And if anybody did, would I be able to keep him or her under surveillance?
I gazed out the train window, at the robo-tended fields. Wheat, or maybe soy — I wasn’t sure what either looked like, growing. In ten minutes, Desdemona was back. Her face appeared slowly between my outstretched legs; she’d crawled along the floor, under the seats, through the mud and spilled food and debris. Desdemona raised her little torso between my knees, balancing herself with one sticky hand on my seat. The other hand shot out and closed on my bracelet.
I unfastened it and gave it to her again. The front of her blue jacks was filthy. “No cleaning ’bot on this train?”
She clutched the bracelet and grinned. “It died, him.”
I laughed. The next minute the gravrail broke down.
I was thrown to the floor, where I swayed on hands and knees, waiting to die. Under me machinery shrieked. The train shuddered to a stop but didn’t tip over.
“Damn!” Desdemona’s father shouted. “Not again!”
“Can we get some ice cream, us?” a child whined. “We’re stopped now!”
“Third time this week! Fucking donkey train!”
“We never get no ice cream!”
Apparently the trains didn’t tip over. Apparently I wasn’t going to die. Apparently this shrieking machinery was routine. I followed everyone else off the train.
Into another world.
A fever wind blew across the miles of prairie: warm, whispering, intoxicating. I was staggered by the size of the sky. Endless bright blue sky above, endless bright golden fields below. And all of it caressed by that blood-warm wind, impregnated with sunlight, gravid with fragrance. I, a city lover to equal Sir Christoper Wren, had had no idea. No holo had ever prepared me. I resisted the mad idea to kick off my shoes and dig my toes into the dark earth.
Instead I followed the grumbling Livers along the tracks to the front of the train. They gathered around the holoprojection of an engineer, even though I could hear his canned speech being broadcast inside each car. The holo “stood” on the grass, looking authoritative and large. The franchise owner was a friend of mine; he believed that seven-foot-high swarthy-skinned males were the ideal projection to promote order.
“There is no need to be alarmed. This is a temporary malfunction. Please return to the comfort and safety of your car, and in a few moments complimentary food and drinks will be served. A repair technician is on the way from the railroad franchise. There is no need to be alarmed—”
Desdemona kicked the holo. Her foot passed through him and she smirked, a pointless saucy smile of triumph. The holo looked down at her. “Don’t do that again, kid — you hear me, you?” Des-demona’s eyes widened and she flew behind her mother’s legs.
“Don’t be so scaredy, you — it’s just interactive,” Mommy Liver snapped. “Let go, you, of my legs!”
I winked at Desdemona, who stared at me sullenly and then grinned, rattling our bracelet.
“—to the comfort and safety of your car, and in a few moments complimentary food—”
More people approached the engine, all but two complaining loudly. The first was an older woman: tall, plain-faced, and angled as a tesseract. She wore not jacks but a long tunic knitted of yarn in subtle, muted shades of green, too uneven to be machine-made. Her earrings were simple polished green stones. I had never before seen a Liver with taste.
The other anomaly was a short young man with silky red hair, pale skin, and a head slightly too large for his body.
The back of my neck tingled.
Inside the cars, server ’bots emerged from their storage compartments and offered trays of freshly synthesized soy snacks, various drinks, and sunshine in mild doses. “Compliments of State Senator Cecilia Elizabeth Dawes,” it said over and over. “So nice to have you aboard.” This diversion took half an hour. Then everyone went back outside and resumed complaining.
“The kind of service you get these days—”
“—vote next time, me, for somebody else — anybody else—”
“—a temporary malfunction. Please return to the comfort and safety of—”
I walked over the scrub grass to the edge of the closest field. The Sleepless-in-inadequate-disguise stood watching the crowd, observing as pseudocasually as I was. So far he had taken no special notice of me. The field was bounded by a low energy fence, presumably to keep the agrobots inside. They ambled slowly between the rows of golden wheat, doing whatever it was they did. I stepped over the fence and picked one up. It hummed softly, a dark sphere with flexible tentacles. On the bottom a label said CANCO ROBOTS/ LOS ANGELES. CanCo had been in the Wall Street Journal On-Line last week; they were in trouble. Their agrobots had suddenly begun to break down all over the country. The franchise was going under.
The warm wind whispered seductively through the sweet-scented wheat.
I sat on the ground, cross-legged, my back to the energy fence. Around me adults settled into games of cards or dice. Children raced around, screaming. A young couple brushed past me and disappeared into the wheat, sex in their eyes. The older woman sat by herself reading a book, an actual book. I couldn’t imagine where she’d gotten it. And the big-headed Sleepless, if that’s what he/she was, stretched out on the ground, closed his eyes, and pretended to sleep. I grimaced. I’ve never liked self-serving irony. Not in other people.
After two hours, the server ’bots again brought out food and drinks. “Compliments of State Senator Cecilia Elizabeth Dawes.
So nice to have you aboard.” How much soysynth did a Liver gravrail carry? I had no idea.
The sun threw long shadows. I sauntered to the woman reading. “Good book?”
She looked up at me, measuring. If Colin had sent me to the Science Court in Washington, he probably had sent some legitimate agents as well. And if Big Head was a Sleepless, he might have his own personal tail. However, something in the reading woman’s face convinced me it wasn’t her. She wasn’t genemod, but it wasn’t that. You can find donkey families who refuse even permitted genemods, and then go on existing very solidly corporate but on the fringe socially. She wasn’t that, either. She was something else.
“It’s a novel,” the woman said neutrally. “Jane Austen. Are you surprised there are still Livers who can read? Or want to?”
“Yes.” I smiled conspiratorally, but she only gave me a level stare and went back to her book. A renegade donkey didn’t arouse her contempt, or indignation, or fawning. I genuinely didn’t interest her. I felt unwitting respect.
Apparently I didn’t know as much about the variety of Livers as I’d thought.
The sunset ravished me. The sky turned lucid and vulnerable, then streaked with subtle colors. The colors grew aggressive, followed by wan and valedictory pastels. Then it grew cold and dark. An entire love affair, empyrean, in thirty minutes. Claude-Eugene-Rex-Paul-Anthony-Russell-David.
No repair technician appeared. The prairie cooled rapidly; we all climbed back onto the train, which turned on its lights and heat. I wondered what would have happened if those systems — or the server ’bots — had failed as well.
Someone said, not loudly and to no one in particular, “My meal chip, it came late from the capital last quarter.”
Pause. I sat up straighter; this was a new tone. Not complaint. Something else.