The door slid open. He crossed the lobby, eyes down, trying not to think about the dozens of security scans he was passing through. At least it was still a mob scene. Outside the building, the bright morning had given way to a hot and hazy afternoon. The round-top articulated frame cars crowding the lower parking lot seemed to vibrate in the heat. Ambrose walked quickly, fighting the urge to flip his palm and summon a limousine service. Eventually he’d have to tap into the signal for geographic wikis or transit maps, but not this close to UniCorp HQ. What did average people do when they needed a ride somewhere in a hurry?

Taxi, he thought, looking around. He’d never been in one but was aware of the yellow cars that waited like vultures outside atmoscraper lobbies. He was nervous and flushed. His skinsuit excreted a sweat pellet, which dropped to the ground and rolled under a car. Next to that car was a decrepit taxi, one of those U-Space-era models that lacked the thrust vectoring to ride in the upper traffic streams. Well, that was okay. Little Saigon was down, not up.

He approached the faded banana yellow car. The driver was asleep in the front seat. He knocked on the window and the man woke with a start, spilling the coffee he clutched in his lap. The man turned to glare at Ambrose. The skin around his left eye, along with the eye itself, was gone, replaced by a plasteel graft that glinted in the afternoon sun.

The window slid open.

“Off-duty, kid,” rasped the cabbie.

Ambrose couldn’t look away. He’d never seen such a shoddy facial modification. Maybe it was the work of some illegal chop shop.

“It’s—it’s an emergency,” Ambrose stammered.

The plasteel eye grew out from its socket, trailing a cord, and scanned Ambrose up and down. It hissed faintly, then returned to the cabbie’s face.

The window began to shut. Ambrose looked over his shoulder. Another sweat pellet fell next to his foot.

“I can pay,” he said. “I can pay whatever you want.”

The window paused. The man ran his tongue around the space between his gums and lips so that the skin protruded. Then he spit into the empty coffee mug and stowed it under the dashboard. “Well, I’m about to go home, so if it’s on the way, then…”

Ambrose pulled up the heavy door and slid into the back seat. The door slammed shut. It smelled like synthetic pine and real tobacco.

“Little Saigon, please,” Ambrose announced.

The cabbie burst into dry, phlegmy laughter.

Ambrose slid low in the seat. “Like I said, it’s kind of an emergency, so if we could just—”

“Sure, kid. Sure.” The cab lurched off the ground as the lifts sputtered and engaged. “You got friends there?”

“Something like that.”

The cabbie shrugged, chuckling, and entered the ground-level ESC traffic flow. The pattern was perfectly arranged to be accident-free and efficient, so long as drivers relinquished control of their vehicle to the system. Failure to do so was grounds for loss of license and arrest.