NETFEED/NEWS: Asia's Leaders Declare "Prosperity Zone"

(visual: Empress Palace, Singapore City)

VO: Asian politicians and business leaders meeting in Singapore, led by aging and reclusive Chinese financier Jiun Bhao and Singapore's Prime Minister Low—

(visual: Low Wee Kuo and Jiun Bhao shaking hands)

—agreed on a historical trade agreement which Jiun calls a "Prosperity Zone" that would give Asia an unprecedented economic unity.

(visual: Jiun Bhao, supported by aides, at press lectern)

JIUN: "The time has come. The future belongs to a united Asia. We are full of hope, but we know there is hard work ahead. . . ."

 

It stretched before them from horizon to horizon, its millions of byways like scratches on glass under extreme magnification—but in every one of those scratches, lights flickered and minute objects moved.

"There cannot be any place so big!"

"But it's not a place, remember—not a real place. The whole thing is just electronic impulses on a chain of very powerful computers. It can be as big as the programmers can imagine."

!Xabbu was silent for a long moment. They hung side by side, twin stars floating in an empty black sky, two angels gazing down from heaven at the immensity of humankind's commercial imagination.

"The girl arose," !Xabbu said at last. "She put her hands into the wood ashes. . . ."

"What?"

"It is a poem—or a story—made by one of my people:

"The girl arose; she put her hands into the wood ashes; she threw the ashes up into the sky. She said to them: 'The wood ashes which are here, they must together become the Milky Way. They must lie white along the sky. . . .' "

He stopped as if embarrassed. "It is something of my childhood. It is called 'The Girl of the Early Race Who Made the Stars.' Being here, what you have done—they brought it back to me."

Now Renie was embarrassed, too, although she was not quite sure why. She flexed her fingers to take them instantly down to ground level. Lambda Mall, the main tradeground of the entire net, surrounded them completely. The Mall was a nation-sized warren of simulated shopping districts, a continent of information with no shore. Millions of commercial nodes blinked, shimmied, rainbowed, and sang, doing their best to separate customers from credits. The intricate web of virtual thoroughfares surged with sims of every visual type, every level of complexity. "It is a huge place," she said, "but remember that most people never bother with high-level overviews like the one we just had—they just travel directly to wherever it is they want to go. If you tried to visit every node on the net, or even just every node in this Mall . . . well, it would be like trying to call every single address in the Greater Beijing Directory. Even all these—" she indicated the crush of sims moving around them in endless parade, "—are just a tiny fraction of the people who are using the Mall right now. These are just the folk who want to have the visual experience of browsing and people-watching."

"The visual experience?" !Xabbu's gray simuloid swiveled to watch a flock of Fumes push through the crowd, cartoon-voluptuous females with animal heads.

"Like you're doing now. There's plenty to see. But it's much faster just to go directly to what you want. When you're using the regular computer interface, do you read the name of every file in storage?"

!Xabbu was slow to respond. The Putties had met a pair of snake-headed men and were going through an elaborate ritual greeting which featured a great deal of sniffing. "Go to what I want?"

"I'll show you. Let's say we want to . . . I don't know, buy a new data pad. Well, if you know where the electronics district is, you could go there directly and then physically move around—people spend a lot of money trying to make their commercial nodes attractive, just like in the real world. But let's say you don't even know where the district is."

He had turned to face her. His gray face with its vestigial features caused her a moment of anxiety. She missed his animation, his smile: this was like traveling with a scarecrow. Of course, she herself must not look any more pleasant. "But it's true," he said. "I do not know where the electronics district is."

"Right. Look, you've spent a lot of time in the past few weeks learning to find your way around the basic computer setup. The only difference here is that you're inside the computer—or apparently so."

"It is hard to remember that I have a real body, and that it is back at the Polytechnic—that I am still in the Polytechnic."

"That's the magic." She made her voice smile since she couldn't do much with her face. "Now, do a search."

!Xabbu moved his fingers slowly. A glowing blue orb appeared in front of him.

"Good." Renie took a step closer. "No one can see that but you and me—that's part of our interaction with our own computer at the Poly. But we're going to use our computer to access the Mall's service directory." She showed him the procedure. "Go ahead and bring up the list. You can do voice commands, too, either offline, where no one will hear them but you, or online. If you keep an eye open here to the Mall, you'll see lots of people talking to themselves. They might just be crazy—there are more than a few—but they may also be talking to their own systems and not bothering to keep it private."

The orb spat out a list of services, which hovered in midair as lines of fiery blue letters. Renie adjusted the list to sunset red, more readable against the background, then pointed at those listed under Electronics. "There you go. 'Personal access devices.' Click it"

The world immediately changed. The open spaces of the Mall's public area were replaced by a long wide street. The simulated buildings on either side loomed high into the false sky, each one a riot of color and movement, the outside displays as colorful and competitive as tropical flowers. And we're the bees, she thought to herself, with pollen credits to spread around. Welcome to the information jungle. She rather liked the metaphor. Maybe she would use it in one of her lectures.

"Now," she said aloud, "if you had found a particular store in the services directory, we could have beamed straight there."

"Beamed?" !Xabbu's head was tipped back on his simulated neck. It reminded her of how amazed she'd been by the displays when she had first traveled on the net.

"It used to be an old science fiction term, I think. Kind of a net joke. It just means to travel directly instead of going the long way 'round, RL-style. RL means 'real life,' remember?"

"Mmmmm." !Xabbu seemed very quiet and withdrawn. Renie wondered if she'd shown him enough for a first visit—it was hard to know what an adult mind would make of all this. Everyone she knew had started net-riding in childhood.

"Do you want to go on with our simulated shopping trip?"

!Xabbu turned. "Of course. Please. This is all so . . . astonishing."

She smiled to herself. "Good. Well, as I said, if we wanted a particular store, we could have beamed directly to it. But let's browse."

Renie had been a professional for so long that the thrill of what was possible had worn off. Like her little brother, she had discovered the net at much the same time as she discovered the real world, and learned her way around both long before adolescence. Stephen was still interested in net for net's sake, but Renie was well past the sense-of-wonder stage. She didn't even like shopping, and whenever possible just reordered from an existing account.

!Xabbu, however, was a child in these virtual realms—but a manchild, she reminded herself, with a sophisticated and adult sensibility, however primitive her city-dweller prejudices made his background seem—so it was both refreshing and a little horrifying to accompany him on this maiden voyage. No, more than just a little horrifying: seeing it through his eyes, Lambda Mall seemed so huge and loud, so vulgar. . . .

!Xabbu stopped in front of one store's outside displays and gestured to see the full advertisement. Renie didn't bother. Although his sim was standing motionless before the shop's coruscating facade, she knew that he was currently in the middle of a family melodrama in which the crusty but benign father was slowly being brought around to the joys of purchasing a Krittapong Home Entertainment Unit with multiple access features. She watched the Bushman's small sim speaking and reacting to invisible presences and again felt a slightly shamed responsibility. After a few minutes, !Xabbu shook himself all over like a wet dog and stepped away.

"Did tight-fisted-but-basically-kindly Dad see the error of his ways?" she asked.

"Who were those people?"

"Not people. On the net, real people are called 'Citizens.' Those were Puppets—constructs which look like people. Invented things, just like the stores here and even the Mall itself."

"Not real? But they talked to me—answered questions."

"Just a slightly more expensive form of advertising. And they aren't as smart as they act. Go back and ask Mom about the Soweto Uprising or the second Ngosane Administration. She'll just tell you all over again about the joys of Retinal Display."

!Xabbu thought this over. "They are . . . like ghosts, then. Things with no souls."

Renie shook her head. "No souls, that's true. But 'Ghost' means something else on the net. I'll tell you about it one day."

They continued along the street, floating forward at walking speed, a comfortable pace for browsing.

"How can you tell the difference?" !Xabbu asked. "Between Citizens and Puppets?"

"You can't always. If you want to know, you ask. By law, we all have to respond—constructs, too. And we all have to tell the truth, although I'm sure that law gets broken often enough."

"I find that thought . . . upsetting."

"It takes some getting used to. Well, we're pretending to shop, so let's go on in—unless something in the advertising offended you."

"No. It was interesting. I think Dad should get more exercise. He has an unhealthy face."

Renie laughed as they stepped through into the store.

!Xabbu gaped. "But it is just a tiny space seen from outside! Is this more visual magic?"

"You must remember, none of this is real in the normal sense. Frontage space on the Mall is expensive so the exterior displays tend to be small, but the commercial node itself isn't behind it as it would be in a real market We've just moved into another location on the information network, which could be right next to the Polytechnic's janitorial services, or a children's adventure game, or the banking records for an insurance company." They looked across the large and expensive-looking shop. Quiet music was playing, which Renie promptly blocked—some of the subliminals were getting very sophisticated and she didn't want to discover when she went offline that she'd bought herself some expensive gadget. The walls and floor space of the simulated store were covered with tasteful abstract sculptures; the products themselves, displayed atop low pillars, seemed to glow with their own soft inner light like holy relics.

"Do you notice there are no windows?"

!Xabbu turned to look behind him. "But there were several on either side of the door where we came in."

"Only on the outside. Those were showing us the equivalent of a page in a printed catalog—easy to do. Far more difficult and expensive, not to mention distracting to potential customers, would be to show what was going on in Lambda Mall outside the facade. So, on the inside, no windows."

"And no people, either. Is this store, then, an unpopular place?"

"It is all a matter of choice. I didn't change the default setting when I came in. If you remember your computer terminology from last week, 'default'. . . ."

". . . Is the setting you get unless you specify otherwise."

"Exactly. And the default in this kind of store is usually 'alone with the merchandise.' If we want we can see any other customers who themselves choose to be seen." She made a gesture; for a brief moment a half-dozen sims flashed into sight, bending over one or another of the pillars. "And if we want we could be visited by a shop assistant immediately. Or, if we hover around long enough, one will eventually appear anyway, just to help us toward a decision."

!Xabbu moved across the floor to the nearest gently gleaming device. "And these are representations of what this company sells?"

"Some of what they sell. We can change the display, too, or see only the things we're interested in, hovering in front of us. We can even eliminate the showroom and view them only as text, with descriptions and prices. I'm afraid that's what I tend to do."

!Xabbu chuckled. "The man who lives beside the water hole does not dream of thirst."

"Another of your people's sayings?"

"One of my father's." He reached his blunt-fingered hand toward one of the pads, a thin rectangle small enough to fit in a simulated palm. "Can I pick this up?"

"Yes, but it will only feel as realistic as your own equipment allows it to feel. I'm afraid the sims we're wearing are pretty basic."

!Xabbu turned it in his hands. "I can feel the weight of it. Quite impressive. And look at this reflection across its screen! But I suppose this is no more real than that water you created my first day in simulation."

"Well, somebody spent more time working on that than I did on my puddle."

"Good afternoon, Citizens." An attractive black woman a few years younger than Renie appeared beside them. !Xabbu started guiltily and she smiled. "Are you interested in personal access devices?"

"We are merely looking today, thank you." Renie examined the perfect, just-ironed crease of the woman's pants and her flawless white teeth. "My friend. . . ."

"Are you a Citizen or a Puppet?" !Xabbu asked.

The woman turned toward him. "I am a type-E construct," she said, her voice still as warm and soothing as when she had greeted them, "respondent to all UN codes for retail display. If you wish to deal with a Citizen, I will be happy to summon one now. If you have a complaint about my performance, please indicate and you will be connected with. . . ."

"No, no," Renie said. "There's no need. My friend is on his first trip to Lambda Mall and was just curious."

The smile was still in place, although Renie fancied it was a bit stiffer than before. But that was silly—why should a Puppet be programmed with hurt feelings? "I am glad I could answer your question. Is there anything else I can tell you about this or any of Krittapong Electronics' other fine products?"

Out of an obscure sense of guilt, she asked the saleswoman—the Puppet saleswoman, she reminded herself, a mere piece of code—to demonstrate the pad for them.

"The Freehand is the latest in portable access data units," the Puppet began, "with the most sophisticated voice recognition of any pad in its price range. It also allows the preprogramming of hundreds of different daily tasks, a smart phone-filtering service, and a wealth of other extras that have made Krittapong Asia's leader in consumer data-manipulation products. . . ."

As the Puppet described the voice recognition features for !Xabbu, Renie wondered whether it was a coincidence that this particular salesperson appeared as a black woman, or whether it had been summoned up tailor-made to match her own net index and address.

A few minutes later they were outside again, standing in the simulated street.

"Just for your information," she said, "it isn't really polite to ask if people are Citizens or not. But unless you specifically request a live human being, most of the salespeople in stores will be Puppets."

"But I thought you said that it was the law. . . ."

"It is the law. But it's a social thing—a little delicate. If you're talking to a Citizen and you ask them that question, then you're implying that they're . . . well, boring enough or mechanical enough to be artificial."

"Ah. So one should only ask if one is reasonably certain that the person in question is a Puppet."

"Or unless you really, really need to know."

"And what might cause such a need?"

Renie grinned. "Well, if you were falling in love with someone you met here, for instance. Come on, let's find a place to sit down."

 

!Xabbu sighed and straightened up. His gray sim had been sagging in its chair.

"There is still so much I do not understand. We are still in . . . on . . . the Mall, are we not?"

"We are. This is one of its main public squares."

"So what can we hope to do at this place? We cannot eat, we cannot drink."

"Rest, to begin with. VR can be like long-distance driving. You don't do much, but you still get tired."

As blood was red and wet in whichever artery it flowed, so, too, the crowd in the teeming streets seemed identical in its sheer variety to any other in Lambda Mall. The fraction of the Mall's visitors that floated, walked, or crawled past Café Boulle seemed no different from what Renie and !Xabbu had seen upon first entering the commercial sector, or in the streets of the electronics district. The most basic sims, which usually represented the most infrequent visitors, stopped frequently to rubberneck. Other, more detailed sims were covered in bright colors and traveling in groups, dressed up as though for a party. And some wore sophisticated rigs which would have been right at home in the poshest sectors of the Inner District, sims like handsome young gods which turned virtual heads everywhere they passed.

"But why is it a café? Why not a resting-house, or some such?"

Renie turned back to !Xabbu. The slope of his shoulders indicated fatigue. She would have to take him offline soon. It was easy to forget what a staggering sensory experience a first visit to the net could be. "Because 'Café' sounds nicer. No, I'm teasing. For one thing, if we had the equipment for it, we could eat and drink here—or at least feel like we were doing so. If we had the implants some rich people have, we could taste things we've never tasted in the real world. But even a real café serves more than just food and drink." She made a gesture and they were surrounded by the gentle sounds of a Poulenc string quartet; the noise of the street dropped to a low murmur in the background. "We are essentially renting a place where we can be—somewhere we can stop and think and talk and admire the parade without obstructing a public thoroughfare. And unlike a real restaurant, once you've paid for your table your waiter is always available, but only when you want him."

!Xabbu settled back. "It would be nice to have a beer."

"When we go offline, I promise. To celebrate your first day on the net."

Her companion watched the street life for a while, then turned to survey the Café Boulle itself. The striped awnings fluttered, though there was no wind. Waiters and waitresses in clean white aprons strode among the tables balancing trays stacked improbably high with glasses, although very few of the customers seemed to have any glassware in front of them. "This is a nice place, Ms. Sulaweyo."

"Renie, please."

"Very well. This is a nice place, Renie. But why are so many tables empty? If it is as inexpensive as you said. . . ."

"Not everyone here chooses to be seen, although they cannot simply be invisible without some indication." She pointed to a perfect but deserted simulation of a black cast-iron table with a vase of exquisite daisies in the center of the white tablecloth. "Do you see the flowers? How many other empty tables have them?"

"Most of them."

"That means someone is sitting there—or occupying the virtual space, more accurately. They just choose not to be seen. Perhaps they are secret lovers, or their sims are famous and readily recognizable. Or perhaps they merely forgot to change the default setting from the last people who sat there."

!Xabbu contemplated the empty table. "Are we visible?" he asked at last.

"Oh, yes. I have nothing to hide. I did put a mute on our conversation, though. Otherwise we'd be surrounded by hawkers as soon as we leave, waiting to sell you maps, instruction manuals, so-called 'enhancement packages'—you name it. They love first-timers."

"And that is all most people do here? Sit?"

"There are various kinds of virtual performances going on, for those who are not interested in watching the crowd. Dancing, object-creation, comedy—I just haven't requested access to any of them. Do you want to see one?"

"No, thank you, Renie. The quiet is very nice."

The quiet lasted only a few more moments. A loud detonation made Renie shout in surprise. On the street outside the café the crowd swirled and scattered like a herd of antelope fleeing a lion's charge.

Six sims, all muscular males dressed in martial leather and steel, stood in the open space, shouting at one another and waving large guns. Renie turned up the volume so she and !Xabbu could hear.

"We told you to stay off Englebart Street!" one of them bellowed in the flat tones of American English, lowering his machine gun so that it jutted from his waist like a black metal phallus.

"The day we listen to Barkies is the day pigs fly!" another shouted back. "Go on back to your Hellbox, little boy."

An expanding star of fire leaped from the muzzle of the first man's gun. The phut-phut-phut sound was loud even through the damped audio in Renie's hearplugs. The one who had been told to stay off Englebart Street was instead abruptly spread all over the thoroughfare in question, bright blood and intestines and bits of meat flung everywhere. The crowd gave a collective shout of fear and tried to push back even farther. More guns flashed, and two more of the muscular men were smashed down onto the street, oozing red from scorched black holes. The survivors lifted their weapons, stared at each other for a moment, then disappeared.

"Idiots." Renie turned to !Xabbu, but he had vanished, too. A moment's worry was eased when she saw the edge of his gray sim poking out from behind the chair. "Come back, !Xabbu. It was just some young fools larking around."

"He shot that man!" !Xabbu crept back into his seat, looking warily at the crowd which had rolled back over the spot like an incoming tide.

"Simulation, remember? Nobody really shot anybody—but they're not allowed to do that in public areas. Probably a bunch of school kids." For a worried moment she thought of Stephen, but such tricks were not his style. She also doubted he and his friends could get access to such high-quality sims. Rich punks, that was what these had been. "And they may lose their access privileges if they get caught"

"It was all false, then?"

"All false. Just a bunch of netboys on the prank."

"This is a strange world indeed, Renie. I think I am ready to go back now."

She had been right—she had let him stay too long. "Not 'back,' " she said gently. "Offline. Things like that will help you remember this isn't a real place."

"Offline, then."

"Right" She moved her hand and it was so.

 

 

The beer was cold, !Xabbu was tired but happy, and Renie was just beginning to unwind when she noticed that her pad was blinking. She considered ignoring it—the battery was low, and when the power faded, strange things often happened—but the only priority messages were those from home, and Stephen would have returned from school a few hours ago.

The beerhall's node was not working, and her battery wasn't capable of boosting her signal enough to use it from the table, so she apologized to !Xabbu and went out to the street in search of a public node, squinting against the late-afternoon glare. The neighborhood was not a good one, loose bits of plastic crinkle blowing like autumn leaves, empty bottles and ampoules in discarded paper bags lying in the gutter. She had to walk four long blocks before she found a node, defaced with graffiti but in service.

It was strange being so close to the well-manicured grounds of the Poly and yet in another world, an entropic world in which everything seemed to be turning to dust and litter and flakes of dried paint. Even the little lawn around the public node was only a phantom, a patch of baked earth and skeletal brown grass.

She jiggled the pad's access jack in the node until she made something resembling clean contact. The booth was voice-only, and she listened to her home phone pulse a dozen times before someone answered.

"What you want?" her father slurred.

"Papa? My pad was showing a message. Did Stephen call me?"

"That boy? No, little girl, I call you. I call you to say I won't put up with no nonsense no more. A man got a right to some rest. Your brother, he and his friends make a mess, make too much noise. I tell him to clean up the kitchen, he say it's not his job."

"It's not his job. I told him if he cleaned his room—"

"None of your lip, girl. You all think you can talk back to your father like I'm nobody. Well, I throw that upstart boy out, right out for good, and if you don't get home and clean this place up, I throw you out, too."

"You what? What do you mean, threw him out?"

There was a sly, pleased sound to Long Joseph's voice now. "You hear me. I throw his skinny behind out of my house. He want to play silly buggers with his friends and make noise, he can live with his friends. I deserve some peace."

"You . . . you. . . !" Renie swallowed hard. When her father got into these moods, he was just itching for conflict; smashed and self-righteous, he would carry it on for days if she fought back. "That wasn't fair. Stephen has a right to have friends."

"If you don't like it, you can go, too."

Renie hung up the phone and stared for long moments at a stripe of cadmium yellow paint splashed across the face of the node, the long tail of a graffiti letter so arcane that she couldn't make it out. Her eyes filled with tears. There were times she understood the violent impulses that made the netboys blow each other to shreds with make-believe guns. Sometimes she even understood people who used real guns.

The jack stuck in the public node when she pulled it out. She stared at the snapped wire for a moment, swore, then threw it down on the ground where it lay like a tiny stunned snake.

 

 

"He's only eleven! You can't throw him out for making noise! Anyway, he has to live here by law!"

"Oh, you going to call the law on me, girl?" Long Joseph's undershirt was stained at the armpits. The nails on his bare feet were yellow and too long. At that moment, Renie hated him,

"You can't do that!"

"You go, too. Go on—I don't need no smart-mouth girl in my house. I told your mama before she died, that girl getting above herself. Putting on airs."

Renie stepped around the table toward him. Her head felt like it might explode. "Go ahead, throw me out, you old fool! Who will you get to clean for you, cook for you? How far do you think your government check will go without me bringing home my salary?"

Joseph Sulaweyo waved his long hands in disgust. "Talk that shit to me. Who brought you into this world? Who put you through that Afrikaaner school so you could learn that computer nonsense?"

"I put myself through that school." What had started as a simple headache had now transmuted into spikes of icy pain. "I worked in that cafeteria cleaning up after other students for four years. And now I have a good job—then I come home and clean up after you." She picked up a dirty glass, dried residue of milk untouched since the night before, and lifted it to smash it on the floor, to break it into the thousand sharp fragments she already felt rattling in her own head. After a moment, she put it down on the table and turned away, breathing hard. "Where is he?"

"Where is who?"

"God damn it, you know who! Where did Stephen go?"

"How should I know?" Long Joseph was rooting around in the cupboard, looking for the bottle of cheap wine he had finished two nights before. "He go off with his damn friend. That Eddie. What you do with my wine, girl?"

Renie turned and went into her room, slamming the door shut behind her. It was impossible to talk with him. Why did she even try?

The picture on her desk showed him over twenty years younger, tall and dark and handsome. Her mother stood beside him in a strapless dress, shielding her eyes from the Margate summer sun. And Renie herself, age three or four, was nestled in the crook of her father's arm, wearing a ridiculous bonnet that made her head look as big as her entire body. One small hand had wrapped itself in her father's tropical shirt as if seeking an anchor against the strong currents of life.

Renie scowled and blinked back tears. It did no good to look at that picture. Both of those people were dead, or as good as dead. It was a dreadful thought, but no less true for its horror.

She found a last spare battery in the back of her drawer, slotted it into the pad, and phoned Eddie's house.

Eddie answered. Renie was not surprised. Eddie's mother Mutsie spent more time out drinking with her friends than home with her children. That was one of the reasons Eddie got into trouble, and though he was a pretty good kid, it was one of the reasons Renie was not comfortable with Stephen staying there.

God, look at yourself, girl, she thought as she waited for Eddie to fetch her brother. You're turning into an old woman, disapproving of everyone.

"Renie?"

"Yes, Stephen, it's me. Are you okay? He didn't hit you or anything, did he?"

"No. The old drunk couldn't catch me."

Despite her own anger, she felt a moment of fright at hearing him talk about their father that way. "Listen, is it all right for you to stay there tonight, just till Papa calms down? Let me talk to Eddie's mother."

"She's not here, but she said it was okay."

Renie frowned. "Ask her to call me anyway. I want to talk to her about something. Stephen, don't hang up."

"I'm here." He was sullen.

"What about Soki? You never told me if he came back to school after—after you three got in that trouble."

Stephen hesitated. "He was sick."

"I know. But did he come back to school?"

"No. His mama and dad moved into Durban. I think they're living with Soki's aunt or something."

She tapped her fingers on the pad, then realized she had almost cut the connection. "Stephen, put the picture on, please."

"It's broken. Eddie's little sister knocked over the station."

Renie wondered if that was really true, or if Stephen and his friend were into some mischief they didn't want her to see. She sighed. It was forty minutes to Eddie's flatblock by bus and she was exhausted. There was nothing she could do.

"You phone me at work tomorrow when you get home from school. When's Eddie's mama coming back?"

"Soon."

"And what are the two of you going to do tonight until she gets back?"

"Nothing." There was definitely a defensive note in his voice. "Just do some net Football match, maybe."

"Stephen," she began, then stopped. She didn't like the interrogatory tone of her own voice. How could he learn to stand on his own two feet if she treated him like he was a baby? His own father had wrongfully accused him of something just hours earlier, then thrown him out of his home. "Stephen, I trust you. You call me tomorrow, hear?"

"Okay." The phone clicked and he was gone.

Renie plumped up her pillow and sat back on her bed, trying to find a comfortable position for her aching head and neck. She had planned to read an article in a specialist magazine tonight—the kind of thing she wanted to have under her belt when career review time came around—but she was too drained to do anything much. Wave some frozen food and then watch the news. Try not to lie awake for hours worrying.

Another evening shot to hell.

 

 

"You seem upset, Ms. Sulaweyo. Is there anything I can do to help you?"

She took an angry breath. "My name's Renie. I wish you'd start calling me that, !Xabbu—you make me feel like a grandmother."

"I am sorry. I meant no offense." His slender face was unusually solemn. He lifted his tie and scrutinized the pattern.

Renie wiped the screen, blotting out the schematic she had been laboring over for the last half hour. She took out a cigarette and pulled the tab. "No, I'm sorry. I had no right to take my . . . I apologize." She leaned forward, staring at the sky blue of the empty screen as the smoke drifted in front of it "You've never told me anything about your family. Well, not much."

She felt him looking at her. When she met it, his gaze was uncomfortably sharp, as though he had extrapolated from her question about his family to her own troubles. It never paid to underestimate !Xabbu. He had already moved past the basics of computing and was beginning to explore areas that gave her other adult students fits. He would be constructing programmer-level code soon. All this in a matter of a few months. If he was studying at night to make such a pace, he must be going without sleep altogether.

"My family?" he asked. "That means a different thing where I come from. My family is very large. But I assume you mean my mother and father."

"And sisters. And brothers."

"I have no brothers, although I have several male cousins. I have two younger sisters, both of whom are still living with my people. My mother is living there, too, although she has not been well." His expression, or the lack of it, suggested that his mother's illness was nothing small. "My father died many years ago."

"I'm sorry. What did he die of? If you don't mind talking about it."

"His heart stopped." He said it simply, but Renie wondered at the stiffness of his tone. !Xabbu was often formal, but seldom anything but open in his conversation. She put it down to pain he did not wish to share. She understood that.

"What was it like for you, growing up? It must have been very different from what I knew."

His smile came back, but only a small one. "I am not so certain of that, Renie. In the delta we lived mostly outdoors, and that is very different, of course, from living beneath a city roof—some nights since I came here I still have trouble sleeping, you know. I go outside and sleep in the garden just so I can feel the wind, see the stars. My landlady thinks I am very strange." He laughed; his eyes almost closed. "But other than that, it seems to me that all childhoods must be much alike. I played, I asked questions about the things around me, sometimes I did what I should not and was punished. I saw my parents go to work each day, and when I was old enough, I was put to school."

"School? In the Okavango Swamps?"

"Not the sort you know, Renie—not with an electronic wall and VR headsets. Indoor school was much later for me. I was taken by my mother and her relatives and taught the things I should know. I never said that our childhoods were identical, only much alike. When I was first punished for doing something I should not have, it was for straying too near the river. My mother was afraid that crocodiles might take me. I imagine that your first punishments were incurred for something different."

"You're right. But we didn't have any electronic walls in my school. When I was a little girl, all we had were a couple of obsolete microcomputers. If they were still around, they'd be in a museum now."

"My world has changed also since I was a young child. That is one of the things that brought me here."

"What do you mean?"

!Xabbu shook his head with slow regret, as though she were the student rather than he, and she had fastened onto some ultimately unworkable theory. When he spoke, it was to change the subject "Did you ask me about my family out of curiosity, Renie? Or is there some problem with yours that is making you sad? You do seem sad."

For a moment she was tempted to deny it or to push it aside. It didn't feel proper for a teacher to complain to a student about her home life, even though they were more or less the same age. But she had come to think of !Xabbu as a friend—an odd companion because of his background, but a friend nevertheless. The pressures of raising a little brother and looking after her troubled and troublesome father had meant that her friends from university days had drifted away, and she had not made many new ones.

"I . . . I do worry." She swallowed, disliking her own weakness, the messiness of her problems, but it was too late to stop. "My father threw my little brother out of the house, and he's only eleven years old. But my father's got it into his bloody mind to take a stand and he won't let him back until he apologizes. Stephen is stubborn, too—I hope that's the only way he's like Papa." She was a little surprised at her own vehemence. "So he won't give in. He's been staying with a friend for three weeks now—three weeks! I hardly get to see him or talk to him."

!Xabbu nodded. "I understand your worry. Sometimes when one of my folk has a dispute with his family, he goes to stay with other relatives. But we live very close together, and all see each other often."

"That's just it. Stephen's still going to school—I've been checking with the office—and Eddie's mother, this friend's mother, says he's okay. I don't know how much I trust her, though, that's part of the problem." She stood up, trailing smoke, and walked to the far wall, just needing to move. "Now I'm going on and on about it again. But I don't like it. Two stupid men, one big, one little, and neither one of them is going to say he's wrong."

"But you said your younger brother was not wrong," !Xabbu pointed out "If he were to apologize, it is true that he would be showing respect for his father—but if he accepts blame that is not his, then he would also be submitting to injustice to maintain the peace. I think you are worried that would not be a good lesson."

"Exactly. His people—our people—had to fight against that for decades." Renie shrugged angrily and stubbed the cigarette out "But it's more than politics. I don't want him to think that might makes right, that if you are pushed down yourself, it's acceptable then to turn around and find someone weaker you can push down. I don't want him to end up like . . . like his. . . ."

!Xabbu held her gaze. He seemed capable of finishing the sentence for her, but didn't.

After a long pause, Renie cleared her throat "This is a waste of your tutorial time. I apologize. Shall we try that flowchart again? I know it's boring, but it's the kind of thing you're going to have to know for exams, however well you're doing with everything else."

!Xabbu raised an inquiring eyebrow, but she ignored it.

 

 

!Xabbu was standing at the edge of a sharp spur of rock. The mountainside stretched away beneath him, a curving, glass-smooth free fall of shiny black. In his outstretched palm lay an old-fashioned pocket watch. As Renie stared, !Xabbu began to take it apart.

"Move away from the edge," she called. Couldn't he see the danger? "Don't stand so close!"

!Xabbu looked up at her, his eyes crinkled into slits, and smiled. "I must find out how it works. There is a ghost inside it."

Before she could warn him again, he jerked, then held up his hand wonderingly, like a child; a drop of blood, round as a gem, became liquid and flowed down his palm.

"It bit me," he said. He took a step backward, then toppled over the precipice.

Renie found herself staring down from the edge. !Xabbu had vanished. She searched the depths, but could see nothing but mists and long-winged white birds, who circled slowly and made mournful sounds, te-wheep, te-wheep, te-wheep. . . .

 

She surfaced from the dream, her heart still pounding. Her pad was beeping at her, quiet but insistent. She fumbled for it on the night table. The digital numbers read 2:27 a.m.

"Answer." She flicked the screen upright.

It took her a moment to recognize Stephen's friend Eddie. He was crying, his tears a silver track on his blue-lit face. Her heart went cold inside her chest,

"Renie. . . ?"

"Where's Stephen?"

"He's . . . he's sick, Renie. I don't know. . . ."

"What do you mean, 'sick'? Where's your mama? Let me talk to her."

"She's not here."

"For God's sake. . . ! How is he sick, Eddie? Answer me!"

"He won't wake up. I don't know, Renie. He's sick."

Her hands were shaking. "Are you sure? He's not just sleeping very deeply?"

Eddie shook his head, confused and frightened. "I got up. He's . . . he's just lying there on the floor."

"Cover him with something. A blanket. I'll be right there. Tell your mother when she . . . shit, never mind. I'll be right there."

She phoned for an ambulance, gave them Eddie's address, then called a cab. While she waited, fever-chilled with worry, she scrabbled in her desk drawers for coins to make sure she had enough cash. Long Joseph had burned out their credit with the cab company months ago.

 

Except for a few dimly lit windows, there was no sign of life outside Eddie's flatblock—no ambulance, no police. A sliver of anger pierced Renie's fear. Thirty-five minutes already and no response. That would teach them all to live in Pinetown. Things crunched under her feet as she hurried across the entranceway.

A handwritten sign said the electronic lock on the main door was out of service; someone had since removed the whole latching mechanism with a crowbar. The stairwell stank of all the usual things, but there was also a scorched smell, faint but sharp, as of some long-ago fire. Renie took the stairs two at a time, running; she was gasping for breath when she reached the door. Eddie opened it. Two of his younger sisters sheltered behind him, eyes wide. The apartment was dark except for the jittery light of the wallscreen's static. Eddie stood, mouth working, frightened and prepared for some kind of punishment. Renie didn't wait for him to think of something to say.

Stephen lay on his side on the living-room carpet, curled slightly, his arms drawn against his chest. She pulled the threadbare blanket away and shook him, gently at first, but then with increasing force as she called his name. She turned him onto his back, terrified by the slackness of his limbs. Her hands moved from his narrow chest to the artery beneath his jaw. He was breathing, but slowly, and his heartbeat also seemed strong but measured. She had been forced to take a first-aid course as part of her teaching certificate, but could remember little beyond keeping the victim warm and administering mouth-to-mouth. Stephen didn't need that, at least not as far as she could tell. She lifted him and held him tight, trying to give him something, anything, that might bring him back. He seemed small but heavy. It had been some time since he had let her clutch him this uninhibitedly. The strangeness of his weight in her arms made her suddenly feel cold all over.

"What happened, Eddie?" Her heart felt as though it had been beating too fast for hours now. "Did you take some kind of drugs? Do some kind of charge?"

Stephen's friend shook his head violently. "We didn't do anything! Nothing!"

She took a deep breath, trying to clear her head. The apartment looked a surreal shambles in the silver-blue light, toys and clothes and unwashed dishes on every surface: there were no flat planes anywhere. "What did you eat? Did Stephen eat anything you didn't?"

Eddie shook his head again. "We just waved some stuff." He pointed to the packaged dinner boxes, not surprisingly still out on the counter.

Renie held her cheek close to Stephen's mouth just to feel his breath. As it touched her, warm and faintly sweet her eyes filled with tears. "Tell me what happened. Everything. God damn it, where is that ambulance?"

According to Eddie, they truly had done nothing much. His mother had gone out to her sister's, promising to be home by midnight They had downloaded some movies—the kind Renie wouldn't let Stephen watch at home, but nothing so horrible she could imagine it having a physical effect on him—and made dinner. After sending Eddie's sisters to bed, they had sat up for a while talking before putting themselves to bed as well.

". . . But I woke up. I don't know why. Stephen wasn't there. I just thought he went to the bathroom or something, but he didn't come back. And I kind of smelled something funny, so I was afraid maybe we'd left the wave on or something. So I went out. . . ." His voice hitched. He swallowed. "He was just lying there. . . ."

There was a knock at the unlatched door, which swung open. Two jumpsuited paramedics entered like storm troopers and brusquely took Stephen from her. She felt reluctant to let him go to these strangers, even though she herself had summoned them; she released some of her tension and fear by letting them know what she thought of their response time. They ignored her with professional elan as they quickly checked Stephen's vital signs. The clockwork performance of their routine ran down a bit as they discovered what Renie already knew: Stephen was alive but unconscious, and there was no sign of what had happened to him.

"We will take him to the hospital," one of them said. Renie thought he made it sound like a favor.

"I'll go with you." She didn't want to leave Eddie and his sisters alone—only God knew when their useless mother might turn up—so she called another cab, then wrote a hasty note explaining where they were all going. Since the local cab company was unfamiliar with her father, she was able to use a card.

As the paramedics loaded Stephen's gurney into the white van, she squeezed her brother's small, unmoving hand and leaned to kiss his cheek. It was still warm, which was reassuring, but his eyes were rolled up beneath his lids like those of a hanged man she had once seen in a history lesson. All she could see of them by the dim streetlights were two slivers of gray, screens showing an empty signal.