Four Points Transit Authority buses usually looked like this: white with four stripes down the side—red, blue, green, and yellow. Since Four Points wasn’t a big town, there weren’t a lot of buses, but they were all relatively well kept up.
This bus … well, this bus was the opposite of well kept up.
It wasn’t white, for one thing. And it wasn’t just that this bus sounded and looked like it was ready for the junkyard. No, this bus sounded and looked like it had been made in the junkyard. It was a hodgepodge of mismatched metals—a rust-red hood, a tarnished silver body, blackened brass window casings, and a door that glimmered gold under a thick layer of grime.
And the driver who leaned toward them after the door creaked open was as strange as her bus.
She had silver hair piled high on her head—impossibly high. Even in the limited light, it was clear that she had on a tremendous amount of makeup. She wore a much-patched, stain-covered electric-blue jumpsuit with a brass name tag that read CELCY, and large, tinted glasses.
“Only three of you?” Celcy the bus driver cried. “Wasn’t there another one?”
Alma peeked at Hugo and Shirin and saw that they appeared as startled as she felt.
“No,” Shirin said cautiously. “Just us.”
“All right, all right, my dear souls!” Celcy replied. “Where are you headed, then?”
Alma exchanged another glance with Hugo and Shirin.
“The mountain base stop,” Hugo said slowly, clearly. “That is the route of this bus, correct?”
“Sure, sure, that’s the route, my darling dear.” The bus driver let out a cackle. “But this late at night, eh? Not much up there.”
“We’re stargazing,” Shirin said, pointing to Alma’s quintescope case.
“We’re in an Astronomy Club,” Alma added.
“And that there, my loves?” Celcy asked, pointing to the pole that Hugo had over his shoulder and the funnel he carried in his other hand.
“It’s a wind sock,” Hugo said. He had taught Alma and Shirin about those too, material tubes on poles used to measure wind speed and direction. “We’re also amateur meteorologists.”
“Ah, I see! I see!” The driver cackled again, delightedly this time, and nodded. She nodded so hard that her hair slipped sideways; the prodigious nest of silver was suddenly over one ear.
“Oh my stars!” she croaked, scrambling to right it. “What a mess I am tonight. But time’s a-wastin’! Climb aboard, my dear souls. Climb aboard!”
No one moved toward the bus.
“This is—this is a Four Points bus, isn’t it?” Alma asked. “I mean … you work for the town?”
“I drive the bus,” the driver said, nodding again, carefully this time. “I drive to the mountains.”
Which wasn’t really what Alma had asked, but Celcy didn’t say anything else, just stared expectantly. Even through her glasses, her eyes shone a piercing blue beneath long, black lashes and fluorescent green eyeshadow.
Alma waited for Shirin the adventurer to take the lead, but Shirin was hanging back, as if reluctant to board the bus. It was Hugo who stepped forward.
“These hypotheses aren’t going to test themselves,” he said. “On to Second Point Peak.”
And he led the way aboard.