The Traveler

45

With Gabriel’s motorcycle hidden in the back of the van, Maya drove north to Las Vegas. She saw dozens of road signs advertising casinos, and then a cluster of bright towers popped up on the horizon. After cruising past several motels outside the city, she checked into the Frontier Lodge-ten individual rooms designed to look like log cabins. The shower stall had green stains bleeding from the faucet handles and the mattress was saggy, but she placed her sword beside her and slept for twelve hours.

Maya knew the casinos would have surveillance cameras, and some of the cameras might be connected to Tabula computers. When she woke up, she took out a syringe and injected facer drugs into her lips and the skin below her eyes. The drugs made her look overweight and dissipated, like a woman who had a drinking problem.

She drove to a mall and bought cheap, flashy clothes-Capri pants, a pink T-shirt, and sandals-then visited a shop where an older woman wearing a cowgirl costume was selling makeup and synthetic wigs. Maya pointed to a blond wig sitting on a Styrofoam head behind the counter.

“That’s the Champagne Blonde model, honey. You wanna wrap it up or wear it?”

“I’ll put it on right now.”

The clerk nodded her approval. “Men just love that blond hair. It drives ’em crazy.”

Now she was ready. She drove down the main boulevard, turned right at the half-sized Eiffel Tower, and left the van in the parking lot of the Paris Las Vegas Hotel. The hotel was an amusement-park version of the City of Lights. It had a small version of the Arc de Triomphe and painted façades that resembled the Louvre and the Paris Opera House. The ground-floor casino was an enormous room with a domed ceiling that glowed with a dark blue color like an endless Paris twilight. Tourists wandered down cobblestone streets to blackjack tables and rows of slot machines.

Maya walked along the strip to another hotel and saw gondoliers rowing tourists down a canal that went nowhere. Although each hotel had a different theme, they were all basically the same. None of the gambling rooms had clocks or windows. You were there and nowhere at the same time. When Maya first entered a casino, her acute sense of balance helped her realize something most tourists would never understand. The ground floor was slightly tilted so that gravity would pull visitors in an imperceptible manner from the hotel section to the slot machines and blackjack tables.

For most people Las Vegas was a happy destination, where you could drink too much and gamble and watch strange women take off their clothes. But this city of pleasure was a three-dimensional illusion. Surveillance cameras watched constantly, computers monitored the gambling, and a legion of security guards with American flags sewn on the sleeves of their uniforms made sure nothing truly unusual would ever occur. This was the goal of the Tabula: the appearance of freedom with the reality of control.

In such an ordered environment, it would be difficult to trick the authorities. Maya had spent her life avoiding the Vast Machine, but now she had to trigger all their sensors and escape without being captured. She was sure the Tabula computer programs were searching the Vast Machine for a variety of data-including the use of Michael’s credit card. If the card was reported as stolen, then she might have to deal with security guards who knew nothing about the Tabula. Harlequins avoided injuring citizens or drones, but sometimes it was necessary for survival.

After checking out the rest of the hotels on the strip, she decided that the New York-New York Hotel gave her the most options for escape. Maya spent the afternoon at a shop run by the Salvation Army where she acquired two used suitcases and men’s clothes. She bought a toiletry kit and filled it with a can of shaving cream, a half-used tube of toothpaste, and a toothbrush, which she rubbed on the concrete outside her cabin. The final detail was the most important: road maps with pencil marks indicating a coast-to-coast trip with New York City as the final destination.

Gabriel had left his helmet, gloves, and motorcycle jacket in the van. Back at the tourist cabin, Maya pulled on the riding gear. It felt as if Gabriel’s skin, his presence, surrounded her. Maya had owned a motor scooter when she lived in London, but the Italian-made motorcycle was a large and powerful machine. It was difficult to steer the bike, and whenever she shifted gears she heard a grinding sound.

That evening she left the motorcycle in the New York-New York Hotel parking lot and used a pay phone to reserve a suite. Twenty minutes later she entered the hotel’s massive atrium and approached the front desk carrying her suitcases.

“My husband made the reservation,” she explained to the desk clerk. “He’s flying in later tonight.”

The clerk was a muscular young man with a blond haze of close-cropped hair. He looked as if he should be running a summer sports camp in Switzerland. “Hope you two have a fun weekend,” he said, and then asked for some form of identification.

Maya handed over her fake passport and Michael Corrigan’s credit card. Numbers flowed from the desk computer to a master computer and then onward to a mainframe somewhere in the world. Maya watched the clerk’s face intently, looking for a slight tension if the words stolen card appeared on the monitor screen. She was ready to lie, to run, to kill if necessary-but the clerk smiled and gave her a plastic card key. When Maya entered the elevator she was required to slide the card into a slot and punch the correct floor number. Now the hotel computer knew exactly where she was: in the elevator going up to the fourteenth floor.

The two-room suite had a huge television. The furniture and bathroom fixtures were larger than anything to be found in a British hotel. Americans were fairly big people, Maya thought. But it was more than that-this was a conscious desire to feel overwhelmed by grand furnishings.

Maya heard screaming and then a deep grumbling sound. When she pushed open the curtains, she saw that a roller coaster was on the roof of a building about five hundred feet away from the window. Ignoring the distraction, she ran water in the tub and sink, used a bar of soap, and dampened a few towels. In the suite’s living room, she placed the road maps and a pencil on a side table. A paper bag with greasy wrappers from a fast-food restaurant was left beside the television. With each piece of trash and clothing, she was constructing a little story that would be read and interpreted by a Tabula mercenary. It was about ten minutes since the credit card number had entered the Vast Machine. Returning to the bedroom, she opened the suitcases and placed some of the clothes in a drawer. Maya pulled out the small German automatic that she had found at Resurrection Auto Parts and slipped it beneath a folded shirt.

The gun was the ultimate proof that she had been at the hotel. The Tabula would never believe that a Harlequin would deliberately give up a weapon. If the police discovered the gun, it would be registered in their database and the Tabula computers that were searching the Internet would detect it immediately.

Maya was rumpling up the sheets and blankets when she heard a faint click in the outer room. Someone had pushed a key card into the door lock and now he was opening the door.

Her right hand touched the sword case. She had the Harlequin desire to attack-always attack-and destroy the threat to her safety. But that wouldn’t accomplish the true goal, to confuse the Tabula with false information. Maya glanced around the room and saw a sliding glass door that led to a balcony. She drew the stiletto and approached the curtains; it took her a few seconds to cut two strips of fabric.

The floor creaked in the outer room as the intruder walked softly across the carpet. Whoever was outside the bedroom door paused for a few seconds and Maya wondered if he was gathering the courage to attack.

Carrying the strips of curtain, she pushed open the sliding door and stepped onto the balcony. Warm desert air surrounded her. The stars hadn’t appeared yet, but green-and-red neon lights flashed in the street below. No time to make a rope. She tied both strips to the railing, then went over the side.

The curtains were made of thin cotton and unable to support her weight. As Maya lowered herself, one strip ripped apart and broke away. She dangled in the air, holding on to the other strip, then continued her descent to the next floor. A voice from above. Maybe he saw her.

There was no time to think or feel or be afraid. The Harlequin grabbed the iron railing and pulled herself onto a balcony. Once again, she drew the stiletto and saw that she had cut the palm of her hand. Damned by the flesh. Saved by the blood. She pulled open a sliding glass door and ran through an empty room.