Specimen Days (31 page)

"It's all right," he said. "I don't mean you any harm. Really and truly. I'm afraid you may have gotten yourself in trouble back there. Please. Tell me what you said to the drone."

She answered, "I tell it you went differently." "Why did you do that?"

Mistake. When a Nadian felt accused, it could go catatonic. One theory: they were playing dead in hope that the aggressor would lose interest. Another theory, more widely held: they decided that they were already dead and might as well make it easier for everybody by just hurrying things along.

She straightened her spine. (She had no shoulders.) She looked directly at him with her bright orange eyes.

She said, "I try to help you." "Why did you want to help me?" "You are kind man."

"I'm not a man. I'm programmed to be something that resembles kind. Do you know how much trouble you're probably in?"

She answered, "Yes."

"Do
you?"

"Yes."

"I'm not so sure you do."

"I am ready to go away," she said. "I have no joy."

Then the little boy reached his limit. He screeched. He knew something was up; it probably didn't matter what. He was being neglected. His nanny was talking to a strange man. Clutching his drone, the boy ran screaming to the entrance of his building.

Simon said to Catareen, "Come with me." "Come where?"

"Just come. You're fucked here. We don't have any time."

He plucked the little girl out of her arms. Catareen was too surprised to resist. The girl awoke and howled. Simon ran with her to the building's entrance, got there a second before the boy did.

He handed the girl off to the doorman. "Here," he said. "Take care of them."

The doorman took the wailing girl, started to speak. Simon was gone already. He grabbed Catareen's elbow.

"We have to move very quickly," he said.

They took off down Seventy-fifth Street, headed west. She was a good runner. Flight was prominent on the list of Nadian talents.

They got to the subway stop at West Seventy-second and ran down the stairs. Simon whizzed them in with his card. A handful of players huddled in clumps on the platform. The subways were not popular with tourists. Tourists had their hoverpods for getting from place to place. Only a few sticklers and historical nuts wanted subway rides, and then only for short distances. The overwhelming majority of riders were players going to and from the residential complexes.

Simon and Catareen stood panting on the platform. He said, "We're on the uptown side."

She said nothing. He implored her silently not to go catatonic.

"We should go up into the Nineties, I think," he said. "They keep the cars up there. We'll need a car."

Still nothing from the Nadian. Her lizard eyes stared straight ahead at the empty tracks.

"We should be able to get across the George Washington Bridge. Once we're on the Jersey side, we're out of Infmidot's jurisdiction."

He would be illegal in New Jersey, too, but the Council's enforcement system didn't interface well with Infmidot's. And Catareen might not have committed a New Jersey crime at all. It was impossible to know the variations from state to state.

The train arrived. Its clatter was always shocking. The doors rumbled open, and Simon nudged Catareen forward. She moved. He was grateful for that.

The car was mostly empty. There were four other people, all players. Two dreadlocked bicycle messengers; an Orthodox, also dreadlocked; a homeless man in a Mets cap, two sweaters, and flip-flops all headed home for the night.

They clustered at the far end of the car. They looked tense. Simon wondered for a moment if they knew, if some kind of instantaneous bulletin about him and Catareen had gone out from Infmidot and reached the citizenry at large. Which was unlikely. Then he remembered. He was with a Nadian.

"Sit," he told Catareen. She sat. He sat beside her.

He said, "We can get off at Ninety-sixth Street. Are you okay?"

Her nostrils dilated. The orange orbs of her eyes blinked twice.

"I'm going to assume you're okay," he said. "I'm going to assume you'll tell me if you're not okay. I'm going to assume that when it's time to move, you'll be able to move."

From the far end of the car he felt the homeward-bound players not looking at him and Catareen. When the train started up again, the two messengers and the Orthodox got up and changed cars.

Simon saw the homeless player struggle with a decision. Should he switch cars, too? He half rose, then settled back down again. Nadians were harmless, after all. It was just that they were oily. It was just that they smelled.

Simon saw a drone flash by the subway window after the train had passed the Seventy-ninth Street station. It was a blur of golden wings.

They had sent a drone into the tunnels. It would be waiting at the next stop.

He said to Catareen, "The malformed limbs are tied to the anatomist's table, what is removed drops horribly in a pail."

She blinked. She breathed.

He tried again. He said, "A drone just went by."

"I have see."

"It'll be waiting at Ninety-sixth Street," he said. "It'll probably follow the train to the end of the line. We are now probably fucked."

She said, "Wait here."

She stood. She walked quickly to the opposite end of the car, where the homeless player sat not looking at her.

She stood before him. He kept his eyes on the floor, hoping she wouldn't hit him up for a yen, as Nadians sometimes did. She bent forward slightly to get into his line of vision. She opened her mouth and showed two rows of small serrated teeth. She hissed. Simon had never heard a sound like that. It was sharp and urgent catlike but more guttural.

She raised both her hands and held them before the player's face. She extended her talons. Her skin glowed molten green. She seemed to get larger and brighter.

The player shrieked. She said to him, "Be quiet. Give your clothes."

The player looked desperately in Simon's direction. Simon shrugged. This bit of unappreciated, nonrecreational violence was jerking his circuits a little, even though he wasn't the assailant. His gut felt numb, and a fizziness started up behind his eyes.

Catareen took the player's face in one clawed emerald hand and turned it to look at her.

She hissed, "Take off clothes and give to me. Now."

The player obeyed. He removed his cap and both sweaters. He kicked off his flip-flops.

She said, "Pants."

He rose and struggled out of his greasy work pants. He gave them to her. He stood plumply terrified in his underwear.

Catareen threw the clothes to Simon. She said, "Put on. Quickly."

He did as he was told. As he was pulling one of the sweaters on, she crouched, catlike, and put a lethal-looking finger claw to the quivering player's throat.

Simon heard her say, "No move. No speak." The player did not move or speak.

Queasy but still functional, Simon put the baggy pants on over his own. He mashed the Mets cap down onto his head.

The train stopped at Ninety-sixth Street.

"Go," Catareen called to Simon. "We not are together."

"What about you?" he asked.

Her eyes glowed furnace-orange. "Do as I say."

He did. He got off the train.

The drone was hovering on the platform, checking the disembarking passengers. Simon slouched along. He pulled the cap brim an inch lower and kept his eyes down. Detrained players and a smattering of Nadians moved toward the exit turnstiles. He moved with them. The drone whirred overhead, maintaining a circumscribed orbit in the vicinity of the exit. It wavered once, smacked up against the tiled wall, righted itself. Everyone looked at the drone with curiosity. Simon did, too. Act like everybody else. Briefly his eyes connected with the drone's rotating eyestalk. It considered him. It snapped a vid. It flittered on to the next citizen. Simon passed through the turnstile and went up the stairs with the others.

He emerged among the warehouses and empty stores on Ninety-sixth and Broadway. He hesitated. He knew he should move naturally along, but where was Catareen? He pretended to read an old hologram that advertised a concert. Singing cats. He could plausibly linger for less than a minute.

She came up the stairs within thirty seconds. She passed close to him but not too close. She said softly, "Not together."

Right. He walked on, several paces behind her. She crossed Broadway. He crossed, too. On the far side of Broadway, she went west on Ninety-sixth Street, as did he.

This neighborhood was just storage, really. Some maintenance shops, some stretches of pure dereliction where extra props sat bleaching and rusting. Sweatshop machinery and horse carts from Five Points (they were thinking of shutting it down; it was too hard getting players to work there), Gatsbymobiles from Midtown in the Twenties, crate upon crate of hippie paraphernalia that had been slowly decaying here since the Council closed down Positively Fourth Street. The attractions didn't start up again until you reached the soul food parlors and jazz joints of Old Harlem, and then that was the end of the park.

When they had reached a quiet stretch of West End Avenue, she turned to him.

"I didn't know you people could do that," he said.

"Can."

"How did you get off the train?"

"I go quick. Man will tell drone next stop. We hurry."

"We'll need a car," he said.

"You can get?"

"I
am
a car. More or less."

He chose a vintage Mitsubishi parked in a weedy lot. He hoped it was a real one. Half of them were shells. Simon fingered the autolock, felt its numbers transmit. He punched them in and opened the door. It was a working car. He pulled the wires, started it. He let her in on the passenger side.

She fastened her seat belt.

He drove to the Henry Hudson Parkway and headed north. He said, "I can't believe you did that."

She stared straight ahead, her long green fingers folded in her lap.

The parkway was divided. Vintage cars on the right, hoverpods on the left. There were not many cars, but there was a steady stream of hoverpods filled with tourists. From within the clean, arctic light of the pods' interiors people looked down at Simon and the Nadian, chugging along in the Mitsubishi. They must have wondered what this was supposed to be a tattooed man in a Mets cap and two sweaters, driving in a compact car with a Nadian nanny. They must have been consulting their guidebooks.

He said, "I hope you don't mind my asking, but I'd like to know. What did you do on Nadia?"

"I was criminal," she said.

"You're kidding. You stole from people?"

"I was criminal," she said. She said nothing else.

Ahead, the George Washington Bridge stretched illuminated across the river. He got onto the bridge. He said, "We should get rid of the car when we reach New Jersey. I'll find us a pod."

She nodded. She kept her hands folded in her lap.

They were halfway across when a drone voice sounded from overhead. "Ball doo behackle ober do doo rark."

"Not stop," she said.

"I wasn't even considering it."

He punched the accelerator. The Mitsubishi groaned and went somewhat faster.

"We're probably screwed," Simon said.

Then the drone was alongside him, whirring at the window. It said, "Pull over to the right."

Simon swerved in the drone's direction. It knocked against the window glass and spun out over the car. He could hear the sound its wings made against the roof, like a metal bee trapped in a bottle.

The drone reappeared almost immediately in front of the car. The first beam shattered the windshield. Bright pebbles of glass flew everywhere.

Simon shouted, "This is the breath of laws and songs and behavior." He swerved to the right this time. The drone tracked him.

"Duck," he said to Catareen.

She ducked. He ducked. The second beam burned a hole in the headrest where Simon's head had been. The air smelled of hot plastifoam.

With his head almost touching his knees, he could not see the road. The car careened, scraped against the guardrail. Catareen raised her head slightly above the dashboard and put a hand on the wheel. She helped guide the car back into its lane. Wind blew through the empty windshield.

Another ray angled in, aimed at Catareen's head. She bobbed just in time. It struck the console between driver and passenger seat. It sent up a minor flame, a curl of plastic smoke.

Simon lifted his head high enough to see the road. The drone was not visible. Then it was. It was at his side again. He hit the brake. The tires screeched. The car shimmied. The drone's ray shot straight across the hood.

Simon accelerated and turned the wheel sharply. He steered into the hoverpod lane and clipped the front end of a pod. It sounded its horn. He saw that there was just enough space for the Mitsubishi on the shoulder to the pod's left. He swerved onto the shoulder.

The drone was behind them now. It tried to shoot out the rear windshield. It missed the first time, aiming too high, and sent its beam into New Jersey. The second time, it took out the rear windshield and struck the radio. Bruce Springsteen started singing "Born to Run."

Simon and Catareen were covered in glass. The hoverpods were trumpeting. The one just ahead applied its brakes, and Simon shot around and in front of it. The car was shuddering. It had not been made for this. Simon had not been made for this, either.

Directly ahead, both lanes were empty, except for a hoverpod thirty yards away. Simon weaved from lane to lane as erratically as he could. A ray clipped his cheek. He felt the burn. He swerved sharply to the right as another ray shot through the baseball cap (sharp sudden smell of hot plastiwool) and glanced across his scalp. He couldn't tell how badly he was hurt. He knew he was alive. He knew he could keep driving.