He made a noise with his teeth: something sucked back he might otherwise have spat. “Foolishness, to leave the federation. And look what it’s gotten Memmediv and his folk, ah? If Tatié lasts ’til spring, it’s only by the blessing of the Queen.”

“Are we still calling it that?” asked Aristide. “Gedda, I mean. ‘The federation.’”

“If you listen to the provisional folk, yes. After the election, who knows? Frye thinks we should keep the interstate borders open, tariffs down. She’s got interests in the railroads and she’ll serve herself first, but it doesn’t mean she won’t lay a good table. Saeger … People like her for herself, you know? Me, I want to hear her talk real policy. Not just bedtime stories. So she wants us all to be siblings in the struggle to end hunger and poverty. Fine. What about the treasury? And our borders? And our infrastructure? Where will all this money come from? It’s a choice between a dreamer and an oligarch.”

“You haven’t always driven a cab,” asked Aristide, “have you?”

The driver snorted. “And a cabbie can’t talk politics?”

Aristide opened his mouth to pull out his foot, but was given a pardon before he could manage.

“I was a professor at Haverin East,” said the driver. “And ran for city council once or twice. Not much city left now, I hear.”

He stopped at a signal. Aristide glanced at their surroundings and realized with a start that they had reached the intersection of Temple Street and Seagate Road.

“This is rather out of the way, isn’t it?” he asked. “We ought to have turned onto Station a while back.”

“It’s a mess,” said the driver. “Construction at the trolley transfer. Faster to take Seagate to Staunton and then go north. A good memory, if you’ve been gone so long.”

Aristide hesitated a moment, eyeing the red light, daring it to change before he asked what was about to slip from his tongue. But it didn’t, and he said, “I know it’s out of the way, but would you mind just taking us a few blocks north on Temple?”

The driver shrugged and flipped down the stalk by his wheel to indicate.

It wasn’t far off Seagate—a block and a half, if he remembered right. And as the driver had said, his memory for these things was good. He had a map of the city—his city—at the ready behind his eyes.