The Long Run | Page 4

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 blocked the walkway from the maglev
platform, looking back as they did so at Trent and the French women.
Trent turned to leave also and then suddenly, just the other side of the
maglev gates, turned around to face the French women again.
"Do you speak English?" he demanded.
The one nearest him said in English, haughtily, clearly, "I do not speak
English."
"Oh." The maglev gates closed on the women, and the power on the
platform suddenly died. The platform went dark. "One hundred and
fifteen million people," said Trent in his best French, "died last year
because there wasn't enough food for them." Behind the gate, on the
maglev platform, the women were pushing frantically at the pressure
points. Trent did not think they had even heard him. He looked at them
for just a moment, stood watching them without expression from the
other side of the gates. The one who was not punching at the pressure
points suddenly became aware of Trent standing and watching them,
and pleaded in French, "Young man, will you call someone to let us
out?"
Turning away, Trent shook his head. "I'm already late," he muttered.
He almost tripped over the juice junkie.
The Crystal Wind is the Storm, and the Storm is Data, and the Data is
Life.
--The Player's Litany
Heat rises; it was always notably cool on the bottom level of the Down
Plaza.

Walking out onto Eight, those who were new to the Plaza, even New
York natives, tended to gawk like tourists. The upper seven levels of
the Down Plaza were illuminated by yellow light with a greenish tinge:
a mixture of yellow sunpaint and the omnipresent, wavering flickering
light of the blue-green glowfloats in their eternal migration between the
first and eighth levels of the Down Plaza.
Level Eight was a riot of color; glittering adholo, real neon and
neonlaser and glowpaint. Eight was the only level with a floor, though
those who spent any amount of time down on Eight learned to avoid
those areas around the maglev tower where the ceiling opened up; the
eight level drop into the crowds was a favorite with jumpers.
Eight was easily the most popular level in the Plaza. There was a
whorehouse behind the furniture shop, and two sensable parlors that
catered to those with refined, largely illegal tastes. CalleyTronics was
located there as well, and Players from over a hundred kilometers
around came in person to buy from Calley, who had been a rather
famous Player himself as a young man, in the wistfully remembered
days before DataWatch.
The BloodSilk Boys were mixed among the crowds at the west end of
the Plaza. Four gendarmes--cops, New York City Police officers--sat in
full goldtone riot armor at Googie's Place on the eastern edge of Eight,
watching the Plaza through the coffee shop's glassite walls. Trent did
not look at either group as he walked away from the diminishing sound
of the swearing French women and went to see Bones.
On the crowded floor of Down Plaza, well back from the jumper zone,
eight floors beneath the surface of Brooklyn, the old black man who
was considered by many the world's greatest contortionist gathered up
the hard Chinese and SpaceFarer CU in the basket before his platform
and prepared to take a break from his routine.
Trent came to a stop just off the walkway, beside the low platform on
which Bones worked. Pulling on his shirt, Bones had to raise his voice
to be heard above the loud music and the babble of the crowd.

"Evening, Trent. Take dinner with me?"
"Hi, Bones. Not tonight."
"Something goin', Trent?"
Trent did not even turn his head as Bones spoke to him. "What do you
mean?"
"'Bout an hour ago I seen Jimmy Ramirez; and Tammy the Rat been
hanging around, and not fifteen minutes ago I seen your midget. And
there was six Peaceforcers, they was here when I got here this morning.
I ain't seen the Left Hand of the Devil in the Plaza that early in, oh, five
years."
Trent heard barely audible popping noises as Bones' joints