1.
Wass thi fukin problim heer? Doan a creetch get no respect 4 — (& am shoutin now angry & I drop thi twig from ma beak).
Then thi big red birdz foot cums out like itz bleedin leg is telescopic & zaps itself 2wards ma hed & raps round it & sqwishes me down b4 I can do anythin & I feel maself trapt & sqwelched down thru thi fabric ov thi metalic bird am perched upon & down thru thi bildin its part ov & down thru thi city & down thru thi grid & down thru thi erf beneaf & down & down & down & whots wurse I can feel that thi ring roun ma leg that had my wake-up code on it has gon like that big red bird swiped it when it hit me an shurenuf I cant fink whot thi hel thi wake-up coad is meenwhile am stil goin down an down an down an am finkin,
O shit…
THREE
1
'Ah, this must be she. Good morning, young lady.'
'Good morning, young lady.'
'I beg your…? Ah, well, no, though I am half flattered.'
'You not young lady, no?'
'Neither young nor remotely lady-like. My name is Pieter Velteseri; I understand you may not know your own name, but —'
'No, I do not.'
'Quite. Well, first let me welcome you to our estate and to our house, both of which are called Jenahbilys. Please; do sit down… Well, I meant… Ah, perhaps the seat might be more appropriate? There; behind you. You see? Like this.'
'Ah, not floor; seat.'
'There you are. Just so. Now… Ah, would you excuse me?… Gil, I can see this young lady's pudenda, and despite my surfeit of years it is most off-putting, if more in the memory than in the tumescence. Might we clothe her in something more, ah, complete than what would appear to be merely your jacket and fundamentally nothing else?'
'Sorry, uncle.'
'… What are you looking at me for?'
'Come on, Lucia; you could lend her something of yours.'
'Tech. She hasn't even been washed or anything yet; have you seen the state of her feet? Oh, all right…'
'… My nephew's friend has gone to fetch you some further attire. I thought she might take you, and… well, never mind. Perhaps you would like to come to the window over here? The view of the formal gardens is particularly pleasing. Gil, perhaps our young guest would like something to drink.'
'I'll attend to it, unc.'
The second man — of course not a lady, which was to do with women, like herself (and she had to search for the word she now felt; it was embarrassed) — the second man, who was old and a little stooped and had a crinkled face, motioned to one of the windows, and they both walked there while the first man, the young one, closed his eyes for a second. The view from the window was of a gravel and flower garden, arranged in a strange, half-swirling, half-geometric pattern. Small tracked machines rolled amongst the blooms, clipping and sorting.
A little later a small wheeled thing appeared in the room, humming quietly and carrying a tray which held four glasses, several bottles and some small filled bowls. Then Lucia Chimbers appeared with some clothes and took her to a side room where she showed her how to put on shorts, pants and a shirt.
They stood looking at their reflections in a long mirror for a moment. 'You on something deep?' Lucia Chimbers asked quietly.
She looked at Lucia Chimbers.
'Because if you are, I'd like to know what it is.'
'On something deep,' she repeated, frowning (and watched herself frown, in the mirror). 'In something deep, mean you? I mean; you mean?'
'Never mind.' The other woman sighed. 'Let's wheel you out there. See if the old man can get any sense out of you.'
'I believe she may be an asura,' Pieter Velteseri said, over lunch.
He had spent the morning patiently questioning the girl in an effort to determine what memories she possessed. From this he knew that she had appeared in the clan vault a few hours earlier, seemingly artificially rebirthed in the manner a family member might be were there no clan member suitably pregnant at the time of their scheduled reconstitution. Being born without warning, alone, and in adult form did make the girl unique in his experience, however. She had an extensive vocabulary but seemed uncertain how to employ it, though he had gained the impression that her linguistic skills had developed considerably just in the two hours or so of their conversation.
Gil and Lucia had sat in on his gentle inquisition for a while, then grown restless and gone for a swim. Lunch-time had reconvened them, though if he had been hoping to impress his nephew and Lucia with their guest's new-found articulacy it seemed Pieter was to be disappointed; the presence of large quantities of food seemed to have temporarily driven all thought of conversation from the girl's head.
They sat at one end of the dining-room table. The windows were open to the veranda and the curtains billowed slowly.
Pieter sat on one side of the table while the young lovers sat on the other, with their strange, fey guest at its head, a generously proportioned napkin tucked into the neck of her blouse and — another spread across her lap while she frowned and sighed and dipped her head down almost level with the table while she attempted to manipulate a knife, fork and spoon to the end of eating the food on her plate.
Gil and Lucia exchanged looks. Pieter watched the young woman at the head of the table attack a lobster claw with the wrong end of a heavy spoon, and sighed.
'On reflection, perhaps seafood salad was a mistake,' he said.
Bits of red-white carapace spattered across the table; their guest made an appreciative growling noise at the back of her throat and after sniffing at the meat revealed, sucked it out and sat back, chewing open-mouthed and smiling happily while looking at the other three diners. A cleaning servitor hummed and clicked from under the table and busied itself on the floor, gathering up the bits of food and debris the girl had let drop. She looked down at it, grinning, and swept more shards of lobster off the table and onto the floor.
'What,' Lucia asked Pieter, 'exactly is an assurer?'
'I can't find it either,' Gil said, smiling at Lucia and squeezing her hand. Like her, he was eating one-handed.
'An asura,' Pieter said, secretly pleased, though wondering if the two young people really couldn't find the word in their habitua or were just being polite. 'A Hindi word, originally,' he told them. 'It used to mean a demon or a giant opposed to the gods.'
Lucia wore that annoyed look Pieter had come to recognise as her reaction to anything that was not expressed through implants and which she thought ought to be. It was fairly common for those in the first inflationary rush of infatuation, lust or love to embrace almost exclusively the inner voicelessness of implant-articulation in preference to the somehow physically off-putting and clumsy medium of normal speech, and although Pieter did not think Lucia jealous of their guest — any more than Gil seemed able to spare the girl more than the most cursory attention — she did seem to resent both the simple distraction she represented and the fact Pieter had suggested they communicate by speech in deference to the girl's seeming total lack of implants.
'Hindi, hmm,' Gil said, obviously having to look the word up. 'So what does "asura" mean nowadays?' He smiled at Lucia, squeezing her hand again under the table.
'A sort of… natural, one might say,' Pieter replied (mischievously, knowing they would both have to look that up too). He spooned a little crabmeat and ate contemplatively while watching the girl flick bits of shell further and further away across the floor so that the cleaning machine described a zig-zag course towards the windows. 'Something generated semi-randomly by the corpus or some separate system for reasons of its own,' he went on, dabbing at his lips with a napkin. 'Usually to do with some required change impossible to achieve from within. A non-predictable variable; a wildness.'