“I’m Darla Jones, me,” I said cheerfully. I had a lock-pocket full of various chips under various names, some of which the GSEA had provided, some of which they knew nothing about. It’s a mistake to let the agency provide all of your cover. The time might come when you want cover from them. All of my identities were documented in federal databases, looking as if they had long pasts, thanks to a talented friend the GSEA also knew nothing about. “Going to Washington, me.”

“Arnie Shaw,” the man said eagerly. “The train, it break down yet?”

“Nah,” I said. “Probably will, though, it.”

“What can you do?”

“Nothing.”

“Keeps things interesting.”

“Arnie,” Mommy Liver said sharply, interrupting this mild conversational excursion, “back here, us. There’s more seats.” She gave me a look that would scorch plastisynth.

“Plenty of seats up here, Dee.”

“Arnie!”

“ ‘Bye,” I said. They walked away, the woman muttering under her breath. Bitch. I should let the SuperSleepless turn her descendants into four-armed tailless guard dogs. Or whatever they had in mind. I leaned my head against the back of the seat and closed my eyes. We slowed down for another Liver town.

As soon as we left it, the littlest Shaw was back. A girl of about five, she crept along the aisle like a kitten. She had a pert little face and long dirty brown hair.

“You got a pretty bracelet, you.” She looked longingly at the soda-can atrocity on my wrist, all curling jangles of some lightweight alloy bendable as warm wax. Some besotted voter had sent it and the matching earrings to David when he was running for state senator. He’d kept it as a joke.

I slipped the bracelet off my wrist. “You want it, you?”

“Really?” Her face shone. She snatched the bracelet from my outstretched fingers and scampered back down the aisle, blue shirt-tail flapping. I grinned. Too bad kittens inevitably grow up into cats.

A minute later Mommy Liver loomed. “Keep your bracelet, you. Desdemona, she got her own jewelry!”

Desdemona. Where do they ever hear these names? Shakespeare doesn’t play at scooter tracks.

The woman looked at me from very hard eyes. “Look, you keep, you, to your kind, and we keep to ours. Better that way all around. You understand, you?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said, and popped out my lenses. My eyes are an intense, genemod violet. I gazed at her calmly, hands folded on my lap.

She waddled away, muttering. I caught the words, “These people…”

“If I find I can’t pass for a Liver,” I’d told Colin, “I’ll pass for a semi-crazy donkey trying to pass for a Liver. I wouldn’t be the first donkey to go native. You know, the working-class person pathetically trying to pass for an aristo. Hide in plain sight.”

Colin had shrugged. I’d thought he already regretted recruiting me, but then I realized that he hoped my antics would draw attention away from the real GSEA agents undoubtedly heading for Washington. The Federal Forum for Science and Technology, popularly known as the Science Court, was hearing Market Request no. 1892-A. What made this market request different from numbers 1 through 1891 was that it was being proposed by Huevos Verdes Corporation. For the first time in ten years, the Super-Sleepless were seeking government approval to market a patented genemod invention in the United States. They didn’t have a fish’s chance on the moon, of course, but it was still pretty interesting. Why now? What were they after? And would any of the twenty-seven show up personally at the Science Court hearing?

And if anybody did, would I be able to keep him or her under surveillance?

I gazed out the train window, at the robo-tended fields. Wheat, or maybe soy — I wasn’t sure what either looked like, growing. In ten minutes, Desdemona was back. Her face appeared slowly between my outstretched legs; she’d crawled along the floor, under the seats, through the mud and spilled food and debris. Desdemona raised her little torso between my knees, balancing herself with one sticky hand on my seat. The other hand shot out and closed on my bracelet.

I unfastened it and gave it to her again. The front of her blue jacks was filthy. “No cleaning ’bot on this train?”

She clutched the bracelet and grinned. “It died, him.”

I laughed. The next minute the gravrail broke down.

I was thrown to the floor, where I swayed on hands and knees, waiting to die. Under me machinery shrieked. The train shuddered to a stop but didn’t tip over.

“Damn!” Desdemona’s father shouted. “Not again!”

“Can we get some ice cream, us?” a child whined. “We’re stopped now!”

“Third time this week! Fucking donkey train!”

“We never get no ice cream!”

Apparently the trains didn’t tip over. Apparently I wasn’t going to die. Apparently this shrieking machinery was routine. I followed everyone else off the train.

Into another world.

A fever wind blew across the miles of prairie: warm, whispering, intoxicating. I was staggered by the size of the sky. Endless bright blue sky above, endless bright golden fields below. And all of it caressed by that blood-warm wind, impregnated with sunlight, gravid with fragrance. I, a city lover to equal Sir Christoper Wren, had had no idea. No holo had ever prepared me. I resisted the mad idea to kick off my shoes and dig my toes into the dark earth.

Instead I followed the grumbling Livers along the tracks to the front of the train. They gathered around the holoprojection of an engineer, even though I could hear his canned speech being broadcast inside each car. The holo “stood” on the grass, looking authoritative and large. The franchise owner was a friend of mine; he believed that seven-foot-high swarthy-skinned males were the ideal projection to promote order.

“There is no need to be alarmed. This is a temporary malfunction. Please return to the comfort and safety of your car, and in a few moments complimentary food and drinks will be served. A repair technician is on the way from the railroad franchise. There is no need to be alarmed—”

Desdemona kicked the holo. Her foot passed through him and she smirked, a pointless saucy smile of triumph. The holo looked down at her. “Don’t do that again, kid — you hear me, you?” Des-demona’s eyes widened and she flew behind her mother’s legs.

“Don’t be so scaredy, you — it’s just interactive,” Mommy Liver snapped. “Let go, you, of my legs!”

I winked at Desdemona, who stared at me sullenly and then grinned, rattling our bracelet.

“—to the comfort and safety of your car, and in a few moments complimentary food—”

More people approached the engine, all but two complaining loudly. The first was an older woman: tall, plain-faced, and angled as a tesseract. She wore not jacks but a long tunic knitted of yarn in subtle, muted shades of green, too uneven to be machine-made. Her earrings were simple polished green stones. I had never before seen a Liver with taste.

The other anomaly was a short young man with silky red hair, pale skin, and a head slightly too large for his body.

The back of my neck tingled.

Inside the cars, server ’bots emerged from their storage compartments and offered trays of freshly synthesized soy snacks, various drinks, and sunshine in mild doses. “Compliments of State Senator Cecilia Elizabeth Dawes,” it said over and over. “So nice to have you aboard.” This diversion took half an hour. Then everyone went back outside and resumed complaining.

“The kind of service you get these days—”

“—vote next time, me, for somebody else — anybody else—”

“—a temporary malfunction. Please return to the comfort and safety of—”

I walked over the scrub grass to the edge of the closest field. The Sleepless-in-inadequate-disguise stood watching the crowd, observing as pseudocasually as I was. So far he had taken no special notice of me. The field was bounded by a low energy fence, presumably to keep the agrobots inside. They ambled slowly between the rows of golden wheat, doing whatever it was they did. I stepped over the fence and picked one up. It hummed softly, a dark sphere with flexible tentacles. On the bottom a label said CANCO ROBOTS/ LOS ANGELES. CanCo had been in the Wall Street Journal On-Line last week; they were in trouble. Their agrobots had suddenly begun to break down all over the country. The franchise was going under.