Howard raised an eyebrow.
“Compressed gas jets. The tank isn’t that big, so it’s only good for eight or ten hops before it runs out, but if Claire here comes to a ditch that would take too long to go around, she can make like a bunny and leap right over it.”
Howard smiled. “Might make recon of a building full of armed terrorists easier, at that. What are they going to run when they go into production? Any idea?”
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llpark only. They’re saying a hundred thousand, Ca-
Lieutenant. For that much, we can buy an r-plated car.”
, but it can’t do this.” little robot hissed and jumped again. 1 it’s tree.”
it’s the service contract run?” tically nothing. Three years, maybe thirty thou,
thirty thousand American or so, I can find a lot of men who would spit and jump up, even if they ; see in the dark.”
shook his head. “Have I ever mentioned that the is somewhat old-fashioned?” ever know when my buggy whip is going to come y. Lieutenant It does the job it was designed to never needs batteries.”
I on, John, give it a try. You know you want to.” I the controls to Howard, fell, yes, he did. It was just like playing with Tyrone’s toy on Christmas morning when the boy was nine, mother was fond of saying, If you couldn’t have what was the point?
pushed the button, and grinned as the robot I again.
22
Washington, D.C.
Santos waited until the senator came out of the supermarket on his way home before he made his move. One of the most powerful men in this country, one of only a hundred altogether, and he not only didn’t have a bodyguard, he drove a small car and did his own grocery shopping. Amazing. In Rio, a man in this senator’s position would be guarded, chauffeured everywhere in an armored limo, and would not have the slightest idea what a carton of milk or a loaf of bread cost, unless somebody happened to tell him. What was the point of having power if you did not exercise it?
Santos had already driven the route the man would take to get to his townhouse. He had a woman there-not his wife, who was back home in West Virginia with their two teenaged children until the school year was done. Santos had seen the mistress himself when he had driven by earlier. Hie information about the wife and children was public knowledge, available to anybody who cared to look for it. Another amazing thing. Back home, men of wealth
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knew that knowledge was power, and they to themselves. Why would you give a potential r anything he might use against you? Foolish. : senator from West Virginia swung his car out onto t and headed home, driving in the right lane. San- him, two cars back on the four-lane road. œ blocks later, Santos swung into the left-hand lane the senator. He sped up slightly, just a few I an hour over the limit, not enough to trigger photo r or the interest of a traffic cop. He gained a block senator’s car, pulling into his home street forty- onds ahead of the honorable Wayne DeWitt. He the car’s engine, sped a hundred feet down the and hung a skidding one-eighty turn. He stopped r, his steel-toed workboot resting on the brake, but i gear. He lifted a motorcycle crash helmet from the : to him and slipped it on, pulled the straps tight. f helmet had a face-shield of heavy clear plastic. He the visor down into place. He already wore the leather and rubber grappling gloves used by NHB fighters for matches, with the wrist wraps cinched fc! You could use your hands, but there was a lot of ; on the outside. He put a boil-and-bite mouthpiece i his mouth and slipped it over his upper teeth. Guar! for the first seventy-five hundred dollars of dental : if you hurt your teeth while wearing it, nine dollars |-mart. A great deal. He wore a boxer’s cup in a jock- t over his leather pants, and a weightlifter’s thick and S belt covering his waist and his lower back under his jacket. Without special springs and belts, he was
I as he could be in this car. the senator’s car rounded the corner, Santos the accelerator pedal.
thing you had to give big gas-guzzling American 1 had power to spare. He left tire rubber smokl on the asphalt as he took off. : was doing almost fifty when he switched lanes and 1 into the senator’s compact car.
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It was at a slight angle-he wanted to be able to drive his car away, if possible, and there was too much chance of rupturing the radiator in a head-on, even against a smaller car.
There was a hard thumpl and crash, and a sense of time slowing down, almost of drifting through space. Even though he was braced and ready, the seat belt tight, he still went forward into the air bag as it deployed. The face shield and gloves saved him from a flattened nose and brush burns on his arms as he hit the bag, which immediately collapsed. Striking an air bag in an accident was not, as some people seemed to think, like being hit in the face with a soft feather pillow. It was more like being punched by a gloved boxer, hard.
The big car’s windshield didn’t shatter, that was good, but something shiny flew up from the impact and hit on the passenger side hard enough to crack the safety glass.
He saw the senator’s car spinning, saw the man’s head hit his side window, blasting the tempered glass into squarish little bits that burst outward in a glittering fan of shrapnel. The air bag in the senator’s car had gone off, but the deliberately angled impact had caused the senator to hit the bag well to the side, so the safety device didn’t do as much good as it would have-another reason to avoid the full frontal smash.
Once past, Santos stood on the brake, and his car, already slowed by the crash, skidded to a noisy stop. He looked back in time to see the senator’s car pinwheel into a fiberglass light pole that snapped off at the base and came down on top of the auto just as the car plowed into a row of bushes, wiped them out, and smashed the right rear panel into a thick oak tree. The tree shook violently, but held.
Santos put the car into reverse and backed up. Seemed to be driving okay, nothing scraping against the wheel, that was good.
He came abreast of the senator’s car. No way they were
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to repair that, the whole front end was shifted to t side, the frame bent and badly distorted. Steam came i the ruptured cooling system.
senator’s head lolled through his shattered side aw. Blood welled from his head and dripped onto d, and from the angle of his neck, Santos thought tit be broken. Certainly it was wrenched enough to muscles. The front of the car was collapsed so that the man’s legs were probably pinned, they were broken, too.
1 enough. Maybe he would die, maybe not, but he : going to be playing golf any time soon, if he sur1 And he would not be a thorn in CyberNation’s side | a while, either.
ntos put the car into forward gear, and drove away, were coming out of their townhouses to see what happened. He kept his head down, knowing he was
by the helmet and face shield, he was around the corner, he pulled the helmet gloves off and spat the mouthpiece into his hand. He led the lifting belt, pulling it from under his jacket. I used a small pocket knife to cut the elastic on the jock I cup. With one hand he stuffed all the protective gear > a big shopping bag from Trader Joe’s.
miles away he came to a major bus stop. There a movie theater across the street. He parked the car ,a movie lot, damaged front end toward the building, t out, and dumped the bag in the nearest trash bin. Any- who found the bag would probably not be the kind j person who’d run straight to the police, and even if were, what was illegal about gloves, a helmet, and a ng belt? By the time anybody found the hit-and-run cle, he would be long gone. i walked to the bus stop. Smiled at an old black lady saw him coming. She smiled back, good night’s work, this. Made a man proud.
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Mount Fuji, Japan July 2012
Jay Gridley sat on a bench provided for pilgrims and watched the sunset. Fuji-yama was a walk-up, lots of people climbed it every day. It was a volcanic peak, a stratovolcano shaped like a squat cone, but more than twelve thousand feet high, in Fuji-Hakone-Izu National Park, near Honshu. The sacred mountain was the highest in Japan. It hadn’t had a major eruption since the early 1700s, but it vented steam and smoke now and again. Gave folks a bit of a thrill, maybe, to know it could possibly wake up and blow the climbers into the next world, however unlikely that was.