!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."