Futuretrack 5 by Robert Westall Page A

credits pile up in the trough, spill out on the floor. Lost to the world…
    A hand tapped my shoulder, painfully. I turned, exasperated.
    He was taller than me; with a car-smash of a face. The cheekbones had been broken and allowed to mend themselves; square corners of bone humped up beneath the skin, red and shiny. Badly stitched scars wrapped his face in a mask of red barbed wire. His jaw hung lopsided, showing steel false teeth. His ears had been cut off, leaving red question marks on each side of his shaved cannonball skull. He wore a thick, black leather collar, with steel spikes like a dog’s collar. Otherwise, he was naked to the waist. Wild tattoos ran across his slabby chest. He was either sweating, or he’d greased himself.
    I looked into his eyes, as I might have looked through the windows of a crashed car; afraid of what I might see. His eyes were dark grey, dull, empty of everything but pain. The ruined mouth moved, spoke.
    “I’ll have me share, now. Half.”
    “What?” His words were hard to piece together, and I was still coming out of my machine world.
    “Half.” He nodded down at the coins around my feet.
    “What for?”
    “Protecting yer. I’m yer Fighter.”
    “Who said?”
    “I said.”
    “Now look. …”
    He hit me in the gut. Luckily, his eyes had signalled the blow. I had no room to dodge, but I tightened my gut muscles, so it didn’t hurt like it was meant to.
    “Half!” He hit me again. It hurt a bit more the second time.
    No Tech can stand being crowded like that. And every Tech is trained to deal with it. I stamped down hard on his instep. Only to find he was wearing steel toecaps.
    I saw the violence coming in his empty eyes; he’d have killed me. If I hadn’t chopped at his shaved temple with the edge of my hand…
    He collapsed gently to the floor. He’d be out about five minutes; enough time for me to deal with the situation, probably by running away.
    But the moment he collapsed, the white-coats whipped in with that wheeled tube and syringe. Before I could draw breath they were wheeling him away. I ran after them, shouting at them. They were only Techs 2M.
    A solid, warm hand gripped my wrist, a brown hand with a pale palm; my late neighbour.
    “Cool it, lobo. You wanna go in a tube, too?” He drew me back to my machine.
    “I didn’t mean him any harm. I wanted to talk… Where they taking him?”
    “His worries are over now, lobo. You wanna worry about his mates. …” He nodded toward the curving walls of the dome. And there they were, in three ranks, silent, watching. Earless, bald, stripped to the waist with greased, shining torsos. Looking like undressed shop-window dummies, they stood so still.
    “Who are they?” My voice shot up in a frightened squeak.
    “Fighters, lobo. Futuretrack Twoers. Didn’t they teach you anything, down on the farm? You’d better win a whole lot of credits now, lobo. So you can hire a whole gang of them to protect you. The Bluefish are good— only they cost, lobo, they cost.”
    I hammered away at my machine with total dedication. Soon I was slipping and sliding on a whole mountain of credits. Other people’s dedication was wearing off; they were leaving their machines and standing in a circle around me. Wondering loudly if I’d do it…
    Do what? Remembering the shop-window dummy faces, I went on pulling.
    Suddenly my machine gave an incredible howl; all its lights began flashing together. The handle locked, wouldn’t pull anymore. I looked round, terrified the wheeled tube would come for me. But my friend the black man was pounding me on the back, his blue-black face splitting with delight.
    “You did it, man, you did it.” Everyone was pounding me, hugging me. Six black Fighters pushed through and began gathering up my mountain of credits in a purple bag. “These are your Bluefish, man, the greatest.”
    Looking at their size, I was very glad to hear it.
    Now white-coats were pinning a purple cloak of thin cheap satin