It took Caldwell and Mei Lin almost ten mio reach the entrao the uy. A couple of sleek oblong taxis were queued up at the taxi stand, their electrics idling. Wang Lin had disappeared. Mei Lin handed Caldwell a roll of New a Yuan and a credit chip and jumped into the first taxi. The automatic doors swished shut and the vehicle slid sideways into traffic. Caldwell got into the sed taxi. The driver, an old weather-beaten man with short spiky gray hair and a mole at the back of his neck with a sirand of hair growing out of it, turned round and gave him the once over. Caldwell had a feeling he was going to need all the Mandarin he could muster.
「Ni qu nar li a?」 the driver asked, rolling his 「r」s like his teeth were made of Malaysian rubber. His voice was a deep guttural drawl. If you ran it through a voialysis struct, you』d find traces of some obscure northern dialect.
「Follow those two 4x4s,」 Caldwell urged in his best Mandarin.
「The ohat just sped off several minutes ago?」
「Exactly.」
「They』ve been gone for minutes. Many PLA 4x4s in Beijing at this time of the day my friend,」 the old man observed slyly, looking at Caldwell in the rear view mirror.」
「Five thousand New Yuan if you sprout ara pair of eyes and catch up with vehicles iion.」
「Now we are talking,」 the old driver said with a salacious twinkle in his eyes as they eased out into traffic.
「Whatever,」 Caldwell muttered, settling bato the leather seats of the taxi. He flicked through the roll of bills Mei Lin had handed him to see if he had enough moo pay the driver. He had more than enough.
Things were definitely heating up. And Caldwell was not sure he liked the growing feeling of impending danger. He was orail of the PLA, on a journey whose destination he could not predict. What if there was an aspect to this AI, a purpose more sihan appeared to the unsuspeg eye? What would Fouler make of the current turn of events? What if he never made it out of this alive?
「 you go any faster,」 Caldwell asked the old driver. A distinote of impatience had crept into his voice. He did not like the sound of it. As much as he didn』t want to admit it, he was scared.
「I , but it is impossible with the traffid everything on autopilot for the wo kilometers. Anyway, the traffic is good because it means we catch up with those cars,」 the driver growled without turning around. The old man cleared his throat, spat a thick globule of yellow phlegm out of the window and took a sip out of a transparent flask of strong-lookihe back of his neck was the texture of burher, wriched into the mocha-colored fabric of his skin with the cruel passage of uing time. Taut silver hairs at the base of his round head formed the beginnings of an impressive crew cut.
「Just find those two cars ok?」
「Sure. And stop looking back of head. Make my skin crawl,」 the driver said matter-of-factly, leaning ba his seat. Caldwell couldn』t help but laugh. The driver was a bit ky but he had a sense of humor, a virtue to be appreciated at times like this. The taxi was on autopilot guided along by its sensors and the markers on the road. There was something surreal about all the cars moving along at the same speed. It was like the various teologies, engines, fuel iion systems and carburetors that made some vehicles superior to others had been stripped away leaving only uniformity. This was exactly what society would like to impose upon its citizens, Caldwell thou