“He’s talking old times with the Pakistanis, I think,” Allen said. “How can you be bored? There are some very famous people here.”
“I know. I blame myself.”
“Uh huh. You’d rather be hiking the Adirondacks , or — ”
“Don’t make my mouth water,” I said.
“Duty, honor, planet,” he said, and left to attend to another clump.
Bithras reappeared ten or fifteen minutes later, speaking earnestly with one of the Pakistani women. The woman listened attentively, nodding frequently. His face glowed with enthusiasm, and I felt glad for him. I couldn’t understand a word they said, however.
The party had expanded to fill the available space, and still more people were arriving. Miriam flitted from point to point in the crowd, rearranging conversations, herding people toward food or drink, a social sheep-dog.
Some of the people arriving now were, to my eye, beyond exotic. A musician from Hawaii and three young women in close-fitting black caps took much of the heat away from Allen and me. I recognized him from news stories. His name was Attu . Gaunt and intense, he dressed in a severe black suit. He had linked his consciousness with the three women, who dressed in filmy white, and whom he referred to as sisters. At intervals of ten minutes, they would rejoin, clasp hands, and exchange all their experiences. The women never spoke; Attu was their conduit. I avoided them. That sort of intimacy (and implied male domination) spooked me. I wondered why Miriam had invited them.
The evening was winding down, and the crowd beginning to diminish, when I saw one of the Pakistani men approach Miriam. Miriam raised herself on tiptoes and looked around, shook her head, and went off in search. Intuition had little to do with my guess that they were looking for Bithras.
I disengaged myself from several bankers and made my way down a hall that led to several smaller rooms. I did not want to interrupt anything private, but I had a bad feeling.
A door slid open suddenly and the Pakistani woman bumped into me. With a quick, angry glance, she rustled past in her long gray dress. Bithras emerged a moment later, biting his lower lip, eyes darting. He sidestepped me and said, “It is nothing, it is nothing.”
The Pakistanis gathered near the main door, talking heatedly. They searched the faces of the remaining party guests, focused on Bithras, and one of the men began to shove through other partygoers in his direction. The women restrained him, however, and the four departed.
Miriam stood at the door for a moment, uncertain what to do. Bithras sat in a chair, staring blankly, before standing with deliberation and going for a drink. Like me, he was having only juice.
Nothing more was said. An hour later, we left the party.
Bithras spent the next ten hours locked in his room with the lights out. He accepted his meals through the half-open door, glared at us owlishly, and shut it. Allen and I spent this time studying Alice ’s fresh reports on GEWA and GSHA.
The following morning, Bithras stepped out of his room in his bathrobe, hands on hips, and said, “It is time to take a vacation. You have two days. Do what you will. Be back here, in this room, by seven in the morning of Saturday next.”
“You’re taking some time off, as well, Uncle?” Allen asked.
Bithras smiled and shook his head. “I’ll be talking with a lot of people… If we were better than children at this sort of thing, we’d have brought an entire negotiating team. Nobody wanted to spend the money.” He practically spat the last three words. There were circles under his eyes; his skin had grayed with stress. “I can’t make all the decisions myself. I refuse to set policy for an entire world. If this is a new era for relations with Earth…” He waved his hand in the air as if describing the flight of birds. “It will take days to sort things out with the other syndics and governors. Alice will postpone her kiss with Jill and advise me. But you would only distract me. If I can’t come up with a way to turn this to our advantage, I will resign as syndic.”
His smile turned wolfish. “You can play their game. They think we are provincials, suckers for the taking. Maybe we are. You shall certainly act the part. Give interviews if you are asked. Say I am bewildered and disconsolate, and I do not know where to turn next. We are dismayed at the social slight, and find Earth to be incredibly rude.” He sat and rested his head in his hands. “May not be too far wrong.”
I called Orianna’s private number and left a message. Within two hours, Orianna returned my call and we made plans for a rendezvous in New York . Allen had his own plans; he was flying to Nepal .
An hour before I left the hotel, I felt dizzy and frightened. I wondered how we would be received on Mars if we failed here; what would our families think? If Bithras tumbled, would my career within Majumdar BM tumble with him?
By choosing to go with Bithras, I had become part of a monumental war of nerves, and it seemed clear we were losing. I resented being caught between two worlds; I hated power and authority and the very real, sweaty misery of responsibility. I might be part of a failure of historic proportions; I could disgrace my mother and father, my Binding Multiple.
I longed for the small warrens and cramped tunnels of Mars, for my confined and secure youth.
I knew there were bigger cities, more crowded cities — but New York ’s fifty million citizens caused this rabbit a new kind of claustrophobia. My apprehension changed from fear of the unknown to fear that I would simply be sucked up and digested.
Five hundred and twenty-three years old, New York appeared both ancient and new at once. I emerged from Penn Station surrounded by a rainbow of people, more than I had ever seen crowded together in one place in my life. I stood on a corner as hordes walked in a cold breeze and spatters of sleet.
In design, New York had kept much of its architectural history intact, yet there was hardly a building that had not been rebuilt or replaced. Architectural nano had worked its way through frames and walls, down through the soil and ancient foundations, redrawing wires and fibers, rerouting water pipes and sewers, leaving behind buildings resculpted in original or better materials, new infrastructures of metal and ceramic and plastic. Nothing seemed designed as a whole; everything had been assembled and even reassembled bits at a time, block by block or building by building.
And of course many of the buildings a New Yorker considered new were in fact older than any warren on Mars.
The people also had been rebuilt from the inside. Even in my confusion, they fascinated me. New people in New York the old city: transforms, their skins glistening like polished marble, black or white or rose, their golden or silver or azure eyes glinting as they passed, penetrating glances that seemed both friendly and challenging at once; designer bodies put on for a month or a year, the flesh shaped like clay; designs identifying status and social group, some ugly as protest, some thin and austere, others large and strong and — Earthy.
Lights flashed over the street, airborne arbeiters like fairies on a trod in one of my children’s vids, or, even more fantastic, huge fireflies; arbeiters flowed through the city in narrow channels underground and above. Slaved cabs followed glassy strips pressed into the asphalt and concrete and nano stone of the streets.
What fascinated me most about New York was that it worked.
Most submitted to medical nano, body therapy as well as mind. By and large, the city’s people were healthy, but medical arbeiters still patrolled the streets, searching for the untherapied few who might even now out of negligence or perverse self-destruction fall ill. Human diseases had been virtually eliminated, replaced by infestations of learning, against which I had chosen to be made immune. New Yorkers, like most people on Earth, lived in a soup of data itself alive.
Language and history and cultural updates filled the air. Viruses and bacteria poured forth from commercial ventilators in key locations, or could be acquired at infection booths, conveying everything the driven New Yorker might want to know. Immunizations prevented adverse reactions for natural visitors not used to the soup.