"Okay,
Squirt," Tricia said as she applied the brakes, "Let's get
you behind the wheel." She disconnected the hose to her cooling
vest. Then she climbed out of her seat, up onto the headrest while
holding the roll bars for support.
They
were in the middle of a flat and featureless sandy plain in the
middle of nowhere. Mabel and Iona had already left for their task.
George
got out of his seat and shifted over to the driver's side on the
left. He adjusted the connection on his cooling hose.
"Don't
forget to buckle up," Tricia reminded him as she climbed down
into the passenger seat.
Once
everyone was belted up and everything was plugged in correctly,
George settled his hands on the steering wheel. He tried to shift to
first gear but stopped when a grinding noise protested.
"You've
to use the clutch," Tricia told him.
"The
what?"
Tricia
pointed to an additional foot pedal that George had not noticed
before. "You've to push it while switching gears."
That
pedal had not been present in the city vehicles he had driven. How
cumbersome.
George
did as he was instructed and shifted smoothly into the first gear.
Then the pickup jerked and the engine abruptly stopped.
Tricia
gave him a look. Well, he assumed it was 'the' look since she had her
mask on.
"You've
never driven a manual before, have you?" Tricia asked.
"What's
a 'manual'?"
And that
led into a short lecture about manual transmission.
"It's
so troublesome to shift gears like that," George commented at
the end of it, "Why design the vehicle that way?"
Tricia
turned to him. "Back in the city, do you drive instead of using
the autopilot?"
"Sometimes,"
George admitted.
"Why?"
"Because
it's boring sitting in the van," George answered, "I want
to go where I want to go, not let some program do it for me."
Tricia
nodded. "It's the same reason here: to be in control. But
there's more: a skilled driver can get better performance with a
manual. Out here, especially in combat, every little edge counts.
"Plus,
they're easier to maintain," she added, "Or so Laura says."
George
started his practice at a low speed so he could get acclimated to
manually shifting gears. Once Tricia judged that he was accustomed to it, he was allowed to drive the vehicle faster, at higher gears.
It was
so unlike the city vehicles, which had automatic transmission - a
term that he had just learned. George had driven the family's
delivery van on occasion to collect or return items to be fixed. If
he drove the Vixen pickup on busy city streets, he imagined it would
be irritating to keep shifting the gears manually as he stopped and
started over and over in traffic.
But then
again, he usually activated the delivery van's autopilot if the
traffic was bad.
"Hey,
Squirt, slow down a bit," Tricia said.
No comments:
Post a Comment