The studio audience went berserk right on cue. They were on their feet, stamping and yelling and waving their banners. Cynthia felt a perverse sense of elation. Even though they were manipulated bigots and probably crazy evil, she could not lose the feeling that they were cheering for her. Despite all her instincts, it was a feeling that she liked. She was enjoying the applause.

Speedboat

Johnny Cash was singing 'Ring of Fire'. The Grass Roots Tavern on St. Marks Place had one of the last real coin-operated jukeboxes in the city. Most of them had been destroyed through that terrible weekend two years earlier when the deacons had purged the video games and pinball machines. Some fool in Washington had taken it into his head that video games were the instruments of Satan, and all across the country the dekes had gone to work with a vengeance. The dekes loved anything that involved conspicuous violence and destruction. Unfortunately they had acted with a fairly wide interpretation of their orders, and the jukeboxes had been smashed right along with the other machines. Only an administrative oversight had saved the pool tables.

The Grass Roots Tavern was something of a surviving relic itself. As far as he knew, the low-ceilinged semibasement had been there since the 1950s if not longer. It had always been the hangout for East Side bohemians. In its time, it had seen beatniks and hippies, punks, skinheads, and zippos all pass through its doors. Even though it had been plastered with all the anti-alcohol propaganda that covered the walls of every bar, and the bohemians of the Faithful era had been reduced to petty criminal lowlife, it still managed to retain a few shreds of its traditional atmosphere. The jukebox was one of those shreds.

Speedboat ordered himself a shot of bourbon and chased it with a draft beer. Normally he did not drink hard liquor, but he was tired and tense. He had unloaded the rock records and the pornosoft without too much sweat, and Jook Aroun had come through with the spansules. Speedboat had already moved half of those, and if he kept on going at the same rate, the rest would be gone by later that night. He had over a thousand dollars stashed in one of the secret pockets of his parka, and escape to Canada was close to becoming a reality. He had even run into a piece of luck. A pillhead who had bought his spansules at one of the rat traps had a line on where to get a set of forged travel documents. There was a guy who worked on the lighting crew at the Garden who could give him all he needed to get across the border for twelve hundred. The pillhead had given Speedboat a number, and he had dialed it, though not without a good deal of trepidation. Pillheads were notoriously unreliable, and there was always the chance that the deal might be a setup. Over the phone he had been given a list of instructions that seemed, on the surface, to be the real thing. In five days' time there was going to be an Arlen Proverb spectacular at the Garden. Speedboat was to go there and meet his contact after the show. Normally Speedboat would not have gone within a mile of that kind of Christian freakout, but if that's what he had to do, he would be there. At least it was a public place, which lowered the odds on getting robbed.

A bunch of mouthbreeders were feeding coins into the jukebox, and the country music was quickly replaced by a dirgelike, modern, no-bop instrumental. It was some doombeam band, probably Flugzeug. Speedboat had nothing but contempt for the doombeams and the way they pretended they were so goddamn subversive. All they did was play around at being self-destructive; at no stretch of the imagination was that going to bring down Faithful and his gang. The bands were a perfect example. They slid by the literal minds of the music censors by playing all instrumental music. They put out a lot of attitude that somehow their hollow, minor chords were going to change the world. To Speedboat's ear, it was nothing more than grim, depressing, industrial noise.

Speedboat ordered another drink. He needed to relax. As Canada came closer to reality, the fear grew that something would go wrong. He would be ripped off on the final deal, or, worse than that, he was somehow being set up for the big fall. Earl the bartender put his shot and beer in front of him.

"What's the matter with you? You look like there's a hellhound on your trail."

Speedboat shook his head. "It ain't nothing. I just got a lot on my mind."

"You got to watch out for that thinking. It can make you crazy."

Speedboat forced a half smile. "Sure."

Earl shrugged. "Barkeep wisdom."

He moved off to serve another customer. An individual who went by the name of Rancid had come out of the toilet and was talking to the mouthbreeders by the jukebox. Speedboat had not spotted him before. The word on the street was that Rancid was a deke snitch, and the smart money said that sooner or later he would wind up dead in a dumpster. Speedboat watched him out of the corner of his eye. Rancid moved from the mouthbreeders to a pair of doomy blondes who worked a sheep and shepherd game up on Union Square. The blondes did not seem to be particularly pleased to see him, but he persevered. He seemed to be trying to sell them something. As he talked, he glanced in Speedboat's direction a couple of times. Speedboat inwardly twitched. Were they talking about him, or was Rancid watching him? Suddenly he wanted to get out of the bar. He downed the shot in one gulp and took a quick swallow of beer. He left a two-dollar tip and stood up.

Earl nodded. "Leaving so soon?"

"I got to see a guy."

"So take care out there."

As Speedboat reached the door, someone else was coming through – a tall man in a raincoat and an old-fashioned fedora. Speedboat stepped quickly back. The guy had to be a cop. Nobody else would have the gall to dress like that. To his great relief, the man paid him no attention at all and walked on into the bar. Speedboat scuttled off into the night.

He hurried down St. Marks. The whole street was covered in posters for the Alien Proverb revival at the Garden. They were big 3D duraprints of Proverb against a dark, storm-cloud sky. The angry eyes that glared out of the poster seemed to follow Speedboat down the street. At the corner of Second Avenue, he ducked into Gem Spa for a pack of cigarettes and a candy bar. Two meth maniacs, Jetson and Ratner, were hanging out inside. Ratner was nervously flipping through a copy of Life, hardly seeing the pages, and Jetson was staring with bug-eyed concentration at the TV behind the counter and chewing his lip. Speedboat could not imagine why someone like Jetson should be so engrossed in Vern and Emily. It was the kind of chance encounter that Speedboat would have liked to avoid. The pair had a reputation for being dangerous and usually armed. He hoped that he might slip away without them noticing him. As usual, his luck was lousy.

"Hey, Speedboat, we want to talk with you."

They followed him outside.

"We heard you got a bunch of spansules off Aroun."

"We sure could use a few of those."

Speedboat didn't doubt that. They both looked in bad shape. Their eyes seemed about to spin, and their hands were trembling. He began to back away. "You heard wrong. I don't have a thing."

"Maybe you sold 'em all and you got the money on you?"

Speedboat felt sick. "I'm telling you, you heard wrong. I'm tapped out."

"Maybe we should look through that funky coat of yours."

At that moment a police gunship clattered overhead, randomly probing the neighborhood with twin searchlights. Speedboat saw his chance and went for it. While Jetson and Ratner were looking up at the chopper, he took off at a dead run, his legs pounding for dear life.