Pennsylvania Omnibus (3 page)

One man with slicked-back hair—a young man Jed did not
know and had never met—openly showed his disdain for Jed.  Slicked-back had a
sneer on his face, and whenever he caught Jed’s eye (which Jed studiously tried
to avoid) he’d emphasize the sneer and demonstrably look Jed up and down with
disgust.  There was hatred in Slicked-back’s eyes, and this was not the first
time that Jed had seen this attitude among the English.  It made matters worse
that seats on an airbus were arranged like those on an old subway, with
passengers facing one another across an aisle.  Slicked-back was across the
aisle from him, but one seat over and to his right.  Jed decided not to look at
him, and he thought back to the incident with Dawn.

Back at the vending machine, when he’d been trying to
grasp what was happening with the extra unis, the customs clerk named Dawn had
approached him in a way that caused him to experience very real fear.  Had he
done something wrong?

When she was about five yards away, she’d reached into a
pocket of her navy blue vest.  Her eyes met his, and then she was extending her
hand toward him.  In her hand he could see his used electronic unilets card. 
He’d left it back at the desk.  He didn’t think he needed it anymore. They were
disposable, after all.

“You left this at the desk,” Dawn said, and now there was
a forced smile on her face.

“I’m sorry… um… listen, I just…”
Jed indicated with his head toward the vending machine, but Dawn cut him
off before he could say anything about the extra unilets.

“Yes,” she said, interrupting him again and nodding her
head, “that’s all right.  Everything is as it should be now.  Just take your
card and make sure you don’t miss your bus.”

“But, I…”

“Yes, sir.”  She raised her hands this time. “Everything
is as it should be.”  Her eyes grew wider, as if she were trying to tell him to
shut up and just accept things the way they are.  “Just take your card and go
get on your bus, sir.”

“So…”

“Listen, sir.  Everything is fine now.  You needn’t worry
about a thing.  I’ve got to get back to the desk, but…
everything is as it
should be
, so have a great trip.”  She forced the card into his hand, and
when she did, he noticed that she was handing him more than just the card. 
There was also a small, folded piece of paper, and something else.  Something
heavy.  It felt like a large coin.  He didn’t look at it.

Not knowing why he did it, but intimidated by the
discussion and not sure what else to do, Jed put the card, paper, and coin into
his pocket quickly and without argument.  He looked up at Dawn and tried to
smile, and he noticed that she smiled back.  And then she turned and was
striding back toward the check-in desk…

In the men’s restroom, he examined what Dawn had given
him.

There was a note.

Don’t say anything about the extra unis to anyone. I
can’t explain everything right now, but trust me.  If you’re in trouble in the
City, ask at Merrill’s Grocery Supply for Pook.  Just ask for Pook.  Put the
gold coin in your shoe, and only pull it out in an emergency.  There are no
metal detectors anymore since bombs and guns won’t work on transport anyway. 
Unless you get searched, they won’t find it.  Flush this note when you’re done
memorizing it.  Dawn.

Now he was on the airbus to West Texas, and he could feel
the heaviness of the gold coin in his shoe, and somehow the extra unis in his
wristband seemed to have an extra weight all their own as well. 
I feel
guilty
, Jed thought, 
and I don’t know what I’ve done wrong.  Maybe I
should tell someone about the unis and the gold?  No.  Getting caught with
extra unis that don’t belong to you would mean automatic deportation.
  If
he did something stupid, he’d never make it to New Pennsylvania.  How was he to
know what was stupid in this world?  For all he knew, everything he did was
stupid.  He began to imagine the Transport Police storming into the airbus to
haul him off and send him to exile in Oklahoma.

Despite Jed’s best attempts to put them out of his mind,
crazy ideas started to flood over him. 
Maybe I can spend them all at the
SGT station when I get there… maybe I can give all the extra unis away… maybe a
Quadrille dealer will sell me some drugs and then I can flush them all down the
toilet like I did with Dawn’s note…
None of his ideas were workable, and
most of them would get him deported.  It wasn’t a far trip from West Texas to
Oklahoma.  Not far at all.

The airbus floated silently through the air, and Jed tried
to occupy his mind by looking out the window at the ground way below.  The
polarized windows and the altitude combined to make the view seem not… quite…
right.  But he’d never been this high before, so he wasn’t sure how things were
supposed to look.

Every now and then, looking down, he could see scars on
the earth—remnants from the wars—and at one point they passed over what used to
be a great city, but from thousands of feet in the air it looked like it was
now a massive pile of burned rubble and debris.  He wondered why people hadn’t
fixed up the cities again in the dozens of years that had passed since the
wars.  Maybe they left everything destroyed like that just to remind everyone
how bad the wars had been, and so that the people would be thankful to the
Transport Authority and the government for keeping everyone safe and secure.

“Hey, little Amish boy, you ever been up this high
before?”

It was Slicked-back, and he spewed the words, giving the
impression that he really didn’t care what the answer might be.

“No, sir,” Jed replied.

“Yeah, I think it’s funny that you Amish get to travel and
fly and do everything the rest of us get to do… only you don’t have to live by
the same rules as everyone else.”  As he said this, he pointed at Jed’s
wristband and snorted.  He looked around as if everyone else agreed with him,
but most of the other passengers seemed to be on the Internet in their
heads.

Jed didn’t know what playing by the rules had to do with
them being up this high, but he figured that Slicked-back was only looking for
trouble and a reason to spew.  Jed just ignored him and looked out the
window.

“That’s not very polite, Amish boy.  I’m talkin’ to you. 
How come you people don’t have to get implanted TRIDs like everyone else?  What
makes you so special?”  He was raising his voice now, and a few of the other
passengers looked over, interrupting their music or videos or chats to see what
was going on right there on their own bus.

Jed hadn’t noticed it, but when Slicked-back began his
little rant, a large Hispanic man sitting toward the back of the bus had gotten
up, and during the one-sided conversation had been walking forward up the
aisle.  Now Jed noticed him, and he wondered if this giant of a man was going
to give him grief too.

Just as Slicked-back finished his last little broadside,
the big Hispanic man leaned over to Slicked-back and spoke to him clearly and
concisely.

“Do you want to get sent to Oklahoma?”

“What’re you, a Transport cop?” Slicked-back said with a
snarl.

“No, friend, but we’re about to be over Oklahoma, and if
you’d like me to throw you out of one of these windows, then you keep bothering
my friend.”

Slicked-back didn’t reply; he just kicked his feet across
the aisle and pushed himself back in his seat.  The big man smiled and nodded
his head.

“That’s right, little man.  Now I’m going to talk to my
friend.  You should take some Q and chill out so that you don’t make any
permanent mistakes.”  He stepped over to take the seat next to Jed, but before
he did he leaned back over Slicked-back’s face and whispered to him. 
Slicked-back didn’t respond, but he slowly drew his legs back so that they
weren’t blocking the aisle.

“I’m sorry that some people feel the need to attack things
they don’t understand,” the big man said.  “I’m Jerry Rios.”  Jerry stuck out
his hand and Jed instinctively clasped it with his own.

“Jed.  Jedediah Troyer.  But you can just call me Jed.”

“Okay, Jed.  Glad to know you,” Jerry said with a smile
and a nod.  He sat down next to Jed and crossed his long legs.

“What did you whisper to that guy as you walked by?” Jed
asked.

“I told him that if his legs were still across the aisle
when I walk back to my seat, that I’d remove them and feed them to him.”

“Apparently he believed you,” Jed said as he looked over
at Slicked-back.

“It’s good that he did,” Jerry replied somberly. “I don’t
make idle threats.”

Jed looked at Jerry to see how serious the young man was. 
He was serious.

“Anyway,” Jed said, “there’s no eating on the bus.”

Jerry broke down laughing and eventually Jed joined him. 
Slicked-back just looked up at them and grunted his displeasure.

Jerry was a little older than Jed,
maybe in his mid-twenties, and he looked like someone who was not to be messed
with.  Talking to Jed though, he was personable and friendly, and the younger
man was happy that Jerry had been there on the bus when Slicked-back decided to
get aggressive.

“Where’re you headed?” Jerry asked.

“I’m a pilgrim.  I’m traveling to our colony in New
Pennsylvania to live.”

“Well then!” Jerry replied, smiling broadly.  “We’ll
almost be neighbors.  I’m heading to New PA too, but I’m heading to the City. 
I’m not a country boy.”

Jed stared at Jerry for a minute and blinked several times
before he could answer.

“Um… Oh.  Uh, I didn’t know… that the English… I mean—”

Jerry laughed heartily.  “Hey man, don’t worry about it. 
I know that your people call all of us outsiders the
English
.  It’s just
strange for me to hear, because I’m as far from English as a man can get!”

“I’m sorry, Jerry.  What I meant was that I didn’t know
that any…
non Plain People
… were also colonizing New Pennsylvania.”

“Oh, sure!  You didn’t think they were going to let you
people have the whole planet, did you?  Besides, someone has to eat all of that
food your people produce!”  Jerry laughed again in a friendly way, and Jed was
compelled by Jerry’s gregarious manner to laugh along with him.

“I guess I just never thought about it,” Jed said.  “In my
world, we only talk about the colony that our people are starting there, so I
just never considered that there would be others.”

“Well, if you look around, Jed, you’ll see that you’re the
only Amish guy on this bus, and I’d guess that most of us are going to West
Texas SGT so that we can catch our transport to New PA.  That should tell you
that there are probably going to be a lot more of us there than there will be
of you.”

“I guess it’s always that way.”

“Well, from what I hear, it won’t be bad,” Jerry said,
shrugging his shoulders.  “I’ve read a lot about the colonization process, and
it seems that there’s plenty of land and countryside to go around.  They say
that New PA is almost the same size as Earth, with similar gravity, weather,
and all that stuff as this planet, so I figure with such a tiny population,
there’ll be plenty of room to stretch your legs… without having to block the
aisle.”  Jerry winked again and glanced over at Slicked-back.  The man was
obviously on the Internet in his head now, because he just stared blankly into
the distance and hardly moved at all.

Jed looked sheepishly over at Jerry before speaking.  He
wasn’t sure how exactly to ask what he wanted to ask, but now that he had an
honest-to-goodness English fellow here to talk to, he felt like he should take
advantage of the education.

“So… how do I say this… you don’t look like you’re on
Quadrille or on the Internet in your head.”  Jed smiled a little.  He thought
that he’d made it sound like the Plain People believed that all English were on
Quadrille and the Internet all the time.  He wanted his interrogation to be
taken as benevolent, and he wasn’t sure whether he’d said it right.  Jerry
didn’t seem to be offended.

“Oh, Jed… I don’t mess with that stuff.  But I’m unique in
this world.  When I need to, I get on the Internet the old-fashioned way.  I’d
walk down to the IntSta—the Internet Station—near our house a couple of times a
week to check email.  Frankly, I don’t know why they even have the IntStas any
more.  No one uses them, except a few weirdos like me.  Even the ultra-poor
have the BICE… do you know what that is?”

Jed shook his head.

“The BICE is the Beta Internet Chip Enhancement.  That’s
what you call ‘the Internet in the head.’”  Jed noticed Jerry looking at him,
and his new friend saw the confusion on Jed’s face, but Jed nodded anyway as he
tried to keep up.

“Listen, Jed.  I’m sorry to be using all of this stupid
technology jargon with you.  I know your people don’t use too much of it. 
Let’s talk about something else.”

“No, please.  I’m fascinated, and I mean to learn all that
I can.  I just have to slow down a bit and try to understand it all.  I think
I’m getting it.  There are so many terms to learn.  I just got the hang of a
whole new vocabulary just for this trip, so you can correct me if I’m wrong on
any of this stuff.  I studied a lot before I left home.  I know that
TRIDs
are Transfer IDs.  I know that
unilets
are your kind of
invisible money.”  He was now counting off the terms with his fingers.  “Hey,
and I even know that the term
unilets
comes from what was once called
the
LETS
, which meant Local Exchange Trading System.  Then, when the UN
took over the money system after the wars, it became UNILETS for United Nations
International Local Exchange Trading System.  Now, thanks to you, I know that
the Internet in the head thing is called BICE, and the Internet that is not in
your head is at a place called an IntSta.”