Specimen Days

Simon heard her say, "No move. No speak." The player did not move or speak.

Queasy but still functional, Simon put the baggy pants on over his own. He mashed the Mets cap down onto his head.

The train stopped at Ninety-sixth Street.

"Go," Catareen called to Simon. "We not are together."

"What about you?" he asked.

Her eyes glowed furnace-orange. "Do as I say."

He did. He got off the train.

The drone was hovering on the platform, checking the disembarking passengers. Simon slouched along. He pulled the cap brim an inch lower and kept his eyes down. Detrained players and a smattering of Nadians moved toward the exit turnstiles. He moved with them. The drone whirred overhead, maintaining a circumscribed orbit in the vicinity of the exit. It wavered once, smacked up against the tiled wall, righted itself. Everyone looked at the drone with curiosity. Simon did, too. Act like everybody else. Briefly his eyes connected with the drone's rotating eyestalk. It considered him. It snapped a vid. It flittered on to the next citizen. Simon passed through the turnstile and went up the stairs with the others.

He emerged among the warehouses and empty stores on Ninety-sixth and Broadway. He hesitated. He knew he should move naturally along, but where was Catareen? He pretended to read an old hologram that advertised a concert. Singing cats. He could plausibly linger for less than a minute.

She came up the stairs within thirty seconds. She passed close to him but not too close. She said softly, "Not together."

Right. He walked on, several paces behind her. She crossed Broadway. He crossed, too. On the far side of Broadway, she went west on Ninety-sixth Street, as did he.

This neighborhood was just storage, really. Some maintenance shops, some stretches of pure dereliction where extra props sat bleaching and rusting. Sweatshop machinery and horse carts from Five Points (they were thinking of shutting it down; it was too hard getting players to work there), Gatsbymobiles from Midtown in the Twenties, crate upon crate of hippie paraphernalia that had been slowly decaying here since the Council closed down Positively Fourth Street. The attractions didn't start up again until you reached the soul food parlors and jazz joints of Old Harlem, and then that was the end of the park.

When they had reached a quiet stretch of West End Avenue, she turned to him.

"I didn't know you people could do that," he said.

"Can."

"How did you get off the train?"

"I go quick. Man will tell drone next stop. We hurry."

"We'll need a car," he said.

"You can get?"

"I am a car. More or less."

He chose a vintage Mitsubishi parked in a weedy lot. He hoped it was a real one. Half of them were shells. Simon fingered the autolock, felt its numbers transmit. He punched them in and opened the door. It was a working car. He pulled the wires, started it. He let her in on the passenger side.

She fastened her seat belt.

He drove to the Henry Hudson Parkway and headed north. He said, "I can't believe you did that."

She stared straight ahead, her long green fingers folded in her lap.

The parkway was divided. Vintage cars on the right, hoverpods on the left. There were not many cars, but there was a steady stream of hoverpods filled with tourists. From within the clean, arctic light of the pods' interiors people looked down at Simon and the Nadian, chugging along in the Mitsubishi. They must have wondered what this was supposed to be a tattooed man in a Mets cap and two sweaters, driving in a compact car with a Nadian nanny. They must have been consulting their guidebooks.

He said, "I hope you don't mind my asking, but I'd like to know. What did you do on Nadia?"

"I was criminal," she said.

"You're kidding. You stole from people?"

"I was criminal," she said. She said nothing else.

Ahead, the George Washington Bridge stretched illuminated across the river. He got onto the bridge. He said, "We should get rid of the car when we reach New Jersey. I'll find us a pod."

She nodded. She kept her hands folded in her lap.

They were halfway across when a drone voice sounded from overhead. "Ball doo behackle ober do doo rark."

"Not stop," she said.

"I wasn't even considering it."

He punched the accelerator. The Mitsubishi groaned and went somewhat faster.

"We're probably screwed," Simon said.

Then the drone was alongside him, whirring at the window. It said, "Pull over to the right."

Simon swerved in the drone's direction. It knocked against the window glass and spun out over the car. He could hear the sound its wings made against the roof, like a metal bee trapped in a bottle.

The drone reappeared almost immediately in front of the car. The first beam shattered the windshield. Bright pebbles of glass flew everywhere.

Simon shouted, "This is the breath of laws and songs and behavior." He swerved to the right this time. The drone tracked him.

"Duck," he said to Catareen.

She ducked. He ducked. The second beam burned a hole in the headrest where Simon's head had been. The air smelled of hot plastifoam.