he
road on a human travois made of the porters' linked arms of red wool and gold
brocade.

"Assholes!" she was hollering. "I could have a goddamn spinal injury! You're not
supposed to move me!"

"Look, Miss," one porter said, a young chap with the kind of fantastic dentition
that only an insecure teabag would ever pay for, teeth so white and flawless
they strobed in the sodium streetlamps. "Look. We can leave you in the middle of
the road, right, and not move you, like we're supposed to. But if we do that,
chances are you're going to get run over before the paramedics get here, and
then you certainly *will* have a spinal injury, and a crushed skull besides,
like as not. Do you follow me?"

"You!" she said, pointing a long and accusing finger at Art. "You! Don't you
watch where you're going, you fool! You could have killed me!"

Art shook water off his face and blew a mist from his dripping moustache.
"Sorry," he said, weakly. She had an American accent, Californian maybe, a
litigious stridency that tightened his sphincter like an alum enema and
miraculously flensed him of the impulse to argue.

"Sorry?" she said, as the porters lowered her gently to the narrow strip turf
out beside the sidewalk. "Sorry? Jesus, is that the best you can do?"

"Well you *did* step out in front of my car," he said, trying to marshal some
spine.

She attempted to sit up, then slumped back down, wincing. "You were going too
fast!"

"I don't think so," he said. "I'm pretty sure I was doing 45 -- that's five
clicks under the limit. Of course, the GPS will tell for sure."

At the mention of empirical evidence, she seemed to lose interest in being
angry. "Give me a phone, will you?"

Mortals may be promiscuous with their handsets, but for a tribalist, one's
relationship with one's comm is deeply personal. Art would have sooner shared
his underwear. But he *had* hit her with his car. Reluctantly, Art passed her
his comm.

The woman stabbed at the handset with the fingers of her left hand, squinting at
it in the dim light. Eventually, she clamped it to her head. "Johnny? It's
Linda. Yes, I'm still in London. How's tricks out there? Good, good to hear.
How's Marybeth? Oh, that's too bad. Want to hear how I am?" She grinned
devilishly. "I just got hit by a car. No, just now. Five minutes ago. Of course
I'm hurt! I think he broke my hip -- maybe my spine, too. Yes, I can wiggle my
toes. Maybe he shattered a disc and it's sawing through the