Silhouette by Dave Swavely

Author:Dave Swavely
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

12

It was starting to get dark as I wove through the crowd that had gathered around our barricades on the surface, outside the entrance to the tunnel, and the city assailed my senses.

I supposed the people who lived here were immune to the sights, sounds, and smells of this metropolis, but they always hit me like I was running into a wall. My eyes immediately tended to twirl and glaze from the unfamiliar stimuli of a thousand moving parts and the scale of the surrounding buildings. My ears almost hurt at the cacophony of voices, vehicles, and video advertisements, both flat and holo, that were being projected onto the streets and sidewalks. And the rotation of strong aromas could only be described as bittersweet—an unpleasant residue from the chemical products (natural and not-so-natural) of a million sardined humans, punctuated with refreshing bursts of sea air blowing in from the Bay.

I seldom left a controlled environment, and this was anything but. I knew that Lynn and probably Paul would have thrown fits if they’d known what I was doing. They would have told me that I was recognizable, and would be afraid that some anti-BASS gang of thugs would dismember me before the cavalry could show up. But my state of mind right now was such that I really didn’t care, and I needed to be outside the reach of BASS surveillance to do what I wanted to do.

As I studied some of the faces I passed in the crowd, however, the fear seemed unfounded. Very few recognized me (at least noticeably), none approached, and most simply went about their business, not on the lookout for famous people by any means. After all, I was the least well known of the BASS executives: the old man was a living legend, Paul was his son, and D had been our charismatic, smiling face for the media. I had hardly ever appeared on the net by choice, and the tabloid coverage had focused mostly on those three.

Nevertheless, a few people did recognize me as I walked a few blocks up Powell Street. And a woman I asked about a bookstore noticed at least one of the boas, because the breeze had blown my jacket open while I was talking to her. I closed it partially then to avoid scaring too many people, but I left the guns in front in case I met anyone that I needed to scare.

I turned a corner, looking for the Noble Virgin. The woman had said, “Can’t miss it,” and she was right. It took up half a block along this street, almost the entire first floor of a typically colossal building that stretched so high that I couldn’t see the top from this angle. I stepped in and noticed that the buzz of noise was even louder in here than on the street. This was from the conversations going on at the coffeehouses on the perimeter of the huge floor, but also from the many sampling and

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