11. Normal takes a bus ride I
Normal sat back in the comfortable cushioned seat of the hoverbus. It was one Shima of a life, running from one's own wife, because of a dog. At least I can't complain it's a dog's life, he thought, with a little mental chuckle.
He lay back and tried to get some sleep, but Kathryn's face kept popping up in his mind's eye like some angry jack-in-the-box. She wasn't really a bad sort; he loved her a lot and she loved him as much. The trouble was that she loved that mutt as well and he just couldn't take it. Not that he was the jealous type, mind you. It was the thought of all the fleas and germs that drove him nuts. He hoped she would forgive him. Maybe he could get her one of those new robot dogs. What were they called now? CCs? Yeah, that was it! "Cybernetic Canines"! The things they came up with these days - the world sure had changed a lot since the Martians arrived.
He gazed in sombre introspection at his reflection on the plasti-glass window; his hair really was too long. Kathryn had been bugging him to get a haircut for weeks now. Perhaps when he got to Donagar. Maybe that'd make Kathryn more amenable towards forgiving him when he returned? He could always hope.
He sighed and lay back on his seat again. There was nothing to see out there except for desolation. He was feeling gloomy enough already and didn't need to be brought down even further by looking at the dreary landscape outside. Soon it would be evening and the landscape would be covered in the bloody red rays of the setting sun. A fitting colour indeed for this land, which has seen so much bloodshed, Normal thought despondently.
The vehicle came to a sudden stop. There wasn't a scheduled stop for a while and they'd just picked him up. What now? Was it another person walking the highway? Or had Dick Turpentine decided that he really could use a sidekick? He craned his neck to see what had happened. As he did so, the question flitted through his mind as to how you could crane your neck - it's not as if you were one of those newfangled androids who could telescope their necks like two stories up - bombed peeping toms! They've got no morals, that's what's wrong with them - just steel, plastic and wires... no emotions. But that description could fit Kathryn when she was mad too... Maybe there wasn't much of a difference between humans and androids after all. He mentally shook himself, time to find the reason for the unscheduled stop.
Normal peered between the other passengers towards the front of the bus. Geez, it was the Cheese! For a moment, the panicked thought ran through his mind - and boy, could those thoughts run like the wind when they were panicked - as to whether Kathryn had sicced the police on his trail for turning her beloved pet into a Martian masala meal. The thought was as short-lived as he figured his marriage to Kathryn would be. This was, in all likelihood, just another routine graft stop. Ever since Chu and his gang passed the Feenster and Meaney Graft Act, it was a common occurrence for the Cheese to stop public conveyances to get their daily quota of baksheesh. There was no escape - on one hand, you had Dick Turpentine who preyed on lone travellers on the highway, and on the other, you had the Cheese pouncing on any commercial passenger vehicle. When you're stuck between the law and the outlawed, you had nowhere to run, he thought. It would be just his luck if they picked on him.
The officer, a giant of a man with blond hair bleached almost white by the sun, had been looking over the passengers like a vulture appraising a carcass ripe for the picking. And now, the Cheese was looking straight at Normal as if he could see right through Normal's soul to the soles of his rather worn-out shoes. Normal wished that there was some way he could turn invisible or just apport out of the hoverbus and appear somewhere else far away from the accusing eyes of the Cheese. But the Cheese had already turned away and was questioning another passenger.
Normal whispered a silent prayer to all the deities of Kabul City and promised them an offering each this time. When he got back to Kabul City, of course[1]. He wriggled further down in his seat to be less conspicuous a target. Maybe he shouldn't have tried that - trying to look inconspicuous just made you stand out all the more. The Cheese was looking in his direction again. Maybe he should have tried to look nonchalant like the guys in the trivid movies did, but then again, he'd always thought that those poses looked rather fake and contrived.
Normal wondered if perhaps his guilt was written all across his face for everybody, especially the Cheese, to see. The Cheese certainly was looking at Normal as if he was a thick wad of notes dropped on the sidewalk[2]. Normal's heart began beating faster and then dropped like an elevator which had its cables cut as he noticed the cop begin to move in his direction ... and then, the Cheese stopped to hassle another passenger.
Normal's poor heart, which was trembling like the bunny rabbits he'd seen in picture books as a kid, couldn't take much more of this unbearable tension and guilt. He wanted to get it over with, to know what was going on. Was the game up already? Was he to be dragged back in ignominy to Kabul City to face the wrath of Kathryn?
To be continued ....
[1] The Kabul City Deities' Association had given up filing breach-of-promise law suits about these hasty promises of offerings which never seemed to materialize after the crisis was over. If they had an offering for each time this happened, they'd need hundred times the temples, mosques and other places of worship than they currently had, just to hold all the offerings.
[2] In reality, this would never happen in Kabul City. A wad of notes dropped on the sidewalk in Kabul City was called a riot.
