A Place so Foreign Part 8

"Sorry, ma'am," I said. "I just wanted to use your telephone. I was packjacked, and I need to call the police."

The bartender turned back to her soap opera. "Go peddle it somewhere else, sonny. The phone's for customers only."

"Please," I said. "My father's an amba.s.sador, from 1898? I don't have any money, and I'm stuck here. I won't be a minute."

The s.p.a.cer looked up from his drink. "Get lost, the lady said," he slurred at me.

"I'll buy something," I said.

"You just said you don't have any money," the bartender said.

"I'll pay for it when the police get here. The Emba.s.sy will cover it."

"No credit," she said.

"You're not going to let me use your phone?" I said.

"That's right," she said, still staring at her vid.

"I'm a stranger, an amba.s.sador's son, who's been robbed. A kid. Stuck here, broke and alone, and you won't let me use your phone to call the police?"

"That's about the size of things," she said.

"Well, I guess my Pa was right. The whole world went to h.e.l.l after 1914. No manners, no human decency."

"You're breaking my heart," she said.

"Fine. Be that way. Send me back out on the street, deny me a favour that won't cost you one red cent, just because I'm a stranger."

"Shut _up_, kid, for chrissakes," the s.p.a.cer said. "I'll stand him to a c.o.ke, if that's what it takes. Just let him use the phone and get out of here. He's giving me a headache."

"Thank you, sir," I said, politely.

The bartender switched her vid over to phone mode, poured me a c.o.ke, and handed me the vid.

The policeman who showed up a few minutes later stuck me in the back of his cruiser, listened to my story, scanned my retinas, confirmed my ident.i.ty, and retracted the armour between the back and front seats.

"I'll take you to the station house," he said. "We'll contact your Emba.s.sy, let them handle it from there."

"What about the kids who 'jacked me?" I asked.

The cop turned the jetcar's conn over to wire-fly mode and turned around. "You got any description?"

"Well, they had really nice packs on, with the traffic beacons snapped off. One was red, and I think the other was green. And they were young. Ten or eleven."

The cop punched at his screen. "Kid," he said, "I got over three million minors eight to eleven, flying packs less than a year old. The most popular colour is red. Second choice, green. Where would you like me to start? Alphabetically?"

"Sorry, sir, I didn't realise."

"Sure," he said. "Whatever."

"I guess I'm not thinking very clearly. It's been a long day."

The cop looked over to me and smiled. "I guess it has, at that. Don't worry, kid, we'll get you home all right."

They gave me a fresh jumpsuit, sat me on a bench, called the emba.s.sy, and forgot about me. A long, boring time later, a fat man with walrus moustaches and ruddy skin showed up.

"On your feet, lad," he said. "I'm Pondicherry, your father's successor. You've made quite a mess of things, haven't you?" He had a clipped, British accent, with a hint of something else. I remembered Mr Johnstone saying he'd been in India. He wore a standard unis.e.x jumpsuit, with his amba.s.sadorial sash overtop of it. He looked ridiculous.

"Sorry to have disturbed you, sir," I said.

"I'm sure you are," he said. "Come along, we'll see about fixing this mess."

He used the station's teleporter to bring me to his apartment. It was as ridiculous as his uniform, and in the same way. He'd taken the basic elegant simplicity of a standard 1975 unit and draped all kinds of silly trophies and models overtop of it: lions' heads and sabers and model s.h.i.+ps and framed medals and savage masks and dolls.

"You may look, but not touch, do you understand me?" he said, as we stepped out of the teleporter.

"Yes, sir," I said. If anyone else had said it, I would have been offended, but coming from this puffed-up pigeon, it didn't sting much.

He went to a vid and punched impatiently at the screen while I prowled the apartment. The bookcase was full of old friends, books by the Frenchman, of course, and more, with strange names like Wells and Burroughs and Sh.e.l.ley. I looked over a long, stone-headed spear, and the curve of an elephant's tusk, and a collection of campaign ribbons and medals under gla.s.s. I returned to the bookcase: something had been bothering me. There, there it was: "War of the Worlds," the book that Mr Adelson had given me for Christmas. But there was something wrong with the spine of this one: instead of _Jules Verne_, the author name was _H.G. Wells_. I snuck a look over my shoulder; Pondicherry was still stabbing at the screen. I snuck the book off the shelf and turned to the t.i.tle page: "War of the Worlds, by Herbert George Wells." I turned to the first chapter:

The Eve of the War

No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water.

It was just as I remembered it, every word, just as it was in the Verne. I couldn't begin to explain it.

A robutler swung out of its niche with a sheaf of papers. I startled at the noise, then reflexively stuck the book in my jumpsuit. The roboutler delivered them to Pondicherry, who stuffed them in a briefcase.

"The emba.s.sy will be able to return you home by courier route in three hours.

Unfortunately, I don't have the luxury of waiting around here until then. I have an important meeting to attend -- you'll have to come along."

"Yes, sir," I said, trying to sound eager and helpful.

"Don't say anything, don't touch anything. This is very sensitive."

"No, sir, I won't. Thank you, sir."

The meeting was in a private room in a fancy restaurant, one that I'd been to before for an emba.s.sy Christmas party. Mama had drunk two gla.s.ses of sherry, and had flushed right to the neck of her dress. We'd had roast beef, and a goose wrapped inside a huge squash, the size of a barrel, like they grew on the Moon.

Pondicherry whisked through the lobby, and the main dining room, and then up a narrow set of stairs, without checking to see if I was following. I dawdled a little, remembering Pa laughing and raising his gla.s.s in toast after toast.

I caught up with Pondicherry just as he was ordering, speaking brusquely into the table. Another man sat opposite him. Pondicherry looked up at me and said, "Have you dined, boy?"