Holy Fire - Bruce Sterling [66]
“Quel dommage!” said Bouboule, clearly very pleased. “My uncles manufacture spex in Stuttgart. I have four uncles. All brothers! Do you know how rare that is nowadays, to have four brother men, all from one family? Five childs! With my mother, all together. That never happens now! But things always happen to me that should never happen.” Bouboule opened her pack and handed Maya a plastic-wrapped pair of wire-rimmed spex.
“Liquid film?” Maya said, examining the lenses.
“Disposables,” shrugged Bouboule. “Take these smartgloves—I don’t say these are gloves of the mode. These are gloves to wear on party nights, when you might wake up who knows where. Don’t break the fingers, stretch them out slowly … that’s the way.”
“You’re very kind to loan me these,” Maya said.
“No loan, keep them! My uncles like gifting toys to the childs, they have a very long-term view of the market.”
“I have something for you, too, Maya,” said Benedetta suddenly, apparently on impulse. Benedetta groped with two fingers beneath the high rolled collar of her blouse. She tugged out a diamond necklace, with a pendant on a thin golden chain. “Here. This is for you. Yours is the greater need.”
“A diamond necklace?”
“Don’t look so surprised, any idiot can make diamonds,” Benedetta said. She handed it over. “Look at the pendant.”
“A little nightingale in a golden nest! This is so lovely, Benedetta. I can’t possibly accept this.”
“Gold is dirt. Stop gaping, and pay attention. The bird nest goes inside your ear. It’s a translator. All the diamonds are memory beads, they contain all the European languages. See the little numbers etched on the beads? The bird, she is hatching English, Italiano, and Français now. You don’t need Italiano as your major language, so put in English, that’s egg number one … put English in the center of the nest, and put Italiano back on one side. Italiano, that’s egg number seventeen.”
“Italiano is seventeen?” said Bouboule.
“It’s a Swiss device. From Basel.”
“What humorless people the Swiss are,” said Bouboule. “Just because Milano bought Geneva … What a grudge.”
Maya took the Italiano egg from the chain. Then she pried the English egg loose from the golden nest, and carefully popped the Italiano diamond egg beneath the bird’s etched little circuitry feet. The tiny eggs snapped nicely into place with satisfying little clicks.
She gently tucked the little pendant into the hollow of her right ear. The pendant wriggled about like a metallic earwig. Something threadlike and waxy crept into her ear canal. She felt an instant violent urge to claw the device out of her head, but she accepted the tickling penetration, shivering on the spot.
“[It has no battery,]” Benedetta told her in Italiano. “[You have to keep the bird warmed by your skin at all times. If she ever gets cold, the bird will die.]”
The new translator had a wonderful flutelike resonance, a tiny piping right next to the surface of her right eardrum. “But it’s so lovely! So clear!”
“Remember—no battery.”
“No battery. Okay. But that seems like an odd oversight.”
“That’s not a bug, it’s a feature,” Benedetta said glumly. “That bird is a shareware device. The Swiss weren’t missing any tricks when they built it.”
Maya clipped the diamond chain around her neck, and tucked it beneath her blouse. She couldn’t help but feel pleased. “You’re very generous. Would you like my Deutsch translator?”
Benedetta looked it over. “Deutsch-to-English. I can’t use this. It’s tourist kitsch.” She tossed it back. “[Now we can talk like civilized people. Show us your palazzo.]”
“I certainly hope this works.” Maya traced her passtouch into the glossy surface of the woven computer. “Are my gloves turned on?”
“[Something is processing,]” Benedetta diagnosed skeptically.
Bouboule pulled on a pair of exquisitely tailored lemon yellow smartgloves and carefully adjusted her spex. “This is so exciting. Patapouff and I love memory palaces. Don’t we, Pouff-pouff?”
Maya tensed in expectation that the monkey would speak aloud. The monkey said nothing. Maya forced herself to relax. Talking