Strings Read Free Page B

and there had been long periods of fog, on one channel or another, with nothing visible at all.
    Everything was visible here.
    Suddenly he became disgusted at his own reactions. He barked an order, switching to com mode. In two minutes Madge was standing on the other side of the window, smiling at him. Before she even spoke he knew he had erred. He had forgotten the time difference and caught her in the middle of putting youngsters to bed. But she did not complain; she merely smiled and sat down.
    “I promised to call,” he said.
    “So you did. And you’ve survived your first day in the Big Wide World!” Rosy cheeks and white hair—no one could have looked more motherly than Madge. But when had she grown so small? She could hardly have shrunk since he had left that morning.
    “I didn’t buy Brooklyn Bridge, like Ben said I would.”
    “Ben didn’t mean that!”
    But Ben had meant the other things he had warned about. Cedric might think he owned nothing of value except the camera Gran had given him, Ben had said, but any healthy nineteen-year-old must look out for bodyshoppers, or he would soon discover he was a mindless zombie in one of the darker corners of the vice industry, with every prospect of eventual promotion to a freezerful of spare parts.
    “I hired a percy,” Cedric said. “Can you see it?” Madge leaned sideways and looked where he pointed. She said yes, she could. The big metal cylinder stood in a corner, dominating the room—a blank, blue, bullet-shaped pillar.
    “I buzzed around all over the place like a native,” Cedric said proudly. No one could get knocked off in a percy, which was why all city dwellers used them.
    Percy: Personal Survival Aid.
    “Doesn’t look big enough,” Madge said doubtfully.
    “It’s okay,” Cedric insisted. “I was lucky. It’s an XL, and they just happened to have it in stock.”
    In a percy, the occupant stayed upright, half sitting, half standing. It would have been quite comfortable, had his legs not been so damned long. His neck was still stiff.
    “Did you see all the sights?” Madge asked.
    He told her about his day, or most of it—his trip on the super, his sightseeing, and how he had tried to go to a ball game, but the new stadium was not complete yet and the old one had finally been abandoned after Hurricane Zelda last fall. He did not describe how he had gaped at the ads for surgical improvements to various body parts, nor did he detail the varieties of chemical and electronic stimulation he had declined, or the educational opportunities both erotic and exotic, some of them even promising real girls. He had not been tempted, and he had had no money anyway.
    Nor did he mention that he had gone window shopping, because he had been choosing gifts he was going to give Madge herself, and Ben, and all the others. Of course, he had not been able actually to buy anything, but as soon as he started earning money he was going to send gifts to everyone at Meadowdale. Well, not truly everyone, but all the adults, certainly. Maybe some of the older kids, although all his own group had gone long since. He had been the oldest for almost a year now.
    And then he asked if Gavin had used his fishing rod yet, and if Tess had had her pups, and stuff like that.
    “Did you eat properly?” Madge asked, mother instincts roused.
    “I had a pizza.”
    She pouted disapprovingly at the mention of pizza. “I’ll get Ben. He took some of the small fry out to watch a calving.”
    But Cedric had just realized that his credit was about to die. The call would end without warning and Madge would guess why, and then she would worry. “I’d better go,” he said. He sent his love to everyone and disconnected. He checked his credit and discovered that he had cut it very fine. He would not even be able to buy a Coke in the morning; but he had his ticket to HQ, and the percy was prepaid, so he was all right.
    It was nice to know that Meadowdale was still there. It was the only