I had no patience.
Gran promised we could try again after lunch, so I wolfed down a nut butter sandwich and some chips. As if eating fast would speed things up. I couldn’t stop thinking about everything that was going on.
What ended up taking my mind off the scrambler was a call from Sal.
“I’m delivering a dual trannie to a customer out in the country. Want to come along? We can take the express back.” I mentioned it to Gran, and she practically shooed me out the door.
Fifteen minutes later I was in the lobby, hiding behind one of the fake plants that flanked the doorway. I scoped out the street. When I didn’t see anything resembling Ed or his green transport, I went outside.
Standing in a sheltered patch of sunshine, shielded from the legendary Chicago winds, I was warm. It felt more like spring than almost winter. I basked in my little bit of sun until I heard a beep. It was Sal in a shiny blue dual transport.
“Wow! This is really cool,” I said.
Sal hopped out. “We modified the engine—it goes to one-twenty in sixty seconds. And the exterior… you like?”
He paraded me around the vehicle, pointing out the gold flecks in the Hawsworth blue paint. And showed me that when the light reflected a certain way you could see a deep pink flower with a thorny stalk encircling the transport.
I felt an overwhelming urge to trace it with my finger, but I didn’t dare touch. “It looks like Wei’s tattoo.”
“Yep, it’s a thistle.” Sal opened the passenger door. “Madam…” He bowed low with a sweep of his arm.
I giggled, sliding into the seat, which immediately conformed to every curve of my body.
“Comfort Style,” I murmured. I’d heard about the features of Comfort Style in verts, but never imagined I’d ever get to sit in a tran that had it. I felt guilty about enjoying the luxury. It didn’t seem fair to relax when I had so much to worry about.
Sal got in on the other side. “Give it a sec, it will warm you up, too. Ready?”
While Sal wove through traffic, I alternated between exploring all the luxuries surrounding me and checking out the window for green trannies. Inside there were individual entertainment devices, a dashboard chiller, and separate light diffusers in each window. Outside, there was reality—Cinderella girls, FeLS, sex-teens, and Ed.
Out of the corner of my eye I caught Sal watching me. After I’d ooh’d and aah’d over every little gadget, he said, “Then there’s this.” He pressed a dial marked temp.
I looked around to see what had happened—nothing. “And?”
“And,” he said, “we are now shielded from any listening or tracking devices.” He beamed with pride.
“You mean, we can talk about anything and no one can hear us?”
“Click on your PAV.”
I tried. It didn’t work. “A traveling DZ.” We were driving down State Street, where every store’s verts tried to outdo the others’. The verts were inescapable, even when you were in a trannie. But there we were, sitting in complete silence.
“No verts—Mike would hate it.” I laughed. “Whose car is this anyway?”
“My aunt Rita’s, we’re going to her place.”
Rita—it took me a second to connect. That was the name on Ginnie’s list. Before I could ask him anything about her, we merged onto the Cementville expressway and a wave of sadness washed over me. “This reminds me of going home.” There was a catch in my throat.
Sal reached over and squeezed my hand. “We’ll only be on here for a few miles; then we switch over to Angola Works West.”
I turned to the window, watching the countryside fly by. We sped past Mill Run Farm. I remembered the last time I passed it, the night Ginnie died. I caught a glimpse of the horses, tails flowing out behind them as they galloped across the meadow. We turned west and I forced myself to concentrate on the present.
“Want a Sparkle?” Sal pressed another button on the dashboard and the chiller in front of me popped open. A metal arm held up the drink. After I removed it, everything closed up again. I relaxed into the seat, which was practically cuddling me. This is tier ten all the way, I thought.
Sal steered past a little old couple in a 2100 DT. They reminded me of Gran and Pops, and I thought of my conversation with Gran earlier. “I found out more stuff about Ed.” I filled him in on everything Gran and I had discussed.
“I’ve been doing some investigating, too, and I think Aunt Rita will be able to fill in a lot of the gaps. That’s one reason I wanted you to come along.”
“What’s the other?”
He glanced over at me and his eyes met mine. “To have you close by.”
A rush of warmth spread over me that had nothing to do with the Comfort Style seat. After last night, I no longer had any doubts about Sal’s motivations—I knew he liked me for me, and not my father.
Sal scanned the traffic. “Hang on.” He flipped a lever under the dash and we shot down the road like a comet. The g-force pinned me to my seat.
Eventually he slowed down to just under eighty miles per hour. “Wanted to make sure the engine would do what we modified it to do. Besides”—he grinned impishly—“it’s fun.”
“Yeah, it is! I haven’t felt like this since moon travel simulation in fifth grade.”
He caught my hand and kissed the tips of my fingers. “You’re my kind of gal.”
That kiss traveled to my toes faster than the trannie had taken off. I was blushing, but didn’t care. He made me feel so good.
“Tell me about your aunt. Could she have known my mother?”
“She knew your mom really well. Rita’s my mother’s sister. She, uh… ‘died’ in high school. Like several people back then, she deliberately disappeared to join the NonCons. Only two people, besides my mom and dad, knew about it—Jade and Ginnie. They helped fake her death. She got a new identity. She has a big farm that’s also an NC.”
“NC? NonCon?” I asked.
“No, it stands for ‘nook and cranny,’ which is slang for a safe place. There aren’t many NCs near cities. Most are in the mountains or deserts; it’s easier to conceal them in rough terrain. This one is right in the middle of Easely Woods.”
“Easely Woods! Doesn’t that belong to a big Media corporation?”
“Sort of. EnviroManagement owns Easely. They’re Resistance sympathizers. There’s even a rumor that they run a rogue radio station from somewhere in Easely Woods. But no one’s ever been able to track it down.”
What was so matter-of-fact to him was hard for me to take in all at once. People—his aunt and hopefully my father—who died, but weren’t dead. There were safe places for NonCons to go. Some big corporations sympathized with the Resistance. There was so much I didn’t know. I felt foolish for my ignorance, particularly because my mother had apparently been right in the middle of it all. Media, government… my head was spinning.
“Where did he come from?” Sal jerked his thumb over his shoulder.
I looked out the back. A green transport. “That can’t be Ed. Can it?”
“I’m not taking any chances.” Sal reached over, checking my safety restraint. “This could get rough.”
With a quick twist of the steering wheel, we flew across the median strip, then bounced over a fence and into a field. Granted, we were a foot or so off the ground, but at the speed we were traveling the resonance tractor was having difficulty keeping us stable off-road. The seat embraced me like a mother holding a baby. Even so, I thought my teeth were going to rattle right out of my head.
Sal veered into a patch of woods. I slapped my hands over my eyes, bracing myself for the imminent collision with one of the trees. He steered the trannie through more twists and turns than the Martian rocket ride at Lands o’ Fun. I was so scared I didn’t look through my fingers until we slowed down.