They were now going south on Roosevelt, approaching University Bridge. The road immediately in front was clear, but the cars farther ahead were slowing to a halt before the warning barrier, which was down and flashing red lights. To the left, a schooner was moving out along the channel, sails furled, running on its auxiliary engine. Beyond the barrier, the hinged center sections of the bridge had begun rising.
Vanessa emitted a vexed sigh and eased up on the gas.
“What’s this?” Payne picked up a small object off the top of the dashpanel. For a moment, before touching it, he’d thought it was a wasp. It was about the same size and had yellow and black tiger stripes.
At the sight of it, Vanessa lost the control that she had been fighting to preserve. She had forgotten the mec. They were here too, in the car. In an instant, all her recollections of grappling with it and being cut to pieces came pouring back. She stabbed at the button to open the passenger-side window. “Throw it out,” she shuddered.
“What? I don’t—”
“Just get rid of it, Martin!”
And then something else, with wings, rose up from behind the seats and brushed her shoulder. Vanessa screamed and swatted at it with her hand.
Limenitis Lorquini, or Lorquin’s Admiral, a common butterfly of western North America and Canada, dark blue and brown with white markings. Stirred by the rush of air, it fluttered, confused for a moment, and then vanished out the window. Payne laughed. “Just a bug, Vanessa. What’s this? You’re getting too jumpy. It’s not like—”
He broke off as he saw her eyes widening in shock, her mouth open in a silent shout of protest, the look of horror spreading across her face. “What? . . .”
Vanessa raised her hand from the utility shelf between the front-seat armrests. Something was sticking to her palm—something black, long and pointed like an insect, sinister- looking. Most of its legs were missing or reduced to stumps. It was fastened to her skin by a sharp, needlelike sting attached to its partly severed head.
Payne shook his head. He knew, but his mind refused to accept. “No! Pull over. Stop the car. . . .”
Vanessa tried to speak but could only gurgle. The toxin was already taking effect. As the muscles in her leg contracted, straightening it against the gas pedal, her last voluntary act was to jog the wheel and avoid the line of stationary traffic. The windshield iced as they crashed through the barrier, accelerating hard.
“Vanessa! . . .”
The Jaguar cleared the top of the upward-hinging ramp and somersaulted as its front went down into the gap. It hit the end of the opposite section roof first, dead center, the momentum caving it in like a karate-chopped soda can, ends buckling, fountains of glass exploding out in all directions. The car hung for several seconds, tipping back slowly as the angle of the bridge steepened. Finally it broke free and plunged into the green-gray water.
It was night by the time salvage boats, working by floodlights, brought the wreck up again. This time, Vanessa’s condition wasn’t virtual. And what was left of Payne had to be buried without a head.
EPILOGUE
The tour bus looked vaguely like a stretched, big-wheels version of a golf cart with a transparent bubble top. It had seats for a driver and six passengers, slung high above four roundwall tractor treads independently suspended for rugged terrain. The driver had a blue uniform with cap, white shirt and tie, and looked the part of somebody in charge. Seated in pairs behind him were a man in a sweater and slacks, one in a jacket, another in shirtsleeves, two women in skirts and one wearing jeans—representative of a mixed vacation group that could have been found anywhere. Except that they all had immobile features and oddly proportioned bodies, and their clothes and faces were painted on.
Amy Patterson, feature writer for Time-Life, was at the back on the right. The rendering of a tan check two-piece with yellow, high-necked blouse was a little on the staid side of anything she would have picked herself, but the other reporters and journalists “occupying” the figures around her were hardly interested in matters like that. It was special preview day for the press at Seattle’s just-completed MICROCOSM test site, which would open to the public tomorrow. A half dozen more were planned at major U.S. cities in the next six months, and two in Japan. It didn’t need to be the kind of large, centralized undertaking that would require visitors by the thousands and parking lots measured by the acre to justify it, like a Disneyworld. A few square yards of any kind of environment—natural, synthetic, subterranean, aqueous—could be created anywhere. So they could more appropriately be offered as smaller, local attractions comparable to the neighborhood park or the mall movie theaters. Eventually, the information package circulated by the new corporation said, there was no reason why individuals shouldn’t acquire their own to use as they chose, like personal computers.