Drifter's Run (15 page)

Outside the cab there were occasional flashes of sunlight as the cab shuttled up and down between surface and subsurface tubes.

Then, just when Lando was wondering if the trip would ever end, they rolled out of a hillside and onto a regular road. The cab coasted downhill toward a huge recreational complex.

The building had a dome-shaped roof and, thanks to a mineral mixed into the duracrete, glittered like gold. Huge parking lots surrounded the facility and were packed to overflowing with brightly colored ground cars.

Meanwhile, Cy was bobbing up and down with excitement and counting out the money he'd produced from a hidden compartment. Seeing this, Lando was reminded of how Cy had gambled away his body, and wondered if coming here was such a good idea after all.

But good idea or not Cy was clearly determined to go inside. So, rather than challenge him, Lando resolved to give it some time and ease the cyborg out of the complex as quickly as possible.

The cab pulled up at the main entrance, agreed to debit Cap's bank account, and whirred off with a new fare.

Cy generated a few stares as they joined the throng that was crowding its way into the dome, but so did the scattering of other cyborgs, and nobody looked for very long. Lando was glad figuring that people who stared at Cy wouldn't notice him.

The inside of the building was a large open space. Various kinds of vendors lined the outside walls. The crowd seemed to have divided itself into subgroups and headed toward various parts of the huge floor. Once there they seemed to mill around Lando couldn't see the attraction at first, but then he caught a glimpse of a boxlike structure at the center of each group, and realized it was a computer terminal.

"That's how you place your bets," Cy explained eagerly, "the terminals will accept cash or credit. You can bet on a particular animal to win, place, or draw."

"That's nice," Lando said, looking around. "But where are they? The animals I mean? And how can they race with all the people in here?"

All of a sudden the lights dimmed, there was a flurry of trumpets, and a melodic voice flooded the PA system. "Fellow sentients! Welcome to the Pylax Pavilion! Are you ready for a bounty of bodacious baccas? Let me hear you say 'Hell yes!'"

"Hell yes!" the crowd roared back, and Lando realized this a small army of booze and drug vendors had started to make their rounds. With each passing moment the pavilion seemed less and less appropriate for little girls.

"That's the announcer Les Lexus," Cy yelled over the noise "Isn't he a riot?"

"Yeah, a real riot," Lando agreed dryly. "Do you think this is a good place for Melissa?"

Cy spun back and forth as if seeing the pavilion in a new way. "Well, now that you mention it I'm…"

There was another blare of trumpets. Four holo projections, one for every point on the compass, snapped into being, each one filled with statistics on that day's races. Then the ceiling became a maze of pulsating red, blue, yellow, and green neon while the floor turned suddenly transparent. "Lando, look!"

Lando followed Melissa's finger down toward the floor. What he saw was a softly lit transparent tube. A brown streak raced through it and Lando realized that he'd just seen a bacca.

It was running through a complex system of tunnels under the pavilion's floor. Looking closer he saw there were actually two tracks, the one that was lit, and another more complicated version right next to it.

A cheer went up. "Warm-ups are under way… it's time to place your bets, my fellow sapients… time to win, lose, or draw!"

Lando turned to say something to Cy but he was gone. Standing on tiptoe, Lando could just make him out, placing his bet at a terminal, then speeding back.

"Just one race," Cy said excitedly, braking himself with a jet of compressed air, "then we'll leave. One race won't corrupt you will it, Mel?"

"Of course not!" Melissa replied indignantly. "Besides, I want to see what happens. How does it work, Cy?"

"Well," Cy replied, taking on the air of a lecturing professor, "first the tunnels are misted with rasa scent, those are the little animals that baccas like to hunt, and then four of them are released all at once.

"That's no problem at first, because the tunnel's real wide, but then it narrows down and that forces 'em to go through one at a time."

"And what happens then?" Lando asked, already having a pretty good idea.

"Well," Cy said cautiously, sensing the trap that had just been laid for him, "they tussle a bit. You know, fight to see who goes first."

"But that's mean!" Melissa said unhappily. "You're making them fight!"

"Maybe a little," Cy admitted, "but they rarely get hurt. Then the tunnel widens out a bit, and two baccas can run neck and neck till they hit the maze."

"The maze?" Melissa asked suspiciously. "What happens there?"

"Here, I'll show you." Cy zipped over toward a cluster of people and waited for Lando and Melissa to arrive. Looking down they saw that what had been a single tunnel was now a maze of tubing, complete with twists, turns, false entrances, and dead ends.

"There's only one way through," Cy said, "and they've got to find it. Once they do there's an underwater swim, an obstacle course, and a long straightaway to the finish line. The first one across wins."

Melissa crossed her arms and tapped a small foot. Then she frowned and gave Cy a dirty look. "I think it's silly and mean. I hope you lose all your money."

But this comment was lost on Cy as a bell clanged, a cheer went up, and the announcer yelled, "They're off!"

Something moved up above. Lando looked up to find that the pulsating neon had resolved itself into a huge diagram. Since spectators could see little more than the section of tunnel where they happened to be standing, the diagram provided the "big" picture, and served as a universal reference point.

Meanwhile, a small army of antigrav-equipped robo-cams had appeared all over the inside of the pavilion and were feeding images to the holos above. The pictures were the same ones seen all over the planet.

Choosing the diagram over actual video Lando watched as four animated baccas were released from a stylized starting gate. At first they were side by side, racing down a short straightaway, heading for the point where the tunnel narrowed.

Then, as the passageway began to close in, the cartoon baccas began to nip each other trying to gain an advantage. It was immediately clear that numbers one and four were getting the best of it, but just when their supremacy seemed assured, the tunnel ballooned out, then narrowed into a tiny corridor.

The crowd cheered as the electronic baccas tore into each other, biting off chunks of neon-colored flesh in their eagerness to pursue the maddening scent, each determined to be first through the hole.

Looking down, Lando saw that Melissa was undisturbed. Like him she was watching the computerized animation and the cartoonlike images held no reality for her.

Half the crowd cheered and the other half groaned as number three wriggled through the passageway first. Numbers one, four, and two were close on its heels.

Cy yelled, "Here they come!"

Lando looked up and saw the cyborg was right. The crowd was coming toward them with two robo-cams leading the way. He grabbed Melissa's shoulder just as the mob surged around them.

"Look!" Melissa said and pointed toward the floor.

Lando looked just in time to see four furry little animals enter the transparent maze. An extremely small robo-cam followed along behind them.

Each bacca wore a harness with a number on it. They had small weasellike faces, no external ears, and three eyes. One eye was located up front toward the center of the bacca's head, with the other two on either side, providing lateral vision.

Lando noticed that their front legs were shorter, ended in prehensile paws, and weren't used for running. Would a few million years of additional evolution turn their front legs into arms and their paws into hands? There was no way to tell.

Number three was bleeding profusely from a deep bite. Melissa bit a knuckle and reached for Lando's hand.

Now Lando found that he could see individual differences between the animals.

Number one darted here and there, exploring each and every possible route, eliminating them one by one.

Two was different, more tentative somehow, sniffing here and there but refusing to make a commitment.

Three split its time between licking its wound and exploring, while four sat back and took it all in. Was it thinking? Or just so confused it didn't know what to do?

The question was answered a few seconds later when number four took off down a tube, took two turns to the right, and cleared the maze.

A few seconds later numbers one, two, and three confirmed what Lando was beginning to suspect, that baccas are smarter than they look, and followed four's lead. As usual the small robo-cam tagged along behind them.

As the animals headed toward the underwater swim, most of the crowd followed, pulling Cy along. A few moments later Lando and Melissa had the surface of the maze all to themselves.

"Well," Lando said, "what do you think?"

"I think it's mean," Melissa answered without hesitation. "I felt sorry for number three. Will he be okay?"

"I'm sure he will," Lando answered reassuringly. "How 'bout some ice cream while we wait?"

"Yes please!" Melissa said, jumping up and down with excitement. Seconds later she had him by the hand and was towing him toward the nearest refreshment counter.

Looking back over his shoulder, Lando saw Cy hovering over the thickest part of the crowd and decided the cyborg would have little trouble finding them. Life in a silver sphere might have its problems but it had some advantages too.

It was a full fifteen minutes later before the baccas had found the way over, through, and around all the obstacles, and made the final dash for the finish line. Number two was first, with four second, three third, and one last. The winners roared with approval, while the losers threw their tickets toward the floor in disgust and ordered some more solace from one of the many vendors.

Cy appeared out of nowhere, shouting, "I won! I won!" before speeding off toward a nearby pay-out window. Landc and Melissa traded amused grins as they ambled along behind. They were about fifty feet from the window when all hell broke loose.

Someone shouted, "Grab that cyborg!" and the crowd swirled as a dozen people tried to obey.

Lando looked up just in time to see a man throw his cape over Cy and attempt to bundle him up. Two men and a woman stepped in to assist while Melissa ran straight at them shouting, "Let him go! He hasn't done anything to you! Let him go!"

Lando swore a blue streak as he followed, cursing Cy, cursing himself, and cursing his rotten luck. The four strangers had Cy almost under control by the time he arrived, but a flying body block and a bite or two from Melissa turned the tide.

Breaking out from under the cape, Cy squirted himself upward, and yelled, "Follow me!" So saying he headed for the nearest exit.

Breaking free of the hands that reached out to grab him, Lando grabbed Melissa's arm and followed the fleeing cyborg. He didn't get far. The stunner hit him right square between the shoulder blades.

Lando dropped like a rock. He could see and hear but that was all. All of his muscles were locked into spasm. People yelled, robo-cams swarmed around him like flies on a corpse, and rough hands picked him up off the floor. Since Lando was facedown he saw nothing but floor.

Lando heard a man say, "Yeah, the gambler's guild wants the borg for unpaid debts, and this guy tried to help him escape. The girl says her father's a Captain somebody or other. Book 'em and let the judge sort it out."

Lando gave a silent groan. Surely things couldn't get any worse than this?

But had Lando seen the bounty hunter with the green eyes and the flaming red hair he would've known the answer. Things
could
get worse. Much, much worse.

11

Like most jails this one was less than pleasant. Though the structure itself was reasonably modern, the inmates were the same scum who filled prisons everywhere, and something less than pleasant.

Lando had been in four fights during the last twelve hours. Two involved protecting Cy from other prisoners, one centered around keeping his boots, and the last centered around his portion of slop the guards referred to as "dinner."

Lando won all four, but with a constant flow of prisoners in and out of the holding pen, he'd soon be forced to prove himself again.

The pen was roughly seventy-five feet long and about fifteen feet wide. At the moment a hundred twenty-three men shared this relatively small space and it was an extremely tight fit.

Some lounged on the metal benches that lined two of the four walls, a few lay unconscious on the floor, and the rest stood around talking. Their conversation centered around sex and money mostly, with overtones of "What're you in for?" And "When you gettin' out?"

For the most part they were all the same, drunks, addicts, petty thieves, and pimps. Rumor had it there was another nicer jail for important criminals like homicidal maniacs.

The front of the holding cell featured floor-to-ceiling bars. Cy wanted to cut them using the torch concealed inside his metal torso, but Lando forbid him to do so, pointing out that they were in enough trouble without engineering a mass escape.

So the two of them were snuggled into a much contested corner waiting for something to happen. Something that was way overdue. By now Cap should have sobered up, come dirtside, and bailed them out.

And how about Melissa? Shortly after the arrest the police had taken her somewhere else. Somewhere nicer than where
he
was Lando hoped. But where was that? Had Sorenson come for Melissa and left the rest of his crew behind? Given the mess they were in Cap might consider such an action completely justified. There was no way to know.

There was a stir toward the front of the cell. "Pik Lando! Pik Lando, front and center!" The voice belonged to a guard.

Lando looked at Cy. The cyborg activated his antigrav unit and squirted himself toward the ceiling. He'd be out of reach up there, and as luck would have it, the bullies who'd bothered him earlier were out on bail.