Bruce Sterling - In Paradise

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2024-11-24 0 0 17.4KB 6 页 5.9玖币

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BRUCE STERLING

IN PARADISE

THE MACHINES BROKE DOWN so much that it was comical, but the security people

never laughed about that.

Felix could endure the delay, for plumbers billed by the hour. He opened his

tool kit, extracted a plastic flask and had a solid nip of Scotch.

The Moslem girl was chattering into her phone. Her dad and another bearded

weirdo had passed through the big metal frame just as the scanner broke down.

So these two somber, suited old men were getting the full third degree with

the hand wands, while daughter was stuck. Daughter wore a long baggy coat and

thick black headscarf and a surprisingly sexy pair of sandals. Between her and

her minders stretched the no man's land of official insecurity. She waved

across the gap.

The security geeks found something metallic in the black wool jacket of the

Wicked Uncle. Of course it was harmless, but they had to run their full

ritual, lest they die of boredom at their posts. As the Scotch settled in,

Felix felt time stretch like taffy. Little Miss Mujihadeen discovered that her

phone was dying. She banged at it with the flat of her hand.

The line of hopeful shoppers, grimly waiting to stimulate the economy, shifted

in their disgruntlement. It was a bad, bleak scene. It crushed Felix's heart

within him. He longed to leap to his feet and harangue the lot of them. Wake

up, he wanted to scream at them, cheer up, act more human. He felt the urge

keenly, but it scared people when he cut loose like that. They really hated

it. And so did he. He knew he couldn't look them in the eye. It would only

make a lot of trouble.

The Mideastern men shouted at the girl. She waved her dead phone at them, as

if another breakdown was going to help their mood. Then Felix noticed that she

shared his own make of cell phone. She had a rather ahead-of-the-curve Finnish

model that he'd spent a lot of money on. So Felix rose and sidled over.

"Help you out with that phone, ma'am?"

She gave him the paralyzed look of a coed stuck with a dripping tap. "No

English?," he concluded. "Habla español, senorita?" No such luck.

He offered her his own phone. No, she didn't care to use it. Surprised and

even a little hurt by this rejection, Felix took his first good look at her,

and realized with a lurch that she was pretty. What eyes! They were

whirlpools. The line of her lips was like the tapered edge of a rose leaf.

"It's your battery," he told her. Though she had not a word of English, she

obviously got it about phone batteries. After some gestured persuasion, she

was willing to trade her dead battery for his. There was a fine and delicate

little moment when his fingertips extracted her power supply, and he inserted

his own unit into that golden-lined copper cavity. Her display leapt to life

with an eager flash of numerals. Felix pressed a button or two, smiled

winningly, and handed her phone back.

She dialed in a hurry, and bearded Evil Dad lifted his phone to answer, and

life became much easier on the nerves. Then, with a groaning buzz, the scanner

came back on. Dad and Uncle waved a command at her, like lifers turned to

trusty prison guards, and she scampered through the metal gate and never

looked back.

She had taken his battery. Well, no problem. He would treasure the one she had

given him.

Felix gallantly let the little crowd through before he himself cleared

security. The geeks always went nuts about his plumbing tools, but then again,

they had to. He found the assignment: a chi-chi place that sold fake antiques

and potpourri. The manager's office had a clogged drain. As he worked, Felix

recharged the phone. Then he socked them for a sum that made them wince.

On his leisurely way out -- whoa, there was Miss Cell phone, that looker, that

little goddess, browsing in a jewelry store over Korean gold chains and

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