Ambient 06 - Going, Going, Gone

even recognized Humphrey Bogart. It was impossible to hear what was really being said on any of the screens, though; music – I guess that was what it was supposed to be, although it didn’t seem to be much more than a steady driving rhythm – filled the room. Wherever the speakers were, they must have been concert-size. Granddaughter had incense burning in several different censers, but the smell of the room, and of granddaughter, still came through painfully clear.
    »Corrected,« said Eulie, handing her back the puck. Granddaughter lay her little mitts on it and then shoved it into her mouth as if intending to swallow it, but she didn’t. All of the pictures on the screens as a single big movie filled the entire wall. It was doubly unsettling to suddenly see a much larger version of our hostess, wearing even less, stomping through what seemed at first to be a toy city, until I realized it was some actual anonymous burg – Omaha, or Cleveland, maybe. She knocked over buildings, crushed people underfoot, slung cars through the air like frisbees.
    »We’ve paid respect,« Eulie whispered to me. »Follow.«
    Eulie bowed down before Topsy, and as I took her literally I did as well. No surprise to find out that I shouldn’t have. Without taking her eyes off the wall she snatched up a rock-hard plastic mug and bounced it off my noggin. It didn’t break the bone, or even the skin, but it wasn’t a sensation I enjoyed. Soon as I recovered my footing I backed out of the room, fast. Neither of us said a word until we were back in the elevator, heading somewhere below.
    »Apples don’t fall far from the tree,« I mumbled. She shook her head.
    »Adopted,« Eulie said. »Childhood friend’s daughter, heard. Friend died postbirthing. Cancered. Father in absentia, dead.« She shrugged. »Environment, heredity. Onesame.«
    Thought it best to keep the talk light while we were still in hearing range of Sassy Sue. »She’s older than she looks?«
    »Thirteen,« Eulie said. »Figureheads, sole, installed by Madame. Dryco runs itself, or did until recent disruptions.«
    »What disruptions?«
    »We’ll homeways now, Walter. You need knowing.«
    »Homeways where?«
    »My home.«
    »Where’s that? Up here in the clouds, somewhere –?«
    »Jersey.«
    So I was right, after all. As we plummeted down I still tried to get it through my head that the Pi had somehow been removed from my system; that none of this was a hallucination. I’d be just as glad, I thought, to get out of New York; because how much weirder could their Jersey be? Her place, as well. Taking another gander at those sad, glistening eyes of Eulie’s, I felt that old springboard go. Forgive me for being so blunt, my brothers, but it was the only thing on my mind at that moment; that after months stuck in drydock, I thought I was finally going to get my chance to open the savoury bivalve. But I should have known better than that.
     
    Even though I’d figured we’d hop another cab, once we popped back out into the free and clear I saw we were in a parking garage, same as any you’ve ever seen except that this one was shiny bathroom white. When cars drifted past us, looking more like bugs than krautwagons ever looked, I couldn’t help but marvel at how quietly they ran.
    »Oh,« Eulie said when I noted this, »they’re electric«
    After walking down a series of spirals we reached her car, a pathetic little runabout that looked like something FAO Schwarz’d sell to the Kennedy boys to put in their nephews’ stockings. A pink bunion with Radio Flyer wheels is the only fair way to describe it. She must have been hauling pig iron in the trunk; the thing didn’t sit five inches off the ground.
    »What kind is it?«
    »Stimray,« she said, waving her hands over the car’s side. Nothing happened. She started pounding the roof till the doors came open.
    »Double as a lawn mower?« I asked, squeezing myself inside. I could have rested my chin on my knees if the seat hadn’t strapped me down so tight the second I sat down in it. While not a half hour earlier that would have probably made me jump up and run off screaming. I couldn’t help but be aware of how quickly I was getting used to the way things worked out in the territories. Eulie pressed a sky-blue button on the floor with her foot and we slid out, gliding through the aisles until we emerged at what looked like the Harlem River – it was too narrow to be either the Hudson or the East. She edged the car