Two
THE PLATYPUS
This was closed to you, even on moistdisk. Keishi was careful to block certain things from the Net-cast—not that it mattered, in the end.
I was folded into the single front seat of the electric car I’d rented in Alma-Ata. Thanks to the rental company’s paternalism, the car would go no faster than 100 kph. At that rate I was four hours from the trainport, then three more hours by bullet train from the empty cathedrals and copper towers of Leningrad. Kazakhstan crept past me in spurts of brush and patchy fields. There was nothing for my eyes to do but look ahead for the five-kilometer markers, distracted only where the scarred land condescended to support a token sheep.
A yellow light flashed in the corner of my eye. “What?” I said irritably.
The answer scrolled across my eyes: FEED NANOTECH.
“All right. Cancel alarm.”
SECOND WARNING.
“All right, I said.” The letters meekly disappeared.
I took my flask out of my pocket and shook it. Almost half full, and I could get a refill on the train. No problem. I dug the telltale out of my duffel bag and pressed it against the back of my neck. It hummed as it read my implant, and clicked a few times, thinking. Finally it chimed, and I pulled it away. It said I needed fifty-three millilitres—just a booster. My nano population was steady as she goes. I opened the flask and, pinching it between my knees, dug into my duffel for a graduated cup.
The shout of a siren interrupted my search. The car pulled itself over to the side of the road.
“What? What’s wrong?”
“Alcohol detected,” the car informed me primly. “Drinking and driving goes counter to company policy, as well as the laws of the Fusion of Historical Nations.”
“Oh, right,” I said. I touched the telltale to the dashboard, but there was no answering chime.
“It’s right there,” I said irritably. “Can’t you read?”
“Drinking and driving is not permitted,” the car repeated. “There are no exceptions to this policy.”
“Look,” I said, “I’m a camera. I’ve got more nanobugs in my head than a corpse has worms. They’re the old kind.” I was speaking very slowly and distinctly, as if this might help the car to understand me. “They live on ethanol. If I don’t give them some, they’ll starve, and they’ll get all clotted up in my blood vessels, and I’ll have a stroke and die. What do the laws of Kazakhstan have to say about dying and driving?”
“Drinking and driving,” it corrected me, “go counter to—”
“Company policy, yes, all right. The company was supposed to tell you this before we left. Do you understand me? I won’t get drunk. The nanobugs will eat the alcohol. I’m not going to wrap us around a tree—even if there were any trees around. Do you see any trees? I don’t see any trees.”
“Accidents are possible at any place and time. Drinking and driving—”
“All right, I heard you,” I said. “I’m overdue to feed the bugs already. If I don’t drink some nanojuice within a couple of hours, I will, at the very least, be in a coma. And when that happens, I promise, if there’s even one tree in this whole damned Historical Nation, I’ll find it and wrap your pretty little bumper—”
The alarm light in my eye flashed again. “Yes, I know,” I said. “What do you think I’m trying to do?”
A message scrolled by, just above the horizon: CAN I BUY YOU A DRINK?—KM.
“Mirabara?” I said. “How did you find me?”
ONLY PERSON IN KAZAKHSTAN WHO WOULD ARGUE WITH A CAR, she answered. MIND IF I HELP?
I sighed and said, “Do I have a choice?”
SURE YOU DO. LET BUGS DIE. OTHERWISE, IMAGINE A PLATYPUS.
“What?”
HUMOR ME. VISUALIZE PLATYPUS.
I stared at the car’s hood ornament and tried to imagine a platypus curled up around it. Gradually the animal gained solidity, and I made it wake up, yawn, and defecate on the hood.
NOW MAKE IT A WEASEL.
I shrank the platypus into a weasel.
CHANGE IT INTO A WHALE.
“A whale won’t fit on the car hood.”
SMALL WHALE, she suggested. Then I heard her voice behind me: “Never mind, I’m here.”
In the back seat was a cloud of static, gradually taking on human shape. As I watched it in the rear-view mirror, it sent out a tendril to the dashboard.
“Company headquarters has just informed me of a change in policy,” the car said breathlessly. “Drinking and driving is now allowed. No—I’m sorry, strike that—” it paused as though listening “—drinking and driving now encouraged. Also—” as it pulled back out onto the road “—speed limit throughout Kazakhstan has now been doubled. Tripled if you happen to be wearing a black shirt, and—” it squealed with excitement “—you are!”
The accelerator fell under my foot. The speed indicator sprouted an extra digit, and turned red.
“Visualize bat out of hell,” she said. I glanced into the rear-view mirror, which showed me only a strip of forehead; by craning my neck a little I managed to see one eyelid, harboring an orb of static. Then I looked back at the road, which was passing at an alarming rate.
“All right, Mirabara, I understand how you slipped the text in through my camera chip, but how are you giving me visual?”
“Through your imagination enhancer.”
I frowned. “That doesn’t hook up with the Net.”
“Not usually. But it’ll call out to News One’s stock library if it needs to draw something you don’t have a clear memory of.”
“Oh. Like a platypus.”
“Exactly,” she said. “By the way, you’d better not take any assignments in Australia for a while. It’s a little confused about egg-laying mammals—thinks they all look like me. Oh, and they’re a lot bigger than you were imagining. See?” She reached forward and deposited a platypus on my lap.
“Hey!” I tried to brush the animal away, but it was insubstantial; my hands passed through it. “Will you get rid of that? I’m trying to drive.”
“Oh, all right. Spoilsport.” She made the animal disappear. “You’d better drink your nanojuice now.”
I poured out the vodka—100 proof, strictly regulation; I hate having to do math before I drink.
“Hey, nice flask,” she said admiringly. “Right out of an old movie.”
I shrugged. “Keeps me from getting caught without when I’m out on assignment.”
“So,” she said dismissively, “would a crusty old plaid thermos out of a lunch box. And a thermos would keep it cold, so you could put nutrient mix in it. But that flask does something much better.”
“What’s that?” I asked, unwarily.
“Makes you feel like Sam Spade.”
I dropped my voice half an octave and drawled: “‘All we’ve got is that maybe you love me and maybe I love you….’”
I stopped; the pleasure of quotation had carried me past caution. She gave me a brief speculative look, but let the implication pass.
“Not bad,” she said. “Best Bogart I’ve heard in a long time.”
“Flatterer.” I’ve been to Japan, so I knew she was putting me on. The Japanese profess to think that Classical America was the high-water mark of world civilization—mostly to spite the Africans’ love of Egypt. A good Bogart can get you promotions in Tokyo. Me, I don’t even like Bogart. I just watch The Maltese Falcon for Peter Lorre, and Casablanca because the thought of people wanting out of Africa is so agreeably deranged.
“Not that I’m not enjoying this little chat with the back of your head,” Keishi said, “but do you mind if I come up front?”