The Race

The University grounds teemed with people.  In the shadow of the skeletal figures of the in-progress library and research buildings on the edge of the new pond, the Northern Gate had been thrown open.  Here, stands held the throngs of hundreds of bystanders eager for the beginning of the race.  These overlooked the starting line where four vehicles stood arrayed and being prepped.  Blessedly, the sun shown brightly, pushing back the sharp cold of morning and making this year much more pleasant than either of the previous two.


Alcohol, normally banned entirely on campus, flowed from the vast reserves held in tanks that had been hauled in by truck.  Some of the spectators were already beginning to show signs of intoxication; at least one group of Threman women had been removed after exposing the team colors which they had painted on their breasts.  The young ladies might not have been ejected had they not had the misfortune of being witnessed by the elderly dean of students.  Still, they seemed in high spirits as they were escorted outside the gate.

Teams of students representing each of the major city-states were present and dressed in the traditional colors of their flags: Iordon in white and deep blue; Tevark in crimson, purple, and black; Banajir in gold and white; and Threm in simple, forest green.

This year skimmers were being allowed for the first time in the history of the races.  Two teams, Iordon and Banajir, had taken advantage of this change while Threm and Tevark had built wheeled vehicles.  This was not unusual, the prejudices of a city often showed in design choices.  In this case, the Iordonese and Banajiri had opted for high engineering and speed at the cost of control; the Tevarkians and Thremans, for strength and reliability instead of finesse.

Iordon had really gone all out in their design, borrowing heavily from nature for their conceptualization, and the result was very striking.  Broad in front and tapering into a tall control surface in back, their skimmer had been constructed to resemble one of the predatory bone-plated fish from the lakes of their homelands.  The attention to detail was only marginally diminished by the addition of the turbine mounted in the tail.  The pilot lay waiting and peering out through the transparent wooden domes mounted on the front of the blue-and-white-lacquered balsa of the reinforced skull plates of the skimmer.  He looked comfortable in his sling as he shifted his weight experimentally, causing the tail and lateral fins to flex.  The whole assembly gleamed brightly in the sun as it bobbed gently.

Banajir's skimmer could scarcely have been more different in approach, eschewing anything natural for sharp, aggressive lines.  One large turbine dominated the whole machine with two planes extending diagonally downward a few feet to either side.  One housed a small cockpit rife with levers and more than one crank and control surfaces sprouting vertically.  The other was slightly longer and clearly there primarily as counter-balance to the pilot although it too had control surfaces.  The two half-exposed flywheels opposite the pilot waited for their final glyphs to be locked into place before they could spin.

The Tevarkians and Thremans had designs similar to the extent that a fight threatened to break out between the teams regarding stolen plans.  It was conceded eventually that any likeness was due to convergent evolution of thought and both cities got back to final tuning of their idling craft.

Their vehicles were both wide and low-slung cages suspended between four wheels, perfect for making tight turns without flipping.  Where Threm had a single monstrous vertical flywheel and a complicated gearing system to manage it, Tevark had opted for a series of flywheels, all painted the same rich purple as their flag, of varying diameters to bring them up to speed without applying so much torque as to shatter the machine; last year they had miscalculated to devestating, if spectacular, effect and lost the race before it even began.

Each craft was the culmination of months of hard work and research and represented the pinnacle of the arts that went into its construction.  The teams consisted of one grammarian-in-training and four craftsmen-in-training from various disciplines.   Effort counted for quite a bit; even losing teams could be offered lucrative employment for deft use of glyphs or clever design.  Iordon had already drawn quite a bit of attention for the grammar that rendered the fish's wooden eyes transparent.

A blast of a horn echoed off the buildings and was met by a second blast from outside the city walls.  The city dwellers hurried to their places and those outside settled onto their blankets on the hillsides along the course which wove through alpine meadows along the valley and around the glacial lake at its end.  The competitors quickly moved their vehicles up to the starting line in front of the great column that had been erected to serve as counterpoint to the lake for the event's laps and mounted up.  The pilots and drivers donned protective gear, climbing into the machines while the rest of the team members started up the flywheels.  As they did, a group of adherents to the teachings of the Prophets of Lerum were joined by the crowd in intoning a bright canticle.

When the prayer had finished, the starting banner was winched up as the crowd counted down in unison.  At the count of zero, the flag dropped and the craft leapt out of the gate, wheels throwing rocks and fins clipping tall grass as they hurtled headlong into the first lap.