Ancient eyes turned to look at him. "I couldn't care less, Mr. Orozco."
O-kay ! Hmm. There was lots about Winston Blount that was public record, even some legacy newsgroup correspondence. That was always good for getting a grown-up's, um, attention.
Fortunately, Blount continued talking on his own. "I'm not like some of the people here. I've never been senile. By rights, I shouldn't be here."
"By rights?" Maybe he could score points just by imitating an old-time shrink program.
"Yes. I was Dean of Arts and Letters through 2012. I was on track to be UCSD Chancellor. Instead I was pushed into academic retirement."
Juan knew all that. "But you… you never learned to wear."
Blount's eyes narrowed. "I made it a point never to wear. I thought wearing was a demeaning fad." He shrugged. "I was wrong. I paid a heavy price for that. But things have changed." His eyes glittered with deliberate iridescence. "I've taken four semesters of this 'Adult Education.' Now my resume is out there in the ether."
"You must know a lot of important people."
"Indeed. Success is just a matter of time."
"Y-You know, Dean, I may be able to help. No wait — I don't mean by myself. I have an affiliance you might be interested in."
"Oh?"
He seemed to know what affiliance was. Juan explained Big Lizard's deal. "So there could be some real money in this." He showed him the payoff certificates, and wondered how much his recruit would see there.
Blount squinted his eyes, no doubt trying to parse the certificates into a form that Bank of America could validate. After a moment he nodded, without granting Juan numerical enlightenment. "But money isn't everything, especially in my situation."
"Well, um, I bet whoever's behind these certs would have a lot of angles. Maybe you could get a conversion to help-in-kind. I mean, to something you need."
"True." They talked a few minutes, till the place got busy. Some of the shop projects were finally showing results. At least two teams had made mobile nodes, swarm devices. Tiny paper wings fluttered all around. The other swarmer crawled in the grass and up the legs of the furniture and chairs. It stayed out of clothes, but it was awfully close to being intrusive. Juan zapped a few of them, but the others kept coming.
Orozco — > Blount: <sm>Can you read me?</sm>
"Of course I can," replied the old man.
So despite Blount's claims of withittude, he couldn't manage silent messaging, not even the finger tapping most grown-ups used.
The class period was almost over anyway. Juan looked up at the billowing tent fabric. He was a little discouraged. He had covered almost everyone on the list, and Winston Blount was the best he'd found: someone who couldn't even sming. "Okay. Well, keep my offer in mind, Dean Blount. And remember, there are only a limited number of people I'm allowed to take in." Blount rewarded this sales jabber with a thin smile. "Meantime, I-I have other possibilities." Juan nodded in the direction of the weird new guy, Robert Gu.
Winston Blount didn't follow Juan's gaze, but you could tell he was sneaking a peek sideways. For a moment the skin on his face seemed to tighten. Then the smile returned. "May God have mercy on your soul, Mr. Orozco."
Juan didn't get his chance at Robert Gu till Friday, right after Ms. Chumlig's other class. Creative Composition was almost always the low point of Juan's school week. Chumlig was flexible as to media, but students had to stand up and perform their own work. That was bad enough when you had to watch some other kid mess up, but unbearable when you were the performer. Order of appearance was decided at Ms. Chumlig's whim. Normally worrying about that would have occupied most of Juan's attention. Today, he had other concerns that mercifully blotted out the usual panic.
Juan skulked to the back of the class and slumped down, covertly watching the others. Winston Blount was here, which was a surprise. He blew off this class almost as often as he did shop. But he took me up on my offer . The Lizard's account showed that the old man had taken his first step toward signing on.
On the far side of the room, Robert Gu was surfing with his view-page. Even that looked like a struggle for the guy. But it turned out that Gu was part of a particular Marine Corps family — and when Juan had reviewed all of the affiliation instructions he had found that that was a big plus. If he could just interest Robert Gu in affiliation, he'd hit the top bonus level.
Chumlig's voice cut across his thought. "No volunteers for first up? Well — " she looked off into the air, and then turned to Juan.
¡Caray!
06
So Much Technology, So Little Talent
Chumlig's "Creative Composition" class was shaping up to be the low point of Robert Gu's first week at Fairmont High. Robert remembered his own high-school years very well. In 1965, school had been easy, except for math and science, which he didn't care about anyway. Basically, he never did homework in anything. But the poems he wrote, almost without conscious effort, were already in a different world from what his poor teachers normally encountered. They considered themselves blessed to be in his presence — and rightly so.
But in this brave new world he could see only a fraction of the "compositions" the students allegedly created, and he had no doubt they could appreciate very little about his work.
Robert sat at the edge of the class, doodling on his view-page. As usual, the children were on the left side of the room, and the Adult Ed students were on the right. Losers. He had learned a few names, even talked to the Xiang woman. She said she was going to have to drop Chumlig's composition class. She just didn't have the courage to perform in front of others. The only talent she had was in obsolete engineering, but at least she was smart enough to know she was a loser. Not like Winston Blount, the biggest loser of all. Occasionally he caught Winnie looking his way, and Robert would smile to himself.
At the front of the class, Ms. Chumlig was coaxing today's first performer. "I know you've been practicing, Juan. Show us what you can do."
"Juan" stood and walked to center stage. This was the kid who had been chatting up the Adult Ed students in shop class. Robert remembered his earnest sales-rep behavior. At a guess, the boy was on the low side of average, the kind that high schools of Robert's time graduated pro forma. But here, in the twenty-first century, incompetence was no excuse: Chumlig seemed to have serious expectations. The boy hesitated and then began waving his arms. Without any visible effect. "I don' know, Ms. Chumlig, it's still not, um, fully ready."
Ms. Chumlig just nodded patiently, and gestured for him to continue.
"Okay." The boy squinted his eyes and his armwaving became even more chaotic. It wasn't dance, and the boy wasn't speaking. But Chumlig leaned back against her desk, and nodded. Much of the class watched the random mime with similar attention, and Robert noticed that they were nodding their heads as if in time to music.
Crap . More invisible nonsense. Robert looked down at his magic foolscap and played with the local browser selections. Internet Explorer was much as he remembered, but there were dropdowns that allowed him to "Select View." Yes, the fantasy overlays. He tapped on "Juan Orozco Performs." The first overlay looked like graffiti, rude commentary on Juan's performance. It was the sort of thing you might see on a note passed furtively from child to child. He tapped the second view selection. Ah. Here the boy stood on a concert stage. The classroom windows behind him opened onto a vast city as seen from a high tower. Robert held his hand along the margin of the page, and there was sound. It was tinny and faint compared with the room audio back in the house, but… yes, it was music. It was almost Wagner, but then it rambled off into something that might have been a marching song. In the window on Robert's view-page, rainbows formed around the boy's image. Fluffy white — ferrets ? — hopped into existence at every jerk of his hands. Now all the other kids were laughing. Juan was laughing too, but his handwaving became desperate. Ferrets covered the floor, shoulder-to-shoulder, and the music was frenetic. The creatures misted together into snow and lifted on miniature tornadoes. The boy slowed his rhythm, and the sound became something like lullaby music. The snow glistened, sublimating into invisibility as the music faded. And now Robert's browser window showed the same unmagical child who stood in reality at the front of the room.