To hell with it, he decided, picking up his pace. Do or die.
In the end, Kendrick's fears came to nothing. The check-in people asked him what he was carrying and he showed them the datachip, as Roy had instructed. A woman placed his chip in a reader and that was that -they waved him on.
The jet was barely half-full. Not surprising, given how its destination had lost its tourist appeal in recent decades. The majority of the passengers wore T-shirts or caps that made it clear they were on their way to do relief work. Apart from them, Kendrick saw a smattering of men and women in businesswear.
The jet boosted to the top of the atmosphere, skipping across the borderline between sky and space like a stone skimming across waves. Kendrick spent most of his time staring out the window at the deep blue of near- space.
23 October 2096 New York
A few short hours later Kendrick stepped out of the terminal building at La Guardia and into utter chaos.
There were tanks parked all the way around the airport. That was the first thing he noticed. The second thing was the sea of beggars who surrounded him the instant he stepped beyond the terminal entrance.
Just metres away Kendrick sighted a rank of antique and battered-looking cabs, the entirely manual kind that still needed real human drivers. He headed for the first in line, pushing past all the people pleading with him. One woman, her face a mask of tears, even thrust her baby at his chest, yelling words he couldn't comprehend amidst the commotion.
Knowing that he wasn't the only one having to deal with this gave Kendrick scant relief. He noticed the relief workers from the same flight pushing just as hard against this human tide but they looked like they had more experience of it. A phalanx of them just bulldozed through the beggars, heading for a private-hire bus parked a little way beyond the taxi rank.
Kendrick kept asking people to step out of his way but they thrust themselves in his path all the more eagerly. He could see soldiers sitting on top of some tanks in the distance and imagined that they were watching the scene with detached amusement.
Out of the corner of his eye he spotted another passenger from his flight – a business type – literally battering the beggars aside with his aluminium suitcase. The man bulled on through, his technique appearing to work.
Giving up any pretence at the niceties, Kendrick followed his example. He propelled himself forward, smacking against shoulders and heads with his elbows. It was, indeed, the only way. Things were bad all over in his native country, but he'd forgotten just how bad.
'Jesus Christ,' he muttered once he reached the first of the taxis. A woman whom he recognized from his flight – small and chocolate-skinned, with short, cropped hair and wearing a T-shirt that read NEW YORK AID RELIEF in large block letters – had reached the cab behind his. A scrawny young girl, who couldn't have been older than ten, was standing right next to her, thrusting little tinfoil-wrapped packages at her. The relief worker managed to ignore the girl as if she wasn't even there.
Kendrick stared at the child and thought of his daughter.
He looked back up, suddenly catching the woman's eye. 'Jesus won't help you,' she said with a cheery smile, her accent a soft drawl from somewhere south of Virginia. 'But I can give you a ride into town if you like.'
'Thanks, but I've got to make my way somewhere…'
The beggars were trailing off as fresh meat from some other flight began exiting the terminal. The relief worker had the door of her cab half open. She left it and stepped over to him.
'Don't get in that cab,' she murmured. 'You'll never see tomorrow.'
'What are you talking about?'
She leant a little closer, so he could smell her perfume. 'It's the licence plate. I can tell.'
He stared at her, then stepped back from his cab, closing the door. The driver glared at him from inside, shook his head, and went back to reading his eepsheet. She drew him back with a gentle pressure on his elbow and nodded towards the registration plate on the rear.
'It's fake. There's ways to tell. They lock you in, gas you, and steal anything valuable. As often as not they put a bullet through your head and dump your body in the river. Corpses get dredged up all the time, and nobody ever checks on them.'
Kendrick saw the driver glance around at them and mutter some inaudible profanity. A moment later the cab shot away from the kerb with a screech of tyres.
Kendrick watched it roar away, dumbfounded. 'All I'm saying is you look like this is your first time over here,' she said. 'Yet you're obviously American, so…' She shrugged.
'Weren't you together with all those other relief workers on that flight?'
'Nah, they're headed for the West Coast.' She gave an impish smile. 'I deal with European fund-raising for the regional administration that takes care of food relief for New York.' The woman studied Kendrick for a moment, her smile growing just wide enough to show a glint of small, perfect teeth. 'Listen, I usually always stay at the same place. It's safe and has the advantage that nobody tries to kill you in your sleep.'
'What's it called, this place?'
'The Chelsea. Used to be quite well known.'
Kendrick saw the woman with the baby moving towards them again, having presumably found slim pickings elsewhere. Tears still streamed down her face and her voice was a constant wail. The baby's mouth hung slackly and he realized to his horror that the child was dead.
That was the worst thing he could possibly have seen. He got into the taxi: anything to avoid the sight.
The relief worker slid into the seat beside him.
'My name's Kendrick,' he said. 'Thanks for the lift.'
'No problem at all. I'm Helen,' she said, smiling. 'Chelsea Hotel, please, driver.'
Helen swayed against Kendrick's shoulder as the cab pulled sharply around a corner, between looming and run-down brownstones. Something had been niggling at Kendrick's memory. 'The Chelsea Hotel – I feel like I should know that name.'
Helen nodded. 'You used to get a lot of artists and musicians staying there. They've been going there for a long time, well over a century. I suppose it used to possess what you'd call bohemian charm.'
The cab pulled to a stop right outside a twelve-storey brownstone. 'Look, I'll pay for this,' Kendrick offered, finding his wand.
She squinted at the device. 'Isn't that thing something of an antique?'
He smiled quickly. 'I don't like the, ah…' He shrugged amiably.
Helen raised an eyebrow a millimetre or so. 'I didn't take you for the type to get upset about subderms. Makes my life easier, though, if I want to pay for something in most parts of the world.'
'Maybe so, but it bothers me. And I don't mind if people think I'm old-fashioned.' Which was bullshit, of course: Kendrick's augs would fritz the subdermal implants that everyone else used to pay for their goods and services – or even to make phone calls.
She sighed. 'Well, that wouldn't do you much good round here anyway.' She reached into her shoulder bag and pulled out some crumpled notes. 'Stick with cash here, long as you're in town. Foreign currency only -yen, if possible.'
As old and shabby as the hotel looked from the outside, it was a different story on the inside. At some point the building's original innards had been ripped out and the present internal architecture was of a much more modern design.
'Listen, I want to thank you,' Kendrick told Helen after he'd checked in. He found it hard to take his eyes away
