Free 02 _ Maltese Goddess, The by Lyn Hamilton

Without it I either had to go very slowly, or speed along in third. Stalling was only a hairsbreadth away at any given time. I listened enviously to the sound of more fortunate drivers gearing smoothly up or down. I became obsessed with not slowing down.
    Finally I got on a relatively well-kept road that unfortunately headed in the wrong direction, toward the aforementioned Rabat and something called Verdala Palace, which if I remembered Anthony’s lecture was built by his idol, Gerolamo Cassar. That meant, at least I thought it did, that I was headed west, not north, but my innate sense of direction had totally deserted me so I couldn’t be sure. I could only hope it would lead to something headed north, or at least a place name I recognized.
    As I moved along this road, I overtook a car moving relatively slowly. There was an approaching truck, but it was still quite far away, and rather than slow down, I decided to go for it and pass the other vehicle. I floored it, roared past, then pulled quickly in front of the other car, in a way that, if I’m being honest, I would have to consider rather rude, if not a bit reckless.
    I glanced guiltily at the driver as I passed the car. He was looking at me too. We were both surprised to see each other. It was the Great White Hunter yet again, and he was not pleased to see me.
    Normally I think I would have found this a funny coincidence, but now, with the business with the brakes, there was an edge of menace to it, not the least because of what happened next. When the oncoming truck passed us, he geared down, then passed me much too closely, pulling in so tightly that I had to slam on the brakes, which mercifully worked in a manner of speaking. The car started to skid, and for a few seconds I thought I’d lost control of it, but I was able to pull over to the side of the road, where I sat for a few minutes listening intently to my heart pound. The Great White Hunter I couldn’t see for dust.
    It took me a few minutes to stop shaking. I kept telling myself I sort of deserved it, what with my rush past him. But to be forced off the road? I could hardly believe what had happened.
    While I sat there, a man on an aged bicycle pedaled by, and I flagged him down. He was a pleasant person who gave me new directions, briefly explaining the intricacies of navigating around Malta: which is to say, road signs, where they exist, are only relative. One gets a general sense of the direction one is going, then sticks to it, ignoring signs for towns and sites along the way.
    It was good advice and I managed to find the University, then most fortuitously a place to park. I got out, pulled up the window on the passenger side which had done its trick of falling down into the door at the first roundabout I encountered, then eyed the car. I sincerely hoped I would not return to find it minus several critical body parts. A young boy offered to watch the car for me—such a nice car, he said—for a small fee of course. I paid him on the spot, walked into the hall, flinging myself—there is no other word to describe my hasty and inelegant entrance—into the seat that Sophia and Anthony had saved for me just as the speaker mounted the platform and moved to the podium.
    “Who will speak for the Goddess?”
she began, a tall, big-boned woman with wispy, greying hair, owlish glasses, a less than stylish print dress, and what my mother would call sensible shoes. Not that my mother would be caught dead wearing sensible shoes herself, mind you.
    The lights in the hall dimmed, then were extinguished, a single reading lamp on the podium the only light in the room, casting eerie shadows on the wall behind the speaker as she spoke.
    “Who will speak for the Goddess? Try now, if you can, to set aside the kind of world we know today, and imagine yourself living in the world of six thousand years ago. To do so, you must leave behind you all those technological wonders we take for granted. Lights, cars, running