“You got that right!”
Cyndee said, “Is it one of those turismos?”
Fred looked insulted. “A turismo? Have you been outdoors lately? No, it’s a Campaigner 3000.”
“We spend time outdoors every day,” Mary said, “and the Campaigner 3000 looks dashing on you. Along with the shoes.”
“Thank you,” Fred said and admired his cross-trainers. He leaned over and kissed Mary on the lips, the penultimate item on his list. All that remained was walking out the door. “Great to see you again, Cyndee. Say hello to Larry. And, Shell, I hope this death improves for you. And give my regards to Reilly.”
Shelley replied coolly, “You’ll have to do that yourself, Fred. Reilly and I have broken up.”
Fred was astonished. Even Mary and Cyndee were taken off guard. “Oh, Shell,” Mary said, half rising from the couch, but Shelley signaled curtly for her to stay away from her.
“He couldn’t get over his first death,” Shelley went on. “You remember that one, don’t you, Fred? It was the strangulation one. In case you don’t know what I’m talking about, the Roosevelt Clinic recording is freely available. Or I can get you a copy if you like.”
Fred twisted the Campaigner hat in his large hands. “No, thanks, Shell,” he said softly. “That’s not necessary. I see that movie every time I close my eyes. I’m very sorry to hear your news. I truly am.”
As Fred and the evangelines talked, no one was watching the holocube of the Leena who was still sitting in the shadows of the death artist’s breezeway. The Leena was painting a dark figure in the air with two spit-wetted fingers. First she made a counterclockwise spiral, and then she slashed across it. Again and again she did this, as though trying to summon death from the air.
The Hairball
A few floors down, Fred paused at the pedway merging ramp to shape his floppy hat into a cycling helmet. It didn’t take him long, but by the time he joined the throng of rush-hour commuters, he had attracted a cloud of media bees.
Fred sprinted onto the pedway and entered a jogging lane. After building up a little speed, he began a skating stride, pushing his cross-trainers sideways with each step, and the pedway plates beneath his feet switched to skate mode. When he was skating fast enough, he merged into the velolane. Just then, the pedway emerged from the interior of the Lin/Wong gigatower, and he was suspended two hundred munilevels over a deep traffic well. Around him, the towers rose as high above as they stretched below, and Fred had to focus in order to manage the passing and weaving of velolane traffic. He reached for the ideal stride that he could maintain for hours, and the bees fell far behind. Then two skaters came up on either side of him. They wore form-fitting crashsuits in glowing colors. They weren’t iterants. They glanced at Fred with scorn and pulled ahead with ease. A challenge! Fred was game. He increased his pace and adjusted his stride multipliers, and when he caught up to them, the race was on. They moved as a group into the fastest lanes and reached truly frightening speeds. The two skaters appeared to have augmented bodies, and he couldn’t tell by their figures if they were male or female. They outclassed him in technique, but he was fueled with spit, and he managed to keep up with them all the way to the interchange plaza where he would have to turn north.
Without warning, the slipskate function of the pedway ceased, and Fred’s cross-trainers defaulted to ordinary running mode. He was going much too fast to stop and he sprinted as fast as he could to dump speed and stay on his feet. His two competitors fell and slid on their backs, their frictionless racing suits riding the plates with ease. Eventually Fred tripped hard and rolled and slid to a halt, bumping into a number of people along the way but doing no great harm. He lay on his back and caught his breath and felt himself for injury. The reinforced knees of his jumpsuit were shredded, as were the palms of his gloves, but he was whole. The Campaigner helmet had protected his head.
When Fred sat up, he found himself near the middle of the interchange. The entire hundred-lane interchange plaza surrounding him had come to a halt, and its throngs of pedestrians were standing or lying perfectly still. It was weird.
Fred got up and looked around for the nearest exit, but before he could set off, a CPT bee flew over to him and said, “In the interest of public safety, do not move, Myr Londenstane. The local pedway system is temporarily malfing, and any unauthorized movement may cause a dangerous traffic situation.” For good measure, it spritzed him with a pinch of dust. “Stay where you are until instructed to move.”
“Hey! Stop that!” he yelled, trying to clear the dust with his hand, but he instantly felt calm and patient. “What’s going on?” he asked, but the transit bee flew off to the next stranded pedestrian.
Several lanes away, a jack yelled to those around him, “Don’t nobody fart or we’ll have us a hairball.”
A hairball. Fred had heard about pedway hairballs, gnarly traffic patterns that had only started occurring after the canopies had dropped. As Fred waited, he called the mentar Marcus at the BB of R and told him he might be late. He readjusted his Campaigner into a floppy hat and watched the traffic channel with its visor for a while, and then he switched to filter 21 and just stood there gazing at the showers of nano crap that rained like glitter upon the city. Another legacy of the missing canopies.
“Please bear with us as we work to restore service,” droned the transit subem. Its voice was broadcast through the transit bees, which had formed a flying grid over the interchange. “And remember, do not move until directed to.” There was one advantage to the malfunction, at least. The transit authority kept all but official mechs out of the plaza, so Fred was able to stand outdoors, enjoy the sunny weather, and admire the monumental cityscape without being bothered by the media.
The person nearest Fred was a jerome, a plain-looking, unpretentious type that excelled in administrative tasks. This one wore a derby-style hat with hardly a brim at all. Most of the hats around Fred seemed more fashionable than functional.
Without warning, the interchange lurched, sending many pedestrians stumbling. “Don’t move! Don’t move!” roared the transit subem, but the damage was done, and the interchange lurched again into sustained motion. The lane markers disappeared, and the entire intricate interchange plaza merged into one huge, counterclockwise merry-go-round.
“Don’t move! Don’t move!” droned the bees. The jerome drifted away, saluting farewell to Fred, and new people drifted in and out of his vicinity. One of the skaters he had raced, jennys, dorises, johns, and a lot of free- rangers. A pair of lulus in sexy clothes, one of them sobbing on the other’s shoulder. A free-range man who argued belligerently with the transit bees surrounding him. Around and around they went at a not unpleasant rate of speed. Fred’s encounters were repeated: the jerome, the skater, jennys, dorises, and johns. The lulu was still crying, and her sister looked about desperately.
“Can I help?” Fred shouted, but he couldn’t make out her reply.
The belligerent free-ranger had had all he could take. With an angry bellow, he broke free from his spot and sprinted across the plaza. The transit bees converged on him and dusted him with something that made him sit down very quickly. But it was too late; the pedway plates under Fred’s feet began to twitch. They darted this way and that. A cry of alarm rose up from the plaza, and the orderly counterclockwise rotation broke up into a random, slow-motion helter-skelter. People slowly skittered off each other; they clumped up; they collided.
“Do not be afraid!” commanded the transit subem. “Do not move! The current pattern of motion is not dangerous. Do not overreact to unpleasant encounters with other pedestrians.”
Fred did his best to radiate calm. He stood at ease, smiling like a fool, and when he grazed other people, begged their pardon.
The movement alternately sped up and slowed down, and some of the collisions knocked people off their feet. The bees were very busy maintaining order. At one point Fred was at the center of a gyrating knot of thirty or so people. At first they were twirling around each other like some kind of folk dance, but gradually the circle closed in, and they were pressed tight. They either laughed or urged calm or cursed the politicians. Soon they were squeezed cheek to jowl, and a few ribs snapped. Bad as it seemed, it could get worse, and most people were able to remain calm. Eventually, the knot loosened, and they were do-si-do-ing around each other again and gasping for air.
At one point, Fred was pressed back-to-back with a man who he thought must be another russ, for he was
