The subways now ran vertically as well as horizontally, trains of cars supplementing and connecting the antiquated elevators.
The office buildings were interspersed with the skeletons of the “racktowers,” where space was rented for the modular apartments that could be unplugged and moved at the owner’s wish. The higher you lived, the more you paid.
The street was just a smudge, far, far below. No one lived there except the homeless and the outlaws who crept through the garbage, feeding on the trash and debris that fell from above.
The trickle-down theory at work.
If the scene was new to the girl, she didn’t show it. She hardly seemed to notice. She reached into one of the pockets on her skimpy outfit and pulled out the broken handle. She looked at it and shook her head, then put it back.
Bratabratabratabrat!
Shots ricocheted off the wall and the ledge, and the girl crept around the comer of the building, out of the line of fire.
A head stuck out of the shaft.
It was the Chief of Security. He looked out, then down—then turned pale and pulled his head back in.
He turned to the two men right behind him.
“Follow her!”
A security guard stuck his head out. A hand and foot followed. He took one step out onto the narrow ledge, then turned and clambered back into the ventilation shaft.
“No way,” he said flatly.
The second guard took one look and pulled back.
“No way.”
The Chief of Security had been preparing a series of threats in his mind. He reconsidered and filed them away.
He popped open his cell phone. “We need a flying unit here!” he said.
WOO WEEE WOOOWEEE!
Siren wailing, lights flashing, a police cruiser zoomed up between the buildings. Swarms of cabs moved out of the way.
The chief leaned out far enough to point, and the police cruiser shut off its siren. Hovering silently, it crept slowly toward the corner of the building.
“This.is.the.police,” said a robotic amplified voice.
“We.are.processing.your.identification.”
Actually it wasn’t a robot, but one of the two officers in the car, who had learned to imitate a robot through a post-academy mail order course.
He could see the perp standing on the narrow ledge. A pretty girl, in a very bright and very scanty outfit.
“She has no file!” said his partner, tapping the glass on the cruiser’s computer terminal.
“Please.put.up.your.arms.and.follow.our. instructions,” said the driver in his best robotic voice.
The girl seemed only too happy to comply.
She smiled and raised her arms. She stood on her tiptoes, looked down 450 stories, and—
“Christ!” said both cops at once. “She dove off!”
10
“LET ME OFF OVER THERE, PLEASE! THAT ENTRANCE ON THE LEFT, at the corner.”
Korben yanked at the wheel of the cab, turning so fast that his gyros moaned, and cut under two lanes of traffic, expertly avoiding a fender-bender, a side swipe and a rear-ender, while ignoring the curses of a fellow cabbie.
He bobbled to a hovering stop at an entrance ledge high above the 44th Street Corridor, where what had once been 44th Street lay beneath twenty feet of midden trash.
“Wow,” said the fare, a turquoise-suited businessman. “Where’d you learn to drive like that?” “The last war,” Korben said drily. “And the one before that.”
“Awesome.” The fare swiped his card through the slot, and the decal speakers in Korben’s cab all started up at once, a chorus of tiny robot voices:
“Please.make.sure.your.belongmgs.are…”
“While.in.New.York.visit.the…” “Direct.any.complaints.or…”
The fare opened the door.
“Hey,” said Korben. “Aren’t you forgetting something?”
The fare checked the seat behind him. “What?” “The tip.”
“I don’t tip,” said the fare, stepping out onto the entrance ledge. “It’s against my principles.” “Great,” said Korben, roaring off. “How often do you get to meet a true man of principle!”
Leaving the 44th, Korben cruised north, looking for a new fare. Cabs were hailed by balloons released by doormen, or by flashing lights at the entrance locks of the big corporations.
He was cruising at a little over 400 floors, watching the ledges out of the corners of his eyes, when—
CRASH!
Something hit the roof of the cab.
The impact tripped all the sensors, and the cab automatically droned: “You.have.just.had.an.accident.”
“No shit!” Korben muttered, struggling to regain control of his careening cab. He glanced over his shoulder and saw to his amazement that someone had fallen into the cab, through the roof!
He stabilized his gyros and pulled over to the side, out of the traffic. He hovered in the shadow of a parapet as the cab’s voice droned on: “Four.points.have.been.temporarily removed… You.have.one.point.left.on.your.license.”
Great! He sighed and looked into the back seat to assess the damage. Korben figured he had been hit by a “faller,” one of midtown Manhattan’s hundred or so suicides every day.
But if this was a suicide, it was an unsuccessful one.
The whatever-or-whoever-it-was had smashed through the crummy Plexiflex roof of the cab, and was lying on the back seat in a heap of legs and arms. Awfully pretty legs and arms, as a matter of fact!
“Any survivors?” Korben asked—and caught his breath.
A girl sat up in the pile of debris on the back seat of his cab. She was, for lack of a better word, beautiful. More than beautiful, in fact.
Heavenly.
There was a little blood on her face from a cut lip, but other than that she seemed miraculously unharmed.
Korben leaned over and wiped the blood off her mouth with his sleeve.
Her eyes were so green…
Korben’s heart stopped and he felt like the cab was spinning.
Her hair was bright red…
She smiled.
He felt he ought to say something. But what does one say to a spectacularly pretty girl who just fell out of the sky?
“Hi,” he said. “Nice hair.”
“Akina delutan,” the girl replied, with a broad smile, as if Korben had just said the cleverest thing she had ever heard. “Nou shan. Djela— Boom!”
“Boom?” queried Korben.
“Bada boom! ” the girl said, clapping her hands.
Korben looked up through the demolished roof of his cab. He could see a blue police cruiser approaching, its lights flashing.
“Yeah,” he said. “Big Bada Boom,”
“YOU.HAVE.AN.UNAUTHORIZED.PASSENGER,” growled the police cruiser in a demented robotic screech as it hovered in front of Korben’s cab. “WE.ARE.GOING.TO.ARREST. HER.PLEASE.LEAVE.YOUR.HANDS.ON.THE.WHEEL.THANK.YOU.FOR.YOUR.COOPERATION.”
Korben had had enough experience with New York’s “finest” to know their reputation for trigger-happy un-professionalism.
He left his hands on the wheel in plain sight.
“Sorry, hon,” he said over his shoulder. “But I think this is your ride. We’d better do what they say.”
The police cruiser moved in clumsily, mag-locking onto the cab.
Huge guns pointed through every window of the police cruiser, and behind every gun barrel were two black, beady eyes.
Cops.
The cruiser’s doors slid open, and a hydraulic Felon-net emerged, complete with a set of automatic handcuffs, opened and beckoning.
Korben felt lousy.
He felt twice as lousy when he looked into the back seat and saw the tears in the girl’s eyes.