22

You leave the Hall of Honours en route for the Eiger Vault and your Time Machine, and approach the hovrail, calling a car to the nearest embarkation point using CAIN and the Service Computer.

Stepping from the TIME building pedway you emerge into the cityscape, to be dwarfed by the tiered office blocks surrounded by housing for the workers and the Prodmarkets which supply them. Jetcopters hum overhead like streams of flies, each one, darting or circling, its pilot intent on reaching particular destinations. The lower level streets and pedways are thick with people; those streets which curve up to the higher levels and along the buttresses of the larger buildings bear a steady flow of skimmers, runners sparking as they contact the electrified streetmetal. Some way from the embarkation point you realise that you are being followed. You step from the pedway onto the deserted bay of the Intelfax building. The anonymous figure of an office worker in a one-piece suit steps off the pedway behind you. Do you: