The woman at the bakery asked me to face the wall before she gave me my change.
I did. I had been doing it all morning. The wallpaper showed a basket of bread that no baker alive would have put on that particular bicycle.
Behind me, the till clicked off.
“Too late,” the woman said.
“Keep the change.”
“I would if I could get at it.”
I waited while her terminal restarted. The young man who had followed me into the shop held out a cloth eye mask.
“This will stop it.”
“I have one.”
“Then put it on.”
I disliked him immediately. It saved time later.
My implant was supposed to display my identity badge to optical readers. It had one controller and a display across each cornea; I had paid for the option that let a reader find either eye. Two nights ago an update had left both displays transmitting a malformed badge over and over. The clinic had explained that the pattern confused the city’s linked scanners badly enough to restart their receivers. A camera not connected to that system could photograph me perfectly well. A person could look at me all day, if inclined. Nothing turned to stone except my prospects of getting through a transport gate.
An opaque mask stopped the transmission. Unfortunately it also stopped me seeing.
The clinic had offered a guide for tomorrow and a repair appointment on Monday. My niece was marrying today. I had asked whether they could switch the implant off remotely. The clinician said the fault had broken that connection too. She sounded as tired of saying this as I was of hearing it.
Outside, I turned my back to a street reader and took my mask out of my bag. The young man stood beside me.
“Where are you going?”
“To a wedding.”
“You need somebody to walk with you.”
“I need somebody who knows the way.”
He named the riverside civic hall before I did. For the first time I looked directly at him. He held his wrist terminal against his chest, screen inward.
“How do you know?”
“Your niece posted a photograph. You were tagged.”
“That is not an answer I like.”
“My name’s Leon.”
That wasn’t either.
I had tried asking for transport at the tram office. Their only staffed entrance was closed for repairs; the remaining gates would read my badge before I could reach the tram. A clerk had offered to book assistance by telephone. The first slot was after the ceremony. A taxi firm quoted a forty-minute wait. The hall was six tram stops away; I could walk there sooner if someone guided me. My niece had offered to send her brother to collect me, and I had told her he belonged there with the rings. There was no great principle involved. I wanted to arrive without becoming the morning’s problem.
Leon offered his arm. I put on the mask and took it.
“Straight ahead,” he said. “There’s a broken paving stone.”
For ten minutes he was a good guide. He told me when we reached the kerb, when to stop, where a delivery cart was passing. I could hear its little wheels. Then we turned, and the wind that had been on my right came into my face.
“The hall is south,” I said.
“There’s an obstruction.”
I stopped. He tried to move me on, lightly enough to pretend he hadn’t.
“What obstruction?”
“A crowd.”
There was certainly a crowd ahead. I heard a man calling for a corridor, then a burst of amplification that made the words unintelligible. It was not wedding music.
I pushed the mask up while looking down at my shoes. Leon caught my wrist.
“Don’t. There are receivers all round the square.”
I pulled my hand free.
“Then why have you brought me here?”
He took a long breath. “The network opening. The city commissioner is demonstrating the new universal reader.”
“You said you’d take me to the hall.”
“Afterwards.”
I kept my head bent. On the paving between my shoes, a white arrow pointed towards the new square. Leon had not taken me around an obstruction. He had taken me towards an audience.
“They told people there was no fault,” he said. “My mother’s mobility carriage refused her badge twice this week. They blamed her. You’re evidence they can’t talk away.”
“You could ask me.”
“You’d say no.”
He said it with the injured certainty of someone whose bad manners had been proved necessary by their result.
“I am saying no.”
“It only restarts the receivers. You won’t hurt anyone.”
“Including your mother’s carriage?”
He did not answer promptly enough.
I lowered the mask again. “Take me back to the bakery.”
“That’s in the wrong direction.”
“I know where it is.”
His sleeve moved under my hand. I let go before he could decide whether to pull me. For several seconds I heard only traffic and the amplified man failing to clear his throat quietly.
“I’m trying to change something,” Leon said.
“So am I. My shoes. At the hall.”
It wasn’t a brave answer. I had rehearsed a much better one about consent, and lost track of it while wondering whether he would leave me beside the road.
He did leave. I heard him say, “You don’t understand,” and his footsteps went towards the square.
I stayed where I was. I called my niece. The call went through my ordinary handheld phone; the clinic’s failed connection had been to the implant, not every object I owned.
“I’ve got held up,” I told her.
“Do you want Denny?”
“After the ceremony. If I don’t get there.”
She was quiet for a moment. Then she said, “We can do the first bit without you. The register has a spare witness.”
I had been meant to sign. I had built the whole morning around that small importance. I told her yes before I started bargaining for ten more minutes.
A door opened close by. Someone dragged a crate over a threshold.
“Are you waiting for assistance?” a woman asked.
“I am now.”
I explained, briefly, with the mask still on. She was taking sandwiches to the civic hall. Her name was Breen. Her assistant had gone ahead with the hot food; she was walking because the cold boxes fitted on her handcart.
“I can’t guide you and push this,” she said.
“Could I hold the cart?”
“From the side. Not behind. I don’t want to squash your feet at the kerbs.”
She placed my hand on its rounded side rail and let me try a few steps. The cart pulled a little towards her. We agreed she would say stop before a kerb and tell me when we’d crossed it. The handles were cold. Beneath the lid something smelled of onion.
We took the long route because the crowd blocked her usual one. When I asked how long, she told me twenty-five minutes and did not improve the answer when I sighed.
At the hall, the door attendant’s scanner was already turned away. My niece had called him. He checked my paper invitation and fetched a chair while Breen rolled the cart into the kitchen.
The ceremony was over. My niece came out holding a glass in one hand and her husband’s fingers in the other. I kept the mask on until the attendant covered his reader. Then I lifted it.
“I wanted you to see me walk in,” she said.
“I did too.”
We stood with that for a moment. She did not tell me it made no difference. Her dress had a small dark mark near the hem, and she showed me where she’d stepped in a puddle getting out of the car. I touched the dry edge of the fabric.
“I’ll need you in the photographs,” she said. “Ordinary camera. We’ve checked.”
She put me beside her husband. I had met him twice. He bent down and asked whether I would like his arm for the steps outside.
“Yes,” I said. “And please tell me where we’re going.”
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