The willing engine tugged at his throttle hand, but Bruce didn't really notice. A warm wind blew in off the Pacific as leisurely as the coast-hugging curves; it invited excess. Yet today he was in no hurry.
A Harley moved up fast in his mirror, then slowed as it came abreast. The rider looked him over with an ill-concealed contempt before blasting past.
Bruce didn't consider accelerating to take up the gauntlet. It was true; he looked every excessive inch a middle aged fat-cat out posing on purchased street cred.
Good, Bruce thought, and his smile was reflected in the discreet 200mph speedo. He'd had it off the clock, but not days, and not quite yet. Bruce dawdled, cruising past a private beach. He recognised some of the rich and famous at play in the beckoning surf. But that wasn't for him any more, not with his physique. Besides, he had a prior appointment. Business.
The parking valet looked askance and the doorman's face clouded--until Bruce removed his helmet. Then brusque orders and obsequious welcome were the order of the day.
The owner hurried out to greet him personally. "We are flattered you should favour our establishment, Mr. W..."
"Bruce will suffice," he regarded the proffered hand with distaste, "and I abhor physical contact."
The owner cursed silently. The unremoved gloves should have clued him, but he couldn't be expected to know every eccentricity of the most reclusive billionaire since Hughes.
"Ah, certainly sir... I mean, Bruce. I didn't want to seem overly familiar." He reviewed his small stock of information. The usual blandishments of sex and drugs were out, it would be up to gastronomy and the quality of his cellar to make amends--that, and discretion.
"Your--ah--guest has already arrived," he murmured. "Allow me to direct you to our private patio." The owner carefully negotiated the bulky, and rather clumsy, rider through the dining area. It was the other 'guest' who had flustered him; he had almost suspected a practical joke, but Bruce was notoriously humourless. However, the owner prided himself on a sense of people, and it was piqued.
Ushered into the well-shaded patio, Bruce walked towards the table then stopped short. A tall, slim figure rose gracefully and turned to face him. She was fashionable to the point of caricature, the refined face all sharp facets like a cut-gem.
"Darling."
The owner bowed out discreetly, his genial mask slipping into a private frown of confusion. It wasn't politic to eavesdrop, but...
A pastel-gloved hand was extended, and Bruce took it carefully in his own. She'd last felt these hands when the gloves were off. He knew these fingers, hard and bare as bone, so white beneath the pink silk. White all over like a bride, like a skeleton.
"Can I order you anything before we dine?" Bruce enquired, after they were seated.
"You could order that 'person'..." she looked pointedly at the curtained doorway, "to go away."
Sharp today, thought Bruce. He turned his head. "That will be all," he enunciated as if reprimanding a butler. His voice carried an authority beyond mere wealth.
She raised a half-full glass of wine and laughed like a nervous virgin. "I don't usually do this sort of thing."
Always with the jokes, Bruce thought, but found himself smiling wryly--he didn't do this sort of thing much either.
"Ah..." Bruce felt quite foolish. "What shall I call you?"
"Jeannie," she replied. "Call me Jeannie."
When she smiled like that it sent shivers down his spine. He'd felt the same shiver last week when he picked up the shielded telephone back at the manor, heard that on-the-edge whisper. It had told Bruce things about himself he'd prayed no-one would ever know. It told him that significant others had to meet, to settle their long affair. But this wasn't just some lovers' clandestine tryst being proposed--it was a duel. Fortunately, challenger doesn't get choice of weapons.
Bruce had suggested the place; Muerto canyon, long closed as a danger to the public. He always tried to avoid endangering civilians; it would be mano e mano.
"You might have mentioned that your other identity was female," Bruce demurred.
"And spoil the joke?" Jeannie pouted. She took a mirror from her handbag. "Am I really so different?"
Bruce looked closely. Jeannie's big blue eyes looked back. Contacts, of course, and much artfully applied skin pigment. Elegantly coiffured blond wig too.
Bruce smiled in sympathy, all he had to do was sag and look a hundred pounds heavier. "And I'm not?"
Jeannie hadn't really seen his face before, only eyes and teeth. But they had shared blood and passion many times--a rough courting by proxy. She looked at his jet hair, so casually cut, ordinary ears even. The strong nose, considerably stronger since its extensive rebuilding after... Jeannie pushed away the past. She wasn't responsible for that. That was another personality--ask any psychiatrist.
She'd never seen his mouth smile, not natural and relaxed. She decided she liked Bruce. If only he could do something about the eyes, they still looked like bunker slits.
After a light lunch, Bruce pointed beyond the discreet car park to the coast and the distant mouth of a canyon that wound its way up into the hills.
Jeannie nodded approval, then looked down through the shrubbery to the parking lot. "Is that your motorcycle?" she asked. "It doesn't look the same without the..."
"Costume?" Bruce supplied. "I assume the other one is yours."
She smiled indulgently at the green and white machine hiding in the shadows, it too had the armouring stripped off. It would hardly have done to advertise their liason.
Even her smile is different, Bruce thought. I wish we had more time. He never thought of losing, the possibility couldn't exist. "It will be a change for you to be chasing me," he said conversationally. "I took the liberty of bringing a pair of small communication devices, just don't get too far behind."
Jeannie smiled, showing long, sharp teeth. "Money isn't everything," she countered, "nor brute power. There's speed and agility."
Bruce rubbed his jaw at the old fracture. "And being able to stop," he added.
She leaned forward, her smile tightening. "But we're not able to, are we? Not any more; that's why it has to be this way."
Neither said anything for a while. Jeannie inserted a black cigarette in an ivory holder and waited. Bruce held out a light; it came from the ring on his finger.
She laughed through a cloud of latakia tobacco. "You always did have the best toys--but we agreed, no gadgets this time."
Bruce looked pointedly at the travel case at her feet.
"It's my new riding suit," she explained. "I certainly don't propose to sit side-saddle."
"I'm sure it will be more fetching than mine," said Bruce, indicating his beige leather windcheater and casual pants. "Boring but respectable is my style, I'm afraid."
"Oh," said Jeannie, "I never found you boring, and as for being afraid, well...!"
Bruce frowned. "But I'm afraid of us. It's not just crime and punishment any more, it's..."
"Personal?" Jeannie suggested.
"Deadly," he finished.
"Oh, don't you want to reform me again?" Jeannie pouted. "Not even a little discipline?"
Bruce looked down at his gloved hands, he could see stains gloves can't hide. How many times have I wanted to kill, needed to just do it? he wondered. We've been so close to death, it's become an intimacy.
"J... Jeannie," he began, "I just want it to end. Clean, honest--just you and me."
"Or me," she corrected. "The old way--a duel."
"Or dual," muttered Bruce, poker faced.
Jeannie stared, then a shade of that old smile flickered, the bad one. "Holy dueling dualities," she said, but in a boy's voice.
Bruce scowled. "Is this called pre-race needling?"
Jeannie's mask of composure flickered again. "Only if it bleeds."
Bruce warmed up his engine and waited for Jeannie to change. He checked out her machine for tricks. The turbo was obvious, the nitrous less so--probably hidden in the alloy box-frame. The Buell-type muffler was puzzling on a multi, but at least he couldn't detect any weapon systems. A skeletally light bike, and Bruce outweighing his opponent by a hundred pounds alone. His bike was heavier too, despite yards of carbon fibre and magnesium cases. But, like him, it was all muscle and very much faster than an American V-twin had any right to be.
"So, how do I look?" Jeannie had snuck up on him--again. "Is it me, Bruce?" she asked, pirouetting girlishly in her leathers.
One of you, occurred to Bruce. Blood red and bone white, tight enough to tell there was nothing beneath, and nothing there to hide. No helmet and wrap-around rhinestone sunglasses; always style over safety. Her big four screamed into vicious life, drowning the deceptively amiable lope of his twin.
"Last one out of the canyon just keeps on going," said Bruce, reiterating the terms.
"And doesn't come back," Jeannie agreed. "Assuming they ever leave."
Bruce frowned. "No funny business?"
She looked demure. "But that's the only business I know."
He reached to turn off his ignition.
"Oh, very well," she agreed. "Just tally-ho, and good clean fun."
Bruce placed his helmet on the ground, kicked it out of the way, and slipped on a pair of armoured-glass Vuarnets. "No advantages."
"Or deceptions." She pulled off her wig and shook out natural tresses the colour of absinthe, a chalk-white line where the wig had rubbed away make-up.
Bruce passed over two buttons joined by a short, fine wire. He demonstrated; one for the ear, the other adhered to the throat. Jeannie followed suit. "So thoughtful, you know how I just love our little tete-a-tetes."
Yes, thought Bruce, following her out on to the road. Head to head, and no helmets.
The canyon turn-off was overgrown and blocked by a heavy barrier, even a bike couldn't squeeze past. Jeannie waited, assuming a theatrically helpless pose against the scaffold tube embedded at each end into a heavy concrete block. Bruce had been lagging behind, savouring the scent of salt and eucalyptus, feeling that sharpening of senses he knew only too well. He didn't usually hunt days.
"I'm afraid I didn't bring any acid this time," she said as he pulled up, and smiled at his slight, involuntary wince. "Are you sure you didn't cheat--not even a teenie weenie laser?"
Bruce left his bike rumbling on the sidestand, and grasped one end of the barrier rail. Even with all the padding out, leather seams strained as he lifted the whole section like a barbell and moved it a few feet, just enough for a bike.
He dropped the blocks and threw himself to one side as her engine howled into life. Bruce rolled and was instantly on his feet--but the howl had changed to laughter.
"Just testing your reactions." Jeannie turned off her engine.
"So big, so fast." The laughter left her voice. "Always more power, more control--all I ever had was quick hands and a sense of humour." Her smile was steady now, almost normal. "I want to win this one fair and square--no tricks, no excuses. Just the two of us, like different people who'd never met before."
Bruce swung a leg over his bike. "Our first, and final time," he stated bluntly.
Jeannie's lip quivered. "I'm going to miss your masterful ways. So will all of Gotham. Oh, I promise they will."
His voice grated like a truck transmission. "Deal?"
She nodded, and let the scream of her engine answer.
The race was on like a fight--it just started. High stakes, and no quarter asked or given. It isn't always big bucks or the best hand that wins the game; there is always the rogue element, the wild card. Bruce felt coldness descend like a mask as Jeannie shot into the lead, but he was content to suck draft for now. She was faster than he'd expected and even more reckless than usual. He briefly considered the red button on his handlebars--but no, not yet.
It was a long, winding canyon; the road went up one side, then back down the other. He'd run simulations the past few days till he rode it in his dreams, but it was still a gamble.
The tank came up and hit his chin as he pressed against it in a racer's crouch, but the bars never quivered in his iron grip. He'd been ready. Jeannie's skinny rear had cleared her saddle warning him of the sinkhole. There were advantages to biding time, to watching. He was a good hunter.
She threw herself into corners spitting dirt and tiny hot balls of rubber back into his face. He endured in silence, there was nothing to say that could change anything. He would win.
Broadsiding in a sandwash, Jeannie's slide opened up a gap in the loose surface and Bruce, very briefly, touched the button.
Arms and engine took the sudden strain, kevlar tyres shredded and howled, but he shot into the lead. Time to demonstrate the advantages of well-endowed American technology.
"Naughty secrets," hissed a voice in his ear.
Bruce checked his rear screen; Jeannie was a madman in the lead, but a demon in pursuit. "A bad workman..." he observed drily.
Nobody had said anything about what went in the tank, and NASA didn't have all the best fuel. He flicked another switch and a map was displayed on the inside of his flyscreen.
Hmm, steep switchback-turns rising out of the canyon. He considered. Perfect for brute torque, and we have that in spades.
Jeannie was right on his tail entering the first hairpin. Bruce felt the footrest fold and his knee graze fractured blacktop, but the tyres stuck like bubblegum and his inboard computer adjusted the geometry to sling him around the unforgiving turn. The switchbacks became a rhythm. Brake as late as possible, exact line in, over on the knee, brakes off and throttle on--repeat faster. He recognised the heightened state; he was one with the bike, wrapped in harmony with ride and road. You can't get that in a car, especially one that's virtually a tank.
He was able to look down on Jeannie, almost a switchback behind now. Amazingly she was keeping her head and racing like a pro--a pro on last year's racer. He checked his read-outs, a bit hot but nothing to worry about. There was even time for a passing awareness of the canyon reasserting itself--weeds in the cracks, washouts, and tree falls. Wild life!
The fawn leapt from behind a bush and right out in front of him. Panic ABS braking faster than thought. Bruce automatically took a brutally tight inside line--deer either jump ahead or freeze. Tyres either grip or slip. He felt the inevitable slide begin and hot-shoed as the bike went sideways.
Suddenly Jeannie screamed through in a blast of laughing gas, and ploughed straight into the little deer. She somehow managed to hold on, and hurtled away into the lead. Bloody and wild, that was how she played.
"Bye, bye Bambi," simpered the voice in his ear. "Bye, bye Brucie."
"Always the innocents," he growled, and tightened his grip on the bars as he powered out of the slide.
The wind pressed Bruce's sunglasses against his face and howled in his ears, but Jeannie still held the lead. Another bend, and he glimpsed a ramshackle bridge near the head of the canyon. A flash flood had swept away most of the deck leaving a few buckled and shaky beams that didn't even meet in the middle. Bruce cursed softly, he'd hoped for first stab at it. Jeannie, typically, didn't hesitate. She dropped a gear, revved the engine, and hit the longest beam, pulling up on the bars at the last minute. Bruce blasted around the last bend in time to see her land on the other side. Standing on the pegs, her legs took the impact, but the remaining deck didn't. It fell away beneath her clawing rear wheel, but she made it--just, and screeched to a halt.
Bruce crammed on his brakes as most of the other side of the bridge disappeared into the canyon.
"I'm really going to miss you, Bruce," Jeannie cooed in his ear. "Say you'll miss me too."
"Not if I aim just right," Bruce promised, gunning his engine.
Jeannie's eyes widened. The girder! Its bow had suspended the bridge deck, but now that was at the canyon bottom. The once-graceful arc terminated abruptly midway, swinging slightly in the aftermath of her violent crossing. At best a foot wide, rust flaked and set with rivets, it pointed straight at her.
Driven by brutal acceleration, Bruce's paralever suspension bottomed out as he impacted the sudden lift of the curved I-beam. Down he slammed against the tank, driving the air from his chest. A telescopic front drive-shaft cut in as the rear wheel squirreled and slipped. He held down the red button, and held on as the heavy bike launched itself into the air.
Jeannie made no attempt to move as near half-ton of man and metal hurtled towards her. Her smile was frozen in ecstasy.
At the last minute Bruce twisted the bike in mid-air, he just missed Jeannie but landed hard, sliding down his left side in a stream of sparks and high-tech tyre compound. He felt his leg break below the knee and a hot, wet rush of blood. That doesn't matter now, bones heal.
He caromed off the banking, but his other foot found second gear and purchase in the loose dirt. Bruce shifted his weight and powered the bike upright, fishtailing wildly on to the road. He was back in the lead--that was what mattered.
Jeannie unfroze as he sped away. "Oh, Bruce," she whispered bitterly, "how could you--it would have been so, so perfect."
He didn't hear her, or the vengeful scream of multiple cylinders as she gave chase. He was ahead, but his problems were far from over. Bruce bent down on the tank and jammed his flopping left foot between the crushed peg and the cases. He diverted rear brake function to the bars and glanced quickly at his hand; the blood on it wasn't arterial but there was hot oil too. His smashed heads-up display was no help, but when you built the ride you don't need instruments. He knew the motor could make fifty miles without a drop of oil, but he didn't need synthetic all over his rear tyre. Bruce smiled grimly, at least it would be a bigger problem for Jeannie. There were some advantages to being the pursued.
He concentrated on remembering the road; mostly downhill straightways now--power over handling. His smile widened, he always had the power.
But Jeannie was a corner-kamikaze. Taking fearful risks, she shaved down his lead to a bike length. She managed to come abreast on the last sweeping bend before the long final straight, then suddenly lashed out. Her boot heel caught Bruce's leg right on the break, crushing it against the overheated motor. He shook a red veil from his eyes and set his jaw against the pain. Pain doesn't matter, it will pass, it is only the messenger.
Bruce deliberately overcorrected and, with a burst of acceleration, slid his rear wheel against Jeannie's front tyre. Her wheel suddenly tried to reverse direction as something like two-hundred horsepower was applied to it. Bruce turned in the saddle and witnessed her front end break loose, throwing Jeannie out of control. He would have sworn nobody could have ridden out that tank slapper--she did. But she'd lost the race.
Bruce snapped his attention back to the road ahead, almost dead straight for the last couple of miles and Jeannie must be low on nitrous. A glance down at the oil and blood that coated the side of the bike--he'd live, and it would run. Now was the time to show who was top dog; the supercharger hit another octave as hyper-oxygenated fuel turned the ceramic valves white-hot.
A great force pushed him back in the saddle; eyes bleared in the slipstream and old injuries added to the straining chorus of pain. He twisted the red button to lock and clung on like a half-blind bitten to its hunting mother.
Then a great voice drowned out everything, and an incandescent light was suddenly filling his mirror like a fireball. It was as if everything stood still.
My God! she's gone ballistic. Bruce realised. That Buell-type muffler was a JATO rocket booster.
Adrenalin strove to outdistance time as Jeannie burned past him in slow motion. He saw a crazy red-rimmed grin and white tracks of tears streaking her make-up. She wasn't riding, she was aiming. The cards were down, and rocket beats piston any day.
Past in a hellish cloud of searing flame. Past and gone with a long strip of melted rubber pointing the way. But her face remained imprinted: white and thin as a skull, rictus of long yellow teeth stretching a knife-slash mouth, billowing sea of hair, and the eyes--oh, such eyes!
It wasn't Jeannie, it hadn't been for a very long time. Not anymore than he'd been Bruce. This wasn't about them—it never was.
This was about life and death, and Bruce had just seen Death ride by on a pale horse. He was only a spectator now.
Bruce watched the rapidly disappearing bike, and calculated. He knew much more about aerodynamics and raw power--and the importance of control. He was running well over two hundred mph, and even with all his weight the front end was feeling light. God knows what speed she was doing.
With only a few hundred yards still to go, the inevitable occurred. A wild laugh of triumph assaulted Bruce's ears as he witnessed the other machine hit escape velocity--and fly.
Bruce released the button and let his engine catch a breath. He remembered as a child, watching the newsreel before Zorro; Sir Donald Campbell, Bluebird's jet motor forcing it off the surface on Lake Coniston. The racing was over.
Bruce let his bike fall on its side, and hobbled over to the wreck. There was nothing anyone could do. Jeannie was all odd angles and spreading pools--but incredibly, she was alive.
"I... I won?" she gasped, as he raised her head.
"You won," he confirmed. "You won fair."
The booster had torn itself loose and she'd slammed back down onto the blacktop just before the barrier. Sheer momentum carried the jumble of flesh and metal careening through it. A chequered flag for the death of a harlequin.
"Doesn't seem..." A gurgle of blood choked her for a moment. "...to matter now."
Bruce reached for his cellular.
"No!" She struggled to lift her head. "Just hold me." A ghost of a smile twitched her lips. "A good joke deserves a private audience."
"Okay, but please don't try to talk," Bruce said, bending closer, faces almost touching. He knew at least one of those teeth would be full of nerve gas. That didn't seem to matter either.
"Listen, just listen." Bruce took a shaky breath, he'd lost a lot of blood too--time was never a friend. "You probably know the real me better than anyone, but I've never told you how I felt." He swallowed; never enough time.
"You were the first," a harder voice continued. "The only one that mattered. I hated you with a passion." The voice broke. "I... I thought it was hate. But you knew it's never that simple." Too late for tears, but they fell anyway.
A broken hand convulsed briefly in his.
"D... darling."
Bruce finished dragging himself upright. The world went round, but the crude splint of broken-off tubing and tightly wrapped wire harness held.
He took a deep breath and staggered over to start his bike. Bruce reached under the tank for something as he snicked the transmission into gear. He looked over a last time at the wreck, the body he'd set atop it. He shut his eyes, and threw. A flash of magnesium and nitro-methane singed his face, but he was already on the move and turning to the road ahead.
A deal was a deal, he was going away for a while. That's what you do after a loss.
Bruce had lost his duel.