Pattern Recognition

"It is a precision instrument," the black man says, "performing calculations mechanically, employing neither electricity nor electronic components. The sensation of its operation is best likened to that of winding a fine thirty-five-millimeter camera. It is the smallest mechanical calculating machine ever constructed." Voice deep and mellifluous. "It is the invention of Curt Herzstark, an Austrian, who developed it while a prisoner in Buchenwald. The camp authorities actually encouraged his work, you see. 'Intelligence slave,' his title there. They wished his calculator to be given to the Fuhrer, at the end of the war. But Buchenwald was liberated in 1945 by the Americans. Herzstark had survived." He gently takes the thing from her. Enormous hands. "He had his drawings." Large fingers moving surely, gently, clicking the black tabs into a different configuration. He grasps the knurled cylinder in his left, gives the handle at the top a twirl. Smoothly ratcheting a sum from its interior. He raises it to see the resulting figure in a tiny window. "Eight hundred pounds. Excellent condition." Dropping an eyelid partially, to wait for her response.

"It's beautiful," his offer finally giving her a context for this baffling exchange: These men are dealers, come here to do business in these things. "But I wouldn't know what to do with it."

"You've had me out for nothing, you silly cunt," snarls the gray man, snatching the thing from the black one's hands, but Cayce knows that it's the black man this is meant for, not her. He looks, just then, like a scary portrait of Samuel Beckett on a book she owned in college. His nails are black-edged and there are deep orangey-brown stains of nicotine on his long fingers. He turns with the calculator and bends over the open trunk, to furiously repack the black, grenade-like machines.

Hobbs," the black man says, and sighs, "you lack all patience. She will come. Please wait."

Bugger," says Hobbs, if that's his name, closing a cardboard box and spreading the old sweater over it with a quick, practiced, weirdly mater-nal gesture, like a mother adjusting the blanket over a sleeping child. He bangs the lid down and tugs at it, checking to see that it's closed. "Waste my bloody time…" He hauls the driver-side door open with a startling creak.

She glimpses filthy mouse-colored upholstery and an overflowing ashtray that protrudes from the dash like a little drawer.

"She will come, Hobbs," the black man protests, but without much force.

The one called Hobbs folds himself into the driver's seat, yanks the door shut, and glares at them through the dirty side window. The car's engine starts with an antique, asthmatic shudder, and he puts it into gear, still glaring, and pulls away, toward Portobello. At the next corner, the gray car turns right, and is gone.

"He is a curse to know, that man," says the black man. "Now she will come, and what am I to tell her?" He turns to Cayce. "You disappointed him. He thought that you were her."

"Who?"

"The buyer. Agent for a Japanese collector," the blond boy says to Cayce. "Is not your fault." He has those straight-across cheekbones she thinks of as Slavic, the open look that comes with them, and the sort of accent that comes with learning English here but not yet too thoroughly. "Ngemi," indicating the black man, "is only upset."

"Well then," Cayce ventures, "goodbye." And starts toward Portobello. A middle-aged woman opens a green-painted door and steps out in black leather jeans, her large dog on a lead. The appearance of this Netting Hill matron feels to Cayce as though it frees her from a spell. She quickens her stride.

But hears footsteps behind her. And turns to see the blond boy with his flapping pouch, hurrying to catch up.

The black man is nowhere to be seen.

"I walk with you, please," he says, drawing even with her and smiling, as if delighted to offer her this favor. "My name is Voytek Biroshak."

"Call me Ishmael," she says, walking on.

"A girl's name?" Eager and doglike beside her. Some species of weird nerd innocence that somehow she accepts.

"No. It's Cayce."

"Case?"

"Actually," she finds herself explaining, "it should be pronounced 'Casey, like the last name of the man my mother named me after. But I don't."

"Who is Casey?"

"Edgar Cayce, the Sleeping Prophet of Virginia Beach."

"Why does she, your mother?"

"Because she's a Virginian eccentric. Actually she's always refused to talk about it." Which is true.

"And you are doing here?" /

"The market. You?" Still walking.

"Same."

"Who were those men?"

"Ngemi sells to me ZX 81."

"Which is?"

"Sinclair ZX 81. Personal computer, circa 1980. In America, was Timex 1000, same."

"Ngemi's the big one?"

Dealing in archaic computer, historic calculator, since 1997. Has shop in Bermondsey."

"Your partner?"

"No. Arrange to meet." He lightly slaps the pouch at his side and plastic rattles. "ZX 81."

But he was here to sell those calculators?"