neighbors, multicolored heads at the windows of theirsagging house adjoining his, Link and Natalie in the adjacent windowsfarthest from his front door, Mimi's face suspicious at her window, andwas that Krishna behind her, watching over her shoulder, hand betweenher wings, fingers tracing the scars depending from the muscles there?
He waved at them. The reluctant winter made every day feel like the daybefore a holiday weekend. The bankers and the retail slaves coming intoand out of the Market had a festive air.
He waved at the neighbors, and Link waved back, and then so did Natalie,and he hefted his sack of coffees from the Greek's suggestively, andMimi shut her curtains with a snap, but Natalie and Link smiled, and amoment later they were sitting in twig chairs on his porch in theirjammies, watching the world go past as the sun began to boil the air andthe coffee tasted as good as it smelled.
"Beautiful day," Natalie said rubbing the duckling fuzz on her scalp andclosing her eyes.
"Found any work yet?" Alan said remembering his promise to put her intouch with one of his fashionista protégés.
She made a face. "In a video store. Bo-ring."
Link made a rude noise. "You are *so* spoiled. Not just any video store,she's working at Martian Signal on Queen Street."
Alan knew it, a great shop with a huge selection of cult movies and abrisk trade in zines, transgressive literature, action figures andT-shirts.
"It must be great there," he said.
She smiled and looked away. "It's okay." She bit her lip. "I don't thinkI like working retail," she said.
"Ah, retail!" he said. "Retail would be fantastic if it wasn't for thefucking customers."
She giggled.
"Don't let them get to you," he said. "Get to be really smart about thestock, so that there's always something you know more about than theydo, and when that isn't true, get them to *teach you* more so you'll bein control the next time."
She nodded.
"And have fun with the computer when it's slow," he said.
"What?"
"A store like that, it's got the home phone number of about seventypercent of the people in Toronto you'd want to ever hang out with. Mostof your school friends, even the ones you've lost track of. All thethings they've rented. All their old addresses -- you can figure outwho's living together, who gave their apartment to whom, all of thatstuff. That kind of database is way more fun than you realize. You canget lost in it for months."
She was nodding slowly. "I can see that," she said. She upended hercoffee and set it down. "Listen, Arbus --" she began, then bit her lipagain. She looked at Link, who tugged at his fading pink shock of hair.
"It's nothing," he said. "We get emotionally overwrought about friendsand family. I have as much to apologize for as... Well, I owe you anapology." They stared at the park across the street, at the damagedwading pool where Edward had vanished.
"So, sorries all 'round and kisses and hugs, and now we're all friendsagain, huh?" Link said. Natalie made a rude noise and ruffled his hair,then wiped her hand off on his shirt.
Alan, though, solemnly shook each of their hands in turn, and thankedthem. When he was done, he felt as though a weight had been lifted fromhim. Next door, Mimi's window slammed shut.
"What is it you're doing around here, Akin?" Link said. "I keep seeingyou running around with ladders and tool belts. I thought you were awriter. Are you soundproofing the whole Market?"
"I never told you?" Alan said. He'd been explaining wireless networkingto anyone who could sit still and had been beginning to believe thathe'd run it down for every denizen of Kensington, but he'd forgotten toclue in his own neighbors!
"Right," he said. "Are you seated comfortably? Then I shall begin. Whenwe connect computers together, we call it a network. There's a *big*network of millions of computers, called the Internet."
"Even *I* know this," Natalie said.
"Shush," Alan said. "I'll start at the beginning, where I started a yearago, and work my way forward. It's weird, it's big and it's cool." Andhe told them the story, the things he'd learned from Kurt, the argumentshe'd honed on the shopkeepers, the things Lyman had told him.
"So that's the holy mission," he said at last. "You give everyone avoice and a chance to speak on a level playing field with the rich andpowerful, and you make democracy, which is good."
He looked at Link and Natalie, who were looking to one another ratherintensely, communicating in some silent idiom of sibling body-language.
"Plate-o-shrimp," Natalie said.
"Funny coincidence," Link said.
"We were just talking about this yesterday."
"Spectrum?" Alan quirked his eyebrows.
"No, not exactly," Natalie said. "About making a difference. About holymissions. Wondering if there were any left."
"I mean," Link said, "riding a bike or renting out videos are honestways to make a living and all, and they keep us in beer and rent money,but they're not --"
"-- *important*." Natalie said.
"Ah," Alan said.
"Ah?"
"Well, that's the thing we all want, right? Making a difference."
"Yeah."
"Which is why you went into fashion," Link said giving her skinnyshoulder a playful shove.
She shoved him back. "And why *you* went into electrical engineering!"
"Okay," Alan said. "It's not necessarily about what career youpick. It's about how you do what you do. Natalie, you told me you usedto shop at Tropicál."
She nodded.
"You liked it, you used to shop there, right?"
"Yeah."
"And it inspired you to go into fashion design. It also providedemployment for a couple dozen people over the years. I sometimes got tohelp out little alternative girls from North Toronto buy vintage promdresses at the end of the year, and I helped Motown revival bands puttogether matching outfits of red blazers and wide trousers. Four or fivelittle shops opened up nearby selling the same kind of thing, imitatingme -- that whole little strip down there started with Tropicál."
Natalie nodded. "Okay, I knew that, I guess. But it's not the same as*really* making a difference, is it?"
Link flicked his butt to the curb. "You're changing people's lives forthe better either way, right?"
"Exactly," Alan said.
Then Link grinned. "But there's something pretty, oh, I dunno, *ballsy*,about this wireless thing, yeah? It's not the same."
"Not the same," Alan said grinning. "Better."
"How can we help?"
#
Kurt had an assembly line cranking out his access points now. Half adozen street kids worked in the front of his place, in a cleared-outspace with a makeshift workbench made from bowed plywood and scratchedIKEA table-legs. It made Alan feel better to watch them making sense ofit all, made him feel a little like he felt when he was working on TheInventory. The kids worked from noon, when Kurt got back from breakfast,until 9 or 10, when he went out to dive.
The kids were smart, but screwed up: half by teenaged hormones and halfby bad parents or bad drugs or just bad brain chemistry. Alan understoodtheir type, trying to carve some atom of individual identity away fromfamily and background, putting pins through their bodies and affectingunconvincing tough mannerisms. They were often bright -- the usedbookstore had been full of their type, buying good, beat-up books offthe sale rack for 50 cents, trading them back for 20 cents' credit thenext day, and buying more.
Natalie and Link were in that morning, along with some newcomers,Montreal street punks trying their hand at something other than squeegeebumming. The punks and his neighbors gave each other uneasy looks, butAlan had deliberately put the sugar for the coffee at the punks' end ofthe table and the cream in front of Natalie and the stirs by thebathroom door with the baklava and the napkins, so a rudimentary socialintercourse was begun.
First, one of the punks (who had a rusty "NO FUTURE" pin that Alanthought would probably go for real coin on the collectors' market) askedNatalie to pass her the cream. Then Link and anoth
er punk (foppy sillyblack hair and a cut-down private school blazer with the short sleevespinned on with rows of safety pins) met over the baklava, and the punkoffered Link a napkin. Another punk spilled her coffee on her lap,screeching horrendous Quebecois blasphemies as curses, and that crackedeveryone up, and Arnold, watching from near the blanket that fenced offKurt's monkish sleeping area, figured that they would get along.
"Kurt," he said pulling aside the blanket, handing a double-doublecoffee over to Kurt