Night Driving

The hover had one of those map screens you saw in cabs, or if a truckdriver picked you up, but Molly never turned it on except that first time, to look for the numbers the voice had given her. After a while, Mona understood that Angie was telling her which way to go, or anyway those voices were telling her. Mona’d been wishing for morning for a long time, but it was still night when Molly killed the lights and sped on through the dark.…

“Lights!” Angie cried.

“Relax,” Molly said, and Mona remembered how she’d moved in the dark in Gerald’s. But the hover slowed slightly, swung into a long curve, shuddering over the rough ground. The dash lights blinked off, all the instrumentation. “Not a sound now, okay?”

The hover accelerated through the dark.

Shifting white glare, high up. Through the window, Mona glimpsed a drifting, twirling point; above it, something else, bulbous and gray—

“Down! Get her down!”

Mona yanked at the catch on Angie’s seatbelt as something whanged against the side of the hover. Got her down on the floor and hugged her furs around her as Molly slewed left, sideswiping something Mona never saw. Mona looked up: split-second flash of a big raggedy black building, a single white bulb lit above open warehouse doors, and then they were through, the turbine screaming full reverse.

***

Mona Lisa Overdrive ch 39