I wondered what he was selling, and hoped it wasn’t what I thought.
“What kind of a name is Jones? Is that your real name?”
“Why do you ask? Do you think it isn’t?”
“Jones— Smith—” I said. “Bogus names, scam artist names. Meet Mister Smith, wink-wink.” What I didn’t say was that half of Jonny’s customers were Smith or Jones. I’d made a natural assumption.
“Well, it’s the name I was born with. And there are lots of real Smiths and Joneses, you know. Common names, really.”
“Okay, so what’s your first—”
I was interrupted. Somebody shot at us in one of the unlit patches. I heard a bell-like sound from the left front fender, and a moment later another bullet hit the window next to Jones’s head with a thwack. The window didn’t break. It just grew a scar. “Don’t worry,” Jones told me. “The car’s armored — bulletproof.” I didn’t relax until we got to the next stretch of lights.
That was my mistake, and I was caught off guard when the car suddenly leapt into the air and came down on my side, skidding to a quick stop, dumping Jones on me, half-crushing me, my ears still ringing from the explosion. It had to have been right under the car when it went off. I wondered if it had been in the street or attached to the underside of the car.
Jones stepped on me with a muttered apology as he attempted to stand up. He threw himself, shoulder first, against what had been the floor in front of his seat. I had no idea what he was doing until the car teetered on its rounded side and fell back onto its wheels, rocking on its springs. I fell back into my seat and Jones caught himself before he fell on his face into his.
He seated himself and we exchanged looks. “You okay?” he asked.
“Sure. You?”
“A little battered. Nothing serious.”
I looked out my window. “Company,” I said. A group of four or five men were converging from the darkness. They were carrying big pry-bars, the kind you can use to bash someone’s head in. They looked purposeful. Not random sightseers, curious about the explosion.
“Let’s see if this thing still works,” Jones said, and punched a button on the dash. The nearest man swung his pry-bar at my window, but it bounced off, leaving no mark, and the car didn’t give him a second chance. Tires chirping, it scooted us up the avenue.
“This is a rough area,” Jones said, looking back at the frustrated attackers as they disappeared from sight, abandoning the road as quickly as they’d appeared in it.
“They’re all rough areas, until you’re in the CeeZee,” I told him. “What did you expect?” I retracted its blade and put my knife away.
“I’m not usually down here after dark,” he said. He hadn’t noticed the knife.
“No kidding,” I said.
We came to another burning block. The car plowed through the smoke without slowing. “Why do your people do that?” I asked. “Set fires.”
“My people? I don’t know what you’re talking about. Those fires are caused by the deplorable conditions in which some people live. I’m amazed they haven’t burned the whole city down by now. I guess we have the firefighters to thank for that.”
I stared at him, incredulous. “Firefighters?” I said. “You see any firefighters back there? You see anybody trying to put out that fire?”
“It was too smoky to see anything back there,” he said, turning around to peer out the back window too late.
“Let me tell you something,” I said. “I watched the fires being set on my block. Big men, in black uniforms, with flamethrowers. And you know what they did when people tried to get out, escape the fire?”
“What?”
“They shot them. Killed them, those who weren’t killed by the fire. Who do you think they were working for?”
“I don’t know,” Jones said, shaking his head. “It certainly wasn’t me.”
Twice the car turned off the avenue to take side streets to a parallel avenue. Jones said some kind of problems forced the detours. “It’s all automatic. The car knows. I don’t.”
“So, okay,” I said after the second detour, “why do you want to give me those tests? What’re you trying to prove?”
“Well,” he said, “I don’t know what you know about the One Percent, but we are not monolithic. We don’t all think alike. We have disagreements, even controversies.”
I shrugged. “Like everyone else, huh?”
“Pretty much.”
“But you guys don’t think you’re like everyone else though, do you?”
“What do you know about that?” His tone became sharp.
“I read, you know,” I said, folding my arms again.
“Right. Well, I’ve gotten into a disagreement with several of my colleagues. It’s about human intelligence.”
“Which side are you on? Race-based intelligence quotients, or—”
His mouth fell open.
“It’s not a new argument,” I told him. “Goes back centuries.”
He closed his mouth and then opened it again to say, “You’re quite right. But our argument isn’t over racial variations in IQ — an old and pretty dead issue, really. Our argument is different and concerns the growing genetic gap between the One Percent and the, um, others — between me and you.” He gestured at each of us in turn.
“A genetic gap? Can we still crossbreed?” I let a trace of sarcasm creep into my voice.
Color rose in his face. “It’s — not that great a gap,” he said. “Not yet.”
“So—?”
“So I think you’re as intelligent as most of us — in the One Percent, I mean. I want to prove it.”
“You must know you’ll lose,” I told him. “You think I’m an idiot.”
He stared at me, his mouth working, no words coming out.
“You know one high-scoring IQ from my side of the fence means nothing. You know it’s statistically worthless — no matter how high I tested it wouldn’t win your argument for you. You know that. And I know that. Maybe I’d ace your tests, but so what? You know I like to read, so you think I must be smart? How smart does that make you?” I felt my voice rising, and I stopped. I shouldn’t have said a single word. I realized that, too late to take any of them back. So I leaned back against my side of the car and glared at him.
“What do you really want from me?” I asked, finally breaking the silence.
The car’s interior was only lit with little glowing lights on the dash, so it was hard to make out Jones’s expression when he said, “I’ll explain it to you upstairs. We’re here.”
I hadn’t been paying attention. We’d entered the CeeZee without my noticing the brighter lights and cleaner streets. Now the car pulled into a building entrance, a portico just off the street. Jones did something and both doors swung open. Warily, I climbed out.
He took my arm gently and led me through the big, bank-vault doors, through an air-lock-like vestibule, and into the building’s lobby.
As we went through the first doors I glanced back at the car. My side was scraped up and dented. “What about your car?” I asked.
He laughed. “It’s not my car. It’s a public car.”
I didn’t know what that meant. “Won’t somebody get mad about the damage?”
“No, it’s pretty much expected now — when they’re taken out of this zone.”
The lobby surprised me. I’d expected better. It was all chrome or maybe stainless steel and glass and it probably looked really good fifty or a hundred years ago. Now, like its faded carpet, it looked almost shabby and it smelled musty.
Jones hurried me through the lobby to a bank of elevators. The door to one of them opened as we approached. We entered, the door closed, and we started up. I’ve been in elevators before and I looked without success for the floor buttons, or even a floor indicator. Nothing. Just smooth paneled walls and a glowing ceiling.