“You must be,” I said. “You haven’t seen me since last night.” I grinned at the Devstick, walking faster.
“Oh please spare me,” she said, laughing.
“I’ll be down to see you in about five mins. I was thinking I’d watch you eat and have an alky or two and then we could head back to the Env and take off. What do you think?”
“Sounds good. How has your day been? Did you enjoy my rose?”
“Day’s been good, apart from the freezing jet of cold water this morning. Everything has been just great since then. Look, I’m at the Lev port and it’s a little crowded. I’ll tell you my news over an alky.”
“Great,” she said, and waving with her left hand, signed off.
A few stops later the Lev reached ground level and I stepped a few paces out of it and looked around. The rain over Orchard had moved south and now it was slashing down in the uncovered space in front of me, splashes reaching the new footwear I’d credded at Smooth. About thirty meters away I saw Mariko walking through the rain towards me. Even from this distance I could tell she was angry about something.
She looked around at something and then saw me and with a last glance flung over her shoulder she walked straight across, chin down against the rain.
I put my hand on her arm and said, “Hey, are you OK? What’s the matter?”
She shook her head brusquely. “I’m OK. Let’s just forget it for now. I’ll tell you about it later. Can we just go? Skip the alkys and get on the trav? Would you mind?”
Shaking my head, I said, “No, of course not,” and seeing how troubled she looked I took her arm and steered her back to the Lev port.
Fifteen minutes and two Levs later we were back at the Woodlands Envplex. I used my Devstick to tell the car to come earlier and Mariko went to take a shower and get a change of clothes. She had hardly spoken since we left Jurong. I let her have her space — she’d said she would tell me later and I was sure she would. Instead I focused on packing the remaining items and called up the Envplex’s autotroll. The autotroll arrived with a beeping on my Devstick indicating that it was ready for use and waiting outside of my door.
I’d stacked the plastic boxes, each about a meter long and half that wide, on top of each other. Apart from the ones loaded with books, they hardly weighed a thing and I loaded the autotroll in the time that Mariko was still in the shower. I flashed a note to her Devstick telling her that I was headed to the Envplex lobby to load the car. It had arrived in the same manner as the autotroll except that it was waiting for me at ground level just outside the southern Lev port entrance.
I walked to the entrance and looked back at the apartment. The last time I had done this I had walked out with a carry on and left the apartment practically empty. This time I was leaving a woman in the shower getting ready to join me and an autotroll full of clothes, images and books.
Progress, I thought, and laughed to myself as I remembered the punk rap song, ‘Progress is a Bitch’, and decided not to tell that one to Mariko. I felt happy but at the same time I was concerned about Mariko. She’d been on a kind of monosyllabic auto response mode since leaving Jurong, and I’d never seen this side of her. She was obviously working something really serious out and I had to wait until she was ready to talk. I hoped with all my heart that she wasn’t having second thoughts about moving to Sisik with me.
The Toyota Titan I’d rented was a mag/offroad hybrid. It was also all-terrain and ocean, which had pushed the cred up another thirty-five units a day, but I figured that we’d come in off the sea and drive up the beach to the house. It would save us lugging the boxes through the four hundred meters of jungle that separated us from civilization. I had no plans to change that amount of separation. In fact I was already thinking about how it might be increased.
There were a few people standing around looking at the Titan and I nonchalantly thumbed my Devstick approaching with the autotrolly. The door slid open in the sixteen meter vehicle — to call it a car was a bit of a misnomer. It took up a lot of space in the lobby, and with its wheels set well inside the squat body shell, it looked like a very shiny, dark titanium box with a huge cockpit of swept black glass floating on air. I saw the manual on the stairs leading to the top cockpit and picked it up.
One of the males standing looking at the Titan smiled at me reading the manual. It was pretty obvious this was my first time with this kind of rig. I smiled back and shrugged my shoulders.
A quick scan of the manual and I located the loader door panel button on the bracing column of the door. Pressing it caused a pneumatic hiss out of the belly of the beast that made me jump and then laugh at myself as I saw a side panel slide back in the hull. I loaded the plastic boxes into the cargo hold. The four lights that defined its corners were orange and casted a revolving glow in the dim of the lobby. Then I walked up the stairs and into the tan expanse of the primary cockpit. It had a high-end Devcockpit done in black with adjustable screens set into a dark grey interior with red piping. The twin drivers' seats allowed for observation or participation, meaning they were adjustable from extreme comfort to the pragmatic of reaching the controls. The steering column arced its way out from under the front shield in functional titanium, drilled out to reduce weight. Hanging off the end of the column, two thick black rubber grips with a face in between them of an array of multi-colored buttons.
Manual in hand, I sat down in the comfortable Siteazy behind the wheel. I looked at the black grips and opened the manual to find where the On switch was. My Devstick vibrated and I dug it out of my lower outers pocket. It was the car rental company. I hit accept.
“Good afternoon, Mr Oliver and thank you for making us your choice for vehicle trav. Welcome to the Titan. My name is Cindy and I’ll be taking you through the start-up routine. I am now turning on the interior systems — we recommend fully automatic trav out of New Singapore and collision avoidance systems will set to auto when you switch to manual.”
The automated recording from the rental company played on as the Devcockpit came alive with color and images. I looked away from the little Chinese-looking girl on my Devstick, reciting the Titan’s features and systems. Instead I studied the Dev. I caught Mariko walking out of the Lev port, her Devstick to her mouth. I couldn’t hear what she was saying but while she didn’t seem angry, she still seemed serious. She stopped when she saw me sitting up in the cockpit, waving at her. She had no idea I was going to rent something this huge. She probably thought we’d just go up in a standard cab but I had gone with a trav liner and a top of the line one at that.
Mariko turned her face sideways but kept her eyes on me, now smiling. She took the Devstick from her ear and walked over to the door. I leaned forward so that I could see her face down the half spiral stair. There she stood, her cloth bag over one shoulder, holding the Devstick in her hand.
She looked up at me and smiled. “Let’s go,” and grabbing the hand rail walked up the stairs and plonked down in the seat next to me. She pursed her lips together in a pout and made a sucking noise with her tongue.
The twin brother or maybe sister of my steering column rose out of the cockpit floor and extended from below the front shield, the extension of the twin grips easing its way towards a position above Mariko’s lap. The black grips, Devpad and drilled out titanium column matched the matt black leg outers and chromed cloth outer tank top she had on. She stretched out her arms and flexed her muscles. I started to feel alarmed, hoping she wasn’t thinking about driving the Titan out of here.
Mariko took hold of the steering grips and hit a button on the center Dev pad with her right thumb. The door slid shut with a quick hiss and metallic solid clunk. There was a slight whirring sound as Mariko adjusted her seat, going to a half recline with the steering grips still in her hands. Neither of us said anything — I wanted to see what she would do. She fiddled with the angle of her seat and then, appearing satisfied, reached up and pulled the rear and side view Devscreen down from the roof above her, the lobby behind us displayed in clear color and infrared. She took a last look at that and, reaching out with her left hand, tapped another button on the Devpad. She reached again and adjusted the black mic that coiled out of the roof above us like a dark snake about to strike.