Graceful Blur

Graceful Blur

  A JUST CAUSE UNIVERSE Short Story by

  Ian Thomas Healy

  Copyright 2010 Ian Thomas Healy

  Cover design by Ian Thomas Healy

  Cover art sources:

  Bonneville Salt Flats by Michael, used under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

  Cloud brushes by Rubina119, used under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

  Figure by SenshiStock, used under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

  Helmet by Morio, used under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

  It’s just before dawn. Salena stands by the entrance to the Flats and breathes in the scent of the salt on the early morning air. The sky is pink in the east behind the mountains and soon the salt will be crawling with men and machines. A few of them are already here, tuning up engines, adjusting fuel and air mixtures, jarring the morning peace with caustic rumbles.

  She’s been here for hours already, though. She couldn’t sleep with the nervousness and anticipation of today’s run. By four in the morning she gave it up as a lost cause, kissed Jason on his cheek – he murmured something unintelligible and went back to snoring – and stole out of the room with her shoes in her hands.

  Even as early as it had been, racers had already begun to stir, and she wasn’t the only one in the parking lot. “Mornin’,” a cheerful fellow called as he tightened lug nuts on a carbon-fiber-bodied pickup truck.

  “Good morning,” she replied while she slipped on her shoes.

  “Out for an early-mornin’ run, huh?”

  “Yep.”

  “You’re gonna be runnin’ the Flats later, ain’tcha?”

  “That’s my plan.”

  “Good luck.”

  “Thanks. Same to you.”

  He saluted her with his tire iron. She smiled back and then left the lot at an easy jog.

  She didn’t mean to run out to the Flats; but her feet led her there anyway. And when the pavement gave way to compacted salt, she knew there was no turning back.

  The course is plain, beyond minimalist – a single black stripe painted down the snow-white salt by the Utah State Highway Department. At mile intervals are the timers and recording equipment. She knows, because she’s been here before.

  It still gives her shivers to know her name is already in the record books, that people out here discuss her along with those who came before her: Breedlove, Gabelich, Nobel, Green. In a sport dominated by men and machines, she’s the anomaly.

  But she’s the fastest anomaly ever.

  She ran a few wind sprints, back and forth, nothing too fast, to shake the cobwebs loose, and they helped to refresh her somewhat, but she’s not scheduled to make her official run for four more hours.

  A familiar horn beeps behind her and she turns to see Jason’s Bronco crunching across the salt toward her. She smiles and a moment later is by the car, stands on the running board, and leans in to kiss him.

  “Hi, baby,” he says. “I figured you’d be out here already.”

  She looks behind the Bronco and sees nothing. “Is it just you?”

  “So far,” he says, and pushes his chin-length blond hair back from his face in a signature move that always makes her want to jump on him. “I brought some coffee and donuts if you want any.”

  “Neither just yet.” She opens his door and climbs in across his lap to sit next to him, which she can do because she’s just a couple inches over five feet and slender like a figure skater. Compared to her, or even to most people, he’s a giant of a man; seven feet and three hundred pounds of rock hard muscle.

  He grins. “More for me, then. You know you’re never going to grow up big and strong if you don’t eat, Mrs. Tibbets.”

  She punches him in the shoulder, not hard enough to bruise herself, but hard enough to amuse him. “And you’re getting love handles, Mr. Tibbets.”

  He stops, a half-eaten donut in his hand. “I’m not! Am I?” He lifts up his shirt and examines his belly.

  She kisses him again. “I think they’re adorable.”

  He snorts. “A fat superhero.”

  “Shush.”

  It’s their honeymoon, and she loves him dearly for it. Only two weeks ago, she answered the preacher with the words I do when he asked if she, Salena, would take Jason to be her lawfully-wedded husband. The marriage proceeded, as so many things in her life, with blinding speed and it seemed like only a blink of her eye and she was married to this wonderful man, their five-year engagement only a distant memory.

  They didn’t make specific plans for the first part of the honeymoon, partly because their jobs as full-time superheroes wouldn’t allow them to stray too far from home, partly because they always tended toward spontaneity in their relationship. The first week, they went to Moab, rented a jeep and tried it out on the easier trails. She let Jason do all the driving since she never had gotten the hang of operating a car. When they got stuck – and she’d known they would sooner or later with the way he drove – at least he was strong enough to lift the jeep free of whatever obstructions they encountered.

  After a week of playing in the hills, camping under the stars, and once sneaking into a truck stop shower together, they headed here to Bonneville for Speed Week, where she will try for yet one more land speed record.

  This time, it’s The Big One. The only one that still matters.

  Andy Green did it over a decade ago in Nevada in a car called ThrustSSC, and shook the entire desert with an unmistakable sonic boom. Nobody else has repeated the feat since. Salena intends to be the first to do it. . .

  . . . on foot.

  She awakens with a start. She must have fallen asleep after all. Jason isn’t in the Bronco, but he’s rolled down all the windows so she won’t cook in the morning sunshine. The two RVs for her team are parked on either side of the Bronco to give her some privacy and shade. She rubs her eyes and climbs out of the truck.

  “Good morning, sleepyhead!” Her best friend, Sondra, stands to one side with a cup of coffee and a smile. “I was about to wake you, anyway. Your run’s in ninety minutes.” Sondra is a parahuman too, like Salena. The beautiful Amerind woman has magnificent brown feathered wings folded neatly against her broad back and shoulders. “Time to start getting ready.”

  “It’s kind of silly, isn’t it? All this hype and hubbub?” Salena stretches her arms over her head and does some knee bends. “I wish I could just throw on my regular costume and go. It’s what I do every other time I run.”

  “Your sponsor might see it otherwise. Coffee?”

  Salena wrinkles her nose at the sharp, tarry blend Sondra prefers. “No thanks, I’ll find my own. Too much caffeine makes me jittery.”

  With a throaty rumble, a brand new convertible Ford Mustang pulls up in front of the Blazer. It is bright red with yellow pinstriping, the same colors she uses in her costume. A man wearing a Ford polo shirt, shorts, and a visor steps out of it, all smiles and handshakes.

  “Good morning, good morning! How’s our little racer today? Feeling fast?”

  Salena tries not to roll her eyes. “Hi, Chad.” Chad Forrester is the representative from Ford Motor Company, who is sponsoring her run today in return for her endorsement of the Mustang. It makes sense, seeing as how she calls herself Mustang Sally. She feels kind of weird, selling out like a Hollywood celebrity doing ads in Japan, but her ultra-high-speed suit is ridiculously expensive and she can’t wear her regular costume for this run because it’s not rated past five hundred miles per hour.

  “Sally, I can’t tell you how thrilled we are that you’ll be running for us today.”

  “I’m not running for you, Chad.”

  “Sure, sure. Of co
urse. Listen, would you mind autographing the quarter panel of the car, here? I brought a Sharpie.” He presses a thick permanent marker into her hand.

  She looks at Sondra, who shrugs back. So Salena lopes over to the Mustang, a beautiful car that she feels bad about defacing, and writes Salena Tibbets “Mustang Sally” over the fender. Chad grabs a can from the back seat, and proceeds to spray it across her signature. “Spray fixative,” he crows. “The factory guys tell me it’s permanent. Thanks so much, Sally! I’ve got to set up the satellite feed. I’ll see you at the starting line.” He jumps back into the car, revs the motor unnecessarily, and drives off.

  “I loathe that man,” says Salena.

  Sondra bursts out laughing. “He’s not so bad. He’s just a yes-man. I think he’s a real fan, and not just because they’re paying him to be one.”

  “I guess I should get ready.”

  A track official awaits her in the RV, along with a paramedic and a representative from the World Motor Sport Council. The paramedic checks her vital signs, draws blood which will be tested for any