“But I’d have to get across the border first.”
“That’s what I’m working on now,” she said. “But I’ll find a way.”
“I wish I could believe you.”
“We will meet, Maya. I’m not letting you off that easy.”
I watched the road in silence. At last she said, “Maya, I’d rather stay with you, but I’m still working on the Postcop computers, and I need to make plans to get you into Africa, too. I just don’t have the bandwidth to spare. Can you drive for a while?”
“I can’t drive a car like this.”
“There’s nothing to learn. It’s a direct neural interface. Here, take it.”
“But—” And then I was the car. It was as if I had been born with wheels, as if evolution had crafted my nerves to fit axles and gears instead of muscles and bones. I felt the wind against my skin. The road beneath me was an ever-changing stream of tastes and textures, to which my tires responded with a constant rearrangement of their fingerprints.
“Are you all right?” she asked anxiously.
“All right doesn’t begin to cover it,” I answered from the dashboard speaker. I adjusted my shape to reduce drag, and shot forth even faster, trying to see if I could reach 400 kph. After a few minutes, I could barely remember what it was like to have a human body. Even the vague sensations from my internal organs had been changed: my stomach was an engine. And I realized as I felt its heat that the car was not electric, but internal combustion. It burned. Other cars were barely even obstacles; there was nothing on the road but me—looking just like any other car, yet harboring this secret fire.
“Uh-oh,” Keishi broke in. “We’ve got a Postcop, dead ahead.”
“Just one? What is he?”
“Standard wasp. Not a threat in itself, but if a Weaver notices—”
“I see him now,” I said. “I don’t think it’s going to be a problem.” I accelerated toward him, the indicator trembling just below the 400 mark. The wasp came into view, crawling toward me at a pathetic pace, his whining little sirens on. I made myself the color of the road and leapt at him, an invisible bullet. When I reached him I breathed static into his ears and spat needles. His tires were shredded and he spun out of control into my lane. I was not afraid: I had seen the motion before it began. I slid past, stretching out an arm to scoop the air against him. He was blown onto the shoulder of the road. I swerved, braked, and farted fire. As I accelerated again I saw the wasp engulfed in brick-red flames. I didn’t look at it for long.
“You did it,” Keishi said. “I didn’t get a peep of radio.”
“Too bad,” I said. “I switched our registrations as we passed him. If he had called home, they’d have come and finished off the job.”
She chuckled appreciatively. “I always knew you had potential.”
“Always?” I said. “How long is always? Last week? It seems like forever.”
“Yes, it does,” she said softly. “It seems like twenty years.” She broke contact. I accelerated back up to 350. Then I extruded ailerons, making the car skip over the road like a stone on water. I adjusted, and began to glide, as over ice. The indicator shuddered past 350, and didn’t stop: 360, 370. There was no use fighting it. I had fallen into hope, as you might fall into the ocean; and though I knew I would drown eventually, for the moment it seemed as though the deep, deep sea would keep me up.
Almost… yes: 400. My tires brushed the road only rarely, as if to assure themselves it was still there. Is love like this? I wondered, as I leapt into the air again. “Better,” was the whispered answer. Like this? I asked, as I rippled my skin to fling the wind away from it. “Better,” as my fingertips tasted the road.
Then I had a thought that seized my brakes with fear and sent me spinning across the road. I could barely control the skid enough to bring us safely to a stop.
“What are you doing? We haven’t got time!”
“Keishi,” I said, “if I go to Africa, what happens to you? They won’t let you immigrate.”
“I can take care of myself. Drive!”
“That’s not an answer.” Silence. “And I’m not going anywhere until I get one.”
“Well,” she said at length, “it is Africa.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“We could get married.”
(The Unknown King)
(I don’t know what compulsion makes me go through the forms of suspense, as if the ending of the story were in some doubt. You already know that Africa is not where I wound up. The rumors say I’m in contact with them, that I’ve talked to His Majesty. It isn’t true. Perhaps the Known Kings do protect me in some way, but if so, they don’t tell me about it.
Once people have gotten an idea like that in their heads, though, it’s no use trying to get it out. So people ask me questions about Africa. And I make up answers, just as if I knew.
Most of the answers are simple. The question I’m asked most is who the Unknown King is, what her title is, whether I’ve met her—that’s the information everybody wants. And I tell them. I don’t know, of course, but it’s always seemed obvious to me. Think about the three Known Kings: His-Majesty-in-Chains, whose nerves are wound into his continent, so that he feels the hunger and the pain of all his people. Only-A-Man, who takes one person at a time and lives behind her eyes, though only for an hour. And Its-Ethereal-Highness, the calculator-king, whose justice is the justice of a balance beam, whose sympathy is parceled out by floating-point arithmetic. Male, hermaphrodite, and neuter; that means the Unknown King’s a woman. It stands to reason. And beyond that, can’t you see what the three represent? General sympathy, individual sympathy, law. Those are the three possible ways of reaching out to people. At least, I can’t think of any others.
And once you know that, well, isn’t it obvious what the Unknown King must be? And why she’s unknown?
She’s the one who turns away.)
Sixteen
VERY LIKE A WHALE
Tearing off the plastic babushka, I crashed down the stairs, fumbling to slot in the African moist-disk and camera chip. I couldn’t get them in with just one hand, so I gave up and let go of the railing to use both. Surely, after all that had happened, I would not break my neck on a mere staircase; the Weaver bullet rushing toward me would prevent all lesser dooms.
“Time?” I called out. My voice reverberated through the stairwell.
“You’ve got about three minutes,” Keishi said, her voice calm and echoless.
At the bottom of the third flight of stairs was the door to an elevator. Fortunately, the elevator car was already there waiting, but the ride down took at least a decade of subjective time. When the doors finally opened, I saw a corridor that went on for a hundred meters and then turned a blind corner. On both sides of the hall were moving sidewalks, like the ones they have in trainports.
“Stairs, elevator, now this,” I said, getting onto the conveyor. “If I have to slide down a pole, the deal’s off.”
As the sidewalk carried me along, I noticed that the one on the other side, for return trips, wasn’t moving. So much for a quick get away. Keishi was going to send my signal out along a winding path, which she said would take hours to unravel; but if the Post-cops did see through it, they would surely be here before I could get out.
“Forty-five seconds.”
“Count me down from ten,” I said, breaking into a run, “and whatever happens, make it look like I planned it.”
“Gotcha,” Keishi said. “The miscues are dramatic pauses, and the bumps are verite. So noted. Oh, and Maya?”