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"Just ask."
"I just did."
Caine grinned. "No. Ask the car. To turn it on."
She looked at him with wide eyes. "Too creepy." Then she leaned tentatively toward the dashboard. "Car, please turn on the radio."
The Irish-accented radio greeted her, then asked her to choose a channel. She asked for World News.
"Thank you. Connecting to World News . . ."
"This is weird," she said.
Caine smiled. "That's nothing; wait 'til you hear the news."
Which cut directly in on the strident voice of a career newscaster: "-which leads observers to ask: has the UK now decided to confirm its membership in the Ne...
Opal looked over at him. "'International bloc'?"
He nodded, answered in the short space between news items. "Five blocs. More important than nations, now."
The same newscaster pressed on. "In interstellar news,-"
Her eyes widened. "Whoa."
"-the sharp debates over the co-dominium of Delta Pavonis Three now seem to be abating. Observers attribute the restoration of normative relations between the...
Opal frowned. "Those sound like fighting words."
Caine just nodded and waited for the next item.
"In other business headlines, CoDevCo continues to deny allegations that hundreds of outsystem-worker deaths were caused by transport in unsafe or outdated cr...
"And that-" Caine said, manually switching off the radio, "-is the end of the news." The car had ceased moving. "Seems like we've hit a snag," he observed. Th...
"I'll see what the problem is," Opal volunteered, and fumbled at the door for a moment before remembering to unfasten her seat belt.
As he watched her exit the vehicle, he heard the air conditioning increase, felt the engine race to keep up with the sudden power drain. "Stop," he instructed...
"This car is stopped."
"Uh . . . 'off.'"
"Shutting down." The fuel-cell engine diminuendoed into a bass hum and then nothing.
Watching Opal saunter toward the road worker was a pleasant distraction. But after an exchange of smiles and nods, she seemed to hit a language snag. As her a...
Caine wondered what Downing had in mind for her: almost certainly something involving her military training. Her movements also suggested that if she had miss...
He considered her empty seat: a bodyguard . . . for me? Possible. And a bodyguard could also work as a watchdog, an informant. Caine frowned: that would certa...
The door opened; Opal was almost in her seat by the time he turned. Reaching for the safety belt, she frowned and smiled at the same time. "You know how to dr...
"I've had a few instructive misadventures trying to learn: why?"
She looked ahead, nodded at a road marker two hundred meters further on. "We're going to have to take the 'old road' up to a different lookout. And from what ...
"Will we have to dodge the animals?"
She smiled. "Just a figure of speech, but a few parts are still single lane gravel. I got the whole sad story: seems they were in the process of modernizing i...
"And what's wrong with the road to the main site?"
She looked over her shoulder at the woman in the hard hat, who had resumed her fixated roadside crouch. "Apparently, the sensors steered someone right over an...
"Uh . . . Opal, I've got to confess: I'm still getting the hang of these quasi-cars. I might not be the safest driver."
Her smile was back. "We'd be in a hell of a lot more trouble with me behind the wheel. So drive on: I have every confidence in your manly automotive abilities...
Her radiant confidence was gratifying, but not particularly reassuring. Caine forced himself to return her smile, restarted the car in manual, turned off the ...
"Yup. Let me see; the woman back there said that most rentals have maps in the glove compartment." She opened it and rummaged through the various manuals and ...
As he moved off the shoulder of the road and back into the northbound lane, Caine checked the rearview mirror: no traffic-and the hard-hatted road worker had ...
Opal was muttering and still rummaging: "Every damn promotional brochure known to man, but if you need to find a map-" Caine stole a quick sideways glance; sh...
"You turn here." Her head had swiveled toward him, and, smiling, she cocked it in the direction of the oncoming white concrete marker.
Caught staring. Damn. "Um . . . yes, right."
He checked the rearview mirror before turning. Still no traffic, although the road technician seemed to be looking after them. Wondering if the tourists under...
Chapter Seventeen
MENTOR
Downing checked his watch. This was taking too long. And besides, it was madness.
The old-fashioned hand radio on the passenger seat paged once. There was no subsequent sound of a channel opening-and there wasn't supposed to be: coded signa...
He looked at the hand radio, looked up at the rough-hewn slopes two kilometers to the north. There had to be a better way, a safer way. But he hadn't been abl...
ODYSSEUS
As the car bounced over a rock and down into a pothole, Opal's hand flinched to support her recovering liver. "Damn, this really is a goat trail."