BOOK FOUR - !BONER
CHAPTER FOURTEEN - “JUNKYARD TONY!”
The shiny red Chevette hovercar that Rats has
obtained… from where and from whom the snakers have
refrained from asking… crosses through the domegate out
of Tao City (the exit station unmanned – the Regency clearly of the persuasion
that anybody who wants to get out deserves to be out and have all the help in doing so that a government can
muster). At eight klicks a solmin over the limit, he’s daring the Devil, but the road
to Mintur is silent and empty with only the pink or
purple rocks to either side of the lunge.
Not a roadshurt in sight.
Forty solmins
later, Rats veers down a dusty road and down into a bowl undoubtedly scooped
out by an enormous meteor, at an enormously distant time. The center of the bowl is a barren plain,
surrounded by crackling forcewalls and one means of
entry… a great, Gothic iron gate. Within
the forcewalls is a vast junkyard of vehicles –
spaceships, mag cars, hovercars and bikes; numerous
items whose origin or purpose Turpin can’t discern. Then, he slaps Broonzy
on the back of the neck, directing his attention to what seems the scrapyard’s
newest salvage prize… the Aegelweiss!
Rats
leans on the horn – a disembodied voice
replies.
“Go 'way!”
“That’s Junkyard Tony,”
the gambler turns – “he’s an okay jim
but a little strange, you know? Probl’y comes from being out here all alone ‘cept for his knafes and his junk…
it's me! Rats! Open up!”
He keeps honking until the
gates groan open, then steers the hovercar around
grotesque pillars of junk until he pulls up in front of a rusting trailer. An
indescribably dirty, wild-haired mechanic in goggles, a hyde
where the motley mongrels in him have mostly shaped his face, while his frame
is nearly plud, though short and squat – heavily
muscled and clothed only in gray shorts, a shirt that might once have been
plaid and laceless boots. Snarling and cavorting in circles around him
are four of his knafes… their bodies are canine, but
their faces are almost human, though the sounds which lurch from their mouths
are distinctly animal.
Junkyard Tony stops in
front of the Chevette, kicks two of the knafes away from a front wheel, and pulls his goggles away
from his face to reveal ink-black, hostile eyes. “Better have money, this time, Rats.”
“Would I have made the
trip if I didn’t?” Rateyes
Rateyes
dangles a solcard in front of the junkyard boss,
pulls it away as Tony reaches for it and waves it about for a few moments
before the dirty dank snatches it.
“All
yours,” Rateyes gestures. “Just lemme meth up or… wanna buy a hovercar?”
“Hunnert
soys,” Junkyard Tony snaps, over his shoulder.
“See what I mean about no
future in thievery?” Rats tells the snakers. “We’ll
pass!” he shouts – his high-pitch voice rising in inflection
as well as volume… a screech that could break glass. Turpin is motivated to cover his ears.
Rats guides the Chevette around more junk to a straightaway, at the end of
which looms a dull white starship exhaling frosty little bubbles from its skin,
apparantly comprised of living bone.
“What a jammin’ antique,” Broonzy
snorts. “Must be… two centuries
old? Three? You restoring it for
some museum.”
“I'm restoring it for me.”
“Say…” Turpin leans
forward to challenge him.
“I own this bird. Well,
almost…” Rateyes allows, “Tony's letting me work on
it out here, so long as I keep up the payments. Which I've been able to do,
courtesy of Kinkadou!
C’mon!”
And he vaults over the
door of the hover the way that wise guys on the Qube do – having yanked an old fashioned carpetbag out from
under the seat. “C’mon!” he urgest Broonzy and Turpin again.
Carefully opening and
closing the door, Broonze straightens up to his full
height and rubs his eyes in disbelief.
“What a pile of rawth! You’ve changed my mind… used to think you
were a loser, just another down and out. But you ain't!
You're a full-fledged nutcase! Makhbool!” he adds,
pointing at Rats like a sorcerer hurling his curse.
“My feelings are wounded,”
Rateyes sighs, head down as if searching for
something in the dust. “But I'll lay that off on the Regency propaganda. You do know why they
stopped making boneships and condemned all the ones
still operable more’n a century back?”
“Cuz
they kept breaking down?” Broonze snorted.
Rateyes
shook his head – more in sorrow, as it seems, than anger, “Cause the smugshurts
couldn't touch 'em.
Too jammin' fast, and
they handles like butter. could hit a snake on all
sorts of angles, cause your jamming smurts to spin
out or hit the rim.” He flashes a laserlock and a ramp unfolds, affording the interlopers a
way into the vehicle. Regency couldn't
stop the smugglers, so they outlawed their boneships
instead.”
“Fascinating story,” Broonzy scoffs. “Fascinating!”
Rats, already up two
steps, turns, brightening. “Really?”
“Pile o'rawth!”
the snaker disabuses him. “Even if it's like you say, why sink a jammin' sol into a ship that's illegal out of the gate?”
“All depends on the purpose,
gentlemen,” Rateyes taps his head, “all depends on
the plan! And the law ain’t worth the jammin’ sqube it’s written on, less you get caught. Faq?”
He turns and disappears
into the bowels of the boneship before either of the snakers can reply, leaving Turpin and Broonzy
staring at each other until, finally, the latter throws up his hands.
“What the jam… I'm only an
eighteen-time loser!”
The boneship
was close and cluttered, but with the membranes surrounding its skin turned
sideways, it doesn’t smell like most of the keefts Turp served on since he started riding the snakes… it has a
clean, windblown desert smell, like something that has died a century ago, its
skeleton picked clean until there’s nothing left to give off an odor, he reckons,
growing morbid again with a premonition of bad things about to come of
this. It doesn’t help that the lume Rats has left behind has lost its charge – forcing
them to pinch their fingers and bump into each other in the engineering
corridor which, however clean-smelling, is close and cramped. An occasional curse punctuates the gloom…
“Thing must’ve been
operated by jammin’ midgets,” Broonzy
snarls, after banging his head against some unseen, dark apparatus on the
ceiling. He jerks open one of the
cabinets hiding the wiring and a rawthpak of small,
dark insects hurries out, running in confused circles and standing on hindlegs to hiss at the giants who’ve disturbed their
peace.
“Sorry, man… here’s
another drive's rusted out,” Broonzy shook his
head. “Too bad!
Looks presto on the outside and the deck's better than on the Aegelweiss, but all the guts are rotten.”
“I know. I know!
I'm working on it…” Rateyes appeals. “Piece by piece.
Hard to find help that won't get wasted and blab… two thirds the jims on the Baawl are wasted on
roar… and I gotta raise money for parts at the track
and casinos. Hey, I never said it wasn't a job like… you know… a job of
work! But it'll be worth it… it’ll work
out…”
Turpin has been content to
hang back and let Broonzy snark
at the wretchedness of the thing but, after Rats brings up the topic of work,
he just can’t keep his feelings to himself.
“How is a rotted out, illegal boneship worth
more than drizzit?”
“Everything will be
revealed in its time, gentlemen.” Rats proclaims, placing a proprietary hand
across the top of the Captain’s chair.
“Everything in its time…”
“Yeah… the thirtieth
century…” Turpin mutters, and thrusts his pinched, bleeding hand into a pocket
of his trousers. A curious revelation
has occurred to him…
“Hey Rats… like… would you
be able to take drives and parts off a tran-class
starship and plug 'em into a boneship?”
“Sure!” replies the little
gambler. “Of course nothing works like
the original drives… but that's why they made 'em
illegal. Trouble is… you leave even the best drives lying around for a century
or two and they degrade…”
“But if I could get you
drive mechanisms off a salvage tranny… been on the rust a couple weeks, no
more…”
“You mean…” Broonzy realizes…
Turp
tugs a little card out into the gloom of the boner. “Forgot to turn in my Aegelweiss
passcard,” he shrugs.
“This fellow Tony, guess he's been chargin’ a heather’s hairbox for the spare
parts, right?” Rats
groans and nods. “But how's his
security?”
Rateyes
picks up a piece of wire, puts it in his mouth and
began chewing, thoughtfully. “Tony’s
guns, his knafes.
The usual, more or less. Less if he happens to
be sleeping… they all sleep together in this rawthin
pile of blankets, positively
The gambler kicks at the
ground, raising a minicloud of red dust. “Might work!
go
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