Читать книгу Hard, Soft and Wet - Melanie McGrath - Страница 15

Nancy and I take a picnic up to Muir Woods. Rain has fallen during the night, softening the air and stirring up the smell of leaf mould. Nancy is wearing blue shorts which set off her hair and make her look a decade younger than she is.

We climb up the path through the woods towards the clearing, from where the Pacific Ocean is visible, creating the illusion of a tiny island of woods drifting unnoticed towards Japan.

‘Karin says …’ begins Nancy, gazing down at the leaf mould and forgetting her next thought.

‘Who’s Karin?’ I ask and she darts me a strange look, as if puzzled by my tone, then, realizing the question is genuine, shakes her head and waves it away. I’m touched by this habit of hers, this assumption that everyone leads the exact same life as she does, has the same set of friends, the same job, the same taste in food. It’s so intimate and self-involved and scatty, which three possibly contradictory qualities Nancy possesses in equal and lavish abundance.

‘I always think the weirdest thing about Battletech and all those geeky games’, she follows, changing the subject, ‘is the mountain of trivia you have to absorb to make any sense out of it at all. It’s such a boy thing. Lists and specs and reams of completely pointless detail.’

‘Yeah, I guess.’ I try out another Americanism. ‘But, you know, once you’ve done it, there’s this amazing feeling of shared experience. I can’t really explain it. It’s like any ritual. Church, waterskiing clubs, trainspotting, whatever.’

Suddenly the trees fall away, and we are out on the grassy plateau, overlooking the ocean.

‘Sweetheart,’ says Nancy, adopting a wheedling tone. ‘About the other day, at the education and technology meet…’

I stop her with my hand, anxious not to spoil the atmosphere, and conscious also that whatever passed between us that day probably doesn’t brook too much explanation or analysis. But Nancy is eager to talk it out. She’s so Californian that way.

‘I mean, I think you’re right. Information isn’t the same as knowledge. You can fill every classroom in the country with a thousand computers and link them all up to the Net, and you won’t have taught anyone anything.’

‘Is that what I said?’ I don’t recall saying any such thing, though I remember a similar thought passing through my mind.

Nancy carries on walking along the plateau, gazing down into the water as if draining her breath from it.

‘Data doesn’t mean anything on its own. You have to be able to interpret it, relate it to the real world.’

We find a spot to sit, and pull out a couple of cans of Coke from our picnic bag. I try to drag Nancy away from the subject, introduce the topic of wildflowers, the sky, pretty much everything, but she won’t be drawn. Some nudging gobbet of resentment sticks in my breast. I’m not ready to be disillusioned, dammit. Give me hope.

‘You put future education policy in the hands of the computer industry and they’re going to come up with something involving truckloads of computers, obviously.’

‘Oh well,’ I say, blandly, ‘it’s early days yet.’

Nancy wheels round, looks through my eyes into the dark recesses of my head.

‘Why the hell are you trying to defend them?’ she says, voice suddenly dark with anger. I adopt an ameliorating smile. Them? Us? Them? By her own account. Nancy is one of them.

‘Rome wasn’t built in a day,’ I say, determined to protect my new-found future.

‘But the networks will be,’ cries Nancy in return. ‘They already are. In a year’s time you’ll hardly remember life without them.’

I’ve never seen her in this mood before, so hellbent on sabotaging her own bullish optimism, so bent on spoiling the game. It’s so unlike her. So un-American.