Child of Fortune (12 page)

"What are you talking about?" I cried.

"What do I talk about? What do you talk about? Surely even Children of Fortune comprend the difference subtle between a taverna and a Public!"

"Kudasai, bitte, mercy upon my ignorance, good sir," I begged. "I'm entirely new at this. I have no idea what you mean by a Public Service Station!"

The domo's expression softened somewhat, at least to the point of regarding me as an ignorant bumpkin in some distress rather than a deliberately insulting churl. "Nouvelle Child of Fortune desu, auslander, ne? Wakaru. Attends, kind: Edoku a magnet for indigent Children of Fortune desu, ne, therefore wir wollen nicht a great display of public munificence to render to same, ne, lest what is already a flood become a tsunami. But Edoku a civilized planet desu, and we cannot therefore allow even such as yourself to starve or suffer disease, and certainly not to be forced to relieve yourself al fresco, ne. Voila, the Public Service Stations, where you will find the necessities of survival and no more, pared to the edge of physical discomfort, but not beyond."

Thanking him far more profusely than his modest aid justly required, I hastened, indeed fairly ran, to the venue he had suggested, and there in the little wood, screened from casual sight by tall hedges, was the first truly unesthetic construct I had seen on Edoku. Vraiment, as if in contrast to every other building in the city, the Public Service Station--or rather Stations, for, as I was to learn only too well, the hundreds of them secreted all over the city were entirely identical -- seemed designed to negate all concepts of esthetics. It was a single-story windowless cube constructed of some textureless gray material, the perfect nullity of its design marred only by an oblong doorless portal.

Inside, the Public was only marginally less unappetizing. All of the interior surfaces were of the same gray substance, entirely unadorned, and the lighting was an unwholesome bluish-white harshness emanating from naked overhead fixtures. The central area of the single room was given over to benches and tables seamlessly extruded from the gray material of the floor; at these sat about a dozen people more or less the same age as myself. The far end of the room was given over to shower stalls, for the doors supplied only a modicum of privacy, and 1 could see the shanks of bathers abluting themselves within. To the right as 1 entered was a counter with a bored-looking elder functionary lounging be- hind it, a long rack holding several dozen gray garments, a series of water fountains, and then a long narrow table piled with strange rubbery-looking gray blocks.

All these accoutrements I perceived, as it were, en pissant, for the left-hand wall was given over entirely to toilet stalls, and to the nearest unoccupied stall I scurried, with only the briefest nod of my head to a young boy in a singularly unappealing gray smock who had lifted his arm and pointed his finger thereto in an entirely superfluous gesture of friendly, if jocular direction.

***

After relieving myself of both catabolic waste products and the chagrin of my not exactly graceful entry , I emerged from the toilet stall to essay my debut into the society of the Public Service Stations and apprise myself of the nature of the facilities and services which Edoku in its magnanimity provided gratuit to indigent Children of Fortune such as myself.

Now that I had dealt with the most pressing matter, I could more exquisitely appreciate the extent of my thirst and hunger, and so I first repaired to one of the fountains, where I surfeited myself on water so perfectly tepid and tasteless as to be remarkable for the very perfection of its blandness.

Food, however, seemed nowhere in evidence, and so I next introduced myself to a group of two young boys and a young girl lounging at the nearest table. "Hello, I am Moussa Shasta Leonardo. My mother, Shasta Suki Davide --"

The younger of the two boys, dressed, like the girl, in a singularly unappealing gray smock, held up his hand to stay the telling of my name tale. "Greener, ne?" he said. "We don't exchange name tales, since we've just started to live the tales of our own freenoms, right, so all we have is the kindernoms someone else gave us, and paternoms and maternoms mean nothing to the vrai Child of Fortune, ne. So in the Publics, you're just Moussa, I'm just Dan, she's just Jooni, and he's just Mart."

While this bizarre mode of introduction seemed entirely uncivilized to me, I felt in no position to deliver a lecture on manners; they seemed friendly enough, and, moreover, I had more pressing needs than the desire to hear their name tales. "Bien," I said amiably, ''as you surmised, I'm entirely innocent of the ways of the Public Service Stations. I was given to understand that food was available gratuit, but I see no refectory, nor even a cold buffet ..."

For reasons which I was about to learn, the three of them seemed to regard this as high comedy, breaking into raucous and ironic laughter. There were half a dozen gray oblong blocks on the table before them; Dan handed me one of them with an exaggerated courtly flourish.

"Voila, your very first fressen bar, Moussa," he said. "you are about to enjoy a unique culinary experience."

I fingered the unappetizing-looking gray thing dubiously. It felt like soap. I sniffed at it. It was almost odorless, save for a subtle odor of something chemical, perhaps formaldehyde. It seemed to me that I was being set up as the victim of some juvenile prank ...

Seeing my reluctance, Jooni took up another fressen bar, bit off a large chunk, and rapidly chewed it down with an entirely neutral expression. "Mangia, Moussa," she said. «Not only perfectly safe, but each fressen bar is perfectly com- pounded to provide optimum nutriment for one human for one standard day."

"But we may eat as many as we want," Mart added.

"Though we may not want as many as we eat," Dan muttered enigmatically.

Properly famished, and at least assured that I wasn't about to poison myself, I bit off a sizable chunk of my fressen bar and masticated it appraisingly.

It had the nontexture of a bland fromage made of cellulose dust. It had no taste at all, or rather, perhaps, the perfectly neutral savor of a wad of wet paper. I chewed it down swiftly and mechanically, if only to clear my palate of this wretched substance, while my companions, seeing my expression, burst once more into laughter .

"It's vile!" I cried. "It's disgusting!"

"Try again and reconsider," Mart said. "you will find it neither vile nor disgusting, but something both easier to consume and more boring. "

"Perhaps you have sampled the art of some great chef maestro and marvelled at its culinary perfection?" Jooni said. "Such art is a triumph of cuisinary esthetics, ne?"

"Well you should also appreciate the art behind the creation of the fressen bar, " Dan said. "Somewhere on Edoku there is a chef maestro who has achieved, through the exercise of daunting skill, total culinary antiperfection. The fressen bar is not the result of cuisinary incompetence; au contraire, it is a triumph, a perfectly nutritious meal perfectly shorn of the slightest hint of cuisinary esthetics!"

"Entirely in keeping with the Edojin's general regard for Children of Fortune," Jooni added, and then, as ravenous hunger overcame esthetic reluctance and I glumly gobbled down the rest of my fressen bar, the three of them delivered up a communal lecture which admirably served to apprise me of my current true status in Edoku's scheme of things and induct me into the demimonde of the Public Service Stations.

Indeed the latter were the perfect practical incarnation of the former, for the Publics were designed with demonic perfection to supply us with precisely the absolute essentials of animal existence and exactly nothing more. Toilets and bathing facilities. A medical dispensary and other minimal healing services. The strictly functional and esthetically dismal gray smocks for those of us without serviceable clothing on our backs. Entirely tasteless distilled water. And of course the unspeakable but perfectly nutritious fressen bars.

As for sleeping accommodations, did not Edoku abound in every sort of public parkland to suit any conceivable taste for temperature, climate, hour of the day, season, and even gravity gradient?

Edoku, according to the social philosophy of the Edojin, was morally obligated to safeguard our protoplasmic existence, but our esthetic and spiritual requirements were the responsibility not of the body politic but of ourselves.

Moreover, we were assured at every opportunity, the people of Edoku would accuse us not of ingratitude on the basis of wounded civic pride should any of us choose to desert their planet for a venue of more lavish public munificence. Au contraire, as a bona fide of their good will in this regard, Children of Fortune leaving Edoku were gifted with a subsidized 25% discount on electrocoma passage in any and all Void Ships departing the planet.

***

Thus did the Publics serve as the salons, restaurants, and bazaars of the Children of Fortune of Edoku, and thus did I become a citizen of the demimonde which existed in the interstices of Great Edoku, if not exactly out of sight of the educated eye, then at least discreetly tucked away in the nooks and crannies.

When I had been a haut turista with a valid chip of credit and quarters in the hotel Yggdrasil, I had never noticed the small gray buildings screened by shrubbery or built in the obscured bottoms of ravines or hidden in rarely-frequented copses or secreted in alleyways between tall towers. Nor had I regarded the occasional figure dressed in a gray smock as anything but an Edojin with a peculiarly outre sense of style; in fact, among the colorful throngs of birds of paradise, such dull plumage faded into effective invisibility, unless, of course, you were a bird of the same species.

Similarly, who was to notice that the parks and gardens and woodlands served as regular dormitories for a considerable population of indigents when these same venues were also frequented by the Edojin themselves, who were much given over to lounging on lawns, postprandial al fresco naps, and amatory exercises conducted in dells and bowers?

Now, however, being barred by pecuniary circumstances from the restaurants, hotels, and entertainment emporiums, and being limited in the range of my wanderings to the ground I could cover afoot, I experienced a perceptual reversal of figure and ground. The extravagant buildings of the urban arrondissements, the pavilions and palaces of pleasure, the hotels and entertainment emporiums, all hardly impinged on the forefront of my conscious attention, for they had now become facets of a society, indeed a reality, from which I was exiled; these now assumed the perceptual role of a background blur, an extravagant kaleidoscopic ground against which I perceived with a vividness and detail sharpened by practical imperatives the quotidian realm of the Children of Fortune which all along had been cunningly hidden in plain sight.

I might not know which fanciful building contained a restaurant or taverna nor the modes of cuisine and drink to be found within as I wandered aimlessly about a relatively circumscribed territory, but within a few days I knew the precise location of every Public therein. The entertainments to be had for a price within this vecino might be a matter of complete indifference, but soon enough I became a knowledgeable connoisseur of the gardens, woods, and parklands. I knew where one might find a luxuriant lawn under warm midnight skies with just enough gravity to keep a sleeping body from drifting, or where one might nap on a forest floor at twilight, or bake one's bones on a noonday beach beside a lake, or secure a bower by a cooling stream in a land where dawn remained perpetually imminent.

In short, I was a typical Child of Fortune of Edoku: fresh from home, out of funds, on the planet only a short time, subsisting on fressen bars, sleeping al fresco, and frequenting the Publics as much to pass the time as to utilize the practical facilities.

For in truth, most of us had little to do with ourselves in this stage of our evolution as Children of Fortune but wander aimlessly about the landscape and public venues, sleep, engage in desultory amorous dalliance, or gather in the Public Service Stations to exchange tales, lore, and gossip.

Most of which involved stratagems whereby we might some- how obtain sufficient ruegelt to either regain access to the restaurants, hotels, entertainment emporiums, and particularly to the Rapide, or to quit Edoku for a less financially demanding planet. That, and methods whereby we might gain entree to the elite circles of Public Service Station Society -- those wiser, older, and more experienced Children of Fortune who had neither gone home in surrender nor chosen to work their way off the planet, but who had carved out their niches in the social ecology of Edoku itself by organizing themselves into small tribes for the communal purpose of securing ruegelt from the throngs of the city.

While these lordly urchins consumed fressen bars only when they were down on their luck, the ruegelt in their pockets could not purchase freedom from the need to void their bowels and bladders, and so they too were required to pay regular visits to the Publics, though by and large they deigned not to mingle with the likes of us.