screen and touch something. I wasn’t the only one who couldn’t believe what I saw.
But when I reached out, my hand felt the screen, soft and yielding-it wouldn’t let me past to touch what was inside. I jerked back, afraid that somehow it knew me for what I was. I stood still again for a long minute, with my heart beating too hard. But nothing more happened, and finally I realized that nothing was going to. I started to believe that there was only one thing different about me that it could have known: I didn’t have a data bracelet. Not guilt, just Insufficient Credit. I noticed that somebody had scrawled something with a marker on the base below the display; a single, simple word. I knew all the letters. I sounded them out, and when I heard what it said, I laughed. I thought about the walls in Oldcity, covered with words like that. I’d put some of them there myself, but I’d never known what I was copying; I never even cared. I just wanted to make my mark somehow, someway, on a world that didn’t know I was alive. It was strange to realize there were really people up here who felt the same way. For a second I thought about Jule.
I moved on, with my hands in my pockets, searching for a credit marker or a camph, for anything; knowing in that same sick moment just how empty they were. Then my fingers closed on something solid. I pulled it out into my hand: candy. I’d stuffed my pockets full of the damned things whenever I could, in the cafeteria at the Institute. One piece left. I closed my fingers over it, opened them again. I put it into my mouth, felt it dissolve and the dark, oily sweetness cover my tongue.
It didn’t last long. After it was gone, I began to taste the smells in the air around me. There were places to eat here, just like in Oldcity. Even the gods had to eat. Most of it smelled better than anything I remembered-maybe because there wasn’t Oldcity’s stink mixed into it, or maybe just because it was here and I was hungry. Hungry. My throat ached with the thought. It was too easy to forget how it felt to be . . . No. It was too easy to remember. But without a data bracelet I was scared even to try a lift or a doorway and feel it turn me back again.
The day was closing in on evening; there were more people on foot now, children as well as adults. I wondered where they went all day. Maybe just someplace cool. It was getting loud and confusing and hard to move; my mind started to buzz with the feedback of too many other minds. I wove a defense and held it so hard that I couldn’t feel a thing, until I could forget that I’d ever even been a psion.
Lights were beginning to show, and I tried to feel like I was back in Oldcity night. But there was no music. Music was the only thing I’d really missed about Oldcity. Sometimes there’d been songs coming out of the walls at the Institute, but they were thin and gutless; listening to them was like drinking water when you wanted hard brew. . . . I wondered whether I was walking on solid ground now, or whether Oldcity, with its noise and smells and darkness, was somewhere just below my feet.
And I wondered if maybe I couldn’t pick a data bracelet off someone in this crowd. . . . But I wasn’t in Oldcity, I didn’t know which way to run; and even if I did, there was no freedrop waiting to take it off me for a handful of markers. And I’d never be able to break the code on someone else’s bracelet before they missed it and had it killed. I was lost in this world, I was a ghost-I didn’t belong here, I belonged in Oldcity. And if I wanted to go on walking free I’d better start thinking again, about how to get back there before it was too late.
There were signs everywhere, but I couldn’t read them. Trying to act like just another tourist, I went up to the closest stranger in the street and said, “’Scuse me. Can . . . uh, how do I get to Oldcity?”
He looked at me, squinting a little, and I felt the prickle of his surprise, but no
But when I reached out, my hand felt the screen, soft and yielding-it wouldn’t let me past to touch what was inside. I jerked back, afraid that somehow it knew me for what I was. I stood still again for a long minute, with my heart beating too hard. But nothing more happened, and finally I realized that nothing was going to. I started to believe that there was only one thing different about me that it could have known: I didn’t have a data bracelet. Not guilt, just Insufficient Credit. I noticed that somebody had scrawled something with a marker on the base below the display; a single, simple word. I knew all the letters. I sounded them out, and when I heard what it said, I laughed. I thought about the walls in Oldcity, covered with words like that. I’d put some of them there myself, but I’d never known what I was copying; I never even cared. I just wanted to make my mark somehow, someway, on a world that didn’t know I was alive. It was strange to realize there were really people up here who felt the same way. For a second I thought about Jule.
I moved on, with my hands in my pockets, searching for a credit marker or a camph, for anything; knowing in that same sick moment just how empty they were. Then my fingers closed on something solid. I pulled it out into my hand: candy. I’d stuffed my pockets full of the damned things whenever I could, in the cafeteria at the Institute. One piece left. I closed my fingers over it, opened them again. I put it into my mouth, felt it dissolve and the dark, oily sweetness cover my tongue.
It didn’t last long. After it was gone, I began to taste the smells in the air around me. There were places to eat here, just like in Oldcity. Even the gods had to eat. Most of it smelled better than anything I remembered-maybe because there wasn’t Oldcity’s stink mixed into it, or maybe just because it was here and I was hungry. Hungry. My throat ached with the thought. It was too easy to forget how it felt to be . . . No. It was too easy to remember. But without a data bracelet I was scared even to try a lift or a doorway and feel it turn me back again.
The day was closing in on evening; there were more people on foot now, children as well as adults. I wondered where they went all day. Maybe just someplace cool. It was getting loud and confusing and hard to move; my mind started to buzz with the feedback of too many other minds. I wove a defense and held it so hard that I couldn’t feel a thing, until I could forget that I’d ever even been a psion.
Lights were beginning to show, and I tried to feel like I was back in Oldcity night. But there was no music. Music was the only thing I’d really missed about Oldcity. Sometimes there’d been songs coming out of the walls at the Institute, but they were thin and gutless; listening to them was like drinking water when you wanted hard brew. . . . I wondered whether I was walking on solid ground now, or whether Oldcity, with its noise and smells and darkness, was somewhere just below my feet.
And I wondered if maybe I couldn’t pick a data bracelet off someone in this crowd. . . . But I wasn’t in Oldcity, I didn’t know which way to run; and even if I did, there was no freedrop waiting to take it off me for a handful of markers. And I’d never be able to break the code on someone else’s bracelet before they missed it and had it killed. I was lost in this world, I was a ghost-I didn’t belong here, I belonged in Oldcity. And if I wanted to go on walking free I’d better start thinking again, about how to get back there before it was too late.
There were signs everywhere, but I couldn’t read them. Trying to act like just another tourist, I went up to the closest stranger in the street and said, “’Scuse me. Can . . . uh, how do I get to Oldcity?”
He looked at me, squinting a little, and I felt the prickle of his surprise, but no
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