or something, without your knowledge. Just in case.”
“Good enough. What sort of things will I have to do?”
“The main thrust is going to be about how the elderly are feeling bemused by the world. I want to show how things have moved too fast for some.”
“The more things change, the more they stay the same.”
“Um,” I said, noncommittally.
“You don’t agree?” His hand shook a little as he put down his teacup. “Rape, murder, torture, it’s all been done before. Loneliness, joy, love—been around for thousands of years. Clothes are different, but there’s always been fashion. Food is different, but there’s always been taste and fads. Oh, there may be new ways to read books these days, there’s the net instead of radio and these silly PIDAs instead of a good leather wallet, but people don’t change. Not really.” He laughed. “The expression on your face! Live a few more years and you’ll find out. Nothing really changes.”
“But how did you feel when your money no longer worked and you had to get a PIDA?”
He shrugged. “It was twelve years ago. I was a bit uncertain at first: What if something went wrong in a computer and my account got tied up? How would I pay the rent then? But after a month or two I liked it. No more rushing to the bank. No more filling out bills. Everything’s so easy.”
“For some,” I said. “I heard a story once about when the book reader first came out, a young man gave one to his grandfather. He turned it on, pulled up a copy of To Kill a Mockingbird, and showed grandfather how to change the pages. Granddad said, Thank you very much. The younger man left him happily reading. A year later, when he went back to visit, the young man found his grandfather reading the same book. ‘Wonderful thing, this reader,’ the old man said, ‘but I wish they’d brought out some different stories.’ The old man had no idea that there were nearly twenty thousand different books on that disk. That he could have bought hundreds of other disks, or simply downloaded others—anything at all—from the net. He was used to a book being immutable. The fact that the words on each side of the ‘page’ changed didn’t make a difference: this was To Kill a Mockingbird, so how could it be anything else?”
We looked at each other thoughtfully.
“Anyway,” I said, “that’s what I want to look at. And don’t worry about acting. All I want is some standard shots of you sitting, walking, talking, reading, eating. My programs can change your expression and put you in the street or whatever. I’ll give you ten percent of my cut.”
“When do you want to start?”
“How about now?”
TWELVE
Lore is midway between thirteen and fourteen. It has been months since Oster and Katerine have spoken to each other about anything but business. Now it is late spring and all of the immediate family except Greta are gathered together at Ratnapida for the first time in almost a year.
“I’ve ordered a picnic,” Oster tells them all. “We’ll take in the grounds, sit in the sun and relax together. No,” he says to Tok who is folding up his screen to take outside, “we’re going to leave all the bloody paraphernalia in the house for a change.”
They walk single file behind Oster, who is carrying the rug, to the pond, the ornamental one with the fountain. Lore assumes he has chosen this one, the first in a series that becomes progressively less formal, because Katerine hates the casual disorganization of nature. Lore knows they do sometimes think of one another, try to please each other, to find common ground, but they are like two planets following separate orbits.
It is a beautiful day; the sun is lemony and light, not too hot, and the grass is that particular lush bright green only seen when the first flush of spring growth is ending. Everything should be perfect, and everyone tries—lots of oohs and ahs about the food, some conversation about the two-year lawsuit against the company, which is nearing its climax in Caracas—but it is an effort. Lore watches Katerine stare into the distance, then reach to her belt for the slate that is not there before she remembers she is supposed to be relaxing. Tok sits on the grass, just outside the intangible circle of family on the rug. Every now and then he reaches to the plate in front of him and picks