Over to the Underneath, part five

Having learned their lessons from mistakes made on Earth frontiers, Eleventh Door recipients were free to pick and choose from a myriad of successes. Even these had pitfalls of course. Every different place, time, and dimension has its special opportunities, and one size never fits all. I had one little thing implanted behind my left ear that in its time on Old Earth was a godsend, and a moral disaster. Kenetica revived it, but not to its full extant.

 “This is Stuart, yes. Hello Angela.” I received the urgent message from our co-mayor through my backflow devise. It tingled a little, but communication was instant with the implant. She had been bouncing the surveillance cloud around down south and came up with a lead. “Okay, let me run it by Steve. Yes, I found him.” Another dig at Steven, resident astronaut. What was it with Angela and him; did they have an affair when I wasn’t looking or something? “Steve, Angela found tire tracks leading to Mole City. She wants to send some Trapezoids that way. You concur?”

 “Why not? As soon as I get this wobbly pinchoke screwed down I might pop over myself,” he said, mumbled from under the Klantien floor grates. I heard something metallic falling into the works and then some more ancient Earth words. We don’t teach those words now, but it’s hard to break old habits – ask any transplant.

 I wasn’t so sure, but if we wanted Johnny back, the Traps might be our only good hope. “Well, they are a bit heavy handed. Should I ring up Miron?”

 “Fuck’m. Ah, here we go. Finger tight is good enough for me,” he said, putting out a hand. “Pull me up Stu. You coming along?”

 Why not? I’d never been in any sort of spaceship, even a little short range doo-dad. All us old timers came through the door in catapulted canisters under a heavy dose of somavapor. “Sure, yeah. Miron can hang out at the office. They can spare us, right?”

 Reparte plunked down into his captain’s chair and swiveled the co’s toward me. “Sit. Road trip!”

 --

 Johnny kicked it in to high gear, standing high in the stirrups, as he ponied down the white stripes toward Mole City. He’d been there before, on a buddy’s trip he thought, but his memory was sketchy. He bit his lip, trying to recollect something that seemed to be dodging him. There it is, he thought, then the think he thought ducked behind his liver. At least that’s the way it felt, because his guts were turning over. Johnny decided to put the notion away for now and his stomach immediately settled.

 Soon the city started to rise into view, and with it the road was changing over from concrete to a hard glassy surface. It was laid end to end, six wide, in tiled units, and the pony rode upon it like melted butter on a hot skillet. It looked slick, but this was the smoothest most controlled ride Johnny had ever experienced. He tried some gentle swerves and his tires gripped the road tightly. In fact they sensed the perfect surface and shrunk down to their quickest, skinniest dimensions. The pony had its race shoes on, and jumped ahead like a champ. “Woohoo,” Johnny cheered.

 At these speeds Johnny entered the outer city in a hurry. There were small structures off the side of the road at regular intervals, and the road changed somewhat, causing his velocity to slow. Soon the pony came to a crawl, there appeared to be some sort of roadwork ahead. Johnny pulled off onto the shoulder and climbed down to check it out. There was a fuzzy gopher-looking creature levering up one section of the road with hydraulics, and it stopped what it was doing when it saw Johnny.

 It let out a squeal and knelt down to pick up a road sign that it waved at Johnny, squeaking furiously the entire time, then the varmint dropped its sign and hurled its body down the exposed hole. Before Johnny could react the road became a frantic hub of activity. Small mole vehicles came from left and right, motoring over the highway like rush hour traffic, and it may well have been just that. He was close to the levered slab, so Johnny rushed closer to it, avoiding the unapologetic traffic. They swerved in and out, just avoiding the road work and each other.

 He figured he would wait it out, the crush of traffic was bound to disperse as rapidly as it began. Then a louder buzz from above caught Johnny’s attention. From the north over the horizon some airborne geometry seemed to be approaching, and in a hurry. Three of them, Trapezoids; “Hot chocolate!” he shouted, and looked around for place to hide. Johnny had never seen the illusive sky sentinels before, but knew of them. The mayors would only pull them out of mothballs for something big. Johnny figured he must be all that and a bag of chips if they were siccing these bad boys on him.

 The Trapezoids came quick and were sure to home on him fast. Murder from on high, and a veritable cloud of locusts on the surface. “Godammit, only one way to go,” Johnny jumped and disappeared below the surface into the subterranean city of moles.