The Pleasure Tube (17 page)

We pass down the main straight. The pits are filled with cars, jump-suited mechanics, spectators. The crowd in the grandstand is up, watching the distance. The black smoke rises off to the west, not far off to the west now, a narrow column near the ground fanning into a growing cloud.

We swing through a wide left. Ahead is the shorter straight, the chute of its exit hairpin blocked by a welter of emergency vehicles, more than fifty people milling on the track, the brake lights of the ambulance flash red. Beyond is wreckage. I cannot see Massimo's car; every racer on the infield border is squat Formula E.

The smoke is deeply black, dense, rising slowly in its own weight. Chemicals ooze over the road surface at the inner edge of the crowd down from the crown of the track. I slide the Lancia, barely moving, through on the infield edge, on the infield. There is a single, burning car on end against the concrete outer wall of the curve, the wall itself is smeared black for a distance, the flames are orange-red, searing, the car itself invisible in its compact fireball, the acrid smoke wafts around—and
whump,
there is a minor explosion. I think, Fuel, combustion, Massimo, while a piece of crumpled sheet metal catches the periphery of my vision. Clambering out of the cockpit, I see scattered fragments on the infield. Blood-red. Ferrari.

I push my way through the crowd, spectators have somehow gotten onto the track, the car is still burning, upended and burning with orange-red flames, the heat is palpable and intense. Chemicals now plume toward the track wall in arcs, the fireball abating, but the smoke for a minute becomes a dense gray fog in which we are all consumed.

The car falls to its side, its cockpit creased, charred metal unmistakably the Ferrari—its frame folded on its driver's side—the flames begin to settle under the load of foam. I have searched the crowd with a sinking heart for Massimo, don't want to look at the wreckage, but do, and focus, and see: the mangled sleeve of a jump suit protruding from the wrenched metal, limp as if empty. Metal crushed like wadded paper. I have to turn away.

"Who is it?" Collette is asking. "Rawley, is it that man?"

I stumble past and she turns from the fire, I feel myself gagging from the sharp odor, look into the blank reflective faces of vehicle crews, see in their faces the strange mixture of satisfaction and awe in the face of destruction so complete.

I have walked down the track. Higher toward the wall at the chute to the turn there are two wide black swaths smeared on the concrete. Someone is moving toward me through the thin edge of the crowd, a technician rolling an instrument along the road surface with fierce attention. The technician wears thin-rimmed glasses, steps carefully, absorbed in following the dead center of the lower swath along the banked surface, the ticks of his instrument just audible through the welter of other noise.

"Skid?" I yell to him, my voice uncontrollably cracking. "A hundred meters of skid?"

"More than that," he yells back without looking up. "Don't look like near enough, wasn't near enough. That machine was at two hundred when it hit."

At the
hairpin,
I am thinking, the decreasing radius hairpin, the slowest curve on the track.

A hundred meters away the wreckage is still smoldering; ash and acrid smoke hang in the air. The site is encircled by red flashing lights, yellow lights, blue lights, while eerie figures in silver flameproof suits approach behind their own chemical clouds, making a way for a white van backing perpendicularly up the track to the Ferrari.

I look down at my feet. Squat down, look closely in a numb daze at the wide, distinct tire marks on the road surface—rubber seared onto concrete, welded. I see only waste at first, then for an instant I am frighteningly disoriented. The rubber fragments vulcanized into oozing tar masses gather on the wreckage side of the texture of the concrete; I feel reversed on the track.

No, I think, this is not exactly a skid.

I try to follow the line with my eyes: it weaves twice, then disappears at the thin edge of the crowd. I look beyond at the wreckage from a higher point of the track.

The flames have abated, but not the smoke. Two of the men in fireproof suits are bringing the body out while the other two ease the creased cockpit with long rods as tall as they are used as levers. The body: limbs hang loose, the flameproof driving suit is streaked with char. For one wild moment I am thinking,
Survived, survived,
but before I can even move, the ambulance attendants have opened a large dark bag, a body bag. Massimo is laid within, his lifeless body sealed by one of the white-suited figure's long pull of a cord.

Collette is kneeling on the infield edge of the track, up from her heels as if in prayer. Her body shakes and she sways, shudders. Her hands at her stomach, she leans forward and vomits, not once but again and again and again, shuddering and swaying, again and again and again.

"Better? Better now?" I am wiping Collette's forehead with linen from the ambulance, soothing her and cooling her face with the wet cloth. Her hair has gone stringy, lipstick gone, we are both of us sweating from the sun and our states at the grass of the infield—she is sitting now, quietly sobbing, her face warm, slightly puffy.

"This goddamned
place,"
Collette sobs in sudden anger. "I hate this place, I hate this place."

Her dark clothes are in disarray, she lifts her knees and sobs into her hands. She has long passed the point of caring about herself, her naked legs glistening brown in the sun.

"You've been through enough," I say. "Come."

"Oh, Rawley," she sobs.

"Lean on me," I say. I want to walk her away, but she seems not to want to move. I hold her warm body next to mine—she is pressed against me and clings, I can feel her breasts pressed against me, I can feel her heart beating heavily.

"I'm through," she says. "I'm going to quit. I don't care what they make me do, this is my last trip. I can't take it any more, I just can't
take
it. Rawley, I've seen too much of this. I don't want to ever see people destroying themselves again. Never again."

I wonder. I think about getting on as a commercial pilot somewhere—SoAm, Africa. A different future. Not like this, I've had enough of this, this place, my life since Guam.

Collette is turning hysterical now, her chest is shuddering with sobs. I hold her tightly, as if to make my strength her own. The smoldering, steaming wreckage, white wisps of chemical fumes, fill me with a sinister chill, anger. Collette is shaking against me. "Oh, God, oh, Jesus Jesus God, woman," she says to herself, "does it have to be this way?"

I help her up and toward the Lancia, walk her slowly a few steps, and she wants to walk on her own, then leans on me. She is a tall woman, her shoulders only a flat hand lower than mine—my arm around her, she naturally turns into me. Beyond her distress her womanhood bleeds into her walk, her hip rhythm against mine, her breasts palpable through my thin shirt. Her breathing is regular now, the wreckage behind us. Rich liquid red in the hazy sun, the Lancia makes me think of her and Massimo at once, the feel of her warm body, his blood burned black on the legs of his driving suit.

I could go, I think. I could stash the Lancia, be on the road at first light tomorrow morning and through the perimeter before Taylor was ever awake, long before the office end-processing my appeal could act.

I wonder what's out there. My impulse is to run south. The location maps I've seen show wide access through the perimeter west of the trans-port, heavy traffic to the adjoining city; once through, just trust my sense of direction and hope for Mexico. I remember stories of a dried-up Rio Grande, a border like Swiss cheese—it excites me wondering what it's like out there.

At the car I kiss Collette to comfort her, and myself, I suppose; once our lips touch, the kiss becomes deeper, longer, a loss into one another. She whispers that she wants me, more than anything she wants me.

We make love in a private lounge in the warehouse, lock ourselves in. We hold each other, have sex with a passion that can only come from such close pain. We quietly shower together, and afterward, sitting in the silence of the room, I tell Collette of my idea to bolt from LasVenus once I'm ordered back to Guam tomorrow morning—to stash the Lancia tonight and to take it through the perimeter before Taylor even knows I'm packed.

As I tell her, her expression changes from loss to determination, and a brightness comes into her eyes. She takes a deep breath. "I'm coming along," she says. "If you'll let me, if you want me, I'm coming along."

In the middle of the night I wake from a deep sleep, shivering and sweating at once. I've seen something. The vision of the woman suspended in space, arms spread as if crucified, her features indistinguishable, but the void beyond as vividly present as the sink I lean over now, its presence palpable and vast, cold and endless.

I look up into the mirror, the blood has gone from my face. The mirror reflects the mirrored wall behind me, the back of my head, and I watch the mirror in horror as the room in the room in the room becomes a corridor of infinite regress.

I sink to my knees, shaking, my hands slipping on the cold rim of the sink. I fight to catch my breath, suck in a draft of chemical air, and vomit into the john.

DA8//5:42:19 ... 20 ... 21 ... 22—
the digits blink from my chronometer as I adjust its strap on my wrist, its grasp the pull of a familiar hand; I have not worn the Seiko since Guam. I awoke twenty minutes ago at first light, Erica facing the window/wall with her back to me, her arm cantered over her face, one knee up and her foot hanging over the edge of the recliner. Collette lies toward me, the flat of her hand on my chest, her breathing almost inaudible, twisted toward me so we lie thigh against thigh—yet her touch is as light as the thin blanket's. Her lips are vaguely pursed in sleep, and as I kiss her, her eyes come open and she slowly, languidly, smiles, then moves against me; the two of us are naked under the satin sheet. We make slow and quiet love without waking Erica, who tosses once, moves with a muffled grunt when we leave the recliner, who lies there still sprawled on her stomach deep in her rest. I feel good now—so much better in general, I think, since I've decided to go. Collette moves toward the kitchen, she wants to put together a basket of chicken, fruit, cheese, wine, and the rest, enough for a few days.

Erica doesn't know our plans. I agree with Collette that Erica might try to cover for us if she did know. We will tell her that we are going to spend the early morning watching the Grand Prix and boarding theTube for today's late-morning liftoff from there.

The sun is rising and I go out to the small balcony to look beyond the city as Collette wakes her. The air is still and the haze light as the sun shows a liquid and brilliant line on the rough horizon, its enormous mass tucked behind a range of mountains, the line rising into a dome above them with the incipient thrust of a launch. The atmosphere is shifting from gray to spectral and vivid red. This is the farthest I have been able to see. The city in its low urban fog stretches far into what looks to be scrubby low hills rising to foothills to a mountain range in the east, forming a north-south line of ridge. To the southeast, roadways are obscured in the steel-gray fog, but the land looks ripe for a road laid flat through opening desert country.

Collette is wearing a pale green bandana, a pale green blouse, and dark shorts, a walking snapshot from a picnic. I tell her to pack some stimulants in case we need them. She already has.

channel 393//IN IN IN

sign key 0208//SCHOLE

telex medium//

route:   Guam Utama Sta.

           
Midway

           
Honolulu

           
SoCal Center

           
LasVenus Local (des.)
 

debugging rider: erase if intercept//only 393

ATTN:    RAWLEY VOORST

FIRST//ICARUS ENCODING IS CLEARLY A BLIND. SECOND//SOMETHING IS BREAKING HERE. I THINK SOMETHING HAS CRACKED.

ALL SCICOM SCREENING TEAMS IN CONFERENCE UNDER SECURITY, NOT MILITARY SECURITY BUT SCICOM'S. YOU REMEMBER THOSE NAZIS.

BASE CONFINEMENT FOR ALL DAEDALUS CONSOLE PERSONNEL LIFTED BUT NO RUMORS FROM PERSONNEL OFFICE OF LEAVES. SAW KNUTH, HE SAYS ALL FUTURE INTERVIEWS RESCHEDULED.

OF COURSE I REMEMBER JEANNIE D.

WERHNER

"What do you think it means?"

"I don't know," I tell Collette. "Makes me nervous. I'd like to know before we take off. But I don't think we have a choice about waiting. Wait another hour, maybe." I honestly don't know what to do. I know we'll have to pass a gate on the way out, I have tried to put running it out of my mind. I tell Collette she could always stay. "For what?" she says. "Stay for what?"