Maxie’s Demon Read online

  MAXIE’S DEMON

  Michael Scott Rohan

  www.sfgateway.com

  Enter the SF Gateway …

  In the last years of the twentieth century (as Wells might have put it), Gollancz, Britain’s oldest and most distinguished science fiction imprint, created the SF and Fantasy Masterworks series. Dedicated to re-publishing the English language’s finest works of SF and Fantasy, most of which were languishing out of print at the time, they were – and remain – landmark lists, consummately fulfilling the original mission statement:

  ‘SF MASTERWORKS is a library of the greatest SF ever written, chosen with the help of today’s leading SF writers and editors. These books show that genuinely innovative SF is as exciting today as when it was first written.’

  Now, as we move inexorably into the twenty-first century, we are delighted to be widening our remit even more. The realities of commercial publishing are such that vast troves of classic SF & Fantasy are almost certainly destined never again to see print. Until very recently, this meant that anyone interested in reading any of these books would have been confined to scouring second-hand bookshops. The advent of digital publishing has changed that paradigm for ever.

  The technology now exists to enable us to make available, for the first time, the entire backlists of an incredibly wide range of classic and modern SF and fantasy authors. Our plan is, at its simplest, to use this technology to build on the success of the SF and Fantasy Masterworks series and to go even further.

  Welcome to the new home of Science Fiction & Fantasy. Welcome to the most comprehensive electronic library of classic SFF titles ever assembled.

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  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Gateway Introduction

  Contents

  Chapter One: No Right Turn

  Chapter Two: Green Light

  Chapter Three: Heavy Traffic

  Chapter Four: Obey Signals

  Chapter Five: Proceed with Caution

  Chapter Six: Slippery Surface

  Chapter Seven: Objects in Mirror May Appear

  Chapter Eight: Czech Speed Now

  Chapter Nine: Exit Closed

  Chapter Ten: Emergency Braking

  Chapter Eleven: Dip in Road

  Website

  Also By Michael Scott Rohan

  Acknowledgments

  Dedication

  Appendix

  About the Author

  Copyright

  CHAPTER ONE

  No Right Turn

  SEX IS ALL RIGHT, but it’s nothing like the real thing.

  I pressed my foot down gingerly. I almost jumped at the snarl that answered me, deep enough to feel, not hear. It was the old electric feeling. Suddenly I was lord of limitless power. The bucket seat hugged me in white hide and made me a part of the machine, brain to a bigger, stronger body whose every quiver I felt and controlled. Now I was the strong man, the wild one. I was the one who set the pace.

  Out ahead of me they stretched, fat, docile slugs in dotted ranks, and I saw myself weaving and winding a stream of fire between them, leaving a trail of dropping jaws and wet pants. The road stretched out arrow-straight ahead to where it met the sky, and I felt I could just ground the pedal and go shooting off it like a launching ramp, straight into the sunset. But there was all that bloody traffic in the way, taillights flocking like mindless fireflies; and I had to be careful. Didn’t want to draw attention to myself, did I? I’d gone carefully this far, light on the throttle, low on the revs. Draw back; rein in. There were cameras and things. Don’t stand out. Just another commuter, however sleek the car.

  There’d be time enough for thrills, later.

  I did an elegant side-swerve, all four-wheel drift, to avoid an unwary citizen in the outer lane, a sardine gaping out of his conventional little can, carved him up neatly on the inside – and swore. I was getting careless already. Leave the plebs alone, boy. Let them gape. Be grey; be glad.

  The back of my neck was itching. Cameras and things – why the hell had I moved out on to the motorway? This bitch coked up at low revs. Speed, that was what I’d been thinking of. Stupid, stupid. If I’d only stuck to the back roads.

  Maybe I could turn off. I searched my memory feverishly, there was one hell of a junction up ahead, wasn’t there? All splits and merges and multiple laning, idiot planning. Cloverleaf hell, as junctions go this was a Venus flytrap.

  I could drop out of sight there, altogether. I reached around for my road atlas on the passenger seat, but my hand lit on the hard little box of the scanner radio beside it. Christ, I hadn’t even turned it on! I flicked the switch, the array of lights flickered, sweeping up and down the frequencies. A couple of meaningless crackles, and then there was a voice.

  ‘… car checking in – suspect is moving through traffic on the westbound carriageway, I say again westbound, driving recklessly …’ I swore, and stared into my mirror. I couldn’t see anything, but there was so much traffic. A trickle of sweat ran down behind my ear lobe, and the old urges surfaced, swamping all my cool good sense. Never mind whether they meant me! Get moving, now, fast, get away, get out, run run run run run. All the old primeval rat rose up in me, as the boot stamped down into the sewer mud. I floored the pedal and changed up, and up, and a hard hand pressed down on my chest as the car really took off.

  The engine was amidships, behind my head, and the manic bass bellow filled my ears as I was blasted back in my seat. The deep-dish wheel leaped and bucked against my wrists, a battle that hardly had anything to do with direction. It was like wrestling a living will, a maniac writhing any way and all ways. Yet in the midst of it, weaving between citizen cans and rustbucket trucks and trailer units full of freezer-fresh cabbages, fear snatched my eyes back to the mirror and the ice-blue flicker that had awoken in the dusk.

  I couldn’t hear the sound, I didn’t need to. Sickening fear. They were that close, they must have been shadowing me right from the start, practically, waiting so I wouldn’t panic and bolt in the commuter traffic, maybe damage the pretty car. Christ, that meant they’d be ahead of me as well! Waiting to drop a stinger in my path, split the tyres and stop me painlessly …

  We’d bloody well see about that! Cops can’t drive worth a damn. I could outrun them in this, I could hardly do anything else. Just one clear stretch—

  I wrenched the wheel straight-armed, sliding up and down the gears with featherlight jabs on the brakes, no more. I wove a jagged line of swerves and skids and sudden violent braking, I beat crazy riffs of dents and bangs and ditching as the citizens smacked each other. But not me, not one of them touched me, not one!

  Then the balloon burst and fizzled, like all my balloons, always. I hunched behind the wheel, and wailed between my teeth. Why here? Why now? Why me? Why’d they have to be there, the bastards? Why weren’t they out catching real crooks?

  Look at the dash! The citizen who’d shelled out for this classic had never put more than twelve thou on it. Just used it as a weekend runabout, probably, when he was tired of his Roller. Now that was a crime. That was the old man’s kind of thing …

  Sign gantries came sweeping up above me, and batteries of lights – and cameras. I could see them swivelling on their poles, and gave them the finger for their trouble. The flicker was nearer now, though, for all my speed, sweeping blue across the low cockpit roof, filling the mirror. Christ, he was close – how the hell, in a pissy little patrol car? Cops can’t drive.

  We were just past an exit lane. I swung this way and that to shake him, then bore down hard, spinning the soft leather rim, wrenched the car across the lanes, across the shoulder, the grass – bump, crash, sang the six-figure suspension in a spray of dry soil and wee
ds – and out, away up the exit slope, leaving Blueballs skidding into the shrubbery. I twisted around in my seat to gloat.

  The engine retched. The revs sank. Memory, swift-slashing glass shards – a fuel cutoff, if the car overturned and the driver’s weight came off the seat. All Ferraris had them; formula stuff. And I hadn’t much weight, so when I shifted …

  I slammed my backside down hard, but the engine was coughing, misfiring, coking up probably like all these high-revving temperamental—

  And suddenly the screen was full of truck, as if someone threw it at me. Big, bigger, bright green, very, with a red light leering. Me – why bloody well me?

  I slammed on the brakes, I hauled the wheel, I screamed. All very conventional. The car took off. Like a launching ramp. Straight into the sunset. Still screaming.

  It landed. I rose and smacked into the roof. It bounced, I sprawled, the gearstick goosed me playfully, the bright-red bullet ran forward on burst tyres and collapsing suspension, howling like a demon. I must have landed on the bloody fuel switch. We were racing across one lane, then another, brakes screeching, cars swerving, blank faces turned to terror-masks whirled by – and I never guessed, then, that they must be mirroring mine. Another lane, a bump, a crash and a screech of sparking metal and now I really saw the sunset, whirling, spiralling as I spilled and tumbled about, knowing I was falling into a pit of fire. The old man’s hand came up and cuffed me so hard my eyes went dark and whizzing spots of red filled my head, like the atomic models in the college labs. And the turning and bouncing went on and on and on.

  Why didn’t the fire come? Why?

  A breathtaking bang, a slithering roll and agony flared as I was flung about like a cat in a spindrier, my knees and elbows and head whirled out into a wild riff of blows. Then, almost sickeningly, stillness and silence, except for the tick and creak of cooling metal. A burning stench filled my nostrils. Something gave, and I slumped down heavily on my neck, my head driven painfully into my chest. I was upside down, knees by my shoulders, showing my usual aspect to the world.

  And, it began to dawn on me, I was still alive. I might even be all right. Normally I wasn’t too hot on life, but right then it was sunshine and apples and Pimm’s No. 1 – how long since I’d tasted that? – and Celia the Snake Dancer and steak and chips all rolled into one.

  You think that’s improbable? Try hanging arse-upward under about eighty litres of high-octane.

  An awful hope and panic billowed up, and I was thrashing and gibbering to get free, seeing the fireball blossoming above the seat of my jeans any moment. A leg fell free into emptiness and I did an involuntary backward roll. Suddenly there was open air and grass, and I scrabbled like a maniac on all fours to get away, clutching at the ground in gratitude.

  When I ran out of breath I lifted myself on my stinging elbows, and looked around. The car was a mess, crumpled like a beer can in a giant fist, resting upside down on its rollbar in deep grass, wreathed in steam or smoke. Whoever owned this wasn’t going to get his toy back. Serve the bastard right.

  I was sitting on a garden wall, looking at a row of toy cars, telling two littler kids that my dad worked in the factory that made these, and that if they let me take them tonight I could get copies tomorrow. So they picked out all their favourites, of course. A treat to watch them.

  I was looking at the old man’s Jaguar, with its wing stove in against the gatepost, feeling my pants wet – oh hell, they were. Somehow in the middle of that lot I’d lost control. I began to shake violently and my stomach just punched up at me. Explosive vomit arched across the grass.

  Strangely enough I felt better, as if I’d spewed out my terror. At least the bloody machine hadn’t caught. Maybe, I decided with the idiot clarity of the concussed, I ought to get my scanner out; it could be traced to me. I tested one aching knee gingerly, and managed to get to my feet. Then the flare of heat stung my face, and I fell down again. It wasn’t a movie-style explosion, more like elephant gas, but it was fierce enough, a greedy, mocking roar that took all the relief out of being alive. It was telling me just how close I’d come. It was crisping up all the cash I’d been looking forward to, that might have made the difference – not that Ahwaz would have paid out anything like a fair price anyway. He’d just shrug and go on about the shipping costs to the Gulf, the way he always did. He didn’t even have to get nasty. One of these days …

  No. I couldn’t do anything about Ahwaz. I couldn’t do anything about anything. And my legs and arms hurt, a real wincing pain, and the back of my head. I’d bitten my cheek, and my damp pants were riding up. The cash wouldn’t have changed anything. I hugged myself and whimpered.

  I looked up abruptly. Somebody was looking at me, and I hated his guts for it. He was standing there quite calmly, about ten yards away, a smallish man, little bigger than me but more heavily built. His face, as far as I could see it in the gathering dusk, was leathery, outdoor, expressionless; he was leaning on some kind of heavy crooked pole. I stood up again, not too shakily. He didn’t say anything. I glanced around quickly for ways out. Plenty of those; it was an open field, rich-looking strips of some kind of grain – wheat, probably, heavy heads whispering in the breeze over the rumble of the road.

  The car had burst through a low straggly hedge and come to rest in the lush green grass at its edge. Above the hedge, a surprising distance away, I saw the rising strips of bridge and flyover that made up the junction, its lamps a hazy golden curtain in the dusk. I looked nervously for flashing lights at the edge, but there weren’t any. Maybe they hadn’t even seen me spin off! Maybe nobody had!

  But they’d see the fire soon enough, and the scar; I’d crashed like a jet. I’d better get out of here, fast. I looked back; the junction was there too, and its approach roads, glowing beads told endlessly in the dark. And to the other side – Christ, it was all around! This must be a patch in the middle. And yet somehow the junction hadn’t ever seemed that big, as I remembered it.

  I rubbed the back of my head gingerly. It was all a bit much. The yokel still hadn’t said a word, which confirmed everything I’d ever felt about yokels. I looked at him. He looked back, a very ordinary sort of oik in the usual shabby shirt and trousers. Only one thing stood out, a gleam of metal among the grass at the base of that stick; it was a scythe, begod, the huge old-fashioned kind. They still used them on verges, sometimes, but I didn’t like the connotations. He made a pretty grim reaper, at that.

  ‘Ferrari,’ he said suddenly. ‘Ar.’

  Well, that about put the situation in a nutshell, I had to admit. Voice like a corncrake, but a bit more reassuring. At least he didn’t talk in small capitals. I assumed my best upper-crust self-confidence. ‘Yah. Bit of a nasty smash, eh?’

  Silence.

  I shook my head ruefully. ‘I was fond of that car. Still, lucky I’m alive. And nobody’s hurt. It’s burning itself out, it shouldn’t spread to your wheat or whatever it is.’

  Silence. I wanted to kick him, but I wasn’t feeling too stable right then, and he looked tough. Besides, there was that scythe. Play it natural. ‘Look, laddie, I’d better get to a phone, hadn’t I? Is there a pub somewhere around?’

  He jerked his head backward, at what looked like an oak covert, but was actually something like a windbreak. Now I looked, I could just make out a squat roof behind it, thatched probably. ‘Oh. Right. Well, I’ll just – pop over there, then, eh? Er – right.’

  Silence. He stood watching me as I limped off, first into the grain, then, remembering myself, around the verge; but he didn’t say a damn thing more. I decided his parents were first cousins.

  The last thing I wanted was a phone. I wanted to get out of there. I needed a ride out, but trying to thumb one around the junction I’d just spun off would be about as clever as tapdancing in a minefield. But before all that I needed, I really needed, a drink.

  By the time I reached the door I needed it a lot more. There was a path alongside a fence, and I found myself hanging on to the wooden ra
ils. The pub was easy to spot from here, its newish-looking red brick glowing cheerfully in the greyness beneath an ornate thatched roof, very high pitched. It had a sign, but it was swaying in the breeze so much I couldn’t read it – or was it? By the time I reached the post it was quite still.

  The Wheel, it said, with an odd design of an old carved cartwheel apparently hanging against a starry sky. Très, très quaint, I thought giddily; something Biblical. Yay for Ezekiel. I shuffled effortlessly down the path, fumbled with the old-fashioned lever latch and more or less fell inside.

  It was dark as any number of pits, and the resemblance didn’t stop there. The waft of beer was pleasant enough, but it carried a wide range of guest odours, ranging from old locker rooms to a hint that the landlord kept pigs – lots of them and very well fed. I was past caring. As my eyes struggled to adjust, I slumped down on the nearest empty bench I saw, leaned my elbows on the table and sank my head in my hands. The moment my elbows took the weight I yelped and clutched at them, bruised and raw, and sat wincing and swearing. Then I felt a light hand on my shoulder, and realised somebody had said something. I looked up to see a pleasant, plump face, female and quite young, beaming down at me sympathetically through the gloom.

  ‘Had an accident, ’ave yer, moi dear?’

  I nodded painfully. ‘Came off the road a way back. Into the grassfield behind the trees. Lucky I got thrown out, I suppose.’

  The face nodded. ‘Oo yer, moi dear. Could do yerself a proper peck o’ mischief that-wise. And yer could use a drink, I’ll be bound. Just sit yer down there and let Poppy fetch yer a good deep draught. And physic for your sores and scathes, to boot!’

  I nodded thankfully, hardly able to speak. God, what a nice girl! More sympathy than I’d have got from the usual tarts I went out with. I blinked gratefully at her – then I half shot to my feet, forgetting aches and pains and everything else. She was wearing some kind of costume – white cap, long skirt, full blouse – full enough, at that. Why tell? Label her ‘Tavern Wench’ and you’ve got the essentials.