There was a long surprised pause that hadn’t been edited out. “I was told you’ve made all the hoverbikes in Pittsburgh.”
“Mostly. There are a handful of custom jobs that we didn’t do. Deltas. The next generation. They’re faster.”
“How can you be the only manufacturer of hoverbikes and don’t know how they work?”
“We’re mostly just modifying motorcycles. We order in superbike racers with twin four-stroke twelve hundred cc engines. Hoverbikes need powerful engines for the lift drives. We strip them down for the engine, the transmission, and the entire electrical system including the headlights—just about everything but the frames and the wheels. We discovered it was easier to carve the frame out of ironwood. The flexibility of the wood allows for more vibration damping and better impact tolerance.”
“Vibration? Like what you get while riding a bicycle on a rough road? Is it really that much of a problem in a flying vehicle?”
“No, not that. The spell chain is sensitive to some sound resonance…” The president paused and considered the camera with a slight widening of his eyes, as if he realized everything he was saying was being recorded. “I rather not discuss specifics. Company secrets and all that.”
“But-but-but where do you get the spell chains?” Wyatt asked. “Who makes them? Are they actual chains?”
The president considered for a moment before admitting. “Yes, there’s a chain. The design is under patent, but we’re trying to keep it literal black box. We have an exclusive licensing agreement with the inventor. Like I said, except for a handful of custom models, we’re sole producer of hoverbikes in Pittsburgh, and we would like to stay that way. It’s a small niche market and we have to sink a lot of money into parts and labor before we can make a profit.”
“I understand. Historically, it’s the mass supply and demand that fuels innovation. When only a handful of companies could afford computers, the rate of improvement in the technology was miniscule compared to the leaps in advances when they became tools of the masses.”
“Pittsburgh doesn’t have masses. It’s still a expensive, nearly handmade piece of equipment with a very narrow profit margin.”
“But if you could find some way to translate them to Earth…”
Suspicion filled the Pittsburgher’s face and segment ended with president gesturing that the camera should be turned off. “I think I’ve answered enough questions.”
Wyatt then proceeded to stop random people who owned hoverbikes and ask how they worked. The riders could explain that the lift drive took power from the gasoline engine and “somehow generated the vertical motion.” The more power into the lift drive, the higher the bike would hover, at the sacrifice of speed to the horizontal motion. That much they all knew.
One college student leaned against his hoverbike, shaking his head. “It hurts my brain when I try to understand it. The lift you can actually see if you’re like over a mud puddle. See. There’s a force pushing downwards, and it’s creating an equal and opposite reaction. But the forward motion? I really don’t know how it possibly works. Especially the fact that you can brake. Logically the bikes should be like boats in water; in a frictionless state, things in motion stay in motion. It’s not stopping on a dime, but you can brake—only I have not a clue how. It’s not like you throw out an anchor.”
Louise could guess which spell Alexander had used to create the lift. She wondered about the possible combinations of spells that could have created the forward motion of the hoverbike.
It took Wyatt weeks before he managed to catch Alexander on camera. Even then, he wasn’t aware that he’d found the person that he was looking for. He’d cornered Team Tinker at the racetrack, packing up to leave for the day. Heavy steel toolboxes and a mud-covered hoverbike were being strapped down onto the back of a big flatbed truck with “Pittsburgh Salvage” painted onto the door. Two massive elfhounds came to their feet as Wyatt walked up to the team, their growls as deep and menacing as a grizzly bear’s.
“Bruno. Pete.” A man in a Team Tinker T-shirt called to the dogs, silencing them. “We don’t allow photographing of our riders except during the races. We do sell publicity photos. If you want pictures, come by our table in the concession area next week.”
There was a jump in time as Wyatt negotiated the right to continue filming. During the interval, Alexander appeared on the back of the flatbed. Hair damp from a shower, she wore a Team Tinker T-shirt, cargo shorts, and hiking boots. She stomped in and out of the shoot, checking gear and complaining about the heat. Either Wyatt had been banned from photographing her or he missed the subtle body language of the people arrayed around him. Alexander might have been the youngest member of the team, but her teammates rotated around her like planets about a star. Instead, Wyatt kept the camera trained on the team’s business manager, who was only identified by the name of “Roach.” (Everyone in Pittsburgh apparently used weird nicknames.)