The Wellstone by Wil McCarthy Page A

suggested she’d seen quite enough punk kids come swarming in here like they owned the place.
    “Who’s paying?” she wanted to know.
    Bascal held up a thumb. “That would be me.”
    “Uh-huh.” She presented him with the sketchplate, skeptically.
    “Authorized up to twenty thousand,” Bascal said to it, rolling his thumb across its surface in the accepted manner, rather than simply jamming it the way punk kids were supposed to. “Plus a hundred percent tip.”
    The slate chimed softly, acknowledging the transaction, and the young woman’s features softened a little. Bascal’s face and voice and thumbprint and DNA pattern all had to match against an account balance—he was good for the money. Still a punk kid, but apparently not a thief or mooch. That tip wasn’t going to change her life or anything; all the necessities of life and most of its luxuries were free for the faxing, or at least had downloadable free knockoffs. And everything else had a free waiting list (except of course for freedom itself), so no matter how poor you were, you knew your turn would eventually come. Penthouse apartment, whatever, just live to be a million. But a tip was a nice gesture—traditional, polite—and a big tip was nicer still. He didn’t have to do that.
    “I’ll see what we can do.”
    “Thanks so much,” Bascal agreed.
    The black-haired girl had slipped away during the exchange. Shrugging, Bascal sat down next to Conrad. But Conrad was worried and asked, “Can’t they track you now? The police, your parents? Spending money is always the giveaway.”
    “Oh, probably. But the account has ... certain security features that will slow down a search.”
    “Oh. That’s good, I guess. Thinking ahead.”
    “Such is my function.”
    The very last rays of sunset were visible over the mountains, between gaps in the apartment buildings on the river’s far bank. From what Conrad could see, the buildings themselves were in tasteful colors, not selling anything or trying to be anything in particular. These were the homes of ordinary Queendom citizens, with fax gates inside, possibly right there in the apartments themselves. Here ended the terrarium extravagance of the Children’s City, and there began the staid suburbs of the Queendom proper.
    The Green Mountain Spire was dark most of the way up now, the sunlight glinting redly off the top hundred meters or so, and inching upward with near-visible speed. The café balcony itself hung over a precipitous three-meter drop, with a small grassy bank beneath, and then the stony shallows of the Platte River, which wasn’t nearly as majestic as Conrad would have imagined. It was maybe twenty meters across, and shallow enough to wade in. To the north and south there were little sets of rapids where men and women in glowing green kayaks paddled down and, incredibly, back up again.
    Where the grass ended, the river’s banks were lined with a random jumble of stones, and sticking up here and there were the concrete stubs of what probably used to be bridges. Conrad couldn’t imagine why they’d never been removed, although they did lend an honest, unfinished sense to the area. Neither pristinely wild nor immaculately groomed, just here.
    “From an aesthetic standpoint,” Peter Kolb said self-importantly, “this place is fucking rich. The juxtaposition of elements is not as random as it looks.”
    Peter was big on aesthetics, which as far as Conrad could tell was a mathematical pursuit, having almost zero overlap with anything real, like architecture or matter programming, or even feng shui. The worst of it was, he couldn’t tell if Peter was being agreeable or sarcastic, so he refrained from commenting. Everyone else was ignoring Peter anyway, so that was all right.
    It only took a minute for the waitress to return, first with their drinks, and then again with platters of nacho chips, smothered in melted cheese and surrounded by battlements of carrot and celery, zucchini and