by Susan Juby
A third favour wore a Deep Sea Diver, circa a really long time ago. The suit, which was mostly clear plastic with a few strategically positioned silver fabric view-blockers, took up two entire seats. Her client had to sit in front of her because he couldn’t fit beside her.
Three favours with full headgear, thought Bright. Not exactly the best advertisement for the house, which was all about perfection of face and body and gear. Even if she wasn’t really doing this to promote the brand, she didn’t want to totally embarrass it.
The fourth favour wore an apron covered with red splatters. A small, red hard hat perched on top of her glossy black hair. She carried a big hammer and a bolt gun. Every few minutes she would hit her client with the soft hammer or he would grab her bolt gun and hold it to her arm or head and press the trigger. The pretend bolt gun made a dull rubber thump and wooie noise when it hit skin. Great piece, thought Bright.
The fifth favour wore boring Small-Machine Repair. No style. No story. Just small tools that couldn’t even be swung very hard. But the girl was scarcely out of her lure years, so she could get away with it. In the old days, the Mistress would have made the girl get her style together by sending her to the dressing room of one of the more experienced favours for a while. She would have been put in a leisure unit with serious gearheads. But the Mistress was missing almost everything that mattered these days.
The sixth favour was the most disturbing of all. She was barely even hot. She carried a single small wrench and wore a faded yellow one-piece bathing suit. A one-piece! It drooped in important places, and the favour, Bright couldn’t help noticing, didn’t look young. Not at all. One of her surgeries was sagging, and Bright thought she saw a wrinkle near the favour’s mouth. How had she made it this long? Why hadn’t anyone noticed she was going to pieces and probably bringing down the credit values of every other favour in the house? The sad old favour hadn’t even brought a client with her, likely because she hadn’t gotten any bids during her descent. She probably couldn’t make it down any of the better descent apparatuses without experiencing deflation or worse. She was like a negative advert that said, “Don’t Party Here Because It’s Not Even Fun!”
Bright winced as she looked at the favour, sitting alone in her tragic yellow one-piece near the middle of the bus. Bright tried pushing a button on the control board to drop the girl’s seat so she wouldn’t be visible from the outside, but the seat didn’t go any lower. The adverbus was not designed for privacy.
Bright made her way down the aisle to the favour wearing the toothbrush headpiece, who looked like she’d had the most cutting-edge surgeries.
“Excuse me,” she said. “I just wanted to admire your headpiece.”
The favour inclined her head to show off the Spun Fun unit. It was three times the size of a normal head.
“That is so great,” said Bright. “I would love to see it close up.”
The girl carefully pulled the headpiece off and showed it to Bright.
“Is it as light as it looks?” asked Bright.
“You can touch it,” the girl said magnanimously. “This is the second time I’ve worn it, so I’m going to get rid of it after this shift. Send it to headgear recycling.”
It weighed no more than a glass of nutri. The favour, black-haired and dark-tinted, was fully and perfectly made-up. She was new and beautiful, and her eyelids were stretched tight across her eyes and had a shape Bright had only heard about the week before. Between her and the favour with the bolt gun, Bright was starting to feel practically plain.
“Amazing,” said Bright. “But I’m a little surprised you’d cover your face. It’s, like, magnificent.”
“I know,” said the girl.
“It would make more sense for someone like …” Bright’s voice trailed off as she looked over at the sad one-piece favour.
“Ugh. Her whole everything should be in a mascot head,” said the girl.
“So I can let her use it? That’s so great!” said Bright.
The girl shrugged. The conversation was moving too fast for her to follow.
“Thanks!”
Bright made her way down the aisle and gave the enormous Spun Fun headpiece to the yellow one-piecer. “Here. Put this on,” she said.
The aged favour fit the headpiece over her head and immediately looked better.
“You also need to do something with those.” Bright mimed lifting up the front of the bathing suit.
The favour nodded her huge toothbrush-covered head and tied the straps of the suit tighter on her shoulders. It still wasn’t great, but at least everything rode a little higher.
Bright went back to the driver’s seat. The point of all this was not to whip these favours into shape but to get her bot. Sometimes, concentrating on a goal felt like trying to scoop spilled Zip Fizz with a straw.
Bright looked down the length of the bus. “Get your gear on!” she shouted.
“And get ready to party!” came the reply from her passengers.
From the corner of her eye, Bright saw Fon hurrying through the doorway. There were no bots following her. Fon clinked and clattered up the stairs, making such a racket that at first she didn’t hear Bright’s whispered question.
“Where’s Pinkie?” Bright repeated, rapping her knuckles against Fon’s armoured shoulder as she rushed by.
“Couldn’t,” puffed Fon. “PS officers. Came through the front door. They didn’t look like they were there for support.”
Bright heard the ragged edges of panic in Fon’s voice.
“But … Pinkie …” said Bright.
“I shoved both the bots behind the gear box and covered them with outfits. They’ll be fine and, as a bonus, they won’t get dusty. We’ll pick them up later.”
“I—”
“Get this thing going!” shouted Fon, surprising herself and Bright and everyone else on the bus. “Move! Move!
Move!”
That was all it took. Bright turned the switch and the bus hummed on. She cast one last look at the door that led into the House of Gear. “I’ll be back for you, Pinkie,” she vowed silently.
Forgotten bits of information nibbled at the edges of her mind, but she ignored them and drove the bus carefully up the ramp that led out of the cart park.
When a house from the Partytainment District put on an adverdrive to show off its good times, the adverbus was usually driven slowly up and down the streets by a PS officer so that everyone could get a close look at the favours. Driving an adverbus took skill, because the vehicle couldn’t go too slowly or stop lest the audience get overexcited. Once, a group of productives had pulled a favour off a House of Food adverbus. By the time the PS officer had summoned backup, it was too late. The favour, who’d been covered with donut flavours plus three types of sugar substitute, was no longer in service.
Bright had never heard of a favour driving an adverbus, and she sort of wished she wasn’t the first. When they reached street level, she looked to her right and saw that the road was empty. Then she made the mistake of looking to her left. At the other end of the block were dozens of PS officers.
Bright thought of the mob scene outside the House of Pretty Olds. She thought of what had happened at the House of Smooth, and she realized she didn’t feel the same way about PS officers anymore. She would no longer be jealous of anyone who had more personal support than she did.
“Uh-oh,” she murmured.
Fon clanked over and, with great difficulty, crouched beside the driver’s seat. “Just drive.”
“But …” Bright pointed at the crowd of officers.
“So turn the other way.”
“What if they come after us?”
“Drive faster than they can run.”
When had Fon started to make so much sense?
“You’ve got good all-round skills,” said Fon. “Like, you’re not the hottest, but you’re smart and you can do stuff.”
There was a time when Fon’s words would have landed like squirts of co
ld Zip Fizz to the eye, but times had changed. Being smart and able to do stuff seemed more important now.
“Thanks,” said Bright.
“I’m glad you’re driving the bus.”
Bright looked over at her dressing-mate, the girl she’d spent so much time resenting. Somewhere along the line she’d started to like Fon. She liked her almost as much as Pinkie. In fact, Pinkie and Fon had a lot in common. They could be annoying if you didn’t know them, but they both meant well and tried to help.
When Fon spoke again, her voice was clear. “If we’re done having a moment, it might be a good idea to get driving.”
Bright snapped her head to the left. Sure enough, a pack of PS officers was walking toward them so quickly that their bodies rocked from side to side with the effort.
She hit the pedal and the adverbus accelerated, tipping precariously as it turned sharply onto the street, heading in the opposite direction from where they needed to go.
“We’ll double back!” cried Fon, as she lost her balance and crashed against the front passenger seat.
Bright pinned her foot to the accelerator. She didn’t dare look in the rear-view mirror. When she hit the corner where the House of Office was located, she made a sharp left, then a right. She drove for two blocks, then made another left.
“Fun!” cried Fon, who was now rolling around at the front of the bus, trying to grab onto things during the straight stretches.
When Bright felt she’d driven far enough away from the House of Gear, she finally turned them back toward the Natural Experience. Even though she’d failed to rescue the bots, it seemed like the safest place to take her passengers. Grassly would know what to do with them.
“You can get up now,” she said to Fon, who was flat on her back in the aisle, using silver-clad hands to grip a seat leg on either side of her.
“I’m okay down here,” said Fon. “I think I’m getting cart-sick.”
Now that the pursuit part of the drive was over, Bright considered passenger safety. She made sure the windows were as high as they’d go and kept to a moderate speed as they wove their way through the Entertainment Zone. When they reached Gaming, people began to appear on the streets, but she didn’t slow down, even for the few pedestrians, who had to scramble to get out of the way. Smaller carts pulled over to let them pass, the heads of the drivers and passengers jerking around to watch them go. The adverbus nearly hit several lonelies, the three-wheeled self-pedals ridden by low-credit productives and preferred by sensitives.
Despite the speed of their transit and the bizarre way they’d left the House of Gear with a pack of PS staff in hot pursuit, the favours tried hard to party. They bobbed up and down in their seats and smiled and tossed their hair, or at least nodded their head coverings, and brandished their gear seductively. The clients, amazed to find themselves part of an adverdrive, turned up their happy faces as high as they’d go.
Fon even got up and took a seat.
Bright was so busy watching her passengers in the rear-view mirror and on the cart’s video feed that she nearly ran over a cart driven by two gamers. She yanked the wheel to the left, and the adverbus tipped onto two wheels. All her passengers screamed.
The gamers, who were dressed in black shirts under red vests, drove a cart painted to look like a Wager of Wonder board. They gestured at her and scrunched up their pointy faces.
“Sorry,” she muttered as she pulled the bus back into the proper lane.
With a glance at the rear-view, she saw that her passengers had stopped bouncing. They now huddled in their seats and looked unsure about what to do.
Then it hit her: the problem that had been poking at her brain. She was supposed to be hiding from the PS staff, which meant she couldn’t let the officers at the gate to the Natural Experience see the bus or the people on it. It didn’t matter that she and Fon were covered up. House branding was all over the vehicle.
She looked back at the road just in time to barely miss a productive on a particularly rickety lonely. She slowed the bus and tried to mimic the driving style of the other adverdrives she’d been on. Slow and steady. Not stopping. She wanted all of them to get through this safely. She needed a plan.
Now that the drive was more steady, the favours and clients went back to bobbing in time with the music. Dancing in their seats. Showing off their fun. A thought slid into Bright’s head like lip colour out of a tube. What was she doing? She was bringing these people to a strange PS officer who’d told her terrible things about the contract. Who’d told her he would take them all away in a ship. Who’d given her a light that turned people into crawling light-seekers.
Her foot eased off the pedal. She wanted to get off this adverbus. She was unprepared to take responsibility for anything other than her hair and her outfits.
They had cleared Gaming and passed the first Mind Alter house. She pulled over beside the House of Harsh. She had to figure out what to do. She didn’t trust Grassly, or even understand him, really, but it was clear that he was right about one thing: all favours from the House of Gear were in danger of being released from their contracts if they were caught by the PS staff. They’d be safer inside the Natural Experience, but how would she get them inside? It had taken her and Fon an hour of sawing on the membrane to make a hole big enough for them to wriggle through, and the hole had begun to heal itself even as she’d pulled Fon to the other side. There was no way she could get all the passengers through the membrane. They had to go in via the gate.
Bright rested her forehead on the steering wheel, and the writing under the buttons on the dashboard came into focus. One button was labelled House of Bends, another House of Talls. Those were the houses on either side of the House of Gear. This adverbus must be used by all three houses!
Bright jabbed a forefinger at the button labelled House of Talls. The lights turned yellow and green, and a glance at the video monitors that showed the outside of the bus told her that the side panels had changed to show extra-tall favours towering over their thrilled clients.
“Look tall, everyone!” commanded Bright. This set off a round of confused conversation among her passengers. Bright pushed their seats up six inches to make everyone seem taller.
She pulled out and resumed their journey to the Natural Experience. She’d decide what to do next when they reached the gate. Maybe she’d drop everyone off and then go back to get Pinkie and Peaches.
She ran a hand lightly over the array of buttons on the dashboard. Who knew that technology was so powerful? She’d always thought it was best left to bots, PS staff, and Deciders.
Bright was so pleased with her problem-solving skills that she almost forgot to be nervous as they approached the gate. Now that it was night inside the Natural Experience, no tour buses were lined up at the gate and, to Bright’s surprise, no PS officers were visible outside the gatehouse. She hesitated for just a moment, then hit the pedal hard and roared through the gate and into the Natural Experience, only to brake just as hard when a PS officer stepped into the road in front of her and held up his hand. Another one emerged from the gatehouse and headed toward the bus. Just as he reached it, all the lights went out behind them.
The onset of darkness seemed to suck all the air out of the bus. Darkness was supposed to be a background thing: a quality of flattering lightlessness that made a person’s skin look better. It wasn’t meant to be all around you, hiding everything from sight.
But as Bright overcame her shock, she realized the blackness wasn’t complete. The adverbus’s headlights illuminated the road in front of them, and its flashing side panels cast intermittent light along the sides of the bus.
Bright blinked and waited for her eyes to adjust. She hoped the sudden onset of darkness would convince the PS staff that they had better things to do than harass a perfectly productive adverbus filled with favours and clients just trying to generate a little brand buzz.
Bright was just beginning to make out shapes when the knock sounded beside her. A PS office
r stood silhouetted outside the door of the adverbus. He knocked again, more insistently.
For a long, breathless moment, Bright pretended she couldn’t see him. “Uh, hello?” she said, trying to make her voice clear and strong. “It’s dark, so I can’t see you.”
At the sound of her voice, the passengers behind her seemed to come to life.
“What’s happening?” asked one.
“I can’t see either!” said another.
“I’m going to turn my halo on higher,” said Fon in a confident tone.
In the rear-view mirror, Bright could see a small circle of illumination around Fon’s head. The pink lights illuminated Fon’s hair and not much else. The rest of the passengers were shifting shapes. Bright wished someone would come along and tell her what to do. She really, really didn’t want to drive the bus anymore.
The knock sounded again, this time so hard that she worried the plasti-glass might break.
“Just a minute!” called Bright. She moved her hand around in front of her and jabbed random spots on the dashboard, pretending she couldn’t find the button that would open the door, while being careful not to hit the one that would turn on the House of Gear branding. “I’m coming!” she said.
Finally, because she couldn’t think of what else to do, Bright opened the door to the bus. As she did so, she realized she should have just driven around the officer instead of stopping. It was too late now. The officer was already inside the vehicle.
“Destination?” he asked. He held a white sheet in his hand. The document glowed dully. Bright realized with a start that he could see everything just fine. It must be his dataglasses. They allowed him to see in the dark.