The Book of Koli (Rampart Trilogy #1) - M. R. Carey Page 0,65
Rampart was what I had got left to make myself feel like I mattered somewhat. But that don’t explain it, for I could come to Rampart Hold at any time and say to Catrin and them “look what I got in my hand that’s waked and working”. It didn’t have to be soon. Yet still, I was hoping I could do it before the day of Salt Feast, and I was bending myself to that like my life depended on it. Maybe it was because Ramparts is like a family. If I was a Rampart, then I would be in that family the same way Haijon was, though blood was in it for him and not for me. When I stood and watched Spinner take Haijon’s hand and pledge to him, I would be like her brother at least, and live in the same house with the two of them.
I had not properly thought what that would mean, being so close to her and thinking always of that one time when we was together. I wasn’t running towards anything good. But running I was, for all that. The onliest thing that slowed me, and kept me from standing up right then and saying my piece, was that I was still kind of fighting against what the DreamSleeve was, and trying to make it be something it wasn’t.
“There’s got to be some part of you that’s a weapon,” I says to Monono, though she’d already told me a dozen times it wasn’t so. “People of the old times wasn’t idiots. They wouldn’t make a tech that could only sing.”
We was sitting in the broken house again. I mean, I was sitting, with my back up against the wall. The DreamSleeve was propped up on a stone a few feet away, so I could see the little window and Monono standing in the window looking out at me.
“Oh, how I wish I could help you, obnoxious boy,” Monono said. She looked and sounded so sad that she had got to be joking, but I didn’t see it. I was still learning her ways. “If only those super-duper engineers at Sony had given me a laser beam, I could shoot holes in all your enemies and then we could live happily ever after.”
She give a sigh. Then she said, “Oh!” like some other idea just come to her, and I got to hoping she did have a laser beam after all. But it was not that. “I just thought about that word ‘happily’, Cody-bou. Do you think maybe making people ‘happy’ is important too, even if you can’t shoot holes in them? How weird! That would mean I wasn’t ‘only’ an entertainment console and you were ‘only’ a stupid, selfish dope.”
She folded her arms and turned her back on me. I realised I had made her angry again without meaning to. I said I was sorry and she made a tutting sound. A different picture come in the little window, of a cute kitten face that was rolling its eyes. I knowed she was just joking then, for I had seen the kitten face oftentimes before.
“Will you play ‘Enter Sandman’?” I asked her. For it always seemed to make Monono happy if I asked her to play me music. Only this time she didn’t answer right away.
I was fixing to ask again when she says, “This lethal-weapon nonsense is really important to you, isn’t it, Cody-bou?”
I gun to say entertainment was important too, for I hated to argue with her, but she shushed me. “Yes or no, dopey boy.”
“It would be something good to have, Monono, yes. But songs is—”
“Bah bah bah bah! Okay, there is one thing I could do. There might be one thing. Possibly. Not a laser beam, but something that’s maybe just a little bit laser-y and slightly beamish. But I’ve got to give you the scary speech first.”
“The what?” I asks her, all excited but also somewhat wildered.
“You’ll know it when you hear it, Cody-bou.”
“But what is this thing you’re—?”
“Ready or not. The product or service you are being offered falls outside the scope of your current contract with the Sony Corporation and its licensees and assignees. If you accept the offer, the terms of your contract will be amended accordingly. If this results in additional payments being levied, you will be liable for those payments under the laws pertaining in the state of California.”