Child of Fortune (5 page)

"I have a matter of some import which I .. that is, I think it is time ... something is on my mind ..."

"So much we have gathered from the way you've been picking at your food," my mother said, exchanging somewhat arch glances with my father.

"Come, out with it, Moussa," my father demanded. "Such reticence has hardly been your usual style."

"I am already in my eighteenth year ..."

"We too can mark the passage of time," Leonardo said in an ironic tone belied by the amusement in his eyes.

"Many of my friends have already begun their wanderjahrs. ..."

"And Davi leaves on the Ardent Eagle next week," my mother said to my wide-eyed astonishment.

Leonardo laughed. "We dine at his parents' table often enough," he pointed out. "At the very least, such a matter of cosmic import is suitable table talk among us, ne."

"Davi is three months younger than I am ..."

"Quite so. "

"So ..."

"So ...?"

All at once I found my ire at this foolish game overriding any further reticence between my unease at the import of what I was about to announce and the desire to make my meaning plain. "So it's time I began my wanderjahr too!" I exclaimed with no little pique. "Both of you knew what I wanted to say all along!"

Shasta laughed. "We had a certain inkling surmise," she owned. "But naturellement such a declaration is one we must all make on our own. It's hardly a confession to be prised from uncertain lips like an admission from the guilty conscience of a child."

"I'm not a child!"

"Indeed, kleine Moussa?" my father said, smiling paternally, or so it seemed, to mask a certain sense of loss.

"I'm not your kleine Moussa anymore!" I declared, all at once coming to detest this innocent term of endearment which I had always accepted in the loving spirit with which it was intended. "I've completed my schooling. I've had many lovers. I can power-ski with the best. I can fly an Eagle. I'm conversant with cuisinary styles and vintages. I have survived many a night in the Bittersweet Jungle. I can compose word crystals and play chess. What more is there for me to learn in Nouvelle Orlean before I'm ready to become a Child of Fortune?"

At this my parents burst into such laughter that even I was constrained to hear the foolishness of my own words.

"Voila, our kleine Moussa has become a woman of the worlds, skilled in all the means whereby one may survive as an independent human among indifferent strangers," Leonardo ironically declared.

"So now that you have mastered the rudiments of the tantric arts and hedonic sciences, you consider yourself a sophisticated daughter of Nouvelle Orlean, more than ready to conquer the wider worlds of men?" my mother asked, and though this was said with no little reflexive jocularity, still I could not but perceive its serious intent, nor could I fail to wonder whether in truth I might not be entirely unequipped to survive without parental largesse.

But on the other hand, I told myself as this unpleasant thought passed like a cloud across the bright blue sky of my young spirit, the absence of parental largesse was hardly what I had in mind.

Thus did it finally dawn upon me that the leave to travel as a Child of Fortune was already a foregone grant in my parents' hearts and that without exactly knowing when the transition had occurred, we had now entered into negotiations vis-a-vis the financial arrangements.

In which case it would be better to remain their kleine Moussa a while longer, the little girl whom mother and father would fear to loose upon the seas of fate without the protective might of beau coup d'argent.

"Certainly not to conquer, mama," I said in quite a more childish tone." And no doubt you are right, papa, I've not yet learned the skills required to earn my way as a full independent adult among strangers. But how am I to learn to make my own way among the worlds unless I try? Surely you would not contend that Davi is better equipped for the vie of a Child of Fortune than I?"

Leonardo laughed. "You have me there, Moussa," he said. "But on the other hand, Davi's parents have weighed the freedom of his spirit down with a chip of credit sufficient to finance a life of indolent ease in the floating cultura and the grand hotels of even the most extravagant of worlds for several years."

I liked not the drift of my father's words, I liked them not at all. "Naturellement, papa," I said in a daddy's darling voice I hadn't used in years. "As you yourself have said and I in all humility must agree, I've yet to learn the skills required to earn my own way on distant worlds far away from home. Fear not, papa, though I must often seem a creature of foolish and overweening pride, I am not such a monster of ego that I will out of any exaggerated sense of my own economic puissance refuse funds sufficient to travel in a safe and proper style and ease thereby your fears for my survival."

Mother giggled. Father frowned. "Nobly spoken, my kleine Moussa," he said dryly. "But rest assured, we will not allow any foolish fears of ours to rob you of the wanderjahr's true essence, as Davi's tremulous parents have robbed him. Not for our daughter the empty ersatz wanderjahr of a haut turista playing at being a Child of Fortune!"

"The wanderjahr's true essence ...?"

"Indeed," Shasta said. "We will grant you the vrai wanderjahr, the vie of the true Child of Fortune that we ourselves have known, without selfish regard for our own misgivings."

"'The vrai wanderjahr? The vie of the true Child of Fortune?" Somehow I was beginning to suspect that the magnanimity of these professions was something other than what it seemed.

"Just so!" Leonardo enthused. "We cannot allow you to throw away your wanderjahr as a subsidized haut turista out of your tender regard for us. For what is there for the spirit to learn indolently voyaging in the floating cultura, and flitting weightlessly from world to world insulated and pampered inside a voidbubble of parental gelt except sloth and ennui?"

"Verdad!" Shasta agreed. "Instead we grant you the freedom to live the life of the true Child of Fortune, which is to say, surviving by your wits and your own travail, earning your own passage from planet to planet by sweat or guile, entering intimately thereby into the life of every planet you touch, rather than skimming along the gelt-paved surface. For you, mi Moussa, the true adventure of the spirit, the wanderjahr as it was meant to be, the vie of the Child of Fortune, with all its dangers, hardships, and fairly won delights!"

My mouth fell open. My stomach dropped in gross dismay. My gorge, not to say my ire, began to rise. "you ... you would have me starve? You would have me wander the streets of some far-off city on an entirely hostile world without the chip to rent a room in which to sleep? You would leave me to wear the same clothes for years? You would allow me to expire of hunger or exposure scores of light-years from home? You would see your own daughter reduced to begging in alien streets for scraps of bread?"

"Fear not, kleine Moussa," my father said. "Our hearts are not quite so hard as that. Before you rage, hear the traveling gifts we propose. First, we will purchase your passage in electrocoma to any world you choose. Second, we will give you a chip of credit good for similar passage back to Glade from any world of men, so that if hunger or privation pushes you to the brink, you can always return safely home. Finally, we will give you a second chip sufficient to subsidize two standard months' sojourn in decent ease if not luxury on a planet of mean galactic cost of living."

I sprang to my feet shouting, overturning a wineglass in the process. "Merde! Caga! What minge! Electrocoma passage! A mere two months' funds! What have I done to deserve this outrage? How can you do this to your own daughter?"

"With wisdom and a higher regard for the development of your spirit than for your indolent ease," my mother said loftily.

"Pah!" I spat. "With a higher regard for hoarding your treasure than for your own flesh and blood, you mean!" I spread my arms as if to enfold their luxurious manse, their lucrative boutiques, all the fine furnishings and works of art within, the boats moored at our dock, the fulsome hoard of credit behind the chips they carried. "Is this house any less grand than Davi's? Are your chips backed by any less credit than his parents possess? Yet they have given him a chip backed by sufficient credit to voyage as an Honored Passenger to as many worlds as suits his fancy, there to dwell in a style suitable to a true child of Nouvelle Orlean!"

Neither my foul-mouthed rage, which should have earned me the severest of reprimands, nor my accusations of selfish minge, which should at least have wounded their pride, swayed my mother and my father from their calm, measured certitude.

"You have said it yourself, Moussa, in a style suitable to a true child of Nouvelle Orlean, not to a true Child of Fortune," my father said, taking no little amusement in pouncing on my words and turning them back on me.

"If you simply wish to continue a never-ending round of divertissements with never the need to face hardship, true danger, or responsibility for your own destiny, we will continue to subsidize you in a style suitable to a true child of Nouvelle Orlean, cher Moussa, until you have had your fill," my mother chimed in, as if all this had long since been rehearsed between them. "But here, on Glade."

"Contrawise, if it is the life of a true Child of Fortune that you seek, this you shall have on the terms we offer," Leonardo said. "We would rather now have a young daughter think us cheap and cruel than be chided later by a more mature avatar for ruining her wanderjahr with an excess of indulgence."

I sank back into my seat, my anger simmering down from a boil into a sullen silent pout, for I had to own, at least to myself, that my accusation of mean-spirited miserliness was probably unjust, for even the disappointed child that I in that moment was could dimly comprehend the philosophy behind what seemed like minge, though I liked it not. I was reduced to silent attempts to project my state of wounded funk with twist of lips, hunch of shoulders, and frown of brow, and when, after consuming the salad course without extracting another word from their kleine Moussa's lips, my parents fell to discussing the subtle merits of the dessert between them, I gave it up for the night, retiring to my room to plot and scheme and brood, the rejection of the sweet my final, futile, parting shot.

***

Of my efforts to extract a greater largesse over the next few days, there is little of significance to relate, except to say that they were entirely futile until the very end, when my father relented to the extent of granting a further boon unlike any of my requests.

I alternately pouted behind a sullen wounded mask and minced about attempting to play the role of daddy's little girl. Could I not at least travel as an Honored Passenger, or failing that, be granted a chip good for electrocoma passage to a succession of worlds instead of only one? No, I could not.

I stayed out all night and reeled home at noon of the next day in a state of toxicated dishabille. Surely my subsidy could at least be extended to a full year without damaging the philosophic purity of their wise intent? Nein.

In short, over these several days, the single firm result of my campaign of wheedling, pouting, arguing, and thespic fits of pique was to convince me, increment by increment, that their terms were set in stone.

As this slow and unpleasant satori forced its way upon my spirit against my hope and will, so too did I begin at length to accept the fact that I was going to have to select a single planet out of nearly three hundred on which to begin my wanderjahr, which is to say that by the time I began my listless and alas somewhat perfunctory study of the catalog of worlds, I knew in my heart of hearts that they had won.

Only when I studied the entry for Edoku did my spirit rise and some spring return to my step and my soul resolve that I would now give up my futile and sullen quest and accept electrocoma passage thereto on the next Void Ship that would take me there.

Edoku, from one perspective, was the largest city in all the worlds of men, from another it was a small planet, and from both, it was certainly the ultimate example of the planetmolder's art. This much, naturellement, was common lore, which is to say that even as indifferent a scholar as I knew Edoku as a Xanadu among the worlds of men, but upon delving deeper, I soon enough became quite entranced.

In the middle of the First Starfaring Age, a terminally damaged arkology had managed to transfer its citizens to the surface of a fairly large satellite of a gas giant. Rich in mineral resources but devoid of atmosphere or biosphere, this moon was a tabula rasa upon which generations of planetmolders, landscape architects, genetic designers, und so weiter, had created a totally ersatz geography, ecosphere, and cityscape, a planetary metropolis and garden, in which every hill and stream, every plant and creature, indeed clime, gravity, and the quality of light itself, was a conscious work of human craft, and Edoku entire, so some said, our species' highest work of art.