Fantastic Metropolis

Call me Little Tony, backspace rider. There’s frontspace, see, where we all live and everything is ordered and spread out, I mean stars and planets and stuff, and then there’s midspace, really smooooth so the big starliners can use it to move around in, and there’s backspace. They say it’s the necessary ‘other side’ of frontspace but you wouldn’t know it if you go there. Back space is pure connectivity, any normal idea of distance is Yim-Bim, throw it away. Technically it’s what makes frontspace hang together and stay put, so the engineers like to call it the ‘wrong side’ of space. You know those raffia patterns kids do in school? On the show side they’re neat and colorful, but the back is a mess of knots and bits and pieces. Backspace is like that, a chaos of torrents and rapids which will break up a starliner in minutes. Only a small one- or two-man raft has got any chance, and then of course you need a pilot, and how many have got the nerve and skill to go into the wrong side and find their way through to somewhere else? Not many. Yow-Wow.

So meet Little Tony, handing around Hawtaw phase port waiting for work. Yes, there’s work. A midspace liner covers a hundred light years in a month. A backraft might do that in an hour on a good day. So mostly you’re hired as a messenger carrying info which can be reproduced if it’s lost-news, company reports, the bad stuff on somebody, anything there’s a need to get somewhere fast and someone is willing to pay for it.

But every now and then, a passenger.

He was a chubby fellow. His eyes were nice. Dark, kind of oily, you know that sort of eyes? A mop of curly black hair. Soft belly bulging through a neat buttoned waistcoat. Choice. But he was sweating just a little.

He put down a big floppy carry-all bag. ‘I want to go to Elivira.’ He paused. ‘That’s Castan IV.’

‘I know.’ I pointed to Liner Bay Number Three’s big hangar doors. ‘She leaves from there.’

‘Yes, in three days’ time. And another three and a half weeks to Elivira! I want to go now.’

I scratched my neck and fluttered my long silver eyelashes. ‘Well, that sounds urgent.’

‘Yes, it’s urgent.’ He stepped back, suddenly doubtful, to cast his eyes over me, lingering on my bare buttocks. ‘You are a backrider, aren’t you? You can take me?’

‘Never lost a passenger yet. But it will cost you,’, I took a deep breath, ‘a thousand kudos. For that you’re getting the best in the business.’

‘A thousand,’ he muttered sadly. ‘All right.’ And now he’d made the deal, that really scared look came into his face. Every passenger has it. He began stuttering. ‘When… when… Can we start now?’

‘I have to check my raft and fuel up. Meet me back here in an hour.’ I didn’t ask him for an advance, much as I needed one. It’s not good for confidence.

‘Er.’ The scared look was intensifying. ‘I’ve heard thirty-seven trips is average life expectancy for a backrider. How many have you made, may I ask?’

‘Thirty-six.’ I put on a look like I was trying to smile at him. He sure must have had a good reason for hiring my services.

‘Don’t worry about that,’ I told him. ‘You’ve been hearing crap. Either you can do it or you can’t.’

He went away looking slightly reassured. I was walking to the fuel store, wondering if I could get credit, when I ran into Boy Galilee. He stopped me, blinking and giving that simpering smile of his.

‘Tony, don’t tell me, don’t tell me you’re taking on a passenger?’

The creep must have seen me talking to my customer, peering round the corner of Number Three Bay, no doubt. I tried to walk on, but he places his hand gently on my chest.

‘Tony, I really ought to tell him about that bad navigator of yours. That’s too much of a risk.’

‘For God’s sake, Galilee,’ I said, ‘I need this fare so I can get my navigator fixed! Give me a break, will you?’

He started stroking my neat little bum. Why shouldn’t he? His was like a piece of misshaped putty.

‘If things go wrong you could give backriders a bad name.’

‘It’s only an intermittent fault. I’ve been out with it twice already.’

Automatically I started stroking his buttocks too. Christ, how could somebody with a posterior as uninteresting and flabby as his make out in backspace?

Not so long ago you could always tell a backrider. Nowadays it’s less easy to be sure, fashion being what it is and so many crud-brained young punks aping the bare bum, the shiny black leggings and jacket, the silver eyelashes and turquoise face paint. It really annoys me. Plonk any one of them on a guidance plate and he’d shit himself all over it.

And yes, if you’re asking, professional backriders are all sexually unidirectional, and all are male. No one else seems to have the knack, though, plenty have tried, and no real explanation has come forward as to why. Me, I put it down to a solid neural connection between brain and backside, heh heh. It is, after all, the second way there is of selling your arse for a living.

So the habit riders have of fondling each other’s bums when they talk is a double entendre. Apart from the obvious, it’s also a professional compliment, not to say a wondering about each other’s ability. Anyway I couldn’t let Galilee steal my trade.

‘Tell you what,’ I said, hating myself for it, and letting my fingers slide down the sweaty fold between his cheeks just to seem more friendly, ‘there’s two hundred kudos in it for you and you don’t have to do anything.’ The threat began melting from his face and I added, ‘Except loan me some fuel rods to do the job.’

‘Two hundred up front?’

‘Well, no.’