‘I guess.’
‘Good. Then I’m off.’ She walked to the opening door, blew him a kiss, and left. ‘Ciao.’
The quickglass flowed back into place.
What was that all about?
He remembered a conversation with Dad, perhaps a year ago.
‘Son, no matter how much cognosemantics and neurocoding you learn, women are a mystery. And some of them are strange attractors.’
‘Isn’t that some kind of archaic gender stereotyping?’
‘It certainly is.’
Obviously Dad hadn’t told him half of it.
In the sports hall, he stared down at the wrestling area, watching people roll on the mats, wishing he could join them. His solo exercises might have combat applications, but without practising live, he was never going to feel confident. The problem was the additional deepscanning that athletes went through - both for health and to prevent cheating - and the danger of revealing his true nature.
Being here was like picking at a scab. What he ought to do was call Alisha, as Stef had pretty much commanded, or else put her out of his mind. He felt about as decisive as Hamlet, the protagonist of the most boring holodrama he had seen. According to Alisha, it was all in the poor translation; but English was about as accessible as Sanskrit. To be fair, among old Earth languages it had some nice characteristics - more verb tenses than some, more subtly different verbs, so reducing the need for qualifying adverbs - but it lacked the tonality or symbolic resonance that made allusions and multiple meanings so easy. Other ancestral usage, from Old Norse kennings to Mandarin numerology, allowed subtle simultaneous messages to be delivered in a single—
He forced the tip of his tongue against the roof of his mouth, shutting himself up.
Then his tu-ring chimed. It was Alisha.
‘Got a moment?’
‘Sure.’
‘You know Lupus Festival starts tomorrow, right?’
‘I guess so.’
‘So we’re building a mannequin for the parade. Our gang, plus some friends of Stef ’s.’
‘Did she ask you to call me?’
‘Not directly. Why-? Never mind. We’ve all got studies today, so we’re pulling an all-nighter in the labs to do the construction.’
‘You mean, no sleep?’
‘Sure, unless you can sleepwalk. It’s Rick’s design, and he’s done a good job.’
‘That’s nuts.’
‘Part of the fun. Oh, and . . . the parade’s tomorrow afternoon, so it’ll be a long haul.’
‘Also, totally insane.’
‘Hope you make it. Endit.’
The holo shrank to a point, was gone.
Mannequins. Carnival parades. First day of Lupus.
What am I doing here?
This was supposed to be the centre of learning, of leading intellectual activity. Instead, Alisha wanted him to hang around with a bunch of giggling people, working through the night to achieve nothing serious, just for the hell of it.
It’s stupid.
Or maybe he was the stupid one, brooding by himself about things that mattered only to him, while the world continued to flow around him, and people could enjoy or be miserable as they wished, none of it making a difference to anyone but themselves.
They worked in a bay designed to receive large transport vehicles. Roger turned up when the project was well underway, his friends hanging off a half-constructed silver skeleton, or dangling from the scaffolding around it. The mannequin’s joints were complex cogs. Once finished, it would be four times taller than a person.
‘Where does the engine go?’ asked Roger.
‘Hey, Rog,’ Stef called down from a precarious position five metres up. ‘Couldn’t stay away, then?’
Rick tapped Roger’s shoulder.
‘Glad you made it, my friend. And there’s no engine.’
‘With those joints and cable-inserts . . . isn’t it meant to walk?’
‘It certainly is.’
‘But—’
‘We’re using no artificial power. That’s the fun of it.’
‘So it is going to walk in the parade.’
‘Sure.’
‘And it doesn’t have an engine.’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘So you dangle it from a hovering flyer and work it like a puppet?’
‘That would be cheating.’
‘I give up. I can’t imagine—’
‘Sure you can.’ Rick turned him. ‘There’s your clue.’
Alisha and two people he didn’t know were assembling some hardware involving narrow chains and gears. Roger stared at them, then shook his head.
‘You have to be kidding. Pedals?’
‘There, you’ve got it.’
Roger tilted his head back, examining the shining skeleton, estimating its mass.
‘Sorry, Rick. It can’t be done. Are you sure you’ve done the calculations right?’
‘Feel those metal bones, my friend. They’re only half as dense as you think - rather like myself, ha, ha - and just because there’s no artificial power, that doesn’t stop us using superfluid bearings and a bit of smartmaterial.’
‘If you say so. Just don’t ask me to get inside that contraption. ’
‘I wouldn’t dream of it.’ Rick looked up into the scaffolding. ‘Stef, would you order this boy to get inside the mannequin and get to work?’
‘Hoy,’ shouted Stef. ‘Blackstone, get your arse up here and make yourself useful.’
‘You tell him, Stef,’ called Alisha.
Roger laughed. He wanted to talk to Alisha, but she had already turned back to the others. They were loosening a chain loop, trying to slip it off a cog; and one of them was swearing, a streak of blood on his finger.
‘We’re all nuts,’ Roger said.
‘Finally, the boy understands.’
‘Totally insane.’
He grabbed the scaffolding and swung himself up.
By lunchtime, a headless giant clothed mannequin with hands was ready to go. Cables and chains were its ligaments and muscles, counterbalanced tension holding it upright. When they took the scaffolding away, it swayed - Stef and Rick were inside the thing - but stayed upright. Then several others, Roger included, pulled back the diaphanous ‘skin’ and clambered into the skeleton, finding their saddles.
‘Mad, mad, mad.’
‘We know that, Roger.’
‘Everyone get ready,’ called Stef. ‘And . . . Now.’
They got to work, Stef giving orders, while Rick kept himself busy on levers, switching gears and touching brakes - and the whole thing lurched into motion. The first footfall rocked Roger, then the next, but soon they had the knack of it. The mannequin was walking.
‘Time to get a head,’ said Rick.
None of them had authorization to command the roof to open. Roger would have designed a mannequin that actually fitted inside the building - but that would have been too easy, clearly. Instead, they pedalled and Rick steered, and they clomped out through the big exit, made a quick left turn - almost on the spot - and came to a halt, standing next to the wall.
Up on the roof, some more of Stef’s friends - she had obviously been socializing outside the study group - were manoeuvring a large head into position.
‘Careful.’
A magnetic bolt dropped through the hollow interior, and bounced off some part of the skeleton with a clang.
‘Sorry.’
‘Not just mad,’ muttered Roger. ‘Suicidal.’
His eyes were sore and his muscles felt detached from his body; yet he seemed to have passed beyond the need for sleep.
‘Okay, people. Pedal and step. Here we go.’
That was the beginning of an hour-long session of pedalling inside the mannequin, not seeing where they were going. From outside there was the occasional cheer, but it was not until they reached the main parade that the volume grew, indicating that they were in fact part of Lupus Festival.