live. She spoke to me then, huddled in that loft full of damaged and abandoned machinery, about the temptation of danger: how sometimes the near impossibility of carrying out an action makes it irresistible. She must do it because she cannot do it, because it is both forbidden and held to be unachievable. That was when she began to move from pure data piracy toward something more political and even more dangerous. It was then she began her crusade of liberating information from the multis. The Maharal, lying awake as I lie awake, is fearful, as afraid of the remedy he imagines risking his life to carry out as he is afraid of the danger gathering for those who live in his care. Unable to decide, he lies supine to the night and the event, awaiting a further sign.
FOUR
Through the Burning Labyrinth
On April Fools’ Day, Shira, incongruous in her backless suit, joined the hundred thousand day laborers taking the eastbound tube. The escalators to the tube station were twelve across right outside the dome, where the blast of five o’clock heat leaned its scorching weight on her as she shuffled in line. She was wearing a white suit because she had had to check out of Y-S officially. Inbound night workers were lined up out in the still dangerous late sun to pass into the dome by palming the ID plates, but there was no ID required to leave. If you wanted to pass out of safety into hell, it was your business. No one could walk away into the Nebraska desert.
Shira was taking the tube across the country, jammed in a hot crowded car. She only hoped her luggage would arrive eventually, but the chances were, thieves would grab it en route. Her hands clutched the harness holding her into her seat. The tube car was windowless, as there was nothing whatsoever to see underground. She traveled for two hours before she changed at Chicago; she spent the night locked in an eight-by-six cube in the Chicago tube station, for she’d never make it safely across the Glop after dark.
The next morning she had two more hours to Boston. She did not want to think about Ari on a platform one third of the way to the moon with his father. Crying? Still wondering where she was, why she had not come, if she would ever come for him? She felt torn open. Would Josh watch out for early signs of ear infection? She had tried to call Pacifica, but Josh had refused a link.
She could not imagine what it would be like working with Avram, she could not imagine what it would be like returning to live with her grandmother. She had left home at seventeen, and a week was the longest she had visited since. Then she had been delivered from corporate enclave to free town by zipplane, from total fortress security to fragile peace in just over an hour, avoiding the densely inhabited slum of the Glop. Now her life felt like a crystalline structure shattered into bright dangerousshards that left her bleeding. Everything she had worked to create and sustain, everything into which she had poured her perhaps too abundant energy—her marriage, Ari, her work—was smashed or stolen from her. The temperature in the tube hovered near forty. She gasped for breath in the bad air.
Shira stumbled out of the tube exhausted and suffering from lack of oxygen. The small of her back hurt, and her sinuses burned. She had a headache that blistered her skull. Here she was in the Glop and there was no time to worry about small pain if she was to stay alive and intact. She pulled over her backless business suit the thin black covering almost all women and old people and many men wore in the streets. It covered age, class, sex, and made all look roughly the same size. She had not worn it in her years at Y-S, for there were no gangs in the multi enclaves. She pulled on metal woven gloves to cover her hands, though she was perfectly aware that although they might discourage a casual slasher with only a sticker, any real hand-hacker could laser right through the protective mesh. If only she could
FOUR
Through the Burning Labyrinth
On April Fools’ Day, Shira, incongruous in her backless suit, joined the hundred thousand day laborers taking the eastbound tube. The escalators to the tube station were twelve across right outside the dome, where the blast of five o’clock heat leaned its scorching weight on her as she shuffled in line. She was wearing a white suit because she had had to check out of Y-S officially. Inbound night workers were lined up out in the still dangerous late sun to pass into the dome by palming the ID plates, but there was no ID required to leave. If you wanted to pass out of safety into hell, it was your business. No one could walk away into the Nebraska desert.
Shira was taking the tube across the country, jammed in a hot crowded car. She only hoped her luggage would arrive eventually, but the chances were, thieves would grab it en route. Her hands clutched the harness holding her into her seat. The tube car was windowless, as there was nothing whatsoever to see underground. She traveled for two hours before she changed at Chicago; she spent the night locked in an eight-by-six cube in the Chicago tube station, for she’d never make it safely across the Glop after dark.
The next morning she had two more hours to Boston. She did not want to think about Ari on a platform one third of the way to the moon with his father. Crying? Still wondering where she was, why she had not come, if she would ever come for him? She felt torn open. Would Josh watch out for early signs of ear infection? She had tried to call Pacifica, but Josh had refused a link.
She could not imagine what it would be like working with Avram, she could not imagine what it would be like returning to live with her grandmother. She had left home at seventeen, and a week was the longest she had visited since. Then she had been delivered from corporate enclave to free town by zipplane, from total fortress security to fragile peace in just over an hour, avoiding the densely inhabited slum of the Glop. Now her life felt like a crystalline structure shattered into bright dangerousshards that left her bleeding. Everything she had worked to create and sustain, everything into which she had poured her perhaps too abundant energy—her marriage, Ari, her work—was smashed or stolen from her. The temperature in the tube hovered near forty. She gasped for breath in the bad air.
Shira stumbled out of the tube exhausted and suffering from lack of oxygen. The small of her back hurt, and her sinuses burned. She had a headache that blistered her skull. Here she was in the Glop and there was no time to worry about small pain if she was to stay alive and intact. She pulled over her backless business suit the thin black covering almost all women and old people and many men wore in the streets. It covered age, class, sex, and made all look roughly the same size. She had not worn it in her years at Y-S, for there were no gangs in the multi enclaves. She pulled on metal woven gloves to cover her hands, though she was perfectly aware that although they might discourage a casual slasher with only a sticker, any real hand-hacker could laser right through the protective mesh. If only she could
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