The Long Run | Page 3

"It's simply not possible to have the cups just keep coming?"
"Monsieur," protested the manager in such horribly accented English that Trent could barely follow her, "I do not think we can."
"It's okay," said Trent, standing, "we're done." To Jerry Jackson he said, "I've really got to go; I'm late for another appointment." He turned back once before leaving. "Next time," he said as Jerry Jackson stared, "you have to take me someplace classier."

2.
Once there was a thief, and the thief was God.
--The first line in The Exodus Bible.
It was a twenty minute slidewalk trip from L'Express, at one end of the old Brooklyn Navy Yard, through streets lined by gray plastisteel residential high-rises, to the Down Plaza at the other end of the development. Trent ran all the way. He was delayed just before he reached the Plaza when a bomb in a baby carriage blew up next to a pair of patrolling Peaceforcers, killing the Peaceforcers and several bystanders and tearing a hole in the slidewalk that brought the slidewalk to a shuddering, grinding stop. Despite his hurry Trent stopped running immediately, and walked without haste through the growing rain, away from the crowd gathering around the site of the explosion, walked straight as a laser the rest of the way to the Plaza maglev.
About twenty fashionable, damp, well-dressed people were crowded onto the air-conditioned maglev platform as it descended beneath street level.
Trent was not particularly noticeable; because it was necessary for the job, so that he would not stand out from the other patrons inside CalleyTronics, Trent had dressed that day every bit as well as the children of the wealthy and privileged who swarmed through the eight huge, underground levels of the Down Plaza, the busiest shopping structure in the Patrol Sectors.
Most of those crowded onto the maglev platform, as it sank into the Down Plaza, were slender; a few of the less-well dressed were gaunt.
Two of them were fat. Somewhere in their mid-thirties, Trent guessed; they were French and they were female and they were fat. Not counting the cyborg French Peaceforcers Elite, who came by their mass in honest metal and metal-ceramics, Trent had never seen more gross tonnage on two bodies. Between the two of them they must have massed 250 kilos.
They were the last ones onto the maglev platform, already half loaded down with their packages and bags and umbrellas, chattering gaily in French so perfectly accented that there was no question in Trent's mind as to their nationality. They could not be employed themselves, not by the U.N.; the U.N. had maximum weight standards. Wives, then, of United Nations officials transplanted from France to oversee in the governing of Occupied America.
One of the fat women touched the dark pressure point marked "Five." The pressure point lit. Behind the dark lenses Trent's eyelids drooped shut; through the traceset contact buried in the arms of the sunglasses he sent a single command to his Image.
The maglev descended five floors in relative silence, as people got on and off the platform at the various levels. The tower in which the maglev platform was located thrust up like a spear through the center of the Down Plaza; the shops were arrayed in a rough rectangle around the maglev tower. Hanging flat walkways connected the central maglev tower to the shops at each level; skywalks connected the various levels for those who preferred walking to using the maglev.
At Level Five the maglev did not even slow. The two fat women broke off their conversation in consternation; one of them touched the pressure point for Level Five again. Trent said softly, "Ladies?"
They turned to look at him.
"Did you know that on Level One there's one of the finest gyms in the city? And on Level Three there's a biosculptor who vacuums fat cells so you can't get fat." Trent smiled at them. "Really. It's amazing, she just vacuums those fat cells right out. Whoosh!"
The two fat women gaped at him. The platform had not stopped at Level Five; it did at Level Six, and half a dozen of the maglev platform's occupants got off; a couple more got on.
The gates closed again, and the platform descended.
"On Level Four there's three cafes that serve empty food, no calories," Trent continued enthusiastically. "Left handed sugars; you can really pig out." He stared at them with his sunglasses. "It doesn't taste exactly the same, but that's not my fault."
Everybody left on the maglev platform was looking at them, at Trent and the two fat women. The maglev platform skipped Level Seven, where most of the small businesses were clustered, and opened up finally onto Level Eight, the bottom level of the huge plaza. People filed off slowly, stepping over or walking around the prone, twitching form of the juice junkie who