said. “Don’t bother to explain, dopey boy. I can infill.” And I heard it again. Her voice was different somehow. Still happy, laughing, sing-songing, but different. Like there was an edge underneath it that the sing-song was coming up against and getting grazed on. “Just so you know though: I came, I saw, I got the upgrade. And a lot of other stuff besides. The security alarm sounds like a fire engine trying to sing grand opera, so that was a surprise. You want to hear a little snatch of it?”
“No!” I told her. I thought to whisper it, but it come out loud enough so everyone sitting close to me heard it. They was all looking round at me, most of them looking kind of stern.
“Wow. Okay. So sorry for asking. I mean, I only walked halfway around the world for you. You’re very welcome, by the way. But you should ask me some time why I bothered to come back. I’ll try to make up a good reason.”
“I give you each to other, always and everywhere.”
That was the signal for Haijon and Spinner to take each other’s hands and then to kiss. I had thought to look away when that time come, but I kept on looking after all and I seen him draw her to him. Seen her smiling up into his face, like his face was the sun on a day that was just warm enough.
“Sorry, Monono-chan,” I said. “And thank you. Thank you. I don’t want to hear the security alarm, but I would like some music. Something that goes with a wedding.”
“Did I hear a pretty please?”
“Pretty please,” I said. Everyone was looking at me a lot harder now. They couldn’t hear what I was saying, but it was a rude and wrong thing for me to be talking at all.
“Induction field?”
“Out loud. As loud as you can go.”
I got up on my feet, at the same time sliding the DreamSleeve from out of my belt and holding it up in the air. A tune blasted out, filling the gather-ground with its sound. There was words to it: a man telling a woman that he was never going to give her up, or let her down, or run around, or hurt her.
People nearby gun to shout, and to jump up on their feet. Them that was further away didn’t see, at first, that it was tech. They just looked to see who it was that had set in to sing and play when the bride and groom hadn’t even stepped down out of the tabernac. Then when they seen no singer and no players they stood up too, until everyone was upright and almost nobody knowed what for.
Catrin knowed though, right away. And her eyes was on me as I stepped away from my mother and my sisters, still holding the DreamSleeve up high as if it was a torch and I needed it to see my way.
“Shut that down,” she shouted over the heads of the crowd. “Shut it down right now.”
There was a button that you could use to make the DreamSleeve go back to sleep. Monono called it the stand-by, though it didn’t stand by nothing except the other buttons. I didn’t hardly ever use it, for it seemed a kind of disrespect, like turning away from someone without a word instead of bidding them a proper goodbye. Right then, when she was only just come back after being away so long, it felt much worse. But I pressed the button just the same. The tune and the words was gone of a sudden, though the air still rang like they was only hid somewhere and might come out again.
“What is that you got there, Koli Woodsmith?” Catrin says. “And how did you come by it?”
“It’s Rampart, Catrin,” I says back to her, and to everyone. “I’m Koli Rampart now.”
29
There was shouts from every side. What I thought would happen, which was cheers and smiles and clapping hands and such, didn’t happen at all. Most of the faces I was seeing was shocked and nervous, as though this didn’t have to be a good thing necessarily, but just a surprise that could be good or bad depending.
I looked back at my mother and sisters. Athen and Mull was just as taken aback as anyone, but what I seen in Jemiu’s face was different. It was more like grief, as if I’d said I had a sickness and might die. Her eyes