lowered her voice. “I’m afraid someone’s taken my purse. Stolen it. Oh, dear. This is very sad.”
“I’m sorry,” Maya said, inadequately.
“Now I’m afraid I’ll have to talk with the authorities.” The old woman sighed. “This is very distressing. They’ll be so embarrassed, poor things.… It’s dreadful when things like this happen to guests.”
“It’s very nice of you to think of their feelings.”
“Well, of course it’s not my loss of a few possessions, it’s the violation of civility that hurts.”
“I know that,” Maya said, “and I’m truly sorry. I wish you could take my purse instead.” She put her own bag on the table. “There’s not much in here, but I wish you could have it.”
The old woman looked at her for the first time, directly, eye to eye. Something quite strange happened between them then. The woman’s eyes widened and she turned pale. “Didn’t you say that you had an appointment,” she said at last in a tentative voice, “that you had an appointment, ma’am? Please don’t let me keep you.”
“Yes, okay,” Maya said, “good-bye,
Ulrich was waiting for her outside in the street. He had put his woolly suit back on. “You take much too long,” he chided, turning. “Come with me.” He began walking up the street, to a tubestation.
On the way down the escalator Ulrich opened his brown backpack and began rooting in its depths. “Ah-hah! Yes, I knew it.” He pulled up a little featherlight earclamp. “Here, wear this on.”
Maya put the earclamp onto her right ear. Ulrich began speaking to her in Deutsch. A stream of Deutsch gibberish emerged from his lips, and the earclamp began translating on the fly.
“[This will be much better,]” the earclamp repeated, in dulcet mid-Atlantic English. “[Now we’ll be able to converse in something like intellectual parity.]”
“What?” Maya said.
“The translator works, isn’t it?” Ulrich spoke English and patted his ear anxiously.
“Oh.” Maya touched the earclamp. “Yes, it’s working.”
Ulrich slipped happily back into Deutsch. “[Well, then! Now I can demonstrate to you that I’m rather a more clever and resourceful fellow than my limited skills in English irregular grammar might indicate.]”
“You just stole that woman’s purse.”
“[Yes, I did that. It was expedient. It was too frustrating to speak to you otherwise. I was sure that a woman of her age and class would have a tourist’s translator. And who knows, perhaps there are other interesting things in the purse.]”
“What if they catch you? Catch us?”
“[They won’t catch us. When I took the purse I was in my leotards, and there was no one in brightly colored leotards recorded entering or leaving the building. There are certain techniques by which one does these appropriations safely. The craft is difficult to explain to a neophyte.]” Ulrich brushed briskly at the woolly sleeves of his jacket. “[But back to the point. I’m rather good at understanding English, not so good at speaking it.]” Ulrich laughed. “[So you can speak to me in English, and I will speak to your earpiece in Deutsch, and we’ll get on very well.]”
They reached the bottom of the escalator and began working their way through the maze of potted plants: cy-cads, ferns, gingkos. “[When someone speaks a pidgin version of your language,]” Ulrich told her, “[it’s hard not to underestimate their intellect. They always seem like such a fool. I wouldn’t care to have you underestimate me. That misapprehension would put us on entirely the wrong footing.]”
“Okay. I understand you. You can speak beautifully. But you’re a thief.”
“[Yes, we European purse-snatchers have traditionally benefited by an exquisite education.]” She could hear the tone of sarcasm in Ulrich’s Deutsch even as she heard the running translation in English. The translator had a way of punching bits of English, with just the right pitch and timbre, through the blocky syllables inside the Deutsch. This was going to take some getting used to.
They stepped aboard a tube train, and sat together in the back of the car. Ulrich didn’t bother to pay. “[It’s better to leave the scene of the crime in short order,]” he murmured. He took her handbag from her, opened it, and emptied the entire contents of the stolen purse into it, deftly hiding the operation in the cavernous depths of his own backpack. “[Here,]” he said, giving her back her own handbag. “[That’s all yours now. See what you can find that’s of use to you.]”
“This is very dishonest.”
“[Maya, you are dishonest. You are an illegal alien traveling without ID,]” Ulrich said. “[Are you ready to be honest and to go home? Do you want to honestly face the people that you ran away from?]”
“No. No, definitely, I don’t want that.”
“[Then you’re breaking the rules already. You will have to break a lot more such silly rules. You can’t get a real job without ID. You can’t get health checks, you can’t get insurance. If the police ever bother to formally question you, they will take one little sniff of your DNA and they will find out who you are. No matter where you came from in the whole wide world, no matter who you are. The polity’s medical databanks are very good.]” Ulrich rubbed his chin. “[Maya, do you know what an ‘Information Society’ is?]”
“Sure. I guess so.”
“[Europe is a true Information Society. A true Information Society is a society made of informers.]” Ulrich’s dark eyes narrowed. “[A society of ‘rats.’ ‘Sneaks.’ ‘Snitches.’ ‘Judases.’ ‘Stool pigeons.’ Is my rhetorical point penetrating that translator?]”
“Yes, it is.”
“[Then that’s a fine translator! What an excellent grasp of the Deutsch vernacular!]” Ulrich laughed cheerfully, and lowered his voice. “[Munchen is a good place to hide, because the police here move slowly. If you’re smart and you have good friends, then you can survive in Munchen as a runaway. But if they ever take real notice of you, then the bulls will come to arrest you. You can count on that.]”
“Are you an illegal, Ulrich?”
“[Not at all, I’m a legal Deutschlander. Twenty-three years old.]” He stretched, putting his arm behind her shoulders. “[I simply enjoy pursuing the life of a petty criminal for reasons of pleasure and ideology. Too much honesty is bad for people.]”
Maya looked inside her handbag. She felt a vague urge to complain further, but she decided to shut up when she saw what a fine haul he’d made. The minibank was useless away from its proper owner, of course, but there were a couple of cashcards in there with pin money already slotted in them. Also a Munchen tubeticket. Sunglasses. Brush and comb set. Hair lacquer. Lipstick (not her color), night cream (hydrolyzer compound), internal pH chalk (peppermint flavored). Mineral tabs for tinctures. A hypo set. Tissues. A handsome little netlink. A scroller. And a camera.
Maya fished out the camera. A little digital tourist job. It fit her hand with lovely smoothness. She peered experimentally through the lens, then turned and framed Ulrich’s face. He flinched away, and quickly shook his head.
Maya examined the camera’s readout and cleared the internal disk of photos. “You really want me to keep all this stuff?”
“I know you need it,” Ulrich said in English.
“Great.” She began carefully polishing the camera with a paper tissue.
“[I happened to look inside your bag,]” Ulrich confided, “[while you were staring up at the steeple at those crazy Catholics. I saw that there was nothing much in your bag except a half-eaten welfare pretzel and some panties spotted with rat dung. This made me very curious.]” Ulrich leaned closer. “[I declined to appropriate your useless purse. I thought it much better that I offer you my protection. I don’t know who you are, little Californian. But you are very unworldly. You won’t last long in Munchen without a friend.]”
She smiled at him sunnily. Perfectly happy and confident. “So you’re my new friend?”
“[Certainly. I’m just the kind of bad company you need.]”
“You’re very generous. With other people’s property.”
“[I’d be generous with my own property if I were allowed to have any.]” He took her hand and squeezed it, very gently. “[Don’t you trust me? You might as well trust me. We’ll have much more fun that way.]” He lifted her fingers, and lightly touched them to his lips.
She pulled her hand free, clapped her palm against the back of his neck, and leaned into him. Their faces collided. Their lips met.
