He was easy to talk to, in fact. But Mike knew him better than most ў and knew
the old man's cordiality was a mask for things as strange and deep as his public
reputation implied.
"Game, Mike?" Naismith asked.
"Sorry, Mr. Naismith, I'm on duty. "Besides, I know you never lose except on
purpose.
The older man waved impatiently. He glanced over Mike's shoulder at something
among the shops, then lurched to his feet. "Ah. I'm not going to snare anyone
this afternoon. Might as well go down and window shop."
Mike recognized the idiom, though there were no "windows" in the shopping
center, unless you counted the glass covers on the jewelry and electronics
displays. Naismith's generation was still a majority, so even the most archaic
slang remained in use. Mike picked up some litter but couldn't find the
miscreants responsible. He stowed the trash and caught up with Naismith on the
way down to the shops.
The food vendors were doing well, as predicted. Their tables were overflowing
with bananas and cacao and other local produce, as well as things from farther
away, such as apples. On the right, the game area was still the province of the
kids. That would change when evening came. The curtains and canopies were bright
and billowing in the light breeze, but it wasn't till dark that the internal
illumination of the displays would glow and dance their magic. For now, all was
muted, many of the games powered down. Even chess and the other symbiotic games
were doing a slow business. It was almost a matter of custom to wait till the
evening for the buying and selling of such frivolous equipment.
The only crowd, five or six youngsters, stood around Gerry Tellman's Celest
game. What was going on here? A little black kid was playing ў had been playing
for fifteen minutes, Mike realized. Tellman had Celest running at a high level
of realism, and he was not a generous man. Hmmm.
Ahead of him, Naismith creaked toward the game. Apparently his curiosity was
pricked, too.
Inside the shop it was shady and cool. Tellman perched on a scuffed wood table
and glared at his small customer. The boy looked to be ten or eleven and was
clearly an outlander: His hair was bushy, his clothes filthy. His arms were so
thin that he must be a victim of disease or poor diet. He was chewing on
something that Mike suspected was tobacco ў definitely not the sort of behavior
you'd see in a local boy.
The kid clutched a wad of Bank of Santa Ynez gAu notes. From the look on
Tellman's face, Rosas could guess where they came from.
"Otra vez," the boy said, returning Tellman's glare. The proprietor hesitated,
looked around the circle of faces and noticed the adults.
"Aw right," agreed Tellman, "but this'll have to be the last time... └Esta es el
final, entiende?" he repeated in pidgin Spanish. "I, uh, I gotta go to lunch."
This remark was probably for the benefit of Naismith and Rosas.
The kid shrugged. "Okay."
Tellman initialized the Celest board to level nine, Rosas noticed. The kid
studied the setup with a calculating look. Tellman's display was a flat, showing
a hypothetical solar system as seen from above the plane of rotation. The three
planets were small disks of light moving around the primary. Their size gave a
clue to mass, but the precise values appeared near the bottom of the display.
Departure and arrival planets moved in visibly eccentric orbits, the departure
