She walked down a crooked aisle among Stuart’s phalanx of machines, breathing hard and trying to clear her head. She walked the length of the barn, down among the new machines. At the far end of the building she turned and headed back. She felt better now. Walking always helped her.
“Come with me to Europe,” a woman said aloud. Mia stopped.
“We don’t have time for Europe. Or the money,” a man grumbled. The two of them were sitting together on a blanket on the floor, in an aisle among the machines. The man wore a big padded jacket and dirty leggings and big scuffed boots; he had a pair of glittering spex propped on his forehead. The woman wore a very peculiar garment, a tentlike brown poncho somehow suspender-strapped to a baggy pair of pleated harem pants. They’d been working together at a CAD rig. They’d stripped off their manipulation gauntlets and they were sprawling on their blanket and eating biscuits from a paper bag.
They looked rather dirty. They were talking too loud. Their faces were strange: unlined, lithe. Their gestures were sharp and abrupt. They seemed very upset about something.
They were young people.
“They could spin that polymer in six days in Stuttgart,” said the girl. “Six hours, maybe.”
“Stuttgart’s not a real answer. At least here we’ve got some connections.”
“That old man only keeps us here ’cause he likes to watch us play! We need some vivid people. People like us. In a place where it’s happening. Not like this museum.”
“We’ll never get anywhere in Stuttgart. You know what the rents are like in Stuttgart? Anyway, are you saying we’re not vivid? You and me? We gotta be vivid in our own way, on our own ground! It doesn’t mean anything, otherwise.”
Mia walked past them, pretending not to eavesdrop. They paid her no attention. She sought out Mr. Stuart behind his counter. Stuart was digging with a multitool in the silvery innards of a broken helmet.
“I’m done, for now,” Mia said.
“Great,” Stuart said indifferently, tucking a spex monocle into one eye.
“Tell me about those two young people over there, the ones doing CAD work.”
Stuart stared at her, his monocle gleaming. “Are you kidding? What business is that of yours?”
“I’m not asking you what networks they’re accessing,” Mia explained. “I just want to know a little about their personal lives.”
“Oh, okay, no problem,” Stuart said, relieved. “Those kids are in their twenties. Always got some little project going, you know how it is at that age. No sense of time scale, lots of energy to waste, head in the clouds. They make clothes. Try to.”
“Really.”
“Clothes for other kids. She designs them, and he instantiates them. They’re a team. It’s a kid romance. It’s cute.”
“What are their names?”
“I never asked.”
“How do they pay you for the access time?”
Stuart said nothing. Pointedly.
“Thanks,” Mia said. She went back to eavesdrop at greater length. The young people were gone. Mia quickly snagged her cashcard from the entranceway. There wasn’t much left on the card, for Stuart’s rates were very cruel to strangers. She hurried out of the building.
The boy and girl had backpacks slung over their shoulders and were walking uphill toward a bus stop.
When the bus arrived, Mia climbed aboard behind them. They sat in the back. Mia sat near them, across the aisle. They took no notice of her. Young people didn’t like to notice old people.
“This town,” the girl announced bitterly, “is boring me to death.”
“Sure,” the boy said, yawning.
“I’m bored right now,” the girl said.
“You’re in a bus,” the boy pointed out, with infinite tolerance. He began to root around in his pack.
Mia pulled her sunglasses from her purse, put them on, and pretended to gaze up the aisle of the bus. There were three dogs and a couple of cats aboard. Up near the front two well-dressed Asian men were eating from boxes with chopsticks.
The girl opened her backpack, fished out a rattlesnake, and hung it around her neck. The snake was beautiful. Its scaly skin looked like tesselated pavement as seen from a great height. The snake stirred a little at the contact with warm flesh.
“Don’t get tight,” the boy said.
“I won’t get tight. Snakey’s not loaded.”
“Well, don’t load him, then. You’re always getting tight when we argue. As if that ever settles anything.” The boy pulled an enameled comb from his bag, and ran it restlessly through his tousled hair. “Anyway, that snake would look stupid in Stuttgart. They just don’t do rattlesnakes in Stuttgart.”
“We could do Praha. We could do Milano.” The girl toyed listlessly with the snake’s rattle. “It’s so slow here in the Bay. Nothing ever happens here. Darling, I’m miserable.” She let go of the snake and tugged at a hank of greasy brunette hair. “I can’t work if I’m miserable. You know I can’t work if I’m miserable!”
“What am I going to do with you when you’re miserable in Europe?”
“In Europe I’d never be miserable.”
“Sure.”
“You don’t think I know my own mind,” she said angrily. “That’s always been your problem.”
“You don’t know your own mind, and you never have,” he said bluntly. “Your mind is a pain in my neck.”
“I hate you,” the girl announced. She crammed the snake back into her backpack.
“You should go to Europe,” Mia said aloud.
They looked up, startled. “What?” the girl said.
“You should go. You might as well go.” Mia’s heart skipped a beat, then started racing. “You’re very young, but you have plenty of time. Go to Europe for five weeks. Five months. Five years. Five years is nothing. You should go to Europe together, and you can get it all out of your system.”
“I beg your pardon?” said the boy. “Did we ask for this?”
Mia took off her sunglasses. She met their eyes.
“Let her alone,” the girl said, quickly.
“It’s no use going later,” Mia said. “If you wait too long, then you’ll know too much. Then it’s always all the same, no matter where you go.” She began to weep.
“Wonderful,” the boy muttered. He stood up, grabbing the bus’s bamboo pole. “Come on, we’re leaving.”
The girl didn’t move. “Why?”
“Come on, she’s having some kind of attack! That’s not our problem. We’ve got problems enough.”
“You’re not old enough for real problems,” Mia told him. “You can run a lot of risks now. You’ve got energy, and you’re free. Go ahead and run a risk. Take her to Europe.”
The boy stared at her. “Do I look like a man who takes career advice from strange old women who cry in public buses?”
“You look just like the kind of man … A man that I knew a long time ago,” Mia said. Her voice was trembling. Her tear ducts ached dreadfully. They stung all the way down into her nose.
“You’re very free with advice for other people. When was the last time you took any kind of risk?”