John DeChancie is a well-known author of science fiction and fantasy. He is most famous for his Skyway Trilogy (Starrigger, Red Limit Freeway, Paradox Alley) and his seriocomic fantasy adventure series beginning with Castle Perilous and running to nine volumes. His short pieces have appeared in many magazines and paperback original anthologies. Living in Los Angeles, he is at work writing more fiction in addition to screenplays and teleplays. He has a background in music, TV and film production, and was the 2005 recipient of the Forrest J. Ackerman Award for lifetime achievement Science Fiction.
THE WRECKERS
John DeChancie
IF YOU’VE NEVER SEEN A PORTAL ARRAY, a grouping of jet-black cylinders towering over, say, a desert plain on some lifeless, god-bereft planetoid, you might think it pretty strange to be seeing between four and eight huge cylinders lined up on both sides of the road, all rotating at unimaginable speeds. Which you can’t actually see. They’re blacker than black, and they hover only a few meters off the ground. They are not quite as dense as a neutron star. You are amazed that the entire plain, hey, the entire planet, is not sucked into them and crushed to nothing.
They are impressive. Even a little scary. To some people, flat out frightening, especially when you know the vehicle you’re in will go barreling between them, a risky thing to be doing; because any slight deviation from the center line or any dynamic of speed could send you into the cylinders, to be crushed into a degenerate electron gas. And with a flash and a bang. When you see them on the approach against the sky, as I am right now, you can appreciate that they are real, solid objects, despite being composed of “projected programmable matter.”
I’m not going into the question what distinguishes that exotic stuff from all the other kinds of weird matter, or wrangle over what is “real” or virtual and what isn’t, but the reason the planet isn’t sucked into the cylinders is that the matter is programmed not to do that. It is not like ordinary matter. It doesn’t really exist, in a certain sense, because it is composed of virtual particles.
Esoteric physics is not my subject. I flunked out of the upper level courses at university. I am content to be the truck driver I was born to be. I mean, what else could the son of the legendary Jake McGraw become but a truck jockey? At least that’s what the trailer-truck always tells me.
He’s my dad; and he is my truck’s AI, too.
Stands for Asshole Intellectual, Jake often reminds me.
“You should engage the cruise control, Sammy. The road ices up on this planet.”
“Isn’t it a moon of that gas giant over there?” I say, pointing to the big multicolored crescent hanging in an ochre sky above some rocky crags.
“Moon, planetoid, dwarf planet. It’s just another barren interchange world. Like Pluto.”
“Wasn’t Pluto the last planet discovered in Earth’s solar system?”
“Way before my lifetime,” Jake says. “Twentieth century, I think.”
“You spent time in that period, though, didn’t you?”
“Nineteen sixty-four. The year after John Fitzgerald Kennedy died.”
“You were quite the time travelling fool. Who was John Fitzgerald Kennedy?”
“Thirty-fifth president of the United States.”
“History wasn’t my subject.”
“Nothing was your subject, dunce.”
“Dunce? Nickname of Duns Scotus, the medieval scholastic philosopher. He was no ignoramus, and neither am I.”
“Don’t remind me you were a philosophy major. The most useless college degree in the galaxy. The galaxies.”
“Jake, you’re so White Male North American, you fairly reek it.”
“Go on, disrespect me, you anti-cybernetic bastard.”
“Whoa! If I’m a bastard,
what does that make Mom?”
“Beautiful. I may be your dad, but I’m an AI as well.”
“Then take over and shoot this aperture. I need coffee.”
“Go ahead, will do. Just like we said.”
Instead of moving immediately to the aft cabin and firing up the Javatron, I sit there for a minute, watching what Jake does to the controls and the friction index of the rig’s rollers. It always amazes me that, as good a driver as I think I am (to hell with modesty), Jake always proves to be better. I always admire the subtle adjustments he makes to my settings, especially on a portal approach.
“Uh-huh,” I say, nodding. He likes more friction on the rollers and a slightly slower approach speed. He also likes a really tight Z-pinch in the plasma confinement. He was never much of a mechanic (and who is when modern engines get more and more esoteric every month?) but he has a solid grasp of the ways gadgets work. And he was, at the risk of repeating myself, a mythic truck operator, as good as any human being can be without AI assistance. Skyway rigs were a little less sophisticated in his day. You still needed to be an excellent driver then. And some of that transferred over to his Entelechy Matrix, the “casting” that was made of his mind.
I get up and make my way to the spacious aft-cabin (Jake told me to get the extra-roomy cab—you could carry passengers back here) and I start to make coffee but my curiosity gets the better of me. Just what is he doing different? I don’t get back in the driver’s perch, electing to park my butt in one of the “hitchhiker” seats just aft of the driver. I watch the pretty lights dance on the dash, then flick a switch and get a personal display in front of my gaze. I eyeball the readings. Okay, so he feathered back on this, boosted this other, and completely maxed out this doohicky. Why?
But that’s what separates good driving from mediocre. This, that, and the other, nudging here and there.
The rotating cylinders get taller and taller until the tops edge out of sight above the viewscreen. No aperture to see, ’cause they can’t really be seen, and suddenly, silently, and with only a slight bump, we have leaped a hundred light years and are on the surface of another world. It is night, but we are still on the Interstellar Skyway.
We are now on an earthlike planet, I could tell more or less by instinct, but it is dark, so no scenery except the blurry, bleary stuff the screen showed by night vision. No fun, and you can’t really make anything out.
If you’ve never been out to the Skyway, the road between the worlds, you still probably know something about it, earthbound as you are. No one knows who built it. Jake says he knows, because shortly before I was born, he traveled to the end of the road and found…
Well, he never told anyone what he found. Besides, it’s a legend. I never believed it. That, Jake explains, is why he never tried telling anybody what he found. But the stories are many and speculation is rampant.
After half a minute, I get up to finish the kitchen chores, but I see something ahead
and lurch forward to make a mad dash for the driver’s seat.
“Jake, look out!”
The road seems to veer sharply right of a line of vegetation and into an improbable turn, one atypical for the starslab, which has turns you can take at Mach 1, if you are foolish enough.
But Jake doesn’t fall for it. He continues straight and stays on the true road, not the one faked up to make us wreck. All the wreckers need is about forty meters of something black and wide—screencloth usually, showing just the roadway surface, or, if you want to go low-tech, tarp, boards, pigment, whatever, to lay down to make a decoy road, and brush and debris to cover up the real one. If a human is driving, he may not be quick enough on the instruments to detect the difference. It is a matter of seconds. Perceive the ruse, make a split-second decision.
We crash through the line of shrubbery.
“This is it,” I say as clouds of brush and woodchips fly up from our rollers.
“This is it,” Jake agrees.
The true road is clear ahead. I had to compliment whoever did this particular fake road thing. Right out of some ancient cartoons I used to watch as a kid. I would have fallen for it, driven right off the road into the darkness and probably into a chasm.
“Why did they put it so close to the arrival point?”
“Because truckers are too busy checking out local conditions. They aren’t watching the roadbed. And they’re at cautious speed. That way the rig doesn’t end up in too many pieces, along with what it’s hauling.”
“Cautious or not, the wrecks kill a lot of drivers.”
“Drivers don’t have a chance. Kill ’em off first thing, if they survive.”
“Nasty. They drag the cargo away, roll up the screencloth…”
“And Bob’s yer uncle. No evidence of blockage for the Bugs to find.”
“Police are never around when you need ’em.”
“Who needs Roadbugs?” Jake says.
“Oh, I don’t know,” I reply. “Otherwise the Skyway’d be interrupted in a million places.”
“Roadbugs are brutal. People would find a way to keep the road open, I’ve always maintained. Seek your own justice, son. Don’t rely on alien machines to act as police.”
“There goes that utopian tendency in you, Dad.”
“I’m an idealist.”
“And you think a philosophy major is useless.”
“Shut up, go drink your coffee, and come back here and steer this rig.”
The signs come up pretty quick and there are a lot of them, far off the roadway as signs have to be by Roadbug “law.” They were big signs, easy to see.
NEW JAMAICA INN 50K
NEW JAMAICA INN 20K
DON’T PASS THE
NEW JAMAICA INN 10K
STOP, RELAX, GAMBLE A LITTLE AT NEW JAMAICA INN
STOP, STAY OVER, GAMBOL AT NEW JAMAICA INN
And so forth, counting down the last ten kilometers with ever more clever puns, wordplay, and double entendre.
Finally, it heaves into view, out on a level heath about a kilometer away. Doesn’t live up to its hype, but it is garish and glitzy and bright enough for a cross between a Christmas tree and a nuclear blast. We pull into the lot and park. The engine dies whining as it scrams itself.
“Hungry?” Jake asks.
I snort. “Nah.” Peering out the viewport, I go on, “You know, I couldn’t get a feel for the countryside.”
“I could see fine. Reminds me a little of Cornwall.”
“That on Earth?”
“Yup, west England, along the coast.”
“You were there?”
“Hey, I was born on that planet, remember?”
I peer out into the foggy night. “Seashore around here? I’m starting to get a whiff of salt. You’re letting some air in, I believe.”
“You are right twice in a row,” Jake says.
I believe Jake, but I do a quick atmosphere check anyway—just because it smells nice out there doesn’t mean a thing—and check local weather. I dress for cold, wet conditions, because it looks rather dreary. It is raining, barometer is low. No major storm on scanners but there is a cloud ceiling herding misty, chilly moisture in from the sea.
Jake does a biological survey of the air. Some planets have nasty microorganisms that can take you down fast. You have to know what you are up against vis á vis the native flora and fauna.
In my duster, I trudge across the macadam. Three other rigs are parked, along with a couple of passenger buggies, some sleek and modern, a couple battered utility carriers looking like they’d done heavy agricultural work.
I stop, pivot, and look back at my rig. I always marvel at what a behemoth it is. The reason is that if you are going to haul cargo over light-years, you have to haul a lot of it to make any money. And the rig must have an apartment in it if you are to have any kind of normal existence, with the comforts of home. You are going to be on the road a lot.
I turn toward the casino again and get blinded. My goggles adjust, and I can see again. The place is a fleshpot painted with moving images of nude dancing girls, boys, in between, and neutral. I like baseline girls. Everyone looks human, though, at least. But you never know. Surries are so good these days…actually, I wouldn’t care much…never mind.
It looked as though you could get almost anything here, legal, illegal, moral and immoral. Looks like an open town.
I go in.
It’s a barn inside filled with sparkle, glitter, flashing lights, revolving wheels
of fortune, animated holos, animated this, animated that. There is a lot of animation. And music.
And noise: gonging, bonging, clanging, doodling, whistling, bing, bong, bing, bang. Constantly. All casinos are alike, no matter what part of the galaxy you are in. And they haven’t changed much over the centuries, from what I gather. These days they don’t have real tables, wheels, boards, pits, and hard bouncing dice, but they do have VR for anything you want to play: faro, craps, baccarat, roulette, blackjack, slots—plus games I don’t know and cannot make out.
Far over on the side sit serious card players, playing a game that takes real skill. They’re using hard-copy, retro cards.
I go straight for the slots. No skill, all luck. I am not an experienced gambler. Not much of one at all. Despite my natural talent for psychokinesis and clairvoyance, of which I have none but would like to have both in a crap game, I lose a modest amount of colonial scrip. Funny money, anyway. Who cares.
I go to each area and do one game: craps, roulette, baccarat, faro, blackjack and something called Swenai. Insert question mark here; I can’t describe it ’cause I don’t understand it; can’t even pronounce it. I lose about two thousand colonial in all.
Time for a drink, but I don’t have to sidle up to the long, long bar. A striking female slinks up to me and asks if she can bring me a drink. I say sure. Surprise me with something local in a tall glass.
She returns with something exotic. It’s mauve, but tastes fine, a bit like bourbon but probably faux. At any rate, it’s alcoholic. I drink and look at her, for she’s still standing there, smiling. At first I thought she was nude, but now I can see some cover, looking like tawny fur, sort of. It matches her café au lait skin, but maybe it’s a cross between fur and cloth. It might be screencloth, and it seems you can see right through but you can’t, not really.
“What are you hauling?” she asks. Her face is oval and high-born, but the voice comes from the homeless shanty towns.
“Never ask a starrigger that.”
She shrugs. “I do all the time. Haven’t I seen you before? You look familiar.”
“My dad told me he met a woman on the road who said that to him. Claimed to know him, to have hung out with him. He never saw her before in his life.”
“Who was she?”
“My mother.”
“Isn’t that funny. I feel as if I know you. Don’t know why.”
She and I settle into a booth in the bar.
“Tell me about it,” I say.
Her grin widens. “About what?” Her knee has found its way over to nudge my thigh.
“What the deal is here
We nearly wrecked coming through the portal. Somebody tricked up the road, tried to fool us.”
“Wreckers,” she says, nodding. “They’re on the starslab, not just on this world, for sure, here and there.”
“Here, for sure.”
“Somewhere back up the road, probably.”
“Didn’t see any structures, no farms, nothing.”
“There are caves along the coast, that I know. Another drink?”
After draining the last of the cocktail, I hand the glass to her and say, “Sure. And can you get me into a good poker game?”
“Can do, starrigger.”
“By the way, what’s your name?”
“Selena.”
I’m a fair poker player, as long as my opponents are lousy. The table is lousy that night, on that foggy, green seaside world. Comes morning, and I am almost ready to doze off with a full house in my hand, three fours and a pair of sevens. I have been losing all night, but now I am winning big. I slurp on my seventh drink. One more drink and I will own the planet.
“I call,” the big hayseed across the table announces. I’ve taken his last colonial. He’s all in. I am all in. Well, not exactly. The house has advanced me a hundred thousand. So I’m all in, and then some.
I coax the last sip out of my colorful libation, turquoise this time, put down the glass, flip over my cards. Pretty damn good hand. But it isn’t enough.
A thin, nervous-looking geek I didn’t even realize was sitting at the table says, “Straight flush, hearts, eight through queen.”
Where had he come from? I look. Pretty damn good, too. Trouble is, I discarded the nine of hearts.
The dealer cackles. “Read them and weep, truckdriver.”
I stare at the thin guy with the winning hand. I swear he was the waiter an hour or two before. I say so. Employees can game?
The dealer fixes me with a dark gimlet eye. He is the owner, judging by the way he has been ordering people around. Employees have been coming up to him all night, ostensibly about their duties, but doubtless also to give him cards or take them and pass them. These are very basic cardsharp tricks, and they aren’t bad at it, because the drinks and the noise, the B-girls, and all the milling about conspire to dull my perceptions. I only strongly suspect they are flimflamming me. But a little fly buzzes in my ear, and I know the whole place is cheating.
“Are you implying something, kamrada?” He has a thick accent but his Intersystem is fluent.
“Yeah,” I say, “I’m implying the shit out of it. Why don’t we look at the security feed.”
The dealer gets to his feet. “We are not going to show you any security feed. We’ll put a lien on your rig, and we’ll have the constable prevent your leaving this planet. Not until you pay.”
“I got my own security feed.”
He shakes his head dismissively. “A nanodrone? We have scans for nanos. Don’t bluff us. You are not very good at it.”
I tilt my chin up.
“See that tiny botfly buzzing around? There. No, there. See? You’re not scanning that. Otherwise you would have swatted it with your micro, the big mosquito moth or whatever.”
He looks up. He doesn’t see; then the fly buzzes by his ear. “Merte!” He looks at me. “Very slick, kamrada.”
“Damn right. Isn’t that right, Jake?” I call into the air.
“Help meee, help meeeeeee!” Jake says in the tiniest voice imaginable, zipping around.
Nobody gets the joke. Jake is always making arcane references to things that no one understands. I know this is a joke reference, but I myself don’t get it. My dad is a weirdo, ...
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