Runner

'Not stunning, please. Elegant, stylish, cute, or fetching. The hippo thing only lasts a couple of months, and then it's back to gazelle. And one more thing. Do you have perfect vision?'

'It's my one perfect feature.'

'Then while we're out tomorrow, we'll get you some nice glasses. You'll want a pair of sunglasses that are big and dark to change the shape of your face when you're out. We'll need a second pair with a lighter shade, probably brownish. You'll also want some that are clear, so you can wear them in places like movie theaters and grocery stores.'

'Ugh.'

'I'm giving you the means to be safe. When I'm gone, you'll decide which ones you can tolerate in which situations.'

'Are you getting sick of me?'

'Not yet,' said Jane. 'You're actually growing on me.'

'Very funny.'

'That's another thing. We've got to start shopping for an obgyn for you. We need one who works out of a hospital in this part of town.'

'I could call the office of my doctor in San Diego and ask him for a referral.'

Jane looked at her, shocked. She was so young. 'Bad idea. Before we do this, we'd better do some preparing. First we have to get you some new health insurance as Linda Welles. You're young enough so we can probably say you haven't had a job with health benefits yet, and that this is your first policy. Then we'll go for your first checkup.'

'Why can't I call my doctor in San Diego? I'd just ask for a name.'

'Any time you get in touch with anybody from your past life, you give the hunters another way to find you. You can't ask for doctors in Minneapolis without someone making a note on your file that you moved to Minneapolis. Nothing that happens in a doctor's office is supposed to be public information, but there are a million ways to get it. No place where there are physical files or computer records is safe from people who are willing to break in.'

'They don't know the name of my doctor in San Diego. While I was there I never told anybody but Sharon I was pregnant.'

'But Richard knows. Even if some doctor's bills haven't come to your house by now, Richard is your employer. I'm sure he can get the insurance company to list the payments they've made to doctors and figure out which ones are yours. It's likely that his people have already begun to check your medical records. They'll be waiting for you to go to another doctor somewhere. Let me handle this part. I'll get started on it today, with the insurance.'

That afternoon Jane made a telephone call and arranged to add an employee named Linda Welles to a group health insurance contract for one of the imaginary companies she had incorporated years before. When she had first started giving runners new identities, she had found it useful to create corporations that could produce work histories and references for them. After that she had found more and more uses for the shadow companies. She could make purchases with a certain amount of anonymity just by reciting account numbers over a telephone. After the insurance was arranged, she began the search for a doctor to oversee Linda Welles's pregnancy and deliver the baby.

While Jane concentrated on getting Linda Welles settled, she instituted new routines. Every morning Jane got up early, put on a sweatshirt, shorts, and running shoes, and went for a run before the sun came up. She would begin by running the streets and parking lots of the apartment complex. During the first two mornings she memorized the cars that belonged to the tenants along the nearby streets, and each morning after that, as she ran, she watched for ones that didn't belong. When she had been through the complex she ran along the street beyond the entrance, and then returned to Linda Welles's apartment. She stood barefoot on the carpet in the spare room and went through the ordered poses of tai chi.

One morning Linda was up early enough to watch her. 'That's tai chi, right? They're all animals, aren't they?'

'They're stances that each animal uses when it fights.'

'Why do you do it?'

'It makes me feel good. It keeps me flexible, improves my balance and coordination.' Jane smiled. 'It makes me easier to get along with. I can start teaching you a little, if you want.'

'Not today,' Linda said. 'Where did you learn to fight?'

'By fighting.'

'Before that. You've had training.'

'I learned tai chi in a class about twenty years ago. I've been running since I was a kid. I was on the track team. But I wanted something different that kept me flexible and strengthened my upper body. Later on, I took a man out of the world who happened to be a black belt in aikido. He was being hunted hard, so I had to stay with him for several months to make him safe and teach him how to be the person he was going to be. You're a young girl, so you don't have to account for much time. Most people you meet will just assume you've been in school from the time you were five until now. It's much harder for a middle-aged man. He has to account for twenty or thirty years of history beyond that—jobs, wives, hobbies, friends and relatives, education, experiences. That's tricky. He has to account for what he knows, but also pretend he doesn't know certain things, or people will figure out where he must have come from. We used to have long talks. I would ask him to tell me stories about his imaginary life, and I'd try to pick holes in them. When we got tired of that, he would teach me aikido for five or six hours a day.'

'You must have done more than that. I saw you fight.'

'Not exactly. You saw me not-fight. This is fighting.' She pretended to deliver a series of punches and kicks that were so fast that Linda could barely follow the movements. 'That's karate, of course. That's called a kata, and it's a set routine you can go into in a certain situation. You work on a kata until you can do it correctly. Then you practice it in exactly the same way a few thousand times. After two thousand you can usually perform the movements well enough. Another two thousand times and you have it ingrained deeply enough so you might think to use it if you were attacked. After you've done it many more times, you can do it very fast. It takes two-tenths of a second for the eye to receive and transmit an image to the brain and the brain to interpret it. If you can deliver a punch or a kick faster than two-tenths of a second, then you can hit an opponent before he sees the blow coming.'

'That's what you did that night. Why do you call it not-fighting?'

'I broke his knee before a fight could start, and then I ran away.'

'But you could fight.'

'Only because he didn't think I could. He thought I couldn't hurt him, so he didn't pay enough attention to me, or protect himself. There was a huge difference between us. No matter how much work I do, or how much I learn, I'm never going to be as strong as even the average out-of-shape man. He has at least seventy or eighty pounds on me, a lot of it muscle. I have to attack very fast, fight very dirty, and get back where he can't reach me. I can't stand around hitting him and letting him hit me. If he lands one good punch he'll break bones.'

'But you beat him.'

'No, I tricked him. That man saw the two of us, and what he was seeing was like a pair of little pussycats. You can go up to a hundred cats, one after the other, and they're all perfectly docile. Then you meet that one that looks the same, but suddenly it has its claws digging into your arm to hold on while it sinks its teeth all the way into your hand. That's me. I'm the one that bites.'

'That's what I want to be,' said Linda. 'I want to be able to fight back.'

'You don't want to fight,' said Jane. 'You want what I want, which is to get away.'

'I guess that's true.'

'I was planning on helping you with that. We'll start tomorrow after the appointment at the doctor's office.'

The next day was cooler but bright and clear, with a breeze that seemed to Jane to be an early summer treat before the humidity set in. Jane drove Linda along East River Parkway to the edge of the University of Minnesota campus. When she reached Harvard Street she turned left and pointed at the big building that dominated the area. 'That's it.'

'That's what?'

'The hospital. The Fairview-University Medical Center.'