Holy Fire - Bruce Sterling [40]
Maya put the earclamp onto her right ear. Ulrich began speaking to her in Deutsch. A stream of Deutsch gibberish emerged from his lips, and the earclamp began translating on the fly.
“[This will be much better,]” the earclamp repeated, in dulcet mid-Atlantic English. “[Now we’ll be able to converse in something like intellectual parity.]”
“What?” Maya said.
“The translator works, isn’t it?” Ulrich spoke English and patted his ear anxiously.
“Oh.” Maya touched the earclamp. “Yes, it’s working.”
Ulrich slipped happily back into Deutsch. “[Well, then! Now I can demonstrate to you that I’m rather a more clever and resourceful fellow than my limited skills in English irregular grammar might indicate.]”
“You just stole that woman’s purse.”
“[Yes, I did that. It was expedient. It was too frustrating to speak to you otherwise. I was sure that a woman of her age and class would have a tourist’s translator. And who knows, perhaps there are other interesting things in the purse.]”
“What if they catch you? Catch us?”
“[They won’t catch us. When I took the purse I was in my leotards, and there was no one in brightly colored leotards recorded entering or leaving the building. There are certain techniques by which one does these appropriations safely. The craft is difficult to explain to a neophyte.]” Ulrich brushed briskly at the woolly sleeves of his jacket. “[But back to the point. I’m rather good at understanding English, not so good at speaking it.]” Ulrich laughed. “[So you can speak to me in English, and I will speak to your earpiece in Deutsch, and we’ll get on very well.]”
They reached the bottom of the escalator and began working their way through the maze of potted plants: cy-cads, ferns, gingkos. “[When someone speaks a pidgin version of your language,]” Ulrich told her, “[it’s hard not to underestimate their intellect. They always seem like such a fool. I wouldn’t care to have you underestimate me. That misapprehension would put us on entirely the wrong footing.]”
“Okay. I understand you. You can speak beautifully. But you’re a thief.”
“[Yes, we European purse-snatchers have traditionally benefited by an exquisite education.]” She could hear the tone of sarcasm in Ulrich’s Deutsch even as she heard the running translation in English. The translator had a way of punching bits of English, with just the right pitch and timbre, through the blocky syllables inside the Deutsch. This was going to take some getting used to.
They stepped aboard a tube train, and sat together in the back of the car. Ulrich didn’t bother to pay. “[It’s better to leave the scene of the crime in short order,]” he murmured. He took her handbag from her, opened it, and emptied the entire contents of the stolen purse into it, deftly hiding the operation in the cavernous depths of his own backpack. “[Here,]” he said, giving her back her own handbag. “[That’s all yours now. See what you can find that’s of use to you.]”
“This is very dishonest.”
“[Maya, you are dishonest. You are an illegal alien traveling without ID,]” Ulrich said. “[Are you ready to be honest and to go home? Do you want to honestly face the people that you ran away from?]”
“No. No, definitely, I don’t want that.”
“[Then you’re breaking the rules already. You will have to break a lot more such silly rules. You can’t get a real job without ID. You can’t get health checks, you can’t get insurance. If the police ever bother to formally question you, they will take one little sniff of your DNA and they will find out who you are. No matter where you came from in the whole wide world, no matter who you are. The polity’s medical databanks are very good.]” Ulrich rubbed his chin. “[Maya, do you know what an ‘Information Society’ is?]”
“Sure. I guess so.”
“[Europe is a true Information Society. A true Information Society is a society made of informers.]” Ulrich’s dark eyes narrowed. “[A society of ‘rats.’ ‘Sneaks.’ ‘Snitches.’ ‘Judases.’ ‘Stool pigeons.’ Is my rhetorical point penetrating that translator?]”
“Yes, it is.”
“[Then that’s a fine translator! What an excellent