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kid. And I suddenly got this picture; they've never seen this before! Never
seen the hair of Noel, the cigar of Saville, the magic of Daniels.
The living room door opened and Barnie came into the room. He was followed by
a woman. She was carrying a tray of food, and Barnie had a bottle of wine and
some glasses. The woman's hair was green, emerald green, and it reached down
to her fifth vertebrae; it stirred up some feelings in me. Like I'd known her
before, and very closely. Couldn't place it. She put the tray down for me, on
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a small glass coffee table. The food went with the room. Plates of meat and
fish, spiced vegetables, crispy salads, ginger and garlic pastes, fruit and
nuts, crumbling cheeses, apple pie with a cinnamon custard.
"You awake now, Crewcut?" Barnie asked.
"Yes. I. . ."
"You were out cold. All of you were. When's the last time you slept?"
"Slept. . ." I couldn't remember. "What time is it?"
The woman answered. "Half two."
I jerked upright then, out of the chair's soft embraces. "Half two! Is that
afternoon or morning?"
The woman laughed.
"It's the afternoon, Scribb. You dumbo!" This from the older kid on the floor,
whose name was Mandy.
"You want to dig into that food, Crew?" asked Barnie.
I did. It was ages since I'd eaten.
"Where's Beetle?" I asked.
"Beetle's in the bedroom," Barnie told me. "This is our home, and this is my
wife. . .
Lucinda." The woman smiled. Her mouth was wide and opulent. "And this is our
child, Crystal."
At these words from Barnie, the young girl pulled her face from the screen for
a second, to give me a smile.
I started on the good food, feeling it ease my need. I could feel food
dribbling down my chin, and I suppose I must have looked a little bit of a
mess. "I can't stay here," I mumbled through a big mouthful. "I'm in a hurry."
Some oil was dripping off my chin. I had to get back to
Brid and the Thing. That was all that counted. But I didn't even know where I
was.
"You fell asleep in the chair, Crew," Barnie said. "We didn't like to distrub
you."
"This is our home," Lucinda added. "You are most welcome."
"Have I seen you before?" I asked her.
"Oh, most probably." She smiled again. She had a perfect face. So did Barnie.
The child also. They were all smiles. The room where they lived was a hive of
comfort. The paintings on the wall told the same story; half naked women coyly
glancing, horses leaping the waves, swans gliding down rivers of gold,
big-eyed puppy dogs chewing on stolen slippers. The room was drenched in
age-old colours.
Just then the television family got one too many questions wrong, and Noel's
Spew Tank started to fall. It covered them in gunge, and they loved it. The
audience roared their approval.
The kids on the rug following suit.
And it suddenly came to me that not even I had done this before; never seen
Noel, Saville, or Daniels. All this is way before my time. I'd just seen the
reruns. So what was going down?
And why was I going down with it?
Déjà Vurt.
That's the name of the feeling you get sometimes, in Vurt, when you've done
this one already, but you're in the Vurt anyway, remember? And you're thinking
it's real. So a loop is made in the head, and it becomes a kind of Haunting.
Memories of your previous trips start to play on the feather dreams, shifting
them out of phase, like a feedback wave. Maybe this was the answer. I'm in a
Vurt, getting a real cool Haunting.
"It's not a real television," Barnie said. "It's just pre-recorded tapes."
"This isn't real," I shouted. "It's just not real!"
"That's right," he answered, as though proud of it, before lifting up his arm
to me, and with the other hand he peeled off a section of the flesh, showing
me the workings underneath.
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"This is what I am," he said.
I was looking into this hole in his skin, gazing into a pool of wet plastic;
the nanogerms popping along the veins of his blood, the synthetic bones
flexing as he lowered and raised his arm for me. "This is what I am," he said
again, slow this time, with a hint of sadness, like he'd left something
behind, something human.
Robo! Barnie was a robo. A robochef!
"Inside of here," he said, tapping his tight skull, "are all the best recipes [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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