The Long Run | Page 3

"Monsieur," she said, stress making it difficult for Trent to follow her
words, "we have only three waitbots. If we do this we must assign a
waitbot to do nothing but service your table, and this will affect the
other patrons."
"Damn it," Jerry Jackson exploded, "what is this nonsense? Take the
goddamn coffee in a cup. Are you here to talk business or what?"
Rain drops were striking Trent square in the face. The manager looked
back and forth between the two of them in confusion. "You're sure?"
Trent asked her. "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