There was no sign of Harlan the next day either. Cassica and Shiara were awkward with each other all morning. Cassica tried to smooth things over—she couldn’t stand that there was something between them—but Shiara shut her down. It was plain she didn’t want to talk, and so the tension remained.
Anderos Cleff dropped by their hotel around midday to tell them that their car was back in the garage at the practice stadium, and to inquire if they’d heard from Harlan. He seemed concerned, and his heavy, scuffed features were grave. Shiara was polite at first, but when she found out he was a manager, she turned cold.
“We’ll tell him you were askin’ after him,” she said, in a tone that said, Time for you to leave.
“Please do. And if there’s anything I can provide, any help I can offer, just let me know.”
“Harlan’s our manager, Mr. Cleff. He’ll see to us.” And Shiara closed the door on him.
“He’ll see to us?” Cassica said after Anderos had gone. “He ain’t here! Do you know what we’re supposed to do now? Do we need to fill in some entry form for the Widowmaker? Don’t we need sponsors or something? How we even gonna get there?”
“I dunno,” said Shiara. “I just do what I know how to. And I got a car to fix.”
They took a taxi to the practice stadium. Shiara paid the driver while Cassica got out, shaded her eyes against the sun, and looked up at the curved walls towering over them.
“You remember that time Harlan hustled us out of here, like he was in one awful hurry? You think that ’n’ this are connected?”
“Might be,” said Shiara, walking past her. “Might be he’s just drunk somewhere.”
They found the Interceptor waiting next to Maisie in the garage, just as Anderos had said.
“Least someone does their job,” Cassica muttered.
Shiara ignored the comment. She walked over to the Interceptor and studied the damage to the front left side, where Cassica had sideswiped Linty Maxxon’s car. She stared for a long time, until Cassica couldn’t take it anymore.
“Alright, say it!”
Shiara turned and looked at her flatly. “I ain’t got nothin’ to say.”
“Think I can’t tell when you’re judging me? Girl got hurt; so what? Think I’m proud of it? I ain’t! But you had the chance to take off the safety, and you were too scared. So I did what I had to. She’d have done it to us.”
“You reckon?” Shiara’s face showed nothing. “Guess we’ll never know.” She picked up a wrench set, walked over to Maisie, and opened up her hood.
Cassica fumed. She was spoiling for a fight, and Shiara wouldn’t give her one. Card always used to; at least he was good for that. But Shiara refused to engage, and that was insufferable.
“It ain’t Maisie that needs fixing,” Cassica said. “We need the Interceptor in good shape. You wanna race the Widowmaker or not?”
“Oh, sure, I wanna race it,” said Shiara. “Just fancy workin’ on something I built instead of somethin’ bought for us. You know, somethin’ honest.”
That was too much for Cassica. “Yeah, you better keep her tuned!” she sneered as she stalked out of the garage. “Gonna need an honest car to drive your hayseed ass back to Coppermouth!”
Shiara didn’t reply, of course. Insults and ire just rolled off her. Cassica could rage and scream all she liked and Shiara would just sit there like some dumb placid mutt and it wouldn’t affect her one bit. Some days Cassica just wanted to punch her, see if she could get a rise.
She stormed through the gray stone corridors of the stadium and out onto the street. Here, the roads were wide and dusty and hardly trafficked. Warehouses and yards overlooked empty sidewalks. A truck rattled past her as she emerged, but it was the only vehicle out in the midday heat, except for a black car parked a little way from the stadium entrance.
She heard its engine start, but she was too wrapped up in her fury to think anything of it. She heard it drive closer, but she was concocting things to say to Shiara next time they met. It was only when it pulled up ahead of her that she felt the first tugs of alarm. Two men got out, one in front of her, one on the far side. The man before her was tubby, with a heavy brow over small eyes and the grim witless look of a thug.
Now she knew they had something in mind for her, and she turned to run. But the other man was quickly round the back of the car, and he seized her arm as she fled. He was wiry and strong and had nails implanted in rows along his bald head and cheekbones.
Panic took her. She drew in air to shout for help, but Nail-head drove a fist into her belly and she lost her breath in the shock and pain. Then they were all over her, bundling her into the car. She gasped for air and struggled, but they were too forceful. She struck her head on the edge of the open rear door as she was pushed into the back, and that knocked the last of the fight out of her.
Doors slammed, an engine revved, and they moved off. Nail-head pressed up close beside her, a knife in his hand.
“Sit tight and shut up.”
Cassica, already terrified beyond reason, obeyed. The sight of the blade made her panic worse. She was still winded from his punch. Her eyes bulged as she tried to suck in air, and she thought she was suffocating. But at last her lungs relaxed, and she breathed again, and soon, hot hysteria turned to cold fear.
The thugs didn’t speak again and neither did she. Wild plans of escape slipped and slid through her mind. Fear kept her from moving, like a rabbit in the jaws of a fox. She could go nowhere, do nothing, entirely in a stranger’s power. Never had she felt so out of control.
Their journey took them through industrial areas and ghettoes, a seamy, desperate land of water-stained brick and chain-link fencing, tramps digging at bins like shabby crows. At last they stopped in an alleyway scattered with rotten mattresses and broken furniture. Cassica was led through a metal side door and the bare stone rooms beyond until they came to a wide area that might once have been a factory floor. Tall windows made up of grimy square panes let in sunlight to drive back the warm gloom.
Tied to a chair, half his bloodied face lit blindingly and the other half in shadow, was Harlan. He’d been beaten, eye swollen and lip split. He looked up at Cassica as she was led in, then looked down, shamed.
Cassica searched for some explanation. There were other men in the room, some in darkness, some in light. Some had guns.
She heard the scrape of a chair behind her, and she was pushed down into it. Her own hurts were all but forgotten. She’d suffered worse in crashes.
One of the men walked over to Harlan, put a hand on his shoulder. “That her?”
Harlan nodded without raising his head. The man straightened up. He was lanky, hangdog, and unshaven, with a horselike mouth that showed his gums when he spoke.
“Tell her,” he said.
Cassica looked from one man to the other, dreading the news to come. “No?” said the man when Harlan didn’t respond. “I’ll get you started, then.”
He walked over to Cassica. There was something clownish in the gangly way he walked, but Cassica didn’t feel like laughing.
“Name’s Scadler, miss,” he said. “Your manager got himself in some trouble. I’m guessin’ you don’t know the half of things, so let me fill you in.”
He squatted down beside her and pointed at Harlan as if aiming at him.
“You manager was a big shot once,” he told her. “He discovered Liandra Kesey. You heard of her, right? Everyone has. Well, he found her singin’ in a club and made her famous. But Liandra’s head got turned; she wanted more, and more after that, and Harlan couldn’t give it to her. So she went to Anderos Cleff, biggest manager in town. Left Harlan up to his neck in debts and favors owed that he’d taken on to get her to the top.” He scratched one unshaven cheek. “Ain’t no room for sentimentality in show business.” Harlan sat motionless in his chair. He never once looked up, but stared at the ground between his feet.
Cassica might have pitied him if she hadn’t been so scared. What did any of this h
ave to do with her?
Scadler unfolded himself straight again. “Well, those debts left a lot of bad blood, so Harlan there, he was pretty much cut out of the entertainment game. He went into Maximum Racin’ instead. Trouble is, he ain’t very good at it!” He began counting off on his fingers. “Jebson and Trey—dead; Osger and Robbin—dead; Rubble and Tamkin—one dead, one that ain’t gonna walk again; Rapp and Espin—you heard any of these names before, miss?”
Cassica shook her head.
“Yeah, that’s cause they never amounted to nothin’. None of ’em got past the qualifiers. Point I’m makin’ here is that your manager got a habit of backin’ the wrong horse, and that’s an expensive habit. He’s been borrowin’ all over town. Lives are cheap in Maximum Racin’. Cars ain’t.”
Cassica’s gaze hardened as she looked at Harlan. She was beginning to understand now. How much he’d duped and dazzled them. She remembered his speech the night they first met, delivered at the DuCals’ dinner table:
This business is full of amateurs and sharks, unscrupulous managers, taking a gamble with some precious kid’s life just so they can get a payday. Well, that’s not how I do it, Mr. and Mrs. DuCal. That’s not how I do it, Cassica, Shiara!
But that list of dead and crippled kids said otherwise.
Anger helped her find her voice. “He owes you money?” she asked Scadler.
“Oh yeah. A lot of it.”
“That’s nothing to do with me.”
“He’s made it so it is. And since you’re involved, I reckoned you ought to be in on our chat. Otherwise this feller might spin you any old tale he likes.” He scowled at Harlan. “I like my business honest.”
“What’s he said to you?” Cassica asked.
“He and I, we cut a deal. In recompense for what he owes, he’s gonna let me arrange your sponsor for the Widowmaker. An’ he’s gonna let me keep all the money from the deal, which might otherwise go to your pocket, or his, and to spares and repairs and what all else.”
“That money’s not his to give!” Cassica cried.
“Life ain’t fair,” said Scadler. “But a man’s gotta claim what he’s owed. Who’ll respect him otherwise?” Cassica fought for an argument, something that would undo what Harlan had done. She wasn’t thinking about riches. She was thinking about all the things that were necessary to stand a chance over the three days of the Widowmaker. Backup cars, replacement tires, fuel, spare turbo systems, navigation gadgets, medicines, and only Shiara knew what else. Sponsors put up the money to help the racers equip their extraordinarily expensive vehicles in return for advertising their brand. The better equipped the driver, the longer they were likely to be in the race and the more screen time the sponsor’s logo would get.
Everyone in the Widowmaker got sponsored by somebody. If they didn’t have access to that gear, they were already at a big disadvantage.
“You ain’t heard it all yet,” said Scadler. “That about covers his debts. But it don’t account for the additional impertinence of fleein’ the city to hide out in some backwater so as to avoid his responsibilities. With regard to that … well, I’m a man who enjoys a gamble, so here’s how it’s gonna go. I say you can win the Widowmaker even without that sponsor money. If you do”—he held up his hands—“then all is forgiven. If you don’t …”
He motioned to a man in the shadows, who stepped forward, brandishing a huge pair of wire cutters. He snipped them in the air. Harlan flinched. “If you don’t, I’m gonna cut off the fingers on his left hand.”
Harlan raised his head then, his eyes pleading. Cassica stared at him, strips of blazing sunlight lying between them, divided by shadow. The worldly man with his city wisdom and his fancy words was gone forever. For the first time, she thought him pathetic. “Say I don’t agree with the deal he made. What then?” said Cassica.
“You don’t get that choice. Sponsor’s only gonna pay me if you get out there and race.” He shrugged. “ ’Course, once you’ve started and I’ve got my money, I don’t care if you win or lose.” He wiggled the fingers of his left hand at Harlan. “But I’ll wager he does.”
Cassica felt the weight of that come down on her. Not a person, not in control: a commodity now, a chip to be traded and bet with. A girl without a choice.
She glared hatefully at Harlan. He couldn’t hold her gaze.
“You’re a damn fool,” she told him. “Why’d we ever get mixed up with you?”
Scadler laughed at that. “Untie him,” Scadler told his thugs; then he grabbed Harlan by his thinning hair and pulled his head back roughly. “You know better than to run, don’t you?” he said. “You know I’ll find you, and there won’t be no second chance?”
Harlan nodded frantically.
Scadler sneered and let him go. “Get ’em out of here.”
“Ladies and gentlemen, racers and managers, distinguished guests and members of the press, it is my great pleasure to present: the Widowmaker!”
The audience erupted in applause as Dunbery Hasp stepped back from the microphone on the stage and held out an arm, as if in invitation to come inside. Behind him, enormous screens lit up in the dark auditorium, showing camera feeds of terrifying landscapes, flashing storms, wrecked cities. Three-dimensional terrain maps showed a tangle of routes; smaller screens at the front of the stage reeled off information.
The audience, seated in semicircular rows, burst into applause. There was excited chatter and a few gasps of anticipation. Shiara, sitting between Harlan and Cassica, neither applauded nor gasped. Her eyes skipped from screen to screen, grimly calculating.
Dunbery Hasp returned to the microphone. A suit cut from bands of glittering cloth hid his withered body, and his wrinkled face was tiny behind his oversized acid-green shades. In any other world, he’d have been ridiculous. But he owned Maximum Racing, owned most of the television channels they watched, the zines they read, the music they listened to. He owned the audience, in his way. So nobody laughed.
“This year we have something quite, quite special for you,” he said, in a voice dry as breeze-blown leaves scratching across the floor of some long-forgotten cabin. “As always, the Widowmaker will be made up of three stages in three different locations, raced over three days. Time bonuses and penalties will carry from stage to stage. If you’re one hour slower than the leader at the end of stage one, you’ll start one hour after him the next day. If you manage to get ahead of them by the end of stage two, you’ll start before them in stage three. Simple, really.”
He chuckled as if it were a joke. There was nobody in the audience who needed telling about time penalties, but it was necessary to have the rules confirmed. Every year they changed a little bit here and there, in response to viewer feedback.
“Each stage will have a start and a finish, but how the racers get from A to B is entirely up to them,” he continued. He took out a rectangular metal object, slid it open to reveal a large red button, and held it up. “As ever, we will be providing rescue alarms for the racers, which will summon help if their car breaks down or they are too wounded to continue. Officials will, of course, only extract them if it is safe to do so. Pressing this button means instant disqualification. Once the stage has begun, they are permitted no help from anyone except their manager, or such help as they can find themselves on the way. At the end of each stage, racers and their cars will be transported to the start of the next stage, where there will be the opportunity to make repairs, switch cars, and prepare for the following day.”
And that, Shiara thought, was why they were going to lose. Most racers had generous sponsors, which meant they could bring three different cars for three different stages, each one tuned and calibrated to suit the terrain. If they damaged their car, they could simply swap it for a new one at the end of the stage. Some racers arrived with as many as seven cars—which was the limit allowed—so they could adapt to changing race conditions.
Cassica and Shiara would have the Interceptor, and Maisie as backup: a trusty car, but hopeles
sly outmatched in the big leagues. They had only the barest equipment for repairs and spares. It would be a miracle if they even made it through to the end of the second stage.
Harlan had put them in a hole; they had no choice but to try to dig themselves out. He’d tangled them up in his debts, and worse, their success or failure might mean his fingers. That was a burden no one should have to bear, but Shiara, at least, thought they were obliged to. Angry as she was, she wouldn’t be responsible for a man being maimed, whatever the circumstances. Cassica wasn’t so understanding. She’d begun cutting Harlan off just like she had with Card, severing any ties of emotion or respect. If Harlan lost his fingers, she figured it was his own fault.
Shiara could hardly blame her. Though Cassica hadn’t said as much, her encounter with Scadler had obviously been terrifying. By the time she’d filled Shiara in on what had happened, the fear had given way to anger. But Shiara knew her friend well enough to understand just how scared she had been.
Shiara looked over at Harlan, his face hidden in the dark. He hadn’t wanted to come, hadn’t wanted to show his injuries and his shame, but they’d made him. For all his failures, he knew this game better than they did, and they needed all the help they could get.
“Day one!” croaked Hasp, and some of the screens dimmed, drawing their attention to those that were still lit. “Crookback Bayou! A trackless swamp full of sucking bogs, treacherous locals, and lethal wildlife, warped and grown to enormous size due to mutagens in the water from the Omniwar!”
There was more applause as the screens showed aerial shots of an endless expanse of tangled trees, then of the gloomy, eerie world beneath, where insects ticked and strange creatures screeched in the distance. They showed hunters standing over a huge worm as long as a truck, its mouth a sawtoothed circle, big enough to eat a grown man.
Shiara and Cassica exchanged a dismal glance. Neither of their cars was equipped for swampland. Not a good start.