“What in hell is there to think about?” Cassica cried.
“We gonna think first,” Shiara said, staring at Cassica hard. The air went taut between them.
“I can see this is all a lot to take in,” said Harlan, his calm, quiet tone defusing them. “It’s a big decision, a family decision, and I guess you don’t need me rabbiting on while you’re making it. So I’ll excuse myself, if I may.”
He got to his feet and bowed his head toward Melly. “Mrs. DuCal, that was a sensational meal. Thank you for having me in your wonderful home. I’ll be staying at the Crab and Hook in town for the time being. Good-bye, Mr. DuCal, Cassica, Shiara. I hope you’ll do me the honor of thinking real hard on what I’ve said. No, no, I’ll see myself out.”
With that, he was gone, as commanding in his exit as he’d been in his conversation. He left behind a thick silence, which continued even after they heard the door shut downstairs, and they finished up their meals without a word.
There was a fingernail moon that night, and a deep gloom lay over everything, but Shiara could see Cassica’s eyes shining, and she knew her friend was awake in the other bed.
“We gotta do it,” Cassica whispered.
Shiara didn’t reply for a long while. Eventually Cassica spoke again, as Shiara knew she would. Cassica had to say things out loud to work them through.
“When I was in the diner, they were showing when Lady Scorpion took out Pott,” Cassica said.
“Pott and Rammson,” Shiara said. No one ever remembered Pott’s tech. It bugged her. “Two of ’em died, not just one.”
“I’d have outrun her.”
“Huh?”
“Pott tried to dodge the stinger. But Lady Scorpion never misses. They reckon that spear is magnetic or something. I think he was just afraid to go too fast. Couldn’t risk ditching in a lava flow.”
“Maybe.” Shiara gathered her blanket around her, a pale ghost rustling in the dark. Through the window she could see the undersides of the clouds, pearled and sinister.
“You heard what he said,” Cassica murmured. “If we’re good enough, it won’t happen to us.”
“Pott and Rammson were good enough. They could’ve won it.”
Silence from Cassica. Then: “You think Blane will let us do it?” she asked. “If we decide to,” she added quickly after.
“Reckon so,” said Shiara. “Momma’ll have plenty to say on the matter, but he won’t stop me.”
Part of her wanted him to. She wanted this choice taken from her. She wanted him to say, Don’t go, Shiara. I couldn’t take losin’ you. You can have the auto shop, Creek can go shoot wolves or whatever he does up in them mountains, and we’ll be happy ever after.
He wouldn’t, though. Because he loved her, and he knew she couldn’t be kept, and there wasn’t a whole lot here for her if she stayed. All she had to look forward to in Coppermouth was a life of thankless work playing second fiddle to her layabout brother.
The auto shop was supposed to have been Grayley’s, but Grayley drank the water and caught something that killed him. Creek never wanted this place, but his younger brother Tedder wanted it less, and he got married and moved to the Eastern Seaboard Confederacy. Patten drowned in a shallow ditch after a storm, so drunk he couldn’t lift his head.
Even though Creek would have preferred to give it away, the responsibility was his to carry on the family business. It couldn’t go to Shiara. The customers would dry up and the place would fold. So it would be Creek’s name over the door when Daddy was gone. The auto shop she loved would never be hers. Because she was a girl.
But out there on the track, when Maisie was roaring and the competition had been left in the dust, being a girl didn’t matter the way it did in Coppermouth. They wouldn’t be the first girls in Maximum Racing—though there was a sight less of them than boys—nor would she be the first female tech. But there was something in it, something worth a risk. To be accountable only to themselves, to be judged on their skill and nothing else. She’d never thought it could be that way; but tonight, for the first time, it seemed possible, and it made her heart beat hard.
“We probably won’t even make top three in the satellite anyway,” said Cassica. “It’s just one race, right? And even if we win, we don’t have to do anything after. I mean, we don’t need to go to Anchor City. We don’t need to try for the Widowmaker at all. We can always change our minds.”
“Yuh, sure,” said Shiara, sarcastic. “We gonna win the satellite and then you gonna give up. Sounds just like you.”
“I’m serious!” said Cassica. “If we’re in, we’re in this together. We’ll stop any time you want. I promise.”
But Shiara knew her better than that.
Engines snarled and clattered. The air was greasy and stinging with fumes. The sun beat down on hot metal and baked earth.
Cassica adjusted her goggles while Shiara restlessly scanned the gauges on the dash. She sat back, apparently content, then suddenly reached underneath to make last-minute adjustments to the fuel enrichment system. Cassica made sure her helmet was on tight and checked her buckles. Little rituals, to steady her nerves.
When the race began, all her fears would dissolve. In the race, in the moment, she found a stillness she found nowhere else. The waiting was the worst.
She looked up and down the starting line. A motley clutter of racers waited alongside them. Gleaming streamlined speedsters that sat low between wide-set tires; brutish off-roaders with three axles that could smash through obstacles or clamber over them; gristly all-rounders, their oily guts poking out through their chassis, their drivers hidden behind barred windows.
Maisie felt fragile and skeletal by comparison. She was light and fast, but not strong. A roll cage encased their seats, and there was a windshield to deflect the air, but that was all the protection she gave them. Only the trikes and bikes, suicidally fast and unsteady, had less armor. Most of her was taken up by the engine and a fuel tank, suspended on sprung axles between four fat tires. But what an engine it was.
The tech’s craft was a mystery to Cassica, who only understood the basics. Shiara could take a pile of scavenged and mismatched parts and make them cooperate. She could eke out every last bit of brake horsepower from the most unpromising materials. Every race, Cassica burned Maisie out; each time, Shiara built her new and better. This time, Harlan had helped her out with money and Blane with new parts. It was a rare bounty for someone used to working with scrap and guile. She’d barely rested the last two weeks, but she’d assembled a car that could compete with vehicles that cost ten times as much.
There were twenty racers, arranged in a row. Dusty, billboard-sized screens showed the feed from the cameramen as they moved between the drivers, focusing on each in turn. The commentator’s voice was tinny through pole-mounted speakers. Officials buzzed around them, sweating in their suits.
A small crowd was held back by ropes and stakes, fewer onlookers than Cassica had imagined. Most would be at the finish line, watching on other screens, but still the turnout was disappointing. The race would be televised, but not at a time when anyone was likely to see it. She’d expected to be part of a spectacle, but the Outer Leagues seemed little different from the unofficial races she’d competed in. It made her feel insignificant and foolish. It had taken bravery to come here; they were proud of themselves for their courage. But the crowds only cared about the big races.
Set apart from the racers, wavering in a haze of heat and poisonous exhaust gases, was the Wrecker. He called himself the Rhino, after an animal that only existed in pictures now. His vehicle was a monster of grime and black iron, with a great spiked grille and a hide that was riveted and scorched. It didn’t look to be carrying any weapon other than its weight; it was a battering ram, made to bludgeon opponents. If Maisie got in its way, it would crush her like a bug.
The Rhino looked out of the cab of his vehicle, and his eyes met Cassica’s along the starting line. A trickle of cold spilled down her spine. His face was ridged with se
lf-inflicted scars, dyed with crude homemade inks. Protruding from his forehead, implanted right into his skull, was a bony horn. His eyes were bright and crazed, and there was something absent in them, a lack of care or consequence, the psychopathic glaze of a skatch drinker. He bared rotten teeth and mugged at her, and she saw his tongue was dyed black.
She thought of Chabley Pott and Lady Scorpion, how she’d longed for the chance to face off against a Wrecker. She didn’t feel quite so eager now.
Ahead was a shallow slope of hardpan, ending abruptly in a great bulge of red stone rising from the flat, parched land. At its foot was a dark, jagged entrance to a series of caves. What lay inside, they didn’t know.
She recalled Harlan’s pep talk as they’d waited in the sandbagged area that passed for the pits. His skin had shone as he leaned in close, talking in that overeager way he had, long hands chopping the air as if to divide the information into digestible pieces.
“This is a blind race, okay? No laps, just one time through. You won’t have much advance information, just a rough map through the caves. Only the Wrecker knows what’s inside. Blind races are about speed of thought: reacting, not planning. Got that?”
Shiara hadn’t liked that at all. Half the job of the tech was advance planning, calculating routes and fuel consumption, squeezing out an advantage by being smarter than the other techs. Cassica didn’t like it for a different reason. Even by the standards of Maximum Racing, a blind race was terrifically dangerous. But if that was what they had to do to get to the top, then that was what they’d do.
“The secret to a blind race is control, not speed,” Harlan had said. “Drive like a maniac, you’ll crash in there. Just concentrate on getting through. If you come out the other side, you’ll be in with a good chance.”
In the end, Shiara had prepared as best she could by scouting the outside of the caves, comparing it to her map, and making rough fuel calculations to ensure they were carrying as little weight as possible. She had the outline of a plan, ready to be changed on the fly. It settled her some, but not much.
Shiara finished her final adjustments. Cassica reached over and laid a hand on her shoulder. Shiara raised her head, and there was a look between them, like two animals caught in the same trap.
“Last chance,” said Shiara. Last chance to pull out. Last chance to change our minds.
Cassica did neither. A tiny crease appeared in her forehead. She couldn’t understand why Shiara would even offer her that last chance, or what she might do with it.
“Racers, ready!” the announcer howled through crackling speakers, and they faced forward, committed.
“Three!”
Racers gunned their engines. The crowd yelled, but Cassica could hardly hear them over the noise.
“Two!”
Waiting by the finish line, watching on a screen, was Harlan. Cassica felt his eyes on her, felt everybody’s eyes on her. Adrenaline hit, and her nerves quit bubbling, like a pan taken off the boil.
“One.”
The final second was a white blank, burning away fear and doubt. All that existed after was the here and now. Where Cassica needed to be.
A horn blared. Cassica hit the gas.
A few drivers fired their turbos the moment the race began, hoping to get ahead of the pack. Their wheels spun too fast to grip, burning rubber; they skidded left and right. Two of them cut their turbos and were left in the dust. A third slid out of control and into the path of a biker, who went straight over the hood and ended up in a heap on the other side.
Cassica ignored the chaos, accelerating smoothly. Shiara had put in the bare minimum of fuel, and Maisie was light on armor, so she began to pull ahead of the pack, outstripped only by the nimble bikes.
“Hold back!” Shiara shouted over the noise. “We don’t want to be out in front!”
It was the plan they’d discussed. Stay behind the leaders, let them encounter the obstacles inside. Beat them on the final straight. But now it came to it, Cassica found it hard to give up a lead.
“Hold back!” Shiara told her, more firmly.
Cassica eased off the accelerator, letting the slower cars pass her. The mouth of the cave rushed to meet them. She slotted into a spot in fifth or sixth and focused. Now came the unknown.
The world went from dazzling light to echoing dark. The ground dipped before her, a wide gravelly downslope lit only by the headlamps of the cars ahead. There was a terrifying moment of blindness as her eyes adjusted. She felt Maisie trying to skid and let off the speed some more. Others, less willing to use the brakes, began to fishtail as they lost control. The hollow roar of engines reverberated around the cave as the rest followed her in. Shiara checked the mirrors, anxious, looking for the Wrecker. Suddenly:
“Pull left!” she cried.
Cassica was already doing it. She saw how the cars ahead were lurching to the side and knew there must be a reason. A second later, she found out. The bottom of the slope was a wall of rock. The only way out was on the far left.
The leaders, who were traveling fast and saw it late, scrambled to adjust in time. One turned too hard: rear wheels slipped on gravel and swung out to the side. The car rolled twice before smashing hard into the wall. A biker lost control in his panic, tipped over, and went sliding into the first wreck. He slapped against the metal like a rag doll.
Dead. The knowledge hit Cassica and slid off her. No time to think about it. Forewarned, she led Maisie over to the left and slipped through the gap, already grateful for Shiara’s caution.
Beyond, they found sunlight again. The roof of the cavern opened up and they emerged at the bottom of an enormous sinkhole, drilled into the earth by some catastrophic weapon from the Omniwar. Left behind were fantastic formations of melted rock, shaggy with colorful mosses, shot through with strange metals created in the blast. Bats took flight at the sound of their engines, flocking out from the shadows and pouring into the hot blue bowl of the sky. Remote cameras swiveled toward them as they arrived.
Directly in front of the entrance, a fin of rock divided the racers. Cassica threw Maisie to the right and was plunged into a maze of stone monoliths and hanging vines. Racers were all around her, in front and behind, glimpsed between gaps in the rock on either side.
There was no single route through the chaos. Cars crisscrossed each other’s paths, battling for position. A racer cut into her, swerving out of nowhere. She hit the brakes and Maisie narrowly avoided getting her nose sheared off. Cassica swore loudly, her calm lost for a moment.
“Drag right,” said Shiara, her face flitting from light to shade, light to shade as they passed through the shadowed alleys between the rock formations. She was looking at the map, which showed three ways out of the sinkhole. Shiara had decided the rightmost route looked more favorable; she reckoned it would be less jammed than the others.
Cassica checked her mirrors, waited for a gap in the stones, and then cut right.
Directly into the path of the Rhino.
A horn blared and her mirrors filled with black iron, a smoking monster bearing down on her from behind. Her heart lurched. She saw a gap to the left and swerved hard, desperate to be out of the Wrecker’s path. Shiara was thrown against her harness as Maisie darted through, missing the flanks of the rock by inches, and the Rhino thundered past behind her, a terrifying tonnage of rage and ruin. Cassica caught a glimpse of a scarred face in her mirror, black mouth wide with laughter as he passed. “Not that way,” said Cassica.
“Not that way,” Shiara agreed.
They’d lost speed and were falling behind in the order. The drivers in front were heading for a dark slash in the side of the sinkhole—the middle exit of the three. With no other choice, Cassica went for it, whipping past looming piles of melted stone and bubbled metal standing like witnesses aghast at the horror of past days.
The drivers were squeezed together as they raced through the exit. Beyond was a sepulchral cave, lit by the ghostly white glow of headlamps. They went out onto a narrow
rocky bridge, spanning a black drop without limit. Night-vision cameras tracked them. Overhead, at the far range of the light, the tips of many slender stalactites poked out of the dark.
They were on a thin path, barely wide enough for three cars abreast, with no barriers, and death to either side. Only then did Cassica understand what they’d gotten themselves into, what she’d been so eager to embrace when Harlan offered it. They’d put themselves entirely at the mercy of others, and those people—those who’d devised this course, those who arranged the race, those who watched it—didn’t care if they died. Some, in fact, hungered for it.
They’re trying to kill us, Cassica thought in shocked amazement. This was no race; this was a battle for their lives.
She fought to maintain her calm as that realization hit. Others failed. One driver jockeyed sideways to get away from the edge and touched wheels with another. The two cars bounced apart, and the lighter of the two careered off into the void.
Cassica felt her heart in her throat as she saw it dive. Just for an instant, she was in that car, plunging to her doom. Just for an instant, she was Chabley Pott, consumed by flame after being hit by Lady Scorpion’s stinger.
What am I doing here?
“Cassica!” Shiara cried. There was real fear in her voice. She was looking at the ceiling. Cassica followed her gaze up to the stalactites that hung over the abyss. She didn’t know if it was the motion of the car, but they seemed to be visibly shivering. For the first time she became aware of a ringing sound, growing in volume, cutting through the bellow of the engines.
“They’re singstones!” said Shiara. “Get us out of here!”
Shifting down a gear, Cassica stepped on the accelerator and Maisie roared. She swung out to the edge of the bridge, Maisie’s wheels spinning inches from the drop, and powered past the car in front. As she passed, she glimpsed the driver’s frightened face—he was blond, about seventeen, a wisp of a mustache on his lip. The darkness sucked at her, but she held her nerve.
The cars had bunched and slowed on the bridge, caution jamming up the pack. She nosed her way past another car, forcing it aside. Nobody wanted a collision here. All the time, Shiara kept looking toward the ceiling, and the ringing got louder.