The Mammoth Book of Apocalyptic SF - Mike Ashley [206]
Inside, three seats in a row, the center one commanding the failsafe manual controls. Storage behind the seats.
And in those seats: Aurobindo Bandjalang working the joystick with primitive recreationist glee and vigor, rather than vibbing the trundlebug; Tigerishka on his right and Gershon Thales on his left.
A tense silence reigned.
Tigerishka exuded a bored professionalism only slightly belied by a gently twitching tailtip and alertly cocked tufted ears. Her tigrine pelt poked out from the edges of her plugsuit, pretty furred face and graceful neck the largest bare expanse.
A.B. thought she smelled like a sexy stuffed toy. Disturbing.
She turned her slit-pupiled eyes away from the monotonous racing landscape for a while to gnaw delicately with sharp teeth at a wayward cuticle around one claw.
Furries chose to express non-inheritable parts of the genome of various extinct species within their own bodies, as a simultaneous expiation of guilt and celebration of lost diversity. Although the Vaults at Reboot City Twenty-nine (formerly Svalbard, Norway) safely held samples of all the vanished species that had been foolish enough to compete with humanity during this Anthropocene Age, their non-human genomes awaiting some far-off day of re-instantiation, that sterile custody did not sit well with some. The furries wanted other species to walk the earth again, if only by partial proxy.
In contrast to Tigerishka's stolid boredom, Gershon Thales manifested a frenetic desire to maximize demands on his attention. Judging by the swallow-flight motions of his hands, he had half a dozen virtual windows open, upon what landscapes of information A.B. could only conjecture. (He had tried vibbing into Gershon's eyes but had encountered a pirate privacy wall. Hard to build team camaraderie with that barrier in place but A.B. had chosen not to call out the man on the matter just yet.)
No doubt Gershon was hanging out on keek fora. The keeks loved to indulge in endless talk.
Originally calling themselves the "punctuated equilibriumists", the cult had swiftly shortened their awkward name to the "punk eeks" and then to the "keeks".
The keeks believed that after a long period of stasis, the human species had reached one of those pivotal Darwinian climacterics that would launch the race along exciting if unpredictable new vectors. What everyone else viewed as a grand tragedy - implacable and deadly climate change leading to the Big Biota Crash - they interpreted as a useful kick in humanity's collective pants. They discussed a thousand, thousand schemes intended to further this leap, most of them just so much mad vaponvare.
A.B. clucked his tongue softly as he drove. Such were the assistants he had been handed, to solve a crisis of unknown magnitude.
Tigerishka suddenly spoke, her voice a velvet growl. "Can't you push this bug any faster? The cabin's starting to stink like simians already."
New Perthpatna occupied the site that had once hosted the Russian city of Arkhangelsk, torn down during the Reboot. The closest malfunctioning solar collectors in what had once been France loomed 2,800 kilometers distant. Mission transit time: an estimated thirty-six hours, including overnight rest.
"No, I can't. As it is, we're going to have to camp at least eight hours for the batteries to recharge. The faster I push us, the more power we expend, and the longer we'll have to sit idle. It's a calculated tradeoff. Look at the math."
A.B. vibbed Tigerishka a presentation. She studied it, then growled in frustration.
"I need to run! I can't sit cooped up in a smelly can like this for hours at a stretch! At home, I hit the track every hour."
A.B. wanted to say, I'm