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  Moving on, she slung her sweater over her shoulder, and walked past a row of open cook pots, toward the Geo-Span Medical Center.

  Her mind wandered with her gait, thinking about a motif for a line of gym clothing she was working on that would give kids something to interact with at recess periods. Historical shorts, she called them. Briefs with a brief. The idea made her smile, even as the memory of the man and his sons lingered. Perhaps he’d just had a bad day?

  Her movement combined with the warmth of the sun to make her feel better. Being in San Francisco always bumped her adrenaline. It was a great city to visit, quite bohemian, filled with music that came from everywhere at once. The beat of its people pulsed rather than flowed.

  Where London was merely avant-garde, San Francisco was decadent. It pushed the edge too hard for comfort.

  In London Kinji’s creativity came in steady streams that rolled over her like waves over an ocean beach. San Francisco, though, had this underbelly of need that was always in her face — its constant need for difference meant she felt an insistent, and persistent, demand to prove herself.

  She adored visiting, though.

  Passing a Canadian shop, she accepted a stick of grilled meat. “New recipe!” the vendor told her as she passed. “Thank you!” she said as she took it. She ate it as she walked but stopped and turned back to the vendor after the first taste. It was spiced with a thick flavor of maple and bourbon.

  “Glorious,” she called. “Well worth the exercise I’ll need to burn it off!”

  The thought brought her a wicked smile.

  Tania was a demanding lover. With her trip to Acapulco tomorrow, perhaps it would be best to store the excess calories for a day.

  The vendor waved her acceptance of the compliment.

  As she was just finishing the last bits, Kinji came into view of the medical center, a tall building on the corner, with several support buildings scattered at its feet.

  Waker, she thought, recalling the information she’d taken in during the flier.

  Bexie Montgomery, an ancient, interested in her soup stand.

  She’d seen a few clips of interviews the medical center had provided for her wherein he explained his interest in her — or at least his interest in the business aspects of her approach. She wasn’t sure what to make of his explanation, but he seemed intelligent, and he was certainly attractive in a ragged kind of way. Attractive enough she could use it to ping on Tania, anyway.

  This should be interesting.

  The medical center had been built in the last decade, so it had a modern slant to it, a swooping roofline, external elevator shafts that wrapped around the building like vines. Its windows were a green glass that reflected the bay sunshine in a way that made her think of Jack and the Beanstalk.

  She entered the medical center and took a lift to the visitor’s pavilion, which was on the eighteenth floor.

  The elevator car was sleek and streamlined, its progress smooth as it coiled its way up the building. She enjoyed the experience immensely, which was why it had been designed as it was. The best thing about it was the wide, majestic view of the city as it sprawled below her. Seeing it like this made her feel somehow bigger than herself, like there was something permanent about life beyond her own perception.

  She scanned in when she arrived.

  “You are expected, Ms. Hall,” the receptionist said as Kinji’s identification registered. “Your appointment is to be in room 1821. It is just down the hall.”

  “Thank you,” she said, and walked to a room that had three nurses outside it. She smiled at them each as she walked in. Bio-ints, cloned AI hosts, or pure mechanicals aside, they were all people.

  Bexie stood at the window of a receiving room. A doctor bot — which would be monitoring his reaction to the interaction — hovered in one corner, and Julia, who had escorted him to this room, was still there, standing at the doorway.

  He wore what he understood might pass for a business suit in this age, an open-collared, forest green overshirt that dropped down past the hip, lined in synthetic blue trim. His slacks were black and pressed but bunched at the ankle in a way that made him feel clownish. His shoes were sandal-like platforms that wrapped around the base of his foot but left his toes and his heel open to the air. They were comfortable, though, and stable. He felt like he could run in them and not get himself hurt.

  Tension growing inside him, Bexie shook his hands out.

  She’s late, he thought.

  “Confidence is everything,” he mumbled.

  The view outside was fantastic. The waiting room was lower in the tower than his assigned room and revealed more of the actual streets and more of the flow of people who walked them. It was early afternoon, just past lunchtime. They had been in the room for a half hour. As far as he could tell, there’d been no change in the pattern of people at any time during the period he’d been watching. Specifically, he noted there had been no lunch rush.

  The door opened, and Bexie turned.

  He recognized Kinji Hall from newsfeed searches.

  She entered wearing a pair of dark tights, deep burgundy, and a white tunic that flowed to midthigh. She was smaller than he’d anticipated, or rather, thinner. She walked with a stride that was more graceful than she probably thought it was.

  Her smile, when she first saw him, was a brief, almost delighted upturn of one lip that gave him an image of porcelain, but softer, pliable, without the sense of brittleness that often made such people hard to deal with.

  She carried no bag and hesitated only briefly as the door closed behind her.

  “Mr. Montgomery,” she said. “I’m very glad to meet you.”

  “Kinji Hall,” Montgomery said as she entered, motioning her to come further into the room. He came forward from the floor-to-ceiling window, offering his hand.

  She took it, though it seemed a bit formal for her tastes.

  Her briefing said Wakers were walking museums, especially when it came to behavior, and that she could expect to be caught a bit off guard at times.

  Montgomery’s shirt was fitted close to his torso, green with a snaking design of pulsating blue wound into golden code strings to affect a flow that ran from his shoulder down his chest and past his waist on the opposite side — a design geared to accentuate a man’s natural shape by making the eyes follow the flow.

  Not that he needed it.

  Bexie Montgomery was as beautiful in person as his holo suggested he would be. Lanky. Several centimeters taller than her, despite the heels she’d chosen for the day. His hands were long, his face pretty, his eyes comfortably dark. The whole package was one of presence.

  In the corner of the room, along the far wall, a low, kidney-shaped table stood between a pair of half-couches she knew were designed by Opala, an acquaintance of hers. The table was nice, but she decided too much wing on each side made the couches feel gauche. A pot of something that smelled of an herbal coffee mix sat on the table — probably jasmine in there somewhere, but it was hard to tell with the power of coffee overriding it all.

  “Can I get you a cup?” Montgomery said when he noticed her gaze.

  They went to the table, and as he poured, she took a seat in the corner of one of the couches.

  She noted a doctor bot that floated in the corner and the nurse standing to the side which made her decide the three outside the room were more for security than for any medical purpose.

  “Thank you so much for agreeing to meet with me,” the man said, handing her a cup.

  “You are welcome.”

  She had been right about the jasmine. The combination was interesting.

  “I love your accent,” Montgomery said as poured his own.

  “I’m glad,” she replied. “I like your name. Bexie.”

  “Thank you,” he said. “It’s short for Beckingham. I think my parents wanted me to be a footballer.”

  She smiled because he delivered the line with a sense of amusement. “Footballer?”


  “It’s a sport. Or, at least it used to be?”

  “I know what football is,” Kinji said. “It’s Beckingham that’s tripping me up.”

  “Ah, I see.” Montgomery smiled, and the couch across the table made a soft sound as he sat down. “A guy named David Beckham was a big name in the sport when I was very young. He bought an English castle and named it Beckingham.”

  “Well, that makes sense, then,” Kinji replied.

  “Anyway, enough about me and David Beckham. I think you know that I wanted to talk to you because of your soup stands.”

  “Yes.”

  Her cup clinked as she sat it on the table between them.

  “You see,” Montgomery said, “to make a long story short, when I came awake, I caught a newsfeed about your idea, and I thought it was brilliant.”

  “Thank you.” Kinji blushed, despite herself.

  “So brilliant that I want to buy it.”

  “Buy it?”

  “Yes, I want to buy it. Or,” he said with a warm grin, “if you prefer to hold onto a part of the net, I can build a company around it.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Montgomery leaned in.

  “I want to help you,” he said. “So, what do you want? How much will it cost to have you transfer the idea to me?”

  She felt the weight of his gaze on her as if he was looking for a truth that went deeper than his words.

  This was a moment for him. A test for her. She’d seen it before. He was playing a game.

  Which design was coolest?

  Which painting was best?

  What kind of deal could he swing?

  Kinji gave him an expression she knew would say she didn’t understand — which was easy because, to be honest, she found these kinds of games quaint. She’d been briefed. She understood the concept of commerce as he described it even if she knew how outdated it was. Still, she wanted to see where he would go with it.

  “Let’s start here,” Montgomery said. “What do you want more than anything in the world?”

  Kinji picked her cup up from the table, then sat back into the couch.

  The expression on Montgomery’s face was open and sincere. It seemed like he really did want to help her.

  She took a sip. The coffee was cooling to the point of being more gritty than hot. It made the jasmine stronger on her tongue.

  “I want to create new things that are beautiful.”

  “And what do you need to create these beautiful things?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  But she did. Or at least she was beginning to understand some of the information she’d received from the medical center after she’d arranged the trip.

  “A studio?” Montgomery said. “A design center? Tell me what you need, and I’ll see what I can arrange.”

  Kinji slitted her eyes, finding him interesting. It was like watching a fish in an aquarium, she thought, like seeing it bounce into the walls clear as day, but unable to stop himself. It was sad in a way, though the image also made her feel better. I can help him, Kinji thought.

  “What do you need to be more creative?” he added.

  “More time, maybe,” she replied.

  “Yes, of course,” he said with a gregarious laugh that he seemed to realize was outsized for the moment. She liked that. He wasn’t a natural bore. “What else?” he said. “Do you work in a studio?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “I can get you a bigger one.”

  “If I need a bigger studio, I request it and the zone committees will find me one.”

  “What if they say no?”

  “I’ve never had a request turned down,” she said with a grin. “Except one time when what I wanted would have made a fire hazard. The community suggested an alternative, and it turned out better.”

  “I see.” He paused and rubbed his chin.

  “Mr. Montgomery,” she said. “I’m sorry, but I really don’t think you understand what you’re saying. I know a little about how you grew up, but we don’t barter anymore. I do what I want, any time I want to do it. Like we all do. And I work with several people depending on what I want to do and what they want to do. The soup stand you are interested in, for example, was a self-configuring design. Once it was done, I put it in public space, and used collective nets to find every fashion shop in the world. The implementation followed local schedules.”

  “Followed?”

  Kinji gave him a look like he might be crazy.

  “The soup stands are already installed?”

  “A few declined,” she said.

  Bexie stared at her, understanding that if this was true, the opportunity was lost. The doctor bot floated nearer, making him angry as it scanned him, its lights flashing an orange and blue pattern.

  The rest of her words caught up to him then.

  The idea that she was free to create anything she wanted at any time.

  Was it possible the learning modules weren’t a ruse?

  Was he officially broke?

  If so, did it matter?

  The ideas crashed around in his brain in ways that messed up his train of thought.

  “What I don’t understand,” Kinji said, continuing despite his confusion, “is how my soup stand is going to help you. Perhaps if you could tell me this, I could do something.”

  “Why did you work so hard to put soup outlets at mall stores?” he said.

  She took another drink from her cup, then pulled back her lips into a reflective smile that held a hint of satisfaction.

  “I did it so people could enjoy a soup while they are trying on patterns.”

  “But what do you get from it?”

  “I enjoy designing new things, and I like knowing people are enjoying their soup. I get to feel the elegance of how delivery machines are built into the flow of the floor, and how the soup to arrives at the right place at the right time.”

  “That’s it?” Bexie said.

  “Isn’t that enough?”

  He sighed. No, he thought. But as he took her in, sitting forward on the couch, talking, sipping her coffee, he saw that for Kinji Hall this had been enough.

  “There is an art to it, too,” she added. “I like how the systems look when I walk into a fashion center. I like how they smell.”

  “Delivering soup is art?”

  The smile came again. “There is art in all things if they’re done properly. Don’t you think?”

  Bexie sat back, exasperated. He had pinned so many hopes on this conversation, and now they were bursting. It was true, he thought. His money was useless.

  He was lost.

  “I don’t get it. There is really no money in the world today?”

  “I wish I could help you.”

  Which was true.

  There was something sincere about him. Ancient in approach, yes. But when he said he wanted to help her, he radiated sincerity.

  Kinji really did want to help him.

  “Perhaps I can,” she replied.

  “Can what?”

  “Help you.”

  She saw the question in his glance.

  “You asked if I could be the one to escort you through the city. So let me take you to see the soup system in action.”

  He laughed and his gaze shifted to the doctor bot and then the nurse.

  “I would love that.”

  Kinji smiled. “Let’s see what we can do.”

  CHAPTER 17

  Whatever Bexie had expected, this wasn’t it.

  The plaza was expansive, an open-floored square that towered with eight stories of “pods” as Kinji called them (or “stores” as Bexie thought of them), and other bays on each side, with each pod existing in spaces marked off by holographic barriers and the occasional wall.

  The plaza itself was littered with performers, while “shoppers” milled about watching and applauding amid their conversations. The construction included a retractable ceiling, open today to the blue sky and billowing clouds. The sm
ell of food and perfumes drifted pod to pod, spices, and incense, and candles burning with waxy aromas. A gathering of kids strode past, eyes glazed.

  “Playing a TS game,” Kinji explained. “A virtual game in Think Space.”

  “That’s incredible,” he said. “I can barely talk and chew gum at the same time in Think Space.”

  “Your brain can adjust,” she said. “Just takes a little practice.”

  So much was going on all around them that he could almost forget the three security escorts flanking them. The escorts were clone-bots specialized for surveillance and control. He assumed they were linked directly back to the medical center, as well — probably — to any network the Central Inspector’s Office ran. Each of the three wore casual clothes that fit into the crowd.

  He wondered how many other controllers there might be in the area.

  Something else he could ask Kinji if he found the right time.

  Just being out, though, felt good.

  Just breathing fresh air and listening to people having fun made him happy, and the smells of food made him hungry in a way that felt almost joyous.

  He watched a street performer mime a magic trick that ended in a burst of flame and a puff of smoke. When the trick was done, Bexie stepped aside for a ski-boarding kid, watching him go but suddenly having an urge to try it out.

  The smile on Kinji’s face said she was enjoying his sense of discovery.

  They passed sweet-smelling candy stands and a place that was serving some type of ground dish that smelled like cabbage.

  “We can just take anything?” he said.

  “It’s considered proper courtesy to let the creator know if you like something they’ve done,” Kinji replied. “But, yes, you take what you want.”

  They stopped for a man with a pair of neon-furred dogs to pass.

  As they walked, and seeing his befuddlement, Kinji said, “This isn’t how things were arranged in your time.”

  “Not even close,” he replied. “And if we could have gotten this many people to the malls, they never would have closed.”

  He tried to explain the use of currency in his day.