Chasing the Dragon by Justina Robson Read Free Book Online Page B

succulence of it as promising and
untasted as it had been for a thousand human years. He dared not
think of the hand that had given it to him. He knew he had waited too
long. "Yes," he said.
    She swallowed with effort, blinking, licking and biting her lips.
"Do you think that girl is still alive Jones, the strandloper. Do you
think she's still around?"
    He composed himself, then said, "The Ghost Hunters that she was
with set out on an expedition into the Deep Void. She said she was
going to find out where the ghosts came from, and stop them seeping
into the living world. She thought they were widening the cracks. But
they're still coming and I haven't seen her since. Can't say I looked too
hard." He shared a look with her that said Jones had creeped him out
severely, frightened him. "But if we're going to find them then there's
some other people we have to persuade to get us out there."
    "You know them?"
    "I know of them," he corrected her. "I'll make some enquiries.
Look around." He smoothed his hand over the bike's glossy fairings.
They were much more arrowlike creations than they used to be in the
days of combustion engines, and the rider lay almost flat front on them
at full speed, encased in aerodynamic shields, a fish in air. With Lila's
skill it would top 250. "You go and enjoy yourself somewhere. Meet
me tomorrow night downtown. The Medium Bar."
    Lila nodded. She leaned forward suddenly and kissed him on the
cheek, lightly and quickly. "Take care, Mal."
    "You too." He tapped the bike warningly and stepped back as she got on. LEDs and arrays came up as she touched it, then subsided. He
assumed she'd internalised all that stuff. Like magic. He watched her
spin slowly forwards, saw her get used to the machine's silence, weave
it around the narrow turns of the lot and vanish up the ramp towards
the daylight.

    Back in his office he started to look up names and addresses but
unaccountably found himself holding the peach in his hands, examining it minutely for any sign of bruising or rot. There wasn't any, and
he breathed out with relief, inhaling deeply afterwards. Its smell was
heady, divine. He pressed it against his lips.

    Lila rode for a few hours. She took the fastest route out of the city onto
the expressway and followed it south over the curling, secretive waterways that threaded the suburbs. She crossed the first of the Five
Arches; bridges that mimicked the Andalune's giant span over the five
rivers of the dunes in which Bay City hung out, sprawling and indolent. The Five Rivers were small estuaries really, rather than sweetwater tracts. Crocodiles basked on the tidal flats just metres from
shining corporate blocks as she flew silently by, weaving in and out of
the afternoon traffic.
    It was surreal to her, to move so fast and smoothly, with such quiet
emptiness where the engine's roar used to be. Now only the wind battered her ears and face with its noise and wrenched her hair in every
direction. A lot of people had bikes like hers, but they rode them in
armour and she heard the guidance systems doing a lot of the driving.
The pretty coloured bubble cars that had no drivers held an astonishing array of people and activities. She saw a couple at a table lit with
candles speeding in the fast lane, eating dinner off fine china, clinking
crystal glasses. In other pods children flung themselves at the windshields, plastering noses and lips to it, making faces. A girl sunbathed in a bikini while her mother lay in the front doing some kind of exercise class. Boys played console games, their feet sticking out of the
window, socks shimmying in the draft. Occasionally something that
looked like a sports car would shark through the lanes, driver concentrating at the wheel. Lila learned to know them by the heavier rasp of
their wide tires humming like bass notes on the asphalt. Her ride was
so much more like flying, it wasn't like biking at all.

    She reached her particular bit of