Genesis Read Online Free Page A

civic police. Taxis were not allowed into the Central Zones. You either had to walk or shelter from the rain or beg a bed from someone you knew downtown or end up as a bludgeoned passenger inside an army bus. Even those who’d reached their cars were being turned back at the Circular and were obliged to park for the night until restrictions had been lifted. For once, the city was not dull. It was dangerous. Young men are always dangerous.
    Lix crossed the river by the only open route, Deliverance Bridge, and drove around the park on Navigation Island through
stands of tarbony trees and ornamental shrubs, through puddles, ankle deep, which dramatically accessorized his car with arched silver spoilers of rainwater, until he reached the second bridge, which still allowed some access to the river’s eastern banks. Beyond the bridge, the traffic was at a standstill. Even those drivers who had tried to reverse onto the sidewalks or turn back toward the old town’s center were gridlocked. Beyond the traffic were the academy and Freda’s office and Freda’s sanctuary desk.
    â€œWe’ll not get home, you realize,” Lix said. “They’re not letting anybody through.”
    â€œThey always let you through.”
    As it happened Mouetta was wrong, or so it appeared. All the city campuses were closed to traffic, even to the stars of stage and television, it seemed. Militia volunteers, always the last to be deployed and the most unyielding, were squeezing through the traffic, ordering drivers from their cars and searching them, both the drivers and the cars. No permissions asked, no explanations given, no patience or civility. They were determined to enjoy themselves. You had either to stand and lose your dignity or to argue and lose your liberty—that mischievous predicament, as old as humankind. You had to count yourself lucky, as bags were emptied onto seats and trunks were opened for evidence of insurrection—a box of matches, say, a couple of leaflets, a fruit knife—that on this occasion the men had not been issued with their electric cattle prods. Pedestrians, mostly students trying to return to their dorms, were being turned back. They could either spend the night outside or, if they protested or seemed too smart and arrogant, a wooden bed could be arranged for them in some
dark cell. A thorough drenching would be good for them, as would a taste of prison life. Then they’d be “graduates” indeed! They had the choice: Clear off or they’d matriculate in Practical Cell Studies.
    Lix raised and stretched his arms as he was instructed and let two of the young men search his pockets and his waistband and check his ID card. Unlike the other women travelers, Mouetta had not been summoned from the car. She took this as a promising sign that yet again her husband’s public gift was making life easy for them. She hated it, this privilege, but she was grateful as well. She watched her husband through the hand-jive of the windshield wipers, waiting for the look of recognition on the volunteers’ faces and the invitation to go ahead.
    The man who asked Lix to raise his hands did not proceed with his interrogation for very long. Nor was their car searched. Nor were they required to unlock the tailgate. This, then, this rescue bid, thought Mouetta, would be a simple matter, though alarming in ways that she found inexplicably stirring. Her heart was jumping like a pan-fried pea. Yes, she was stimulated by the thought of having a young man about the house, a young man needing to be saved. This would be her contribution to the night, her solidarity—to steal a “wild and innocent” suspect, “known to the authorities,” from underneath the very snobbish, starstruck noses of the police.
    Indeed, her husband had been recognized. She could tell by the way he stood, by the laughter, by the parting handshake, by the way a route was being cleared for them. There