Holy Fire - Bruce Sterling [100]
A bronze gong sounded. The three hundred diners rose from their little tables in unison, walked or limped or shuffled or rolled, and engaged in a huge and extremely well-ordered session of musical chairs. There was no fuss and no confusion. When they were done, everybody found themselves in the intimate company of new friends, with every appearance of spontaneous delight. Scurrying robots brought everyone fresh utensils and the soup course.
Josef’s new tablemates—he seemed to know them well, or perhaps they were broadcasting biographies to be picked up by his spex—were speaking Deutsch. Maya had set her translator for Czestina and Italiano. She could have inserted the little diamond egg for Deutsch, but whenever she fussed with the necklace nowadays, it infallibly stopped and scolded her about how much she owed.
She felt ashamed of her necklace. The cheap gold and diamonds sparkled like so much radioactive junk on the exposed slope of her décolletage. She remained deaf to the Deutsch and said nothing, and her lack of contribution was not noticed in the slightest. She was young. She had nothing of interest to say.
The robots took the zuppa away and everyone moved again. A visually perfect, utterly bland, and intensely digestible cannelloni was served. Some guests chose to eat it, others merely beat it into submission. Then they moved again into fresh company for the delightfully molded and quite taste-free little gnocchi. Then again for gleaming rippled yellow wedges of a scent-free cheeselike substance. Then again for the fluted conical molds of the dolce. It was an intensely elaborate repast, none of it requiring much use of teeth.
The crowd adjourned to the gloomy grandeur of the Kio’s display suite. There were booths here and there against the walls, very daring booths that almost looked as if they were engaging in advertising. This tweaking of the rules was mere bravado on Vietti’s part, for blatant commerciality was not required in haute couture. True haute couture, the pursuit of genuine excellence in dress, required mostly patience. Patience was something that society’s glitterati had a very great deal of, these days. Couture was a game of prestige, and the money that supported it came partly from the wealthy, and mostly from Vietti’s licensing: spexware, scents, bath accoutrements, private spas, medicated cosmetics. An arsenal of intellectual property for a couturier who did not so much make clothing as tailor modes of living.
Here at last the lucky attendees, bones aching from the ascetic stools, found decent chairs in which to sit. They broke up into pewlike rows of competing subclasses. Various Indonesian, Nipponese, and American politicians and financiers who were considered peacocks of the shiny set invested the front row in determined effort to impress one another. They were backed by layers of net-editors, store buyers, photographers, actors, actresses, common or garden millionaires, and hommes and femmes du monde.
There were not quite enough chairs for everyone: a deliberate and very traditional oversight. Novak took her backstage through a milling crowd of socialites, junior designers, and minor celebrities.
The area backstage was full of European storks, African secretary birds, and American whooping cranes. These tall and solemn feathered bipeds awaited their cue with impressive single-minded dignity, deftly sidestepping the anxious humans.
The legendary couturier was the nucleus of a buzzing and highly motivated crowd of atelier subordinates. Vietti wore his version of working clothes: a seal black, vaguely furry, multipocketed getup that would have looked