Distraction - Bruce Sterling [188]
Fontenot pointed to the child, and essayed a suggestion in French. Papa Christophe chuckled indulgently. “D’abord vous guetté poux-de-bois manger bouteille, accrochez vos calabasses,” he said.
“Something about bugs eating the bottles,” Fontenot hazarded.
“Do bugs eat his bottles?” Kevin said.
Christophe hunched over and examined his charcoal outline. He was deeply engrossed by his statue. For his own part, the little boy was fascinated by the sharp carving tools.
The kid made a sudden grab for a rag-coated saw blade. Without a moment’s hesitation, the old man reached behind himself and unerringly caught the child by his groping wrist.
Papa Christophe then stood up, lifted the boy out of harm’s way, and caught him up one-handed in the crook of his right arm. At the very same instant, he took two steps straight backward, reached out blindly and left-handed, and snagged an empty bottle from its shelf on the wall.
He then swung around in place, and deftly snatched up the brimming bottle from the coil of the still. He replaced the bottle with the empty one—all the while chatting to the little boy in friendly admonition. Somehow, Christophe had precisely timed all these actions, so that he caught the trickling rum between drips.
The old man then sauntered back to his work stool and sat down, catching the child on his skinny leg. He lifted the rum bottle left-handed, sampled it thoughtfully, and offered Fontenot a comment.
Kevin rubbed his eyes. “What did he just do? Was he dancing a jig backward? He can’t do that.”
“What did he say?” Oscar asked Fontenot.
“I couldn’t catch it,” Fontenot said. “I was too busy watching him move. That was really strange.” He addressed Papa Christophe in French.
Christophe sighed patiently. He fetched up a flat piece of planed pine board and his charcoal stick. The old man had a surprisingly fine and fluid handwriting, as if he’d been taught by nuns. He wrote, “Quand la montagne brûle, tout le monde le sait; quand le coeur brûle, qui le sait?” He wrote the sentence blindly, while he turned his head aside, and spoke pleasantly to the child on his knee.
Fontenot examined the charcoal inscription on the pine board. “ ‘When the volcano catches fire, everybody knows. But when the heart catches fire, who knows it?’ ”
“That’s an interesting sentiment,” Kevin said.
Oscar nodded thoughtfully. “I find it especially interesting that our friend here can write down this ancient folk wisdom while he talks aloud to that child at the very same time.”
“He’s ambidextrous,” Kevin said.
“Nope.”
“He’s just really fast,” Fontenot said. “It’s like sleight of hand.”
“Nope. Wrong again.” Oscar cleared his throat. “Gentlemen, could we go out for a private conference please? I think it’s time for us to move along to our boat.”
They took Oscar at his word. Fontenot made his cordial good-byes. They left the old man’s cabin, then limped their way silently out of the village, full of broad uneasy smiles for the inhabitants. Oscar wondered at the fate that had stuck him with two different generations of lame men.
Finally they were out of earshot. “So what’s the deal?” Kevin said.
“The deal is this: that old man was thinking of two things at once.”
“What do you mean?” Kevin said.
“I mean that it’s a neural hack. He was fully aware of two different events at the same moment. He didn’t let that little kid hurt himself, because he was thinking about that kid every second. And even though he was carefully working that hammer and chisel, he wouldn’t let that bottle overflow. He was listening to the bottle while he was wood carving. He didn’t even have to look at the bottle to realize it was full. I think he was counting the drops.”
“So it’s like he’s got two brains,” Kevin said slowly.
“No, he only has one brain. But he’s got two windows open on the screen behind his eyes.”
“He’s multitasking, but with his own brain.”
“Yeah. That’s it. Exactly.”
“How do you know that?” Fontenot asked, squinting skeptically.
“My girlfriend won the Nobel