station. The train glided toward a crowded platform, then screeched
horrifyingly down the last few hundred yards of its journey on old-fashioned
steel wheels that struck blazing sparks against old-fashioned steel rails. A
lurch, a blinking of the light strips along the ceiling, and the train came to
a halt.
With the hesitancy known only to New Englanders visiting Manhattan for the
first time, Carl Lewis slid his garment bag from the rack over his seat and
swung his courier case onto his shoulder. The other passengers pushed past
him, muttering and grumbling their way off the train. They shoved Carl this
way and that until he felt like a tumbleweed caught in a cattle stampede.
Welcome to New York, he said to himself as the stream of detraining passengers
dumped him impersonally, indignantly, demeaningly, on the concrete platform.
The station was so big that Carl felt as if he had shrunk to the size of an
insect. People elbowed and stamped their way through the throngs milling
around; the huge cavern buzzed like a beehive. Carl felt tension in the air,
the supercharged crackling high-stress electricity of the Big Apple.
Panhandlers in their traditional grubby rags shambled along, each of them
displaying the official city begging permit badge. Grimy bag ladies screamed
insults at the empty air. Teenaged thugs in military fatigues eyed the crowds
like predators looking for easy prey. Religious zealots in saffron robes, in
severe black suits and string ties, even in mock space suits complete with
bubble helmets, sought alms and converts. Mostly alms. Police robots stood
immobile, like fat little blue fireplugs, while the tides of noisy, smelly,
angry, scampering humanity flowed in every direction at once. The noise was a
bedlam of a million individual voices acting out their private dramas. The
station crackled with fierce, hostile anxiety.
Carl took a deep breath, clutched his garment bag tighter, and clamped his arm
closely over the courier case hanging from his shoulder. He avoided other
people's eyes almost as well as a native Manhattanite, and threaded his way
through the throngs toward the taxi stand outside, successfully evading the
evangelists, the beggars, the would-be muggers, and the flowing tide of
perfectly ordinary citizens who would knock him down and mash him flat under
their scurrying shoes if he so much as missed a single step.
There were no cabs, only a curbside line of complaining jostling men and women
waiting for taxis. A robot dispatcher, not unlike the robot cops inside the
station, stood impassively at the head of the line. While the police robots
were blue, the taxi dispatcher's aluminum skin was anodized yellow, faded and
chipped, spattered here and there with mud and other substances Carl preferred
not to think about.
Every few minutes a taxi swerved around the corner on two wheels and pulled up
to the dispatcher's post with a squeal of brakes. One person would get in and
the line would inch forward. Finally Carl was at the head of the line.
"I beg your pardon, sir. Are you going uptown or downtown?" asked the man
behind Carl.
"Uh, uptown-no, downtown." Carl had to think about Manhattan's geography.
"Excellent! Would you mind if I shared a cab with you? I'm late for an
important appointment. I'll pay the entire fare."