Safe House Part 4

"It's a jury-rig," Maj's mother said, not sounding entirely happy. "Your implant had a bandwidth limiter written into the code. I just circ.u.mvented it. It can be put back the way it was whenever you like. Are the visuals okay now?"

"Yes...!"

"Okay. Maj, check the sales area. It's getting to be the time of year when they'll be reducing prices on some of the spring boys' wear...and this is just for casual wear anyway. Niko doesn't have to worry about being a fashion plate at the moment. His luggage will be here in a while anyway. If you want to use the machine in my office, go ahead, I won't need it for an hour or so...."

"Okay, Mom, thanks. Stay there, Niko, I'll be with you in a minute...."

She went around to her mom's office and settled into the chair there. A moment later she was in her work s.p.a.ce, and Niko was standing there, looking around him in astonishment. "This is...very sophisticated," he said after a moment.

"A poor thing, but my own," said Maj. "Computer..."

"Yes, boss?" said her work s.p.a.ce.

"GearOnline, please. Boys' wear."

"Enter, please."

"Through here, Niko," Maj said, and opened the door at the back of her work s.p.a.ce, between the bookshelves. Niko went over to it, peered through.

"Bozhe moi," he said softly.

"I know," Maj said. They walked through the door together. "I don't shop here a lot anymore. It's too easy to get confused...."

The sheer "acreage" of the place always bewildered her a little; the designers had apparently decided to make this s.p.a.ce a direct virtual descendant of the old snail-mail catalogs from the distant past, so that every single thing the chain stocked was out here, arranged on a "floor" which Maj guessed was probably roughly equivalent to the area of the surface of the moon.

"Come on over here," she said, and led him over to what looked like a single changing room, standing there by itself in the middle of the vast floor full of clothes hanging up on racks and stacked up folded on shelves. "I don't see why we should wander around in all this and get lost. See this grid?" Maj pointed to a lighted square on the floor, all crisscrossed with grid lines. "Just stand here...."

Niko stepped onto it, bemused.

"Store computer, please..." Maj told it.

"Ready to be of service, ma'am. And thank you for shopping GearOnline!"

"Yeah, sure. Please do a measurement template for this gentleman. Niko, hold still, the thing'll get confused if you twitch."

The grid of light-lines peeled itself up off the "floor" and wrapped itself around Niko, molding itself to him. He held quite still, but Maj could understand his slightly alarmed look-the template's feel could be rather snug.

"Don't freak. It's getting the readings off the sensors in the chair," Maj said. "By the way, that was great, in the car...the story you were telling the m.u.f.fin, about the cows."

He gave her a slightly rueful look. "You mean you don't believe it, then."

"That you ride cows to work?" She had to laugh. "Have you ever ridden a cow?"

He laughed, too, then. "They are bony."

"And they dump you off and step on you," Maj said. "I tried it once when I was little and my folks took me to a farm. Once was enough. Riding horses, though, that's another matter."

"You ride-" There was a pause while he got rid of one set of gridwork, tried on another. "Funny."

Her eyebrows went up. "Why would it be funny?"

"Oh. Your name."

Maj blinked.

"In my language, Maj Maj might be short for might be short for amajzonu amajzonu. Amazon. A woman who rides."

She grinned a little. "Well," Maj said, "the name is really Madeline, but we don't use it much."

"A little cake? I think amazon amazon is better." is better."

The grid of light walked off Niko and stood to one side, a Niko-shaped webwork, glowing green. Niko brushed himself down and stared at it. "Now what do we do?"

"Go crazy trying to figure out what we want," Maj said. "Chair, please."

A chair appeared. She sat down. "You want to sit?" Maj said.

"Uh, no, it's all right," Niko said. "I was sitting a long time today."

"Okay. Store program," Maj said.

"Ready to be of service, ma'am, and-"

"Boy, I wish it wouldn't do that.... What kinds of things do you want to wear, Niko?"

"Uh-jeans would be fine. Maybe a shirt."

"Jeans," Maj said. Instantly a pair of them appeared on the wireframe model of Niko. "How do they look?"

He walked around the model. "And these will fit-"

"Real closely. The company will pull the closest match off the rack in the warehouse and van them over. They have a delivery run out this way a few times a day."

"Do they have to be blue?" he said.

"You want a different color?"

"Uh..." He smiled, a very small shy smile. "I always wanted black ones."

"Black, absolutely," said Maj, and the color of the jeans on the wireframe figure changed. She grinned at him. "Black's back in this year. Want the shirt that color, too? It'll look good on you."

"Yes!"

The heck with the sale stuff. "Formshirt, black," said Maj. One of the tight-fitting shirts that were coming in right now appeared on the wireframe. "How about that?"

His smile said it all.

"Great," said Maj. "Store program. Select both, purchase both."

"Account confirmation."

"Eighteen twelve," Maj said.

"Thank you. Pick up or send?"

"Send."

"Thank you. Your purchases will be dispatched from our Bethesda warehouse at ten A.M. A.M."

"That's it," Maj said, and got up. "Can you think of anything else you need?"

"Anything..." Niko looked out across that huge s.p.a.ce of clothes, across which Maj sometimes thought one should be able to see the curvature of the Earth. "No," Niko said, and sounded shy again. "But thank you."

She patted him on the shoulder. He jumped a little, as if taken by surprise. "It's okay," Maj said. "Come on, let's climb out of here, my mom's going to want her machine back."

"It is...a Sunday? And still your mother works?"

Maj rolled her eyes. "It's more like no one can stop her working. Come on..."

"And thank you for shopping at-" the system shouted after them, rather desperately, as they deactivated their implants.

Maj snickered as the two of them headed back into the kitchen. "Are you hungry?" Maj said.

"Uh..." He paused to look out the window at the backyard, which Maj's mother's tomatoes and rosebushes were threatening to take over, just as they always did this time of year. "Something to drink, maybe."

"Tea? Milk? Coffee?"

Niko didn't answer. He was leaning against the windowsill, apparently lost in thought. "Niko?" Maj said.

No response.

"Niko?!"

He jumped as if he had been shot, and turned around in a hurry. "Uh, sorry, yes..."

"Do you want some tea, or coffee, or-"

He stared at her...then relaxed, all over, so obvious a gesture that it practically shouted, I thought you were going to do something terrible to me...but it's all right now I thought you were going to do something terrible to me...but it's all right now. "Um," he said then. "Coffee, that would be good."

"How do you like it?"

"A lot of milk."

"Fine. We'll steal Mom's coffee-it's the best in the house." She got out one of her mother's single-pack drip coffee containers, put it on a mug, put the kettle on, and went to the fridge, opening it and rummaging around. "Let's see...Oh, here it is." She pulled out a quart of milk past the door scanner.

"That's the last liter," said the fridge. "Do you want more?"

"Jeez," Maj muttered, "the way we go through this stuff. My brother must just pour it over his-" As she turned, she saw that Niko was staring at the fridge, completely stunned.

"Your refrigerator talks? talks?" he said.

Maj blinked at that. "Oh. Yeah. Mostly to complain." She made an amused face, pulled the door open to show him the little gla.s.s plate set in it. "See, there's a scanner here, you run everything in front of it when you put things in after you go shopping. It keeps track of everything by the bar codes, and then when you run out, it orders more. It has a little Net connection inside, and it calls the grocery store. The delivery van comes around in the mornings and replaces what you've used up." She shook the liter carton, made a face. "It may not be soon enough, the way my brother drinks this stuff." She turned back to the door, waved the carton in front of it again.

"Ordering more," said the refrigerator.

Maj closed the door. "The new ones don't even ask," she said, "they just do it-they estimate your needs and update their own order lists. This one's kind of an antique, but there's something about the door handles my mother likes, and she won't get rid of it."

Niko sat down with a wry look. "Our refrigerators aren't...quite so talkative."

"Believe me, it might not be a bad thing," Maj said, sitting down across the table. "This one's always bugging me about using too much b.u.t.ter. My brother keeps enabling the 'dietary advice' function just to annoy me, and I have to keep turning it off." She made a face.

The kettle, which her mother must just have boiled, shrieked with very little waiting time. Maj poured the coffee first, then the tea, so they would come out together, then put them both on the table. Niko was already sitting down there.

"Niko-" she said.

This time there was something almost deliberate about the way he responded. "Yes."

"You look completely wrecked," Maj said.

He stared at her...and his face sagged, as if being confronted with his own weariness made it all right to reveal it. "Yes," he said. "Tired, you mean?"

"Tired, yes. Wasted. Utterly paved. Do you want to take a nap? Get some rest, I mean?"

"For a while," he said, "I would not mind."

"Have your coffee, first. There's no rush. You're-" She stopped herself, for her intention had been to say, You're safe here You're safe here. Then she realized that she had no idea why she was going to say it. Except that he had been carrying himself very much like someone who was not safe, someone who was seriously afraid.

Time to get this sorted out, Maj thought.

"You're among family," she said. "You don't have to sit up and be polite around us. You're jet-lagged, you look like you could use some rest. You rest as much as you want. When you feel like getting up, get up. Maybe later this evening. I have some Net stuff to do.... If you want to come along, you'd be welcome."

I can't believe I'm saying this, she thought. But he needs a friend right now, poor kid...and virtuality is one thing, but reality is another. Reality takes precedence But he needs a friend right now, poor kid...and virtuality is one thing, but reality is another. Reality takes precedence.

At the mention of the Net, his eyes lit up. "I would like that," he said. "Very much!"

"Yeah," Maj said. "Look, take your coffee with you...go on, get your rest. I'll wake you up around five, and you can come see what I'm up to. It's pretty neat."

He nodded and got up with his coffee cup. "It was the fourth room down?"

"Fourth room down. If the m.u.f.fin tries to bother you, just throw her out."

"She would not bother me," he said, and grinned briefly, and just for the moment looked much less tired. "She is very-cute?"

"Cute. You got that right," Maj said. "Welcome to America, kiddo. Go get some sleep."

He vanished down the hall. Maj waited about fifteen minutes, and then went to find her father.