the mine. A strong enough incentive for most.
Here, in the Outer Ring, the houses are low and flat-r
oofed, covered in a gray dust. Smallholdings, mostly. A scattering of homes bent against the wind. Some of them with banks of sand heaped up against their sides, as though their occupants have long ago grown weary of fighting the desert.
Blackwater. A town adrift in the sand.
The boys ride past lines of furrowed earth. An assortment of resilient crops are grown here and they wither in the sand-choked soil, yielding a meager offering.
Old Man Dagg’s place lies on the Outer Ring, on the western arm of the crescent. Adam’s place is far outside the town, on the eastern shore of the lake. But he’s not riding home. Not yet.
Every house they pass lies in ruin. Collapsed porches lean on creaking stilts. The ghost face of a child pressed against a cracked and mottled window watches them pass. A mongrel dog, all skin and bone, skitters across the road.
Adam watches the dog lift its leg on an ancient lamppost. He stays alert for any sign of the gangs. But the streets are quiet.
They ride easy down the crumbling main road, dividing at a sinkhole, rejoining after it. Kane rides in the sun. Adam slips into the shadows of huge, looming apartment blocks that line the Inner Ring. This is where the miners are housed, living stacked up, one on top of the other.
They pass a block-wide, two-story brick building. Billboard posters hang from the storefront, advertising sundry Sky-Base goods—mostly hydro-pills and nutrient biscuits.
Above the store, a beetle-black supply drone hovers.
It’s small—about fifty yards in length, ten yards in depth and five yards in width. Ugly—like a flying insect—with a central rotor column, a flight control head and a fat abdomen from which a ribbed umbilical cord extends, docking the drone to a metal receiver in the building’s roof. The drone delivers supplies to the store this way every day, like a ritualistic feeding.
Grover Jackson exits the store at street level, pushing a broom. Been his place of business for two summers, ever since his pa died. Seventeen and the town’s only storekeep. There was trouble back when his pa got turfed in the dirt. Some kids busted into the place. Thought they could take what they wanted. It didn’t go well for them. Grover has Levi on his side.
And Levi has the Colonel.
Grover leans his chin against the broom handle and eyeballs the two boys. His worn clothes are filthy and his apron caked with dirt. There’s something wrong in the way he leers at them with his gap-toothed grin. Grover’s never been right in the head since his pa passed on.
Stone Rider Page 2