The Mammoth Book of Apocalyptic SF - Mike Ashley [207]
Gerson Thales stopped his air haptics to glare at A.B. His lugubrious voice resembled wet cement plopping from a trough. "What's that comment supposed to imply? That I'm wasting my time? Well, I'm not. I'm engaged in posthuman dialectics at Saltation Central. Very stimulating. You two should try to expand your minds in a similar fashion."
Tigerishka hissed. A.B. ran an app that counted to ten for him using gently breaking waves to time the calming sequence.
"As mission leader, I don't really care how anyone passes the travel time. Just so long as you all perform when it matters. Now how about letting me enjoy the drive."
The "road" actually required little of A.B.'s attention. A wide border of rammed earth, kept free of weeds by cousins to A.B. beard removers, the road paralleled the surprisingly dainty superconducting transmission line that powered a whole city. It ran straight as modern justice toward the solar collectors that fed it. Shade from the rows of eulollypops planted alongside cut down any glare and added coolness to their passage.
Coolness was a desideratum. The further south they traveled, the hotter things would get. Until, finally, temperatures would approach fifty degrees at many points of the Solar Girdle. Only their plugsuits would allow the Power Jockeys to function outside under those conditions.
A.B. tried to enjoy the sensations of driving, a recreationist pastime he seldom got to indulge. Most of his workday consisted of indoor maintenance and monitoring, optimization of supply and demand, the occasional high-level debugging. Humans possessed a fluidity of response and insight no kybes could yet match. A field expedition marked a welcome change of pace from this indoor work. Or would have, with comrades more congenial.
A.B. sighed, and kicked up their speed just a notch.
After traveling for nearly five hours, they stopped for lunch, just a bit north of where Moscow had once loomed. No Reboot City had ever been erected in its place, more northerly locations being preferred.
As soon as the wide door slid upward, Tigerishka bolted from the cabin. She raced laterally off into the endless eulollypop forest, faster than a baseline human. Thirty seconds later, a rich, resonant, hair-raising caterwaul of triumph made both A.B. and Gershon Thales jump.
Thales said drily, "Caught a mouse, I suppose."
A.B. laughed. Maybe Thales wasn't such a stiff.
A.B. jacked the trundlebug into one of the convenient stepdown charging nodes in the transmission cable designed for just such a purpose. Even an hour's topping up would help. Then he broke out sandwiches of curried goat salad. He and Thales ate companio-nably. Tigerishka returned with a dab of overlooked murine blood at the corner of her lips, and declined any human food.
Back in the moving vehicle, Thales and Tigerishka reclined their seats and settled down to a nap after lunch, and their drowsiness soon infected A.B. He put the trundlebug on autopilot, reclined his own seat and soon was fast asleep as well.
Awaking several hours later, A.B. discovered their location to be nearly atop the 54t^ parallel, in the vicinity of pre-Crash Minsk.
The temperature outside their cosy cab registered a sizzling thirty-five, despite the declining sun.
"We'll push on toward Old Warsaw, then call it a day. That'll leave just a little over 1,100 klicks to cover tomorrow."
Thales objected. "We'll get to the farms late in the day tomorrow - too late for any useful investigation. Why not run all nite on autopilot?"
"I want us to get a good night's rest without jouncing around. And besides, all it would take is a tree freshly down across the road, or a new sinkhole to ruin us. The autopilot's not infallible."
Tigerishka's sultry purr sent tingles through A.B.'s scrotum.