Bright's Light by Susan Juby Page B

air. She wasn’t high anymore. Too bad. High was quite a bit better than scared and grossed out. Not to mention worried. She was pretty sure she was worried, too.
    Worst mind alter ever. If their room wasn’t so full of bodies, she might have been tempted to ask for her credits back.
    She was distracted from those unhappy thoughts by other unhappy thoughts about her cart. It was small. Slater was not. He was as broad across the shoulders as Bright and Fon combined. His legs were long and sculpted. His feet, clad in bright blue flip-flops, appeared too big to fit inthe available space in the floor well of the cart. Though he seemed increasingly able to stand on his own, she didn’t see how they were going to get him inside. “He won’t fit,” said Bright.
    Fon craned her head around Slater’s broad chest to look at her. “We haven’t even tried.”
    “Fine. You get him in there, then.” Bright was aware that she sounded unpleasant, but she wasn’t sorry.
    “Rude,” grumbled Fon.
    Favours were trained to compete with each other, but they were also trained to appear to get along. Bright was surprised by how good it felt to snipe openly.
    Slater’s head lolled, but Bright could feel his arm, warm and heavy across her back, and his fingers wrapped around her shoulder.
    “Slater?” she said, pushing herself out from under him so she could look into his face.
    “No time for talk,” said Fon. She ducked out from under Slater’s other arm. He swayed on the sidewalk. Before he could fall, Fon used her excellent client management skills to get the cart door open and began shoving him inside, headfirst, like an overstuffed prize from Gaming.
    “Not so hard!” said Bright. “You’ll hurt him. He’ll hit his head.”
    “As if
that
would make a difference,” said Fon. She pushed Slater’s shoulder past the spot where he’d gotten stuck between the two rounded seats.
    Some instinct made Bright look down the street. Two PS officers marched toward them. The turtlenecked figureswere about a block and a half away and moving fast. Both had their releasers out.
    “More PS officers are coming!” Bright yelled.
    “They probably want to make sure I’m okay,” said Fon.
    At Bright’s look, she corrected herself.
    “Sorry. I was being how I am. Correcting course now. Check! Ten-four!” At points of high excitement, Fon tended to lapse into antique trucker talk, which she’d learned while playing Big Rig, a transport truck stop game in which the player drove for hours along a virtual highway while talking to other gamers.
    Bright ran around to the driver’s side, squeezed herself under Slater’s head and started the engine. She waited impatiently for Fon to get in, which took an agonizingly long time because, once again, Fon’s dress and halo got caught. Slater’s legs and feet extended far out the open passenger door.
    “Hurry!” Bright urged.
    Fon wrenched her beaded dress free and heaved herself on top of Slater’s prone body. Beads skittered all over the road and clattered onto the floor of the cart as Bright peeled away from the curb.
    Bright was too frightened to look into the rear-view mirror, but panting and rapid footfalls told her the PS officers were nearly on them. And to think she used to want
more
PS staff around her!
    She heard yelling and thudding as the officers stepped on the beads and went down like an old joke. Bright ground the pedal into the floor, and the cart shook with effort andaccelerated slightly until they were doing fifteen miles an hour, which was the top speed of a mid-credit cart. The sounds faded away.
    They’d made it two blocks when Bright noticed a low groaning noise.
    Slater.
    She looked down. His clear blue eyes stared directly up at her from her lap.
    “Bright,” he said.
    “I’m here.” Her relief reminded her of the way she felt when she woke from surgery, all empty and new.
    “Bright,” he repeated.
    Splitting her focus between him and the road ahead, Bright