The double-circles sign for the station was coming into view through the palms ahead. Her window of opportunity was about to close, and she hadn’t really learned anything.
“You said your dad knows more about ‘this stuff’ than you do.”
He nodded. “He lives to pick holes in it.”
“Maybe I should talk to him.”
“You don’t really want to do that.”
“Why not?”
“He’s . . . difficult.”
“I don’t mind.”
She didn’t know if Jesse had heard anything about the Zep crisis and wasn’t about to explain her fear that Improvement might be making Libby’s emotional state worse.
“All right,” he said, “but don’t tell me I didn’t warn you.”
“Thanks. So . . . will you introduce me so we can chat?”
“He doesn’t do that. You’ll have to come home with me. That’s where he works. We live just around the corner.”
“Oh,” she said, realizing only then what she’d gotten herself into. “Of course. You’d have to.” How else would he get to school—fly?
Jesse picked up his pace. They passed the station and turned left up Main Street, into unknown territory.
9
JESSE LIVED IN a terrace apartment on a broad and overgrown thoroughfare with well-worn sidewalks and bike paths shaded by eucalyptus branches and clumps of sighing bamboo. Unlike many of the developments around Sacramento Bay, it looked lived-in. Someone had planted daisies that bobbed and winked in the pale November sun. There were dog turds on the path. Clair could hear kids calling a couple of houses along.
“Have you been here long?” Clair asked Jesse, thinking of her sterile apartment block and the empty sidewalks below.
“I’ve lived here all my life.”
“Really?”
“Kinda hard to move around if you don’t use d-mat.”
“Yeah, I guess.” Clair had moved more times than she could count. Each time her family had relocated, they had recycled almost everything they owned and fabbed replacements at the other end. Friends were equally easy to visit from anywhere.
“Abstainers tend to stick together,” he said, turning an old-fashioned key in the lock and kicking the stiff door open with the side of one foot. “It’s us against the world, 24-7.”
His satchel dropped with a thud in the hallway as he waved her ahead of him into a house like no other she had seen before.
The ground floor was one unbroken space, with living area and kitchen overlapping in a series of worn couches, scratched tables, and scuffed counter surfaces. Two ceiling fans swirled lazily overhead, circulating the warm air. Clair took it in, feeling as though her eyes were bugging out of her head. There was a stove, a fridge, and a trash can. There were framed sketches that showed signs of fading next to real bookcases holding antique photos and dusty trinkets. The rugs beneath her feet were tatty around the edges. Through the wall-to-wall windows at the far end of the space, she saw vegetable gardens neatly arranged in rows and a big green shed.
“That’s where Dad works,” said Jesse, indicating the shed. “I’ll take you out there in a sec. Let me just get this going first.”
The surprises kept on coming. Clair watched in amazement as Jesse chopped leaves of some kind, grated a carrot, sliced an onion and three large, dark mushrooms, and mixed it all into a bowl with five broken eggs and some grated cheese. Actual ingredients, not something built in a fabber. She dreaded to think how much they cost. For most people, physical goods were free, like access to the Air, but for Abstainers like Jesse and his father, that wouldn’t be the case. Time cost money, and vegetables took time to grow. Weeks, even.
Jesse added green herbs and ground pepper, then poured the mixture out into a low transparent dish. He opened the oven, releasing a blast of dry heat, and slid the dish inside.
“What?” he said. “Never seen anyone cook before?”
She shook her head. “Only in old movies or for fun.”
“It’s not hard,” he said. “That’ll be ready in forty-five minutes or so. You’re welcome to stay for dinner, if you like.”
She shook her head again, but there was no denying her curiosity. “You don’t eat meat?”
“No, and you’ve probably never met any vegetarians before either. Not now that eating meat is a victimless crime, right?”
He grinned at her discomfort, and she sensed that he was enjoying her awkwardness.
“Well, my mother won’t eat chicken,” she said. “There was a corrupt pattern once, or perhaps a copy of meat that had gone off. Either way, I got really sick, and she’s never recovered from it. Telling her I’ve eaten some is a sure way to make her freak.”
“Same with Dad, but with a whole lot more than chicken.”
“Has he always been a Stainer?” Clair asked him.
“Body and soul. Look.” He pointed at one corner of the living room, where hung a photo of a jowly, gray- haired man standing proudly against a white marble background. “Good old George has been watching over me as long as I can remember.”
Clair didn’t know much about the founder of the Abstainer movement. George Staines’ unassuming features hadn’t earned him a following during his lifetime. That had been the product of his political writings, his philosophies, and his death from a rare form of cancer caused, some claimed, by the technology he despised.
“We have meetings here once a week,” Jesse was saying as he chopped more vegetables into a salad. “I tend to stay upstairs in my room for those. After the hundredth time, ‘We Shall Not Be Moved’ stops being ironic.”
She laughed, but he didn’t, and then she felt embarrassed. Maybe he hadn’t meant it as a joke.
She looked around for something else to talk about. The only thing remotely normal was a Psychotic Ultramine poster in the stairwell, cycling through recent images of the band.
“You live here alone with your dad?”
“Yes.”
“What happened to your mom?”
“She died,” he said. “When I was very young, so I barely remember her now. When I picture her, it’s from photos and old video files.”
There were no safe topics of conversation.
“There.” Jesse finished laying out two settings on the dining table. Blue Willow patterned plates came from a cupboard, utensils from a drawer, chipped and scuffed by long use. He wiped his hands on his jeans and brushed his bangs back from his eyes. They immediately fell back down again.
“Come on,” he said. “I’ll take you to the workshop and introduce you to the man himself . . . if you’re sure that’s what you want.”
She nodded. “What does he do out there?”
“He’s an artist,” Jesse said, opening the back door and waving her through. “His medium is transport old and new. Electrobikes and sunboards—anything other than d-mat. He sells them as fast as he can make them, and they keep the idea of alternative transport alive in people’s minds. That’s the plan, anyway. . . . You’ve really never heard of him?”
“No. Sorry.”
“Well, don’t tell him that, whatever you do.”
