James Sallis: Beautiful Quiet of the Roaring Freeway

He always wondered what their stories were.

Maybe they wondered about his too.

He’d look in the rear view, pick up on posturing, body language. Some were just thrill seekers, of course, not much to be said there. Could be this was a onetime thing for them, they’d go home after, slip back into their lives and stay. Others were desperate to find bad and kept looking, whatever the cost. Or they were just bored. Curious what stepping outside things might feel like. Occasionally he’d get a rider who seemed to be protesting some hardfelt lack of freedom, though it was difficult to imagine how they thought that would work, with everything about the rides kept well on the down low. And once in a while he’d get romantics who spent so much time thinking about the old days that they believed they remembered them. Take one’s sweet lady or kind gentleman out for a moonlight ride.

These two, he didn’t have a clue. His handler had checked them out, naturally. Nothing had wobbled or gone off focus.

The woman was anywhere between ten and twenty years younger, wearing a pearl-gray blouse and a dark business suit expertly cut for comfort over stylishness, hair mid-length, layered. Her companion seemed to have a mild speech defect of some sort. Levin took note of it at the pickup site, and again in the vehicle when repeatedly she leaned close as the man spoke. He was in casual clothes of the kind that likely, being from a tailor’s hand, bore no labels. Shirt, sportcoat and trousers all were of different colors.

Hardly unexpected, that they’d be what Levin’s old man always called people of substance. Midnight rides don’t come cheap. Though once Levin had as passenger a dying woman whose family had pooled resources to provide what she’d spoken of with longing all her life, from stories told her by the grandfather who raised her.

The two of them back there now had privacy, of course. The plex was down. No sound carried. Their windows were clear, Levin’s to every appearance opaque. From the menu, they had pre-ordered traditional fado, which fed at low volume to front as well as back. Fascinating to watch in the rear view how the music’s rhythms crossed and recrossed the couple’s own as they turned to look out, shifted in their seats, spoke, waited, listened.

Quarter SW2 was chosen for its population density, guaranteeing high traffic, and for ready access to the freeway. The quarter also hosted a major virtual university, so information of every sort and kind was bouncing and bubbling off the net around here. Another kind of crowd to get lost in.

Carefully matching the speed and flow of other cars on their way upstream, Levin pulled into the go lane. This was the chanciest part. Where they were most likely to get tagged. Levin’s actions were smooth, seamless.

Not many could do this.

Soon they were up the ramp and on the big road, eight lanes, moving at a fast clip with all the others, guided by the sure hand and many-leveled mind of Trafcom. Supposed to be, anyway.

Tales of people getting into their cars and taking randomly to the road for great adventures were once a big thing, Levin knew. Right up there with mythologies that seem imprinted in us. Jealous gods, voyages to the rim of the world, unstoppable warriors. One didn’t hear about adventures much anymore. What they were doing now, those two in the back, that was about as close as anyone came.

In the next three lanes, vehicles began to slow, first in the closest, then the next, as a single vehicle angled across and through them. Same, then, with adjacent lanes, till the vehicle drew out of sight down one of the red ramps. Trafcom detecting a malfunction, most likely.

Guitar chords sounded as the singer paused, and hung in the air as though trying to hold on, not let go, dwell here. Always interesting, what music got chosen. Did passengers simply check off one of the standard programs? Order something specific? Loud, quiet, lush, mood-drenched? These had picked fado, Portugal’s mournful music of fatefulness, loss and lifetime longing.

Levin kept casual watch in the mirror. Whatever the relationship, whatever their story, things were not going well in the back seat. The woman had been looking on as, often instinctively, he made the myriad adjustments and accommodations necessary to echo and fit the patterns set by Trafcom. Now she leaned forward to tap at the plex. Levin motioned towards the combox mounted near her shoulder. She touched the pad.

“You’re very good, aren’t you?”

We’d all better hope so, he thought. Aloud he said, “Speaking with the driver is not allowed. This was covered at time of purchase.”

“Yes, of course. It’s just that I have to wonder why someone does what you do. How he might have come to that.”

When Levin responded no further, she sat back.

He thought about that old woman again, Lina, whose family pooled their funds for the ride. That one time he had spoken, and listened. She’d been a dancer, she told him, a ballerina. Worked all her life to be so perfect in movement, so uniform, as to become almost machinelike. In a sense to remove the human from what she did, and at the same time to fully represent humanity in a way nothing else could. People see us dance, she said, and they think freedom. It isn’t freedom, young man, it’s absolute engagement.

One of the sensors tripped but instantly disengaged. A routine sweep, then. For the moment they were clear. Somehow the woman picked up on this. She interrupted her companion to speak. He glanced forward, resumed talking. Again Levin had to wonder why the two of them were here, what would bring them to pay a small fortune for the ride, take so great a risk. They gave no evidence of excitement or anticipation. From the look of them this might be an everyday outing, off to work or to do some shopping.

Vehicles began to move in waves and pulses to the right, ever at steady speed, signalling that something was ahead, poor road conditions, an emergency perhaps, with Trafcom redirecting to maintain flow. Just as effortlessly, Levin swung into the wave crossing from his lane. The communal speed dropped—imperceptibly, were it not for instruments, just over one kph. Within minutes the lanes were repopulated. All was back to normal.

Movement took his eye to the mirror as the woman reached for the combox.

“This is it?” she said. And after a moment: “I expected more.”

Don’t we all, Levin thought.

Then, as though he had been waiting for this single moment, Levin was accelerating. The woman, then the man, looked up. The fado ended on a broken, long-sustained chord. With a two-second pause, no more than a hiccup, traffic parted before them, moved away right and left. Every sensor on the dash red-lined as Trafcom, with a power and a pull almost physical, battered at the vehicle’s controls, searching for identification, foothold, purchase.

Levin ignored all signals and alarms. He continued to accelerate. Maybe Trafcom would break through the vehicle’s defenses, take control, maybe not. Behind him, the woman slid to the front of her seat. In the bright light of surveillance vehicles closing upon them, her face became beautiful.

End