Absorption (12 page)

His taciturn guide spoke for the second time. “A pity you’re not better equipped. You can’t see the center of the circle.”

Would nanotechnology have sharpened his eyesight? More likely information would have been conveyed directly to the visual portions of his brain: the occipital lobes. It gave Brett great satisfaction to pull the utility computer off his belt. The lens wasn’t meant for this, but it could perform to the standard of a decent pair of binoculars.

Michael and Ariel led the dance from the center stage. Michael was resplendent in white and gold. Ariel wore blue robes trimmed with gold, superficially similar to Brett’s new guide, but cut to flatter her figure and make dancing easier. The rest of the crowd did not mimic their moves, but made them into the core of a living work of art.

When Brett finally looked up, he was alone amidst the dancers who weaved around him effortlessly. The man whose name he did not know had vanished. Brett stood there awkwardly. It occurred to him that Williams had been right, that it was Brett who had underestimated by orders of magnitude how alien the Oceanians were. Whatever point Michael had wanted to prove, he had proved in spades. He and Ariel looked perfect together. Brett stood still as the wave of bodies flowed past him.

“Major?”

Brett turned around. The woman who had fed him a few hours ago approached, frowning. She had removed her oversized skull cap and held it in her hand. The dancers flowed around her as well.

“Pardon me, but I’m wondering if something’s wrong here. Is it really true you’re walking around doing nothing as some kind of political statement? Michael Waterborn invited you to Herbirthday and offered to help you participate as fully as possible, but you insisted this was what you wanted?”

It would sound indescribably petty to complain about how today had made him feel, and admitting it aloud would be a defeat of sorts. Brett replied casually, sticking his hands in his pockets. “Not exactly. Michael was telling me about the gap between people who used nannies and people who didn’t. It wasn’t quite clear the demonstration he had planned when he invited me. It’s no big deal though.”

The frown became deeper, and she shook her head. “It’s not supposed to be that way. Herbirthday celebrations were originally intended to show people not from Oceania how much fun life could be our way.”

Brett noticed a bit of sweat on her face.

He replied, “I didn’t come here plotting rudeness or party pooping, no.”

As she stood on the gently sloping stone talking to Brett, a few of the dancers glanced as they passed. Nobody stopped to listen.

“I want to find out what’s happening here, but I’m not sure how long it will take. Meanwhile I want you to participate in at least one thing while you’re here. I’m going to put this back on. I won’t forget you’re here.”

She donned the cap just as Brett wondered if he should try and prevent her, lest she forget him again. A two seat electric cart rolled up and stopped in front of them rather like a friendly dog. Brett saw no steering mechanism. His companion stepped up through one open side. When he didn’t move she waved towards the other side with a hand. “Come on.”

Brett shrugged and got in. The white vehicle didn’t look that fast, he could probably dive out at full speed without serious injury.

The crowd parted, making a wide lane for them. For all Brett knew the cart was automatic, but he suspected his companion was steering it with the cap, just as she had summoned it. He imagined the sound of her jade earrings tinkling in the breeze, though the noise around them drowned it out.

“Do all those people mind being made to move out of the way like that?”

She shook her head. “They don’t see it that way. If you mingle in a crowd, you might walk around a little without even realizing it. Of course anyone who looks can see the result and figure out we’re behind it, but they don’t feel as if they were ‘made’ to move.”

And nobody felt as if they were made to forget about him, or made to assume he wanted to be stared through. Well, he was already pretty sure there were bigger problems than that with the ‘nannies.’

The cart rolled smoothly to a stop, and his escort waved towards the surrounding grass as she spoke. “Could you wait here awhile? I want to talk to a few people face to face and make them take off their hats.”

Brett complied. A couple of large grey gym mats covered a level patch of ground. Two barefoot men stood on them. One of them wore a white martial arts robe with a red belt. The other wore loose blue pants and a large yellow shirt.

The man in blue and yellow put a hand on the other’s shoulder, in what from a distance might have seemed a gesture of friendship. When redbelt countered, the attacker used one foot to sweep both the target’s legs out from under him. The follow-though wasn’t quite right, and they spent several minutes on the mats grappling for wrestling holds.

Brett barely noticed the cart roll away.

The next couple of matches looked more like Judo than anything else, but informal and with moves from several arts. Nobody wore a gi. There was some striking, but no head blows while he watched.

Another man with a red belt feinted a tripping attack and shifted to a hip throw. He knew the moves correctly, but the timing was wrong. Red belt was pulled off balance. His opponent stepped round his hip and threw him.

Brett thought of Qi, a concept he had heard discussed by a few sensei, which had seemed unnecessarily mystical at the time. He kept watching, trying to decide how these students were similar to and different from others he had known. Brett remembered the casual soccer and volleyball games he had seen earlier. If this was a collection of anyone nearby with even a casual interest in Judo, the quality was surprisingly high. Did the nannies make learning martial arts faster and easier? Brett tried to remember something he had heard awhile ago, at the party where he had met Ariel. It didn’t quite come to mind.

Despite the first few matches he had witnessed, most of the moves he saw later weren’t from Judo. He saw many moves from the softer form of Aikido, which focused on merely not being where the opponent was attacking. Often these were followed up by harder moves from Aikido or other martial arts, when the opponent was off balance or out of position. He saw Jiu-jitsu and Tai Chi moves as well. The practitioners seemed to be avoiding blows to the head, and a few other types that might be painful even in a sparring match.

Inevitably, Brett began to wonder how he would do in these matches. There were no moves he couldn’t handle. Although his brown belt was in Judo, Brett had practiced with many people under many conditions. He was ready for the striking he saw. The participants seemed to know many moves, but Brett saw sloppiness in some of the executions. He could take most of these people, if not all of them. Still there was something unusual about the way these people thought, something that might give him an extra edge if only he could isolate it.

As he watched longer, patterns began to emerge. It wasn’t that they didn’t know different moves, or use them. It was just that many of them had similar styles – more so than if they had merely been taught by the same Sensei. Then it clicked. Many here had had skills copied into their brains via the nanotech interface. There were several groups. Perhaps several different masters were sharing their skills.

He wasn’t the only one to make that observation. The better students took advantage of it as well, often anticipating the moves of many opponents.

Then Brett saw Kenny. The party where they had first met, and where Michael had issued his misleading invitation, now seemed long ago. Kenny wore denim pants and a T-shirt. At first their meeting seemed an odd coincidence, but considering that Kenny and he both practiced martial arts, perhaps it wasn’t. Although… how had the woman with jade earrings divined his interest in martial arts?

Brett watched and was no longer sure he could beat him. Nevertheless he started doing warm up exercises. He was perversely pleased to see Kenny won most of his matches, and was still on the mats when the others had retired. He gave Kenny a few minutes to catch his wind. Brett wasn’t dressed for Judo, but when he took off the belt with the metal buckle, he felt outfitted well enough. The pants were loose enough not to constrict him, and tight enough so they wouldn’t slide down.

“Hi, Kenny.”

Kenny saw him for the first time, and broke the odd silence which presumably meant people were chatting nonvocally. “I thought you hadn’t come. They interviewed people without Nannies to find out what they would enjoy, and you weren’t there.”

“Somebody told me there was some kind of mix up.”

Kenny frowned. “It’s a little hard to see how that could happen. The ministers are in mental contact with most of the people here, and many of them must have noticed you. One of the pages would have been sent for you. I don’t suppose Michael -”

Brett didn’t know, and he didn’t feel like talking about it. He broke in. “I think someone’s trying to sort it out now. It’s true I haven’t done much today. Maybe we could try a few throws? I know you’re already tired, but on the other hand I’m an old man.”

Kenny didn’t really look tired. Brett was hoping he would deny it, to eliminate it as an excuse afterwards.

“I’m not tired. And I shouldn’t have said that. I’d be happy to try two or three throws with you.”

Brett took off his shoes and walked on the mat.

Brett started out as if to use a throw that Kenny had always dealt with in one particular way. When Kenny tried his counterthrow, Brett moved swiftly from his feint and had Kenny hitting the mat.

Brett started out the exact same way for the second throw, prepared for two different counters. Kenny might have his habitual response so deeply imprinted that it would work the same way twice. Or Kenny might be prepared for the feint. It was the latter, but Brett still managed to throw him.

Every instinct was alert as they prepared for one more round. Kenny started to use a throw Brett had already seen him use several times, but Brett knew he was smarter than that. When the feint turned into the real combination, Brett was ready to roll Kenny on the mat for the third time.

Brett tried to look nonchalant as the people standing around broke into spontaneous applause, breaking the almost eerie silence.

“Just a few lucky throws, everyone. I just feel bad the poor guy had to get thrown by an old man. Lemme totter off now and see if I can find my cane.”

“Shut up,” Kenny told him. His grin and cheerful tone belied the words.

It seemed the spell of invisibility was broken. People congratulated him, and talked with him about his technique. He wasn’t going to mention who he was at first, but everyone except him was wearing a skullcap, and they all knew. He had given up fending off questions and had started telling a story from Roundhouse when someone pointed behind him and said, “Stella’s back.”

Brett said farewell to his new acquaintances. Stella was apparently the red robed woman with the jade earrings. Brett’s day was looking up, and he felt if he asked just the right question he might even understand what was happening. The best he could come up with was to ask Stella what all the robes meant.

“Red is for junior ministers.”

The cart steered around a hummock before she continued.

“Blue is for ministers, and blue trimmed with gold is for senior ministers.”

The cart ignored another hummock. The wheels left the ground for a moment as they came down the other side. Did the cart move automatically, or did she steer with her thoughts? Brett inquired, “Is this thing insured?”

She ignored that question, and continued replying to his previous one. “The Prince of the Feast chooses his own costume. Hold on a sec, some people are waiting to talk to you, and I want to make sure we didn’t get turned around here.”

She frowned in concentration for a moment, and the cart sped up sharply. Brett hoped that meant she was confident that she was headed the right way, not merely that she was trying to compensate for uncertainty with speed.

Contrary to Stella’s prediction, nobody waited for them. Brett heard an argument already in progress. As they rolled to a stop, Brett’s attention was drawn to a wizened old gnome, much spryer than the ambassador had been. His skullcap was about a dozen feet away, as if he had thrown rather than placed it on the ground. He was pointing a finger at Michael, his voice was raised, and his face was red with anger.

“I’m not accusing you of violating a tradition of hospitality centuries old for some bizarre vendetta against someone who danced with your girlfriend for a few minutes.”

Was this long winded non-accusation to do with him? If so, how had the short man known? He supposed it was a tradition of hospitality from the Oceanian point of view. Oceanians had always welcomed those who were willing to learn their ways. Spiders always welcomed flies too.

The short man was still yelling. “If you feel what you’ve let Mr. Fletcher pour into your brain is less interesting than what you’ve made of yourself, I’d be the last one to accuse you of having an inferiority complex. I’m willing to concede you are inferior.”

A longstanding argument? The name Fletcher was vaguely familiar. Brett found the idea of letting someone else program his brain chilling, but wasn’t that what Oceanians did? If Shorty was so opposed, why was he wearing a blue and gold robe?