The Customs and Immigration plaza was a vast expanse of parking-slot-demarcated pavement hosting many restaurants, motels and duty-free shops, as well as some official government buildings. A hundred yards from where her bus had deposited her, near an Au Bon Pain, a single lane of traffic—fairly light at this hour—crawled toward the lone inspection checkpoint that remained open.
Amy went inside the restaurant, hoping to assemble her thoughts. She ordered a
After half an hour of pointless cogitation, nothing had revealed itself to her. So she activated her earbuds and began quietly singing along to a Loretta Lynn tune.
A shadow fell across Amy’s field of vision, and she looked up to see a man standing by her table.
The fellow was about six feet four, possessed of an enormous red beard matched in impressiveness only by his beer gut. He wore a one-piece outfit that looked like the inner lining of a taikonaut’s suit, with various hookups and jacks.
For a moment, Amy was frightened. But then she noticed that there were tears in the man’s eyes.
The stranger seemed to want to address her, so Amy deactivated her iPod to allow them to talk.
“Honey,” said the man, “I ain’t thought of that song in nigh on fifteen years, since my Mama died. She loved that song, and used to sing it pert near every day. ‘Course, she could actually nurse a tune, not strangle it like you. Nonetheless, it done my heart good to hear you attempt it. Pertickly here, ‘midst all these Chardonnay- swillers.”
Amy chose to ignore the insult to her singing abilities, as well as the blanket categorization of her fellow New Austinites as foreign- wine imbibers—especially since the latter accusation was true. The man seemed friendly enough, and might know some way of getting her across the border.
“Thanks, mister. I’m purely sorry to hear you lost your mama, even iffen it were a hound dog’s age ago.”
Amy was surprised to find herself falling into the speech patterns and diction of the stranger, a mode of speech that resembled the vernacular of the songs she loved. She had never allowed herself to indulge in such an affectation before, for fear of ridicule by her peers. But now that she had cut loose from her old life, nothing seemed more natural than to talk this way.
“I appreciate the sentiment, little lady.” The man extended his hand. “Bib Bogardus is the name, and I hail from Pine Mountain, Georgia. What’s yourn?”
“Amy Gertslin.”
“Pleased to meet you, Amy.” Bib lowered his bulk precariously into a seat at her table. “Now, just call me a nosy nelly if I’m stepping on any toes with my curiosity, but what brings you out to this place all alone at this hour?”
Amy hesitated a minute, then decided to confide everything to this friendly ear.
Bib listened to her story attentively and without condemnation. When she had finished, he said, “Waal, I can’t say I’d be totally happy iffen my own daughter upped and hit the road. She’s just about your own age, you know. Name of Jerilee. But I can unnerstand how a young’un has to find her own destiny. Especially when you’re trapped in such a hellhole as New Austin. Why, did you know that you can’t even buy a Lone Star beer in this whole territory anymore?”
Emboldened by Bib Bogardus’s sympathy, Amy leaned toward him. “Is there any way you could help me scoot past these revenooers, Bib? What do you do anyhow? How come you’re here?”
“I drive a big rig, Amy. Carrying a load of tomacco from Mexico to Oklahoma City.”
“Why, that’s just where I’m going! I figure on hitching a ride from there straight to Nashville. I’m gonna try to get into the music biz.”
Bib scrached his beard ruminatively. “Hmmm, best you concentrate on being a producer or songwriter, with them pipes. But hail, who’m I to say what you can do, once you put your mind to it. They got plenty of tricks to sweeten up anyone’s voice these days. Just look at thet there little Simpson gal. If it weren’t for her mother, Ashlee, pushing her, she’d probably be serving grits at a Waffle House. Or whatever similar place they got in Agnostica. Caviar at the French Embassy, I guess.”
“So you’ll help me?”
Bib got to his feet. “I sure will. C’mon with me, darling.”
Amy, holding her pack by the straps, followed Bib outside to Bib’s rig, an enormous, streamlined, diesel- powered tractor-trailer combo bearing the proud name
“Does this actually run on
“You bet, honeychile. I know that’s an illegal substance in Agnostica, but they give us truckers an exemption so long as we’re just passing through. You won’t catch me driving one of those water-farting hydrogen creepers, no sir! Take me twice as long just to break even on my routes.”
Bib opened the passenger-side door and removed a crinkly silver suit identical to the one he wore.
“Here, darling, slip into this.”
“Do I have to get naked?”
Bib laughed. “Well, you would if you were planning to drive 24/7 like yours truly. Then you’d want to be hooked into the
Amy did as requested, then snugged into the suit, which seamed invisibly at the rear and automatically shrunk to fit her. Then she and Bib got into the tractor cab.
“Wow! This looks like the inside of the
“Waal, we ain’t going quite so far as Mars, but I do believe in comfort and technology. Jack yerself in at that port there—”
Once Amy’s suit was plugged into the dash, she felt a deft pinprick on her arm. She worried for an instant that Bib was going to drug her and deliver her to the harem of some Yemeni prince. But when nothing happened to her as the big man started the mighty yet purring engine of the truck, she relaxed.
“Just let me do the talking at Customs, ’kay?”
“Sure.”
The
On the New Austin side, the border was protected by a variety of biological barricades, many of them with Batchelder Bioengineering pedigrees: hedges of thorny plants, troops of fire ants, pods of mini-shoggoths. On the Georgetown, Faithland, side, the barriers were strictly inanimate: robot lenses and gun muzzles, monomolecular wire, gluball anti-personnel mines. This natural-artificial interface was as clear a political statement of the differences between Agnostica and Faithland as any tract.
Two New Austin inspectors came up to the stopped truck. The first, a short, stocky Latina, led a redacted dog, a Rhodesian Ridgeback with a hypertrophied snout. This mutant canine proceeded to sniff all around the tractor and trailer, while the women inspected the intelligent seals placed on the trailer at its point of origin. The second inspector, an African-Agnostican with a jaunty goatee, came around to Bib’s door.
“Blood sample, please.”
“Sure thing, officer.” Bib extended his hand and pressed his thumb into the sampling pad on the inspector’s ViewMaster. Then the guardian of the gates came around to Amy’s side, and she did the same, stifling her reluctance to reveal her identity.
Surely the game was up now…?
In a few seconds, both inspectors seemed satisfied.
“You and your daughter go safe now, Mr. Bogardus.”
“Will do,
Once through the New Austin arch, the
Once they were a few miles down Route 35, Amy finally felt it was safe to speak.
“‘Daughter?’ How did you—?”
Bib patted the dashboard affectionately. “The ol’
