Read Online Phoenix Café by Gwyneth Jones - Free Book Online Page B

qualms when they realized where they were heading. Maitri pointed out that the next venue on Lalith’s tour was half way across Youro. They’d had to give up their dear old limousine when the household became too small to count as a “transport community” in city ordinance, and the cost of such a journey in hired cars would be shocking. Everybody was supposed to be economizing, he reminded them virtuously, to cover the expense of the Departure Project.
    Their cab dropped them at a deconstruction site where something very large was vanishing at speed into the maws of silent, bovine civil engineering plant. There was no sign of a meeting hall, and everyone began to panic. Most of Maitri’s people had lived in Youro in the Gender War. They were justifiably afraid of finding themselves lost in the human city, where the air was dead as stone, and the only information available came in printed text or confusing street-projections. Catherine looked for a minitel screen, Maitri flicked through a street directory. Atha, one of the Silent members of the household, covered himself in glory by spotting a glowing hand-sized green arrow, which did not seem to belong to the projection that surrounded it. He had noticed similar green arrows on the flyer Maitri had copied from the local listings. Someone spotted another. They followed the trail, painfully, from one eye-hurting virtual commercial to the next, through the unbuilding site and into the alleys beyond.
     Maitri complained.
    They knew they’d reached their destination when they met a young person in brightly colored overalls, putting up copies of that same flyer at the entrance to an ancient brick-built Christian character shrine. He was using a small machine, which he pointed at another machine that clung to the wall of the church: a data-junction box. As he did so, the Renaissance flyer materialized among the church notices, displacing the text of a restoration appeal fund, a list of Mass-times and the St Vincent de Paul Society’s yearly accounts.
    “Isn’t that clever!” exclaimed Vijaya, Maitri’s first secretary.
    The human looked round and smiled alertly. He was a halfcaste: his face dinted in the middle, with nostril slits instead of a human nose; his upper lip short and divided. “Free advertising,” he lisped. “It doth no harm. The bit-minder will restore the licensee’s data in an hour or two, and that’s all the time we need. Step right inside, noble aliens. Your reserved seats are waiting for you.”
    “But how did you know we were coming?” cried the chaplain, naively astonished. “Have you been ‘bugging’ Lord Maitri’s house?”
    “Didn’t have to. You snagged us, we snagged your hit. And then you ordered a cab to the venue. Simple.”
    The Silent were hanging back, deeply alarmed by the puzzle-trail and the obviously illicit behavior of this halfcaste. Silent Aleutians—naturally conservative, obstinately conventional—mistrusted any extended articulate speech that did not emanate from “the proper authorities.” Maitri’s domestics had joined the outing under protest. They were well aware that their lord was using them to make a doubtful excursion look respectable. they protested.
    Maitri managed to reassure them, but Atha had wandered off down the street, because he’d seen a car that reminded him of dear old limo. Catherine had to go and fetch him, to the amusement of several more humans who’d come out to see the fun. At last they were through the double doors (inert slabs, Old Earth style, like the door of Catherine’s prison cell). They found the whole assembly on its feet, jostling eagerly for a glimpse of the aliens. Stewards wearing green armbands greeted them with the large, infantile gestures of Youro humans trying to “speak Aleutian.” They were ushered to a