Big beautiful green eyes.
“Sorry,” he said.
Instead of answering, she pointed at one of the many stickers plastered on the doors and windows of Korben’s cab.
It was a dial 1-800-ORPHAN sticker. It showed a kid’s pleading eyes and below them, two words: PLEASE HELP.
Was she trying to communicate?
“Don’t!” Korben said. “Don’t put me in this position. I can’t!”
The girl nodded and pointed again to the sticker.
PLEASE HELP.
“I got only one point left on my license, and I need it to get to the garage,” Korben pleaded. “It’s my six-month overhaul. Understand?”
The girl seemed to understand the extraordinary power she had over Korben’s emotions. She smiled wistfully, wiped a tear from an eye, and pointed to the sticker again.
PLEASE HELP.
“Finger’s going to kill me,” Korben muttered. He shut off the meter on the cab.
“THANK.YOU.FOR.YOUR.COOPERATION,” the police said, as Korben hit the null switch under his dash, momentarily overriding the maglock.
“You’re welcome,” said Korben—
And he floored the gyros, spinning the cab free, and sending the police cruiser into an asymmetric tailspin, knocking it against the side of the building two stories below.
“WE’VE.BEEN.HIT!” squawked the cruiser, its automatics kicking in. “REQUEST.BACK.UP! IN. PURSUIT!”
“One.point.has.been.removed.from.your.license,” said the cab in Korben’s ear.
“I wondered when you were going to chime in,” muttered Korben.
He spun the wheel, rocketing around a corner and down six stories, away from the flashing lights of the cruiser.
A flurry of curses, honks and shouts followed him.
“You.have.no.points.left,” the cab continued. “You.are.unauthorized.to.operate.this.vehicle. Would.you.please…”
The voice died suddenly as Korben ripped the speaker from the ceiling and tossed it out the window, into the open back of a passing pickup.
“I hate it when people cry,” he said. In the rearview mirror, he saw the red-haired girl, watching the commotion with a slightly bemused smile.
She was so beautiful that he could barely tear his eyes away, back to the darting aerial traffic.
“I got no defense, you know!”
11
A FEW BLOCKS AWAY, UNIT 47 OF THE 2345 PRECINCT WAS IN line for the McDonald’s take-out window when the radio crackled into life.
“All units in Sector 12 full alert converge on vector 21.”
“Vector, sector,” said the young cop riding shotgun. “I never can get it straight.”
His older partner at the wheel spoke into the
mike. “Unit 47, we’re on our way…”
He hung up the mike, and finished, “…as soon as we eat some lunch. Get the burgers, kid.” The younger cop spoke into another mike, this one hovering patiently in the air outside the cruiser, waiting for an order. “One Big Mac with regular fries, with Diet Coke. One Quarter Pounder with large fries and a caffeine-free Diet Cherry Coke. Copy?”
“That’s One Big Mac with regular fries, with Diet Coke. One Quarter Pounder with large fries and a caffeine-free Diet Cherry Coke.”
“Roger. Over and out.”
The line of hovering aerial vehicles inched forward. The young cop turned to his partner. “Shouldn’t we be responding to that call?”
The older cop shook his head. “I’m too tired, too old and too hungry to go chasing some hotrod call.”
The cruiser pulled up to the take-out window.
“And I’m definitely too thirsty,” said the older cop, reaching across for his tray of cokes.
A tray of burgers followed. He was reaching for it, when—
WHAM!
—it disappeared as a speeding yellow cab slipped between the window and the cruiser, taking off the side of both.
The cops looked at one another, and then at the battered yellow cab disappearing between the skyscrapers.
“Why don’t you sit up here?” said Korben, patting the seat beside him. “Long as we’re illegal anyway.”
The girl climbed into the front seat. Her colorful outfit was intriguingly revealing.
She combed her red hair with her fingers.
WOO WEEE WOOO WEEE!
Behind the speeding cab, the sirens were getting louder. Korben slashed across and over six lanes of traffic, then doubled back two blocks, spun up six stories, then slowed to an idling pace.
“If they don’t chase you after a mile,” he said, “they don’t chase you. Believe me.”
He turned a corner, and suddenly six sky blue police cruisers burst out of an alleyway in hot pursuit.
“Maybe it’s two miles,” he muttered, flooring the turbines and twisting the gyros to full evasion mode.
“Klaatu barata nikto,” said the girl.
“Lady, I’m sorry,” said Korben. “I only speak two languages: English, and bad English.”
The six police cruisers separated into two groups of three, one to the left and one to the right.
Korben threw the cab into a spin, straight down through the canyons toward a roof garden far below.
The cruisers followed.
Korben pulled up at the last moment.
Four of the cruisers pulled up—
WHUMP! WHUMP! Two of the cruisers spun out and buried themselves in the soft synthetic rooftop dirt.
Korben headed straight downtown, with four police cruisers hot on his tail.
“Maica lota muni,” said the girl.
“Listen, lady,” he said. “I’m all for conversation, hut can you shut up a minute? This is a little tricky…”
The four cruisers were closing in, their high-powered police turbos whining.
The cab’s screen was beeping.
Korben turned it on.
ATTACK MODE! ATTACK MODE! ATTACK MODE!
Korben turned to his passenger. “I don’t know what you did to piss them off…”
ENGAGED! ENGAGED! ENGAGED!
“But they are really pissed off. Hold on.”
Korben doubled the gyros while cutting in the braking blasters: an old air combat trick.
The cab groaned in protest but made the turn.
“I think we’re safe for a while,” Korben said. Then he looked in the rearview mirror.
Two police cruisers were still closing in.
“I tried to play it soft, boys,” Korben whispered. “Too bad you don’t appreciate it.”
He cut his hoverjets and pushed the stick forward,
“We’ll be safe in the smog. If we reach it.”
Korben’s cruiser turned turtle and dove— straight down, through the startled scurrying cabs and flivvers and maglev limos.
He powered up at the last minute, just above the garbage that covered the street.
A right, a left, through the noxious methane mist.
Then a dead end .
“Daya deo bono dato!” said the girl. She seemed pleased with the excitement. “Dalutan!”
“If there’s one thing I don’t need,” said Korben, “It’s advice on how to drive.”
Turning a sudden loop, Korben whipped the cab sideways. Then he pressed the stick to one side with his knee and turned off his maglev arrester— another old fighter pilot trick—so that the cab turned sideways.
Steering with uncanny precision, Korben threaded the cab through an alley so tight that the ancient bricks scraped the light off the top.
The first police cruiser was a foot wider. It sped in and then scraped to a screeching halt.
The second cruiser braked just in time.
“Shit! Attention all patrol cars!”
Then backed up and made a U-tum.
The deepening haze and smog that clung to the ground level of the city mercifully obscured the generations of litter and debris—the urban midden that covered the streets to a depth of between twenty and forty feet.