reflecting the strengths and determination of the people who regarded it as their own. Precious to the world. And now, so terribly fragile with age.
Quinn started to chuckle greedily.
Andy Behoo fell in love. It was instantaneous.
Terminal babe. Taller than him by a good ten centimetres, with the most gorgeous cloak of hair. A face with soft features so delicate as to be way beyond anything cosmetic adapter packages could achieve—a natural beauty. She wore a white sleeveless T-shirt that showed off a hot figure without revealing anything, and a scarlet skirt that didn’t reach her knees. But it was the way she carried herself that clinched it for him. Perfectly composed, yet she still looked round the shop with child-like curiosity.
The rest of the staff were all giving her clandestine glances as the doorway scanners datavised their findings. Then the smaller girl entered behind her, and the scanners gave out an almost duplicate alert. How weird. They couldn’t possibly be a cop grab operation, too obvious. Besides, the manager was pretty regular when it came to slipping the shop’s bung to the district station.
Andy told the customer he was dealing with, “Look it over, and have a think about it, you won’t find a better deal in London,” then left them to scoot over to the girl before any of his so-called colleagues could reach her. If the floor manager had seen, he’d probably lose his job.
“Hi, I’m Andy. I’m your sellrat. Anything you want, it’s my job to push the more expensive model on you.” He grinned broadly.
“You’re my what?” Louise asked. Her expression was half puzzlement, half smile.
Her accent did strange things along Andy’s spine, making him shiver. The ultimate in class, and foreign- exotic, too. He scanned his enhanced retinas across her face, desperate to capture her image. Even if she walked out of his life now, she would never be entirely lost. Andy had certain male-orientated software packages that could superimpose her into sensenviron recordings. He felt shabby even as he recorded her.
“Sellrat. That’s what the public calls Customer Interactivity Officers round these parts.”
“Oh,” the smaller girl sighed dismissively. “He’s just a shopboy, Louise.”
Andy’s neural nanonics had to reinforce his smile. Why do they always come in pairs? And why always one obnoxious one? He clicked his fingers and pointed both index fingers at the smaller girl. “That’s me. Try not to be too disappointed, I really am here to help.”
“I’d like to buy some neural nanonics,” Louise said. “Is it very difficult?”
The request startled Andy. Her clothes alone must have cost more than twice his weekly pay, why didn’t she have a set already? Beautiful and enigmatic. He smiled up at her. “Not at all. What were you looking for?”
She sucked her lower lip. “I’m really not very sure. The best I can afford, I suppose.”
“We don’t have them on Norfolk,” Genevieve said. “That’s where we’re from.”
Louise tried not to frown. “Gen, we don’t have to give our history to everyone we meet.”
Rich foreigners. Andy’s conscience struggled against temptation. Conscience won out, backed up by infatuation. I can’t sell her a pirate set. Not her. “Okay, your lucky day. We’ve got some top-of-the-range sets in stock. I can fix a reasonable deal for them, too, so there’s no need to get sweaty about the money. This way.”
He led them over to his section of the counter, managing to get her name on the way. His neural nanonics faithfully recorded the way she walked, her body movements, even her speech pattern. Like most nineteen-year- olds who’d grown up in London’s manky Islington district with its history of low-income employment, Andy Behoo fancied himself as a prospective net don. It combined the goal of fringe-legal work (also his heritage), with very little actual effort. He’d taken didactic memory courses on electronics, nanonics, and software every month since he’d passed his fourteenth birthday. His two-room flat was stocked to the ceiling with ancient processor blocks and every redundant peripheral he’d managed to scrounge or steal. Everyone in his tenement knew Andy was the guy to visit when you had a technical problem.
As to why such an embryonic datasmart prince of darkness was working as a sellrat in Jude’s Eworld, he had to get the money to finance his revolutionary schemes from somewhere—or maybe even go to college. And the shop always employed technerd teenagers as their outfront salesforce, they were the only ones who kept up to date on upgrades and new marques that would work on minimum-wage weeks.
The wall behind the counter was made up entirely from boxes of consumer electronics. All of them had colourful logos and names. Louise read a few of the contents labels, not understanding a word. Genevieve was already bored; looking round at other parts of the slightly shabby shop—one of seemingly hundreds of near- identical outlets along Tottenham Court Road. The inside was a maze formed by counters and walls of boxes, with old company posters and holomorph stickers stuck up on every available surface. Holographic screens flashed out enticing pictures of products in action. The section opposite Andy Behoo had a big GAMES sign above it. And Louise had promised.
Andy began pulling boxes down and lining them up on the counter. They were rectangular, the size of his hand, wrapped in translucent foil, with the manufacturer’s guarantee seal on the front. “Okay,” Andy said with familiar confidence. “What we have here, the Presson050, is a basic neural nanonics set. Everything you need to survive daily arcology life: datavises, mid-rez neuroiconic display, enhanced memory retrieval, axon block. It’s preformatted to NAS2600 standard, which means it can handle just about every software package on the market. There’s a company-supplied didactic operations imprint that comes with it, but we do sell alternative operations courses.”
“That sounds very . . . comprehensive,” Louise said. “How much?”
“How are you paying?”
“Fuseodollars.” She showed him her Jovian Bank disk.
“Okay. Good move. I can give you a favourable rate on that. So, we’re looking at about three and a half thousand, for which we’ll throw in five free Quantumsoft supplement packages from their BCD30 range. Your choice of functions. I can arrange finance for you if you want, better percentage than any Sol-system bank.”
“I see.”
“Then we’ve got—” His hand moved on to the next box.
“Andy. What’s the top of the range, please?”
“Okay, good question.” He disappeared behind the counter for a moment, returning with a fresh box and a suitably awed tone. “Kulu Corporation ANI5000. The King himself uses this model. We’ve only got three left because of the starflight quarantine. These are most wanted items all over town right now. But I can still give you level retail.”
“And that’s better than the first one?”
“Yes indeedie. Runs NAS2600, of course, with parallel upgrade potential for when the 2615 comes out.”
“Um. What’s this NAS number you keep saying?”
“Neural Augmentation Software. It’s the operating system for the whole filament network, and the number is the version. 2600 was introduced turn of the century, and boy was it a bugfeist when it came out. But it’s a smooth proved system now. And the supplement packages are just about unlimited, every software house in the Confederation publishes compatible products. If you’re going serious professional you can add physiological monitors, encyclopaedia galactica, employment waldoing, SII suit control, weapons integration, linguistic translation, news informant, starship astrogration, net search—the full monty. Then there’s games applications as well, I can’t even list them you have so many.” He patted the box with reverence. “No fooling, Louise, this set gives you the full interface range: nerve overrides to control your body, sense amplification, sight-equivalent neuroiconic generation, complete reality sensenviron, implant command, total indexed memory recall.”
“I’ll take it.”
“Got to warn you: not cheap. Seventeen thousand fuseodollars.” He held up his hands in placation. “Sorry.”
Daddy will kill me, Louise thought, but it has to be done. I promised Fletcher, and that horrid Brent Roi never really believed me. “All right.”
Andy smiled in admiration. “Talk about power choosing. That’s impressive, Louise. But, hey, I can lighten
