14
SSSSSSS-POP
After her seventieth jump, a new message appeared in her infield. Thinking it might be Ronnie or Tash saying good morning, she opened it without thinking.
It said: “‘Woman, I behold thee, flippant, vain, and full of fancies.’”
The words hung in bold sans serif over her on the reflecting surfaces of the booth. The message was unsigned, but there was a winking reply patch associated with the text. The address was hidden by some kind of anonymizing protocol. The name was simply a long string of lowercase q’s with an ellipsis in the middle, which indicated that the full text exceeded the field’s maximum character length.
qqqqq . . . qqqqq
If someone she knew had sent the message, they were going out of their way to keep their identity a secret. But the text resonated with her. It was something she had read recently in school. The lines were from a poem, but they had been misquoted.
Clair could have ignored it and taken the next jump, back to Manteca for what felt like the thousandth time.
Instead she sent a reply. She was bored and restless and wondering if she had done enough to prove that Libby was right yet. What did it hurt to send a few words through the Air?
“If you’re going to quote Keats,” she bumped back, “at least do it properly.”
Nothing happened for a while, and she began to wonder if it ever would.
Then a new bump appeared from the same address.
“I Improved it.”
Clair felt gooseflesh rise up on her forearms. She folded her arms tightly across her chest.
There was no way anyone could see her in the booth, but she knew, suddenly, that she was being watched.
“Who are you?” she sent. “What do you want?”
The reply came in the form of another misquote.
“‘Your eyes are drunk with beauty your heart will never see.’”
Clair searched the Air for the source. It was from someone called George W. Russell. She didn’t know him from her writing class, but someone remembered him—or misremembered him, rather. The original line ran, “Our hearts are drunk with a beauty our eyes could never see.”
Whatever was going on, Clair decided to fight fire with fire.
“‘No object is so beautiful that, under certain conditions, it will not look ugly,’” she sent. “That’s Oscar Wilde, and I didn’t need to twist his words to make my point. It’s all about beholding, right, so why does anything need to be changed at all?”
Another bump arrived.
“‘That which does not change is not alive.’” Clair didn’t realize it was another quote until the source of the words added, “Sturgeon, exactly. The irony is mine.”
Clair was determined not to let her uneasiness show, whether she was talking to some random troll who had spotted her movements or a creep connected to Improvement somehow. If he wanted to chat, why not let him? Words couldn’t hurt anyone.
“Are we going to talk properly,” she bumped back, “or just sit here all day slinging quotes at each other?”
An incoming call patch began to flash.
She took a deep breath. This was it.
“Who are you, and what do you want?”
But the voice at the other end of the call was a familiar one.
“Clair?” said Zep. “Quit screwing around. I need you.”
15
CLAIR’S INFIELD SHOWED no return bumps, just Zep’s anxious face staring at hers.
“What is it?” she asked. “What’s going on?”
“It’s Libby. You have to get here, fast.”
“Where are you?”
“My dorm. Quick, she’s leaving.”
“I’m on my way.”
Clair hesitated just for a second. If someone was tracking her, this was exactly the wrong time to go anywhere.
But what else could she do?
She told the booth to take her to Zep’s and hoped for the best.
He lived in a cheap all-male dorm on the Isle of Shanghai. It was an open community, not sealed off from the outside world like a lot of natural-sports frats. Its gaggle of young men came from widely scattered regions, united only by the willingness to put their bodies through hell in exchange for a shot at fame.
The booth finished its work. Her nose was unchanged. The moment the doors opened, Clair knew she was in the right place.
The street outside was filled with the constant ding-dinging of bicycles in vigorous use, decorated with multicolored flags and ribbons. From every fabber streamed the aroma of spices. Shanghai was not so much a city as an inextricable tangle of numerous cultures and times, with traditions that stretched back centuries before d-mat.
Lines of market stalls stretched into the hazy distance, with hundreds of hawkers competing for the attention of passersby. The trade was in original goods—handmade, hand grown, freshly killed, or wrenched from the sea—but convincing customers that something was unique and not built from a fabber’s memory could be very difficult. Claims and counterclaims were being made in loud voices. The racket hurt Clair’s ears.
She hurried toward Zep’s quarters, bumping him to let her know she was on her way. The ground-floor entrance led to an elevator and a flight of stairs. She took the former to the third floor.
“Clair, through here,” Zep called when its doors opened.
She looked up, saw him waving, beyond a bunch of young men playing a haptic MMORPG in a communal hall. They jumped and tumbled like spastic acrobats, laughing and calling in a patois she didn’t understand. Someone whistled at her. She ignored him.
Zep’s room was no cleaner than usual. It was small, cluttered with trophies, and filled almost entirely with bed. There was a fabber in one corner. A pile of clothes lay next to it, awaiting recycling. There was an overwhelming scent of him, with a faint hint of familiar perfume around the edges.
“Where is she?”
“Gone.” Zep came around behind her and shut the door. “Libby’s out of control, Clair.”
“Out of control how?”
“Like crazy how. She came over last night—”
“I know she did. I spoke to her.”
“How did she seem to you?” If he noticed her accusatory tone, he didn’t say anything.
“We argued. She knows about us, I’m sure of it. Did you tell her?”
He shook his head. “She didn’t say anything to me about it.”
“Were you going to?”
“I don’t know. I couldn’t get a word in. She came out of nowhere. I had no warning at all.” He collapsed back onto the bed. It skreeked under his weight. “The very second she got here, we had to go out again. She had this terrible headache, she said. I can’t get meds from my fabber—doping regulations, you know—so we went to a friend of mine who gave her something really strong, something I’d never heard of before. Then she wanted a drink, and it didn’t mix so well. I tried to get her to cool down, but she wouldn’t listen. She was going on and on about awful stuff—things I’d never heard before about her family. If half of it is true, no wonder she’s such a mess.”
“What about her family?”
“How her grandmother was murdered in a death camp, and she was raped as a child. You must know all about this. You’ve been her friend forever.”
Clair rubbed at her temple with the ball of her right thumb. “She wasn’t raped as a child, and both her grandmothers are alive. I’ve met them.”