“This must be the library’s rush hour,” Derec whispered.
With school out for the day, people off work and looking for the cheapest entertainment-it probably was.
At length they found an unused terminal and did a twenty-minute search for the information, making sure they had all they needed. Derec had a moment of doubt when he inserted his money tab into the slot. This metal tab was not unlike the credit-transfer system on the Spacer worlds. But he had no idea what formalities were employed here, or how much money there was in this account.
ACCEPTED, said the blinking transparency, and the machine tinkled a tune to let them know it was copying the information on their card.
“We’ve got it,” he said, breathing more easily. “Let’s go.”
Out of the library, down the steps, to the right. They marched more slowly than they had at the beginning of the day. Derec was as tired as Ariel looked.
“It’s been a long day,” he said hollowly.
“And we’ve come a long way,” she added.
Turn, and turn again, and they confronted a smaller marquee than one they’d seen in Old Town Sector: WILL YOU FOLLOW?
“Not tonight, honey,” said Derec vaguely. “I’m too tired.”
“We didn’t come by that, Derec,” Ariel said, gripping his arm.
“I know,” he said tiredly. “We’ve gotten turned around.”
They retraced their steps, and now couldn’t find the library. After quite a while they paused, gray-faced with weariness and strain, before a window showing dresses and hats of incredible fabrics, some of which glowed. Cheap finery. Men and women peered through windows, pointed out things they’d like but would probably never afford. Not far from them a young man in tight blue pants and silver pseudo-leather jacket, with elaborately coiffed hair, stood next to a girl who seemed much older than Ariel and who wore even tighter violet pants and a nearly transparent, slashed top. Her hair was blonde and long on one side and short and red on the other, and her eyes were cynical and hard.
This was a major thoroughfare, though it was not part of the moving way system. It ought to join to the ways somewhere, but didn’t seem to. They had no idea which way to go.
“Just like a couple of Transients,” said Derec glumly. “We can’t be far from the ways, but we could spend an hour blundering around looking for them.”
The youth with the tough expression and the silvery jacket turned toward them.
“Transients, eh?” he said. He looked them up and down. The hard-featured young woman looked at them curiously also.
Derec braced himself.
Chapter 7. Back To School
“That way two blocks, take the up ramp,” the young tough said courteously, and the hard-featured young woman looked sympathetically at them.
“Thank you,” said Derec, and Ariel, as startled as he, echoed him.
Their rescuers had forgotten them before they were out of sight, but Derec and Ariel remembered them all the way home.
The section kitchen had become a familiar place by the time of their third meal, next morning. Much of the shock of enormous rooms, enormous numbers of loud talking Earthers, of being ignored amid mobs, was gone. After breakfast, out into the monotonous every-day of the ways, they rode south toward the edge of the sprawling megalopolis. Finally, in a section called Mattese, they found the driving school they sought.
They had chosen it because it was a “private” school. Though regulated by the government, it counted as a luxury, and one paid for the privilege of learning here, a concept that bemused the Spacers.
“Yes, please?”
The receptionist was not the robot the term called to their minds, but a middle-aged woman-though Earthers aged fast by Spacer standards; she was probably quite young, perhaps no more than forty-five or fifty.
“Derec and Ariel Avery,” Derec said apologetically, trying again to imitate the Earth dialect.
“Oh, yes, new students. You’re a bit early, but that’s good-you have to do your forms.”
They thought they’d already done the forms over the communo, but took the papers and sat down. These forms were simple and asked primarily how much experience they’d had with automobiles and something called “models.”
“Can that mean what I think it does?” Ariel asked. Derec could only shrug.
They had sweated over the application last night, for it asked for their schooling, but R. David had given them the names of schools in the City they might have gone to. They hoped the driving school would be lax in checking up. Of course, sooner or later their imposture would be detected, but even one day, they calculated
“You may see Ms. Winters now,” said the receptionist, smiling kindly.
Ms. Winters kept them waiting in an outer office for a moment while she examined their forms, and Ariel nudged Derec.
“Did you hear that receptionist? She was trying to copy our accent!”
Ms. Winters called them in, asked a question or two, nodded, and, taking the forms, left with a brief “Wait just a moment.” It hadn’t taken her long, as they had indicated no experience.
She hadn’t closed the door completely.
“Red? Those two students, the brother and sister… upper-rating children slumming, or kicked out of the house, or something.” Doubtfully, she added, “Maybe student reporters, checking up on the schooling system, or something.”
“Who cares?” came a gruff-sounding male voice. ‘They got money, they want to learn, we sell schoolin’. Send ‘em on out.”
With a dazzling smile, Ms. Winters ushered them through the farther door into a large room with a number of carrels within it. Students were entering in a steady stream from a different door and occupying carrels and other learning stations farther down.
Red confronted them, a blocky fellow with thinning sandy hair and a handsome face, his body one solid slab of muscle. He looked them over shrewdly for a moment, nodded, gave a noncommittal grunt.
“Drivin’s a hands-on schoolin’,” he said bluntly. “You either learn it with your reflexes or else you don’t learn it. It ain’t so different from learnin’ to ride the ways, though you don’t remember how you did that.” It was a set speech, and went on in that vein for about three minutes. Red’s face remained blank.
Derec was impressed despite his prejudices. Education among Spacers, as little of it as he could remember, was a more gracious process, lavishly supported by ever-patient robots. It was clear that this indifferent man proposed to push them into the water and watch to see if they drowned. If they did not, they would be rewarded only by his good opinion.
“…it’s your money and your time, so I know you’ll do your best and not waste either.”
Though his experience with different machines must be far greater than this Earther’s, Derec wryly found that Red’s good opinion was a thing worth striving for.
The carrels were cockpits containing mockups of the control sets of various kinds of vehicles, and trimensionals of the roadways. Red gave them a brief instruction on the rules of the road and the operation of the craft, showed them a printed set of instructions on the right and of rules on the left, and said, “Do it, gatos.”
Derec and Ariel grinned faintly at each other, and did it for about half an hour.
Red came by at the end of the time, sucking on the stem of a cup, if a cup had a stem, and exhaling smoke courteously away from them. He bent and looked on the back sides of the carrels.
“You did good,” he said, his eyebrows expressing more than his voice. “You did real good, for beginners.”
Maybe too good,Derec thought uneasily.
Red looked at them, blew smoke thoughtfully, and said, “Come down here to the models.”