and the bloodstains on the kerb; and all their signs,
those slogans and lights and pictures, flickering
and bright, entreating and ordering, enticing and
demanding in a grammar of glowing gas and
incandenscing wire.
This was the soul of the machine, the ethological
epicentre, the planetary ground zero of their
commercial energy.I could almost feel it, shivering
down like bomb-blasted rivers of glass from these
undreaming towers of dark and light invading the
snow-dark sky.
Peace in the Middle East? the papers asked.Better
celebrate Bokassa's coronation instead; better
footage.
'You got a terminal?' Linter said.He sounded eager
somehow.
'Of course.'
'Turn it off?' he said.His eyebrows rose.He looked
like a child all of a sudden. 'Please.I don't want the
ship to overhear.'
I wanted to say something to the effect that the ship
could have bugged every individual hair on his
head, but didn't.I turned the terminal brooch to
standby.
'You seen Close Encounters?' Linter said, leaning towards me.We were heading in the direction of
Broadway.
I nodded. 'Ship showed us it being made.We saw
the final print before anybody.'
'Oh yes, of course.' People bumped into us,
swaddled in their heavy clothes, insulated. 'The
ship said you're leaving soon.Are you glad to be
going?'
'Yes, I am.I didn't think I'd be, but I am.And you?
Are you glad to be staying?'
'Pardon?' A police car charged past, then another,
sirens whooping.I repeated what I'd said.Linter
nodded and smiled at me.I thought his breath
smelled. 'Oh yes,' he nodded. 'Of course.'
'I still think you're a fool, you know.You'll be
sorry.'
'Oh no, I don't think so.' He sounded confident, not
looking at me, head held high as we walked down
the street. 'I don't think so at all.I think I'm going to
be very happy here.'
Happy here.In the grand, cold design and the fake
warmth of the neon, while the drunks brown-
bagged and the addicts begged and the deadbeats
searched for warmer gratings and a thicker
cardboard box.It seemed worse here; you saw the
same thing in Paris and London, but it seemed
worse here.Take a step from a shop you had to
have an appointment for, swathed in loot across the
sidewalk to the Roller, Merc or Caddy purring at
the kerb, while some poor fucked-up husk of a
human lay just a spit away, but you'd never notice
them noticing Or maybe I was just too sensitive,
shell-shocked; life really was a struggle on Earth,
and the Culture's 100 percent non-com.A year was
as much as you could have expected any of us to
handle, and I was near the end of my resistance.
'It'll all work out, Sma.I'm very confident.'
Fall in the street here and they just walk around
you
'Yes, yes.I'm sure you're right.'
'Look.' He stopped, turned me by the elbow so that
we stood face to face. 'I'm going to have to tell
you.I know you probably won't like me for it, but
it's important to me.' I watched his eyes, shifting to
look at each of mine in turn.His skin looked more
mottled than I remembered; some pore-deep dirt.
'What?'
'I'm studying.I'm going to enter the Roman Catholic
Church.I've found Jesus, Diziet; I'm saved.Can you
understand that?Are you angry with me?Does it
upset you?'
'No, I'm not angry,' I said flatly. 'That's great,
Dervley.If you're happy, I'm happy for
you.Congratulations.'
'That's great!' He hugged me.I was pressed against
his chest; held; released.We resumed our walk,
walking faster.He seemed pleased. 'Damn, I can't
tell you Dizzy; it's just so good to be here, to be
alive and know there are so many people, so much
happening!I wake up in the morning and I have to
lie for a while just convincing myself I'm really
here and it's all really happening to me; I really
do.I walk down the street and I look at the people;
just look at them!A woman was killed in the place
I stay in last week; can you imagine that?Nobody
heard a thing.I go out and I go on buses and I buy
papers and watch old movies in the
afternoon.Yesterday I watched a man being talked
down from the Queensboro bridge.I think people
were disappointed.D'you know, when he came
down he tried to claim he was a painter?' Linter
shook his head, grinning. 'Hey, I read a terrible
thing yesterday, you know?I read that there are
times when there's a really complicated birth and
the baby's caught inside the mother and probably
already dead, and the doctor has to reach up inside
the woman and take the baby's skull in his hand and
crush it so they can save the mother.Isn't that
terrible?I don't think I could have condoned that
even before I found Jesus.'
'Why couldn't they have done a Caesarean?'
'I don't know.I don't know.I wondered about that
myself.You know I was thinking about coming up
to the ship?' He looked briefly at me, nodded. 'To