After a while, she returned and joined us. ‘You can feel a vibration,’ she said. She returned to the buggy and sat, arms folded across her chest, head down.
Cang Hai’s Account
13
Jealousy at the Oort Crowd
At this period, I used to like to go with my baby daughter to a small cafe on P. Lowell called the Oort Crowd. The talk there was all about Chimborazo. The threat from outside seemed to have drawn people together and the cafe was more crowded than ever.
My Ambient was choked with messages from Thorgeson, which alternated between apologies, supplications, abuse and endearments. I preferred cafe life, as did Alpha.
Although I did not wish to be impolite, I eventually sent Thorgeson a message: ‘Go to hell, you and your ventriloquist’s dummy!’ At the same time, I found some sheets on the Ambient network and tried to gain a better understanding of particle physics. I was making little progress, and called Kathi, asking if I might see her.
‘I’m busy, Cang Hai, sorry. We have problems.’
Trying to keep the disappointment from my voice, I asked her what the problems were.
‘Oh, you wouldn’t understand. There’s some trouble with the smudge ring. Stray vortices in the superfluid. We’re getting spurious effects. Sorry, must go. Meeting coming up. Love to Alpha.’ And she was gone.
Possibly this was what my Other in Chengdu had warned me about. I had been walking up a mountain with a king -or at least a man with a crown on his head. The air was so pure. We listened to bird song. Another man came along. He too had something on his head. Or perhaps it was a mask. I wanted him to join us. He smiled beautifully, before starting to run at a great pace up the mountain ahead of us. Then I saw a lake.
The manager of the Oort Crowd was Bevis Paskin Peters. He had taken over a department of the old Marvelos travel bureau. He ran the cafe very casually, being a part-time dress designer – the planet’s first. Peters was rather a heavy man, with a sullen set to his features that disappeared when he smiled at you. In those moments, he looked amazingly handsome.
However, Peters was not the reason I went to the Oort Crowd. Nor was Peters often there, leaving the running of the cafe to an assistant, a fair-haired wisp of a lad. I went because Alpha loved to watch the cephalopods. The front wall of the cafe consisted of a thin aquarium in which the little cephalopods lived, jetting their way about the tank like comets.
A YEA marine biologist had become so attached to his pets that he had brought two pairs with him to Mars. Convinced of their intelligence, he had built them a computer-operated maze. The maze, built from multicoloured perspex, occupied the tank. Its passageways and dead ends altered automatically every day. The cephalopods multiplied and had to be culled, so the Oort often had real Calamari on the menu. Ten of the creatures lived in the tank, and seemed to take pleasure in threading their way about the maze.
Alpha sat contentedly for hours, watching. Her particular admiration was for the way in which the squid changed body colour as they glided through the coloured passageways.
We were there one day – I was chatting to some other mothers – when in came Peters with a dark-skinned man I did not know, together with the famous Paula Gallin.
She scooped up Alpha, who knew her well, and kissed her passionately, calling endearments and making Alpha give her beautiful chuckle. The two men, meanwhile, were putting a cassette into a player at the rear of the bar.
Then Paula demanded the attention of the cafe’s clientele.
‘I just want you all to take a look at a piece of film. A sneak preview of my next production, okay? It won’t take a minute. Okay, guys.’
The mirror behind the bar opaqued and there were figures moving and talking. They were in a long hall, filmed in longshot. All was movement. A man and a woman were talking in the crowd, talking and quarrelling. In the main, they avoided each other’s gaze, shooting angry glances now and then. As they continued walking but their voices grew louder, the crowd about them froze into immobility.