It mean you once mo’ been fucked mos’ righteous, honeychile, Detta told her, and cackled. This what you get fo’ messin wit’ honkies.

I can get out here? Mia was asking, shy as a girl arriving at her first dance. Really?

Susannah would have slapped her own brow, had she had one. God, when it was about anything but her baby, the bitch was so goddam timid!

Yes, go ahead. It’s only a single block, and on the avenues, the blocks are short.

The driver … how much should I give the driver?

Give him a ten and let him keep the change. Here, hold it out for me—

Susannah sensed Mia’s reluctance and reacted with weary anger. This was not entirely without amusement.

Listen to me, sweetheart, I wash my hands of you. Okay? Give him any fucking bill you want.

No, no, it’s all right. Humble now. Frightened. I trust you, Susannah. And she held up the remaining bills from Mats, fanned out in front of her eyes like a hand of cards.

Susannah almost refused, but what was the point? She came forward, took control of the brown hands holding the money, selected a ten, and gave it to the driver. “Keep the change,” she said.

“Thanks, lady!”

Susannah opened the curbside door. A robot voice began to speak when she did, startling her—startling both of them. It was someone named Whoopi Goldberg, reminding her to take her bags. For Susannah-Mia, the question of her gunna was moot. There was only one piece of baggage which concerned them now, and of this Mia would soon be delivered.

She heard guitar music. At the same time she felt her control over the hand stuffing money back into her pocket and the leg swinging out of the cab begin to ebb. Mia, taking over again now that Susannah had solved another of her little New York dilemmas. Susannah began to struggle against this usurpation

(my body, goddammit, mine, at least from the waist up, and that includes the head and the brain inside it!)

and then quit. What was the use? Mia was stronger. Susannah had no idea why that should be, but she knew that it was.

A kind of queer Bushido fatalism had come over Susannah Dean by this point. It was the sort of calmness that cloaks the drivers of cars skidding helplessly toward bridge overpasses, the pilots of planes that heel over into their final dives, their engines dead … and gunslingers driven to their final cave or draw. Later she might fight, if fighting seemed either worthwhile or honorable. She would fight to save herself or the baby, but not Mia—this was her decision. Mia had forfeited any chance of rescue she might once have deserved, in Susannah’s eyes.

For now there was nothing to do, except maybe to turn the LABOR FORCE dial back to 10. She thought she would be allowed that much control.

Before that, though … the music. The guitar. It was a song she knew, and knew well. She had sung a version of it to the folken the night of their arrival in Calla Bryn Sturgis.