Warp by Lev Grossman Page A

coupons.
    It was still dark out. He sat down on the icy marble steps and looked out through the glass door at the hotel across the street: all the lights were out, and chintzy white curtains hung in the windows. In the parking lot a pair of police cars idled, their driver’s-side windows facing each other. Plumes of white exhaust from their engines floated up into the light of the streetlights.
    Pulling his coat around him, Hollis stepped out onto the stoop. The early-morning air was bitterly cold. He leaned back against the door. His face felt a little raw from having been hastily washed and shaved. A pair of headlights caught his eye as they appeared at the top of the hill. He watched them as they headed towards him. At the last possible second the car slowed down and stopped, its tires whimpering on the pavement.
    It was a clean, sleek, new-looking gray Lexus sedan. Hollis could barely hear the engine running. A moth fluttered crazily in front of one of the headlights, in and out of the thick white beams.
    One day, my son, all this will be yours.
    Hollis jogged down the steps, between the parked cars, and out into the street. He opened the door: it was warm in the car, and Peters sat behind the wheel, staring straight ahead at the road, wearing a furry leather hunting cap with earflaps. There were dark circles under his eyes. Hollis climbed in and Peters eased off the brake. They rolled forward up to the stoplight at the corner.
    â€œPretty nice car,” said Hollis, while they waited.
    Peters nodded.
    â€œWhere’s your hat?” he said.
    â€œI don’t have one.”
    â€œTake one.” Peters gestured towards the backseat. “Have a hat. Thieves always have hats.”
    Hollis turned around; there was a fedora on the backseat. He made a face and turned back around again.
    â€œMy father wears those,” he said.
    â€œHow is the old man, anyway?”
    The light changed, and Peters stamped on the accelerator.
    â€œWho knows?” said Hollis.
    Trees, street signs, and gray stoops flew by. They passed a block of nicer buildings with identical green canopies over the doorways; in the window of each one was an identical little brass-colored chandelier.
    â€œDid you sleep?”
    â€œNo,” Peters said. “Blake and I played poker at his place.”
    â€œDid you win the car?”
    â€œWe stuck to bets I could cover.”
    â€œA deck of cards is the devil’s prayerbook.”
    Peters nodded, yawning.
    â€œI’m not really feeling all that verbal right now, dude,” he said.
    They beat three or four red lights in a row until they reached the main intersection, where Hollis had gotten off the bus half an hour earlier. The street corners were mostly empty now, and in the window of a Woolworth’s Hollis could see rows of cages with parakeets in them, in various fluorescent colors, sleeping with their heads resting on their own shoulders. There was no other traffic, and when the light changed Peters pushed the Lexus up to fifty. The road widened out into eight lanes. Off to their left the Charles appeared and disappeared in the darkness between the buildings. They cut right through the BU campus, with high-rise classroom buildings on one side and rows of campus stores on the other.
    Hollis leaned his seat back and closed his eyes.
    IT WAS A RACE TO THE EDGE OF SPACE …
    The ship was the size of a six-story apartment building, and not much more aerodynamic. The squared-off hull was built for interstellar flight, and in the thick lower atmosphere it was all he could do to keep its nose pointed at the sky. The gravity projectors that held it up were drawing every last watt of reserve power.
    He knew he had no hope of outrunning the nimble military fighters that harried him, but there was a chance his shielding might hold out until they reached the ionosphere. Then the hyperdrive would kick in, and in an instant the bulky ship would become as quick and agile as