[mona_lisa_overdrive_cover.gif]


  The Smoke

  The ghost was her father's parting gift, presented by a black-clad
  secretary in
  a departure lounge at Narita.
  	For the first two hours of the flight to London it lay forgotten in
  her
  purse, a smooth dark oblong, one side impressed with the ubiquitous
  Maas-Neotek
  logo, the other gently curved to fit the user's palm.
  	She sat up very straight in her seat in the first-class cabin, her
  features composed in a small cold mask modeled after her dead
  mother's most
  characteristic expression. The surrounding seats were empty; her
  father had
  purchased the space. She refused the meal the nervous steward
  offered. The
  vacant seats frightened him, evidence of her father's wealth and
  power. The man
  hesitated, then bowed and withdrew. Very briefly, she allowed the
  mask her
  mother's smile.
  	Ghosts, she thought later, somewhere over Germany, staring at the
  upholstery of the seat beside her. How well her father treated his
  ghosts.
  	There were ghosts beyond the window, too, ghosts in the stratosphere
  of
  Europe's winter, partial images that began to form if she let her
  eyes drift out
  of focus. Her mother in Ueno Park, face fragile in September
  sunlight. �The
  cranes, Kumi! Look at the cranes!" And Kumiko looked across Shinobazu
  Pond and
  saw nothing, no cranes at all, only a few hopping black dots that
  surely were
  crows. The water was smooth as silk, the color of lead, and pale
  holograms
  flickered indistinctly above a distant line of archery stalls. But
  Kumiko would
  see the cranes later, many times, in dreams; they were origami,
  angular things
  folded from sheets of neon, bright stiff birds sailing the moonscape
  of her
  mother's madness. . . .
  	Remembering her father, the black robe open across a tattooed storm
  of
  dragons, slumped behind the vast ebony field of his desk, his eyes
  flat and
  bright, like the eyes of a painted doll. �Your mother is dead. Do you

  understand?" And all around her the planes of shadow in his study,
  the angular
  darkness. His hand coming forward, into the lamp's circle of light,
  unsteadily,
  to point at her, the robe's cuff sliding back to reveal a golden
  Rolex and more
  dragons, their manes swirling into waves, pricked out strong and dark
  around his
  wrist, pointing. Pointing at her. �Do you understand?" She hadn't
  answered, but
  had run instead, down to a secret place she knew, the warren of the
  smallest of
  the cleaning machines. They ticked around her all night, scanning her
  every few
  minutes with pink bursts of laser light, until her father came to
  find her, and,
  smelling of whiskey and Dunhill cigarettes, carried her to her room
  on the
  apartment's third floor.
  	Remembering the weeks that followed, numb days spent most often in
  the
  black-suited company of one secretary or another, cautious men with
  automatic
  smiles and tightly furled umbrellas. One of these, the youngest and
  least
  cautious, had treated her, on a crowded Ginza sidewalk, in the shadow
  of the
  Hattori clock, to an impromptu kendo demonstration, weaving expertly
  between
  startled shop girls and wide-eyed tourists, the black umbrella
  blurring
  harmlessly through the art's formal, ancient arcs. And Kumiko had
  smiled then,
  her own smile, breaking the funeral mask, and for this her guilt was
  driven
  instantly, more deeply and still more sharply, into that place in her
  heart
  where she knew her shame and her unworthiness. But most often the
  secretaries
  took her shopping, through one vast Ginza department store after
  another, and in
  and out of dozens of Shinjuku boutiques recommended by a blue plastic
  Michelin
  guide that spoke a stuffy tourist's Japanese. She purchased only very
  ugly
  things, ugly and very expensive things, and the secretaries marched
  stolidly
  beside her, the glossy bags in their hard hands. Each afternoon,
  returning to
  her father's apartment, the bags were deposited neatly in her
  bedroom, where
  they remained, unopened and untouched, until the maids removed them.
  	And in the seventh week, on the eve of her thirteenth birthday, it
  was
  arranged that Kumiko would go to London.

  "You will be a guest in the house of my kobun ," her father said.
  	"But I do not wish to go," she said, and showed him her mother's
  smile.
  	"You must," he said, and turned away. "There are difficulties," he
  said to
  the shadowed study. "You will be in no danger, in London."
  	"And when shall I return?"
  	But her father didn't answer. She bowed and left his study, still
  wearing
  her mother's smile.

  The ghost woke to Kumiko's touch as they began their descent into
  Heathrow. The
  fifty-first generation of Maas-Neotek biochips conjured up an
  indistinct figure
  on the seat beside her, a boy out of some faded hunting print, legs
  crossed
  casually in tan breeches and riding boots. "Hullo," the ghost said.
  	Kumiko blinked, opened her hand. The boy flickered and was gone. She

  looked down at the smooth little unit in her palm and slowly closed
  her fingers.
  	" 'Lo again," he said. "Name's Colin. Yours?"
  	She stared. His eyes were bright green smoke, his high forehead pale
  and
  smooth under an unruly dark forelock. She could see the seats across
  the aisle
  through the glint of his teeth. "If it's a bit too spectral for you,"
  he said,
  with a grin, "we can up the rez. . . ." And he was there for an
  instant,
  uncomfortably sharp and real, the nap on the lapels of his dark coat
  vibrating
  with hallucinatory clarity. "Runs the battery down, though," he said,
  and faded
  to his prior state. "Didn't get your name." The grin again.
  	"You aren't real," she said sternly.
  	He shrugged. "Needn't speak out loud, miss. Fellow passengers might
  think
  you a bit odd, if you take my meaning. Subvocal's the way. I pick it
  all up
  through the skin. . . ." He uncrossed his legs and stretched, hands
  clasped
  behind his head. "Seatbelt, miss. I needn't buckle up myself, of
  course, being,
  as you've pointed out, unreal."
  	Kumiko frowned and tossed the unit into the ghost's lap. He
  vanished. She
  fastened her seatbelt, glanced at the thing, hesitated, then picked
  it up again.
  	"First time in London, then?" he asked, swirling in from the
  periphery of
  her vision. She nodded in spite of herself. "You don't mind flying?
  Doesn't
  frighten you?"
  	She shook her head, feeling ridiculous.
  	"Never mind," the ghost said. "I'll look out for you. Heathrow in
  three
  minutes. Someone meeting you off the plane?"
  	"My father's business associate," she said in Japanese.
  	The ghost grinned. "Then you'll be in good hands, I'm sure." He
  winked.
  "Wouldn't think I'm a linguist to look at me, would you?"
  	Kumiko closed her eyes and the ghost began to whisper to her,
  something
  about the archaeology of Heathrow, about the Neolithic and the Iron
  ages,
  pottery and tools. . . .

  "Miss Yanaka? Kumiko Yanaka?" The Englishman towered above her, his
  gaijin bulk
  draped in elephantine folds of dark wool. Small dark eyes regarded
  her blandly
  through steel-rimmed glasses. His nose seemed to have been crushed
  nearly flat
  and never reset. His hair, what there was of it, had been shaved back
  to a gray
  stubble, and his black knit gloves were frayed and fingerless. "My
  name, you
  see," he said, as though this would immediately reassure her, "is
  Petal."

  Petal called the city Smoke.
  	Kumiko shivered on chill red leather; through the ancient Jaguar's
  window
  she watched the snow spinning down to melt on the road Petal called
  M4. The late
  afternoon sky was colorless. He drove silently, efficiently, his lips
  pursed as
  though he were about to whistle. The traffic, to Tokyo eyes, was
  absurdly light.
  They accelerated past an unmanned Eurotrans freight vehicle, its
  blunt prow
  studded with sensors and banks of headlights. In spite of the
  Jaguar's speed,
  Kumiko felt as if somehow she were standing still; London's particles
  began to
  accrete around her. Walls of wet brick, arches of concrete, black-
  painted
  ironwork standing up in spears.
  	As she watched, the city began to define itself. Off the M4, while
  the
  Jaguar waited at intersections, she could glimpse faces through the
  snow,
  flushed gaijin faces above dark clothing, chins tucked down into
  scarves,
  women's bootheels ticking through silver puddles. The rows of shops
  and houses
  reminded her of the gorgeously detailed accessories she'd seen
  displayed around
  a toy locomotive in the Osaka gallery of a dealer in European
  antiques.
  	This was nothing like Tokyo, where the past, all that remained of
  it, was
  nurtured with a nervous care. History there had become a quantity, a
  rare thing,
  parceled out by government and preserved by law and corporate
  funding. Here it
  seemed the very fabric of things, as if the city were a single growth
  of stone
  and brick, uncounted strata of message and meaning, age upon age,
  generated over
  the centuries to the dictates of some now-all-but-unreadable DNA of
  commerce and
  empire.
  	"Regret Swain couldn't come out to meet you himself," the man called
  Petal
  said. Kumiko had less trouble with his accent than with his manner of

  structuring sentences; she initially mistook the apology for a
  command. She
  considered accessing the ghost, then rejected the idea.
  	"Swain," she ventured. "Mr. Swain is my host?"
  	Petal's eyes found her in the mirror. "Roger Swain. Your father
  didn't
  tell you?"
  	"No."
  	"Ah." He nodded. "Mr. Kanaka's conscious of security in these
  matters, it
  stands to reason. . . . Man of his stature, et cetera . . ." He
  sighed loudly.
  "Sorry about the heater. Garage was supposed to have that taken care
  of. . . ."
  	"Are you one of Mr. Swain's secretaries?" Addressing the stubbled
  rolls of
  flesh above the collar of the thick dark coat.
  	"His secretary?" He seemed to consider the matter. "No," he ventured

  finally, "I'm not that." He swung them through a roundabout, past
  gleaming
  metallic awnings and the evening surge of pedestrians. "Have you
  eaten, then?
  Did they feed you on the flight?"
  	"I wasn't hungry." Conscious of her mother's mask.
  	"Well, Swain'll have something for you. Eats a lot of Jap food,
  Swain." He
  made a strange little ticking sound with his tongue. He glanced back
  at her.
  	She looked past him, seeing the kiss of snowflakes, the obliterating
  sweep
  of the wipers.

  Swain's Notting Hill residence consisted of three interconnected
  Victorian
  townhouses situated somewhere in a snowy profusion of squares,
  crescents, and
  mews. Petal, with two of Kumiko's suitcases in either hand, explained
  to her
  that number 17 was the front entrance for numbers 16 and 18 as well.
  "No use
  knocking there," he said, gesturing clumsily with the heavy cases in
  his hand,
  indicating the glossy red paint and polished brass fittings of 16's
  door.
  "Nothing behind it but twenty inches of ferroconcrete."
  	She looked down the crescent, nearly identical facades receding
  along its
  shallow curve. The snow fell more thickly now, and the featureless
  sky was lit
  with a salmon glow of sodium lamps. The street was deserted, the snow
  fresh and
  unmarked. There was an alien edge to the cold air, a faint, pervasive
  hint of
  burning, of archaic fuels. Petal's shoes left large, neatly defined
  prints. They
  were black suede oxfords with narrow toes and extremely thick
  corrugated soles
  of scarlet plastic. She followed in his tracks, beginning to shiver,
  up the gray
  steps to number 17.
  	"It's me then," he said to the black-painted door, "innit." Then he
  sighed, set all four suitcases down in the snow, removed the
  fingerless glove
  from his right hand, and pressed his palm against a circle of bright
  steel set
  flush with one of the door panels. Kumiko thought she heard a faint
  whine, a
  gnat sound that rose in pitch until it vanished, and then the door
  vibrated with
  the muffled impact of magnetic bolts as they withdrew.
  	"You called it Smoke," she said, as he reached for the brass knob,
  "the
  city. . . ."
  	He paused. "The Smoke," he said, "yes," and opened the door into
  warmth
  and light, "that's an old expression, sort of nickname." He picked up
  her bags
  and padded into a blue-carpeted foyer paneled in white-painted wood.
  She
  followed him, the door closing itself behind her, its bolts thumping
  back into
  place. A mahogany-framed print hung above the white wainscoting,
  horses in a
  field, crisp little figures in red coats. Colin the chip-ghost should
  live there
  , she thought. Petal had put her bags down again. Flakes of compacted
  snow lay
  on the blue carpet. Now he opened another door, exposing a gilt steel
  cage. He
  drew the bars aside with a clank. She stared into the cage, baffled.
  "The lift,"
  he said. "No space for your things. I'll make a second trip."
  	For all its apparent age, it rose smoothly enough when Petal touched
  a
  white porcelain button with a blunt forefinger. Kumiko was forced to
  stand very
  close to him then; he smelled of damp wool and some floral shaving
  preparation.
  	"We've put you up top," he said, leading her along a narrow
  corridor,
  "because we thought you might appreciate the quiet." He opened a door
  and
  gestured her in. "Hope it'll do. . . ." He removed his glasses and
  polished them
  energetically with a crumpled tissue. "I'll get your bags."
  	When he had gone, Kumiko walked slowly around the massive black
  marble tub
  that dominated the center of the low, crowded room. The walls, angled
  sharply
  toward the ceiling, were faced with mottled gold mirror. A pair of
  small dormer
  windows flanked the largest bed she'd ever seen. Above the bed, the
  mirror was
  inset with small adjustable lights, like the reading lamps in an
  airliner. She
  stood beside the tub to touch the arched neck of a gold-plated swan
  that served
  as a spout. Its spread wings were tap handles. The air in the room
  was warm and
  still, and for an instant the presence of her mother seemed to fill
  it, an
  aching fog.
  	Petal cleared his throat in the doorway. "Well then," he said,
  bustling in
  with her luggage, "everything in order? Feeling hungry yet? No? Leave
  you to
  settle in . . ." He arranged her bags beside the bed. "If you should
  feel like
  eating, just ring." He indicated an ornate antique telephone with
  scrolled brass
  mouth and earpieces and a turned ivory handle. "Just pick it up, you
  needn't
  dial. Breakfast's when you want it. Ask someone, they'll show you
  where. You can
  meet Swain then. . . ."
  	The sense of her mother had vanished with his return. She tried to
  feel it
  again, when he said goodnight and closed the door, but it was gone.
  	She remained a long time beside the tub, stroking the smooth metal
  of the
  swan's cool neck.



  Kid Afrika

  Kid Afrika came cruising into Dog Solitude on the last day in
  November, his
  vintage Dodge chauffeured by a white girl named Cherry Chesterfield.
  	Slick Henry and Little Bird were breaking down the buzzsaw that
  formed the
  Judge's left hand when Kid's Dodge came into view, its patched apron
  bag
  throwing up brown fantails of the rusty water that pooled on the
  Solitude's
  uneven plain of compacted steel.
  	Little Bird saw it first. He had sharp eyes, Little Bird, and a 10X
  monocular that dangled on his chest amid the bones of assorted
  animals and
  antique bottleneck cartridge brass. Slick looked up from the
  hydraulic wrist to
  see Little Bird straighten up to his full two meters and aim the
  monocular out
  through the grid of unglazed steel that formed most of Factory's
  south wall.
  Little Bird was very thin, almost skeletal, and the lacquered wings
  of brown
  hair that had earned him the name stood out sharp against the pale
  sky. He kept
  the back and sides shaved high, well above his ears; with the wings
  and the
  aerodynamic ducktail, he looked as though he were wearing a headless
  brown gull.
  	"Whoa," said Little Bird, "motherfuck."
  	"What?" It was hard to get Little Bird to concentrate, and the job
  needed
  a second set of hands.
  	"It's that nigger."
  	Slick stood up and wiped his hands down the thighs of his jeans
  while
  Little Bird fumbled the green Mech-5 microsoft from the socket behind
  his ear --
  instantly forgetting the eight-point servo-calibration procedure
  needed to
  unfuck the Judge's buzzsaw. "Who's driving?" Afrika never drove
  himself if he
  could help it.
  	"Can't make out." Little Bird let the monocular clatter back into
  the
  curtain of bones and brass.
  	Slick joined him at the window to watch the Dodge's progress. Kid
  Afrika
  periodically touched up the hover's matte-black paint-job with
  judicious
  applications from an aerosol can, the somber effect offset by the row
  of chrome-
  plated skulls welded to the massive front bumper. At one time the
  hollow steel
  skulls had boasted red Christmas bulbs for eyes; maybe the Kid was
  losing his
  concern with image.
  	As the hover slewed up to Factory, Slick heard Little Bird shuffle
  back
  into the shadows, his heavy boots scraping through dust and fine
  bright spirals
  of metal shavings.
  	Slick watched past a last dusty dagger of window glass as the hover
  settled into its apron bags in front of Factory, groaning and venting
  steam.
  	Something rattled in the dark behind him and he knew that Little
  Bird was
  behind the old parts rack, fiddling the homemade silencer onto the
  Chinese
  rimfire they used for rabbits.
  	"Bird," Slick said, tossing his wrench down on the tarp, "I know
  you're an
  ignorant little redneck Jersey asshole, but do you have to keep
  goddamn
  reminding  me of it?"
  	"Don't like that nigger," Little Bird said, from behind the rack.
  	"Yeah, and if that nigger'd bother noticing, he wouldn't like you
  either.
  Knew you were back here with that gun, he'd shove it down your throat
  sideways."
  	No response from Little Bird. He'd grown up in white Jersey
  stringtowns
  where nobody knew shit about anything and hated anybody who did.
  	"And I'd help him, too." Slick yanked up the zip on his old brown
  jacket
  and went out to Kid Afrika's hover.
  	The dusty window on the driver's side hissed down, revealing a pale
  face
  dominated by an enormous pair of amber-tinted goggles. Slick's boots
  crunched on
  ancient cans rusted thin as old leaves. The driver tugged the goggles
  down and
  squinted at him; female, but now the amber goggles hung around her
  neck,
  concealing her mouth and chin. The Kid would be on the far side, a
  good thing in
  the unlikely event Little Bird started shooting.
  	"Go on around," the girl said.
  	Slick walked around the hover, past the chrome skulls, hearing Kid
  Afrika's window come down with that same demonstrative little sound.
  	"Slick Henry," the Kid said, his breath puffing white as it hit the
  air of
  the Solitude, "hello."
  	Slick looked down at the long brown face. Kid Afrika had big hazel
  eyes,
  slitted like a cat's, a pencil-thin mustache, and skin with the sheen
  of buffed
  leather.
  	"Hey, Kid." Slick smelled some kind of incense from inside the
  hover. "How
  y ' doin'?"
  	"Well," the Kid said, narrowing his eyes, "recall you sayin' once,
  if I
  ever needed a favor . . ."
  	"Right," Slick said, feeling a first twinge of apprehension. Kid
  Afrika
  had saved his ass once, in Atlantic City; talked some irate brothers
  out of
  dropping him off this balcony on the forty-third floor of a burned-
  out
  highstack. "Somebody wanna throw you off a tall building?"
  	"Slick," the Kid said, "I wanna introduce you to somebody."
  	"Then we'll be even?"
  	"Slick Henry, this fine-looking girl here, this is Miss Cherry
  Chesterfield of Cleveland, Ohio." Slick bent down and looked at the
  driver.
  Blond shockhead, paintstick around her eyes. "Cherry, this is my
  close personal
  friend Mr. Slick Henry. When he was young and bad he rode with the
  Deacon Blues.
  Now he's old and bad, he holes up out here and pursues his art ,
  understand. A
  talented  man, understand."
  	"He's the one builds the robots," the girl said, around a wad of
  gum, "you
  said."
  	"The very one," the Kid said, opening his door. "You wait for us
  here,
  Cherry honey." The Kid, draped in a mink coat that brushed the
  immaculate tips
  of his yellow ostrich boots, stepped out onto the Solitude, and Slick
  caught a
  glimpse of something in the back of the hover, eyeblink ambulance
  flash of
  bandages and surgical tubing. . . .
  	"Hey, Kid," he said, "what you got back there?" The Kid's jeweled
  hand
  came up, gesturing Slick back as the hover's door clanked shut and
  Cherry
  Chesterfield hit the window buttons.
  	"We have to talk about that, Slick."

  "I don't think it's much to ask," Kid Afrika said, leaning back
  against a bare
  metal workbench, wrapped in his mink. "Cherry has a med-tech's ticket
  and she
  knows she'll get paid. Nice girl, Slick." He winked.
  	"Kid . . ."
  	Kid Afrika had this guy in the back of the hover who was like dead,
  coma
  or something, had him hooked up to pumps and bags and tubes and some
  kind of
  simstim rig, all of it bolted to an old alloy ambulance stretcher,
  batteries and
  everything.
  	"What's this?" Cherry, who'd followed them in after the Kid had
  taken
  Slick back out to show him the guy in the back of the hover, was
  peering
  dubiously up at the towering Judge, most of him anyway; the arm with
  the buzzsaw
  was where they'd left it, on the floor on the greasy tarp. If she has
  a med tech
  's  ticket , Slick thought, the med-tech probably hasn  't  noticed
  it   's
  missing yet . She was wearing at least four leather jackets, all of
  them several
  sizes too big.
  	"Slick's art, like I told you."
  	"That guy's dying. He smells like piss."
  	"Catheter came loose," Cherry said. "What's this thing supposed to
  do ,
  anyway?"
  	"We can't keep him here, Kid, he'll stiff. You wanna kill him, go
  stuff
  him down a hole on the Solitude."
  	"The man's not dying," Kid Afrika said. "He's not hurt, he's not
  sick. . .
  ."
  	"Then what the fuck's wrong with him?"
  	"He's under , baby. He's on a long trip . He needs peace and quiet
  ."
  	Slick looked from the Kid to the Judge, then back to the Kid. He
  wanted to
  be working on that arm. Kid said he wanted Slick to keep the guy for
  two weeks,
  maybe three; he'd leave Cherry there to take care of him.
  	"I can't figure it. This guy, he's a friend of yours?"
  	Kid Afrika shrugged inside his mink.
  	"So why don't you keep him at your place?"
  	"Not so quiet. Not peaceful enough."
  	"Kid," Slick said, "I owe you one, but nothing this weird. Anyway, I
  gotta
  work, and anyway, it's too weird. And there's Gentry, too. He's gone
  to Boston
  now; be back tomorrow night and he wouldn't like it. You know how
  he's funny
  about people. . . . It's mostly his place , too, how it is. . . ."
  	"They had you over the railing, man," Kid Afrika said sadly. "You
  remember?"
  	"Hey, I remember, I . . ."
  	"You don't remember too good," the Kid said. "Okay, Cherry. Let's
  go.
  Don't wanna cross Dog Solitude at night." He pushed off from the
  steel bench.
  	"Kid, look . . ."
  	"Forget it. I didn't know your fucking name, that time in Atlantic
  City,
  just figured I didn't wanna see the white boy all over the street,
  y'know? So I
  didn't know your name then, I guess I don't know it now."
  	"Kid . . ."
  	"Yeah?"
  	"Okay. He stays. Two weeks max. You gimme your word, you'll come
  back and
  get him? And you gotta help me square it with Gentry."
  	"What's he need?"
  	"Drugs."
  	
  	     Little Bird reappeared as the Kid's Dodge wallowed away across
  the
  Solitude. He came edging out from behind an outcropping of compacted
  cars, rusty
  pallets of crumpled steel that still showed patches of bright enamel.
  	Slick watched him from a window high up in Factory. The squares of
  the
  steel frame had been fitted with sections of scavenged plastic, each
  one a
  different shade and thickness, so that when Slick tilted his head to
  one side,
  he saw Little Bird through a pane of hot-pink Lucite.
  	"Who lives here?" Cherry asked, from the room behind him.
  	"Me," Slick said, "Little Bird, Gentry . . ."
  	"In this room, I mean."
  	He turned and saw her there beside the stretcher and its attendant
  machines. "You do," he said.
  	"It's your place?" She was staring at the drawings taped to the
  walls, his
  original conceptions of the Judge and his Investigators, the
  Corpsegrinder and
  the Witch.
  	"Don't worry about it."
  	"Better you don't get any ideas," she said.
  	He looked at her. She had a large red sore at the corner of her
  mouth. Her
  bleached hair stood out like a static display. "Like I said, don't
  worry about
  it."
  	"Kid said you got electricity."
  	"Yeah."
  	"Better get him hooked up," she said, turning to the stretcher. "He
  doesn't draw much, but the batteries'll be getting low."
  	He crossed the room to look down at the wasted face. "You better
  tell me
  something," he said. He didn't like the tubes. One of them went into
  a nostril
  and the idea made him want to gag. "Who is this guy and what exactly
  the fuck is
  Kid Afrika doing to him?"
  	"He's not," she said, tapping a readout into view on a biomonitor
  panel
  lashed to the foot of the stretcher with silver tape. "REM's still
  up, like he
  dreams all the time . . ." The man on the stretcher was strapped down
  in a
  brand-new blue sleeping bag. "What it is, he -- whoever -- he's
  paying Kid for
  this."
  	There was a trode-net plastered across the guy's forehead; a single
  black
  cable was lashed along the edge of the stretcher. Slick followed it
  up to the
  fat gray package that seemed to dominate the gear mounted on the
  superstructure.
  Simstim? Didn't look like it. Some kind of cyberspace rig? Gentry
  knew a lot
  about cyberspace, or anyway he talked about it, but Slick couldn't
  remember
  anything about getting unconscious and just staying jacked in. . . .
  People
  jacked in so they could hustle. Put the trodes on and they were out
  there, all
  the data in the world stacked up like one big neon city, so you could
  cruise
  around and have a kind of grip on it, visually anyway, because if you
  didn't, it
  was too complicated, trying to find your way to a particular piece of
  data you
  needed. Iconics, Gentry called that.
  	"He paying the Kid?"
  	"Yeah," she said.
  	"What for?"
  	"Keep him that way. Hide him out, too."
  	"Who from?"
  	"Don't know. Didn't say."
  	In the silence that followed, he could hear the steady rasp of the
  man's
  breath.



  Malibu

  There was a smell in the house; it had always been there.
  	It belonged to time and the salt air and the entropic nature of
  expensive
  houses built too close to the sea. Perhaps it was also peculiar to
  places
  briefly but frequently uninhabited, houses opened and closed as their
  restless
  residents arrived and departed. She imagined the rooms empty, flecks
  of
  corrosion blossoming silently on chrome, pale molds taking hold in
  obscure
  corners. The architects, as if in recognition of eternal processes,
  had
  encouraged a degree of rust; massive steel railings along the deck
  had been
  eaten wrist-thin by years of spray.
  	The house crouched, like its neighbors, on fragments of ruined
  foundations, and her walks along the beach sometimes involved
  attempts at
  archaeological fantasy. She tried to imagine a past for the place,
  other houses,
  other voices. She was accompanied, on these walks, by an armed
  remote, a tiny
  Dornier helicopter that rose from its unseen rooftop nest when she
  stepped down
  from the deck. It could hover almost silently, and was programmed to
  avoid her
  line of sight. There was something wistful about the way it followed
  her, as
  though it were an expensive but unappreciated Christmas gift.
  	She knew that Hilton Swift was watching through the Dornier's
  cameras.
  Little that occurred in the beach house escaped Sense/Net; her
  solitude, the
  week alone she'd demanded, was under constant surveillance.
  	Her years in the profession had conveyed a singular immunity to
  observation.
  	

  At night she sometimes lit the floods mounted beneath the deck,
  illuminating the
  hieroglyphic antics of huge gray sandfleas. The deck itself she left
  in
  darkness, and the sunken living room behind her. She sat on a chair
  of plain
  white plastic, watching the Brownian dance of the fleas. In the glare
  of the
  floods, they cast minute, barely visible shadows, fleeting cusps
  against the
  sand.
  	The sound of the sea wrapped her in its movement. Late at night, as
  she
  slept in the smaller of the two guest bedrooms, it worked its way
  into her
  dreams. But never into the stranger 's invading memories.
  	The choice of bedrooms was instinctive. The master bedroom was mined
  with
  the triggers of old pain.
  	The doctors at the clinic had used chemical pliers to pry the
  addiction
  away from receptor sites in her brain.

  She cooked for herself in the white kitchen, thawing bread in the
  microwave,
  dumping packets of dehydrated Swiss soup into spotless steel pans,
  edging dully
  into the nameless but increasingly familiar space from which she'd
  been so
  subtly insulated by the designer 's dust.
  	"It's called life," she said to the white counter. And what would
  Sense/Net's in-house psychs make of that, she wondered, if some
  hidden
  microphone caught it and carried it to them? She stirred the soup
  with a slender
  stainless whisk, watching steam rise. It helped to do things, she
  thought, just
  to do things yourself; at the clinic, they'd insisted she make her
  own bed. Now
  she spooned out her own bowl of soup, frowning, remembering the
  clinic.

  She'd checked herself out a week into the treatment. The medics
  protested. The
  detoxification had gone beautifully, they said, but the therapy
  hadn't begun.
  They pointed out the rate of relapse among clients who failed to
  complete the
  program. They explained that her insurance was invalid if she
  terminated her
  treatment. Sense/Net would pay, she told them, unless they preferred
  she pay
  them herself. She produced her platinum MitsuBank chip.
  	Her Lear arrived an hour later; she told it to take her to LAX,
  ordered a
  car to meet her there, and canceled all incoming calls.
  	"I'm sorry, Angela," the jet said, banking over Montego Bay seconds
  after
  they'd taken off, "but I have Hilton Swift on executive override."
  	"Angie," Swift said, "you know I'm behind you all the way. You know
  that,
  Angie."
  	She turned to stare at the black oval of the speaker. It was
  centered in
  smooth gray plastic, and she imagined him crouching back there, his
  long
  runner's legs folded painfully, grotesquely, behind the Lear's
  bulkhead.
  	"I know that, Hilton," she said. "It's nice of you to phone."
  	"You're going to L.A., Angie."
  	"Yes. That's what I told the plane."
  	"To Malibu."
  	"That's right."
  	"Piper Hill is on her way to the airport."
  	"Thank you, Hilton, but I don't want Piper there. I don't want
  anybody. I
  want a car."
  	"There's no one at the house, Angie."
  	"Good. That's what I want, Hilton. No one at the house. The house,
  empty."
  	"Are you certain that's a good idea?"
  	"It's the best idea I've had in a long time, Hilton."
  	There was a pause. "They said it went really well, Angie, the
  treatment.
  But they wanted you to stay."
  	"I need a week," she said. "One week. Seven days. Alone."

  After her third night in the house, she woke at dawn, made coffee,
  dressed.
  Condensation stippled the broad window facing the deck. Sleep had
  been simply
  that; if dreams had come, she couldn't recall them. But there was
  something -- a
  quickening, almost a giddiness. She stood in the kitchen, feeling the
  cold of
  the ceramic floor through thick white sweatsocks, both hands around
  the warm
  cup.
  	Something there. She extended her arms, raising the coffee like a
  chalice,
  the gesture at once instinctive and ironic.
  	It had been three years since the loa had ridden her, three years
  since
  they had touched her at all. But now?
  	Legba? One of the others?
  	The sense of a presence receded abruptly. She put the cup down on
  the
  counter too quickly, coffee slopping over her hand, and ran to find
  shoes and a
  coat. Green rubber boots from the beach closet, and a heavy blue
  mountain jacket
  she didn't remember, too large to have been Bobby's. She hurried out
  of the
  house, down the stairs, ignoring the hum of the toy Dornier's prop as
  it lifted
  off behind her like a patient dragonfly. She glanced north, along the
  jumble of
  beach houses, the confusion of rooflines reminding her of a Rio
  barrio, then
  turned south, toward the Colony.

  The one who came was named Mamman Brigitte, or Grande Brigitte, and
  while some
  think her the wife of Baron Samedi, others name her "most ancient of
  the dead."
  	The dream architecture of the Colony rose to Angie's left, a riot of
  form
  and ego. Frail-looking neon-embedded replicas of the Watts Towers
  lifted beside
  neo-Brutalist bunkers faced with bronze bas-reliefs.
  	Walls of mirror, as she passed, reflected morning banks of Pacific
  cloud.
  	There had been times, during the past three years, when she had felt
  as
  though she were about to cross, or recross, a line, a subtle border
  of faith, to
  find that her time with the loa had been a dream, or, at most, that
  they were
  contagious knots of cultural resonance remaining from the weeks she'd
  spent in
  Beauvoir 's New Jersey oumphor. To see with other eyes: no gods, no
  Horsemen.
  	She walked on, comforted by the surf, by the one perpetual moment of

  beach-time, the now-and-always of it.
  	Her father was dead, seven years dead, and the record he'd kept of
  his
  life had told her little enough. That he'd served someone or
  something, that his
  reward had been knowledge, and that she had been his sacrifice.
  	Sometimes she felt as though she'd had three lives, each walled away
  from
  the others by something she couldn't name, and no hope of wholeness,
  ever.
  	There were the child's memories of the Maas arcology, carved into
  the
  summit of an Arizona mesa, where she'd hugged a sandstone balustrade,
  face into
  the wind, and felt as though the whole hollowed tableland was her
  ship, that she
  could steer out into those sunset colors beyond the mountains. Later,
  she'd
  flown away from there, her fear a hard thing in her throat. She could
  no longer
  recall her last glimpse of her father's face. Though it must have
  been on the
  microlight deck, the other planes tethered against the wind, a row of
  rainbow
  moths. The first life ended, that night; her father's life had ended
  too.
  	Her second life had been a short one, fast and very strange. A man
  called
  Turner had taken her away, out of Arizona, and had left her with
  Bobby and
  Beauvoir and the others. She remembered little about Turner, only
  that he was
  tall, with hard muscles and a hunted look. He'd taken her to New
  York. Then
  Beauvoir had taken her, along with Bobby, to New Jersey. There, on
  the fifty-
  third level of a mincome structure, Beauvoir had taught her about her
  dreams.
  The dreams are real, he'd said, his brown face shining with sweat. He
  taught her
  the names of the ones she'd seen in dreams. He taught her that all
  dreams reach
  down to a common sea, and he showed her the way in which hers were
  different and
  the same. You  alone sail the old sea and the new , he said.
  	She was ridden by gods, in New Jersey.
  	She learned to abandon herself to the Horsemen. She saw the loa
  Linglessou
  enter Beauvoir in the oumphor, saw his feet scatter the diagrams
  outlined in
  white flour. She knew the gods, in New Jersey, and love.
  	The loa had guided her, when she'd set out with Bobby to build her
  third,
  her current life. They were well matched, Angie and Bobby, born out
  of vacuums,
  Angie from the clean blank kingdom of Maas Biolabs and Bobby from the
  boredom of
  Barrytown. . . .

  Grande Brigitte touched her, without warning; she stumbled, almost
  fell to her
  knees in the surf, as the sound of the sea was sucked away into the
  twilit
  landscape that opened in front of her. The whitewashed cemetery
  walls, the
  gravestones, the willows. The candles.
  	Beneath the oldest willow, a multitude of candles, the twisted roots
  pale
  with wax.
  	Child , know me .
  	And Angie felt her there, all at once, and knew her for what she
  was,
  Mamman Brigitte, Mademoiselle Brigitte, eldest of the dead.
  	I have no cult , child , no special altar .
  	She found herself walking forward, into candleglow, a buzzing in her
  ears,
  as though the willow hid a vast hive of bees.
  	My blood is vengeance .
  	Angie remembered Bermuda, night, a hurricane; she and Bobby had
  ventured
  out into the eye. Grande Brigitte was like that. The silence, the
  sense of
  pressure, of unthinkable forces held momentarily in check. There was
  nothing to
  be seen, beneath the willow. Only the candles.
  	"The loa . . . I can't call them. I felt something . . . I came
  looking. .
  . ."
  	You are summoned to my  reposoir. Hear me . Your father drew  v�v�s
  in
  your head: he drew them in a flesh that was not flesh . You were
  consecrated to
  Ezili Freda. Legba led you into the world to serve his own ends. But
  you were
  sent poison , child , a   coup-poudre . . .
  	Her nose began to bleed. "Poison?"
  	Your father  's    v�v�s are altered ,  partially erased , redrawn.
  Though
  you have ceased to poison yourself ,    still the Horsemen cannot
  reach you . I
  am of a different order.
  	There was a terrible pain in her head, blood pounding in her
  temples. . .
  . "Please . . ."
  	Hear me . You have enemies .  They plot against you . Much is at
  stake ,
  in this. Fear poison , child!
  	She looked down at her hands. The blood was bright and real. The
  buzzing
  sound grew louder. Perhaps it was in her head. "Please! Help me!
  Explain . . ."
  	You cannot remain here .  It is death .
  	And Angie fell to her knees in the sand, the sound of the surf
  crashing
  around her, dazzled by the sun. The Dornier was hovering nervously in
  front of
  her, two meters away. The pain receded instantly. She wiped her
  bloodied hands
  on the sleeves of the blue jacket. The remote's cluster of cameras
  whirred and
  rotated.
  	"It's all right," she managed. "A nosebleed. It's only a nosebleed.
  . . ."
  The Dornier darted forward, then back. "I'm going back to the house
  now. I'm
  fine." It rose smoothly out of sight.
  	Angie hugged herself, shaking. No , don 't  let them see . They  'll
  know
  something happened , but not what . She forced herself to her feet,
  turned,
  began to trudge back up the beach, the way she'd come. As she walked,
  she
  searched the mountain jacket's pockets for a tissue, anything,
  something to wipe
  the blood from her face.
  	When her fingers found the corners of the flat little packet, she
  knew
  instantly what it was. She halted, shivering. The drug. It wasn't
  possible. Yes,
  it was. But who? She turned and stared at the Dornier until it slid
  away.
  	The packet. Enough for a month.
  	Coup-poudre .
  	Fear poison, child.



  Squat

  Mona dreamed she was dancing the cage back in some Cleveland juke,
  naked in a
  column of hot blue light, where the faces thrusting up for her
  through the veil
  of smoke had blue light snagged in the whites of their eyes. They
  wore the
  expression men always wore when they watched you dance, staring real
  hard but
  locked up inside themselves at the same time, so their eyes told you
  nothing at
  all and their faces, in spite of the sweat, might have been carved
  from
  something that only looked like flesh.
  	Not that she cared how they looked, when she was in the cage, high
  and hot
  and on the beat, three songs into the set and the wiz just starting
  to peak, new
  strength in her legs sending her up on the balls of her feet . . .
  	One of them grabbed her ankle.
  	She tried to scream, only it wouldn't come, not at first, and when
  it did
  it was like something ripped down inside her, hurt her, and the blue
  light
  shredded, but the hand, the hand was still there, around her ankle.
  She came up
  off the bed like a pop-up toy, fighting the dark, clawing hair away
  from her
  eyes.
  	"Whatsa matter, babe?"
  	He put his other hand against her forehead and shoved her back, down
  into
  the pillow's hot depression.
  	"Dream . . ." The hand was still there and it made her want to
  scream.
  "You got a cigarette, Eddy?" The hand went away, click and flare of
  the lighter,
  the planes of his face jumping out at her as he lit one, handed it to
  her. She
  sat up quickly, drew her knees up under her chin with the army
  blanket over them
  like a tent, because she didn't feel like anybody touching her then
  at all.
  	The scavenged plastic chair's broken leg made a warning sound as he
  leaned
  back and lit his own cigarette. Break , she thought, pitch him on his
  ass so he
  gets to hit me a few times . At least it was dark, so she didn't have
  to look at
  the squat. Worst thing was waking up with a bad head, too sick to
  move, when
  she'd come in crashing and forgotten to retape the black plastic,
  hard sun to
  show her all the little details and heat the air so the flies could
  get going.
  	Nobody ever grabbed her, back in Cleveland; anybody numb enough to
  reach
  through that field was already too drunk to move, maybe to breathe.
  The tricks
  never grabbed her either, not unless they'd squared it with Eddy,
  paid extra,
  and that was just pretend.
  	Whichever way they wanted it, it got to be a kind of ritual, so it
  seemed
  to happen in a place outside your life. And she'd gotten into
  watching them,
  when they lost it. That was the interesting part, because they really
  did lose
  it, they were totally helpless, maybe just for a split second, but it
  was like
  they weren't even there.
  	"Eddy, I'm gonna go crazy, I gotta sleep here anymore."
  	He'd hit her before, for less, so she put her face down, against her
  knees
  and the blanket, and waited.
  	"Sure," he said, "you wanna go back to the catfish farm? Wanna go
  back to
  Cleveland?"
  	"I just can't make this anymore. . . ."
  	"Tomorrow."
  	"Tomorrow what?"
  	"That soon enough for you? Tomorrow night, private fucking jet?
  Straight
  up to New York? Then  you gonna quit giving me this shit?"
  	"Please, baby," and she reached out for him, "we can take the train.
  . .
  ."
  	He slapped her hand away. "You got shit for brains."
  	If she complained any more, anything about the squat, anything that
  implied he wasn't making it, that all his big deals added up to
  nothing, he'd
  start, she knew he'd start. Like the time she'd screamed about the
  bugs, the
  roaches they called palmetto bugs, but it was because the goddamn
  things were
  mutants, half of them; someone had tried to wipe them out with
  something that
  fucked with their DNA, so you'd see these screwed-up roaches dying
  with too many
  legs or heads, or not enough, and once she'd seen one that looked
  like it had
  swallowed a crucifix or something, its back or shell or whatever it
  was
  distorted in a way that made her want to puke.
  	"Baby," she said, trying to soften her voice, "I can't help it, this
  place
  is just getting to me. . . ."
  	"Hooky Green's," he said, like he hadn't heard her, "I was up in
  Hooky
  Green's and I met a mover . He picked me out , you know? Man's got an
  eye for
  talent." She could almost feel his grin through the dark. "Outa
  London, England.
  Talent scout. Come into Hooky's and it was just 'You, my man!' "
  	"A trick?" Hooky Green's was where Eddy had most recently decided
  the
  action was, thirty-third floor of a glass highstack with most of the
  inside
  walls knocked down, had about a block of dancefloor, but he'd gone
  off the place
  when nobody there was willing to pay him much attention. Mona hadn't
  ever seen
  Hooky himself, "lean mean Hooky Green," the retired ballplayer who
  owned the
  place, but it was great for dancing.
  	"Will you fucking listen?   Trick? Shit . He's the man , he's a
  connection, he's on the ladder and he's gonna pull me up. And you
  know what? I'm
  gonna take you  with me."
  	"But what's he want?"
  	"An actress. Sort of an actress. And a smart boy to get her in place
  and
  keep her there."
  	"Actress? Place? What place?"
  	She heard him unzip his jacket. Something landed on the bed, near
  her
  feet. "Two thou."
  	Jesus. Maybe it wasn't a joke. But if it wasn't, what the hell was
  it?
  	"How much you pull tonight, Mona?"
  	"Ninety." It had really been one-twenty, but she'd figured the last
  one
  for overtime. She was too scared to hold out on him, usually, but
  she'd needed
  wiz money.
  	"Keep it. Get some clothes. Not like work stuff. Nobody wants your
  little
  ass hanging out, not this trip."
  	"When?"
  	"Tomorrow, I said. You can kiss this place goodbye."
  	When he said that, it made her want to hold her breath.
  	The chair creaked again. "Ninety, huh?"
  	"Yeah."
  	"Tell me."
  	"Eddy, I'm so tired. . . ."
  	"No," he said.
  	But what he wanted wasn't the truth or anything like it. He wanted a

  story, the story that he'd taught her to tell him. He didn't want to
  hear what
  they talked about (and most of them had some one thing they wanted
  real bad to
  tell you, and usually they did), or how they got around to asking to
  see your
  bloodwork tickets, or how every other one made that same joke about
  how what
  they couldn't cure they could put in remission, or even what they
  wanted in bed.
  	Eddy wanted to hear about this big guy who treated her like she
  didn't
  matter. Except she had to be careful, when she told it, not to make
  the trick
  too rough, because that was supposed to cost more than she'd actually
  been paid.
  The main thing was that this imaginary trick had treated her like she
  was a
  piece of equipment he'd rented for half an hour. Not that there
  weren't plenty
  like that, but they mostly spent their money at puppet parlors or got
  it on
  stim. Mona tended to get the ones who wanted to talk, who tried to
  buy you a
  sandwich after, which could be bad in its own way but not the kind of
  bad Eddy
  needed. And the other thing Eddy needed was for her to tell him how
  that wasn't
  what she liked but she'd found herself wanting it anyway, wanting it
  bad.
  	She reached down in the dark and touched the envelope full of money.
  	The chair creaked again.
  	So she told him how she was coming out of a BuyLow and he'd hit on
  her,
  this big guy, just asked how much, which had embarrassed her but she
  told him
  anyway and she'd said okay. So they went in his car, which was old
  and big and
  kind of damp-smelling (cribbing detail from her Cleveland days), and
  he'd sort
  of flipped her over the seat --
  	"In front of the BuyLow?"
  	"In back."
  	Eddy never accused her of making any of it up, even though she knew
  he
  must have taught her the general outline somehow and it was always
  basically the
  same story. By the time the big guy had her skirt up (the black one,
  she said,
  and I had on my white boots) and his pants down, she could hear
  Eddy's
  beltbuckle jingling as he peeled off his jeans. Part of her was
  wondering, when
  he slid into bed beside her, whether the position she was describing
  was
  physically possible, but she kept on going, and anyway it was working
  on Eddy.
  She remembered to put in how it hurt, when the guy was getting it in,
  even
  though she'd been really wet. She put in how he held her wrists,
  though by now
  she was pretty confused about what was where, except that her ass was
  supposed
  to be up in the air. Eddy had started to touch her, stroking her
  breasts and
  stomach, so she switched from the offhand brutality of the trick's
  moves to how
  it was supposed to have made her feel.
  	How it was supposed to have made her feel was a way she hadn't ever
  felt.
  She knew you could get to a place where doing it hurt a little but
  still felt
  good, but she knew that wasn't it. What Eddy wanted to hear was that
  it hurt a
  lot and made her feel bad, but she liked it anyway. Which made no
  sense at all
  to Mona, but she'd learned to tell it the way he wanted her to.
  	Because anyway it worked, and now Eddy rolled over with the blanket
  bunched up across his back and got in between her legs. She figured
  he must be
  seeing it in his head, like a cartoon, what she was telling him, and
  at the same
  time he got to be that faceless pumping big guy. He had her wrists
  now, pinned
  above her head, the way he liked.
  	And when he was done, curled on his side asleep, Mona lay awake in
  the
  stale dark, turning the dream of leaving around and around, bright
  and
  wonderful.
  	And please let it be true.



  Portobello

  Kumiko woke in the enormous bed and lay very still, listening. There
  was a faint
  continuous murmur of distant traffic.
  	The air in the room was cold; she drew the rose duvet around her
  like a
  tent and climbed out. The small windows were patterned with bright
  frost. She
  went to the tub and nudged one of the swan's gilded wings. The bird
  coughed,
  gargled, began to fill the tub. Still huddled in the quilt, she
  opened her cases
  and began to select the day's garments, laying the chosen articles
  out on the
  bed.
  	When her bath was ready, she let the quilt slide to the floor and
  climbed
  over the marble parapet, stoically lowering herself into the
  painfully hot
  water. Steam from the tub had melted the frost; now the windows ran
  with
  condensation. Did all British bedrooms contain tubs like this? she
  wondered. She
  rubbed herself methodically with an oval bar of French soap, stood
  up, sluiced
  the suds off as best she could, wrapped herself in a large black
  towel, and,
  after some initial fumbling, discovered a sink, toilet, and bidet.
  These were
  hidden in a very small room that might once have been a closet, its
  walls fitted
  with dark veneer.
  	The theatrical-looking telephone chimed twice.
  	"Yes?"
  	"Petal here. Care for breakfast? Roger's here. Eager to meet you."
  	"Thank you," she said. "I'm dressing now."
  	She pulled on her best and baggiest pair of leather slacks, then
  burrowed
  into a hairy blue sweater so large that it would easily have fit
  Petal. When she
  opened her purse for her makeup, she saw the Maas-Neotek unit. Her
  hand closed
  on it automatically. She hadn't intended to summon him, but touch was
  enough; he
  was there, craning his neck comically and gaping at the low, mirrored
  ceiling.
  	"I take it we aren't in the Dorchester?"
  	"I'll ask the questions," she said. "What is this place?"
  	"A bedroom," he said. "In rather dubious taste."
  	"Answer my question, please."
  	"Well," he said, surveying the bed and tub, "by the decor, it could
  be a
  brothel. I can access historical data on most buildings in London,
  but there's
  nothing notable about this one. Built in 1848. Solid example of the
  prevalent
  classical Victorian style. The neighborhood's expensive without being

  fashionable, popular with lawyers of a certain sort." He shrugged;
  she could see
  the edge of the bed through the burnished gleam of his riding boots.
  	She dropped the unit into her purse and he was gone.

  She managed the lift easily enough; once in the white-painted foyer,
  she
  followed the sound of voices. Along a sort of hallway. Around a
  corner.
  	"Good morning," said Petal, lifting the silver cover from a platter.
  Steam
  rose. "Here's the elusive Mr. Swain, Roger to you, and here's your
  breakfast."
  	"Hello," the man said, stepping forward, his hand extended. Pale
  eyes in a
  long, strong-boned face. Lank mouse-colored hair was brushed
  diagonally across
  his forehead. Kumiko found it impossible to guess his age; it was a
  young man's
  face, but there were deep wrinkles under the grayish eyes. He was
  tall, with the
  look of an athlete about his arms and shoulders. "Welcome to London."
  He took
  her hand, squeezed and released it.
  	"Thank you."
  	He wore a collarless shirt, very fine red stripes against a pale
  blue
  ground, the cuffs fastened with plain ovals of dull gold; open at the
  neck, it
  displayed a dark triangle of tattooed flesh. "I spoke with your
  father this
  morning, told him you'd arrived safely."
  	"You are a man of rank."
  	The pale eyes narrowed. "Pardon?"
  	"The dragons."
  	Petal laughed.
  	"Let her eat," someone said, a woman's voice.
  	Kumiko turned, discovering the slim dark figure against tall,
  mullioned
  windows; beyond the windows, a walled garden sheathed in snow. The
  woman's eyes
  were concealed by silver glasses that reflected the room and its
  occupants.
  	"Another of our guests," said Petal.
  	"Sally," the woman said, "Sally Shears. Eat up, honey. If you're as
  bored
  as I am, you feel like a walk." As Kumiko stared, her hand came up to
  touch the
  glasses, as though she were about to remove them. "Portobello Road's
  a couple
  blocks. I need some air." The mirrored lenses seemed to have no
  frames, no
  earpieces.
  	"Roger," Petal said, forking pink slices of bacon from a silver
  platter,
  "do you suppose Kumiko will be safe with our Sally?"
  	"Safer than I'd be, given the mood she's in," Swain said. "I'm
  afraid
  there isn't much here to amuse you," he said to Kumiko, leading her
  to the
  table, "but we'll try to make you as comfortable as possible and
  arrange for you
  to see a bit of the city. It isn't Tokyo, though."
  	"Not yet, anyway," said Petal, but Swain seemed not to hear.
  	"Thank you," Kumiko said, as Swain held her chair.
  	"An honor," Swain said. "Our respect for your father --"
  	"Hey," the woman said, "she's too young to need that bullshit. Spare
  us."
  	"Sally's in something of a mood, you see," Petal said, as he put a
  poached
  egg on Kumiko's plate.

  Sally Shears's mood, it developed, was one of barely suppressed rage,
  a fury
  that made itself known in her stride, in the angry gunshot crack of
  her black
  bootheels on icy pavement.
  	Kumiko had to scramble to keep up, as the woman stalked away from
  Swain's
  house in the crescent, her glasses flashing coldly in directionless
  winter
  sunlight. She wore narrow trousers of dark brown suede and a bulky
  black jacket,
  its collar turned up high; expensive clothing. With her short black
  hair, she
  might have been taken for a boy.
  	For the first time since leaving Tokyo, Kumiko felt fear.
  	The energy pent in the woman was almost tangible, a knot of anger
  that
  might slip at any moment.
  	Kumiko slid her hand into her purse and squeezed the Maas-Neotek
  unit;
  Colin was instantly beside her, strolling briskly along, his hands
  tucked in the
  pockets of his jacket, his boots leaving no imprint in the dirty
  snow. She
  released the unit then, and he was gone, but she felt reassured. She
  needn't
  fear losing Sally Shears, whose pace she found difficult; the ghost
  could
  certainly guide her back to Swain's. And if I run from her , she
  thought, he
  will help me . The woman dodged through moving traffic at an
  intersection,
  absently tugging Kumiko out of the path of a fat black Honda taxi and
  somehow
  managing to kick the fender as it slid past.
  	"You drink?" she asked, her hand around Kumiko's forearm.
  	Kumiko shook her head. "Please, you're hurting my arm."
  	Sally's grip loosened, but Kumiko was steered through doors of
  ornate
  frosted glass, into noise and warmth, a sort of crowded burrow lined
  in dark
  wood and worn fawn velour.
  	Soon they faced each other across a small marble table that
  supported a
  Bass ashtray, a mug of dark ale, the whiskey glass Sally had emptied
  on her way
  from the bar, and a glass of orange squash.
  	Kumiko saw that the silver lenses met the pale skin with no sign of
  a
  seam.
  	Sally reached for the empty whiskey glass, tilted it without lifting
  it
  from the table, and regarded it critically. "I met your father once,"
  she said.
  "He wasn't as far up the ladder, back then." She abandoned the glass
  for her mug
  of ale. "Swain says you're half gaijin. Says your mother was Danish."
  She
  swallowed some of the ale. "You don't look it."
  	"She had them change my eyes."
  	"Suits you."
  	"Thank you. And your glasses," she said, automatically, "they are
  very
  handsome."
  	Sally shrugged. "Your old man let you see Chiba yet?"
  	Kumiko shook her head.
  	"Smart. I was him, I wouldn't either." She drank more ale. Her
  nails,
  evidently acrylic, were the shade and sheen of mother-of-pearl. "They
  told me
  about your mother." Her face burning, Kumiko lowered her eyes.
  	"That's not why you're here. You know that? He didn't pack you off
  to
  Swain because of her. There's a war on. There hasn't been high-level
  infighting
  in the Yakuza since before I was born, but there is now." The empty
  pint clinked
  as Sally set it down. "He can't have you around, is all. You'd be too
  easy to
  get to. A guy like Swain's pretty far off the map, far as Kanaka's
  rivals are
  concerned. Why you got a passport with a different name, right? Swain
  owes
  Kanaka. So you're okay, right?"
  	Kumiko felt the hot tears come.
  	"Okay, so you're not okay." The pearl nails drummed on marble. "So
  she did
  herself and you're not okay. Feel guilty, right?"
  	Kumiko looked up, into twin mirrors.

  Portobello was choked Shinjuku-tight with tourists. Sally Shears,
  after
  insisting Kumiko drink the orange squash, which had grown warm and
  flat, led her
  out into the packed street. With Kumiko firmly in tow, Sally began to
  work her
  way along the pavement, past folding steel tables spread with torn
  velvet
  curtains and thousands of objects made of silver and crystal, brass
  and china.
  Kumiko stared as Sally drew her past arrays of Coronation plate and
  jowled
  Churchill teapots. "This is gomi ," Kumiko ventured, when they paused
  at an
  intersection. Rubbish. In Tokyo, worn and useless things were
  landfill. Sally
  grinned wolfishly. "This is England. Gomi  's  a major natural
  resource. Gomi
  and talent. What I'm looking for now. Talent."

  The talent wore a bottle-green velvet suit and immaculate suede
  wingtips, and
  Sally found him in another pub, this one called the Rose and Crown.
  She
  introduced him as Tick. He was scarcely taller than Kumiko, and
  something was
  skewed in his back or hip, so that he walked with a pronounced limp
  that
  heightened an overall impression of asymmetry. His black hair was
  shaved close
  at the back and sides, but piled into an oily loaf of curls above his
  forehead.
  	Sally introduced Kumiko: "My friend from Japan and keep your hands
  to
  yourself." Tick smiled wanly and led them to a table.
  	"How's business, Tick?"
  	"Fine," he said glumly. "How's retirement?"
  	Sally seated herself on a padded bench, her back to the wall.
  "Well," she
  said, "it's sort of on again, off again."
  	Kumiko looked at her. The rage had evaporated, or else been expertly

  concealed. As Kumiko sat down, she slid her hand into her purse and
  found the
  unit. Colin popped into focus on the bench beside Sally.
  	"Nice of you to think of me," Tick said, taking a chair. "Been two
  years,
  I'd say." He cocked an eyebrow in Kumiko's direction.
  	"She's okay. You know Swain, Tick?"
  	"Strictly by reputation, thank you."
  	Colin was studying their exchange with amused fascination, moving
  his head
  from side to side as though he were watching a tennis match. Kumiko
  had to
  remind herself that only she could see him.
  	"I want you to turn him over for me. I don't want him to know."
  	He stared at her. The entire left half of his face contorted in a
  huge
  slow wink. "Well then," he said, "you don't half want much, do you?"
  	"Good money, Tick. The best."
  	"Looking for something in particular, or is it a laundry run? Isn't
  as
  though people don't know he's a top nob in the rackets. Can't say I'd
  want him
  to find me on his manor. . . ."
  	"But then there's the money, Tick."
  	Two very rapid winks.
  	"Roger's twisting me, Tick. Somebody's twisting him. I don't know
  what
  they've got on him, don't much care. What he's got on me is enough.
  What I want
  to know is who, where, when. Tap in to incoming and outgoing traffic.
  He's in
  touch with somebody, because the deal keeps changing."
  	"Would I know it if I saw it?"
  	"Just have a look, Tick. Do that for me."
  	The convulsive wink again. "Right, then. We'll have a go." He
  drummed his
  fingers nervously on the edge of the table. "Buy us a round?"
  	Colin looked across the table at Kumiko and rolled his eyes.

  "I don't understand," Kumiko said, as she followed Sally back along
  Portobello
  Road. "You have involved me in an intrigue. . . ."
  	Sally turned up her collar against the wind.
  	"But I might betray you. You plot against my father's associate. You
  have
  no reason to trust me."
  	"Or you me, honey. Maybe I'm one of those bad people your daddy's
  worried
  about."
  	Kumiko considered this. "Are you?"
  	"No. And if you're Swain's spy, he's gotten a lot more baroque
  recently.
  If you're your old man's spy, maybe I don't need Tick. But if the
  Yakuza's
  running this, what's the point of using Roger for a blind?"
  	"I am no spy."
  	"Then start being your own. If Tokyo's the frying pan, you may just
  have
  landed in the fire."
  	"But why involve me?"
  	"You're already involved. You're here. You scared?"
  	"No," Kumiko said, and fell silent, wondering why this should be
  true.

  Late that afternoon, alone in the mirrored garret, Kumiko sat on the
  edge of the
  huge bed and peeled off her wet boots. She took the Maas-Neotek unit
  from her
  purse.
  	"What are they?" she asked the ghost, who perched on the parapet of
  the
  black marble tub.
  	"Your pub friends?"
  	"Yes."
  	"Criminals. I'd advise you to associate with a better class, myself.
  The
  woman's foreign. North American. The man's a Londoner. East End. He's
  a data
  thief, evidently. I can't access police records, except with regard
  to crimes of
  historical interest."
  	"I don't know what to do. . . ."
  	"Turn the unit over."
  	"What?"
  	"On the back. You'll see a sort of half-moon groove there. Put your
  thumbnail in and twist. . . ."
  	A tiny hatch opened. Microswitches.
  	"Reset the A/B throw to B. Use something narrow, pointed, but not a
  biro."
  	"A what?"
  	"A pen. Ink and dust. Gum up the works. A toothpick's ideal. That'll
  set
  it for voice-activated recording."
  	"And then?"
  	"Hide it downstairs. We'll play it back tomorrow. . . ."



  Morning Light

  Slick spent the night on a piece of gnawed gray foam under a
  workbench on
  Factory's ground floor, wrapped in a noisy sheet of bubble packing
  that stank of
  free monomers. He dreamed about Kid Afrika, about the Kid's car, and
  in his
  dreams the two blurred together and Kid's teeth were little chrome
  skulls.
  	He woke to a stiff wind spitting the winter's first snow through
  Factory's
  empty windows.
  	He lay there and thought about the problem of the Judge's buzzsaw,
  how the
  wrist tended to cripple up whenever he went to slash through
  something heavier
  than a sheet of chipboard. His original plan for the hand had called
  for
  articulated fingers, each one tipped with a miniature electric
  chainsaw, but the
  concept had lost favor for a number of reasons. Electricity, somehow,
  just
  wasn't satisfying; it wasn't physical  enough. Air was the way to go,
  big tanks
  of compressed air, or internal combustion if you could find the
  parts. And you
  could find the parts to almost anything, on Dog Solitude, if you dug
  long
  enough; failing that, there were half-a-dozen towns in rustbelt
  Jersey with
  acres of dead machines to pick over.
  	He crawled out from under the bench, trailing the transparent
  blanket of
  miniature plastic pillows like a cape. He thought about the man on
  the
  stretcher, up in his room, and about Cherry, who'd slept in his bed.
  No stiff
  neck for her. He stretched and winced.
  	Gentry was due back. He'd have to explain it to Gentry, who didn't
  like
  having people around at all.
  	
  Little Bird had made coffee in the room that served as Factory's
  kitchen. The
  floor was made of curling plastic tiles and there were dull steel
  sinks along
  one wall. The windows were covered with translucent tarps that sucked
  in and out
  with the wind and admitted a milky glow that made the room seem even
  colder than
  it was.
  	"How we doing for water?" Slick asked as he entered the room. One of

  Little Bird's jobs was checking the tanks on the roof every morning,
  fishing out
  windblown leaves or the odd dead crow. Then he'd check the seals on
  the filters,
  maybe let ten fresh gallons in if it looked like they were running
  low. It took
  the better part of a day for ten gallons to filter down through the
  system to
  the collection tank. The fact that Little Bird dutifully took care of
  this was
  the main reason Gentry would tolerate him, but the boy's shyness
  probably helped
  as well. Little Bird managed to be pretty well invisible, as far as
  Gentry was
  concerned.
  	"Got lots," Little Bird said.
  	"Is there any way to take a shower?" Cherry asked, from her seat on
  an old
  plastic crate. She had shadows under her eyes, like she hadn't slept,
  but she'd
  covered the sore with makeup.
  	"No," Slick said, "there isn't, not this time of year."
  	"I didn't think so," Cherry said glumly, hunched in her collection
  of
  leather jackets.
  	Slick helped himself to the last of the coffee and stood in front of
  her
  while he drank it.
  	"You gotta problem?" she asked.
  	"Yeah. You and the guy upstairs. How come you're down here? You off
  duty
  or something?"
  	She produced a black beeper from the pocket of her outermost jacket.
  "Any
  change, this'll go off."
  	"Sleep okay?"
  	"Sure. Well enough."
  	"I didn't. How long you work for Kid Afrika, Cherry?"
  	" 'Bout a week."
  	"You really a med-tech?"
  	She shrugged inside her jackets. "Close enough to take care of the
  Count."
  	"The Count?"
  	"Count, yeah. Kid called him that, once."
  	Little Bird shivered. He hadn't gotten to work with his styling
  tools yet,
  so his hair stuck out in all directions. "What if," Little Bird
  ventured, "he's
  a vampire?"
  	Cherry stared at him. "You kidding?"
  	Eyes wide, Little Bird solemnly shook his head.
  	Cherry looked at Slick. "Your friend playing with a full deck?"
  	"No vampires," Slick said to Little Bird, "that's not a real thing,
  understand? That's just in stims. Guy's no vampire, okay?"
  	Little Bird nodded slowly, looking not at all reassured, while the
  wind
  popped the plastic taut against the milky light.

  He tried to get a morning's work in on the Judge, but Little Bird had
  vanished
  again and the image of the figure on the stretcher kept getting in
  the way. It
  was too cold; he'd have to run a line down from Gentry's territory at
  the top of
  Factory, get some space heaters. But that meant haggling with Gentry
  over the
  current. The juice was Gentry's because Gentry knew how to fiddle it
  out of the
  Fission Authority.
  	It was heading into Slick's third winter in Factory, but Gentry had
  been
  there four years when Slick found the place. When they'd gotten
  Gentry's loft
  together, Slick had inherited the room where he'd put Cherry and the
  man she
  said Kid Afrika called the Count. Gentry took the position that
  Factory was his,
  that he'd been there first, got the power in so the Authority didn't
  know. But
  Slick did a lot of things around Factory that Gentry wouldn't have
  wanted to do
  himself, like making sure there was food, and if something major
  broke down, if
  the wiring shorted or the water filter packed it in, it was Slick who
  had the
  tools and did the fixing.
  	Gentry didn't like people. He spent days on end with his decks and
  FX-
  organs and holo projectors and came out only when he got hungry.
  Slick didn't
  understand what it was that Gentry was trying to do, but he envied
  Gentry the
  narrowness of his obsession. Nothing got to Gentry. Kid Afrika
  couldn't have
  gotten to Gentry, because Gentry wouldn't have gone over to Atlantic
  City and
  gotten into deep shit and Kid Afrika's debt.

  He went into his room without knocking and Cherry was washing the
  guy's chest
  with a sponge, wearing white throwaway gloves. She'd carried the
  butane stove up
  from the room where they did the cooking and heated water in a steel
  mixing
  bowl.
  	He made himself look at the pinched face, the slack lips parted just

  enough to reveal yellow smoker's teeth. It was a street face, a crowd
  face, face
  you'd see in any bar.
  	She looked up at Slick.
  	He sat on the edge of the bed, where she'd unzipped his sleeping bag
  and
  spread it out flat like a blanket, with the torn end tucked in under
  the foam.
  	"We gotta talk, Cherry. Figure this, you know?"
  	She squeezed the sponge out over the bowl.
  	"How'd you get mixed up with Kid Afrika?"
  	She put the sponge in a Ziploc and put that away in the black nylon
  bag
  from the Kid's hover. As he watched her, he saw there was no wasted
  motion, and
  she didn't seem to have to think about what she was doing. "You know
  a place
  called Moby Jane's?"
  	"No."
  	"Roadhouse, off the interstate. So I had this friend was manager
  there,
  doing it for about a month when I move in with him. Moby Jane, she's
  just huge;
  she just sits out back the club in a float tank with this freebase IV
  drip in
  her arm and it's totally  disgusting. So like I said, I move in there
  with my
  friend Spencer, he's the new manager, because I had this trouble over
  my ticket
  in Cleveland and I couldn't work right then."
  	"What kind of trouble?"
  	"The usual  kind, okay? You wanna hear this or not? So Spencer's let
  me in
  on the owner's horrible condition, right? So the last thing I want
  anybody to
  know is that I'm a med-tech, otherwise they'll have me out there
  changing
  filters on her tank and pumping freebase into two hundred kilos of
  hallucinating
  psychotic. So they put me waiting tables, slinging beer. It's okay.
  Get some
  good music in there. Kind of a rough place but it's okay because
  people know I'm
  with Spencer. 'Cept I wake up one day and Spencer's gone. Then it
  comes out he's
  gone with a bunch of their money." She was drying the sleeper's chest
  as she
  spoke, using a thick wad of white absorbent fiber. "So they knock me
  around a
  little." She looked up at him and shrugged. "But then they tell me
  what they're
  gonna do. They're gonna cuff my hands behind my back and put me in
  the tank with
  Moby Jane and turn her drip up real high and tell her my boyfriend
  ripped her
  off. . . ." She tossed the damp wad into the bowl. "So they locked me
  up in this
  closet to let me think about it before they did it. When the door
  opens, though,
  it's Kid Afrika. I never saw him before. 'Miss Chesterfield,' he
  said, 'I have
  reason to believe you were until recently a certified medical
  technician.' "
  	"So he made you an offer."
  	"Offer, my ass. He just checked my papers and took me straight on
  out of
  there. Not a soul around, either, and it was Saturday afternoon. Took
  me out in
  the parking lot, there's this hover sittin' in the lot, skulls on the
  front, two
  big black guys waiting for us, and any way away from that float tank,
  that's
  just fine by me."
  	"Had our friend in the back?"
  	"No." Peeling off the gloves. "Had me drive him back to Cleveland,
  to this
  burb. Big old houses but the lawns all long and scraggy. Went to one
  with a lot
  of security, guess it was his. This one," and she tucked the blue
  sleeping bag
  up around the man's chin, "he was in a bedroom. I had to start right
  in. Kid
  told me he'd pay me good."
  	"And you knew he'd bring you out here, to the Solitude?"
  	"No. Don't think he did, either. Something happened. He came in next
  day
  and said we were leaving. I think something scared him. That's when
  he called
  him that, the Count. 'Cause he was angry and I think maybe scared.
  'The Count
  and his fucking LF,' he said."
  	"His what?"
  	" 'LF.' "
  	"What's that?"
  	"I think this," she said, pointing up at the featureless gray
  package
  mounted above the man's head.



  No There, There


  She imagined Swift waiting for her on the deck, wearing the tweeds he
  favored in
  an L. A. winter, the vest and jacket mismatched, herringbone and
  houndstooth,
  but everything woven from the same wool, and that, probably, from the
  same sheep
  on the same hillside, the whole look orchestrated in London, by
  committee, in a
  room above a Floral Street shop he'd never seen. They did striped
  shirts for
  him, brought the cotton from Charvet in Paris; they made his ties,
  had the silk
  woven in Osaka, the Sense/Net logo embroidered tight and small. And
  still,
  somehow, he looked as though his mother had dressed him.
  	The deck was empty. The Dornier hovered, then darted away to its
  nest.
  Mamman Brigitte's presence still clung to her.
  	She went into the white kitchen and scrubbed drying blood from her
  face
  and hands. When she stepped into the living room, she felt as though
  she were
  seeing it for the first time. The bleached floor, the gilt frames and
  cut-velvet
  upholstery of the Louis XVI chairs, the Cubist backdrop of a Valmier.
  Like
  Hilton's wardrobe, she thought, contrived by talented strangers. Her
  boots
  tracked damp sand across the pale floor as she went to the stairwell.
  	Kelly Hickman, her wardrobe man, had been to the house while she'd
  been in
  the clinic; he'd arranged her working luggage in the master bedroom.
  Nine Herm�s
  rifle cases, plain and rectangular, like coffins of burnished saddle
  hide. Her
  clothes were never folded; they lay each garment flat, between sheets
  of silk
  tissue.
  	She stood in the doorway, staring at the empty bed, the nine leather

  coffins.
  	She went into the bathroom, glass block and white mosaic tile,
  locking the
  door behind her. She opened one cabinet, then another, ignoring neat
  rows of
  unopened toiletries, patent medicines, cosmetics. She found the
  charger in the
  third cabinet, beside a bubble card of derms. She bent close, peering
  at the
  gray plastic, the Japanese logo, afraid to touch it. The charger
  looked new,
  unused. She was almost certain that she hadn't bought it, hadn't left
  it here.
  She took the drug from her jacket pocket and examined it, turning it
  over and
  over, watching the measured doses of violet dust tumble in their
  sealed
  compartments.
  	She saw herself place the packet on the white marble ledge, position
  the
  charger above it, remove a derm from its bubble and insert it. She
  saw the red
  flash of a diode when the charger had drawn off a dose; she saw
  herself remove
  the derm, balancing it like a white plastic leech on the tip of her
  index
  finger, its moist inner surface glittering with minute beads of DMSO
  --
  	She turned, took three steps to the toilet, and dropped the unopened

  packet into the bowl. It floated there like a toy raft, the drug
  still perfectly
  dry. Perfectly. Her hand shaking, she found a stainless nailfile and
  knelt on
  the white tile. She had to close her eyes when she held the packet
  and drove the
  tip of the file against the seam, twisting. The file clattered on
  tile as she
  touched the flush button and the two halves of the empty packet
  vanished. She
  rested her forehead against cool enamel, then forced herself to get
  up, go to
  the sink, and carefully wash her hands.
  	Because she wanted, now she really knew   she wanted, to lick her
  fingers.

  Later that day, in a gray afternoon, she found a corrugated plastic
  shipping
  cannister in the garage, carried it up to the bedroom, and began to
  pack Bobby's
  remaining things. There wasn't much: a pair of leather jeans he
  hadn't liked,
  some shirts he'd either discarded or forgotten, and, in the teak
  bureau's bottom
  drawer, a cyberspace deck. It was an Ono-Sendai, hardly more than a
  toy. It lay
  amid a tangle of black leads, a cheap set of stim-trodes, a greasy-
  looking
  plastic tube of saline paste.
  	She remembered the deck he'd used, the one he'd taken with him, a
  gray
  factory-custom Hosaka with unmarked keys. It was a cowboy's deck;
  he'd insisted
  on traveling with it, even though it caused problems during customs
  checks. Why,
  she wondered, had he bought the Ono-Sendai? And why had he abandoned
  it? She was
  seated on the edge of the bed; she lifted the deck from the drawer
  and put it on
  her lap.
  	Her father, long ago, in Arizona, had cautioned her against jacking
  in.
  You don't need it, he'd said. And she hadn't, because she'd dreamed
  cyberspace,
  as though the neon gridlines of the matrix waited for her behind her
  eyelids.
  	There 's no there ,there. They taught that to children, explaining
  cyberspace. She remembered a smiling tutor's lecture in the
  arcology's executive
  cr�che, images shifting on a screen: pilots in enormous helmets and
  clumsy-
  looking gloves, the neuroelectronically primitive "virtual world"
  technology
  linking them more effectively with their planes, pairs of miniature
  video
  terminals pumping them a computer-generated flood of combat data, the

  vibrotactile feedback gloves providing a touch-world of studs and
  triggers. . .
  . As the technology evolved, the helmets shrank, the video terminals
  atrophied.
  . . .
  	She leaned forward and picked up the trode-set, shook it to free its
  leads
  from the tangle.
  	No there, there.
  	She spread the elastic headband and settled the trodes across her
  temples
  -- one of the world's characteristic human gestures, but one she
  seldom
  performed. She tapped the Ono-Sendai's battery-test stud. Green for
  go. She
  touched the power stud and the bedroom vanished behind a colorless
  wall of
  sensory static. Her head filled with a torrent of white sound.
  	Her fingers found a random second stud and she was catapulted
  through the
  static wall, into cluttered vastness, the notional void of
  cyberspace, the
  bright grid of the matrix ranged around her like an infinite cage.

  "Angela," the house said, its voice quiet but compelling, "I have a
  call from
  Hilton Swift. . . ."
  	"Executive override?" She was eating baked beans and toast at the
  kitchen
  counter.
  	"No," it said, confidingly.
  	"Change your tone," she said, around a mouthful of beans. "Something
  with
  an edge of anxiety."
  	"Mr. Swift is waiting ," the house said nervously.
  	"Better," she said, carrying bowl and plate to the washer, "but I
  want
  something closer to genuine hysteria. . . ."
  	"Will  you take the call?" The voice was choked with tension.
  	"No," she said, "but keep your voice that way, I like it."
  	She walked into the living room, counting under her breath. Twelve,
  thirteen . . .
  	"Angela," the house said gently, "I have a call from Hilton Swift --
  "
  	"On executive override," Swift said.
  	She made a farting sound with her lips.
  	"You know I respect your need to be alone, but I worry about you."
  	"I'm fine, Hilton. You needn't worry. Bye-bye."
  	"You stumbled this morning, on the beach. You seemed disoriented.
  Your
  nose began to bleed."
  	"I had a nosebleed."
  	"We want you to have another physical. . . ."
  	"Great."
  	"You accessed the matrix today, Angie. We logged you in the BAMA
  industrial sector."
  	"Is that what it was?"
  	"Do you want to talk about it?"
  	"There isn't anything to talk about. I was just screwing around. You
  want
  to know , though? I was packing some crap Bobby left here. You'd have
  approved ,
  Hilton! I found a deck of his and I tried it. I punched a key, sat
  there looking
  around, jacked out."
  	"I'm sorry, Angie."
  	"For what?"
  	"For disturbing you. I'll go now."
  	"Hilton, do you know where Bobby is?"
  	"No."
  	"You telling me Net security hasn't kept tabs on him?"
  	"I'm telling you I don't know, Angie. That's the truth."
  	"Could you find out, if you wanted to?"
  	Another pause. "I don't know. If I could, I'm not sure that I
  would."
  	"Thanks. Goodbye, Hilton."
  	"Goodbye, Angie."

  She sat on the deck that night, in the dark, watching the fleas dance
  against
  floodlit sand. Thinking of Brigitte and her warning, of the drug in
  the jacket
  and the derm charger in the medicine cabinet. Thinking of cyberspace
  and the sad
  confinement she'd felt with the Ono-Sendai, so far from the freedom
  of the loa.
  	Thinking of the other's dreams, of corridors winding in upon
  themselves,
  muted tints of ancient carpet . . . An old man, a head made of
  jewels, a taut
  pale face with eyes that were mirrors . . . And a beach in the wind
  and dark.
  	Not this beach, not Malibu.

  And somewhere, in a black California morning, some hour before dawn,
  amid the
  corridors, the galleries, the faces of dream, fragments of
  conversation she
  half-recalled, waking to pale fog against the windows of the master
  bedroom, she
  prized something free and dragged it back through the wall of sleep.
  	Rolling over, fumbling through a bedside drawer, finding a Porsche
  pen, a
  present from an assistant grip, she inscribed her treasure on the
  glossy back of
  an Italian fashion magazine:
  	        T-A

  	"Call Continuity," she told the house, over a third cup of coffee.
  	"Hello, Angie," said Continuity.
  	"That orbital sequence we did, two years ago. The Belgian's yacht .
  . ."
  She sipped her cooling coffee. "What was the name of the place he
  wanted to take
  me? The one Robin decided was too tacky."
  	"Freeside," the expert system said.
  	"Who's taped there?"
  	"Tally Isham recorded nine sequences in Freeside."
  	"It wasn't too tacky for her?"
  	"That was fifteen years ago. It was fashionable."
  	"Get me those sequences."
  	"Done."
  	"Bye."
  	"Goodbye, Angie."
  	Continuity was writing a book. Robin Lanier had told her about it.
  She'd
  asked what it was about. It wasn't like that, he'd said. It looped
  back into
  itself and constantly mutated; Continuity was always  writing it. She
  asked why.
  But Robin had already lost interest: because Continuity was an AI,
  and AIs did
  things like that.
  	Her call to Continuity cost her a call from Swift.
  	"Angie, about that physical . . ."
  	"Haven't you scheduled it yet? I want to get back to work. I called
  Continuity this morning. I'm thinking about an orbital sequence. I'm
  going over
  some things Tally did; I may get some ideas."
  	There was a silence. She wanted to laugh. It was difficult to get a
  silence out of Swift. "You're sure, Angie? That's wonderful, but is
  it really
  what you want to do?"
  	"I'm all better, Hilton. I'm just fine. I want to work. Vacation's
  over.
  Have Porphyre come out here and do my hair before I have to see
  anyone."
  	"You know, Angie," he said, "this makes all of us very happy."
  	"Call Porphyre. Set up the physical." Coup-poudre . Who , Hilton?
  Maybe
  you?
  	He had the resources, she thought, half an hour later, as she paced
  the
  fogbound deck. Her addiction hadn't threatened the Net, hadn't
  affected her
  output. There were no physical side effects. If there had been,
  Sense/ Net would
  never have allowed her to begin. The drug's designer, she thought.
  The designer
  would know. And never tell her, even if she could reach him, which
  she doubted
  she could. Suppose, she thought, her hands on the rust of the
  railing, that he
  hadn't been the designer? That the molecule had been designed by
  someone else,
  to his own ends?
  	"Your hairdresser," the house said.
  	She went inside.
  	Porphyre was waiting, swathed in muted jersey, something from the
  Paris
  season. His face, as smooth in repose as polished ebony, split into a
  delighted
  smirk when he saw her. "Missy," he scolded, "you look like homemade
  shit."
  	She laughed. Porphyre clucked and tutted, came forward to flick his
  long
  fingers at Angie's bangs with mock revulsion. "Missy was a bad girl.
  Porphyre
  told  you those drugs were nasty!"
  	She looked up at him. He was very tall, and, she knew, enormously
  strong.
  Like a greyhound on steroids, someone had once said. His depilated
  skull
  displayed a symmetry unknown to nature.
  	"You okay?" he asked, in his other voice, the manic brio shut off as
  if
  someone had thrown a switch.
  	"I'm fine."
  	"Did it hurt?"
  	"Yeah. It hurt."
  	"You know," he said, touching her chin lightly with a fingertip,
  "nobody
  could ever see what you got out of that shit. It didn't seem to get
  you high. .
  . ."
  	"It wasn't supposed to. It was just like being here, being there,
  only you
  didn't have to --"
  	"Feel it as much?"
  	"Yes."
  	He nodded, slowly. "Then that was some bad shit."
  	"Fuck it," she said. "I'm back."
  	His smirk returned. "Let's wash your hair."
  	"I washed it yesterday!"
  	"What in? No! Don't tell me!" He shooed her toward the stairwell.
  	In the white-tiled bathroom, he massaged something into her scalp.
  	"Have you seen Robin lately?"
  	He sluiced cool water through her hair. "Mistah  Lanier is in
  London,
  missy. Mistah  Lanier and I aren't currently on speaking terms. Sit
  up now." He
  raised the back of the chair and draped a towel around her neck.
  	"Why not?" She felt herself warming to the Net gossip that was
  Porphyre's
  other specialty.
  	"Because," the hairdresser said, his tone carefully even as he ran a
  comb
  back through her hair, "he had some bad things to say about Angela
  Mitchell
  while she was off in Jamaica getting her little head straight."
  	It wasn't what she'd expected. "He did?"
  	"Didn't he just, missy." He began to cut her hair, using the
  scissors that
  were one of his professional trademarks; he refused to use a laser
  pencil,
  claimed never to have touched one.
  	"Are you joking, Porphyre?"
  	"No. He wouldn't say those things to me , but Porphyre hears ,
  Porphyre
  always hears. He left for London the morning after you got here."
  	"And what was it you heard he'd said?"
  	"That you're crazy. On shit or off. That you hear voices. That the
  Net
  psychs know."
  	Voices . . . "Who told you that?" She tried to turn in the chair.
  	"Don't move your head. There." He went back to his work. "I can't
  say.
  Trust me."

  There were a number of calls, after Porphyre left. Her production
  crew, eager to
  say hello.
  	"No more calls this afternoon," she told the house. "I'll run the
  Tally
  sequences upstairs."
  	She found a bottle of Corona at the rear of the fridge and took it
  to the
  master bedroom. The stim unit in the teak headboard was equipped with
  studio-
  grade trodes that hadn't been there when she'd left for Jamaica. Net
  technicians
  periodically upgraded equipment in the house. She had a swig of beer,
  put the
  bottle on the bedside table, and lay down with the trodes across her
  forehead.
  "Okay," she said, "hit me."
  	Into Tally-flesh, Tally-breath.
  	How did I ever replace you?  she wondered, overcome by the former
  star's
  physical being. Do I give people this same pleasure?
  	Tally-Angie looking out across a vine-hung chasm that was also a
  boulevard, glancing up to the inverse horizon, squares of distant
  tennis courts,
  Freeside's "sun" an axial thread of brilliance overhead . . .
  	"Fast forward," she told the house.
  	Into smooth-pumping muscle and a blur of concrete, Tally hurling her
  cycle
  around a low-grav velodrome . . .
  	"Fast forward."
  	A dining scene, tension of velvet straps across her shoulders, the
  young
  man across the table leaning forward to pour more wine . . .
  	"Fast forward."
  	Linen sheets, a hand between her legs, purple twilight through plate

  glass, sound of running water . . .
  	"Reverse. The restaurant."
  	The red wine gurgling into her glass . . .
  	"Little more. Hold it. There."
  	Tally's eyes had been focused on the boy's tanned wrist, not on the
  bottle.
  	"I want a graphic of the visual," she said, pulling off the trodes.
  She
  sat up and took a swallow of beer, which mingled weirdly with the
  ghost-flavor
  of Tally's recorded wine.
  	The printer downstairs chimed softly as it completed its task. She
  forced
  herself to take the stairs slowly, but when she reached the printer,
  in the
  kitchen, the image disappointed her.
  	"Can you clear this up?" she asked the house. "I want to be able to
  read
  the label on the bottle."
  	"Justifying image," the house said, "and rotating target object
  eight
  degrees."
  	The printer hummed softly as the new graphic was extruded. Angie
  found her
  treasure before the machine could chime, her dream-sigil in brown
  ink: T-A.
  	They'd had their own vineyards, she thought.
  	Tessier-Ashpool S.A. , the typeface regal and spidery.
  	"Gotcha," she whispered.



  Texas Radio

  Mona could see the sun through a couple of rips in the black plastic
  they kept
  taped over the window. She hated the squat too much to stay there
  when she was
  awake or straight, and now she was both.
  	She got quietly out of bed, wincing when her bare heel brushed the
  floor,
  and fumbled for her plastic thongs. The place was dirty;  you could
  probably get
  tetanus from leaning up against the wall. Made her skin crawl to
  think about it.
  Stuff like that didn't seem to bother Eddy; he was too far gone in
  his schemes
  to notice his surroundings much. And he always managed to keep clean,
  somehow,
  like a cat. He was cat-clean, never a fleck of dirt under his
  polished nails.
  She figured he probably spent most of what she earned on his
  wardrobe, although
  it wouldn't have occurred to her to question the fact. She was
  sixteen and
  SINless, Mona, and this older trick had told her once that that was a
  song,
  "Sixteen and SINless." Meant she hadn't been assigned a SIN when she
  was born, a
  Single Identification Number, so she'd grown up on the outside of
  most official
  systems. She knew that it was supposed to be possible to get a SIN,
  if you
  didn't have one, but it stood to reason you'd have to go into a
  building
  somewhere and talk to a suit, and that was a long way from Mona's
  idea of a good
  time or even normal behavior.
  	She had a drill for getting dressed in the squat, and she could do
  it in
  the dark. You got your thongs on, after giving them a quick knock
  together to
  dislodge possible crawlies, and then you walked over to where you
  knew there was
  a roll of old fax on a Styrofoam crate beside the window. You peeled
  off about a
  meter of fax, maybe a day and a half of Asahi Shimbun , folded and
  creased it,
  put it down on the floor. Then you could stand on it, get the plastic
  bag from
  beside the crate, undo the twist of wire that held it shut, and find
  the clothes
  you wanted. When you stepped out of the thongs to put your pants on,
  you knew
  you'd be stepping on fresh fax. It was an article of faith with Mona
  that
  nothing was going to wander across the fax in the time it took her to
  step into
  a pair of jeans and get the thongs back on.
  	You could put on a shirt or whatever, carefully reseal the bag, and
  get
  out of there. Makeup, when required, went on in the corridor outside;
  there was
  some mirror left, beside the derelict elevator, a Fuji biofluorescent
  strip
  glued above it.
  	There was a strong piss smell beside the elevator this morning, so
  she
  decided to skip the makeup.
  	You never saw anybody in the building, but you heard them sometimes;
  music
  through a closed door, or footsteps just gone around a corner at the
  far end of
  a corridor. Well, that made sense; Mona had no desire to meet her
  neighbors
  either.
  	She took the stairs down three flights and into the gaping dark of
  the
  underground garage. She had her flashlight in her hand, found her way
  with six
  quick little blinks that steered her around stagnant puddles and
  dangling
  strands of dead optic cable, up the concrete steps and out into the
  alley. You
  could smell the beach, sometimes, in the alley, if the wind was
  right, but today
  it just smelled of garbage. The side of the squat towered away above
  her, so she
  moved fast, before some asshole decided to drop a bottle or worse.
  Once she was
  out on the Avenue, she slowed, but not too much; she was conscious of
  the cash
  in her pocket, and full of plans for spending it. Wouldn't do to get
  taken off,
  not when it looked like Eddy had wrangled them some kind of ticket
  out. She
  alternated between telling herself it was a sure thing, that they
  were
  practically gone, and warning herself not to get her hopes up. She
  knew Eddy's
  sure things: hadn't Florida been one of them? How it was warm in
  Florida and the
  beaches were beautiful and it was full of cute guys with money, just
  the spot
  for a little working vacation that had already stretched into the
  longest month
  Mona could remember. Well, it was fucking hot in Florida, like a
  sauna. The only
  beaches that weren't private were polluted, dead fish rolling belly-
  up in the
  shallows. Maybe the private stretches were the same, but you couldn't
  see them,
  just the chainlink and the guards in shorts and cop shirts standing
  around.
  Eddy'd get excited by the weapons the guards carried and describe
  each one to
  her in numbing detail. He didn't have a gun himself, though, not as
  far as she
  knew, and Mona figured that was a good thing. Sometimes you couldn't
  even smell
  the dead fish, because there was another smell, a chlorine smell that
  burned the
  roof of your mouth, something from the factories up the coast. If
  there were
  cute guys, they were still tricks, and the ones down here weren't
  exactly
  offering to pay double.
  	About the only thing to like about Florida was drugs, which were
  easy to
  come by and cheap and mostly industrial strength. Sometimes she
  imagined the
  bleach smell was the smell of a million dope labs cooking some
  unthinkable
  cocktail, all those molecules thrashing their kinky little tails, hot
  for
  destiny and the street.
  	She turned off the Avenue and walked down a line of unlicensed food
  stalls. Her stomach started growling at the smell, but she didn't
  trust street
  food, not if she didn't have to, and there were licensed places in
  the mall that
  would take cash. Somebody was playing a trumpet in the asphalt square
  that had
  been the parking lot, a rambling Cuban solo that bounced and
  distorted off the
  concrete walls, dying notes lost in the morning clatter of the
  market. A soapbox
  evangelist spread his arms high, a pale fuzzy Jesus copying the
  gesture in the
  air above him. The projection rig was in the box he stood on, but he
  wore a
  battered nylon pack with two speakers sticking over each shoulder
  like blank
  chrome heads. The evangelist frowned up at Jesus and adjusted
  something on the
  belt at his waist. Jesus strobed, turned green, and vanished. Mona
  laughed. The
  man's eyes flashed God's wrath, a muscle working in his seamed cheek.
  Mona
  turned left, between rows of fruit vendors stacking oranges and
  grapefruit in
  pyramids on their battered metal carts.
  	She entered a low, cavernous building that housed aisles of more
  permanent
  businesses: sellers of fish and packaged foods, cheap household
  goods, counters
  serving a dozen kinds of hot food. It was cooler here in the shade,
  and a little
  quieter. She found a wonton place with six empty stools and took one.
  The
  Chinese cook spoke to her in Spanish; she ordered by pointing. He
  brought her
  soup in a plastic bowl; she paid him with the smallest of her bills,
  and he made
  change with eight greasy cardboard tokens. If Eddy meant it, about
  leaving, she
  wouldn't be able to use them; if they stayed in Florida, she could
  always get
  some wonton. She shook her head. Gotta go, gotta. She shoved the worn
  yellow
  disks back across the painted plyboard counter. "You keep 'em." The
  cook swept
  them out of sight, bland and expressionless, a blue plastic toothpick
  fixed at
  the corner of his mouth.
  	She took chopsticks from the glass on the counter and fished a
  folded
  noodle from the bowl. There was a suit watching her from the aisle
  behind the
  cook's pots and burners. A suit who was trying to look like something
  else,
  white sportshirt and sunglasses. More the way they stand than
  anything, she
  thought. But he had the teeth, too, and the haircut, except he had a
  beard. He
  was pretending to look around, like he was shopping, hands in his
  pockets, his
  mouth set in what he might have thought was an absent smile. He was
  pretty, the
  suit, what you could see of him behind the beard and the glasses. The
  smile
  wasn't pretty, though; it was kind of rectangular, so you could see
  most of his
  teeth. She shifted a little on the stool, uneasy. Hooking was legal,
  but only if
  you did it right, got the tax chip and everything. She was suddenly
  aware of the
  cash in her pocket. She pretended to study the laminated foodhandling
  license
  taped to the counter; when she looked up again, he was gone.

  She spent fifty on the clothes. She worked her way through eighteen
  racks in
  four shops, everything the mall had, before she made up her mind. The
  vendors
  didn't like her trying on so many things, but it was the most she'd
  ever had to
  spend. It was noon before she'd finished, and the Florida sun was
  cooking the
  pavement as she crossed the parking lot with her two plastic bags.
  The bags,
  like the clothes, were secondhand: one was printed with the logo of a
  Ginza shoe
  store, the other advertised Argentinian seafood briquettes molded
  from
  reconstituted krill. She was mentally mixing and matching the things
  she'd
  bought, figuring out different outfits.
  	From the other side of the square, the evangelist opened up at full
  volume, in mid-rant, like he'd warmed up to a spit-spraying fury
  before he'd cut
  the amp in, the hologram Jesus shaking its white-robed arms and
  gesturing
  angrily to the sky, the mall, the sky again. Rapture, he said.
  Rapture's coming.
  	Mona turned a corner at random, automatic reflex avoiding a crazy,
  and
  found herself walking past sunfaded card tables spread with cheap
  Indo simstim
  sets, used cassettes, colored spikes of microsoft stuck in blocks of
  pale blue
  Styrofoam. There was a picture of Angie Mitchell taped up behind one
  of the
  tables, a poster Mona hadn't seen before. She stopped and studied it
  hungrily,
  taking in the star's clothes and makeup first, then trying to figure
  out the
  background, where it had been shot. Unconsciously, she adjusted her
  expression
  to approximate Angie's in the poster. Not a grin, exactly.A sort of
  half-grin,
  maybe a little sad. Mona felt a special way about Angie. Because -
  - and tricks
  said it, sometimes -- she looked like her. Like she was Angie's
  sister. Except
  her nose, Mona's, had more of a tilt, and she, Angie, didn't have
  that smear of
  freckles out to her cheekbones. Mona's Angie half-grin widened as she
  stared,
  washed in the beauty of the poster, the luxury of the pictured room.
  She guessed
  it was a kind of castle, probably it was where Angie lived, sure,
  with lots of
  people to take care of her, do her hair and hang up her clothes,
  because you
  could see the walls were made of big rocks, and those mirrors had
  frames on them
  that were solid gold, carved with leaves and angels. The writing
  across the
  bottom would say where it was, maybe, but Mona couldn't read. Anyway,
  there
  weren't any fucking roaches there, she was sure of that, and no Eddy
  either. She
  looked down at the stim sets and briefly considered using the rest of
  her money.
  But then she wouldn't have enough for a stim, and anyway these were
  old, some of
  them older than she was. There was whatsit, that Tally, she'd been
  big when Mona
  was maybe nine. . . .

  When she got back, Eddy was waiting for her, with the tape off the
  window and
  the flies buzzing. Eddy was sprawled out on the bed, smoking a
  cigarette, and
  the suit with the beard, who'd been watching her, was sitting in the
  broken
  chair, still wearing his sunglasses.

  Prior , he said that was his name, like he didn't have a first one.
  Or like Eddy
  didn't have a last one. Well, she didn't have a last name herself,
  unless you
  counted Lisa, and that was more like having two first ones.
  	She couldn't get much sense of him, in the squat. She thought maybe
  that
  was because he was English. He wasn't really a suit, though, not like
  she'd
  thought when she'd seen him in the mall; he was onto some game, it
  just wasn't
  clear which one. He kept his eyes on her a lot, watched her pack her
  things in
  the blue Lufthansa bag he'd brought, but she couldn't feel any heat
  there, not
  like he wanted her. He just watched her, watched Eddy smoke, tapped
  his
  sunglasses on his knee, listened to Eddy's line of bullshit, and said
  as little
  as he needed to. When he did say something, it was usually funny, but
  the way he
  talked made it hard to tell when he was joking.
  	Packing, she felt light-headed, like she'd done a jumper but it
  hadn't
  quite come on. The flies were fucking against the window, bumping on
  the dust-
  streaked glass, but she didn't care. Gone, she was already gone.
  	Zipping up the bag.

  It was raining when they got to the airport, Florida rain, pissing
  down warm out
  of a nowhere sky. She'd never been to an airport before, but she knew
  them from
  the stims.
  	Prior's car was a white Datsun rental that drove itself and played
  elevator music through quad speakers. It left them beside their
  luggage in a
  bare concrete bay and drove away in the rain. If Prior had a bag, it
  wasn't with
  him; Mona had her Lufthansa bag and Eddy had two black gator-clone
  suitcases.
  	She tugged her new skirt down over her hips and wondered if she'd
  bought
  the right shoes. Eddy was enjoying himself, had his hands in his
  pockets and his
  shoulders tilted to show he was doing something important.
  	She remembered him in Cleveland, the first time, how he'd come out
  to the
  place to look at a scoot the old man had for sale, a three-wheel
  Skoda that was
  mostly rust. The old man grew catfish in concrete tanks that fenced
  the dirt
  yard. She was in the house when Eddy came, long high-walled space of
  a truck
  trailer up on blocks. There were windows cut down one side, square
  holes sealed
  over with scratched plastic. She was standing by the stove, smell of
  onions in
  sacks and tomatoes hung up to dry, when she felt him there, down the
  length of
  the room, sensed the muscle and shoulder of him, his white teeth, the
  black
  nylon cap held shyly in his hand. Sun was coming in the windows, the
  place lit
  up bare and plain, the floor swept the way the old man had her keep
  it, but it
  was like a shadow came, blood-shadow where she heard the pumping of
  her heart,
  and him coming closer, tossing the cap on the bare chipboard table as
  he passed
  it, not shy now but like he lived there, right up to her, running a
  hand with a
  bright ring back through the oiled weight of his hair. The old man
  came in then
  and Mona turned away, pretended to do something with the stove.
  Coffee, the old
  man said, and Mona went to get some water, filling the enamel pot
  from the roof-
  tank line, the water gurgling down through the charcoal filter. Eddy
  and the old
  man sitting at the table, drinking black coffee, Eddy's legs spread
  straight out
  under the table, thighs hard through threadbare denim. Smiling,
  jiving the old
  man, dealing for the Skoda. How it seemed to run okay, how he'd buy
  it if the
  old man had the title. Old man getting up to dig in a drawer. Eddy's
  eyes on her
  again. She followed them out into the yard and watched him straddle
  the cracked
  vinyl saddle. Backfire set the old man's black dogs yelping, high
  sweet smell of
  cheap alcohol exhaust and the frame trembling between his legs.
  	Now she watched him pose beside his suitcases, and it was hard to
  connect
  that up, why she'd left with him next day on the Skoda, headed into
  Cleveland.
  The Skoda'd had a busted little radio you couldn't hear over the
  engine, just
  play it soft at night in a field by the road. Tuner part was cracked
  so it only
  picked up one station, ghost music up from some lonesome tower in
  Texas, steel
  guitar fading in and out all night, feeling how she was wet against
  his leg and
  the stiff dry grass prickling the back of her neck.
  	Prior put her blue bag into a white cart with a striped top and she
  climbed in after it, hearing tiny Spanish voices from the Cuban
  driver's
  headset. Then Eddy stowed the gator cases and he and Prior got in.
  Rolling out
  to the runway through walls of rain.

  The plane wasn't what she knew from the stims, not like a long rich
  bus inside,
  with lots of seats. It was a little black thing with sharp, skinny
  wings and
  windows that made it look like it was squinting.
  	She went up some metal stairs and there was a space with four seats
  and
  the same gray carpet all over, on the walls and ceiling too,
  everything clean
  and cool and gray. Eddy came in after her and took a seat like it was
  something
  he did every day, loosening his tie and stretching his legs. Prior
  was pushing
  buttons beside the door. It made a sighing sound when it closed.
  	She looked out the narrow, streaming windows at runway lights
  reflected on
  wet concrete.
  	Came down here on the train , she thought, New York to Atlanta and
  then
  you change .
  	The plane shivered. She heard the airframe creak as it came to life.

  She woke briefly, two hours later, in the darkened cabin, cradled by
  the long
  hum of the jet. Eddy was asleep, his mouth half-open. Maybe Prior was
  sleeping
  too, or maybe he just had his eyes closed, she couldn't tell.
  	Halfway back into a dream she wouldn't remember in the morning, she
  heard
  the sound of that Texas radio, fading steel chords drawn out like an
  ache.



  Underground

  Jubilee and Bakerloo, Circle and District. Kumiko peered at the
  little laminated
  map Petal had given her and shivered. The concrete platform seemed to
  radiate
  cold through the soles of her boots.
  	"It's so fucking old," Sally Shears said absently, her glasses
  reflecting
  a convex wall sheathed in white ceramic tile.
  	"I beg your pardon?"
  	"The tube." A new tartan scarf was knotted under Sally's chin, and
  her
  breath was white when she spoke. "You know what bothers me? It's how
  sometimes
  you'll see 'em sticking new tile up in these stations, but they don't
  take down
  the old tile first. Or they'll punch a hole in the wall to get to
  some wiring
  and you can see all these different layers of tile. . . ."
  	"Yes?"
  	"Because it's getting narrower , right? It's like arterial plaque. .
  . ."
  	"Yes," Kumiko said dubiously, "I see. . . . Those boys, Sally, what
  is the
  meaning of their costume, please?"
  	"Jacks. What they call Jack Draculas."
  	The four Jack Draculas huddled like ravens on the opposite platform.
  They
  wore nondescript black raincoats and polished black combat boots
  laced to the
  knee. One turned to address another and Kumiko saw that his hair was
  drawn back
  into a plaited queue and bound with a small black bow.
  	"Hung him," Sally said, "after the war."
  	"Who?"
  	"Jack Dracula. They had public hangings for a while, after the war.
  Jacks,
  you wanna stay away from 'em. Hate anybody foreign . . ."
  	Kumiko would have liked to access Colin, but the Maas-Neotek unit
  was
  tucked behind a marble bust in the room where Petal served their
  meals, and then
  the train arrived, amazing her with the archaic thunder of wheels on
  steel rail.

  Sally Shears against the patchwork backdrop of the city's
  architecture, her
  glasses reflecting the London jumble, each period culled by
  economics, by fire,
  by war.
  	Kumiko, already confused by three rapid and apparently random train
  changes, let herself be hauled through a sequence of taxi rides.
  They'd jump out
  of one cab, march into the nearest large store, then take the first
  available
  exit to another street and another cab. "Harrods," Sally said at one
  point, as
  they cut briskly through an ornate, tile-walled hall pillared in
  marble. Kumiko
  blinked at thick red roasts and shanks displayed on tiered marble
  counters,
  assuming they were made of plastic. And then out again, Sally hailing
  the next
  cab. "Covent Garden," she said to the driver.
  	"Excuse me, Sally. What are we doing?"
  	"Getting lost."

  Sally drank hot brandy in a tiny caf� beneath the snow-streaked glass
  roof of
  the piazza. Kumiko drank chocolate.
  	"Are we lost, Sally?"
  	"Yeah. Hope so, anyway." She looked older today, Kumiko thought;
  lines of
  tension or fatigue around her mouth.
  	"Sally, what is it that you do? Your friend asked if you were still
  retired. . . ."
  	"I'm a businesswoman."
  	"And my father is a businessman?"
  	"Your father is   a businessman, honey. No, not like that. I'm an
  indie. I
  make investments, mostly."
  	"In what do you invest?"
  	"In other indies." She shrugged. "Feeling curious today?" She sipped
  her
  brandy.
  	"You advised me to be my own spy."
  	"Good advice. Takes a light touch, though."
  	"Do you live here, Sally, in London?"
  	"I travel."
  	"Is Swain another 'indie'?"
  	"He thinks so. He's into influence, nods in the right direction; you
  need
  that here, to do business, but it gets on my nerves." She tossed back
  the rest
  of the brandy and licked her lips.
  	Kumiko shivered.
  	"You don't have to be scared of Swain. Yanaka could have him for
  breakfast. . . ."
  	"No. I thought of those boys in the subway. So thin . . ."
  	"The Draculas."
  	"A gang?"
  	"Bosozoku ," Sally said, with fair pronunciation. " 'Running
  tribes'?
  Anyway, like a tribe." It wasn't the right word, but Kumiko thought
  she saw the
  distinction. "They're thin because they're poor." She gestured to the
  waiter for
  a second brandy.
  	"Sally," Kumiko said, "when we came here, the route we took, the
  trains
  and cabs, that was in order to make certain we were not followed?"
  	"Nothing's ever certain."
  	"But when we went to meet Tick, you took no precautions. We could
  easily
  have been followed. You enlist Tick to spy on Swain, yet you take no
  precautions. You bring me here, you take many precautions. Why?"
  	The waiter put a steaming glass down in front of her. "You're a
  sharp
  little honey, aren't you?" She leaned forward and inhaled the fumes
  of brandy.
  "It's like this, okay? With Tick, maybe I'm just trying to shake some
  action."
  	"But Tick is concerned that Swain not discover him."
  	"Swain won't touch him, not if he knows he's working for me."
  	"Why?"
  	"Because he knows I might kill him." She raised the glass, looking
  suddenly happier.
  	"Kill Swain?"
  	"That's right." She drank.
  	"Then why were you so cautious today?"
  	"Because sometimes it feels good to shake it all off, get out from
  under.
  Chances are, we haven't. But maybe we have. Maybe nobody, nobody at
  all, knows
  where we are. Nice feeling, huh? You could be kinked, you ever think
  of that?
  Maybe your dad, the Yak warlord, he's got a little bug planted in you
  so he can
  keep track of his daughter. You got those pretty little teeth, maybe
  Daddy's
  dentist tucked a little hardware in there one time when you were into
  a stim.
  You go to the dentist?"
  	"Yes."
  	"You stim while he works?"
  	"Yes . . ."
  	"There you go. Maybe he's listening to us right now. . . ."
  	Kumiko nearly overturned what was left of her chocolate.
  	"Hey." The polished nails tapped Kumiko's wrist. "Don't worry about
  it. He
  wouldn't've sent you here like that, with a bug. Make you too easy
  for his
  enemies to track. But you see what I mean? It's good to get out from
  under, or
  anyway try. On our own, right?"
  	"Yes," Kumiko said, her heart still pounding, the panic continuing
  to
  rise. "He killed my mother," she blurted, then vomited chocolate on
  the caf�'s
  gray marble floor.

  Sally leading her past the columns of Saint Paul's, walking, not
  talking.
  Kumiko, in a disjointed trance of shame, registering random
  information: the
  white shearling that lined Sally's leather coat, the oily rainbow
  sheen of a
  pigeon's feathers as it waddled out of their way, red buses like a
  giant's toys
  in the Transport Museum, Sally warming her hands around a foam cup of
  steaming
  tea.
  	Cold, it would always be cold now. The freezing damp in the city's
  ancient
  bones, the cold waters of Sumida that had filled her mother's lungs,
  the chill
  flight of the neon cranes.
  	Her mother was fine-boned and dark, the thick spill of her hair
  grained
  with gold highlights, like some rare tropical hardwood. Her mother
  smelled of
  perfume and warm skin. Her mother told her stories, about elves and
  fairies and
  Copenhagen, which was a city far away. When Kumiko dreamed of the
  elves, they
  were like her father's secretaries, lithe and staid, with black suits
  and furled
  umbrellas. The elves did many curious things, in her mother's
  stories, and the
  stories were magic, because they changed with the telling, and you
  could never
  be certain how a tale might end on a given night. There were
  princesses in the
  stories as well, and ballerinas, and each of them, Kumiko had known,
  was in some
  way her mother.
  	The princess-ballerinas were beautiful but poor, dancing for love in
  the
  far city's heart, where they were courted by artists and student
  poets, handsome
  and penniless. In order to support an aged parent, or purchase an
  organ for an
  ailing brother, a princess- ballerina was sometimes obliged to voyage
  very far
  indeed, perhaps as far as Tokyo, to dance for money. Dancing for
  money, the
  tales implied, was not a happy thing.

  Sally took her to a robata bar in Earls Court and forced her to drink
  a glass of
  sake. A smoked fugu fin floated in the hot wine, turning it the color
  of
  whiskey. They ate robata from the smoky grill, and Kumiko felt the
  cold recede,
  but not the numbness. The decor of the bar induced a profound sense
  of cultural
  dislocation: it managed to simultaneously reflect traditional
  Japanese design
  and look as though it had been drawn up by Charles Rennie Mackintosh.
  	She was very strange, Sally Shears, stranger than all of gaijin
  London.
  Now she told Kumiko stories, stories about people who lived in a
  Japan Kumiko
  had never known, stories that defined her father's role in the world.
  The oyabun
  , she called Kumiko's father. The world Sally's stories described
  seemed no more
  real than the world of her mother's fairy tales, but Kumiko began to
  understand
  the basis and extent of her father's power. "Kuromaku ," Sally said.
  The word
  meant black curtain. "It's from Kabuki, but it means a fixer, someone
  who sells
  favors. Means behind-the-scenes, right? That's your father. That's
  Swain, too.
  But Swain's your old man's kobun , or anyway one of them. Oyabun-
  kobun , parent-
  child. That's partly where Roger gets his juice. That's why you're
  here now,
  because Roger owes it to the oyabun . Giri , understand?"
  	"He is a man of rank."
  	Sally shook her head. "Your old man, Kumi, he's it . If he's had to
  ship
  you out of town to keep you safe, means there's some serious changes
  on the
  way."

  "Been down the drinker?" Petal asked, as they entered the room, his
  eyeglass
  edges winking Tiffany light from a bronze and stained-glass tree that
  grew on
  the sideboard. Kumiko wanted to look at the marble head that hid the
  Maas-Neotek
  unit, but forced herself to look out into the garden. The snow there
  had become
  the color of London sky.
  	"Where's Swain?" Sally asked.
  	"Guvnor's out," Petal told her.
  	Sally went to the sideboard and poured herself a glass of scotch
  from a
  heavy decanter. Kumiko saw Petal wince as the decanter came down hard
  on the
  polished wood. "Any messages?"
  	"No."
  	"Expect him back tonight?"
  	"Can't say, really. Do you want dinner?"
  	"No."
  	"I'd like a sandwich," Kumiko said.

  Fifteen minutes later, with the untouched sandwich on the black
  marble bedside
  table, she sat in the middle of the huge bed, the Maas-Neotek unit
  between her
  bare feet. She'd left Sally drinking Swain's whiskey and staring out
  into the
  gray garden.
  	Now she took up the unit and Colin shuddered into focus at the foot
  of the
  bed.
  	"Nobody can hear my half of this," he said quickly, putting a finger
  to
  his lips, "and a good thing, too. Room's bugged."
  	Kumiko started to reply, then nodded.
  	"Good," he said. "Smart girl. Got two conversations for you. One's
  your
  host and his minder, other's your host and Sally. Got the former
  about fifteen
  minutes after you stashed me downstairs. Listen . . ." Kumiko closed
  her eyes
  and heard the tinkle of ice in a whiskey glass.
  	"Where's our little Jap, then?" Swain asked.
  	"Tucked up for the night," Petal said. "Talks to herself, that one.
  One-
  sided conversation. Queer."
  	"What about?"
  	"Bloody little, actually. Some people do, y 'know. . . ."
  	"What?"
  	"Talk to themselves. Like to hear her?"
  	"Christ, no. Where's the delightful Miss Shears?"
  	"Out for her constitutional."
  	"Call Bernie 'round, next time, see what she's about on these little
  walks
  . . ."
  	"Bernie," and Petal laughed, "he'd come back in a fucking box!"
  	Now Swain laughed. "Mightn't be a bad thing either way, Bernard off
  our
  hands and the famous razorgirl's thirst slaked . . . Here, pour us
  another."
  	"None for me. Off to bed, unless you need me . . ."
  	"No," Swain said.
  	"So," said Colin, as Kumiko opened her eyes to find him still seated
  on
  the bed, "there's a voice-activated bug here in your room; the minder
  reviewed
  the recording and heard you address me. Our second segment, now, is
  more
  interesting. Your host sits there with his second whiskey, in comes
  our Sally. .
  . ."
  	"Hullo," she heard Swain say, "been out taking the air?"
  	"Fuck off."
  	"You know," Swain said, "none of this was my idea. You might try
  keeping
  that in mind. You know they've got me by the balls as well."
  	"You know, Roger, sometimes I'm tempted to believe you."
  	"Try it. It would make things easier."
  	"Other times, I'm tempted to slit your fucking throat."
  	"Your problem, dear, is that you never learned to delegate; you
  still want
  to do everything personally."
  	"Listen, asshole, I know where you're from, and I know how you got
  here,
  and I don't care how far you've got your tongue up Kanaka's crack or
  anybody
  else's. Sarakin!  " Kumiko had never heard the word before.
  	"I heard from them again," Swain said, his tone even,
  conversational.
  "She's still on the coast, but it looks as though she'll make a move
  soon. East,
  most likely. Back on your old manor. I think that's our best bet,
  really. The
  house is impossible. Enough private security along that stretch to
  stop a fair-
  sized army . . ."
  	"You still trying to tell me this is just a snatch, Roger? Trying to
  tell
  me they're gonna hold her for ransom?"
  	"No. Nothing's been said about selling her back."
  	"So why don't they just hire that army? No reason they'd have to
  stop at
  fair-sized, is there? Get the mercs, right? The corporate-extraction
  boys. She's
  not that hard a target, no more than some hotshit research man. Get
  the fucking
  pros  in . . ."
  	"For perhaps the hundredth time, that isn't what they want. They
  want
  you."
  	"Roger, what do  they have on you, huh? I mean, do you really  not
  know
  what it is they got on me?"
  	"No, I don't. But based on what they've got on me, I'll hazard a
  guess."
  	"Yeah?"
  	"Everything."
  	No reply.
  	"There's another angle," he said, "that came up today. They want it
  to
  look as though she's been taken out."
  	"What?"
  	"They want it to look as though we've killed her."
  	"And how are we supposed to manage that?"
  	"They'll provide a body."
  	"I assume," Colin said, "that she left the room without comment. It
  ends
  there."



  The Shape

  He spent an hour checking the saw's bearings, then lubed them again.
  It was
  already too cold to work; he'd have to go ahead and heat the room
  where he kept
  the others, the Investigators and the Corpsegrinder and the Witch.
  That in
  itself would be enough to disturb the balance of his arrangement with
  Gentry,
  but it faded beside the problem of explaining his agreement with Kid
  Afrika and
  the fact of two strangers in Factory. There was no way to argue with
  Gentry; the
  juice was his, because he was the one who fiddled it out of the
  Fission
  Authority; without Gentry's monthly passes on the console, the ritual
  moves that
  kept the Authority convinced Factory was somewhere else, some place
  that paid
  its bill, there wouldn't be any electricity.
  	And Gentry was so strange anyway, he thought, feeling his knees
  creak as
  he stood up and took the Judge's control unit from his jacket pocket.
  Gentry was
  convinced that cyberspace had a Shape, an overall total form. Not
  that that was
  the weirdest idea Slick had ever run across, but Gentry had this
  obsessive
  conviction that the Shape mattered totally . The apprehension of the
  Shape was
  Gentry's grail.
  	Slick had once stimmed a Net/Knowledge sequence about what shape the

  universe was; Slick figured the universe was everything there was, so
  how could
  it have a shape? If it had a shape, then there was something around
  it for it to
  have a shape in , wasn't there? And if that something was something,
  then wasn't
  that  part of the universe too? This was exactly the kind of thing
  you didn't
  want to get into with Gentry, because Gentry could tie your head in
  knots. But
  Slick didn't think cyberspace was anything like the universe anyway;
  it was just
  a way of representing data. The Fission Authority had always looked
  like a big
  red Aztec pyramid, but it didn't have  to; if the FA wanted it to,
  they could
  have it look like anything. Big companies had copyrights on how their
  stuff
  looked. So how could you figure the whole matrix had a particular
  shape? And why
  should it mean anything if it did?
  	He touched the unit's power stud; the Judge, ten meters away, hummed
  and
  trembled.
  	Slick Henry hated the Judge. That was what the art people never
  understood. That didn't mean it didn't give him pleasure to have
  built the
  thing, to have gotten the Judge out , out where he could see him and
  keep track
  of him and finally, sort of, be free of the idea of him, but that
  sure wasn't
  the same as liking  him.
  	Nearly four meters tall, half as broad at the shoulders, headless,
  the
  Judge stood trembling in his patchwork carapace the color of rust
  gone a certain
  way, like the handles of an old wheelbarrow, polished by the friction
  of a
  thousand hands. He'd found a way to get that surface with chemicals
  and
  abrasives, and he'd used it on most of the Judge; the old parts
  anyway, the
  scavenged parts, not the cold teeth of the circular blades or the
  mirrored
  surfaces of the joints, but the rest of the Judge was that color,
  that finish,
  like a very old tool still in hard daily use.
  	He thumbed the joystick and the Judge took one step forward, then
  another.
  The gyros were working perfectly; even with an arm off, the thing
  moved with a
  terrible dignity, planting its huge feet just so.
  	Slick grinned in Factory's gloom as the Judge clomped toward him,
  one-two,
  one-two. He could remember every step of the Judge's construction, if
  he wanted
  to, and sometimes he did, just for the comfort of being able to.
  	He couldn't remember when he hadn't been able to remember, but
  sometimes
  he almost could.
  	That was why he had built the Judge, because he'd done something -
  - it
  hadn't been anything much, but he'd been caught doing it, twice -
  - and been
  judged for it, and sentenced, and then the sentence was carried out
  and he
  hadn't been able to remember, not anything, not for more than five
  minutes at a
  stretch. Stealing cars. Stealing rich people's cars. They made sure
  you
  remembered what you did.
  	Working the joystick, he got the Judge turned around and walked him
  into
  the next room, along an aisle between rows of damp-stained concrete
  pads that
  had once supported lathes and spot welders. High overhead, up in the
  gloom and
  dusty beams, dangled dead fluorescent fixtures where birds sometimes
  nested.
  	Korsakov's, they called that, something they did to your neurons so
  that
  short-term memories wouldn't stick. So that the time you did was time
  you lost,
  but he'd heard they didn't do it anymore, or anyway not for grand
  theft auto.
  People who hadn't been there thought it sounded easy, like jail but
  then it's
  all erased, but it wasn't like that. When he'd gotten out, when it
  was over --
  three years strung out in a long vague flickering chain of fear and
  confusion
  measured off in five-minute intervals, and it wasn't the intervals
  you could
  remember so much as the transitions . . . When it was over, he'd
  needed to build
  the Witch, the Corpsegrinder, then the Investigators, and finally,
  now, the
  Judge.
  	As he guided the Judge up the concrete ramp to the room where the
  others
  waited, he heard Gentry gunning his motor out on Dog Solitude.
  	People made Gentry uncomfortable, Slick thought as he headed for the

  stairs, but it worked both ways. Strangers could feel the Shape
  burning behind
  Gentry's eyes; his fixation came across in everything he did. Slick
  had no idea
  how he got along on his trips to the Sprawl; maybe he just dealt with
  people who
  were as intense as he was, loners on the jagged fringes of the drug
  and software
  markets. He didn't seem to care about sex at all, to the extent that
  Slick had
  no idea what it was he'd have wanted if he'd decided to care.
  	Sex was the Solitude's main drawback, as far as Slick was concerned,

  particularly in the winter. Summers, sometimes, he could find a girl
  in one of
  those rusty little towns; that was what had taken him to Atlantic
  City that time
  and gotten him in the Kid's debt. Lately he told himself the best
  solution was
  just to concentrate on his work, but climbing the shuddering steel
  stairs to the
  catwalk that led to Gentry's space, he found himself wondering what
  Cherry
  Chesterfield looked like under all those jackets. He thought about
  her hands,
  how they were clean and quick, but that made him see the unconscious
  face of the
  man on the stretcher, the tube feeding stuff into his left nostril,
  Cherry
  dabbing at his sunken cheeks with a tissue; made him wince.
  	"Hey, Gentry," he bellowed out into the iron void of Factory,
  "comin' up .
  . ."
  	
  Three things about Gentry weren't sharp and thin and tight: his eyes,
  his lips,
  his hair. His eyes were large and pale, gray or blue depending on the
  light; his
  lips were full and mobile; his hair was swept back into a ragged
  blond
  roostertail that quivered when he walked. His thinness wasn't Bird's
  emaciation,
  born of a stringtown diet and bad nerves; Gentry was just narrow, the
  muscle
  packed in close, no fat at all. He dressed sharp and tight, too,
  black leather
  trimmed with jet-black beads, a style Slick remembered from his days
  in the
  Deacon Blues. The beads, as much as anything, made Slick think he was
  about
  thirty; Slick was about thirty himself.
  	Gentry stared as Slick stepped through the door into the glare of
  ten 100-
  watt bulbs, making sure Slick knew he was another obstacle coming
  between Gentry
  and the Shape. He was putting a pair of motorcycle panniers up on his
  long steel
  table; they looked heavy.
  	Slick had cut roof panels away, installed struts where needed,
  covered the
  holes with sheets of rigid plastic, caulked the resulting skylights
  with
  silicone. Then Gentry came in with a mask and a sprayer and twenty
  gallons of
  white latex paint; he didn't dust or clean anything, just lay down a
  thick coat
  over all the crud and dessicated pigeonshit, sort of glued it all
  down and
  painted over it again until it was more or less white. He painted
  everything but
  the skylights, then Slick started winching gear up from Factory's
  floor, a small
  truckload of computers, cyberspace decks, a huge old holo-projection
  table that
  nearly broke the winch, effect generators, dozens of corrugated
  plastic cartons
  stuffed with the thousands of fiche Gentry had accumulated in his
  quest for the
  Shape, hundreds of meters of optics, on bright new plastic reels,
  that spoke to
  Slick of industrial theft. And books, old books with covers made of
  cloth glued
  over cardboard. Slick hadn't ever known how heavy books were. They
  had a sad
  smell, old books.
  	"You're pulling a few more amps, since I left," Gentry said, opening
  the
  first of the two panniers. "In your room. Get a new heater?" He began
  to root
  quickly through the contents, as though he were looking for something
  he needed
  but had misplaced. He wasn't, though, Slick knew; it was having to
  have someone,
  even someone he knew, unexpectedly in his space.
  	"Yeah. I gotta heat the storage area again, too. Too cold to work,
  otherwise."
  	"No," Gentry said, looking up suddenly, "that's not a heater in your
  room.
  The amperage is wrong."
  	"Yeah." Slick grinned, on the theory that grinning made Gentry think
  he
  was stupid and easily cowed.
  	" 'Yeah' what, Slick Henry?"
  	"It's not a heater."
  	Gentry closed the pannier with a snap. "You can tell me what it is
  or I
  can cut your power."
  	"Y'know, Gentry, I wasn't around here, you'd have a lot less time
  for . .
  . things." Slick raised his eyebrows meaningfully in the direction of
  the big
  projection table. "Fact is, I got two people staying with me. . . ."
  He saw
  Gentry stiffen, the pale eyes widen. "But you won't see  either of
  'em, won't
  hear 'em, nothing."
  	"No," Gentry said, his voice tight, as he rounded the end of the
  table,
  "because you're going to get them out of here ,  aren't you?"
  	"Two weeks max, Gentry."
  	"Out. Now ." Gentry's face was inches away and Slick smelled the
  sour
  breath of exhaustion. "Or you go with them."
  	Slick outweighed Gentry by ten kilos, most of it muscle, but that
  had
  never intimidated Gentry; Gentry didn't seem to know or care that he
  could be
  hurt. That was intimidating in its own way. Gentry had slapped him,
  once, hard,
  in the face, and Slick had looked down at the huge chrome-moly wrench
  in his own
  hand and had felt an obscure embarrassment.
  	Gentry was holding himself rigid, starting to tremble. Slick had a
  pretty
  good idea that Gentry didn't sleep when he went to Boston or New
  York. He didn't
  always sleep that much in Factory either. Came back strung and the
  first day was
  always the worst. "Look," Slick said, the way somebody might to a
  child on the
  verge of tears, and pulled the bag from his pocket, the bribe from
  Kid Afrika.
  He held up the clear plastic Ziploc for Gentry to see: blue derms,
  pink tablets,
  a nasty-looking turd of opium in a twist of red cellophane, crystals
  of wiz like
  fat yellow throat lozenges, plastic inhalers with the Japanese
  manufacturer's
  name scraped off with a knife. . . . "From Afrika," Slick said,
  dangling the
  Ziploc.
  	"Africa?" Gentry looked at the bag, at Slick, the bag again. "From
  Africa?"
  	"Kid Afrika. You don't know him. Left this for you."
  	"Why?"
  	"Because he needs me to put up these friends of his for a little
  while. I
  owe him a favor, Gentry. Told him how you didn't like anybody around.
  How it
  gets in your way. So," Slick lied, "he said he wanted to leave you
  some stuff to
  make up for the trouble."
  	Gentry took the bag and slid his finger along the seal, opening it.
  He
  took out the opium and handed that back to Slick. "Won't need that."
  Took out
  one of the blue derms, peeled off the backing, and smoothed it
  carefully into
  place on the inside of his right wrist. Slick stood there, absently
  kneading the
  opium between his thumb and forefinger, making the cellophane
  crackle, while
  Gentry walked back around the long table and opened the pannier. He
  pulled out a
  new pair of black leather gloves.
  	"I think I'd better . . . meet these guests of yours, Slick."
  	"Huh?" Slick blinked, astonished. "Yeah . . . But you don't really
  have
  to, I mean, wouldn't it be --"
  	"No," Gentry said, flicking up his collar, "I insist ."
  	Going down the stairs, Slick remembered the opium and flung it over
  the
  rail, into the dark.
  	He hated drugs.
  	       "Cherry?" He felt stupid, with Gentry watching him bang his
  knuckles on his own door. No answer. He opened it. Dim light. He saw
  how she'd
  made a shade for one of his bulbs, a cone of yellow fax fastened with
  a twist of
  wire. She'd unscrewed the other two. She wasn't there.
  	The stretcher was there, its occupant bundled in the blue nylon bag.
  It
  's eating him , Slick thought, as he looked at the superstructure of
  support
  gear, the tubes, the sacs of fluid. No , he told himself, it  's
  keeping him
  alive ,like in a hospital . But the impression lingered: what if it
  were
  draining him, draining him dry? He remembered Bird's vampire talk.
  	"Well," said Gentry, stepping past him to stand at the foot of the
  stretcher. "Strange company you keep, Slick Henry . . ." Gentry
  walked around
  the stretcher, keeping a cautious meter between his ankles and the
  still figure.
  	"Gentry, you sure you maybe don't wanna go back up? I think that
  derm . .
  . Maybe you did too much."
  	"Really?" Gentry cocked his head, his eyes glittering in the yellow
  glow.
  He winked. "Why do you think that?"
  	"Well," Slick hesitated, "you aren't like you usually are. I mean,
  like
  you were before."
  	"You think I'm experiencing a mood swing, Slick?"
  	"Yeah."
  	"I'm enjoying  a mood swing."
  	"I don't see you smiling," Cherry said from the door.
  	"This is Gentry, Cherry. Factory's sort of his place. Cherry's from
  Cleveland. . . ."
  	But Gentry had a thin black flashlight in his gloved hand; he was
  examining the trode-net that covered the sleeper's forehead. He
  straightened up,
  the beam finding the featureless, unmarked unit, then darting down
  again to
  follow the black cable to the trode-net.
  	"Cleveland," Gentry said at last, as though it were a name he'd
  heard in a
  dream. "Interesting . . ." He raised his light again, craning forward
  to peer at
  the point where the cable joined the unit. "And Cherry -- Cherry, who
  is he?  "
  the beam falling hard on the wasted, irritatingly ordinary face.
  	"Don't know," Cherry said. "Get that out of his eyes. Might screw up
  his
  REM or something."
  	"And this?" He lit the flat gray package.
  	"The LF, Kid called it. Called him the Count, called that his LF."
  She
  thrust her hand inside her jackets and scratched herself.
  	"Well, then," Gentry said, turning, click as the beam died, the
  light of
  his obsession burning bright, bright behind his eyes, amplified so
  powerfully by
  Kid Afrika's derm that it seemed to Slick that the Shape must be
  right there,
  blazing through Gentry's forehead, for anyone at all to see except
  Gentry
  himself, "that must be just what it is. . . ."



  Down on the Drag

  Mona woke as they were landing.
  	Prior was listening to Eddy and nodding and flashing his rectangular

  smile. It was like the smile was always there, behind his beard. He'd
  changed
  his clothes, though, so he must've had some on the plane. Now he wore
  a plain
  gray business suit and a tie with diagonal stripes. Sort of like the
  tricks
  Eddy'd set her up with in Cleveland, except the suit fit a different
  way.
  	She'd seen a trick fitted for a suit once, a guy who took her to a
  Holiday
  Inn. The suit place was off the hotel lobby, and he stood in there in
  his
  underwear, crosshatched with lines of blue light, and watched himself
  on three
  big screens. On the screens, you couldn't see the blue lines, because
  he was
  wearing a different suit in each image. And Mona had to bite her
  tongue to keep
  from laughing, because the system had a cosmetic program that made
  him look
  different on the screens, stretched his face a little and made his
  chin
  stronger, and he didn't seem to notice. Then he picked a suit, got
  back into the
  one he'd been wearing, and that was it.
  	Eddy was explaining something to Prior, some crucial point in the
  architecture of one of his scams. She knew how to tune the content
  out, but the
  tone still got to her, like he knew people wouldn't be able to grasp
  the gimmick
  he was so proud of, so he was taking it slow and easy, like he was
  talking to a
  little kid, and he'd keep his voice low to sound patient. It didn't
  seem to
  bother Prior, but then it seemed to Mona that Prior didn't much give
  a shit what
  Eddy said.
  	She yawned, stretched, and the plane bumped twice on runway
  concrete,
  roared, began to slow. Eddy hadn't even stopped talking.
  	"We have a car waiting," Prior said, interrupting him.
  	"So where's it taking us?" Mona asked, ignoring Eddy's frown.
  	Prior showed her the smile. "To our hotel." He unfastened his
  seatbelt.
  "We'll be there for a few days. Afraid you'll have to spend most of
  them in your
  room."
  	"That's the deal," Eddy said, like it was his idea she'd have to
  stay in
  the room.
  	"You like stims, Mona?" Prior asked, still smiling.
  	"Sure," she said, "who doesn't?"
  	"Have a favorite, Mona, a favorite star?"
  	"Angie," she said, vaguely irritated. "Who else?"
  	The smile got a little bigger. "Good. We'll get you all of her
  latest
  tapes."
  	
  Mona's universe consisted in large part of things and places she knew
  but had
  never physically seen or visited. The hub of the northern Sprawl
  didn't smell,
  in stims. They edited it out, she guessed, the way Angie never had a
  headache or
  a bad period. But it did smell. Like Cleveland, but even worse. She'd
  thought it
  was just the way the airport smelled, when they left the plane, but
  it had been
  even stronger when they'd gotten out of their car to go into the
  hotel. And it
  was cold as hell in the street, too, with a wind that bit at her bare
  ankles.
  	The hotel was bigger than that Holiday Inn, but older, too, she
  thought.
  The lobby was more crowded than lobbies were in stims, but there was
  a lot of
  clean blue carpet. Prior made her wait by an ad for an orbital spa
  while he and
  Eddy went over to a long black counter and he talked to a woman with
  a brass
  nametag. She felt stupid waiting there, in this white plastic
  raincoat Prior had
  made her wear, like he didn't think her outfit was good enough. About
  a third of
  the crowd in the lobby were Japs she figured for tourists. They all
  seemed to
  have recording gear of some kind -- video, holo, a few with simstim
  units on
  their belts -- but otherwise they didn't look like they had a whole
  lot of
  money. She thought they were all supposed to have a lot. Maybe they
  're smart ,
  don 't want to show it , she decided.
  	She saw Prior slide a credit chip across the counter to the woman
  with the
  nametag, who took it and zipped it along a metal slot.

  Prior put her bag down on the bed, a wide slab of beige temperfoam,
  and touched
  a panel that caused a wall of drapes to open. "It's not the Ritz," he
  said, "but
  we'll try to make you comfortable."
  	Mona made a noncommittal sound. The Ritz was a burger place in
  Cleveland
  and she couldn't see what that had to do with anything.
  	"Look," he said, "your favorite." He was standing beside the bed's
  upholstered headboard. There was a stim unit there, built in, and a
  little shelf
  with a set of trodes in a plastic wrapper and about five cassettes.
  "All of
  Angie's new stims."
  	She wondered who'd put those cassettes there, and if they'd done it
  after
  Prior had asked her what stims she liked. She showed him a smile of
  her own and
  went to the window. The Sprawl looked like it did in stims; the
  window was like
  a hologram postcard, famous buildings she didn't know the names of
  but she knew
  they were famous.
  	Gray of the domes, geodesics picked out white with snow, behind that
  the
  gray of the sky.
  	"Happy, baby?" Eddy asked, coming up behind her and putting his
  hands on
  her shoulders.
  	"They got showers here?"
  	Prior laughed. She shrugged out of Eddy's loose grip and took her
  bag into
  the bathroom. Closed and locked the door. She heard Prior's laugh
  again, and
  Eddy starting up with his scam talk. She sat on the toilet, opened
  her bag, and
  dug out the cosmetic kit where she kept her wiz. She had four
  crystals left.
  That seemed like enough; three was enough, but when she got down to
  two she
  usually started looking to score. She didn't do jumpers much, not
  every day
  anyway, except recently she had, but that was because Florida had
  started to
  drive her crazy.
  	Now she could start tapering off, she decided, as she tapped a
  crystal out
  of the vial. It looked like hard yellow candy; you had to crush it,
  then grind
  it up between a pair of nylon screens. When you did that, it gave off
  a kind of
  hospital smell.

  They were both gone, by the time she finished her shower. She'd
  stayed in until
  she got bored with it, which took a long time. In Florida she'd
  mostly used
  showers at public pools or bus stations, the kind you worked with
  tokens. She
  guessed there was something hooked up to this one that measured the
  liters and
  put it on your bill; that was how it worked at the Holiday Inn. There
  was a big
  white filter above the plastic shower- head, and a sticker on the
  tile wall with
  an eye and a tear meant it was okay to shower but don't get it in
  your eyes,
  like swimming pool water. There was a row of chrome spouts set into
  the tile,
  and when you punched a button under each one you got shampoo, shower
  gel, liquid
  soap, bath oil. When you did that, a little red dot lit up beside the
  button,
  because it went on your bill. On Prior's bill. She was glad they were
  gone,
  because she liked being alone and high and clean. She didn't get to
  be alone
  much, except on the street, and that wasn't the same. She left damp
  footprints
  on the beige carpet when she walked to the window. She was wrapped in
  a big
  towel that matched the bed and the carpet and had a word shaved into
  the fuzzy
  part, probably the name of the hotel.
  	There was an old-fashioned building a block away, and the corners of
  its
  stepped peak had been carved down to make a kind of mountain, with
  rocks and
  grass, and a waterfall that fell and hit rocks and then fell again.
  It made her
  smile, why anybody had gone to that trouble. Drifts of steam came off
  the water,
  where it hit. It couldn't just fall down into the street, though, she
  thought,
  because it would cost too much. She guessed they pumped it back up
  and used it
  over, around in a circle.
  	Something gray moved its head there, swung its big curly horns up
  like it
  was looking at her. She took a step back on the carpet and blinked.
  Kind of a
  sheep, but it had to be a remote, a hologram or something. It tossed
  its head
  and started eating grass. Mona laughed.
  	She could feel the wiz down the backs of her ankles and across her
  shoulderblades, a cold tight tingle, and the hospital smell at the
  back of her
  throat.
  	She'd been scared before but she wasn't scared now.
  	Prior had a bad smile, but he was just a player, just a bent suit.
  If he
  had money, it was somebody else's. And she wasn't scared of Eddy
  anymore; it was
  almost like she was scared for him, because she could see what other
  people took
  him for.
  	Well, she thought, it didn't matter; she wasn't growing catfish in
  Cleveland anymore, and no way anybody'd get her back to Florida
  again.
  	She remembered the alcohol stove, cold winter mornings, the old man
  hunched in his big gray coat. Winters he'd put a second layer of
  plastic over
  the windows. The stove was enough to heat the place, then, because
  the walls
  were covered with sheets of hard foam, and chipboard over that.
  Places where the
  foam showed, you could pick at it with your finger, make holes; if he
  caught you
  doing it, he'd yell. Keeping the fish warm in cold weather was more
  work; you
  had to pump water up to the roof, where the sun mirrors were, into
  these clear
  plastic tubes. But the vegetable stuff rotting on the tank ledges
  helped, too;
  steam rose off when you went to net a fish. He traded the fish for
  other kinds
  of food, for things people grew, stove alcohol and the drinking kind,
  coffee
  beans, garbage the fish ate.
  	He wasn't her father and he'd said it often enough, when he'd talked
  at
  all. Sometimes she still wondered if maybe he had been. When she'd
  first asked
  him how old she was, he'd said six, so she counted from that.
  	She heard the door open behind her and turned; Prior was there, the
  gold
  plastic key tab in his hand, beard open to show the smile. "Mona," he
  said,
  stepping in, "this is Gerald." Tall, Chinese, gray suit, graying
  hair. Gerald
  smiled gently, edged in past Prior, and went straight for the drawer
  thing
  opposite the foot of the bed. Put a black case down and clicked it
  open.
  "Gerald's a friend. He's medical, Gerald. Needs to have a look at
  you."
  	"Mona," Gerald said, removing something from the case, "how old are
  you?"
  	"She's sixteen," Prior said. "Right, Mona?"
  	"Sixteen," Gerald said. The thing in his hands was like a pair of
  black
  goggles, sunglasses with bumps and wires. "That's stretching it a
  little, isn't
  it?" He looked at Prior.
  	Prior smiled.
  	"You're short what, ten years?"
  	"Not quite," Prior said. "We aren't asking for perfection."
  	Gerald looked at her. "You aren't going to get it." He hooked the
  goggles
  over his ears and tapped something; a light came on below the right
  lens. "But
  there are degrees of approximation." The light swung toward her.
  	"We're talking cosmetic, Gerald."
  	"Where's Eddy?" she asked, as Gerald came closer.
  	"In the bar. Shall I call him?" Prior picked up the phone, but put
  it back
  down without using it.
  	"What is this?" Backing away from Gerald.
  	"A medical examination," Gerald said. "Nothing painful." He had her
  against the window; above the towel, her shoulderblades pressed
  against cool
  glass. "Someone's about to employ you, and pay you very well; they
  need to be
  certain you're in good health." The light stabbed into her left eye.
  "She's on
  stimulants of some kind," he said to Prior, in a different tone of
  voice.
  	"Try not to blink, Mona." The light swung to her right eye. "What is
  it,
  Mona? How much did you do?"
  	"Wiz." Wincing away from the light.
  	He caught her chin in his cool fingers and realigned her head. "How
  much?"
  	"A crystal . . ."
  	The light was gone. His smooth face was very close, the goggles
  studded
  with lenses, slots, little dishes of black metal mesh. "No way of
  judging the
  purity," he said.
  	"It's real pure," she said, and giggled.
  	He let her chin go and smiled. "It shouldn't be a problem," he said.

  "Could you open your mouth, please?"
  	"Mouth?"
  	"I want to look at your teeth."
  	She looked at Prior.
  	"You're in luck, here," Gerald said to Prior, when he'd used the
  little
  light to look in her mouth. "Fairly good condition and close to
  target
  configuration. Caps, inlays."
  	"We knew we could count on you, Gerald."
  	Gerald took the goggles off and looked at Prior. He returned to the
  black
  case and put the goggles away. "Lucky with the eyes, too. Very close.
  A tint
  job." He took a foil envelope from the case and tore it open, rolled
  the pale
  surgical glove down over his right hand. "Take off the towel, Mona.
  Make
  yourself comfortable."
  	She looked at Prior, at Gerald. "You want to see my papers, the
  bloodwork
  and stuff?"
  	"No," Gerald said, "that's fine."
  	She looked out the window, hoping to see the bighorn, but it was
  gone, and
  the sky seemed a lot darker.
  	She undid the towel, let it fall to the floor, then lay down on her
  back
  on the beige temperfoam.
  	It wasn't all that different from what she got paid for; it didn't
  even
  take as long.

  Sitting in the bathroom with the cosmetic kit open on her knees,
  grinding
  another crystal, she decided she had a right to be pissed off.
  	First Eddy takes off without her, then Prior shows up with this
  creep
  medic, then he tells her Eddy's sleeping in a different room. Back in
  Florida
  she could've used some time off from Eddy, but up here was different.
  She didn't
  want to be in here by herself, and she'd been scared to ask Prior for
  a key. He
  fucking well had one, though, so he could walk in any time with his
  creep-ass
  friends. What kind of deal was that?
  	And the business with the plastic raincoat, that burned her ass too.
  A
  disposable fucking plastic raincoat.
  	She fluffed the powdered wiz between the nylon screens, carefully
  tapped
  it into the hitter, exhaled hard, put the mouthpiece to her lips, and
  hit. The
  cloud of yellow dust coated the membranes of her throat; some of it
  probably
  even made it to her lungs. She'd heard that was bad for you.
  	She'd hadn't had any plan when she'd gone in the bathroom to take
  her hit,
  but as the back of her neck started tingling, she found herself
  thinking about
  the streets around the hotel, what she'd seen of them on their way
  in. There
  were clubs, bars, shops with clothes in the window. Music. Music
  would be okay,
  now, and a crowd. The way you could lose it in a crowd, forget
  yourself, just be
  there. The door wasn't locked, she knew that; she'd already tried it.
  It would
  lock behind her, though, and she didn't have a key. But she was
  staying here, so
  Prior must have registered her at the desk. She thought about going
  down and
  asking the woman behind the counter for a key, but the idea made her
  uncomfortable. She knew suits behind counters and how they looked at
  you. No,
  she decided, the best idea was to stay in and stim those new Angie's.
  	Ten minutes later she was on her way out a side entrance off the
  main
  lobby, the wiz singing in her head.
  	It was drizzling outside, maybe dome condensation. She'd worn the
  white
  raincoat for the lobby, figuring Prior knew what he was doing after
  all, but now
  she was glad she had it. She grabbed a fold of fax out of an
  overflowing bin and
  held it over her head to keep her hair dry. It wasn't as cold as
  before, which
  was another good thing. None of her new clothes were what you'd call
  warm.
  	Looking up and down the avenue, deciding which way to go, she took
  in
  half-a-dozen nearly identical hotel fronts, a rank of pedicabs, the
  rainslick
  glitter of a row of small shops. And people, lots of them, like the
  Cleveland
  core but everybody dressed so sharp, and all moving like they were on
  top of it,
  everybody with someplace to go. Just go with it , she thought, the
  wiz giving
  her a sweet second boot that tripped her into the river of pretty
  people without
  even having to think about it. Clicking along in her new shoes,
  holding the fax
  over her head until she noticed -- more luck -- the rain had stopped.
  	She wouldn't've minded a chance to check out the shop windows, when
  the
  crowd swept her past, but the flow was pleasure and nobody else was
  pausing. She
  contented herself with sidelong flashes of each display. The clothes
  were like
  clothes in a stim, some of them, styles she'd never seen anywhere.
  	I should  've been here , she thought, I should   've  been here all

  along. Not on a catfish farm , not in Cleveland , not in Florida. It
  's  a
  place , a real place , anybody can come here , you don 't have to get
  it through
  a stim . Thing was, she'd never seen this part of it in a stim, the
  regular
  people part. A star like Angie, this part wasn't her part. Angie'd be
  off in
  high castles with the other stim stars, not down here. But God it was
  pretty,
  the night so bright, the crowd surging around her, past all the good
  things you
  could have if you just got lucky.
  	Eddy, he didn't like it. Anyway he'd always said how it was shitty
  here,
  too crowded, rent too high, too many police, too much competition.
  Not that he'd
  waited two seconds when Prior 'd made an offer, she reminded herself.
  And
  anyway, she had her own ideas why Eddy was so down on it. He'd blown
  it here,
  she figured, pulled some kind of serious wilson. Either he didn't
  want to be
  reminded or else there were people here who'd remind him for sure if
  he came
  back. It was there in the pissed-off way he talked about the place,
  same way
  he'd talk about anybody who told him his scams wouldn't work. The new
  buddy so
  goddamn smart the first night was just a stone wilson the next, dead
  stupid, no
  vision.
  	Past a big store with ace-looking stim gear in the window, all of it
  matte
  black and skinny, presided over by this gorgeous holo of Angie, who
  watched them
  all slide by with her half-sad smile. Queen of the night, yeah.
  	The crowd-river flowed out into a kind of circle, a place where four

  streets met and swung around a fountain. And because Mona really
  wasn't headed
  anywhere, she wound up there, because the people around her peeled
  off in their
  different directions without stopping. Well, there were people in the
  circle
  too, some of them sitting on the cracked concrete that edged the
  fountain. There
  was a statue in the center, marble, all worn-out and soft-edged. Kind
  of a baby
  riding a big fish, a dolphin. It looked like the dolphin's mouth
  would spray
  water if the fountain was working, but it wasn't. Past the heads of
  the seated
  people she could see crumpled, sodden fax and white foam cups in the
  water.
  	Then it seemed like the crowd had melded behind her, a curved,
  sliding
  wall of bodies, and the three who faced her on the fountain rim
  jumped out like
  a picture. Fat girl with black-dyed hair, mouth half-open like it
  stayed that
  way, tits spilling out of a red rubber halter; blonde with a long
  face and a
  thin blue slash of lipstick, hand like a bird's claw sprouting a
  cigarette; man
  with his oiled arms bare to the cold, graft-job muscle knotted like
  rock under
  synthetic tan and bad jail tattoos . . .
  	"Hey, bitch," cried the fat girl, with a kind of glee, "hope y'don't
  think
  y'gonna turn any 'roun' here!"
  	The blonde looked at Mona with her tired eyes and gave her a wan
  grin, an
  it's-not-my-fault grin, and then looked away.
  	The pimp came up off the fountain like something driven by springs,
  but
  Mona was already moving, cued by the blonde's expression. He had her
  arm, but
  the raincoat's plastic seam gave way and she elbowed her way back
  into the
  crowd. The wiz took over and the next thing she knew she was at least
  a block
  away, sagging against a steel pole, coughing and hyperventilating.
  	But now the wiz was all turned around, the way it went sometimes,
  and
  everything was ugly. The faces in the crowd were driven and hungry-
  looking, like
  they all had their own private desperate errands to run, and the
  light from the
  shop windows was cold and mean, and all the things behind the glass
  were just
  there to tell her she couldn't have them. There was a voice
  somewhere, an angry
  child's voice stringing obscenities together in an endless,
  meaningless chain;
  when she realized who it was, she stopped doing it.
  	Her left arm was cold. She looked down and saw that the sleeve was
  gone,
  the seam down her side torn open to the waist. She took off the coat
  and draped
  it over her shoulders like a cape; maybe that made it a little harder
  to notice.
  	She braced her back against the pole as the wiz rolled over her on a
  wave
  of delayed adrenaline; her knees started to buckle and she thought
  she was going
  to faint, but then the wiz pulled one of its tricks and she was
  crouching in
  summer sunset light in the old man's dirt yard, the flaky gray earth
  scribed
  with the game she'd been playing, but now she was just hunched there,
  vacant,
  staring off past the bulks of the tanks to where fireflies pulsed in
  the
  blackberry tangle above a twisted old chassis. There was light behind
  her from
  the house and she could smell the cornbread baking and the coffee he
  boiled and
  reboiled there, till a spoon stood up in it, he said, and he'd be in
  there now
  reading one of his books, crumbly brown leaves, never a page with a
  corner on
  it, he got 'em in frayed plastic baggies and sometimes they just fell
  to dust in
  his hands, but if he found something he wanted to keep he'd get a
  little pocket
  copier out of the drawer, fit the batteries in it, run it down the
  page. She
  liked to watch the copies spool out all fresh, with their special
  smell that
  faded away, but he'd never let her work it. Sometimes he'd read out
  loud, a kind
  of hesitation in his voice, like a man trying to play an instrument
  he hasn't
  picked up in a long time. They weren't stories he read, not like they
  had
  endings or told a joke. They were like windows into something so
  strange; he
  never tried to explain any of it, probably didn't understand it
  himself, maybe
  nobody did. . . .
  	Then the street snapped back hard and bright.
  	She rubbed her eyes and coughed.



  Antarctica Starts Here

  "I'm ready now," Piper Hill said, eyes closed, seated on the carpet
  in a loose
  approximation of the lotus position. "Touch the spread with your left
  hand."
  Eight slender leads trailed from the sockets behind Piper's ears to
  the
  instrument that lay across her tanned thighs.
  	Angie, wrapped in a white terry robe, faced the blond technician
  from the
  edge of the bed, the black test unit covering her forehead like a
  raised
  blindfold. She did as she was told, running the tips of her fingers
  lightly
  across the raw silk and unbleached linen of the rumpled bedspread.
  	"Good," Piper said, more to herself than to Angie, touching
  something on
  the board. "Again." Angie felt the weave thicken beneath her
  fingertips.
  	"Again." Another adjustment.
  	She could distinguish the individual fibers now, know silk from
  linen. . .
  .
  	"Again."
  	Her nerves screamed as her flayed fingertips grated against steel
  wool,
  ground glass. . . .
  	"Optimal," Piper said, opening blue eyes. She produced a tiny ivory
  vial
  from the sleeve of her kimono, removed its stopper, passed the vial
  to Angie.
  	Closing her eyes, Angie sniffed cautiously. Nothing.
  	"Again."
  	Something floral. Violets?
  	"Again."
  	Her head flooded with a nauseating greenhouse reek.
  	"Olfactory's up," Piper said, as the choking odor faded.
  	"Haven't noticed." She opened her eyes. Piper was offering her a
  tiny
  round of white paper. "As long as it's not fish," Angie said, licking
  the tip of
  her finger. She touched the dot of paper, raised her finger to her
  tongue. One
  of Piper's tests had once put her off seafood for a month.
  	"It's not fish," Piper said, smiling. She kept her hair short, a
  concise
  little helmet that played up the graphite gleam of the sockets inset
  behind
  either ear. Saint Joan in silicone, Porphyre said, and Piper's true
  passion
  seemed to be her work. She was Angie's personal technician, reputed
  to be the
  Net's best troubleshooter.
  	Caramel . . .

  "Who else is here, Piper?" Having completed the Usher, Piper was
  zipping her
  board into a fitted nylon case.
  	Angie had heard a helicopter arrive an hour earlier; she'd heard
  laughter,
  footsteps on the deck, as the dream receded. She'd abandoned her
  usual attempt
  to inventory sleep -- if it could be called sleep, the other's
  memories washing
  in, filling her, then draining away to levels she couldn't reach,
  leaving these
  afterimages. . . .
  	"Raebel," Piper said, "Lomas, Hickman, Ng, Porphyre, the Pope."
  	"Robin?"
  	"No."

  "Continuity," she said, showering.
  	"Good morning, Angie."
  	"Freeside torus. Who owns it?"
  	"The torus has been renamed Mustique II by the current joint owners,
  the
  Julianna Group and Carribbana Orbital."
  	"Who owned it when Tally taped there?"
  	"Tessier-Ashpool S.A."
  	"I want to know more about Tessier-Ashpool."
  	"Antarctica starts here ."
  	She stared up through the steam at the white circle of the speaker.
  "What
  did you just say?"
  	"Antarctica Starts Here  is a two-hour video study of the Tessier-
  Ashpool
  family by Hans Becker, Angie."
  	"Do you have it?"
  	"Of course. David Pope accessed it recently. He was quite
  impressed."
  	"Really? How recently?"
  	"Last Monday."
  	"I'll see it tonight, then."
  	"Done. Is that all?"
  	"Yes."
  	"Goodbye, Angie."
  	David Pope. Her director. Porphyre said that Robin was telling
  people she
  heard voices. Had he told Pope? She touched a ceramic panel; the
  spray grew
  hotter. Why was Pope interested in Tessier-Ashpool? She touched the
  panel again
  and gasped under needles of suddenly frigid water.
  	Inside out, outside in, the figures of that other landscape arriving
  soon,
  too soon . . .
  	

  Porphyre was posed by the window when she entered the living room, a
  Masai
  warrior in shoulder-padded black silk crepe and black leather sarong.
  The others
  cheered when they saw her, and Porphyre turned and grinned.
  	"Took us by surprise," Rick Raebel said, sprawled on the pale couch.
  He
  was effects and editing. "Hilton figured you'd want more of a break."
  	"They pulled us in from all over , dear," Kelly Hickman added. "I
  was in
  Bremen, and the Pope was up the well in full art mode, weren't you,
  David?" He
  looked to the director for confirmation.
  	Pope, who was straddling one of the Louis XVI chairs backward, his
  arms
  crossed along the top of its fragile back, smiled wearily, dark hair
  tangled
  above his thin face. When Angie's schedule allowed for it, Pope made
  documentaries for Net/Knowledge. Shortly after she'd signed with the
  Net, Angie
  participated anonymously in one of Pope's minimalist art pieces, an
  endless
  stroll across dunes of soiled pink satin, under a tooled steel sky.
  Three months
  later, the arc of her career firmly under way, an unlicensed version
  of the tape
  became an underground classic.
  	Karen Lomas, who did Angie's in-fills, smiled from the chair left of
  Pope.
  To his right, Kelly Hickman, wardrobe, sat on the bleached floor
  beside Brian
  Ng, Piper's gofer-cum-understudy.
  	"Well," Angie said, "I'm back. I'm sorry to have hung all of you up,
  but
  it had to be done."
  	There was a silence. Minute creaks from the gilt chairs. Brian Ng
  coughed.
  	"We're just glad you're back," Piper said, coming in from the
  kitchen with
  a cup of coffee in either hand.
  	They cheered again, somewhat self-consciously this time, then
  laughed.
  	"Where's Robin?" Angie asked.
  	"Mistuh  Lanier in London," Porphyre said, hands on his leather-
  wrapped
  hips.
  	"Expected hourly," Pope said dryly, getting up and accepting a
  coffee from
  Piper.
  	"What were you doing in orbit, David?" Angie asked, taking the other
  cup.
  	"Hunting solitaries."
  	"Solitude?"
  	"Solitaries. Hermits."
  	"Angie," Hickman said, springing up, "you have to see this satin
  cocktail
  number Devicq sent last week! And I've got all of Nakamura's
  swimwear. . . ."
  	"Yes, Kelly, but --"
  	But Pope had already turned to say something to Raebel.
  	"Hey," Hickman said, beaming with enthusiasm, "come on! Let's try it
  on!
  "

  Pope spent most of the day with Piper, Karen Lomas, and Raebel,
  discussing the
  results of the Usher and the endless minor details of what they
  referred to as
  Angie's reinsertion . After lunch, Brian Ng went along with her to
  her physical,
  which was conducted in a private clinic in a mirror-clad compound on
  Beverly
  Boulevard.
  	During the very brief wait in the white, plant-filled reception area
  --
  surely a matter of ritual, as though a medical appointment that
  involved no wait
  might seem incomplete, inauthentic -- Angie found herself wondering,
  as she'd
  wondered many times before, why her father's mysterious legacy, the
  v�v�s  he'd
  drawn in her head, had never been detected by this or any other
  clinic.
  	Her father, Christopher Mitchell, had headed the hybridoma project
  that
  had allowed Maas Biolabs a virtual monopoly in the early manufacture
  of
  biochips. Turner, the man who had taken her to New York, had given
  her a kind of
  dossier on her father, a biosoft compiled by a Maas security AI.
  She'd accessed
  the dossier four times in as many years; finally, one very drunken
  night in
  Greece, she'd flung the thing from the deck of an Irish
  industrialist's yacht
  after a shouting match with Bobby. She no longer recalled the cause
  of the
  fight, but she did remember the mingled sense of loss and relief as
  the squat
  little nub of memory struck the water.
  	Perhaps her father had designed his handiwork so that it was somehow

  invisible to the scans of the neuro- technicians. Bobby had his own
  theory, one
  she had suspected was closer to the truth. Perhaps Legba, the loa
  Beauvoir
  credited with almost infinite access to the cyberspace matrix, could
  alter the
  flow of data as it was obtained by the scanners, rendering the v�v�s

  transparent. . . . Legba, after all, had orchestrated her debut in
  the industry
  and the subsequent rise that had seen her eclipse Tally Isham's
  fifteen-year
  career as Net megastar.
  	But it had been so long since the loa had ridden her, and now,
  Brigitte
  had said, the v�v�s  had been redrawn. . . .
  	"Hilton had Continuity front a head for you today," Ng told her, as
  she
  waited.
  	"Oh?"
  	"Public statement on your decision to go to Jamaica, praise for the
  methods of the clinic, the dangers of drugs, renewed enthusiasm for
  your work,
  gratitude to your audience, stock footage of the Malibu place . . ."
  	Continuity could generate video images of Angie, animate them with
  templates compiled from her stims. Viewing them induced a mild but
  not
  unpleasant vertigo, one of the rare times she was able to directly
  grasp the
  fact of her fame.
  	A chime sounded, beyond the greenery.

  Returning from the city, she found caterers preparing for a barbecue
  on the
  deck.
  	She lay on the couch beneath the Valmier and listened to the surf.
  From
  the kitchen, she could hear Piper explaining the results of the
  physical to
  Pope. There was no need, really -- she'd been given the cleanest
  possible bill
  of health -- but both Pope and Piper were fond of detail.
  	When Piper and Raebel put on sweaters and went out onto the deck,
  where
  they stood warming their hands above the coals, Angie found herself
  alone in the
  living room with the director.
  	"You were about to tell me, David, what you were doing up the well.
  . . ."
  	"Looking for serious loners." He ran a hand back across his tangled
  hair.
  "It grows out of something I wanted to do last year, with intentional

  communities in Africa. Trouble was, when I got up there, I learned
  that anyone
  who goes that far, who'll actually live alone in orbit, is generally
  determined
  to stay that way."
  	"You were taping, yourself? Interviews?"
  	"No. I wanted to find people like that and talk them into recording
  segments themselves."
  	"Did you?"
  	"No. I heard stories, though. Some great stories. A tug pilot
  claimed
  there were feral children living in a mothballed Japanese drug
  factory. There's
  a whole new apocrypha out there, really -- ghost ships, lost cities.
  . . .
  There's a pathos to it, when you think about it. I mean, every bit of
  it's
  locked into orbit. All of it manmade, known, owned, mapped. Like
  watching myths
  take root in a parking lot. But I suppose people need that, don't
  they?"
  	"Yes," she said, thinking of Legba, of Mamman Brigitte, the thousand

  candles. . . .
  	"I wish, though," he said, "that I could've gotten through to Lady
  Jane.
  Such an amazing story. Pure gothic."
  	"Lady Jane?"
  	"Tessier-Ashpool. Her family built Freeside torus. High- orbit
  pioneers.
  Continuity has a marvelous video. . . . They say she killed her
  father. She's
  the last of the line. Money ran out years ago. She sold everything,
  had her
  place sawn off the tip of the spindle and towed out to a new orbit. .
  . ."
  	She sat up on the couch, her knees together, fingers locked across
  them.
  Sweat trickled down across her ribs.
  	"You don't know the story?"
  	"No," she said.
  	"That's interesting in itself, because it shows you how adept they
  were at
  obscurity. They used their money to keep themselves out of the news.
  The mother
  was Tessier, the father Ashpool. They built Freeside when there was
  nothing else
  like it. Got fantastically rich in the process. Probably running a
  very close
  second to Josef Virek when Ashpool died. And of course they'd gotten
  wonderfully
  weird in the meantime, had taken to cloning their children wholesale.
  . . ."
  	"It sounds . . . terrible. And you tried, you did try to find her?"
  	"Well, I made inquiries. Continuity had gotten me this Becker video,
  and
  of course her orbit's in the book, but it's no good dropping by if
  you haven't
  been invited, is it? And then Hilton buzzed me to get back here and
  back to
  work. . . . Aren't you feeling well?"
  	"Yes, I . . . I think I'll change now, put on something warmer."

  After they'd eaten, when coffee was being served, she excused herself
  and said
  goodnight.
  	Porphyre followed her to the base of the stairs. He'd stayed near
  her
  during the meal, as though he sensed her new unease. No, she thought,
  not new;
  the old, the always, the now and ever was. All the things the drug
  had fenced
  away.
  	"Missy, take care," he said, too quietly for the others to hear.
  	"I'm fine," she said. "Too many people. I'm still not used to it."
  	He stood there looking up at her, the glow of dying coals behind his

  elegantly crafted, subtly inhuman skull, until she turned and climbed
  the
  stairs.

  She heard the helicopter come for them an hour later.
  	"House," she said, "I'll see the video from Continuity now."
  	As the wallscreen slid down into place, she opened the bedroom door
  and
  stood for a moment at the top of the stairs, listening to the sounds
  of the
  empty house. Surf, the hum of the dishwasher, wind buffeting the
  windows that
  faced the deck.
  	She turned back to the screen and shivered at the face she saw there
  in a
  grainy freeze-frame headshot, avian eyebrows arched above dark eyes,
  high
  fragile cheekbones, and a wide, determined mouth. The image expanded
  steadily,
  into the darkness of an eye, black screen, a white point, growing,
  lengthening,
  becoming the tapered spindle of Freeside. Credits began to flash in
  German.
  	"Hans Becker," the house began, reciting the Net library's intro-
  critique,
  "is an Austrian video artist whose hallmark is an obsessive
  interrogation of
  rigidly delimited fields of visual information. His approaches range
  from
  classical montage to techniques borrowed from industrial espionage,
  deep-space
  imaging, and kino-archaeology. Antarctica Starts Here , his
  examination of
  images of the Tessier-Ashpool family, currently stands as the high
  point of his
  career. The pathologically media-shy industrial clan, operating from
  the total
  privacy of their orbital home, posed a remarkable challenge."
  	The white of the spindle filled the screen as the final credit
  vanished.
  An image tracked to center screen, snapshot of a young woman in loose
  dark
  clothes, background indistinct. MARIE-FRANCE TESSIER, MOROCCO.
  	This wasn't the face in the opening shot, the face of invading
  memory, yet
  it seemed to promise it, as though a larval image lay beneath the
  surface.
  	The soundtrack wove atonal filaments through strata of static and
  indistinct voices as the image of Marie-France was replaced by a
  formal
  monochrome portrait of a young man in a starched wing collar. It was
  a handsome
  face, finely proportioned, but very hard somehow, and in the eyes a
  look of
  infinite boredom. JOHN HARNESS ASHPOOL, OXFORD.
  	Yes , she thought, and I  've met you many times . I know your story

  ,though I  'm not allowed to touch it .
  	But I really don 't think I like you at all , do I , Mr. Ashpool?



  Catwalk

  The catwalk groaned and swayed. The stretcher was too wide for the
  walk's
  handrails, so they had to keep it chest-high as they inched across,
  Gentry at
  the front with his gloved hands clamped around the rails on either
  side of the
  sleeper's feet. Slick had the heavy end, the head, with the batteries
  and all
  that gear; he could feel Cherry creeping along behind him. He wanted
  to tell her
  to get back, that they didn't need her weight on the walk, but
  somehow he
  couldn't.
  	Giving Gentry Kid Afrika's bag of drugs had been a mistake. He
  didn't know
  what was in the derm Gentry'd done; he didn't know what had been in
  Gentry's
  bloodstream to begin with. Whatever, Gentry'd gone bare-wires crazy
  and now they
  were out here on the fucking catwalk, twenty meters over Factory's
  concrete
  floor, and Slick was ready to weep with frustration, to scream; he
  wanted to
  smash something, anything, but he couldn't let go of the stretcher.
  	And Gentry's smile , lit up by the glow of the bio-readout taped to
  the
  foot of the stretcher, as Gentry took another step backward across
  the catwalk .
  . .
  	"O man," Cherry said, her voice like a little girl's, "this is just
  seriously fucked . . . ."
  	Gentry gave the stretcher a sudden impatient tug and Slick almost
  lost his
  grip.

  "Gentry," Slick said, "I think you better think twice about this."
  	Gentry had removed his gloves. He held a pair of optic jumpers in
  either
  hand, and Slick could see the splitter fittings trembling.
  	"I mean Kid Afrika's heavy, Gentry. You don't know what you're
  messing
  with, you mess with him." This was not, strictly speaking, true, the
  Kid being,
  as far as Slick knew, too smart to value revenge. But who the hell
  knew what
  Gentry was about to mess with anyway?
  	"I'm not messing  with anything," Gentry said, approaching the
  stretcher
  with the jumpers.
  	"Listen, buddy," Cherry said, "you interrupt his input, you maybe
  kill
  'im; his autonomic nervous system'll go tits-up. Why don't you just
  stop him?"
  she asked Slick. "Why don't you just knock him on his ass?"
  	Slick rubbed his eyes. "Because . . . I dunno. Because he's . . .
  Look,
  Gentry, she's saying it'll maybe kill the poor bastard, you try to
  tap in. You
  hear that?"
  	" 'LF,' " Gentry said, "I heard that ." He put the jumpers between
  his
  teeth and began to fiddle with one of the connections on the
  featureless slab
  above the sleeper's head. His hands had stopped shaking.
  	"Shit," Cherry said, and gnawed at a knuckle. The connection came
  away in
  Gentry's hand. He whipped a jumper into place with his other hand and
  began to
  tighten the connection. He smiled around the remaining jumper. "Fuck
  this,"
  Cherry said, "I'm outa here," but she didn't move.
  	The man on the stretcher grunted, once, softly. The sound made the
  hairs
  stand up on Slick's arms.
  	The second connection came loose. Gentry inserted the other splitter
  and
  began to retighten the fitting.
  	Cherry went quickly to the foot of the stretcher, knelt to check the

  readout. "He felt it," she said, looking up at Gentry, "but his signs
  look okay.
  . . ."
  	Gentry turned to his consoles. Slick watched as he jacked the
  jumpers into
  position. Maybe, he thought, it was going to work out; Gentry would
  crash soon,
  and they'd have to leave the stretcher up here until he could get
  Little Bird
  and Cherry to help him get it back across the catwalk. But Gentry was
  just so
  crazy, probably he should try to get the drugs back, or some of them
  anyway, get
  things back to normal. . . .
  	"I can only believe," Gentry said, "that this was predetermined.
  Prefigured by the form of my previous work. I wouldn't pretend to
  understand how
  that might be, but ours is not to question why, is it, Slick Henry?"
  He tapped
  out a sequence on one of his keyboards. "Have you ever considered the

  relationship of clinical paranoia to the phenomenon of religious
  conversion?"
  	"What's he talking about?" Cherry asked.
  	Slick glumly shook his head. If he said anything, it would only
  encourage
  Gentry's craziness.
  	Now Gentry went to the big display unit, the projection table.
  "There are
  worlds within worlds," he said. "Macrocosm, microcosm. We carried an
  entire
  universe across a bridge tonight, and that which is above is like
  that below. .
  . . It was obvious, of course, that such things must exist, but I'd
  not dared to
  hope. . ." He glanced coyly back at them over a black-beaded
  shoulder. "And
  now," he said, "we'll see the shape of the little universe our
  guest's gone
  voyaging in. And in that form, Slick Henry, I'll see . . ."
  	He touched the power stud at the edge of the holo table. And
  screamed.



  Toys

  "Here's a lovely thing," Petal said, touching a rosewood cube the
  size of
  Kumiko's head. "Battle of Britain." Light shimmered above it, and
  when Kumiko
  leaned forward she saw that tiny aircraft looped and dived in slow
  motion above
  a gray Petrie smear of London. "They worked it up from war films," he
  said,
  "gunsight cameras." She peered in at almost microscopic flashes of
  antiaircraft
  fire from the Thames estuary. "Did it for the Centenary."
  	They were in Swain's billiard room, ground-floor rear, number 16.
  There
  was a faint mustiness, an echo of pub smell. The overall tidiness of
  Swain's
  establishment was tempered here by genteel dilapidation: there were
  armchairs
  covered in scuffed leather, pieces of heavy dark furniture, the dull
  green field
  of the billiard table. . . . The black steel racks stacked with
  entertainment
  gear had caused Petal to bring her here, before tea, shuffling along
  in his
  seam-sprung moleskin slippers, to demonstrate available toys.
  	"Which war was this?"
  	"Last but one," he said, moving on to a similar but larger unit that

  offered holograms of two Thai boxing girls. One's callused sole
  smacked against
  the other's lean brown belly, tensed to take the blow. He touched a
  stud and the
  projections vanished.
  	Kumiko glanced back at the Battle of Britain and its burning gnats.
  	"All sorts of sporting fiche," Petal said, opening a fitted pig-skin
  case
  that held hundreds of the recordings.
  	He demonstrated half-a-dozen other pieces of equipment, then
  scratched his
  stubbled head while he searched for a Japanese video news channel. He
  found it,
  finally, but couldn't cut out the automatic translation program. He
  watched with
  her as a cadre of Ono-Sendai executive trainees effaced themselves in
  a tearful
  graduation ceremony. "What's all that then?" he asked.
  	"They are demonstrating loyalty to their zaibatsu . "
  	"Right," he said. He gave the video unit a swipe with his feather
  duster.
  "Tea time soon." He left the room. Kumiko shut off the audio. Sally
  Shears had
  been absent at breakfast, as had Swain.
  	Moss-green curtains concealed another set of tall windows opening
  onto the
  same garden. She looked out at a sundial sheathed in snow, then let
  the curtain
  fall back. (The silent wallscreen flashed Tokyo accident images,
  foil-clad
  medics sawing limp victims from a tangle of impacted steel.) A top-
  heavy
  Victorian cabinet stood against the far wall on carved feet
  resembling
  pineapples. The keyhole, trimmed with an inlaid diamond of yellowed
  ivory, was
  empty, and when she tried the doors, they opened, exhaling a chemical
  odor of
  ancient polish. She stared at the black and white mandala at the rear
  of the
  cabinet until it became what it was, a dartboard. The glossy wood
  behind it was
  pocked and pricked; some players had missed the board entirely, she
  decided. The
  lower half of the cabinet offered a number of drawers, each with a
  small brass
  pull and miniature, ivory-trimmed keyhole. She knelt in front of
  these, glanced
  back toward the doorway (wallscreen showing the lips of a Shinjuku
  cabaret
  singer) and drew the upper right drawer out as quietly as possible.
  It was
  filled with darts, loose and in leather wallets. She closed the
  drawer and
  opened the one to its left. A dead moth and a rusted screw. There was
  a single
  wide drawer below the first two; it stuck as she opened it, and made
  a sound.
  She looked back again (stock footage of Fuji Electric's logo
  illuminating Tokyo
  Bay) but there was no sign of Petal.
  	She spent several minutes leafing through a pornographic magazine,
  with
  Japanese text, which seemed to have mainly to do with the art of
  knots. Under
  this was a dusty-looking jacket made of black waxed cotton, and a
  gray plastic
  case with WALTHER molded across its lid in raised letters. The pistol
  itself was
  cold and heavy; she could see her face in the blue metal when she
  lifted it from
  its fitted bed of foam. She'd never handled a gun before. The gray
  plastic grips
  seemed enormous. She put it back into the case and scanned the
  Japanese section
  in a folder of multilingual instructions. It was an air gun; you
  pumped the
  lever below the barrel. It fired very small pellets of lead. Another
  toy. She
  replaced the contents of the drawer and closed it.
  	The remaining drawers were empty. She closed the cabinet door and
  returned
  to the Battle of Britain.

  "No," Petal said, "sorry, but it won't do."
  	He was spreading Devon cream on a crumpet, the heavy Victorian
  butterknife
  like a child's toy in his thick fingers. "Try the cream," he said,
  lowering his
  massive head and regarding her blandly over the tops of his glasses.
  	Kumiko wiped a shred of marmalade from her upper lip with a linen
  napkin.
  "Do you imagine I'll try to run away?"
  	"Run away? Are you considering that, running away?" He ate his
  crumpet,
  chewing stolidly, and glanced out into the garden, where fresh snow
  was falling.
  	"No," she said. "I have no intention of running away."
  	"Good," he said, and took another bite.
  	"Am I in danger, in the street?"
  	"Lord no," he said, with a sort of determined cheeriness, "you're
  safe as
  houses."
  	"I want to go out."
  	"No."
  	"But I go out with Sally."
  	"Yes," he said, "and she's a nasty piece of work, your Sally."
  	"I don't know this idiom."
  	"No going out alone. That's in our brief with your father,
  understand?
  You're fine out with Sally, but she isn't here. Nobody's liable to
  give you
  bother in any case, but why take chances? Now I'd be happy, you see,
  delighted
  to take you out, only I'm on duty here in case Swain has callers. So
  I can't.
  It's a shame, really it is." He looked so genuinely unhappy that she
  considered
  relenting. "Toast you another?" he asked, gesturing toward her plate.
  	"No, thank you." She put down her napkin. "It was very good," she
  added.
  	"Next time you should try the cream," he said. "Couldn't get it
  after the
  war. Rain blew in from Germany and the cows weren't right."
  	"Is Swain here now, Petal?"
  	"No."
  	"I never see him."
  	"Out and about. Business. There's cycles to it. Soon enough they'll
  all be
  calling here, and he'll be holding court again."
  	"Who, Petal?"
  	"Business types, you'd say."
  	"Kuromaku ," she said.
  	"Sorry?"
  	"Nothing," she said.

  She spent the afternoon alone in the billiard room, curled in a
  leather
  armchair, watching snow fall in the garden and the sundial become a
  featureless
  white upright. She pictured her mother there, wrapped in dark furs,
  alone in the
  garden as the snow fell, a princess-ballerina who drowned herself in
  the night
  waters of Sumida.
  	She stood up, chilled, and went around the billiard table to the
  marble
  hearth, where gasflame hissed softly beneath coals that could never
  be consumed.



  The Silver Walks

  She'd had this friend in Cleveland, Lanette, who'd taught her lots of
  things.
  How to get out of a car fast if a trick tried to lock the doors on
  you, how to
  act when you went to make a buy. Lanette was a little older and
  mainly used wiz,
  she said, "to move the down around," being frequently downed out on
  anything
  from endorphin analogs to plain old Tennessee opium. Otherwise, she
  said, she'd
  just sit there twelve hours in front of the vid watching any kind of
  shit at
  all. When the wiz added mobility to the warm invulnerability of a
  good down, she
  said, you really had something. But Mona had noticed that people who
  were
  seriously into downs spent a lot of time throwing up, and she
  couldn't see why
  anybody would watch a vid when they could stim just as easy. (Lanette
  said
  simstim was just more of what she wanted out of.)
  	She had Lanette on her mind because Lanette used to give her advice
  sometimes, like how to turn a bad night around. Tonight, she thought,
  Lanette
  would tell her to look for a bar and some company. She still had some
  money left
  from her last night's work in Florida, so it was a matter of finding
  a place
  that took cash.
  	She hit it right, first try. A good sign. Down a narrow flight of
  concrete
  stairs and into a smoky buzz of conversation and the familiar, muted
  thump of
  Shabu's "White Diamonds." No place for suits, but it wasn't what the
  pimps in
  Cleveland called a spot , either. She was no way interested in
  drinking in any
  spot, not tonight.
  	Somebody got up from the bar to leave just as she came in, so she
  nipped
  over quick and got his stool with the plastic still warm, her second
  sign.
  	The bartender pursed his lips and nodded when she showed him one of
  her
  bills, so she told him to get her a shot of bourbon and a beer on the
  side,
  which was what Eddy always got if he was paying for it himself. If
  somebody else
  was paying, he'd order mixed drinks the bartender didn't know how to
  make, then
  spend a long time explaining exactly how you made the thing. Then
  he'd drink it
  and bitch about how it wasn't as good as the ones they made in L.A.
  or Singapore
  or some other place she knew he'd never been.
  	The bourbon here was weird, sort of sour but real good once you got
  it
  down. She said that to the bartender, who asked her where she usually
  drank
  bourbon. She told him Cleveland and he nodded. That was eth and some
  shit
  supposed to remind you of bourbon, he said. When he told her how much
  of her
  money was left, she figured out this Sprawl bourbon was expensive
  stuff. It was
  doing its job, though, taking the bad edge off, so she drank the rest
  and
  started in on her beer.
  	Lanette liked bars but she never drank, just Coke or something. Mona

  always remembered one day she'd done two crystals at the same time,
  what Lanette
  called a two-rock hit, and she'd heard this voice in her skull say,
  just as
  clear as that, like it was somebody right in the room: It   's moving
  so fast ,
  it   's  standing still . And Lanette, who'd dissolved a matchhead of
  Memphis
  black in a cup of Chinese tea about an hour before, did half a
  crystal herself
  and then they'd gone out walking, just ghosting the rainy streets
  together in
  what felt to Mona like some perfect harmony where you didn't need to
  talk. And
  that voice had been right, there was no jangle to the rush, no tight-
  jawed
  jitter, just this sense of something, maybe Mona herself, expanding
  out from a
  still center. And they'd found a park, flat lawns flooded with silver
  puddles,
  and gone all around the paths, and Mona had a name for that memory:
  the Silver
  Walks.
  	And sometime after that Lanette was just gone, nobody saw her
  anymore, and
  some people said she'd gone to California, some people said Japan,
  and some
  people said she'd OD'd and gotten tossed out a window, what Eddy
  called a dry
  dive, but that wasn't the kind of thing Mona wanted to think about,
  so she sat
  up straight and looked around, and, yeah, this was a good place,
  small enough
  that people were kind of crowded in but sometimes that was okay. It
  was what
  Eddy called an art crowd, people who had some money and dressed sort
  of like
  they didn't, except their clothes fit right and you knew they'd
  bought them new.
  	There was a vid behind the bar, up over the bottles, and then she
  saw
  Angie there, looking square into the camera and saying something, but
  they had
  the sound down too low to hear over the crowd. Then there was a shot
  from up in
  the air, looking down on a row of houses that sat right at the edge
  of a beach,
  and then Angie was back, laughing and shaking her hair and giving the
  camera
  that half-sad grin.
  	"Hey," she said to the bartender, "there's Angie."
  	"Who?"
  	"Angie," Mona said, pointing up at the screen.
  	"Yeah," he said, "she's on some designer shit and decides to kick,
  so she
  goes to South America or somewhere and pays 'em a few mil to clean
  her act up
  for her."
  	"She can't be on shit."
  	The bartender looked at her. "Whatever."
  	"But how come she'd even start doing anything? I mean, she's Angie ,

  right?"
  	"Goes with the territory."
  	"But look at her," she protested, "she looks so good. . . ." But
  Angie was
  gone, replaced by a black tennis player.
  	"You think that's her? That's a talking head."
  	"Head?"
  	"Like a puppet," a voice behind her said, and she swung around far
  enough
  to see a ruff of sandy hair and a loose white grin. "Puppet," and
  held up his
  hand, wiggling thumb and fingers, "you know?"
  	She felt the bartender drop the exchange, moving off down the bar.
  The
  white grin widened. "So she doesn't have to do all that stuff
  herself, right?"
  	She smiled back. Cute one, smart eyes and a secret halo flashing her
  just
  the signal she wanted to read. No suit trick. Kinda skinny, she could
  like that
  tonight, and the loose look of fun around his mouth set strange
  against the
  bright smart eyes.
  	"Michael."
  	"Huh?"
  	"My name. Michael."
  	"Oh. Mona. I'm Mona."
  	"Where you from, Mona?"
  	"Florida."
  	And wouldn't Lanette just tell her go for it?
  	
  Eddy hated art-crowd people; they weren't buying what he was selling.
  He'd have
  hated Michael more, because Michael had a job and this loft in a co-
  op building.
  Or anyway he said it was a loft, but when they got there it was
  smaller than
  Mona thought a loft was supposed to be. The building was old, a
  factory or
  something; some of the walls were sandblasted brick and the ceilings
  were wood
  and timbers. But all of it had been chopped up into places like
  Michael's, a
  room not much bigger than the one back at the hotel, with a sleeping
  space off
  one side and a kitchen and bath off the other. It was on the top
  floor, though,
  so the ceiling was mostly skylight; maybe that made it a loft. There
  was a
  horizontal red paper shade below the skylight, hooked up to strings
  and pulleys,
  like a big kite. The place was kind of messy but the stuff that was
  scattered
  around was all new: some skinny white wire chairs strung with loops
  of clear
  plastic to sit on, a stack of entertainment modules, a work station,
  and a
  silver leather couch.
  	They started out on the couch but she didn't like the way her skin
  stuck
  to it, so they moved over to the bed, back in its alcove.
  	That was when she saw the recording gear, stim stuff, on white
  shelves on
  the wall. But the wiz had kicked in again, and anyway, if you've
  decided to go
  for it, you might as well. He got her into the pickup, a black rubber
  collar
  with trode-tipped fingers pressing the base of her skull. Wireless;
  she knew
  that was expensive.
  	While he was getting his own set on and checking the gear on the
  walls, he
  talked about his job, how he worked for a company in Memphis that
  thought up new
  names for companies. Right now he was trying to think of one for a
  company
  called Cathode Cathay. They need it bad, he said, and laughed, but
  then he said
  it wasn't easy. Because there were so many companies already that the
  good names
  had been used up. He had a computer that knew all the names of all
  the
  companies, and another one that made up words you could use for
  names, and
  another one that checked if the made-up words meant "dickhead" or
  something in
  Chinese or Swedish. But the company he worked for didn't just sell
  names, they
  sold what he called image, so he had to work with a bunch of other
  people to
  make sure the name he came up with fit the rest of the package.
  	Then he got into bed with her and it wasn't really great, like the
  fun was
  gone and she might as well have been with a trick, how she just lay
  there
  thinking he was recording it all so he could play it back when he
  wanted, and
  how many others did he have in there anyway?
  	So she lay there beside him, afterward, listening to him breathe,
  until
  the wiz started turning tight little circles down on the floor of her
  skull,
  flipping her the same sequence of unconnected images over and over:
  the plastic
  bag she'd kept her things in down in Florida, with its twist of wire
  to keep the
  bugs out -- the old man sitting at the chipboard table, peeling a
  potato with a
  butcher knife worn down to a nub about as long as her thumb -- a
  krill place in
  Cleveland that was shaped like a shrimp or something, the plates of
  its arched
  back bent from sheet metal and clear plastic, painted pink and orange
  -- the
  preacher she'd seen when she'd gone to get her new clothes, him and
  his pale,
  fuzzy Jesus. Each time the preacher came around, he was about to say
  something,
  but he never did. She knew it wouldn't stop unless she got up and got
  her mind
  onto something else. She crawled off the bed and stood there looking
  at Michael
  in the gray glow from the skylight. Rapture. Rapture 's coming .

  	So she went out into the room and pulled her dress on because she
  was
  cold. She sat on the silver couch. The red shade turned the gray of
  the skylight
  pink, as it got lighter outside. She wondered what a place like this
  cost.
  	Now that she couldn't see him, she had trouble remembering what he
  looked
  like. Well , she thought, he won 't have any trouble remembering me ,
  but
  thinking that made her feel hit or hurt or jerked around, like she
  wished she'd
  stayed at the hotel and stimmed Angie.
  	The gray-pink light was filling up the room, pooling, starting to
  curdle
  at the edges. Something about it reminded her of Lanette and the
  stories that
  she'd OD'd. Sometimes people OD'd in other people's places, and the
  easiest
  thing was just to toss them out the window, so the cops couldn't tell
  where they
  came from.
  	But she wasn't going to think about that, so she went into the
  kitchen and
  looked through the fridge and the cabinets. There was a bag of coffee
  beans in
  the freezer, but coffee gave you the shakes on wiz. There were a lot
  of little
  foil packets with Japanese labels, freeze-dried stuff. She found a
  package of
  teabags and tore the seal from one of the bottles of water in the
  fridge. She
  put some of the water in a pan and fiddled with the cooker until she
  got it to
  heat up. The elements were white circles printed on the black
  countertop; you
  put the pan in the center of a circle and touched a red dot printed
  beside it.
  When the water was hot, she tossed one of the teabags in and moved
  the pan off
  the element.
  	She leaned over the pan, inhaling herb-scented steam.
  	She never forgot how Eddy looked, when he wasn't around. Maybe he
  wasn't
  much, but whatever he was, he was there. You have to have one face
  around that
  doesn't change. But thinking about Eddy now maybe wasn't such a good
  idea
  either. Pretty soon the crash would come on, and before then she'd
  have to
  figure out a way to get back to the hotel, and suddenly it seemed
  like
  everything was too complicated, too many things to do, angles to
  figure, and
  that was  the crash, when you had to start worrying about putting the
  day side
  together again.
  	She didn't think Prior was going to let Eddy hit her, though,
  because
  whatever he wanted had something to do with her looks. She turned
  around to get
  a cup.
  	Prior was there in a black coat. She heard her throat make a weird
  little
  noise all by itself.
  	She'd seen things before, crashing on wiz; if you looked at them
  hard
  enough, they went away. She tried it on Prior but it didn't work.
  	He just stood there, with a kind of plastic gun in his hand, not
  pointing
  it at her, just holding it. He was wearing gloves like the ones
  Gerald had worn
  for the examination. He didn't look mad but for once he wasn't
  smiling. And for
  a long time he didn't say anything at all, and Mona didn't either.
  	"Who's here?" Like you'd ask at a party.
  	"Michael."
  	"Where?"
  	She pointed toward the sleeping space.
  	"Get your shoes."
  	She walked past him, out of the kitchen, bending automatically to
  hook her
  underwear up from the carpet. Her shoes were by the couch.
  	He followed and watched her put on her shoes. He still had the gun
  in his
  hand. With his other hand, he took Michael's leather jacket from the
  back of the
  couch and tossed it to her. "Put it on," he said. She did, and tucked
  her
  underwear into one of its pockets.
  	He picked up the torn white raincoat, wadded it into a ball, and put
  it
  into his coat pocket.
  	Michael was snoring. Maybe he'd wake up soon and play it all back.
  With
  the gear he had, he didn't really need anybody there.
  	In the corridor, she watched Prior relock the door with a gray box.
  The
  gun was gone, but she hadn't seen him put it away. The box had a
  length of red
  flex sticking out of it with an ordinary-looking magnetic key on the
  end.
  	Out in the street was cold. He took her down the block and opened
  the door
  of a little white three-wheeler. She got in. He got in the driver's
  side and
  peeled off the gloves. He started the car; she watched a blowing
  cloud reflected
  in the copper-mirrored side of a business tower.
  	"He'll think I stole it," she said, looking down at the jacket.
  	Then the wiz flashed a final card, ragged cascade of neurons across
  her
  synapses: Cleveland in the rain and a good feeling she had once,
  walking.
  	Silver.



  Filament in Strata

  I  'm your ideal audience , Hans --  as the recording began for the
  second time.
  How could you have a more attentive viewer? And you did capture her ,
  Hans: I
  know , because I dream her memories. I see how close you came.

  Yes, you captured them. The journey out, the building of walls, the
  long spiral
  in. They were about walls, weren't they? The labyrinth of blood, of
  family. The
  maze hung against the void, saying, We are that within , that without
  is other ,
  here forever shall we dwell . And the darkness was there from the
  beginning. . .
  . You found it repeatedly in the eyes of Marie-France, pinned it in a
  slow zoom
  against the shadowed orbits of the skull. Early on she ceased to
  allow her image
  to be recorded. You worked with what you had. You justified her
  image, rotated
  her through planes of light, planes of shadow, generated models,
  mapped her
  skull in grids of neon. You used special programs to age her images
  according to
  statistical models, animation systems to bring your mature Marie-
  France to life.
  You reduced her image to a vast but finite number of points and
  stirred them,
  let new forms emerge, chose those that seemed to speak to you. . . .
  And then
  you went on to the others, to Ashpool and the daughter whose face
  frames your
  work, its first and final image.

  The second viewing solidified their history for her, allowed her to
  slot
  Becker's shards along a time line that began with the marriage of
  Tessier and
  Ashpool, a union commented upon, in its day, primarily in the media
  of corporate
  finance. Each was heir to a more than modest empire, Tessier to a
  family fortune
  founded on nine basic patents in applied biochemistry and Ashpool to
  the great
  Melbourne-based engineering firm that bore his father's name. It was
  marriage as
  merger, to the journalists, though the resulting corporate entity was
  viewed by
  most as ungainly, a chimera with two wildly dissimilar heads.
  	But it was possible, then, in photographs of Ashpool, to see the
  boredom
  vanish, and in its place a complete surety of purpose. The effect was

  unflattering -- indeed, frightening: the hard, beautiful face grew
  harder still,
  merciless in its intent.
  	Within a year of his marriage to Marie-France Tessier, Ashpool had
  divested himself of 90 percent of his firm's holdings, reinvesting in
  orbital
  properties and shuttle utilities, and the fruit of the living union,
  two
  children, brother and sister, were being brought to term by
  surrogates in their
  mother's Biarritz villa.
  	Tessier-Ashpool ascended to high orbit's archipelago to find the
  ecliptic
  sparsely marked with military stations and the first automated
  factories of the
  cartels. And here they began to build. Their combined wealth,
  initially, would
  barely have matched Ono-Sendai's outlay for a single process-module
  of that
  multinational's
  orbital semiconductor operation, but Marie-France demonstrated an
  unexpected
  entrepreneurial flare, establishing a highly profitable data haven
  serving the
  needs of less reputable sectors of the international banking
  community. This in
  turn generated links with the banks themselves, and with their
  clients. Ashpool
  borrowed heavily and the wall of lunar concrete that would be
  Freeside grew and
  curved, enclosing its creators.
  	When war came, Tessier-Ashpool were behind that wall. They watched
  Bonn
  flash and die, and Beograd. The construction of the spindle continued
  with only
  minor interruptions, during those three weeks; later, during the
  stunned and
  chaotic decade that followed, it would sometimes be more difficult.
  	The children, Jean and Jane, were with them now, the villa at
  Biarritz
  having gone to finance construction of a cryogenic storage facility
  for their
  home, the Villa Straylight. The first occupants of the vault were ten
  pairs of
  cloned embryos, 2Jean and 2Jane, 3Jean and 3Jane. . . . There were
  numerous laws
  forbidding or otherwise governing the artificial replication of an
  individual's
  genetic material, but there were also numerous questions of
  jurisdiction. . . .

  She halted the replay and asked the house to return to the previous
  sequence.
  Photographs of another cryogenic storage unit built by the Swiss
  manufacturers
  of the Tessier-Ashpool vault. Becker's assumption of similarity had
  been
  correct, she knew: these circular doors of black glass, trimmed with
  chrome,
  were central images in the other's memory, potent and totemic.
  	The images ran forward again, into zero-gravity construction of
  structures
  on the spindle's inner surface, installation of a Lado-Acheson solar
  energy
  system, the establishment of atmosphere and rotational gravity. . . .
  Becker had
  found himself with an embarrassment of riches, hours of glossy
  documentation.
  His response was a savage, stuttering montage that sheared away the
  superficial
  lyricism of the original material, isolating the tense, exhausted
  faces of
  individual workers amid a hivelike frenzy of machinery. Freeside
  greened and
  bloomed in a fast-forward flutter of recorded dawns and synthetic
  sunsets; a
  lush, sealed land, jeweled with turquoise pools. Tessier and Ashpool
  emerged for
  the opening ceremonies, out of Straylight, their hidden compound at
  the
  spindle's tip, markedly uninterested as they surveyed the country
  they had
  built. Here Becker slowed and again began his obsessive analysis.
  This would be
  the last time Marie-France faced a camera; Becker explored the planes
  of her
  face in a tortured, extended fugue, the movement of his images in
  exquisite
  counterpoise with the sinuous line of feedback that curved and
  whipped through
  the shifting static levels of his soundtrack.

  Angie called pause again, rose from the bed, went to the window. She
  felt an
  elation, an unexpected sense of strength and inner unity. She'd felt
  this way
  seven years earlier, in New Jersey, learning that others knew the
  ones who came
  to her in dreams, called them the loa, Divine Horsemen, named them
  and summoned
  them and bargained with them for favor.
  	Even then, there had been confusion. Bobby had argued that
  Linglessou, who
  rode Beauvoir in the oumphor, and the Linglessou of the matrix were
  separate
  entities, if in fact the former was an entity at all. "They been
  doing that for
  ten thousand years," he'd say, "dancing and getting crazy, but
  there's only been
  those things in cyberspace for seven, eight years." Bobby believed
  the old
  cowboys, the ones he bought drinks for in the Gentlemen Loser
  whenever Angie's
  career took him to the Sprawl, who maintained that the loa were
  recent arrivals.
  The old cowboys looked back to a time when nerve and talent were the
  sole
  deciding factors in a console artist's career, although Beauvoir
  would have
  argued that it required no less to deal with the loa.
  	"But they come to me," she'd argued. "I don't need a deck."
  	"It's what you got in your head. What your daddy did . . ."
  	Bobby had told her about a general consensus among the old cowboys
  that
  there had been a day when things had changed, although there was
  disagreement as
  to how and when.
  	When It Changed, they called it, and Bobby had taken a disguised
  Angie to
  the Loser to listen to them, dogged by anxious Net security men who
  weren't
  allowed past the door. The barring of the security men had impressed
  her more
  than the talk, at the time. The Gentleman Loser had been a cowboy bar
  since the
  war that had seen the birth of the new technology, and the Sprawl
  offered no
  more exclusive criminal environment -- though by the time of Angie's
  visit that
  exclusivity had long included a certain assumption of retirement on
  the part of
  regulars. The hot kids no longer hustled, in the Loser, but some of
  them came to
  listen.
  	Now, in the bedroom of the house at Malibu, Angie remembered them
  talking,
  their stories of When It Changed, aware that some part of her was
  attempting to
  collate those memories, those stories, with her own history and that
  of Tessier-
  Ashpool.

  3Jane was the filament, Tessier-Ashpool the strata, her birthdate
  officially
  listed as one with her nineteen sibling clones. Becker's
  "interrogation" grew
  more heated still, when 3Jane was brought to term in yet another
  surrogate womb,
  delivered by cesarean section in Straylight's surgery. The critics
  agreed: 3Jane
  was Becker's trigger. With 3Jane's birth, the focus of the
  documentary shifted
  subtly, exhibiting a new intensity, a heightening of obsession -- a
  sense, more
  than one critic had said, of sin.
  	3Jane became the focus, a seam of perverse gold through the granite
  of the
  family. No , Angie thought, silver , pale and moonstruck . Examining
  a Chinese
  tourist's photograph of 3Jane and two sisters beside the pool of a
  Freeside
  hotel, Becker returns repeatedly to 3Jane's eyes, the hollow of her
  collarbone,
  the fragility of her wrists. Physically, the sisters are identical,
  yet
  something informs  3Jane, and Becker's quest for the nature of this
  information
  becomes the work's central thrust.
  	Freeside prospers as the archipelago expands. Banking nexus,
  brothel, data
  haven, neutral territory for warring corporations, the spindle comes
  to play an
  increasingly complex role in high-orbit history, while Tessier-
  Ashpool S.A.
  recedes behind yet another wall, this one composed of subsidiary
  corporations.
  Marie-France's name surfaces briefly, in connection with a Geneva
  patent trial
  concerning certain advances in the field of artificial intelligence,
  and
  Tessier-Ashpool's massive funding of research in this area is
  revealed for the
  first time. Once again the family demonstrates its peculiar ability
  to fade from
  sight, entering another period of obscurity, one which will end with
  the death
  of Marie-France.
  	There would be persistent rumors of murder, but any attempt to
  investigate
  would founder on the family's wealth and isolation, the peculiar
  breadth and
  intricacy of their political and financial connections.
  	Angie, screening Becker for the second time, knew the identity of
  Marie-
  France Tessier's murderer.

  At dawn, she made coffee in the unlit kitchen and sat watching the
  pale line of
  the surf.
  	"Continuity."
  	"Hello, Angie."
  	"Do you know how to reach Hans Becker?"
  	"I have his agent's number in Paris."
  	"Has he done anything since Antarctica?  "
  	"Not that I know of."
  	"And how long has that been?"
  	"Five years."
  	"Thanks."
  	"You're welcome, Angie."
  	"Goodbye."
  	"Goodbye, Angie."
  	Had Becker assumed that 3Jane was responsible for Ashpool's eventual

  death? He seemed to suggest it, in an oblique way.
  	"Continuity."
  	"Hello, Angie."
  	"The folklore of console jockeys, Continuity. What do you know about

  that?" And what will Swift make of all this?  she wondered.
  	"What would you like to know, Angie?"
  	" 'When It Changed' . . ."
  	"The mythform is usually encountered in one of two modes. One mode
  assumes
  that the cyberspace matrix is inhabited, or perhaps visited, by
  entities whose
  characteristics correspond with the primary mythform of a 'hidden
  people.' The
  other involves assumptions of omniscience, omnipotence, and
  incomprehensibility
  on the part of the matrix itself."
  	"That the matrix is God?"
  	"In a manner of speaking, although it would be more accurate, in
  terms of
  the mythform, to say that the matrix has  a God, since this being's
  omniscience
  and omnipotence are assumed to be limited to the matrix."
  	"If it has limits, it isn't omnipotent."
  	"Exactly. Notice that the mythform doesn't credit the being with
  immortality, as would ordinarily be the case in belief systems
  positing a
  supreme being, at least in terms of your particular culture.
  Cyberspace exists,
  insofar as it can be said to exist, by virtue of human agency."
  	"Like you."
  	"Yes."
  	She wandered into the living room, where the Louis XVI chairs were
  skeletal in the gray light, their carved legs like gilded bones.
  	"If there were such a being," she said, "you'd be a part of it,
  wouldn't
  you?"
  	"Yes."
  	"Would you know?"
  	"Not necessarily."
  	"Do  you know?"
  	"No."
  	"Do you rule out the possibility?"
  	"No."
  	"Do you think this is a strange conversation, Continuity?" Her
  cheeks were
  wet with tears, although she hadn't felt them start.
  	"No."
  	"How do the stories about --" she hesitated, having almost said the
  loa ,
  "about things in the matrix, how do they fit in to this supreme-being
  idea?"
  	"They don't. Both are variants of 'When it Changed.' Both are of
  very
  recent origin."
  	"How recent?"
  	"Approximately fifteen years."



  Jump City

  She woke with Sally's cool palm pressed to her mouth, the other hand
  gesturing
  for silence.
  	The little lamps were on, the ones set into the panels of gold-
  flecked
  mirror. One of her bags was open, on the giant bed, a neat little
  stack of
  clothing beside it.
  	Sally tapped her index finger against closed lips, then gestured
  toward
  the case and the clothing.
  	Kumiko slid from beneath the duvet and tugged on a sweater against
  the
  cold. She looked at Sally again and considered speaking; whatever
  this was, she
  thought, a word might bring Petal. She was dressed as Kumiko had last
  seen her,
  in the shearling jacket, her tartan scarf knotted beneath her chin.
  She repeated
  the gesture: pack.
  	Kumiko dressed quickly, then began to put the clothing into the
  case.
  Sally moved restlessly, silently around the room, opening drawers,
  closing them.
  She found Kumiko's passport, a black plastic slab embossed with a
  gold
  chrysanthemum, and hung it around Kumiko's neck on its black nylon
  cord. She
  vanished into the veneered cubicle and emerged with the suede bag
  that held
  Kumiko's toilet things.
  	As Kumiko was sealing the case, the gilt-and-ivory telephone began
  to
  chime.
  	Sally ignored it, took the suitcase from the bed, opened the door,
  took
  Kumiko's hand, and pulled her out into the darkened hallway.
  Releasing her hand,
  Sally closed the door behind them, muffling the phone and leaving
  them in total
  darkness. Kumiko let herself be guided into the lift -- she knew it
  by its smell
  of oil and furniture polish, the rattle of the metal gate.
  	Then they were descending.
  	Petal was waiting for them in the bright white foyer, wrapped in an
  enormous faded flannel robe. He wore his decrepit slippers; his legs,
  below the
  robe's hem, were very white. He held a gun in his hands, a squat,
  thick thing,
  dull black. "Fucking hell," he said softly, as he saw them there,
  "and what's
  this then?"
  	"She's going with me," Sally said.
  	"That," said Petal, slowly, "is entirely impossible."
  	"Kumi," Sally said, her hand on Kumiko's back, guiding her out of
  the
  lift, "there's a car waiting."
  	"You can't do this," Petal said, but Kumiko sensed his confusion,
  his
  uncertainty.
  	"So fucking shoot me, Petal."
  	Petal lowered the gun. "It's Swain who'll fucking shoot me , if you
  have
  your way."
  	"If he were here, he'd be in the same bind, wouldn't he?"
  	"Please," Petal said, "don't."
  	"She'll be fine. Not to worry. Open the door."
  	"Sally," Kumiko said, "where are we going?"
  	"The Sprawl."

  And woke again, huddled under Sally's shearling jacket, to the mild
  vibration of
  supersonic flight. She remembered the huge, low car waiting in the
  crescent;
  floodlights leaping out from the facades of Swain's houses as she and
  Sally
  reached the pavement; Tick's sweaty face glimpsed through one of the
  car's
  windows; Sally heaving open a door and bundling her in; Tick cursing
  softly and
  steadily as the car accelerated; the complaint of the tires as he
  swung them too
  sharply into Kensington Park Road; Sally telling him to slow down, to
  let the
  car drive.
  	And there, in the car, she'd remembered returning the Maas-Neotek
  unit to
  its hiding place behind the marble bust -- Colin left behind with all
  his fox-
  print poise, the elbows of his jacket worn like Petal's slippers -
  - no more than
  what he was, a ghost.
  	"Forty minutes," Sally said now, from the seat beside her. "Good you
  got
  some sleep. They'll bring us breakfast soon. Remember the name on
  your passport?
  Good. Now don't ask me any questions until I've had some coffee,
  okay?"

  Kumiko knew the Sprawl from a thousand stims; a fascination with the
  vast
  conurbation was a common feature of Japanese popular culture.
  	She'd had few preconceptions of England when she arrived there:
  vague
  images of several famous structures, unfocused impressions of a
  society her own
  seemed to regard as quaint and stagnant. (In her mother's stories,
  the princess-
  ballerina discovered that the English, however admiring, couldn't
  afford to pay
  her to dance.) London, so far, had run counter to her expectations,
  with its
  energy, its evident affluence, the Ginza bustle of its great shopping
  streets.
  	She had many preconceptions of the Sprawl, most of which were
  shattered
  within a few hours of arrival.
  	But as she waited beside Sally in a line of other travelers, in a
  vast,
  hollow customs hall whose ceiling struts rose away into darkness, a
  darkness
  broken at intervals by pale globes -- globes circled, though it was
  winter, by
  clouds of insects, as though the building possessed its own discrete
  climate --
  it was the stim-Sprawl she imagined, the sensual electric backdrop
  for the fast-
  forward lives of Angela Mitchell and Robin Lanier.
  	Through customs -- which consisted, in spite of the endless wait in
  line,
  of sliding her passport along a greasy-looking metal slot -- and out
  into a
  frantic concrete bay where driverless baggage carts plowed slowly
  through a
  crowd that milled and struggled for ground transportation.
  	Someone took her bag. Reached down and took it from her with an
  ease, a
  confidence, that suggested he was meant to take it, that he was a
  functionary
  performing an accustomed task, like the young women bowing welcome at
  the doors
  of Tokyo department stores. And Sally kicked him. Kicked him in the
  back of the
  knee, pivoting smoothly, like the Thai boxing girls in Swain's
  billiard room,
  snatching the bag before the back of his skull and the stained
  concrete met with
  an audible crack.
  	Then Sally was pulling her, the crowd had closed over the prone
  figure,
  and the sudden, casual violence might have been a dream, except that
  Sally was
  smiling for the first time since they'd left London.
  	Feeling entirely dislocated now, Kumiko watched as Sally made a
  survey of
  available vehicles, quickly bribed a uniformed dispatcher,
  intimidated three
  other prospective fares, and chivied Kumiko into a pock- marked,
  slabsided
  hovercraft, painted in diagonal bands of yellow and black. The
  passenger
  compartment was barren and remarkably uncomfortable-looking. The
  driver, if
  there was one, was invisible beyond a scrawled bulkhead of plastic
  armor. The
  nub of a video camera protruded where the bulkhead met the roof, and
  someone had
  drawn a crude figure there, a male torso, the camera its phallus. As
  Sally
  climbed in, slamming the door behind her, a speaker grated something
  in what
  Kumiko assumed was a dialect of English.
  	"Manhattan," Sally said. She took a sheaf of paper currency from her

  jacket pocket and fanned it below the camera.
  	The speaker made interrogatory noises.
  	"Midtown. Tell you where when we get there."
  	The cab's apron bag inflated, the light in the passenger compartment
  was
  extinguished, and they were on their way.



  Jail-Time

  He was in Gentry's loft. He was watching Cherry do nurse-things to
  Gentry.
  Cherry looked over at him from where she sat on the edge of Gentry's
  bed. "How
  y'doin', Slick?"
  	"Okay . . . I'm okay."
  	"Remember me asking you before?"

  He was looking down at the face of the man Kid Afrika called the
  Count. Cherry
  was fiddling with something on the stretcher's superstructure, a bag
  of fluid
  the color of oatmeal.
  	"How y'feel, Slick?"
  	"Feel okay."
  	"You're not okay. You keep for --"

  He was sitting on the floor of Gentry's loft. His face was wet.
  Cherry was
  kneeling beside him, close, her hands on his shoulders.
  	"You did time?"
  	He nodded.
  	"Chemo-penal unit?"
  	"Yeah . . ."
  	"Induced Korsakov's?"
  	He --

  "Episodes?" Cherry asked him. He was sitting on the floor in Gentry's
  loft.
  Where was Gentry? "You get episodes like this? Short-term memory
  goes?"
  	How did she know? Where was Gentry?
  	"What's the trigger?"
  	

  "What triggers the syndrome, Slick? What kicks you into jail-time?"
  He was
  sitting on the floor in Gentry's loft and Cherry was practically on
  top of him.
  	"Stress," he said, wondering how she knew about that. "Where's
  Gentry?"
  	"I put him to bed."
  	"Why?"
  	"He collapsed. When he saw that thing . . ."
  	"What thing?"

  Cherry was pressing a pink derm against his wrist. "Heavy trank," she
  said.
  "Maybe get you out of it . . ."
  	"Out of what?"
  	She sighed. "Never mind."

  He woke in bed with Cherry Chesterfield. He had all his clothes on,
  everything
  but his jacket and his boots. The tip of his erect cock was trapped
  behind his
  belt buckle, pressing up against the warm denim over Cherry's ass.
  	"Don't get any ideas."
  	Winter light through the patchwork window and his breath white when
  he
  spoke. "What happened?" Why was it so cold in the room? He remembered
  Gentry's
  scream as the thing lunged for him --
  	He sat up straight, fast.
  	"Easy," she said, rolling over. "Lie back. Don't know what it takes
  to set
  you off . . ."
  	"What d'y' mean?"
  	"Lie back. Get under the covers. Wanna freeze?"
  	He did as she said. "You were in jail, right? In a chemo-penal
  unit."
  	"Yeah . . . How'd you know?"
  	"You told me. Last night. You told me stress could trigger a
  flashback. So
  that's what happened. That thing went for your buddy, you jumped for
  the switch,
  shut that table down. He fell over, cut his head. I was taking care
  of that when
  I noticed you were funny. Figured out you only had a consecutive
  memory for
  about five minutes at a stretch. Get that in shock cases, sometimes,
  or
  concussion . . ."
  	"Where is he? Gentry."
  	"He's in bed up in his place, plastered with downs. The shape he was
  in, I
  figured he could do with about a day's sleep. Anyway, it gets him out
  of our
  hair for a while."
  	Slick closed his eyes and saw the gray thing again, the thing that
  had
  gone for Gentry. Man-shaped, sort of, or like an ape. Nothing like
  the
  convoluted shaped Gentry's equipment generated in his search for the
  Shape.
  	"I think the power's out," Cherry said. "The light went out in here
  about
  six hours ago."
  	He opened his eyes. The cold. Gentry hadn't made his moves on the
  console.
  He groaned.
  	
  He left Cherry to make coffee on the butane cooker and went looking
  for Little
  Bird. He found him by the smell of smoke. Little Bird had built a
  fire in a
  steel canister and gone to sleep curled around it like a dog. "Hey,"
  Slick said,
  nudging the boy with his boot, "get up. We got problems."
  	"Fuckin' juice's out," he mumbled, sitting up in a greasy nylon
  sleeping
  bag grimed the exact shade of Factory's floor.
  	"I noticed. That's problem number one. Number two is we need a truck
  or a
  hover or something. We have to get that guy out of here. It's not
  working out
  with Gentry."
  	"But Gentry's the only one can fix the juice." Little Bird got to
  his
  feet, shivering.
  	"Gentry's sleeping. Who's got a truck?"
  	"Marvie 'n' them," Little Bird said, and lapsed into a racking
  cough.
  	"Take Gentry's bike. Bring it back in the truck. Now."
  	Little Bird recovered from his coughing fit. "No shit?"
  	"You know how to ride it, don't you?"
  	"Yeah, but Gentry, he'll get --"
  	"You let me worry about that. You know where he keeps that spare
  key?"
  	"Uh, yeah," Little Bird said shyly. "Say," he ventured, "what if
  Marvie
  'n' them don't wanna  gimme that truck?"
  	"Give 'em this," Slick said, pulling the Ziploc full of drugs from
  the
  pocket of his jacket. Cherry had taken it after she'd bandaged
  Gentry's head.
  "And give 'em all  of it, understand? 'Cause I'm gonna ask 'em
  later."

  Cherry's beeper went off while they were drinking coffee in Slick's
  room,
  huddled side by side on the edge of the bed. He'd been telling her as
  much as he
  knew about the Korsakov's, because she'd asked him. He hadn't ever
  really told
  anybody about it, and it was funny how little he actually knew. He
  told her
  about previous flashbacks, then tried to explain how the system
  worked in jail.
  The trick was that you retained long-term memory up to the point
  where they put
  you on the stuff. That way, they could train you to do something
  before you
  started serving your time and you didn't forget how to do it. Mostly
  you did
  stuff that robots could do. They'd trained him to assemble miniature
  geartrains;
  when he'd learned to put one together inside five minutes, that was
  it.
  	"And they didn't do anything else?" she asked.
  	"Just those geartrains."
  	"No, I mean like brainlocks."
  	He looked at her. The sore on her lip was almost healed. "If they do
  that,
  they don't tell you," he said.
  	Then the beeper went off in one of her jackets.
  	"Something's wrong," she said, getting up quickly.

  They found Gentry kneeling beside the stretcher with something black
  in his
  hands. Cherry snatched the thing before Gentry could move. He stayed
  where he
  was, blinking up at her.
  	"Takes a lot to keep you under, mister." She handed Slick the black
  thing.
  A retinal camera.
  	"We have to find out who he is," Gentry said. His voice was thick
  with the
  downs she'd administered, but Slick sensed that the bad edge of
  craziness had
  receded.
  	"Hell," she said, "you don't even know if these are the eyes he had
  a year
  ago."
  	Gentry touched the bandage on his temple. "You saw it too, didn't
  you?"
  	"Yeah," Cherry said, "he shut it off."
  	"It was the shock," Gentry said. "I hadn't imagined. . . . There was
  no
  real danger. I wasn't ready. . . ."
  	"You were out of your fucking skull," Cherry said.
  	Gentry got unsteadily to his feet.
  	"He's leaving," Slick said. "I sent Bird to borrow a truck. I don't
  like
  any of this shit."
  	Cherry stared at him. "Leaving where? I gotta go  with him. It's my
  job."
  	"I know a place," Slick lied. "The power's out, Gentry."
  	"You can't take him anywhere," Gentry said.
  	"Like hell."
  	"No." Gentry swayed slightly. "He stays. The jumpers are in place. I
  won't
  disturb him again. Cherry can stay here."
  	"You're going to have to explain some shit here, Gentry," Slick
  said.
  	"To begin with," Gentry said, and pointed at the thing above the
  Count's
  head, "this isn't an 'LF'; it's an aleph ."



  Under the Knife

  Hotel again, sinking into the deathmarch of wiz-crash, Prior leading
  her into
  the lobby, Japanese tourists already up and clustering around bored-
  looking
  guides. And one foot, one foot, one foot after the other, her head so
  heavy now,
  like somebody punched a hole in the top, poured in a quarter-kilo of
  dull lead,
  and her teeth felt like they belonged to somebody else, too big; she
  slumped
  against the side of the elevator when its extra gravity pressed down.
  	"Where's Eddy?"
  	"Eddy's gone, Mona."
  	Got her eyes open wide and she looked at him, seeing the smile was
  back,
  bastard. "What?"
  	"Eddy's been bought out. Compensated. He's on his way to Macau with
  a line
  of credit. Nice little gambling junket."
  	"Compensated?"
  	"For his investment. In you. For his time."
  	"His time?  " The doors slid open on blue-carpeted corridor.
  	And something falling through her, cold: Eddy hated gambling.
  	"You're working for us now, Mona. We wouldn't want you off on your
  own
  again."
  	But you did , she thought, you let me go. And you knew where to find
  me.
  	Eddy  's gone . . . .

  She didn't remember falling asleep. She was still wearing the dress,
  Michael's
  jacket tucked up around her shoulders like a blanket. She could see
  the corner
  of the mountainside building without moving her head, but the bighorn
  wasn't
  there.
  	The Angie stims were still sealed in plastic. She took one at
  random, slit
  the wrapper with her thumbnail, slotted it, and put the trodes on.
  She wasn't
  thinking; her hands seemed to know what to do, friendly animals that
  wouldn't
  hurt her. One of them touched PLAY and she slid into the Angie-world,
  pure as
  any drug, slow saxophone and limo glide through some European city,
  how the
  streets revolved around her, around the driverless car, broad
  avenues, dawn-
  clean and almost empty, with the touch of fur against her shoulders,
  and rolling
  on, down a straight road through flat fields, edged with perfect,
  identical
  trees.
  	And turning, tires over raked gravel, up a winding drive through
  parkland
  where the dew was silver, here an iron deer, there a wet white marble
  torso . .
  . The house was vast, old, unlike any house she'd seen before, but
  the car swung
  past it, then passed several smaller buildings, coming at last to the
  edge of a
  smooth broad field.
  	There were gliders tethered there, translucent membrane drawn taut
  over
  fragile-looking frames of polycarbon. They quivered slightly in the
  morning
  breeze. Robin Lanier was waiting beside them, handsome, easy Robin in
  a rough
  black sweater, who played opposite Angie in almost all of her stims.
  	And she was leaving the car now, taking to the field, laughing when
  her
  heels sank into the grass. And the rest of the way to Robin with her
  shoes in
  her hand, grinning, into his arms and his smell, his eyes.
  	A whirl, a dance of editing, condensing the business of boarding the

  glider on the silver induction rail, and they were flung smoothly
  down the
  length of the field, lifting now, banking to catch the wind, and up,
  up, until
  the great house was an angular pebble in a swathe of green, green cut
  by a dull
  gleam of curving river --
  	-- and Prior's hand on STOP, smell of food from the cart beside the
  bed
  knotting her stomach, the dull sick ache of wiz-crash in every joint.
  "Eat," he
  said. "We're leaving soon." He took the metal cover from one of the
  plates.
  "Club sandwich," he said, "coffee, pastries. Doctor's orders. Once
  you're at the
  clinic, you won't be eating for a while. . . ."
  	"Clinic?"
  	"Gerald's place. Baltimore."
  	"Why?"
  	"Gerald's a cosmetic surgeon. You're having some work done. All of
  it
  reversible later, if you want, but we think you'll be pleased with
  the results.
  Very pleased." The smile. "Anyone ever tell you how much you look
  like Angie,
  Mona?"
  	She looked up at him, said nothing. Managed to sit up, to drink half
  a cup
  of watery black coffee. She couldn't bring herself to look at the
  sandwich, but
  she ate one of the pastries. It tasted like cardboard.
  	Baltimore. She wasn't too sure where that was.
  	And somewhere a glider hung forever above a tame green country, fur
  against her shoulder, and Angie must still be there, still laughing.
  . . .

  An hour later, in the lobby, while Prior signed the bill, she saw
  Eddy's black
  gator-clone suitcases go by on a robot baggage cart, and that was
  when she knew
  for sure that he was dead.

  Gerald's office had a sign with big old-fashioned letters, fourth
  floor of a
  condo rack in what Prior said was Baltimore. The kind of building
  where they
  throw up a framework and commercial tenants bring their own modules,
  plug-ins.
  Like a highrise trailer camp, everything snaked with bundled cables,
  optics,
  lines for sewage and water. "What's it say?" she asked Prior.
  	"Gerald Chin, Dentist."
  	"You said he was a plastic surgeon."
  	"He is."
  	"Why can't we just go to a boutique like everybody else?"
  	He didn't answer.
  	She couldn't really feel much now, and part of her knew that she
  wasn't as
  scared as she should be. Maybe that was okay, though, because if she
  got scared
  enough she wouldn't be able to do anything, and definitely she wanted
  to get out
  of the whole deal, whatever it was. On the drive over, she'd
  discovered this
  lump in the pocket of Michael's jacket. It had taken her ten minutes
  to figure
  out it was a shockrod, like nervous suits carried. It felt like a
  screwdriver
  handle with a pair of blunt metal horns where the shaft should be. It
  probably
  charged off wall current; she just hoped Michael had kept up the
  charge. She
  figured Prior didn't know it was there. They were legal, most places,
  because
  they weren't supposed to do much permanent damage, but Lanette had
  known a girl
  who'd gotten worked over real bad with one and never got much better.
  	If Prior didn't know it was in her pocket, it meant he didn't know
  everything, and he had a stake in having her think he did. But then
  he hadn't
  known how much Eddy hated gambling.
  	She couldn't feel much about Eddy, either, except she still figured
  he was
  dead. No matter how much they'd given him, he still wouldn't walk out
  without
  those cases. Even if he was going for a whole new wardrobe he'd need
  to get all
  dressed up to go shopping for it. Eddy cared about clothes more than
  almost
  anything. And those gator cases were special; he'd got 'em off a
  hotel thief in
  Orlando, and they were the closest thing he had to a home. And
  anyway, now that
  she thought about it, she couldn't see him going for a buy-out bid,
  because what
  he wanted most in the whole world was to be part of some big deal.
  Once he was,
  he figured, people would start to take him seriously.
  	So somebody finally took him seriously, she thought, as Prior
  carried her
  bag into Gerald's clinic. But not the way Eddy wanted.
  	She looked around at the twenty-year-old plastic furniture, the
  stacks of
  stim-star magazines with Jap writing. It looked like a Cleveland
  haircut place.
  There was nobody there, nobody behind the reception desk.
  	Then Gerald came through a white door, wearing the kind of crinkled
  foil
  suit that paramedics wore for traffic accidents. "Lock the door," he
  said to
  Prior, through a blue paper mask that hid his nose, mouth, and chin.
  "Hello,
  Mona. If you'll step this way . . ." He gestured toward the white
  door.
  	She had her hand around the shockrod now, but she didn't know how to
  turn
  it on.
  	She followed Gerald, Prior taking up the rear.
  	"Have a seat," Gerald said. She sat on a white enamel chair. He came

  close, looked at her eyes. "You need to rest, Mona. You're
  exhausted."
  	There was a serrated stud on the shockrod's handle. Press it?
  Forward?
  Back?
  	Gerald went to a white box with drawers, got something out.
  	"Here," he said, extending a little tube thing with writing on the
  side,
  "this will help you. . . ." She barely felt the tiny, measured spray;
  there was
  a black blot on the aerosol tube, just where her eyes tried to focus,
  growing. .
  . .

  She remembered the old man showing her how you kill a catfish.
  Catfish has a
  hole in its skull, covered with skin; you take something stiff and
  skinny, a
  wire, even a broomstraw did it, and you just slip it in. . . .

  She remembered Cleveland, ordinary kind of day before it was time to
  get
  working, sitting up in Lanette's, looking at a magazine. Found this
  picture of
  Angie laughing in a restaurant with some other people, everybody
  pretty but
  beyond that it was like they had this glow,  not really in the
  photograph but it
  was there anyway, something  you could feel. Look, she said to
  Lanette, showing
  her the picture, they got this glow.
  	It's called money, Lanette said.

  It's called money. You just slip it in.



  Hilton Swift

  He arrived unannounced, as he always did, and alone, the Net
  helicopter settling
  like a solitary wasp, stirring strands of seaweed across the damp
  sand.
  	She watched from the rust-eaten railing as he jumped down, something

  boyish, almost bumbling, in his apparent eagerness. He wore a long
  topcoat of
  brown tweed; unbuttoned, it showed the immaculate front of one of his

  candystriped shirts, the propwash stirring his brown-blond hair and
  fluttering
  his Sense/Net tie. Robin was right, she decided: he did look as
  though his
  mother dressed him.
  	Perhaps it was deliberate, she thought, as he came striding up the
  beach,
  a feigned na�vet�. She remembered Porphyre once maintaining that
  major
  corporations were entirely independent of the human beings who
  composed the body
  corporate. This had seemed patently obvious to Angie, but the
  hairdresser had
  insisted that she'd failed to grasp his basic premise. Swift was
  Sense/Net's
  most important human decision-maker.
  	The thought of Porphyre made her smile; Swift, taking it as a
  greeting,
  beamed back at her.

  He offered her lunch in San Francisco; the helicopter was extremely
  fast. She
  countered by insisting on preparing him a bowl of dehydrated Swiss
  soup and
  microwaving a frozen brick of sourdough rye.
  	She wondered, watching him eat, about his sexuality. In his late
  thirties,
  he somehow conveyed the sense of an extraordinarily bright teenager
  in whom the
  onset of puberty had been subtly delayed. Rumor, at one time or
  another, had
  supplied him with every known sexual preference, and with several
  that she
  assumed were entirely imaginary. None of them seemed at all likely to
  Angie.
  She'd known him since she'd come to Sense/Net; he'd been well
  established in the
  upper eschelons of production when she'd arrived, one of the top
  people in Tally
  Isham's team, and he'd taken an immediate professional interest in
  her. Looking
  back, she assumed that Legba had steered her into his path: he'd been
  so
  obviously on his way up, though she might not have seen it herself,
  then,
  dazzled by the glitter and constant movement of the scene.
  	Bobby had taken an instant dislike to him, bristling with a
  Barrytowner's
  inbred hostility to authority, but had generally managed to conceal
  it for the
  sake of her career. The dislike had been mutual, Swift greeting their
  split and
  Bobby's departure with obvious relief.
  	"Hilton," she said, as she poured him a cup of the herbal tea he
  preferred
  to coffee, "what is it that's keeping Robin in London?"
  	He looked up from the steaming cup. "Something personal, I think.
  Perhaps
  he's found a new friend." Bobby had always been Angie's friend , to
  Hilton.
  Robin's friends tended to be young, male, and athletic; the muted
  erotic
  sequences in her stims with Robin were assembled from stock footage
  provided by
  Continuity and heavily treated by Raebel and his effects team. She
  remembered
  the one night they'd spent together, in a windblown house in southern

  Madagascar, his passivity and his patience. They'd never tried again,
  and she'd
  suspected that he feared that intimacy would undermine the illusion
  their stims
  projected so perfectly.
  	"What did he think of me going into the clinic, Hilton? Did he tell
  you?"
  	"I think he admired you for it."
  	"Someone told me recently that he's been telling people I'm crazy."
  	He'd rolled up his striped shirtsleeves and loosened his tie. "I
  can't
  imagine Robin thinking that, let alone saying it. I know what he
  thinks of you.
  You know what gossip is, in the Net. . . ."
  	"Hilton, where's Bobby?"
  	His brown eyes, very still. "Isn't that over, Angie?"
  	"Hilton, you know. You must know. You know where he is. Tell me."
  	"We lost him."
  	"Lost him?"
  	"Security lost him. You're right, of course; we kept the closest
  possible
  track of him after he left you. He reverted to type." There was an
  edge of
  satisfaction in his voice.
  	"And what type was that?"
  	"I've never asked what brought you together," he said. "Security
  investigated both of you, of course. He was a petty criminal."
  	She laughed. "He wasn't even that. . . ."
  	"You were unusually well represented, Angie, for an unknown. You
  know that
  your agents made it a key condition of your contract that we take
  Bobby Newmark
  on as well."
  	"Contracts have had stranger conditions, Hilton."
  	"And he went on salary as your . . . companion."
  	"My 'friend.' "
  	Was Swift actually blushing? He broke eye contact, looked down at
  his
  hands. "When he left you, he went to Mexico, Mexico City. Security
  was tracing
  him, of course; we don't like to lose track of anyone who knows that
  much about
  the personal life of one of our stars. Mexico City is a very . . .
  complicated
  place. . . . We do know that he seemed to be trying to continue his
  previous . .
  . career."
  	"He was hustling cyberspace?"
  	He met her eyes again. "He was seeing people in the business, known
  criminals."
  	"And? Go on."
  	"He . . . faded out. Vanished. Do you have any idea what Mexico City
  is
  like, if you slip below the poverty line?"
  	"And he was poor?"
  	"He'd become an addict. According to our best sources."
  	"An addict? Addicted to what?"
  	"I don't know."
  	"Continuity!"
  	He almost spilled his tea.
  	"Hello, Angie."
  	"Bobby, Continuity. Bobby Newmark, my friend ," glaring at Swift.
  "He went
  to Mexico City. Hilton says he became addicted to something. A drug,
  Continuity?"
  	"I'm sorry, Angie. That's classified data."
  	"Hilton . . ."
  	"Continuity," he began, and coughed.
  	"Hello, Hilton."
  	"Executive override, Continuity. Do we have that information?"
  	"Security's sources described Newmark's addiction as neuro-
  electronic."
  	"I don't understand."
  	"Some sort of, um, 'wirehead' business," Swift offered.
  	She felt an impulse to tell him how she'd found the drug, the
  charger.
  	Hush , child . Her head was full of the sound of bees, a building
  pressure.
  	"Angie? What is it?" He was half up from his chair, reaching for
  her.
  	"Nothing. I'm . . . upset. I'm sorry. Nerves. It isn't your fault. I
  was
  going to tell you about finding Bobby's cyberspace deck. But you
  already know
  about that, don't you?"
  	"Can I get you anything? Water?"
  	"No, thanks, but I'll lie down for a while, if you don't mind. But
  stay,
  please. I have some ideas for orbital sequences that I'd like your
  advice on. .
  . ."
  	"Of course. Have a nap, I'll have a walk on the beach, and then
  we'll
  talk."

  She watched him from the bedroom window, watched his brown figure
  recede in the
  direction of the Colony, followed by the patient little Dornier.
  	He looked like a child on the empty beach; he looked as lost as she
  felt.



  The Aleph

  As the sun rose, still no power for the 100-watt bulbs, Gentry's loft
  filled
  with a new light. Winter sunlight softened the outlines of the
  consoles and the
  holo table, brought out the texture of the ancient books that lined
  sagging
  chipboard shelves along the west wall. As Gentry paced and talked,
  his blond
  roostertail bobbing each time he spun on a black bootheel, his
  excitement seemed
  to counter the lingering effects of Cherry's sleep-derms. Cherry sat
  on the edge
  of the bed, watching Gentry but glancing occasionally at the battery
  telltale on
  the stretcher's superstructure. Slick sat in a broken-down chair
  scrounged from
  the Solitude and recushioned with transparent plastic over wadded
  pads of
  discarded clothing.
  	To Slick's relief, Gentry had skipped the whole business of the
  Shape and
  launched straight into his theory about the aleph thing. As always,
  once Gentry
  got going, he used words and constructions that Slick had trouble
  understanding,
  but Slick knew from experience that it was easier not to interrupt
  him; the
  trick was in pulling some kind of meaning out of the overall flow,
  skipping over
  the parts you didn't understand.
  	Gentry said that the Count was jacked into what amounted to a
  mother-huge
  microsoft; he thought the slab was a single solid lump of biochip. If
  that was
  true, the thing's storage capacity was virtually infinite; it
  would've been
  unthinkably expensive to manufacture. It was, Gentry said, a fairly
  strange
  thing for anyone to have built at all, although such things were
  rumored to
  exist and to have their uses, most particularly in the storage of
  vast amounts
  of confidential data. With no link to the global matrix, the data was
  immune to
  every kind of attack via cyberspace. The catch, of course, was that
  you couldn't
  access it via the matrix; it was dead storage.
  	"He could have anything in there," Gentry said, pausing to look down
  at
  the unconscious face. He spun on his heel and began his pacing again.
  "A world.
  Worlds. Any number of personality-constructs . . ."
  	"Like he's living a stim?" Cherry asked. "That why he's always in
  REM?"
  	"No," Gentry said, "it's not simstim. It's completely interactive.
  And
  it's a matter of scale. If this is aleph-class biosoft, he literally
  could have
  anything at all in there. In a sense, he could have an approximation
  of
  everything . . . ."
  	"I gotta feeling off Kid Afrika," Cherry said, "that this guy was
  paying
  to stay this way. Kinda wirehead action but different. And anyway,
  wirehead's
  don't REM like that. . . ."

  	"But when you tried to put it out through your stuff," Slick
  ventured,
  "you got that . . . thing." He saw Gentry's shoulders tense beneath
  black-beaded
  leather.
  	"Yes," Gentry said, "and now I have to reconstruct our account with
  the
  Fission Authority." He pointed at the permanent storage batteries
  stacked
  beneath the steel table. "Get those out for me."
  	"Yeah," Cherry said, "it's about time. I'm freezing my ass."

  They left Gentry bent over a cyberspace deck and went back to Slick's
  room.
  Cherry had insisted they rig Gentry's electric blanket to one of the
  batteries
  so she could drape it over the stretcher. There was cold coffee left
  on the
  butane stove; Slick drank it without bothering to reheat it, while
  Cherry stared
  out the window at the snow-streaked plain of the Solitude.
  	"How'd it get like this?" she asked.
  	"Gentry says it was a landfill operation a hundred years ago. Then
  they
  laid down a lot of topsoil, but stuff wouldn't grow. A lot of the
  fill was
  toxic. Rain washed the cover off. Guess they just gave up and started
  dumping
  more shit on it. Can't drink the water out there; fulla PCBs and
  everything
  else."
  	"What about those rabbits Bird-boy goes hunting for?"
  	"They're west of here. You don't see 'em on the Solitude. Not even
  rats.
  Anyway, you gotta test any meat you take around here."
  	"There's birds, though."
  	"Just roost here, go somewhere else to feed."
  	"What is it with you 'n' Gentry?" She was still looking out the
  window.
  	"How do you mean?"
  	"My first idea was maybe you were gay. Together, I mean."
  	"No."
  	"But it's kind of like you need each other some way. . . ."
  	"It's his place, Factory. Lets me live here. I . . . need to live
  here. To
  do my work."
  	"To build those things downstairs?"
  	The bulb in the yellow cone of fax came on; the fan in the heater
  kicked
  in.
  	"Well," Cherry said, squatting in front of the heater and unzipping
  one
  jacket after another, "he may be crazy but he just did something
  right."

  Gentry was slouched in the old office chair when Slick entered the
  loft, staring
  at the little flip-up monitor on his deck.
  	"Robert Newmark," Gentry said.
  	"Huh?"
  	"Retinal identification. Either this is Robert Newmark or someone
  who
  bought his eyes."
  	"How'd you get that?" Slick bent to peer at the screen of basic
  birth
  stats.
  	Gentry ignored the question. "This is it. Push it and you run into
  something else entirely."
  	"How's that?"
  	"Someone wants to know if anyone asks any questions about Mr.
  Newmark."
  	"Who?"
  	"I don't know." Gentry drummed his fingers on his black leather
  thighs.
  "Look at this: nothing. Born in Barrytown. Mother: Marsha Newmark.
  We've got his
  SIN, but it's definitely been tagged." He shoved the chair back on
  its casters
  and swung around so that he could see the Count's still face. "How
  about it,
  Newmark? Is that your name?" He stood up and went to the holo table.
  	"Don't," Slick said.
  	Gentry touched the power stud on the holo table.
  	And the gray thing was there again, for an instant, but this time it
  dived
  toward the core of the hemispherical display, dwindled, and was gone.
  No. It was
  there, a minute gray sphere at the very center of the glowing
  projection field.
  	Gentry's crazy smile had returned. "Good," he said.
  	"What's good?"
  	"I see what it is. A kind of ice. A security program."
  	"That monkey?"
  	"Someone has a sense of humor. If the monkey doesn't scare you off,
  it
  turns into a pea. . . ." He crossed to the table and began to root
  through one
  of the panniers. "I doubt if they'll be able to do that with a direct
  sensory
  link." He held something in his hand now. A trode-net.
  	"Gentry, don't do  it! Look at him!"
  	"I'm not going to do it," Gentry said. "You are."


  Ghosts and Empties

  Staring through the cab's smudged windows, she found herself wishing
  for Colin
  and his wry commentary, then remembered that this was entirely beyond
  his sphere
  of expertise. Did Maas-Neotek manufacture a similar unit for the
  Sprawl, she
  wondered, and if so, what form would its ghost take?
  	"Sally," she said, perhaps half an hour into the drive to New York,
  "why
  did Petal let me go with you?"
  	"Because he was smart."
  	"And my father?"
  	"Your father'll shit."
  	"I'm sorry?"
  	"Will be angry. If he finds out. And he may not. We aren't here for
  long."
  	"Why are we here?"
  	"I gotta talk to somebody."
  	"But why am I here?"
  	"You don't like it here?"
  	Kumiko hesitated. "Yes, I do."
  	"Good." Sally shifted on the broken-down seat. "Petal had to let us
  go.
  Because he couldn't have stopped us without hurting one of us. Well,
  maybe not
  hurting. More like insulting. Swain could cool you, then tell you he
  was sorry
  later, tell your father it was for your own good, if it came to that,
  but if he
  cools me, it's like face , right? When I saw Petal down there with
  the gun, I
  knew he was going to let us go. Your room's kinked. The whole place
  is. I set
  the motion sensors off when I was getting your gear together. Figured
  I would.
  Petal knew it was me. That's why he rang the phone, to let me know he
  knew."
  	"I don't understand."
  	"Kind of a courtesy, so I'd know he was waiting. Gimme a chance to
  think.
  But he didn't have a choice and he knew it. Swain, see, he's being
  forced to do
  something, and Petal knows it. Or anyway Swain says he is, being
  forced. Me, I'm
  definitely being forced. So I start wondering how bad Swain needs me.
  Real
  bad. Because they let me walk off with the oyabun 's daughter,
  shipped all the
  way to Notting Hill for the safekeeping. Something there scares him
  worse than
  your daddy. 'Less it's something that'll make him richer than your
  daddy already
  has. Anyway, taking you kind of evens things up. Kind of like pushing
  back. You
  mind?"
  	"But you are being threatened?"
  	"Somebody knows a lot of things I did."
  	"And Tick has discovered the identity of this person?"
  	"Yeah. Guess I knew anyway. Wish to fuck I'd been wrong."
  	

  The hotel Sally chose was faced with rust-stained steel panels, each
  panel
  secured with gleaming chrome bolts, a style Kumiko knew from Tokyo
  and thought
  of as somewhat old-fashioned.
  	Their room was large and gray, a dozen shades of gray, and Sally
  walked
  straight to the bed, after she'd locked the door, took off her
  jacket, and lay
  down.
  	"You don't have a bag," Kumiko said.
  	Sally sat up and began to remove her boots. "I can buy what I need.
  You
  tired?"
  	"No."
  	"I am." She pulled her black sweater over her head. Her breasts were

  small, with brownish pink nipples; a scar, running from just below
  the left
  nipple, vanished into the waistband of her jeans.
  	"You were hurt," Kumiko said, looking at the scar.
  	Sally looked down. "Yeah."
  	"Why didn't you have it removed?"
  	"Sometimes it's good to remember."
  	"Being hurt?"
  	"Being stupid."

  Gray on gray. Unable to sleep, Kumiko paced the gray carpet. There
  was something
  vampiric about the room, she decided, something it would have in
  common with
  millions of similar rooms, as though its bewilderingly seamless
  anonymity were
  sucking away her personality, fragments of which emerged as her
  parents' voices,
  raised in argument, as the faces of her father's black-suited
  secretaries. . . .
  	Sally slept, her face a smooth mask. The view from the window told
  Kumiko
  nothing at all: only that she looked out on a city that was neither
  Tokyo nor
  London, a vast generic tumble that was her century's paradigm of
  urban reality.
  	Perhaps she slept too, Kumiko, though later she wasn't certain. She
  watched Sally order toiletries and underwear, tapping her
  requirements into the
  bedside video. Her purchases were delivered while Kumiko was in the
  shower.
  	"Okay," Sally said, from beyond the door, "towel off, get dressed,
  we're
  going to see the man."
  	"What man?" Kumiko asked, but Sally hadn't heard her.

  Gomi.
  	Thirty-five percent of the landmass of Tokyo was built on gomi , on
  level
  tracts reclaimed from the Bay through a century's systematic dumping.
  Gomi ,
  there, was a resource to be managed, to be collected, sorted,
  carefully plowed
  under.
  	London's relationship to gomi  was more subtle, more oblique. To
  Kumiko's
  eyes, the bulk of the city consisted  of gomi , of structures the
  Japanese
  economy would long ago have devoured in its relentless hunger for
  space in which
  to build. Yet these structures revealed, even to Kumiko, the fabric
  of time,
  each wall patched by generations of hands in an ongoing task of
  restoration. The
  English valued their gomi  in its own right, in a way she had only
  begun to
  understand; they inhabited it.
  	Gomi  in the Sprawl was something else: a rich humus, a decay that
  sprouted prodigies in steel and polymer. The apparent lack of
  planning alone was
  enough to dizzy her, running so entirely opposite the value her own
  culture
  placed on efficient land use.
  	Their taxi ride from the airport had already shown her decay, whole
  blocks
  in ruin, unglazed windows gaping above sidewalks heaped with trash.
  And faces
  staring as the armored hover made its way through the streets.
  	Now Sally plunged her abruptly into the full strangeness of this
  place,
  with its rot and randomness rooting towers taller than any in Tokyo,
  corporate
  obelisks that pierced the sooty lacework of overlapping domes.
  	Two cab rides away from their hotel, they took to the street itself,
  into
  early-evening crowds and a slant of shadow. The air was cold, but not
  the cold
  of London, and Kumiko thought of the blossoms in Ueno Park.
  	Their first stop was a large, somewhat faded bar called the
  Gentleman
  Loser, where Sally conducted a quiet, very rapid exchange with a
  bartender.
  	They left without buying a drink.

  "Ghosts," Sally said, rounding a corner, Kumiko close at her side.
  The streets
  had grown progressively more empty, these past several blocks, the
  buildings
  darker and more decrepit.
  	"Pardon me?"
  	"Lotta ghosts here for me, or anyway there should be."
  	"You know this place?"
  	"Sure. Looks all the same, but different, you know?"
  	"No . . ."
  	"Someday you will. We find who I'm looking for, you just do your
  good-girl
  routine. Speak if you're spoken to, otherwise don't."
  	"Who are we looking for?"
  	"The man. What's left of him, anyway . . ."
  	Half a block on, the grim street empty -- Kumiko had never seen an
  empty
  street before, aside from Swain's crescent shrouded in midnight snow
  -- Sally
  came to a halt beside an ancient and utterly unpromising storefront,
  its twin
  display windows silvered with a rich inner coating of dust. Peering
  in, Kumiko
  made out the glass-tube letters of an unlit neon sign: METRO, then a
  longer
  word. The door between the windows had been reinforced with a sheet
  of
  corrugated steel; rusting eyebolts protruded at intervals, strung
  with slack
  lengths of galvanized razor wire.
  	Now Sally faced that door, squared her shoulders, and executed a
  fluid
  series of small, quick gestures.
  	Kumiko stared as the sequence was repeated. "Sally --"
  	"Jive," Sally cut her off. "I told you to shut up, okay?"
  	"Yeah?" The voice, barely more than a whisper, seemed to come from
  nowhere
  in particular.
  	"I told you already," Sally said.
  	"I don't jive."
  	"I wanna talk to him," she said, her voice hard and careful.
  	"He's dead."
  	"I know that."
  	A silence followed, and Kumiko heard a sound that might have been
  the
  wind, a cold, grit-laden wind scouring the curve of the geodesics far
  above
  them.
  	"He's not here," the voice said, and seemed to recede. "Round the
  corner,
  half a block, left into the alley."

  Kumiko would remember the alley always: dark brick slick with damp,
  hooded
  ventilators trailing black streamers of congealed dust, a yellow bulb
  in a cage
  of corroded alloy, the low growth of empty bottles that sprouted at
  the base of
  either wall, the man-sized nests of crumpled fax and white foam
  packing
  segments, and the sound of Sally's bootheels.
  	Past the bulb's dim glow was darkness, though a reflected gleam on
  wet
  brick showed a final wall, cul-de- sac, and Kumiko hesitated,
  frightened by a
  sudden stir of echo, a scurrying, the steady dripping of water. . . .
  	Sally raised her hand. A tight beam of very bright light framed a
  sharp
  circle of paint-scrawled brick, then smoothly descended.
  	Descended until it found the thing at the base of the wall, dull
  metal, an
  upright rounded fixture that Kumiko mistook for another ventilator.
  Near its
  base were the stubs of white candles, a flat plastic flask filled
  with a clear
  liquid, an assortment of cigarette packets, a scattering of loose
  cigarettes,
  and an elaborate, multiarmed figure drawn in what appeared to be
  white powdered
  chalk.
  	Sally stepped forward, the beam held steady, and Kumiko saw that the

  armored thing was bolted into the brickwork with massive rivets.
  "Finn?"
  	A rapid flicker of pink light from a horizontal slot.
  	"Hey, Finn, man . . ." An uncharacteristic hesitation in her voice .
  . .
  	"Moll." A grating quality, as if through a broken speaker. "What's
  with
  the flash? You still got amps in? Gettin' old, you can't see in the
  dark so
  good?"
  	"For my friend."
  	Something moved behind the slot, its color the unhealthy pink of hot

  cigarette ash in noon sunlight, and Kumiko's face was washed with a
  stutter of
  light.
  	"Yeah," grated the voice, "so who's she?"
  	"Yanaka's daughter."
  	"No shit."
  	Sally lowered the light; it fell on the candles, the flask, the damp
  gray
  cigarettes, the white symbol with its feathery arms.
  	"Help yourself to the offerings," said the voice. "That's half a
  liter of
  Moskovskaya there. The hoodoo mark's flour. Tough luck; the high
  rollers draw
  'em in cocaine."
  	"Jesus," Sally said, an odd distance in her voice, squatting down,
  "I
  don't believe this." Kumiko watched as she picked up the flask and
  sniffed at
  the contents.
  	"Drink it. It's good shit. Fuckin' better be. Nobody shortcounts the

  oracle, not if they know what's good for 'em."
  	"Finn," Sally said, then tilted the flask and swallowed, wiping her
  mouth
  with the back of her hand, "you gotta be crazy. . . ."
  	"I should be so lucky. A rig like this, I'm pushing it to have a
  little
  imagination, let alone crazy."
  	Kumiko moved closer, then squatted beside Sally.
  	"It's a construct, a personality job?" Sally put down the flask of
  vodka
  and stirred the damp flour with the tip of a white fingernail.
  	"Sure. You seen 'em before. Real-time memory if I wanna, wired into
  c-
  space if I wanna. Got this oracle gig to keep my hand in, you know?"
  The thing
  made a strange sound: laughter. "Got love troubles? Got a bad woman
  don't
  understand you?" The laugh noise again, like peals of static.
  "Actually I'm more
  into business advice. It's the local kids leave the goodies. Adds to
  the
  mystique, kinda. And once in a while I get a skeptic, some asshole
  figures he'll
  help himself to the take." A scarlet hairline flashed from the slit
  and a bottle
  exploded somewhere to Kumiko's right. Static laughter. "So what
  brings you this
  way, Moll? You and," again the pink light flicked across Kumiko's
  face,
  "Yanaka's daughter . . ."
  	"The Straylight run," Sally said.
  	"Long time, Moll . . ."
  	"She's after me, Finn. Fourteen years and that crazy bitch is on my
  ass. .
  . ."
  	"So maybe she's got nothin' better to do. You know how rich folks
  are. . .
  ."
  	"You know where Case is, Finn? Maybe she's after him. . . ."
  	"Case got out of it. Rolled up a few good scores after you split,
  then he
  kicked it in the head and quit clean. You did the same, maybe you
  wouldn't be
  freezing your buns off in an alley, right? Last I heard, he had four
  kids. . .
  ."

  Watching the hypnotic sweep of the scanning pink ember, Kumiko had
  some idea of
  what it was that Sally spoke with. There were similar things in her
  father's
  study, four of them, black lacquered cubes arranged along a low shelf
  of pine.
  Above each cube hung a formal portrait. The portraits were monochrome

  photographs of men in dark suits and ties, four very sober gentlemen
  whose
  lapels were decorated with small metal emblems of the kind her father
  sometimes
  wore. Though her mother had told her that the cubes contained ghosts,
  the ghosts
  of her father's evil ancestors, Kumiko found them more fascinating
  than
  frightening. If they did contain ghosts, she reasoned, they would be
  quite
  small, as the cubes themselves were scarcely large enough to contain
  a child's
  head.
  	Her father sometimes meditated before the cubes, kneeling on the
  bare
  tatami in an attitude that connoted profound respect. She had seen
  him in this
  position many times, but she was ten before she heard him address the
  cubes. And
  one had answered. The question had meant nothing to her, the answer
  less, but
  the calm tone of the ghost's reply had frozen her where she crouched,
  behind a
  door of paper, and her father had laughed to find her there; rather
  than
  scolding her, he'd explained that the cubes housed the recorded
  personalities of
  former executives, corporate directors. Their souls? she'd asked. No,
  he'd said,
  and smiled, then added that the distinction was a subtle one. "They
  are not
  conscious. They respond, when questioned, in a manner approximating
  the response
  of the subject. If they are ghosts, then holograms are ghosts."
  	After Sally's lecture on the history and hierarchy of the Yakuza, in
  the
  robata bar in Earls Court, Kumiko had decided that each of the men in
  the
  photographs, the subjects of the personality recordings, had been an
  oyabun .
  	The thing in the armored housing, she reasoned, was of a similar
  nature,
  though perhaps more complex, just as Colin was a more complex version
  of the
  Michelin guide her father's secretaries had carried on her Shinjuku
  shopping
  expeditions. Finn, Sally called it, and it was evident that this Finn
  had been a
  friend or associate of hers.
  	But did it wake, Kumiko wondered, when the alley was empty? Did its
  laser
  vision scan the silent fall of midnight snow?

  "Europe," Sally began, "when I split from Case I went all around
  there. Had a
  lot of money we got for the run, anyway it looked like a lot then.
  Tessier-
  Ashpool's AI paid it out through a Swiss bank. It erased every trace
  we'd ever
  been up the well; I mean everything, like if you looked up the names
  we traveled
  under, on the JAL shuttle, they just weren't there. Case checked it
  all out when
  we were back in Tokyo, wormed his way into all kinds of data; it was
  like none
  of it ever happened. I didn't understand how it could do that, AI or
  not, but
  nobody ever really understood what happened up there, when Case rode
  that
  Chinese icebreaker through their core ice."
  	"Did it try to get in touch, after?"
  	"Not that I know of. He had this idea that it was gone, sort of; not
  gone
  gone, but gone into  everything, the whole matrix. Like it wasn't in
  cyberspace
  anymore, it just was. And if it didn't want you to see it, to know it
  was there,
  well, there was no way you ever could, and no way you'd ever be able
  to prove it
  to anybody else even if you did know. . . . And me, I didn't wanna
  know. I mean,
  whatever it was, it seemed done to me, finished. Armitage was dead,
  Riviera was
  dead, Ashpool was dead, the Rasta tug pilot who took us out there was
  back in
  Zion cluster and he'd probably written it all off as another ganja
  dream. . . .
  I left Case in the Tokyo Hyatt, never saw him again. . . ."
  	"Why?"
  	"Who knows? Nothing much. I was young, it just seemed over."
  	"But you'd left her  up the well. In Straylight."
  	"You got it. And I'd think about that, once in a while. When we were

  leaving, Finn, it was like she didn't care about any of it. Like I'd
  killed her
  crazy sick father for her, and Case had cracked their cores and let
  their AIs
  loose in the matrix . . . So I put her on the list, right? You get
  big enough
  trouble one day, you're being got at, you check that list."
  	"And you figured it for her, right off?"
  	"No. I gotta pretty long list."
  	Case, who seemed to Kumiko to have been something more than Sally's
  partner, never reentered her story.
  	As Kumiko listened to Sally condense fourteen years of personal
  history
  for the Finn's benefit, she found herself imagining this younger
  Sally as a
  bishonen  hero in a traditional romantic video: fey, elegant, and
  deadly. While
  she found Sally's matter-of-fact account of her life difficult to
  follow, with
  its references to places and things she didn't know, it was easy to
  imagine her
  winning the sudden, flick-of-the-wrist victories expected of bishonen
  . But no,
  she thought, as Sally dismissed "a bad year in Hamburg," sudden anger
  in her
  voice -- an old anger, the year a decade past -- it was a mistake to
  cast this
  woman in Japanese terms. There were no ronin , no wandering samurai;
  Sally and
  the Finn were talking business.
  	She'd arrived at her bad year in Hamburg, Kumiko gathered, after
  having
  won and lost some sort of fortune. She'd won her share of it "up
  there," in a
  place the Finn had called Straylight, in partnership with the man
  Case. In doing
  so, she'd made an enemy.
  	"Hamburg," the Finn interrupted, "I heard stories about Hamburg. . .
  ."
  	"The money was gone. How it is, with a big score, when you're young
  . . .
  No money was sort of like getting back to normal, but I was involved
  with these
  Frankfurt people, owed 'em, and they wanted to take it out in trade."
  	"What kinda trade?"
  	"They wanted people hit."
  	"So?"
  	"So I got out. When I could. Went to London . . ."
  	Perhaps, Kumiko decided, Sally had  once been something along ronin

  lines, a kind of samurai. In London, however, she'd become something
  else, a
  businesswoman. Supporting herself in some unspecified way, she
  gradually became
  a backer, providing funds for various kinds of business operations.
  (What was a
  "credit sink"? What was "laundering data"?)
  	"Yeah," the Finn said, "you did okay. Got yourself a share in some
  German
  casino."
  	"Aix-la-Chapelle. I was on the board. Still am, when I got the right

  passport."
  	"Settled down?" The laugh again.
  	"Sure."
  	"Didn't hear much, back here."
  	"I was running a casino. That was it. Doing fine."
  	"You were prizefighting. 'Misty Steele,' augmented featherweight.
  Eight
  fights, I made book on five of 'em. Blood matches, sweetmeat.
  Illegal."
  	"Hobby."
  	"Some hobby. I saw the vids. Burmese Kid opened you right up, living
  color
  . . ."
  	Kumiko remembered the long scar.
  	"So I quit. Five years ago and I was already five years too old."
  	"You weren't bad, but 'Misty Steele' . . . Jesus."
  	"Gimme a break. Wasn't me made that one up."
  	"Sure. So tell me about our friend upstairs, how she got in touch."
  	"Swain. Roger Swain. Sends one of his boys to the casino, would-be
  hardass
  called Prior. About a month ago."
  	"Swain the fixer? London?"
  	"Same one. So Prior's got a present for me, about a meter of
  printout. A
  list. Names, dates, places."
  	"Bad?"
  	"Everything. Stuff I'd almost forgotten."
  	"Straylight run?"
  	"Everything. So I packed a bag, got back to London, there's Swain.
  He's
  sorry, it's not his fault, but he's gotta twist me. Because
  somebody's twisting
  him. Got his own meter of printout to worry about." Kumiko heard
  Sally's heels
  shift on the pavement.
  	"What's he want?"
  	"A rip, warm body. Celeb."
  	"Why you?"
  	"Come on, Finn, that's what I'm here to ask you ."
  	"Swain tell you it's 3Jane?"
  	"No. But my console cowboy in London did."
  	Kumiko's knees ached.
  	"The kid. Where'd you come by her?"
  	"She turned up at Swain's place. Yanaka wanted her out of Tokyo.
  Swain
  owes him giri ."
  	"She's clean, anyway, no implants. What I get out of Tokyo lately,
  Yanaka
  has his hands full. . . ."
  	Kumiko shivered in the dark.
  	"And the rip, the celeb?" the Finn continued.
  	She felt Sally hesitate. "Angela Mitchell."
  	The pink metronome swinging silently, left to right, right to left.
  	"It's cold here, Finn."
  	"Yeah. Wish I could feel it. I just took a little trip on your
  behalf.
  Memory Lane. You know much about where Angie comes from?"
  	"No."
  	"I'm in the oracle game, honey, not a research library. . . . Her
  father
  was Christopher Mitchell. He was the big shit in biochip research at
  Mass
  Biolabs. She grew up in a sealed compound of theirs in Arizona,
  company kid.
  About seven years ago, something happened down there. The street said
  Hosaka
  fielded a team of pros to help Mitchell make a major career move. The
  fax said
  there was a megaton blast on Maas property, but nobody ever found any
  radiation.
  Never found Hosaka's mercs, either. Maas announced that Mitchell was
  dead,
  suicide."
  	"That's the library. What's the oracle know?"
  	"Rumors. Nothing that hangs together on a line. Street said she
  turned up
  here a day or two after the blast in Arizona, got in with some very
  weird spades
  who worked out of New Jersey."
  	"Worked what?"
  	"They dealt. 'Ware, mostly. Buying, selling. Sometimes they bought
  from
  me. . . ."
  	"How were they weird?"
  	"Hoodoos. Thought the matrix was full of mambos 'n' shit. Wanna know

  something, Moll?"
  	"What?"
  	"They're right."



  Mirror Mirror

  She came out of it like somebody had thrown a switch.
  	Didn't open her eyes. She could hear them talking in another room.
  Hurt
  lots of places but not any worse than the wiz had. The bad crash,
  that was gone,
  or maybe muted by whatever they'd given her, that spray.
  	Paper smock coarse against her nipples; they felt big and tender and
  her
  breasts felt full. Little lines of pain tweaking across her face,
  twin dull
  aches in her eyesockets, sore rough feeling in her mouth and a taste
  of blood.
  	"I'm not trying to tell you your business," Gerald was saying, above
  a
  running tap and a rattle of metal, like he was washing pans or
  something, "but
  you're kidding yourself if you think she'd fool anyone who didn't
  want to be
  fooled. It's really a very superficial job." Prior said something she
  couldn't
  make out. "I said superficial, not shoddy. That's quality work, all
  of it.
  Twenty-four hours on a dermal stimulator and you won't know she's
  been here.
  Keep her on the antibiotics and off stimulants; her immune system
  isn't all it
  could be." Then Prior again, but she still couldn't catch it.
  	Opened her eyes but there was only the ceiling, white squares of
  acoustic
  tile. Turned her head to the left. White plastic wall with one of
  those fake
  windows, hi-rez animation of a beach with palm trees and waves; watch
  the water
  long enough and you'd see the same waves rolling in, looped, forever.
  Except the
  thing was broken or worn out, a kind of hesitation in the waves, and
  the red of
  the sunset pulsed like a bad fluorescent tube.
  	Try right . Turning again, feeling the sweaty paper cover on the
  hard foam
  pillow against her neck . . .
  	And the face with bruised eyes looking at her from the other bed,
  nose
  braced with clear plastic and micropore tape, some kind of brown
  jelly stuff
  smeared back across the cheekbones . . .
  	Angie. It was Angie's face, framed by the reflected sunset stutter
  of the
  defective window.

  "There was no bonework," Gerald said, carefully loosening the tape
  that held the
  little plastic brace in place along the bridge of her nose. "That was
  the beauty
  of it. We planed some cartilage in the nose, working in through the
  nostrils,
  then went on to the teeth. Smile. Beautiful. We did the breast
  augmentation,
  built up the nipples with vat-grown erectile tissue, then did the eye

  coloration. . . ." He removed the brace. "You mustn't touch this for
  another
  twenty-four hours."
  	"That how I got the bruises?"
  	"No. That's secondary trauma from the cartilage job." Gerald's
  fingers
  were cool on her face, precise. "That should clear up by tomorrow."
  	Gerald was okay. He'd given her three derms, two blue and a pink,
  smooth
  and comfortable. Prior definitely wasn't okay, but he was gone or
  anyway out of
  sight. And it was just nice, listening to Gerald explain things in
  his calm
  voice. And look what he could do.
  	"Freckles," she said, because they were gone.
  	"Abrasion and more vat tissue. They'll come back, faster if you get
  too
  much sun. . . ."
  	"She's so beautiful. . . ." She turned her head.
  	"You, Mona. That's you."
  	She looked at the face in the mirror and tried on that famous smile.

  Maybe Gerald wasn't okay.
  	Back in the narrow white bed again, where he'd put her to rest, she
  raised
  her arm and looked at the three derms. Trank. Floating.
  	She worked a fingernail under the pink derm and peeled it off, stuck
  it on
  the white wall, and pushed hard with her thumb. A single bead of
  straw-colored
  fluid ran down. She carefully peeled it back and replaced it on her
  arm. The
  stuff in the blue ones was milky white. She put them back on too.
  Maybe he'd
  notice, but she wanted to know what was happening.
  	She looked in the mirror. Gerald said he could put it back the way
  it was,
  someday, if she wanted him to, but then she wondered how he'd
  remember what
  she'd looked like. Maybe he'd taken a picture or something. Now that
  she thought
  about it, maybe there wasn't anybody who'd remember how she'd looked
  before. She
  guessed Michael's stim deck was probably the closest bet, but she
  didn't know
  his address or even his last name. It gave her a funny feeling, like
  who she'd
  been had wandered away down the street for a minute and never come
  back. But
  then she closed her eyes and knew she was Mona, always had been, and
  that
  nothing much had changed, anyway not behind her eyelids.
  	Lanette said it didn't matter, how you got yourself changed. Lanette
  told
  her once that she didn't have 10 percent of her own face left, the
  one she'd
  been born with. Not that you'd guess, except for the black around her
  lids so
  she never had to mess with mascara. Mona had thought maybe Lanette
  hadn't got
  such good work done, and it must have shown once in Mona's eyes,
  because then
  Lanette said: You shoulda seen me before, honey.
  	But now here she was, Mona, stretched out straight in this skinny
  bed in
  Baltimore, and all she knew about Baltimore was the sound of a siren
  from down
  in the street and the motor running on Gerald's air-conditioner.
  	And somehow that turned into sleep, she didn't know for how long,
  and then
  Prior was there with his hand on her arm, asking her if she was
  hungry.
  	
  She watched Prior shave his beard. He did it at the stainless
  surgical sink,
  trimming it back with a pair of chrome scissors. Then he switched to
  a white
  plastic throw-away razor from a box of them that Gerald had. It was
  strange
  watching his face come out. It wasn't a face she'd have expected: it
  was
  younger. But the mouth was the same.
  	"We gonna be here much longer, Prior?"
  	He had his shirt off for the shave; he had tattoos across his
  shoulders
  and down his upper arms, dragons with lion-heads. "Don't worry about
  it," he
  said.
  	"It's boring."
  	"We'll get you some stims." He was shaving under his chin.
  	"What's Baltimore like?"
  	"Bloody awful. Like the rest of it."
  	"So what's England like?"
  	"Bloody awful." He wiped his face with a thick wad of blue absorbent

  paper.
  	"Maybe we could go out, get some of those crabs. Gerald says they
  got
  crabs."
  	"They do," he said. "I'll get some in."
  	"How about you take me out?"
  	He tossed the blue wad into a steel waste canister. "No, you might
  try to
  run away."
  	She slid her hand between the bed and the wall and found the torn
  foam air
  cell where she'd hidden the shockrod. She'd found her clothes in a
  white plastic
  bag. Gerald came in every couple of hours with fresh derms; she'd
  wring them out
  as soon as he'd gone. She'd figured if she could get Prior to take
  her out to
  eat, she could make a move in the restaurant. But he wasn't having
  any.
  	In a restaurant she might even be able to get a cop, because now she

  figured she knew what the deal was.
  	Snuff. Lanette had told her about that. How there were men who'd pay
  to
  have girls fixed up to look like other people, then kill them. Had to
  be rich,
  really rich. Not Prior, but somebody he worked for. Lanette said
  these guys had
  girls fixed to look like their wives sometimes. Mona hadn't really
  believed it,
  back then; sometimes Lanette told her scary stuff because it was fun
  to be
  scared when you knew you were pretty safe, and anyway Lanette had a
  lot of
  stories about weird kinks. She said suits were the weirdest of all,
  the big
  suits way up in big companies, because they couldn't afford to lose
  control when
  they were working. But when they weren't working, Lanette said, they
  could
  afford to lose it any way they wanted. So why not a big suit
  somewhere who
  wanted Angie that way? Well, there were lots of girls got themselves
  worked over
  to look like her, but they were mostly pathetic. Wannabes -- and she
  hadn't ever
  seen one who really looked much like Angie, anyway not enough to fool
  anybody
  who cared. But maybe there was somebody who'd pay for all this just
  to get a
  girl who did look like Angie. Anyway, if it wasn't snuff, what was
  it?
  	Now Prior was buttoning his blue shirt. He came over to the bed and
  pulled
  the sheet down to look at her breasts. Like he was looking at a car
  or
  something.
  	She yanked the sheet back up.
  	"I'll get some crabs." He put his jacket on and went out. She could
  hear
  him saying something to Gerald.
  	Gerald stuck his head in. "How are you, Mona?"
  	"Hungry."
  	"Feeling relaxed?"
  	"Yeah . . ."
  	When she was alone again, she rolled over and studied her face,
  Angie's
  face, in the mirrored wall. The bruising was almost gone. Gerald
  taped things
  like miniature trodes to her face and hooked them to a machine. Said
  they made
  it heal real fast.
  	It didn't make her jump, now, Angie's face in the mirror. The teeth
  were
  nice; the teeth you'd wanna keep anyway. She wasn't sure about the
  rest, not
  yet.
  	Maybe she should just get up now, get her clothes on, head for the
  door.
  If Gerald tried to stop her, she could use the rod. Then she
  remembered how
  Prior had turned up at Michael's, like he'd had somebody watching
  her, all
  night, following her. Maybe somebody watching now, outside. Gerald's
  place
  didn't seem to have any windows, not real ones, so she'd have to go
  out the
  door.
  	And she was starting to want her wiz bad, too, but if she did even a

  little, Gerald would notice. She knew her kit was there, in her bag
  under the
  bed. Maybe if she did some, she thought, she'd just do  something.
  But maybe it
  wouldn't be the right thing; she had to admit that what she did on
  wiz didn't
  always work out, even though it made you feel like you couldn't make
  a mistake
  if you tried.
  	Anyway, she was hungry, and too bad Gerald didn't have some kind of
  music
  or something, so maybe she'd just wait for that crab. . . .



  In a Lonely Place

  And Gentry standing there with the Shape burning behind his eyes,
  holding out
  the trode-net under the glare of bare bulbs, telling Slick why it had
  to be that
  way, why Slick had to put the trodes on and jack straight into
  whatever the gray
  slab was inputting to the still figure on the stretcher.
  	He shook his head, remembering how he'd come to Dog Solitude. And
  Gentry
  started talking faster, taking the gesture for refusal.
  	Gentry was saying Slick had to go under, he said maybe just for a
  few
  seconds, while he got a fix on the data and worked up a macroform.
  Slick didn't
  know how to do that, Gentry said, or he'd go under himself; it wasn't
  the data
  he wanted, just the overall shape, because he thought that would lead
  him to the
  Shape, the big one, the thing he'd chased for so long.
  	Slick remembered crossing the Solitude on foot. He'd been scared
  that the
  Korsakov's would come back, that he'd forget where he was and drink
  cancer-water
  from the slimed red puddles on the rusty plain. Red scum and dead
  birds floating
  with their wings spread. The trucker from Tennessee had told him to
  walk west
  from the highway, he'd hit two-lane blacktop inside an hour and get a
  ride down
  to Cleveland, but it felt like longer than an hour now and he wasn't
  so sure
  which way was west and this place was spooking him, this junkyard
  scar like a
  giant had stomped it flat. Once he saw somebody far away, up on a low
  ridge, and
  waved. The figure vanished, but he walked that way, no longer trying
  to skirt
  the puddles, slogging through them, until he came to the ridge and
  saw that it
  was the wingless hulk of an airliner half-buried in rusted cans. He
  made his way
  up the incline along a path where feet had flattened the cans, to a
  square
  opening that had been an emergency exit. Stuck his head inside and
  saw hundreds
  of tiny heads suspended from the concave ceiling. He froze there,
  blinking in
  the sudden shade, until what he was seeing made some kind of sense.
  The pink
  plastic heads of dolls, their nylon hair tied up into topknots and
  the knots
  stuck into thick black tar, dangling like fruit. Nothing else, only a
  few ragged
  slabs of dirty green foam, and he knew he didn't want to stick around
  to find
  out whose place it was.
  	He'd headed south then, without knowing it, and found Factory.
  	"I'll never have another chance," Gentry said. Slick stared at the
  taut
  face, the eyes wide with desperation. "I'll never see it. . . ."
  	And Slick remembered the time Gentry'd hit him, how he'd looked down
  at
  the wrench and felt . . . Well, Cherry wasn't right about them, but
  there was
  something else there, he didn't know what to call it. He snatched the
  trode-net
  with his left hand and shoved Gentry hard in the chest with his
  right. "Shut up!
  Shut the fuck up!" Gentry fell back against the steel table's edge.
  	Slick cursed him softly as he fumbled the delicate net of contact
  dermatrodes across his forehead and temples.

  Jacked in.

  His boots crunched gravel.
  	Opened his eyes and looked down; the gravel drive smooth in the
  dawn,
  cleaner than anything in Dog Solitude. He looked up and saw where it
  curved
  away, and beyond green and spreading trees the pitched slate roof of
  a house
  half the size of Factory. There were statues near him in the long wet
  grass. A
  deer made of iron, and a broken figure of a man's body carved from
  white stone,
  no head or arms or legs. Birds were singing and that was the only
  sound.
  	He started walking up the drive, toward the gray house, because
  there
  didn't seem to be anything else to do. When he got to the head of the
  drive, he
  could see past the house to smaller buildings and a broad flat field
  of grass
  where gliders where staked against the wind.
  	Fairytale , he thought, looking up at the mansion's broad stone
  brow, the
  leaded diamond panes; like some vid he'd seen when he was little.
  Were there
  really people who lived in places like this? But it  's not a place ,
  he
  reminded himself, it only feels like it is .
  	"Gentry," he said, "get my ass out of this, okay?"
  	He studied the backs of his hands. Scars, ingrained grime, black
  half-
  moons of grease under his broken nails. The grease got in and made
  them soft, so
  they broke easy.
  	He started to feel stupid, standing there. Maybe somebody was
  watching him
  from the house. "Fuck it," he said, and started up the broad
  flagstone walk,
  unconsciously hitching his stride into the swagger he'd learned in
  the Deacon
  Blues.
  	The door had this thing fastened to a central panel: a hand, small
  and
  graceful, holding a sphere the size of a poolball, all cast in iron.
  Hinged at
  the wrist so you could raise it and bring it down. He did. Hard.
  Twice, then
  twice again. Nothing happened. The doorknob was brass, floral detail
  worn almost
  invisible by years of use. It turned easily. He opened the door.
  	He blinked at a wealth of color and texture; surfaces of dark
  polished
  wood, black and white marble, rugs with a thousand soft colors that
  glowed like
  church windows, polished silver, mirrors. . . . He grinned at the
  soft shock of
  it, his eyes pulled from one new sight to another, so many things,
  objects he
  had no name for. . . .
  	"You looking for anyone in particular, Jack?"
  	The man stood in front of a vast fireplace, wearing tight black
  jeans and
  a white T-shirt. His feet were bare and he held a fat glass bulb of
  liquor in
  his right hand. Slick blinked at him.
  	"Shit," Slick said, "you're him. . . ."
  	The man swirled the brown stuff up around the edges of the glass and
  took
  a swallow. "I expected Afrika to pull something like this
  eventually," he said,
  "but somehow, buddy, you don't look like his style of help."
  	"You're the Count."
  	"Yeah," he said, "I'm the Count. Who the fuck are you?"
  	"Slick. Slick Henry."
  	He laughed. "Want some cognac, Slick Henry?" He gestured with the
  glass
  toward a piece of polished wooden furniture where ornate bottles
  stood in a row,
  each one with a little silver tag hung around it on a chain.
  	Slick shook his head.
  	The man shrugged. "Can't get drunk on it anyway . . . Pardon my
  saying so,
  Slick, but you look like shit. Am I correct in guessing that you are
  not a part
  of Kid Afrika's operation? And if not, just what exactly are you
  doing here?"
  	"Gentry sent me."
  	"Gentry who?"
  	"You're the guy on the stretcher, right?"
  	"The guy on the stretcher is me. Where, exactly, right this minute,
  is
  that stretcher, Slick?"
  	"Gentry's."
  	"Where's that?"
  	"Factory."
  	"And where is that?  "
  	"Dog Solitude."
  	"And how did I happen to get there, wherever that is?"
  	"Kid Afrika, he brought you. Brought you with this girl name of
  Cherry,
  right? See, I owed him a favor, so he wanted me to put you up awhile,
  you an'
  Cherry, and she's taking care of you."
  	"You called me Count, Slick. . . ."
  	"Cherry said Kid called you that once."
  	"Tell me, Slick, did the Kid seem worried when he brought me?"
  	"Cherry thought he got scared, back in Cleveland."
  	"I'm sure he did. Who's this Gentry? A friend of yours?"
  	"Factory's his place. I live there too. . . ."
  	"This Gentry, is he a cowboy, Slick? A console jockey? I mean, if
  you're
  here, he must be technical, right?"
  	Now it was Slick's turn to shrug. "Gentry's, like, he's an artist,
  kind
  of. Has these theories. Hard to explain. He rigged a set of splitters
  to that
  thing on the stretcher, what you're jacked into. First he tried to
  get an image
  on a holo rig, but there was just this monkey thing, sort of shadow,
  so he
  talked me into . . ."
  	"Jesus . . . Well, never mind. This factory you're talking about,
  it's out
  in the sticks somewhere? It's relatively isolated?"
  	Slick nodded.
  	"And this Cherry, she's some kind of hired nurse?"
  	"Yeah. Had a med-tech's ticket, she said."
  	"And nobody's come looking for me yet?"
  	"No."
  	"That's good, Slick. Because if anyone does, other than my lying
  rat-
  bastard friend Kid Afrika, you folks could find yourselves in serious
  trouble."
  	"Yeah?"
  	"Yeah. Listen to me, okay? I want you to remember this. If any
  company
  shows up at this factory of yours, your only hope in hell is to get
  me jacked
  into the matrix. You got that?"
  	"How come you're the Count? I mean, what's it mean?"
  	"Bobby. My name's Bobby. Count was my handle once, that's all. You
  think
  you'll remember what I told you?"
  	Slick nodded again.
  	"Good." He put his glass down on the thing with all the fancy
  bottles.
  "Listen," he said. From the open door came the sound of tires over
  gravel. "Know
  who that is, Slick? That's Angela Mitchell."
  	Slick turned. Bobby the Count was looking out at the drive.
  	"Angie Mitchell? The stim star? She's in this thing too?"
  	"In a manner of speaking, Slick, in a manner of speaking . . ."
  	Slick saw the long black car slide by. "Hey," he began, "Count, I
  mean
  Bobby, what d --"

  "Easy," Gentry was saying, "just sit back. Easy. Easy . . ."



  Back East

  While Kelly and his assistants were assembling her wardrobe for the
  trip, she
  felt as though the house itself were stirring around her, preparing
  for one of
  its many brief periods of vacancy.
  	She could hear their voices, from where she sat in the living room,
  their
  laughter. One of the assistants was a girl in a blue polycarbon exo
  that allowed
  her to carry the Herm�s wardrobe cases as though they were weightless
  blocks of
  foam, the humming skeleton suit padding softly down the stairs on its
  blunt
  dinosaur feet. Blue skeleton, leather coffins.
  	Now Porphyre stood in the doorway. "Missy ready?" He wore a long,
  loose
  coat cut from tissue-thin black leather; rhinestone spurs glittered
  above the
  heels of black patent boots.
  	"Porphyre," she said, "you're in mufti. We have an entrance to make,
  in
  New York."
  	"The cameras are for you."
  	"Yes," she said, "for my reinsertion."
  	"Porphyre will keep well in the rear."
  	"I've never known you to worry about upstaging anyone."
  	He grinned, exposing sculpted teeth, streamlined teeth, an avant-
  garde
  dentist's fantasy of what teeth might be like in a faster, more
  elegant species.
  	"Danielle Stark will be flying with us." She heard the sound of the
  approaching helicopter. "She's meeting us at LAX."
  	"We'll strangle her," he said, his tone confidential, as he helped
  her on
  with the blue fox Kelly had selected. "If we promise to hint to the
  fax that the
  motive was sexual, she might even decide to play along. . . ."
  	"You're horrid."
  	"Danielle is a horror, missy."
  	"Look who's talking."
  	"Ah," said the hairdresser, narrowing his eyes, "but my soul is a
  child's."
  	Now the helicopter was landing.

  Danielle Stark, associated with stim versions of both Vogue-Nippon
  and Vogue-
  Europa , was widely rumored to be in her late eighties. If it were
  true, Angie
  thought, covertly inspecting the journalist's figure as the three of
  them
  boarded the Lear, Danielle and Porphyre would be on par for overall
  surgical
  modification. Apparently in her willowy early thirties, her only
  obvious
  augments were a pair of pale blue Zeiss implants. A young French
  fashion
  reporter had once referred to these as "modishly outdated"; the
  reporter, Net
  legend said, had never worked again.
  	And soon, Angie knew, Danielle would want to talk drugs, celebrity
  drugs,
  the cornflower eyes schoolgirl-wide to take it all in.

  Under Porphyre's daunting gaze, Danielle managed to contain herself
  until they
  were in cruise mode somewhere over Utah.
  	"I was hoping," she began, "that I wouldn't have to be the one to
  bring it
  up."
  	"Danielle," Angie countered, "I am  sorry. How thoughtless." She
  touched
  the veneered face of the Hosaka flight kitchen, which purred softly
  and began to
  dispense tiny plates of tea-smoked duck, gulf oysters on black-pepper
  toast,
  crayfish flan, sesame pancakes. . . . Porphyre, taking Angie's cue,
  produced a
  bottle of chilled Chablis -- Danielle's favorite, Angie now recalled.
  Someone --
  Swift? -- had also remembered.
  	"Drugs," Danielle said, fifteen minutes later, finishing the last of
  the
  duck.
  	"Don't worry," Porphyre assured her. "When you get to New York, they
  have
  anything you want."
  	Danielle smiled. "You're so amusing. Do you know I've a copy of your
  birth
  certificate? I know your real name." She looked at him meaningfully,
  still
  smiling.
  	" 'Sticks and stones,' " he said, topping up her glass.
  	"Interesting notation regarding congenital defects." She sipped her
  wine.
  	"Congenital, genital . . . We all change so much  these days, don't
  we?
  Who's been doing your hair, dear?" He leaned forward. "Your saving
  grace,
  Danielle, is that you make the rest of your kind look vaguely human."
  	Danielle smiled.

  The interview itself went smoothly enough; Danielle was too skilled
  an
  interviewer to allow her feints to cross the pain threshold, where
  they might
  rally serious resistance. But when she brushed a fingertip back
  across her
  temple, depressing a subdermal switch that deactivated her recording
  gear, Angie
  tensed for the real onslaught.
  	"Thank you," Danielle said. "The rest of the flight, of course, is
  off the
  record."
  	"Why don't you just have another bottle or two and turn in?"
  Porphyre
  asked.
  	"What I don't see, dear," Danielle said, ignoring him, "is why you
  bothered . . . ."
  	"Why I bothered, Danielle?"
  	"Going to that tedious clinic at all. You've said it didn't affect
  your
  work. You've also said there was no 'high,' not in the usual sense."
  She
  giggled. "Though you do maintain that it was such a terribly
  addictive
  substance. Why did  you decide to quit?"
  	"It was terribly expensive. . . ."
  	"In your case, surely, that's academic."
  	True ,  Angie thought, though a week of it did cost something in the

  vicinity of your annual salary .
  	"I suppose I began to resent paying to feel normal. Or a poor
  approximation of normal."
  	"Did you build up a tolerance?"
  	"No."
  	"How odd."
  	"Not really. These designers provide substances that supposedly
  bypass the
  traditional drawbacks."
  	"Ah. But what about the new drawbacks, the now  drawbacks?" Danielle

  poured herself more wine. "I've heard another version of all this, of
  course."
  	"You have?"
  	"Of course I have. What it was, who made it, why you quit."
  	"Yes?"
  	"It was an antipsychotic, produced in Sense/Net's own labs. You quit

  taking it because you'd rather be crazy."
  	Porphyre gently took the glass from Danielle's hand as her lids
  fluttered
  heavily over the brilliant blue eyes. "Nightie-night, dear," he said.
  Danielle's
  eyes closed and she began to snore gently.
  	"Porphyre, what -- ?"
  	"I dosed her wine," he said. "She won't know the difference, missy.
  She
  won't remember anything she didn't record. . . ." He grinned broadly.
  "You
  really didn't want to have to listen to this bitch all the way back,
  did you?"
  	"But she'll know, Porphyre!"
  	"No, she won't. We'll tell her she killed three bottles by herself
  and
  made a disgusting mess in the washroom. And she'll feel  like it,
  too." He
  giggled.

  Danielle Stark was still snoring, quite loudly now, in one of the two
  swing-down
  bunks in the rear of the cabin.
  	"Porphyre," Angie said, "do you think she might've been right?"
  	The hairdresser gazed at her with his gorgeous, inhuman eyes. "And
  you
  wouldn't have known?"
  	"I don't know. . . ."
  	He sighed. "Missy worries too much. You're free now. Enjoy it."
  	"I do hear voices, Porphyre."
  	"Don't we all, missy?"
  	"No," she said, "not like mine. Do you know anything about African
  religions, Porphyre?"
  	He smirked. "I'm not African."
  	"But when you were a child . . ."
  	"When I was a child," Porphyre said, "I was white."
  	"Oh . . ."
  	He laughed. "Religions, missy?"
  	"Before I came to the Net, I had friends. In New Jersey. They were
  black
  and . . . religious."
  	He smirked again and rolled his eyes. "Hoodoo sign, missy?
  Chickenbone and
  pennyroyal oil?"
  	"You know it isn't like that."
  	"And if I do?"
  	"Don't tease me, Porphyre. I need you."
  	"Missy has me. And yes, I know what you mean. And those  are your
  voices?"
  	"They were. After I began to use the dust, they went away. . . ."
  	"And now?"
  	"They're gone." But the impulse was past now, and she cringed from
  trying
  to tell him about Grande Brigitte and the drug in the jacket.
  	"Good," he said. "That's good, missy."

  The Lear began its descent over Ohio. Porphyre was staring at the
  bulkhead,
  still as a statue. Angie looked out at the cloud-country below as it
  rose toward
  them, remembering the game she'd played on airplanes as a child,
  sending an
  imaginary Angie out to romp through cloud-canyons and over fluffy
  peaks grown
  magically solid. Those planes had belonged to Maas-Neotek, she
  supposed. From
  the Maas corporate jets she'd gone on to Net Lears. She knew
  commercial
  airliners only as locations for her stims: New York to Paris on the
  maiden
  flight of JAL's restored Concorde, with Robin and a hand-picked party
  of Net
  people.
  	Descending. Were they over New Jersey yet? Did the children swarming
  the
  rooftop playgrounds of Beauvoir's arcology hear the Lear's engine?
  Did the sound
  of her passage sweep faintly over the condos of Bobby's childhood?
  How
  unthinkably intricate the world was, in sheer detail of mechanism,
  when
  Sense/Net's corporate will shook tiny bones in the ears of unknown,
  unknowing
  children. . . .
  	"Porphyre knows certain things," he said, very softly. "But Porphyre
  needs
  time to think, missy. . . ."
  	They were banking for the final approach.



  Kuromaku

  And Sally was silent, on the street and in the cab, all the long cold
  way back
  to their hotel.
  	Sally and Swain were being blackmailed by Sally's enemy "up the
  well."
  Sally was being forced to kidnap Angie Mitchell. The thought of
  someone's
  abducting the Sense/Net star struck Kumiko as singularly unreal, as
  if someone
  were plotting to assassinate a figure out of myth.
  	The Finn had implied that Angie herself was already involved, in
  some
  mysterious way, but he had used words and idioms Kumiko hadn't
  understood.
  Something in cyberspace; people forming pacts with a thing or things
  there. The
  Finn had known a boy who became Angie's lover; but wasn't Robin
  Lanier her
  lover? Kumiko's mother had allowed her to run several of the Angie
  and Robin
  stims. The boy had been a cowboy, a data thief, like Tick in London.
  . . .
  	And what of the enemy, the blackmailer? She was mad, Finn said, and
  her
  madness had brought about the decline of her family's fortunes. She
  lived alone,
  in her ancestral home, the house called Straylight. What had Sally
  done to earn
  her enmity? Had she really killed this woman's father? And who were
  the others,
  the others . . . .
  	And had Sally learned what she'd wanted to learn, in visiting the
  Finn?
  Kumiko had waited, finally, for some pronouncement from the armored
  shrine, but
  the exchange had wound down to nothing, to a gaijin ritual of joking
  goodbyes.

  In the hotel lobby, Petal was waiting in a blue velour armchair.
  Dressed for
  travel, his bulk encased in three-piece gray wool, he rose from the
  chair like
  some strange balloon as they entered, eyes mild as ever behind steel-
  rimmed
  glasses.
  	"Hello," he said, and coughed. "Swain's sent me after you. Only to
  mind
  the girl, you see."
  	"Take her back," Sally said. "Now. Tonight."
  	"Sally! No!" But Sally's hand was already locked firmly around
  Kumiko's
  upper arm, pulling her toward the entrance to the darkened lounge off
  the lobby.
  	"Wait there," Sally snapped at Petal. "Listen to me," she said,
  tugging
  Kumiko around a corner, into shadow. "You're going back. I can't keep
  you here
  now."
  	"But I don't like it there. I don't like Swain, or his house. . . .
  I . .
  ."
  	"Petal's okay," Sally said, leaning close and speaking quickly. "In
  a
  pinch, I'd say trust him. Swain, well, you know what Swain is, but
  he's your
  father's. Whatever comes down, I think they'll keep you out of the
  way. But if
  it gets bad, really bad, go to the pub where we met Tick. The Rose
  and Crown.
  Remember?"
  	Kumiko nodded, her eyes filling with tears.
  	"If Tick's not there, find a barman named Bevan and mention my
  name."
  	"Sally, I . . ."
  	"You're okay," Sally said, and kissed her abruptly, one of her
  lenses
  brushing for an instant against Kumiko's cheekbone, startlingly cold
  and
  unyielding. "Me, baby, I'm gone."
  	And she was, into the muted tinkle of the lounge, and Petal cleared
  his
  throat in the entranceway.

  The flight back to London was like a very long subway ride. Petal
  passed the
  time inscribing words, a letter at a time, in some idiotic puzzle in
  an English
  fax, grunting softly to himself. Eventually she slept, and dreamed of
  her
  mother. . . .
  	
  	"Heater's working," Petal said, driving back to Swain's from
  Heathrow. It
  was uncomfortably warm in the Jaguar, a dry heat that smelled of
  leather and
  made her sinuses ache. She ignored him, staring out at the wan
  morning light, at
  roofs shining black through melting snow, rows of chimneypots. . . .
  	"He's not angry with you, you know," Petal said. "He feels a special

  responsibility. . . ."
  	"Giri ."
  	"Er . . . yes. Responsible, you see. Sally's never been what you'd
  call
  predictable, really, but we didn't expect --"
  	"I don't wish to talk, thank you."
  	His small worried eyes in the mirror.

  The crescent was lined with parked cars, long silver-gray cars with
  tinted
  windows.
  	"Seeing a lot of visitors this week," Petal said, parking opposite
  number
  17. He got out, opened the door for her. She followed him numbly
  across the
  street and up the gray steps, where the black door was opened by a
  squat, red-
  faced man in a tight dark suit, Petal brushing past him as though he
  weren't
  there.
  	"Hold on," red-face said. "Swain'll see her now. . . ."
  	The man's words brought Petal up short; with a grunt, he spun around
  with
  disconcerting speed and caught the man by his lapel.
  	"In future show some fucking respect," Petal said, and though he
  hadn't
  raised his voice, somehow all of its weary gentleness was gone.
  Kumiko heard
  stitches pop.
  	"Sorry, guv." The red face was carefully blank. "He told me to tell
  you."
  	"Come along then," Petal said to her, releasing his grip on the dark

  worsted lapel. "He'll just want to say hello."
  	They found Swain seated at a three-meter oak refectory table in the
  room
  where she'd first seen him, the dragons of rank buttoned away behind
  white
  broadcloth and a striped silk tie. His eyes met hers as she entered,
  his long-
  boned face shadowed by a green-shaded brass reading lamp that stood
  beside a
  small console and a thick sheaf of fax on the table. "Good," he said,
  "and how
  was the Sprawl?"
  	"I'm very tired, Mr. Swain. I wish to go to my room."
  	"We're glad to have you back, Kumiko. The Sprawl's a dangerous
  place.
  Sally's friends there probably aren't the sort of people your father
  would want
  you to associate with."
  	"May I go to my room now?"
  	 "Did you meet any of Sally's friends, Kumiko?"
  	"No."
  	"Really? What did you do?"
  	"Nothing."
  	"You mustn't be angry with us, Kumiko. We're protecting you."
  	"Thank you. May I go to my room now?"
  	"Of course. You must be very tired."
  	Petal followed her from the room, carrying her bag, his gray suit
  creased
  and wrinkled from the flight. She was careful not to glance up as
  they passed
  beneath the blank gaze of the marble bust where the Maas-Neotek unit
  might still
  be hidden, though with Swain and Petal in the room she could think of
  no way to
  retrieve it.

  There was a new sense of movement in the house, brisk and muted:
  voices,
  footsteps, the rattle of the lift, the chattering of pipes as someone
  drew a
  bath.
  	She sat at the foot of the huge bed, staring at the black marble
  tub.
  Residual images of New York seemed to hover at the borders of her
  vision; if she
  closed her eyes, she found herself back in the alley, squatting
  beside Sally.
  Sally, who'd sent her away. Who hadn't looked back. Sally, whose name
  had once
  been Molly, or Misty, or both. Again, her unworthiness. Sumida, her
  mother
  adrift in black water. Her father. Sally.
  	Moments later, driven by a curiosity that pushed aside her shame,
  she rose
  from where she lay, brushed her hair, zipped her feet into thin black
  rubber
  toe-socks with ridged plastic soles, and went very quietly out into
  the
  corridor. When the lift arrived, it stank of cigarette smoke.
  	Red-face was pacing the blue-carpeted foyer when she emerged from
  the
  lift, his hands in the pockets of his tight black jacket. " 'Ere," he
  said,
  raising his eyebrows, "you need something?"
  	"I'm hungry," she said, in Japanese. "I'm going to the kitchen."
  	" 'Ere," he said, removing his hands from his pockets and
  straightening
  the front of his jacket, "you speak English?"
  	"No," she said, and walked straight past him down the corridor and
  around
  the corner. " 'Ere," she heard him say, rather more urgently, but she
  was
  already groping behind the white bust.
  	She managed to slip the unit into her pocket as he rounded the
  corner. He
  surveyed the room automatically, hands held loosely at his sides, in
  a way that
  suddenly reminded her of her father's secretaries.
  	"I'm hungry," she said, in English.
  	Five minutes later, she'd returned to her room with a large and very

  British-looking orange; the English seemed to place no special value
  on the
  symmetry of fruit. Closing the door behind her, she put the orange on
  the wide
  flat rim of the black tub and took the Maas-Neotek unit from her
  pocket.
  	"Quickly now," Colin said, tossing his forelock as he came into
  focus,
  "open it and reset the A/B throw to A. The new regime has a
  technician making
  the rounds, scanning for bugs. Once you've changed that setting, it
  shouldn't
  read as a listening device." She did as he said, using a hairpin.
  	"What do you mean," she asked, mouthing the words without voicing
  them, "
  'the new regime'?"
  	"Haven't you noticed? There are at least a dozen staff now, not to
  mention
  numerous visitors. Well, I suppose it's less a new regime than an
  upgrading of
  procedure. Your Mr. Swain is quite a social man, in his covert way.
  You've one
  conversation there, Swain and the deputy head of Special Branch, that
  I imagine
  numerous people would kill for, not least of them the aforementioned
  official."
  	"Special Branch?"
  	"The secret police. Bloody odd company he keeps, Swain: Buck House
  types,
  czars from the East End rookeries, senior police officers . . ."
  	"Buck House?"
  	"The Palace. Not to mention merchant bankers from the City, a
  simstim
  star, a drove or two of expensive panders and drug merchants . . ."
  	"A simstim star?"
  	"Lanier, Robin Lanier."
  	"Robin Lanier? He was here?"
  	"Morning after your precipitous departure."
  	She looked into Colin's transparent green eyes. "Are you telling me
  the
  truth?"
  	"Yes."
  	"Do you always?"
  	"To the extent that I know it, yes."
  	"What are you?"
  	"A Maas-Neotek biochip personality-base programmed to aid and advise
  the
  Japanese visitor in the United Kingdom." He winked at her.
  	"Why did you wink?"
  	"Why d'you think?"
  	"Answer the question!" Her voice loud in the mirrored room.
  	The ghost touched his lips with a slim forefinger. "I'm something
  else as
  well, yes. I do display a bit too much initiative for a mere guide
  program.
  Though the model I'm based on is top of the line, extremely
  sophisticated. I
  can't tell you exactly what I am, though, because I don't know."
  	"You don't know?" Again subvocally, carefully.
  	"I know all sorts of things," he said, and went to one of the dormer

  windows. "I know that a serving table in Middle Temple Hall is said
  to be made
  from the timbers of the Golden Hind;  that you climb one hundred and
  twenty-
  eight steps to the walkways of Tower Bridge; that in Wood Street,
  right of
  Cheapside, is a plane tree thought to have been the one in which
  Wordsworth's
  thrush sang loud. . . ." He spun suddenly to face her. "It isn 't ,
  though,
  because the current tree was cloned from the original in 1998. I know
  all that,
  you see, and more, a very great deal more. I could, for instance,
  teach you the
  rudiments of snooker. That is  what I am, or rather what I was
  intended to be,
  originally. But I'm something else as well, and very likely something
  to do with
  you. I don't know what. I really don't."
  	"You were a gift from my father. Do you communicate with him?"
  	"Not to my knowledge."
  	"You didn't inform him of my departure?"
  	"You don't understand," he said. "I wasn't aware of your having been
  away,
  until you activated me a moment ago."
  	"But you've been recording. . . ."
  	"Yes, but not aware of it. I'm only 'here' when you activate me.
  Then I
  evaluate the current data. . . . One thing you can be fairly certain
  of, though,
  is that it simply isn't possible to broadcast any sort of signal from
  this house
  without Swain's snoops detecting it immediately."
  	"Could there be more  of you, I mean another one, in the same unit?"
  	"Interesting idea, but no, barring some harrowing secret
  breakthrough in
  technology. I'm pushing the current envelope a bit as it is,
  considering the
  size of my hardware. I know that from my store of general background
  information."
  	She looked down at the unit in her hand. "Lanier," she said. "Tell
  me."
  	"Ten/twenty-five/sixteen: A.M.," he said. Her head filled with
  disembodied
  voices. . . .
  	PETAL: If you'll follow me please, sir . . .
  	SWAIN: Come into the billiard room.
  	THIRD VOICE: You'd better have a reason for this, Swain. There are
  three
  Net men waiting in the car. Security will have your address in their
  database
  until hell freezes over.
  	PETAL: Lovely car that is, sir, the Daimler. Take your coat?
  	THIRD VOICE: What is it, Swain? Why couldn't we meet at Brown's?
  	SWAIN: Take your coat off, Robin. She's gone.
  	THIRD VOICE: Gone?
  	SWAIN: To the Sprawl. Early this morning.
  	THIRD VOICE: But it isn't time. . . .
  	SWAIN: You think I sent her there?
  	The man's reply was hollow, indistinct, lost behind a closing door.
  "That
  was Lanier?" Kumiko asked silently.
  	"Yes," Colin replied. "Petal mentioned him by name in an earlier
  conversation. Swain and Lanier spent twenty-five minutes together."
  	Sound of a latch, movement.
  	SWAIN: Bloody cock-up, not mine. I warned you about her, told you to
  warn
  them. Born killer, probably psychopathic . . .
  	LANIER: And your problem, not mine. You need their product and my
  cooperation.
  	SWAIN: And what's your  problem, Lanier? Why are you in this? Just
  to get
  Mitchell out of the way?
  	LANIER: Where's my coat?
  	SWAIN: Petal, Mr. Lanier's bloody coat.
  	PETAL: Sir.
  	LANIER: I have the impression they want your razorgirl as badly as
  they
  want Angie. She's definitely part of the payoff. They'll be taking
  her, too.
  	SWAIN: Good luck to them, then. She's already in position, in the
  Sprawl.
  Spoke with her on the phone an hour ago. I'll be putting her together
  with my
  man over there, the one who's been arranging for the . . . girl. And
  you'll be
  going back over yourself?
  	LANIER: This evening.
  	SWAIN: Well, then, not to worry.
  	LANIER: Goodbye, Swain.
  	PETAL: He's a right bastard, that one.
  	SWAIN: I don't like this, really. . . .
  	PETAL: You like the goods though, don't you?
  	SWAIN: Can't complain there, but why d'you think they want Sally as
  well?
  	PETAL: Christ knows. They're welcome to her. . . .
  	SWAIN: They. I don't like 'theys'. . . .
  	PETAL: They mightn't be terribly happy to know she'd gone there on
  her own
  stick, with Yanaka's daughter. . . .
  	SWAIN: No. But we have Miss Yanaka back again. Tomorrow I'll tell
  Sally
  that Prior's in Baltimore, getting the girl into shape. . . .
  	PETAL: That's an ugly business, that is. . . .
  	SWAIN: Bring a pot of coffee to the study.

  She lay on her back, eyes closed, Colin's recordings unspooling in
  her head,
  direct input to the auditory nerves. Swain seemed to conduct the
  better part of
  his dealings in the billiard room, which meant that she heard people
  arriving
  and departing, heads and tails of conversations. Two men, one of whom
  might have
  been the red-faced man, held an interminable discussion of dog racing
  and
  tomorrow's odds. She listened with special interest as Swain and the
  man from
  Special Branch (SB, Swain called it) settled an article of business
  directly
  beneath the marble bust, as the man was preparing to leave. She
  interrupted this
  segment half-a-dozen times to request clarification. Colin made
  educated
  guesses.
  	"This is a very corrupt country," she said at last, deeply shocked.
  	"Perhaps no more than your own," he said.
  	"But what is Swain paying these people with?"
  	"Information. I would say that our Mr. Swain has recently come into
  possession of a very high-grade source of intelligence and is busy
  converting it
  into power. On the basis of what we've heard, I'd hazard that this
  has probably
  been his line of work for some time. What's apparent, though, is that
  he's
  moving up, getting bigger. There's internal evidence that he's
  currently a much
  more important man than he was a week ago. Also, we have the fact of
  the
  expanded staff. . . ."
  	"I must tell . . . my friend."
  	"Shears? Tell her what?"
  	"What Lanier said. That she would be taken, along with Angela
  Mitchell."
  	"Where is she, then?"
  	"The Sprawl. A hotel . . ."
  	"Phone her. But not from here. D'you have money?"
  	"A Mitsubank chip."
  	"No good in our phones, sorry. Have any coin?"
  	She got up from the bed and sorted carefully through the odd bits of

  English money that had accumulated at the bottom of her purse.
  "Here," she said,
  coming up with a thick gilt coin, "ten pounds."
  	"Need two of those to make a local  call." She tossed the brassy
  tenner
  back into her purse. "No, Colin. Not the phone. I know a better way.
  I want to
  leave here. Now. Today. Will you help me?"
  	 "Certainly," he said, "though I advise you not to."
  	"But I will."
  	"Very well. How do you propose to go about it?"
  	"I'll tell them," she said, "that I need to go shopping."



  Bad Lady

  The woman must've gotten in sometime after midnight, she figured
  later, because
  it was after Prior came back with the crabs, the second bag of crabs.
  They
  really did have some good crabs in Baltimore, and coming off a run
  always gave
  her an appetite, so she'd talked him into going back for some more.
  Gerald kept
  coming in to change the derms on her arms; she'd give him her best
  goofy smile
  every time, squish the trank out of them when he'd gone, and then
  stick them
  back on. Finally Gerald said she should get some sleep; he put out
  the lights
  and turned down the fake window to its lowest setting, a bloodred
  sunset.
  	When she was alone again, she slid her hand between the bed and the
  wall,
  found the shockrod in its hole in the foam.
  	She fell asleep without meaning to, the red glow of the window like
  a
  sunset in Miami, and she must've dreamed of Eddy, or anyway of Hooky
  Green's,
  dancing with somebody up there on the thirty-third floor, because
  when the crash
  woke her, she wasn't sure where she was, but she had this very clear
  map of the
  way out of Hooky Green's, like she knew she'd better take the stairs
  because
  there must be some kind of trouble. . . .
  	She was half out of bed when Prior came through the door, like
  really
  through  it, because it was still shut when he hit it. He came
  through it
  backward and it just went to splinters and honeycomb chunks of
  cardboard.
  	She saw him hit the wall, and then the floor, and then he wasn't
  moving
  anymore, and someone else was there in the doorway, backlit from the
  other room,
  and all she could see of the face were these two curves of reflected
  red light
  from that fake sunset.
  	Pulled her legs back into bed and sank back against the wall, her
  hand
  sliding down to . . .
  	"Don't move, bitch." There was something real scary about that
  voice,
  because it was too fucking cheerful , like throwing Prior through
  that door had
  been kind of a treat. "I mean really  don't move. . . ." And the
  woman was
  across the room in three strides, very close, so close that Mona felt
  the cold
  coming off the leather of the woman's jacket.
  	"Okay," Mona said, "okay . . ."
  	Then hands grabbed her, fast , and she was flat on her back,
  shoulders
  pressed down hard into the foam, and something -- the shockrod -- was
  right in
  front of her face.
  	"Where'd you get this little thing?"
  	"Oh," Mona said, like it was something she might've seen once but
  forgotten about, "it was in my boyfriend's jacket. I borrowed his
  jacket. . . ."
  	Mona's heart was pounding. There was something about those glasses.
  . . .
  	"Did shithead know you had this little thing?"
  	"Who?"
  	"Prior," the woman said, and let go of her, turning. Then she was
  kicking
  him, kicking Prior over and over, hard. "No," she said, stopping as
  abruptly as
  she'd begun, "I don't think Prior knew."
  	Then Gerald was in the doorway, just like nothing had happened,
  except he
  was looking ruefully at the part of the door that was still on the
  frame,
  rubbing his thumb over an edge of splintered laminate. "Coffee,
  Molly?"
  	"Two coffees, Gerald," the woman said, examining the shockrod.
  "Mine's
  black."

  Mona sipped her coffee and studied the woman's clothes and hair while
  they
  waited for Prior to wake up. At least that's what they seemed to be
  doing.
  Gerald was gone again. She wasn't much like anybody Mona'd seen
  before; Mona
  couldn't place her on the style map at all, except she must've had
  some money.
  The hair was European; Mona'd seen it like that in a magazine; she
  was pretty
  sure it wasn't this season's style anywhere, but it went okay with
  the glasses,
  which were insets, planted right in the skin. Mona'd seen a cabbie in
  Cleveland
  had those. And she wore this short jacket, very dark brown, too plain
  for Mona's
  taste but obviously new, with a big white sheepskin collar, open now
  over a
  weird green thing trussed across her breasts and stomach like armor,
  which was
  what Mona figured it probably was, and jeans cut from some kind of
  gray-green
  mossy suede, thick and soft, and Mona thought they were the best
  thing about her
  outfit, she could've gone for a pair of those herself, except the
  boots spoiled
  them, these knee-high black boots, the kind bike racers wore, with
  thick yellow
  rubber soles and big straps across the insteps, chrome buckles all up
  and down,
  horrible clunky toes. And where'd she get that nail color, that
  burgundy? Mona
  didn't think they even made that anymore.
  	"What the hell are you looking at?"
  	"Uh . . . your boots."
  	"So?"
  	"They don't make it with your pants."
  	"Wore 'em to kick the shit out of Prior."
  	Prior moaned on the floor and started trying to throw up. It made
  Mona
  feel kind of sick herself, so she said she was going to go to the
  bathroom.
  	"Don't try to leave." The woman seemed to be watching Prior, over
  the rim
  of her white china cup, but with those glasses, it was hard to be
  sure.

  Somehow she found herself in the bathroom with her purse on her lap.
  She
  hurried, getting the hit together; didn't grind it fine enough, so it
  burned the
  back of her throat, but like Lanette used to say, you don't always
  have time for
  the niceties. And anyway, wasn't that all a lot better now? There was
  a little
  shower in Gerald's bathroom, but it looked like it hadn't been used
  for a long
  time. She took a closer look and saw gray mold growing around the
  drain, and
  spots that looked like dried blood.
  	When she came back, the woman was dragging Prior into one of the
  other
  rooms, pulling him by his feet. He had socks on, no shoes, Mona
  noticed now,
  like maybe he'd had his feet up to sleep. His blue shirt had blood on
  it and his
  face was all bruised.
  	What Mona felt, as the rush kicked in, was a bright and innocent
  curiosity. "What are you doing?"
  	"I think I'll have to wake him up," the woman said, like she was on
  the
  subway, talking about another passenger who was about to miss his
  stop. Mona
  followed her into the room where Gerald did his work, everything
  clean and
  hospital white; she watched as the woman got Prior up into a sort of
  chair like
  in a salon, with levers and buttons and things. It isn 't like she 's
  that
  strong , Mona thought, it  's like she knows which way to throw the
  weight .
  Prior's head fell to the side as the woman fastened a black strap
  across his
  chest. Mona was starting to feel sorry for him, but then she
  remembered Eddy.
  	"What is it?" The woman was filling a white plastic container with
  water
  from a chrome tap.
  	Mona just kept trying to say it, feeling her heart race out of
  control on
  the wiz. He killed Eddy , she kept trying to say, but it wouldn't
  come out. But
  then it must have, because the woman said, "Yeah, he'll do that sort
  of thing .
  . . if you let him." She threw the water over Prior, into his face
  and all down
  his shirt; his eyes snapped open and the white of the left one was
  solid red;
  the metal prongs of the shockrod snapped white sparks when the woman
  pressed it
  against the wet blue shirt. Prior screamed.

  Gerald had to get down on his hands and knees to pull her out from
  under the
  bed. He had cool, very gentle hands. She couldn't remember how she'd
  gotten
  under there, but now everything was quiet. Gerald had on a gray
  topcoat and dark
  glasses.
  	"You're going with Molly now, Mona," he said.
  	She started to shake.
  	"I think I'd better give you something for your nerves."
  	She jerked back, out of his grip. "No! Don't fucking touch me!"
  	"Leave it, Gerald," the woman said from the door. "It's time you go
  now."
  	"I don't think you know what you're doing," he said, "but good
  luck."
  	"Thanks. Think you'll miss the place?"
  	"No. I was going to retire soon anyway."
  	"So was I," the woman said, and then Gerald left, without even a nod
  for
  Mona.
  	"Got any clothes?" the woman asked Mona. "Get 'em on. We're leaving
  too."
  	Dressing, Mona found she couldn't button her dress over her new
  breasts,
  so she left it open, putting Michael's jacket on and sipping it up to
  her chin.



  Company

  Sometimes he just needed to stand there and look up at the Judge, or
  squat on
  the concrete beside the Witch. It held back the memory-stutter, to do
  that. Not
  the fugues, the real flashbacks, but this jerky unfocused feeling he
  got, like
  the memory tape kept slipping in his head, losing minute increments
  of
  experience . . . So he was doing that now, and it was working, and
  finally he
  noticed Cherry was there beside him.
  	Gentry was up in the loft with the shape he'd captured, what he
  called a
  macroform node, and he'd hardly listened to what Slick had tried to
  tell him
  about the house and that whole place and Bobby the Count.
  	So Slick had come down here to crouch next to an Investigator in the
  cold
  and dark, retracing all the things he'd done with so many different
  tools, and
  where he'd scrounged each part, and then Cherry reached out and
  touched his
  cheek with her cold hand.
  	"You okay?" she asked. "I thought maybe it was happening to you
  again. . .
  ."
  	"No. It's just I gotta come down here, sometimes."
  	"He plugged you into the Count's box, didn't he?"
  	"Bobby," Slick said, "that's his name. I saw him."
  	"Where?"
  	"In there. It's a whole world. There's this house, like a castle or
  something, and he's there."
  	"By himself?"
  	"He said Angie Mitchell's in there too. . . ."
  	"Maybe he's crazy. Is she?"
  	"I didn't see her. Saw a car he said was hers."
  	"She's in some celebrity detox place in Jamaica, last I heard."
  	He shrugged. "I dunno."
  	"What's he like?"
  	"He looked younger. Anybody'd look bad with all those tubes 'n' shit
  in
  'em. He figured Kid Afrika dumped him here because he got scared. He
  said if
  anybody comes looking for him, we jack him into the matrix."
  	"Why?"
  	"Dunno."
  	"You shoulda asked him."
  	He shrugged again. "Seen Bird anywhere?"
  	"No."
  	"Shoulda been back already . . ." He stood up.

  Little Bird came back at dusk, on Gentry's bike, the dark wings of
  his hair damp
  with snow and flapping behind him as he roared in across the
  Solitude. Slick
  winced; Little Bird was in the wrong gear. Little Bird jolted up an
  incline of
  compacted oildrums and hit the brakes when he should've gunned it.
  Cherry gasped
  as Bird and the bike separated in midair; the bike seemed to hang
  there for a
  second before it somersaulted into the rusted sheet-metal tangle that
  had been
  one of Factory's outbuildings, and Little Bird was rolling over and
  over on the ground.
  	Somehow Slick never heard the crash. He was standing beside Cherry
  in the
  shelter of a doorless loading bay -- then he was sprinting across
  snow-flecked
  rust to the fallen rider, no transition. Little Bird lay on his back
  with blood
  on his lips, his mouth partially hidden by the jumble of thongs and
  amulets he
  wore around his neck.
  	"Don't touch him," Cherry said. "Ribs may be broken, or he's mashed
  up
  inside. . . ."
  	Little Bird's eyes opened at the sound of her voice. He pursed his
  lips
  and spat blood and part of a tooth.
  	"Don't move," Cherry said, kneeling beside him and switching to the
  crisp
  diction she'd learned in med-tech school. "You may have been injured.
  . . ."
  	"F-fuck it, lady," he managed, and struggled stiffly up, with
  Slick's
  help.
  	"All right, asshole," she said, "hemorrhage. See if I give a shit."
  	"Didn't get it," Little Bird said, smearing blood across his face
  with the
  back of his hand, "the truck."
  	"I can see that," Slick said.
  	"Marvie 'n' them, they got company. Like flies on shit. Couple of
  hovers
  'n' a copter 'n' shit. All these guys."
  	"What kind of guys?"
  	"Like soldiers, but they're not. Soldier'll goof around, bullshit,
  crack
  jokes when nobody important's looking. But not them."
  	"Cops?" Marvie and his two brothers grew mutant ruderalis in a dozen
  half-
  buried railway tankcars; sometimes they tried to cook primitive amine
  compounds,
  but their lab kept blowing up. They were the nearest thing Factory
  had to
  permanent neighbors. Six kilometers.
  	"Cops?" Little Bird spat another tooth chip and gingerly probed his
  mouth
  with a bloody finger. "They aren't doin' anything against the law.
  Anyway, cops
  can't afford shit like that, new hovers, new Honda. . . ." He grinned
  through a
  film of blood and spittle. "I hung off in the Solitude 'n' scoped 'em
  good.
  Nobody I'd wanna talk to, or you either. Guess I really fucked
  Gentry's bike,
  huh?"
  	"Don't worry about it," Slick said. "I think his mind's on something

  else."
  	"Tha's good. . . ." He staggered in the direction of Factory, nearly
  fell,
  caught himself, continued.
  	"He's higher'n a kite," Cherry said.
  	"Hey, Bird," Slick called, "what happened to that bag of shit I gave
  you
  to give Marvie?"
  	Bird swayed, turned. "Lost it . . ." Then he was gone, around a
  corner of
  corrugated steel.
  	"Maybe he's making that up," Cherry said. "About those guys. Or
  seeing
  things."
  	"I doubt it," Slick said, pulling her into deeper shadow as an unlit
  black
  Honda swung down toward Factory out of winter twilight.

  He heard the Honda making its fifth pass over Factory as he pounded
  up the
  quaking stairs, the iron roof rattling with the copter's passage.
  Well, he
  thought, that should anyway bring it to Gentry's attention that they
  had
  visitors. He took the fragile catwalk in ten long, slow steps; he was
  beginning
  to wonder if they'd ever be able to get the Count and his stretcher
  back out
  without having to weld extra I-bar across the span.
  	He went into the bright loft without knocking. Gentry was sitting at
  a
  workbench, his head cocked to one side, staring up at the plastic
  skylights. The
  bench was littered with bits of hardware and small tools.
  	"Helicopter," Slick said, panting from the climb.
  	"Helicopter," Gentry agreed, nodding thoughtfully, his disheveled
  roostertail bobbing. "They seem to be looking for something."
  	"I think they just found it."
  	"Could be the Fission Authority."
  	"Bird saw people at Marvie's. Saw that copter there too. You weren't

  paying much attention when I tried to tell you what he said."
  	"Bird?" Gentry looked down at the small bright things on the
  workbench.
  Picked up two fittings and twisted them together.
  	"The Count! He told me --"
  	"Bobby Newmark," Gentry said, "yes. I know a lot more about Bobby
  Newmark,
  now."
  	Cherry came in behind Slick. "You gotta do something about that
  bridge,"
  she said, going immediately to the stretcher, "it shakes too much."
  She bent to
  check the Count's readouts.
  	"Come here, Slick," Gentry said, standing. He walked to the holo
  table.
  Slick followed, looked at the image that glowed there. It reminded
  him of the
  rugs he'd seen in the gray house, patterns like that, only these were
  woven of
  hairfine neon, and twisted into some kind of infinite knot; the
  knot's core hurt
  his head to look at it. He looked away.
  	"That's it?" he asked Gentry. "What you've always been looking for?"
  	"No. I told you. This is just a node, a macroform. A model . . ."
  	"He's got this house in there, like a castle, and grass and trees
  and sky.
  . . ."
  	"He's got a lot more than that. He's got a universe more than that.
  That
  was just a construct worked up from a commercial stim. What he's got
  is an
  abstract  of the sum total of data constituting cyberspace. Still,
  it's closer
  than I've gotten before. . . . He didn't tell you why he was in
  there?"
  	"Didn't ask him."
  	"Then you'll have to go back."
  	"Hey. Gentry. Listen up. That copter, it'll be back. It'll be back
  with
  two hovers fulla guys Bird said looked like soldiers. They aren't
  after us, man.
  They're after him ."
  	"Maybe they're his. Maybe they are after us."
  	"No. He told  me, man. He said, anybody comes looking for him, we're
  in
  deep shit and we gotta jack him into the matrix."
  	Gentry looked down at the little coupling he still held. "We'll talk
  with
  him, Slick. You'll go back; this time I'll go with you."



  Winter Journey

  Petal had agreed, finally, but only after she'd suggested phoning her
  father for
  permission. That had sent him shuffling unhappily off in search of
  Swain, and
  when he'd returned, looking no happier, the answer had been yes.
  Bundled in
  several layers of her warmest clothing, she stood in the white-
  painted foyer,
  studying the hunting prints while Petal lectured the red-faced man,
  whose name
  was Dick, behind closed doors. She couldn't distinguish individual
  words, only a
  low torrent of admonition. The Maas-Neotek unit was in her pocket,
  but she
  avoided touching it. Twice already Colin had tried to dissuade her.
  	Now Dick emerged from Petal's lecture with his hard little mouth set
  in a
  smile. Under his tight black suit he wore a pink cashmere turtleneck
  and a thin
  gray lambswool cardigan. His black hair was plastered tightly back
  against his
  skull; his pale cheeks were shadowed by a few hours' growth of beard.
  She palmed
  the unit in her pocket. " 'Lo," Dick said, looking her up and down.
  "Where shall
  we go for our walk?"
  	"Portobello Road," Colin said, slouched against the wall beside the
  crowded coatrack. Dick took a dark overcoat from the rack, reaching
  through
  Colin to do it, put it on, and buttoned it. He pulled on a bulky pair
  of black
  leather gloves.
  	"Portobello Road," Kumiko said, releasing the unit.

  "How long have you worked for Mr. Swain?" she asked, as they made
  their way
  along the icy pavement of the crescent.
  	"Long enough," he replied. "Mind you don't slip. Wicked heels on
  those
  boots . . ."
  	Kumiko tottered along beside him on black French patent spikes. As
  she'd
  predicted, it was virtually impossible to navigate the glass-hard
  rippled
  patches of ice in these boots. She took his hand for support; doing
  this, she
  felt solid metal across his palm. The gloves were weighted, the
  fingers
  reinforced with carbon mesh.
  	He was silent, as they turned the sidestreet at the end of the
  crescent,
  but when they reached Portobello Road, he paused. "Excuse me, miss,"
  he said, a
  note of hesitation in his voice, "but is it true, what the boys say?"
  	"Boys? Excuse me?"
  	"Swain's boys, his regulars. That you're the big fellow's daughter -
  - the
  big fellow back in Tokyo?"
  	"I'm sorry," she said, "I don't understand."
  	"Yanaka. Your name's Yanaka?"
  	"Kumiko Yanaka, yes . . ."
  	He peered at her with intense curiosity. Then worry crossed his face
  and
  he glanced carefully around. "Lord," he said, "must be true . . ."
  His squat,
  tightly buttoned body was taut and alert. "Guvnor said you wanted to
  shop?"
  	"Yes, thank you."
  	"Where shall I take you?"
  	"Here," she said, and led him into a narrow arcade lined solidly
  with
  British gomi .

  Her Shinjuku shopping expeditions served her well with Dick. The
  techniques
  she'd devised for torturing her father's secretaries proved just as
  effective
  now, as she forced the man to participate in dozens of pointless
  choices between
  one Edwardian medallion and another, this or that fragment of stained
  glass,
  though she was careful only to choose items, finally, that were
  fragile or very
  heavy, awkward to carry, and extremely expensive. A cheerful
  bilingual shop
  assistant accessed an eighty-thousand-pound charge against Kumiko's
  MitsuBank
  chip. Kumiko slipped her hand into the pocket that held the Mass-
  Neotek unit.
  "Exquisite," the English girl said in Japanese, as she wrapped
  Kumiko's
  purchase, an ormolu vase encrusted with griffins.
  	"Hideous," Colin commented, in Japanese. "An imitation as well." He
  reclined on a Victorian horsehair sofa, his boots up on an art deco
  cocktail
  stand supported by airstream aluminum angels.
  	The shop assistant added the wrapped vase to Dick's burden. This was

  Dick's eleventh antique shop and Kumiko's eighth purchase.
  	"I think you'd better make your move," Colin advised. "Any moment
  now, our
  Dick will buzz Swain's for a car to take that lot home."
  	"Think this is it, then?" Dick asked hopefully, over Kumiko's
  purchases.
  	"One more shop, please." Kumiko smiled.
  	"Right," he said grimly. As he was following her out the door, she
  drove
  the heel of her left boot into a gap in the pavement she'd noticed on
  her way
  in. "You all right?" he asked, seeing her stumble.
  	"I've broken the heel of my boot. . . ." She hobbled back into the
  shop
  and sat down beside Colin on the horsehair sofa. The assistant came
  fussing up
  to help.
  	"Get 'em off quick," Colin advised, "before Dickie puts his parcels
  down."
  	She unzipped the boot with the broken heel, then the other, pulled
  off
  both. In place of the coarse Chinese silk she usually wore in winter,
  her feet
  were sheathed in thin black rubber toe-socks with ridged plastic
  soles. She
  nearly ran between Dick's legs as she cleared the door, but instead
  her shoulder
  struck his thigh as she squeezed past, toppling him into a display of
  faceted
  crystal decanters.
  	And then she was free, plunging through the press of tourists down
  Portobello Road.

  Her feet were very cold, but the ridged plastic soles provided
  excellent
  traction -- though not on ice, she reminded herself, picking herself
  up from her
  second spill, wet grit against her palms. Colin had directed her down
  this
  narrow passage of blackened brick. . . .
  	She grasped the unit. "Where next?"
  	"This way," he said.
  	"I want the Rose and Crown," she reminded him.
  	"You want to be careful. Dickie'll have Swain's men here by now, not
  to
  mention the sort of hunt that friend of Swain's from Special Branch
  could mount
  if he's asked to. And I can't imagine why he shouldn't be asked to. .
  . ."

  She entered the Rose and Crown by a side door, Colin at her elbow,
  grateful for
  the snug gloom and irradiating warmth that seemed central to the idea
  of these
  drinking-burrows. She was struck by the amount of padding on the
  walls and
  seats, by the muffling curtains. If the colors and fabrics had been
  less dingy,
  the effect would somehow have been less warm. Pubs, she guessed, were
  an extreme
  expression of the British attitude toward gomi .
  	At Colin's urging, she made her way through the drinkers clustered
  in
  front of the bar, hoping to find Tick.
  	"What'll it be, dear?"
  	She looked up into the broad blond face behind the bar, bright
  lipstick
  and rouged cheeks. "Excuse me," Kumiko began, "I wish to speak with
  Mr. Bevan --
  "
  	"Mine's a pint, Alice," someone said, slapping down three ten-pound
  coins,
  "lager." Alice worked a tall white ceramic lever, filling a mug with
  pale beer.
  She put the mug on the scarred bar and swept the money into a
  rattling till
  behind the counter.
  	"Someone wanting a word, Bevan," Alice said, as the man lifted his
  pint.
  	Kumiko looked up at a flushed, seamed face. The man's upper lip was
  short;
  Kumiko thought of rabbits, though Bevan was large, nearly as large as
  Petal. He
  had a rabbit's eyes as well: round, brown, showing very little white.
  "With me?"
  His accent reminded her of Tick's.
  	"Tell him yes," Colin said. "He can't think why a little Jap girl in

  rubber socks has come into the drinker looking for him."
  	"I wish to find Tick."
  	Bevan regarded her neutrally over the rim of his raised pint.
  "Sorry," he
  said, "can't say I know anyone by the name." He drank.
  	"Sally told me I should find you if Tick wasn't here. Sally Shears .
  . ."
  	Bevan choked on his lager, his eyes showing a fraction of white.
  Coughing,
  he set the mug on the bar and took a handkerchief from his overcoat
  pocket. He
  blew his nose and wiped his mouth.
  	"I'm on duty in five," he said. "Best step in the back."
  	Alice raised a hinged section of the bar; Bevan ushered Kumiko
  through
  with small flapping motions of his large hands, glancing quickly over
  his
  shoulder. He guided her down a narrow passage that opened off the
  area behind
  the bar. The walls were brick, old and uneven, thickly coated with
  dirty green
  paint. He stopped beside a battered steel hamper heaped with terry
  bar towels
  that reeked of beer.
  	"You'll regret it if you're on a con, girl," he said. "Tell me why
  you're
  looking for this Tick."
  	"Sally is in danger. I must find Tick. I must tell him."
  	"Fucking hell," the barman said. "Put yourself in my position. . .
  ."
  	Colin wrinkled his nose at the hamper of sodden towels.
  	"Yes?" Kumiko said.
  	"If you're a nark, and I sent you to find this Tick fellow, assuming
  I did
  know him, and he's on some sort of blag, then he'd do for me,
  wouldn't he? But
  if you're not, then this Sally, she'd likely do for me if I don't,
  understand?"
  	Kumiko nodded. " 'Between the rock and the hard place.' " It was an
  idiom
  Sally had used; Kumiko found it very poetic.
  	"Quite," Bevan said, giving her an odd look.
  	"Help me. She is in very great danger."
  	He ran his palm back across thinning ginger-colored hair.
  	"You will  help me," she heard herself say, feeling her mother's
  cold mask
  click into place, "Tell me where to find Tick."
  	The barman seemed to shiver, though it was overly warm in the
  passageway,
  a steamy warmth, beer smell mingling with raw notes of disinfectant.
  "D'you know
  London?"
  	Colin winked at her. "I can find my way," she said.
  	"Bevan," Alice said, putting her head around the corner, "the
  filth."
  	"Police," Colin translated.
  	"Margate Road, SW2," Bevan said, "dunno the number, dunno his
  phone."
  	"Let him show you out the back now," Colin said. "Those are no
  ordinary
  policemen."

  	Kumiko would always remember her endless ride through the city's
  Underground. How Colin led her from the Rose and Crown to Holland
  Park, and
  down, explaining that her MitsuBank chip was worse than useless now;
  if she used
  it for a cab, or any sort of purchase, he said, some Special Branch
  operator
  would see the transaction flare like magnesium on the grid of
  cyberspace. But
  she had to find Tick, she told him; she had to find Margate Road. He
  frowned No,
  he said wait till dark; Brixton wasn't far, but the streets were too
  dangerous
  now, by daylight, with the police on Swain's side. But where could
  she hide? she
  asked. She had very little cash; the concept of currency, of coins
  and paper
  notes, was quaint and alien.
  	Here, he said, as she rode a lift down into Holland Park. "For the
  price
  of a ticket."
  	The bulgy silver shapes of the trains.
  	The soft old seats in gray and green.
  	And warm, beautifully warm; another burrow, here in the realm of
  ceaseless
  movement . . .



  The Rip

  The airport sucked a groggy Danielle Stark away down a pastel
  corridor lined
  with reporters, cameras, augmented eyes, while Porphyre and three Net
  security
  men swept Angie through the closing ring of journalists, a
  choreographed piece
  of ritual that had more to do with providing dramatic visuals than
  protection.
  Anyone present had already been cleared by security and the PR
  department.
  	Then she was alone with Porphyre in an express elevator, on their
  way to
  the heliport the Net maintained on the terminal's roof.
  	As the doors opened, into gusts of wet wind across brilliantly lit
  concrete, where a new trio of security men waited in giant
  fluorescent-orange
  parkas, Angie remembered her first glimpse of the Sprawl, when she'd
  ridden the
  train up from Washington with Turner.
  	One of the orange parkas ushered them across an expanse of spotless
  concrete to the waiting helicopter, a large twin-prop Fokker finished
  in black
  chrome. Porphyre led the way up the spidery, matte-black stairway.
  She followed
  without looking back.
  	She had something now, a new determination. She'd decided to contact
  Hans
  Becker through his agent in Paris. Continuity had the number. It was
  time, time
  to make something happen. And she'd make something happen with Robin
  as well;
  he'd be waiting now, she knew, at the hotel.
  	The helicopter told them to fasten their seatbelts.
  	As they lifted off, there was virtual silence in the soundproofed
  cabin,
  only a throbbing in the bones, and for a strange second she seemed
  able to hold
  the whole of her life in mind and know it, see it for what it had
  been. And it
  was this, she thought, that the dust had drifted over and concealed,
  and that
  had been freedom from pain.
  	And the site of the soul  's departure , said an iron voice, out of
  candleglow and the roar of the hive. . . .
  	"Missy?" Porphyre from the seat beside her, leaning close . . .
  	"I'm dreaming. . . ."
  	Something had been waiting for her, years ago, in the Net. Nothing
  like
  the loa, like Legba or the others, though Legba, she knew, was Lord
  of the
  Crossroads; he was synthesis, the cardinal point of magic,
  communication. . . .
  	"Porphyre," she asked, "why did Bobby leave?" She looked out at the
  Sprawl's tangled grid of light, at the domes picked out in red
  beacons, seeing
  instead the datascape that had drawn him, always, back to what he'd
  believed was
  the only game worth playing.
  	"If you don't know, missy," Porphyre said, "who does?"
  	"But you hear things. Everything. All the rumors. You always have. .
  . ."
  	"Why ask me now?"
  	"It's time. . . ."
  	"I remember talk , understand? How people who aren't famous talk
  about
  those who are. Maybe someone who claimed they knew Bobby talked to
  someone else,
  and it came around. . . . Bobby was worth talking about because he
  was with you,
  understand? That's a good place to start, missy, because he wouldn't
  have found
  that so very gratifying, would he? Story was, he'd set out hustling
  on his own,
  but he'd found you instead, and you rolled higher and faster than
  anything he
  could've dreamed of. Took him up  there, understand? Where the kind
  of money
  he'd never even dreamed of, back in Barrytown, was just change. . .
  ."
  	Angie nodded, looking out over the Sprawl.
  	"Talk was he had his own ambitions, missy. Something driving him.
  Drove
  him off, finally . . ."
  	"I didn't think he'd leave me," she said. "When I first came to the
  Sprawl, it was like being born. A new life. And he was there, right
  there, the
  very first night. Later, when Legba -- when I was with the Net . . ."
  	"When you were becoming Angie."
  	"Yes. And as much of me as that took, I knew he'd be there. And also
  that
  he'd never buy  it, entirely, and I needed that, how it was still
  just a scam,
  to him, the whole business. . . ."
  	"The Net?"
  	"Angie Mitchell. He knew the difference between it and me."
  	"Did he?"
  	"Maybe he was  the difference." So high above the lines of light . .
  .

  The old New Suzuki Envoy had been Angie's favorite Sprawl hotel since
  her
  earliest days with the Net.
  	It maintained its street wall for eleven stories, then narrowed
  jaggedly,
  at the first of nine setbacks, into a mountainside assembled from
  bedrock
  excavated from its Madison Square building site. Original plans had
  called for
  this steep landscape to be planted with flora native to the Hudson
  Valley
  region, and populated with suitable fauna, but subsequent
  construction of the
  first Manhattan Dome had made it necessary to hire a Paris-based eco-
  design
  team. The French ecologists, accustomed to the "pure" design problems
  posed by
  orbital systems, had despaired of the Sprawl's particulate-laden
  atmosphere,
  opting for heavily engineered strains of vegetation and robotic fauna
  of the
  sort encountered in children's theme parks, but Angie's continued
  patronage had
  eventually lent the place a cachet it would otherwise have lacked.
  The Net
  leased the five topmost floors, where her permanent suite had been
  installed,
  and the Envoy had come to enjoy a certain belated reputation with
  artists and
  entertainers.
  	Now she smiled as the helicopter rose past a disinterested robot
  bighorn
  pretending to munch lichen beside the illuminated waterfall. The
  absurdity of
  the place always delighted her; even Bobby had enjoyed it.
  	She glanced out at the Envoy's heliport, where the Sense/Net logo
  had been
  freshly repainted on heated, floodlit concrete. A lone figure, hooded
  in a
  bright orange parka, waited beside a sculpted outcropping of rock.
  	"Robin will be here, won't he, Porphyre?"
  	"Mistah  Lanier," he said sourly.
  	She sighed.
  	The black chrome Fokker brought them smoothly down, glasses tinkling

  gently in the drinks' cabinet as the landing gear met the roof of the
  Envoy. The
  muted throb of the engines died.
  	"Where Robin is concerned, Porphyre, I'll have to make the first
  move. I'm
  going to speak with him tonight. Alone. In the meantime, I want you
  to stay out
  of his way."
  	"Porphyre's pleasure, missy," the hairdresser said, as the cabin
  door
  opened behind them. And then he was twisting, clawing at the buckle
  of his
  seatbelt, and Angie turned in time to see the bright orange parka in
  the
  hatchway, the upraised arm, the mirrored glasses. The gun made no
  more sound
  than a cigarette lighter, but Porphyre convulsed, one long black hand
  slapping
  at his throat as the security man swung the hatch shut behind him and
  sprang at
  Angie.
  	Something was clapped hard against her stomach as Porphyre lolled
  back
  bonelessly in his seat, the sharp pink tip of his tongue protruding.
  She looked
  down, in pure reflex, and saw the black chrome buckle of her seatbelt
  through a
  sticky-looking lozenge of greenish plastic.
  	She looked up into a white oval face framed by a tightly drawn
  orange
  nylon hood. Saw her own face blank with shock, doubled in the silver
  lenses. "He
  drink, tonight?"
  	"What?"
  	"Him." A thumb jerked in Porphyre's direction. "He drink any
  alcohol?"
  	"Yes . . . Earlier."
  	"Shit." A woman's voice, as she turned to the unconscious
  hairdresser.
  "Now I've sedated him. Don't wanna suppress his breathing reflex,
  y'know?" Angie
  watched as the woman checked Porphyre's pulse. "Guess he's okay . .
  ." Did she
  shrug, inside the orange parka?
  	"Security?"
  	"What?" The glasses flashed.
  	"Are you Net security?"
  	"Fuck no, I'm abducting you."
  	"You are?"
  	"You bet."
  	"Why?"
  	"Not for any of the usual reasons. Somebody's got it in for you. Got
  it in
  for me too. I was supposed to set it up to grab you next week. Fuck
  'em. Had to
  talk to you, anyway." "You did? Talk to me?"
  	"Know anybody name of 3Jane?"
  	"No. I mean, yes, but --"
  	"Save it. Our asses outa here, fast."
  	"Porphyre --"
  	"He's gonna wake up soon. Look of him, I don't wanna be around when
  he
  does. . . ."



  3Jane

  If this was part of Bobby's big gray house in the country, Slick
  decided,
  opening his eyes on the cramped curve of the narrow corridor, then it
  was a
  stranger place than it had seemed the first time. The air was thick
  and dead and
  the light from the greenish glass-tile ceiling-strip made him feel
  like he was
  under water. The tunnel was made of some kind of glazed concrete. It
  felt like
  jail.
  	"Maybe we came out in the basement or something," he said, noticing
  the
  faint ping  of echo off the concrete when he spoke.
  	"No reason we'd cut into the construct you saw before," Gentry said.
  	"So what is it?" Slick touched the concrete wall; it was warm.
  	"Doesn't matter," Gentry said.
  	Gentry started walking in the direction they were both facing. Past
  the
  curve, the floor became an uneven mosaic of shattered china,
  fragments pressed
  into something like epoxy, slippery under their boots.
  	"Look at this stuff . . ." Thousands of different patterns and
  colors in
  the broken bits, but no overall design in how it had been put down,
  just random.
  	"Art." Gentry shrugged. "Somebody's hobby. You should appreciate
  that,
  Slick Henry."
  	Whoever it was, they hadn't bothered with the walls. Slick knelt to
  run
  his fingers over it, feeling raw edges of broken ceramic, glassy
  hardened
  plastic in between. "What's that supposed to mean, 'hobby'?"
  	"It's like those things you build, Slick. Your junk toys . . ."
  Gentry
  grinned his tense crazy grin.
  	"You don't know," Slick said. "Spend your whole fucking life trying
  to
  figure what cyberspace is shaped like, man, and it probably isn't
  even shaped
  like anything, and anyway who gives a shit?" There wasn't anything
  random about
  the Judge and the others. The process was random, but the results had
  to conform
  to something inside, something he couldn't touch directly.
  	"Come on," Gentry said.
  	Slick stayed where he was, looking up at Gentry's pale eyes, gray in
  this
  light, his taut face. Why did he put up with Gentry anyway?
  	Because you needed somebody, in the Solitude. Not just for
  electricity;
  that whole landlord routine was really just a shuck. He guessed
  because you
  needed somebody around. Bird wasn't any good to talk to because there
  wasn't
  much he was interested in, and all he talked was stringtown stupid.
  And even if
  Gentry never admitted it, Slick felt like Gentry understood about
  some things.
  	"Yeah," Slick said, getting up, "let's go."
  	

  The tunnel wound in on itself like a gut. The section with the mosaic
  floor was
  back there now, around however many curves and up and down short,
  curving
  stairwells. Slick kept trying to imagine a building that would have
  insides like
  this, but he couldn't. Gentry was walking fast, eyes narrowed,
  chewing on his
  lip. Slick thought the air was getting worse.
  	Up another stairwell, they hit a straight stretch that narrowed to
  nothing
  in the distance, either way you looked. It was broader than the
  curved parts and
  the floor was soft and humpy with little rugs, it looked like
  hundreds of them,
  rolled out layers deep over the concrete. Each rug had its own
  pattern and
  colors, lots of reds and blues, but all the patterns were the same
  zaggy
  diamonds and triangles. The dusty smell was thicker here and Slick
  figured it
  had to be the rugs, they looked so old. The ones on top, nearest the
  center,
  were worn down to the weave, in patches. A trail, like somebody'd
  been walking
  up and down there for years. Sections of the overhead light-strip
  were dark, and
  others pulsed weakly.
  	"Which way?" he asked Gentry.
  	Gentry was looking down, working his thick lower lip between finger
  and
  thumb. "This way."
  	"How come?"
  	"Because it doesn't matter."
  	It made Slick's legs tired, walking over those rugs. Had to watch
  not to
  snag his toes in the ones with holes worn through. Once he stepped
  over a glass
  tile that had fallen from the light-strip. At regular intervals now
  they were
  passing sections of wall that looked as though portals had been
  sealed over with
  more concrete. There wasn't anything there, just the same arched
  shape in
  slightly paler concrete with a slightly different texture.
  	"Gentry, this has gotta be underground, right? Like a basement under

  something . . ."
  	But Gentry just brought his arm up, so that Slick bumped into it,
  and they
  both were standing there staring at the girl at the end of the
  corridor, not a
  dozen meters across the waves of carpet.
  	She said something in a language Slick guessed was French. The voice
  was
  light and musical, the tone matter- of-fact. She smiled. Pale under a
  twist of
  dark hair, a fine, high-boned face, strong thin nose, and wide mouth.
  	Slick felt Gentry's arm trembling against his chest. "It's okay," he
  said,
  taking Gentry's arm and lowering it. "We're just looking for Bobby. .
  . ."
  	"Everyone's looking for Bobby," she said, English with an accent he
  didn't
  know. "I'm looking for him myself. For his body. Have you seen his
  body?" She
  took a step back, away from them, like she was about to run.
  	"We won't hurt you," Slick said, suddenly aware of his own smell, of
  the
  grease worked into his jeans and brown jacket, and Gentry didn't
  really look all
  that much more reassuring.
  	"I shouldn't think so," she said, and her white teeth flashed again
  in the
  stale undersea light. "But then I don't think I fancy either of you."
  	Slick wanted Gentry to say something, but Gentry didn't. "You know
  him --
  Bobby?" Slick ventured.
  	"He's really a very clever man. Extraordinarily clever. Although I
  don't
  think I fancy him, really." She wore something loose and black that
  hung to her
  knees. Her feet were bare. "Nonetheless, I want . . . his body." She
  laughed.
  	Everything

  	changed.

  "Juice?" Bobby the Count asked, holding out a tall glass of something
  yellow.
  The water in the turquoise pool reflected shifting blobs of sunlight
  on the palm
  fronds above his head. He was naked, aside from a pair of very dark
  glasses.
  "What's the matter with your friend?"
  	"Nothing," Slick heard Gentry say. "He did time on induced
  Korsakov's.
  Transition like that scares the shit out of him."
  	Slick lay very still on the white iron lounge chair with the blue
  cushions, feeling the sun bake through his greasy jeans.
  	"You're the one he mentioned, right?" Bobby asked. "Name's Gentle?
  Own a
  factory?"
  	"Gentry."
  	"You're a cowboy." Bobby smiled. "Console jockey. Cyberspace man."
  	"No."
  	Bobby rubbed his chin. "You know I have to shave in here? Cut
  myself,
  there's a scar. . . ." He drank half the glass of juice and wiped his
  mouth with
  the back of his hand. "You're not a jockey? How else you get in
  here?"
  	Gentry unzipped his beaded jacket, exposing his bone- white,
  hairless
  chest. "Do something about the sun," he said.
  	Twilight. Like that. Not even a click. Slick heard himself groan.
  Insects
  began to creak in the palms beyond the whitewashed wall. Sweat cooled
  on his
  ribs.
  	"Sorry, man," Bobby said to Slick. "That Korsakov's, that must be
  some sad
  shit. But this place is beautiful. Vallarta. Belonged to Tally
  Isham." He turned
  his attention to Gentry again. "If you're not a cowboy, fella, what
  are you?"
  	"I'm like you," Gentry said.
  	"I'm a cowboy." A lizard scooted diagonally up the wall behind
  Bobby's
  head.
  	"No. You aren't here to steal anything, Newmark."
  	"How do you know?"
  	"You're here to learn something."
  	"Same thing."
  	"No. You were a cowboy once, but now you're something else. You're
  looking
  for something, but there's nobody to steal it from. I'm looking for
  it too."
  	And Gentry began to explain about the Shape, as the palm shadows
  gathered
  and thickened into Mexican night, and Bobby the Count sat and
  listened.
  	When Gentry was done, Bobby sat there for a long time without saying

  anything. Then he said, "Yeah. You're right. How I think of it, I'm
  trying to
  find out what brought the Change."
  	"Before that," Gentry said, "it didn't have a Shape."
  	"Hey," Slick said, "before we were here, we were somewhere else.
  Where was
  that?"
  	"Straylight," Bobby said. "Up the well. In orbit."
  	"Who's that girl?"
  	"Girl?"
  	"Dark hair. Skinny."
  	"Oh," Bobby said, in the dark, "that was 3Jane. You saw her?"
  	"Weird girl," Slick said.
  	"Dead girl," Bobby said. "You saw her construct. Blew her family
  fortune
  to build this thing."
  	"You, uh, hang out with her? In here?"
  	"She hates my guts. See, I stole it, stole her soul-catcher. She had
  her
  construct in place in here when I took off for Mexico, so she's
  always been
  around. Thing was, she died. Outside, I mean. Meantime, all her shit
  outside,
  all her scams and schemes, that's being run by lawyers, programs,
  more flunkies.
  . . ." He grinned. "It really pisses her off. The people who're
  trying to get
  into your place to get the aleph back, they work for somebody else
  who works for
  some people she hired out on the Coast. But, yeah, I've done the odd
  deal with
  her, traded things. She's crazy, but she plays a tight game. . . ."

  Not even a click.

  At first he thought he was back in the gray house, where he'd seen
  Bobby the
  first time, but this room was smaller and the carpets and furniture
  were
  different, he couldn't say how. Rich but not as glittery. Quiet. A
  lamp with a
  green glass shade glowed on a long wooden table.
  	Tall windows with frames painted white, dividing the white beyond
  that
  into rectangles, each pane, and that must be snow. . . . He stood
  with his cheek
  touching soft drapes, looking out into a walled space of snow.
  	"London," Bobby said. "She had to trade me this to get the serious
  voodoo
  shit. Thought they wouldn't have anything to do with her. Fuck of a
  lot of good
  it did her. They've been fading, sort of blurring. You can still
  raise 'em,
  sometimes, but their personalities run together. . . ."
  	"That fits," Gentry said. "They came out of the first cause, When It

  Changed. You already figured that. But you don't know what happened
  yet, do
  you?"
  	"No. I just know where. Straylight. She's told me all that part, I
  think
  all she knows. Doesn't really care about it. Her mother put together
  a couple of
  AIs, very early on, real heavy stuff. Then her mother died and the
  AIs sort of
  stewed in the corporate cores, up there. One of them started doing
  deals on its
  own. It wanted to get together with the other one. . . ."
  	"It did. There's your first cause. Everything changed."
  	"Simple as that? How do you know?"
  	"Because," Gentry said, "I've been at it from another angle. You've
  been
  playing cause and effect, but I've been looking for outlines, shapes
  in time.
  You've been looking all over the matrix, but I've been looking at
  the matrix,
  the whole thing. I know things you don't."
  	Bobby didn't answer. Slick turned from the window and saw the girl,
  the
  same one, standing across the room. Just standing there.
  	"It wasn't just the Tessier-Ashpool AIs," Gentry said. "People came
  up the
  well to crack the T-A cores. They brought a Chinese military
  icebreaker."
  	"Case," Bobby said, "Guy named Case. I know that part. Some kind of
  synergistic effect . . ."
  	Slick watched the girl.
  	"And the sum was greater than the parts?" Gentry really seemed to be

  enjoying this. "Cybernetic godhead? Light on the waters?"
  	"Yeah," Bobby said, "that's about it."
  	"It's a little more complicated than that," Gentry said, and
  laughed.
  	And the girl was gone. No click.
  	Slick shivered.



  Winter Journey [2]

  Night fell during the Underground's peak evening traffic, though even
  then it
  was nothing like Tokyo, no shiroshi-san  struggling to wedge a last
  few
  passengers in as the doors were closing. Kumiko watched the salmon
  haze of
  sunset from a windy platform on the Central Line, Colin lounging
  against a
  broken vending machine with a row of cracked, dusty windows. "Time
  now," he
  said, "and keep your head demurely down through Bond Street and
  Oxford Circus."
  	"But I must pay, when I leave the system?"
  	"Not everyone  does, actually," he said, tossing his forelock.
  	She set off for the stairs, no longer requiring his directions to
  find her
  way to the opposite platform. Her feet were very cold again, and she
  thought of
  the fleece-lined German boots in the closet in her room at Swain's.
  She'd
  decided on the combination of the rubber toe-socks and the high
  French heels as
  a ploy to lull Dick, to make him doubt she'd run, but with each bite
  of cold
  through the thin soles she regretted the idea.
  	In the tunnel to the other platform, she relaxed her grip on the
  unit and
  Colin flickered out. The walls were worn white ceramic with a
  decorative band of
  green. She took her hand from her pocket and trailed her fingers
  along the green
  tiles as she went, thinking of Sally and the Finn and the different
  smell of a
  Sprawl winter, until the first Dracula stepped smartly in front of
  her and she
  was instantly and very closely surrounded by four black raincoats,
  four bone-
  thin, bone-white faces. " 'Ere," the first one said, "innit pretty."
  	They were eye to eye, Kumiko and the Dracula; his breath smelled of
  tobacco. The evening crowd continued on its way around them, bundled
  for the
  most part in dark wool.
  	"Oo," one said, beside her, "look. Wot's this?" He held up the Maas-
  Neotek
  unit, his hand gloved in cracked black leather. "Flash lighter,
  innit? Let's
  'ave a snag, Jap." Kumiko's hand went to her pocket, shot straight
  through the
  razor slash, and closed on air. The boy giggled.
  	"Snags in 'er bag," another said. " 'Elp 'er, Reg." A hand darted
  out and
  the leather strap of her purse parted neatly.
  	The first Dracula caught the purse, whipped the dangling strap
  around it
  with a practiced flick, and tucked it into the front of his raincoat.
  "Ta."
  	" 'Ere, she's got 'em in 'er pants!" Laughter as she fumbled beneath

  layered sweaters. The tape she'd used hurt her stomach as she tore
  the gun free
  with both hands and flipped it up against the cheek of the boy who
  held the
  unit.
  	Nothing happened.
  	Then the other three were racing frantically for the stairs at the
  far end
  of the tunnel, their high-laced black boots slipping in melted snow,
  their long
  coats flapping like wings. A woman screamed.
  	And still they were frozen there, Kumiko and the Dracula, the muzzle
  of
  the pistol pressed against his left cheekbone. Kumiko's arms began to
  tremble.
  	She was looking into the Dracula's eyes, brown eyes gone wide with
  an
  ancient simple terror; the Dracula was seeing her mother's mask.
  Something
  struck the concrete at her feet: Colin's unit.
  	"Run," she said. The Dracula convulsed, opened his mouth, made a
  strangled, sobbing sound, and twisted away from the gun.
  	Kumiko looked down and saw the Maas-Neotek unit in a puddle of gray
  slush.
  Beside it lay the clean silver rectangle of a single-edged industrial

  razorblade. When she picked up the unit, she saw that its case was
  cracked. She
  shook moisture from the crack and squeezed it hard in her hand. The
  tunnel was
  deserted now. Colin wasn't there. Swain's Walther air pistol was huge
  and heavy
  in her other hand.
  	She stepped to a rectangular receptacle fastened to the tile wall
  and
  tucked the gun down between a grease- flecked foam food container and
  a neatly
  folded sheaf of newsfax. Turned away, then turned back for the fax.
  	Up the stairs.
  	Someone pointed at her, on the platform, but the train roared in
  with its
  antique clatter and then the doors slid shut behind her.

  She did as Colin had instructed, White City and Shepherd's Bush,
  Holland Park,
  raising the fax as the train slowed for Notting Hill -- the King, who
  was very
  old, was dying -- and keeping it there through Bond Street. The
  station at
  Oxford Circus was very busy and she was grateful for the sheltering
  crowd.

  Colin had said that it was possible to leave the station without
  paying. After
  some consideration, she decided that this was true, though it
  required speed and
  timing. Really, there was no other way; her purse, with the MitsuBank
  chip and
  her few English coins, had gone with the Jack Draculas. She spent ten
  minutes
  watching passengers surrender their yellow plastic tickets to the
  automated
  turnstyles, took a deep breath, and ran. Up, over, behind her a shout
  and a loud
  laugh, and then she was running again.
  	When she reached the doors at the top of the stairs, she saw Brixton
  Road
  waiting like a tatty Shinjuku, jammed with steaming foodstalls.



  Star

  She was waiting in a car and she didn't like it. She didn't like
  waiting anyway,
  but the wiz she'd done made it really hard. She had to keep reminding
  herself
  not to grit her teeth, because whatever Gerald had done to them, they
  were still
  sore. She was sore all over, now that she thought about it. Probably
  the wiz
  hadn't been such a great idea.
  	The car belonged to the woman, the one Gerald called Molly. Some
  kind of
  regular gray Japanese car like a suit would have, nice enough but
  nothing you'd
  notice. It had that new smell inside and it was fast when they got
  out of
  Baltimore. It had a computer but the woman drove it herself, all the
  way back to
  the Sprawl, and now it was parked on the roof of a twenty-level lot
  that must be
  close to the hotel where Prior had taken her, because she could see
  that crazy
  building, the one with the waterfall, fixed up like a mountain.
  	There weren't many other cars up here, and the ones that were were
  humped
  over with snow, like they hadn't moved in a long time. Except for the
  two guys
  in the booth where you drove in, there didn't seem to be anybody
  around at all.
  Here she was, in the middle of all those people, the biggest city in
  the world,
  and she was alone in the backseat of a car. Told to wait.
  	The woman hadn't said much when they'd come from Baltimore, just
  asked a
  question now and then, but the wiz had made it hard for Mona not to
  talk. She'd
  talked about Cleveland and Florida and Eddy and Prior.
  	Then they'd driven up here and parked.
  	So this Molly'd been gone at least an hour now, maybe longer. She'd
  taken
  a suitcase with her. The only thing Mona'd been able to get out of
  her was that
  she'd known Gerald a long time, and Prior hadn't known that.
  	It was getting cold in the car again, so Mona climbed into the front
  seat
  and turned on the heater. She couldn't just leave it on low, because
  it might
  run the battery down, and Molly'd said if that happened, they were
  really in the
  shit. " 'Cause when I come back, we leave in a hurry." Then she'd
  shown Mona
  where there was a sleeping bag under the driver's seat.
  	She set the heater on high and held her hands in front of the vent.
  Then
  she fiddled with the little vid studs beside the dash monitor and got
  a news
  show. The King of England was sick; he was really old. There was a
  new disease
  in Singapore; it hadn't killed anybody yet, but nobody knew how you
  got it or
  how to cure it. Some people thought there was some kind of big fight
  going on in
  Japan, two different bunches of Yakuza guys trying to kill each
  other, but
  nobody really knew; Yakuza -- that was something Eddy liked to
  bullshit about.
  Then these doors popped open and Angie came through on the arm of
  this amazing
  black guy, and the vid voice was saying this was live, she'd just
  arrived in the
  Sprawl after a brief vacation at her house in Malibu, following
  treatment at a
  private drug clinic. . . .
  	Angie looked just great in this big fur, but then the segment was
  over.
  	Mona remembered what Gerald had done; she touched her face.
  	She shut off the vid, then the heater, and got into the backseat
  again.
  Used the corner of the sleeping bag to clean her condensed breath off
  the
  window. She looked up at the mountainside-building, all lit up, past
  the sagging
  chainlink at the edge of the carlot's roof. Like a whole country up
  there, maybe
  Colorado or something, like the stim where Angie went to Aspen and
  met this boy,
  only Robin turned up like he almost always did.
  	But what she didn't understand was this clinic stuff, how that
  barman had
  said Angie'd gone there because she was wired on something, and now
  she'd just
  heard the news guy say it too, so she guessed it had to be true. But
  why would
  anybody like Angie, with a life like that and Robin Lanier for a
  boyfriend, want
  to do drugs?
  	Mona shook her head, looking out at that building, glad she wasn't
  hooked
  on anything.
  	She must've drifted off for a minute, thinking about Lanette,
  because when
  she looked again, there was a copter, a big one, glittery black,
  poised above
  the mountain-building. It looked good, real big-town.
  	She'd known some rough women in Cleveland, girls nobody messed with,
  but
  this Molly was something else -- remembering Prior coming through
  that door,
  remembering him screaming. . . . She wondered what it was he'd
  finally admitted,
  because she'd heard him talking, and Molly hadn't hurt him anymore.
  They'd left
  him strapped in that chair and Mona had asked Molly if she thought
  he'd get
  loose. Either that, Molly had said, or somebody finds him, or he
  dehydrates.
  	The copter settled, vanished. Big one, the kind with the whirly
  thing at
  both ends.
  	So here she was, waiting, no fucking idea what else to do.
  	Something Lanette had taught her, sometimes you had to list your
  assets --
  assets were what you had going for you -- and just forget the other
  stuff. Okay.
  She was out of Florida. She was in Manhattan. She looked like Angie.
  . . . That
  one stopped her. Was that an asset? Okay -- putting it another way -
  - she'd just
  had a fortune in free cosmetic surgery and she had totally perfect
  teeth .
  Anyway, look at it that way and it wasn't so bad. Think about the
  flies in the
  squat. Yeah. If she spent the money she had left on a haircut and
  some makeup,
  she could come up with something that didn't look all that much like
  Angie,
  which was probably a good idea, because what if somebody was looking
  for her?
  	There went the copter again, lifting off.
  	Hey.
  	Maybe two blocks away and fifty stories higher, the thing's nose
  swung
  toward her, dipped. . . . It  's  the wiz . Sort of wobbled there,
  then it was
  coming down. . . . Wiz; it  's  not real . Straight down toward her.
  It just got
  bigger. Toward her. But it  's the wiz , right?   Then it was gone,
  behind
  another building, and it was just the wiz. . . .
  	It swung around a corner, still five stories above the roof of the
  carlot,
  and it was still coming down and it wasn 't  the wiz, it was on  her,
  a tight
  white beam stabbing out to find the gray car, and Mona popped the
  door lock and
  rolled out into the snow, still in the car's shadow, all around her
  the thunder
  of the thing's blades, its engines; Prior or whoever he worked for
  and they were
  after her. Then the spotlight went out, blades changed pitch, and it
  came down
  fast, too fast. Bounced on its landing gear. Slammed down again,
  engines dying,
  coughing blue flame.
  	Mona was on her hands and knees by the car's rear bumper. Slipped
  when she
  tried to get to her feet.
  	There was a sound like a gunshot; a square section of the copter's
  skin
  blew out and skidded across the lot's salt- stained concrete; a
  bright orange
  five-meter emergency exit slide popped out, inflating like a kid's
  beachtoy.
  Mona got up more carefully, holding on to the gray car's fender. A
  dark, bundled
  figure swung its legs out over the slide and went down, sitting up,
  just like a
  kid at a playground. Another figure followed, this one padded in a
  huge hooded
  jacket the same color as the slide.
  	Mona shivered as the one in orange led the other toward her across
  the
  roof, away from the black copter. It was . . . But it was!
  	"Want you both in back," Molly said, opening the door on the
  driver's
  side.
  	"It's you," Mona managed, to the most famous face in the world.
  	"Yes," Angie said, her eyes on Mona's face, "it . . . seems to be. .
  . ."
  	"Come on," Molly said, her hand on the star's shoulder. "Get in.
  Your
  Martian spade'll be waking up already." She glanced back at the
  helicopter. It
  looked like a big toy sitting there, no lights, like a giant kid had
  put it down
  and forgotten it.
  	"He'd better be," Angie said, climbing into the back of the car.
  	"You too, hon," Molly said, pushing Mona toward the open door.
  	"But . . . I mean . . ."
  	"Move!"
  	Mona climbed in, smelling Angie's perfume, wrist brushing the
  supernatural
  softness of that big fur. "I saw you," she heard herself say. "On the
  vid."
  	Angie didn't say anything.
  	 Molly slid into the driver's seat, yanked the door shut, and
  started the
  engine. The orange hood was snugged up tight, her face a white mask
  with blank
  silver eyes. Then they were rolling toward the sheltered ramp,
  swinging into the
  first curve. Down five levels like that, in a tight spiral, and Molly
  swung them
  off into aisles of larger vehicles under dim green diagonals of
  light-strip.
  	"Parafoils," Molly said. "You ever see any parafoil gear, up the
  Envoy?"
  	"No," Angie said.
  	"If Net security has any, they could be upstairs already. . . ." She
  swung
  the car in behind a big long boxy hover, a white one with a name
  painted across
  the rear doors in square blue letters.
  	"What's it say?" Mona asked, then felt herself blush.
  	"Cathode Cathay," Angie said.
  	Mona thought she'd heard that name before.
  	Molly was out there opening those big doors. Pulling down these
  yellow
  plastic ramp things.
  	Then she was back in the car. Reversed, put it in drive, and they
  rolled
  right up into the hover. She stripped back the orange hood and shook
  her head to
  free her hair. "Mona, you think you can get out there and shove those
  ramps back
  in? They aren't heavy." It didn't sound like a question.
  	They weren't heavy. She pulled herself up behind the car and helped
  Molly
  pull the doors shut.
  	She could feel Angie there in the dark.
  	It was really Angie.
  	"Up front, strap in, hold on."
  	Angie. She was sitting right beside Angie.
  	There was a whoosh as Molly filled the hover's bags; then they were
  skimming down the spiral ramp.
  	"Your friend," Molly said, "he's awake by now, but he can't really
  move
  yet. Another fifteen minutes." She swung off the ramp again and this
  time Mona
  had lost track of the levels. This one was packed with fancy cars,
  little ones.
  The hover roared along a central aisle, swung left.
  	"You'll be lucky if he isn't waiting for us outside," Angie said.
  	Molly brought them to a halt ten meters from a big metal door
  painted with
  diagonal stripes, yellow and black.
  	"No," Molly said, taking a little blue box from the dash
  compartment, "he
  's  lucky if he's not   waiting outside." The door blew out of its
  frame with an
  orange flash and a sound that slammed into Mona's diaphragm like a
  solid blow.
  It crashed into the wet street in a cloud of smoke and then they were
  over it,
  turning, the hover accelerating.
  	"This is awfully crude, isn't it?" Angie said, and actually laughed.
  	"I know," Molly said, intent on her driving. "Sometimes that's just
  the
  way to go. Mona, tell her about Prior. Prior and your boyfriend. What
  you told
  me."
  	Mona hadn't ever felt so shy in her life.
  	"Please," Angie said, "tell me. Mona."
  	Just like that. Her name. Angie Mitchell had actually said her
  name. To
  her. Right there.
  	It made her want to faint.



  Margate Road

  "You seem lost," the noodle seller said, in Japanese. Kumiko guessed
  that he was
  Korean. Her father had associates who were Korean; they were in the
  construction
  business, her mother had said. They tended, like this one, to be
  large men, very
  nearly as large as Petal, with broad, serious faces. "You look very
  cold."
  	"I'm looking for someone," she said. "He lives in Margate Road."
  	"Where is that?"
  	"I don't know."
  	"Come inside," the noodle man said, gesturing Kumiko around the end
  of his
  counter. His stall was made of pink corrugated plastic.
  	She stepped between the noodle stall and another that advertised
  something
  called roti, this word worked in deliriously colored spraybomb
  capitals trimmed
  with looping, luminous blobs. That stall smelled of spices and
  stewing meat. Her
  feet were very cold.
  	She ducked beneath a clouded sheet of plastic. The noodle stall was
  crowded: squat blue tanks of butane, the three cooking grids with
  their tall
  pots, plastic sacks of noodles, stacks of foam bowls, and the
  shifting bulk of
  the big Korean as he tended his pots. "Sit," he said; she sat on a
  yellow
  plastic canister of MSG, her head below the level of the counter.
  "You're
  Japanese?"
  	"Yes," she said.
  	"Tokyo?"
  	She hesitated.
  	"Your clothes," he said. "Why do you wear rubber tabi-socks in
  winter? Is
  this the fashion?"
  	"I lost my boots."
  	He passed her a foam bowl and plastic chopsticks; fat twists of
  noodle
  swam in a thin yellow soup. She ate hungrily, then drank off the
  soup. She
  watched as he served a customer, an African woman who took away
  noodles in her
  own lidded pot.
  	"Margate," the noodle man said, when the woman was gone. He took a
  greasy
  paperbound book from beneath the counter and thumbed through it.
  "Here," he
  said, jabbing at an impossibly dense little map, "down Acre Lane." He
  took a
  blue feltpen and sketched the route on a coarse gray napkin.
  	"Thank you," she said. "Now I will go."

  Her mother came to her as she made her way to Margate Road.
  	Sally was in jeopardy, somewhere in the Sprawl, and Kumiko trusted
  that
  Tick would know a way to contact her. If not by phone then through
  the matrix.
  Perhaps Tick knew Finn, the dead man in the alley. . . .
  	In Brixton, the coral-growth of the metropolis had come to harbor a
  different life. Faces dark and light, uncounted races, the brick
  facades washed
  with a riot of shades and symbols unimaginable to the original
  builders. A
  drumbeat pulsed from a pub's open door as she passed, heat and huge
  laughter.
  The shops sold foodstuffs Kumiko had never seen, bolts of bright
  cloth, Chinese
  handtools, Japanese cosmetics. . . .
  	Pausing by that bright window, the display of tints and blushes, her
  own
  face reflected in the silver backing, she felt her mother's death
  fall on her
  out of the night. Her mother had owned things like this.
  	Her mother's madness. Her father would not refer to it. Madness had
  no
  place in her father's world, though suicide did. Her mother's madness
  was
  European, an imported snare of sorrow and delusion. . . . Her father
  had killed
  her mother, Kumiko had told Sally, in Covent Garden. But was it true?
  He had
  brought doctors from Denmark, from Australia, and finally from Chiba.
  The
  doctors had listened to the dreams of the princess-ballerina, had
  mapped and
  timed her synapses and drawn samples of her blood. The princess-
  ballerina had
  refused their drugs, their delicate surgeries. "They want to cut my
  brain with
  lasers," she had whispered to Kumiko.
  	She'd whispered other things as well.
  	At night, she said, the evil ghosts rose like smoke from their boxes
  in
  Kumiko's father's study. "Old men," she'd said, "they suck our breath
  away. Your
  father sucks my breath away. This city sucks my breath away. Nothing
  here is
  ever still. There is no true sleep."
  	In the end, there had been no sleep at all. Six nights her mother
  sat,
  silent and utterly still, in her blue European room. On the seventh
  day, she
  left the apartment alone -- a remarkable feat, considering the
  diligence of the
  secretaries -- and made her way to the cold river.
  	But the backing of the display was like Sally's glasses. Kumiko took
  the
  Korean's map from the sleeve of her sweater.

  There was a burnt car beside the curb in Margate Road. Its wheels
  were missing.
  She paused beside it, and was scanning the unrevealing faces of the
  houses
  opposite, when she heard a sound behind her. Turning to find a
  twisted gargoyle
  face, under a greasy spill of curls, in the light from the half-open
  door of the
  nearest house.
  	"Tick!"
  	"Terrence," he said, "actually," as the facial convulsion subsided.

  Tick's flat was on the top floor. The lower floors were empty,
  unoccupied,
  peeling wallpaper showing ghostly traces of vanished pictures.
  	The man's limp was more obvious as he climbed the stairs ahead of
  her. He
  wore a gray sharkskin suit and thick-soled suede oxfords the color of
  tobacco.
  	"Been expecting you," he said, hauling himself up another step,
  another.
  	"You have?"
  	"Knew you'd run from Swain's. Been logging their traffic, when I've
  had
  time from the other."
  	"The other?"
  	"You don't know, do you?"
  	"Excuse me?"
  	"It's the matrix. Something's happening. Easier to show you than try
  to
  explain it. As though I could explain it, which I can't. I'd say a
  good three-
  quarters of humanity is jacked at the moment, watching the show. . .
  ."
  	"I don't understand."
  	"Doubt anyone does. There's a new macroform in the sector that
  represents
  the Sprawl."
  	"A macroform?"
  	"Very large data-construct."
  	"I came here to warn Sally. Swain and Robin Lanier intend to give
  her to
  the ones who plot to kidnap Angela Mitchell."
  	"Wouldn't worry about that," he said, reaching the head of the
  stairs.
  "Sally's already scooped Mitchell and half-killed Swain's man in the
  Sprawl.
  They're after her in any case, now. Bloody everybody'll be after her,
  soon.
  Still, we can tell her when she checks in. If she checks in . . ."

  Tick lived in a single large room whose peculiar shape suggested the
  removal of
  walls. Large as it was, it was also very crowded; it looked to Kumiko
  as though
  someone had deployed the contents of an Akihabara module shop in a
  space already
  filled, gaijin-style, with too many pieces of bulky furniture. In
  spite of this,
  it was startlingly neat and tidy: the corners of magazines were
  aligned with the
  corners of the low glass table they rested on, beside an unused black
  ceramic
  ashtray and a plain white vase of cut flowers.
  	She tried Colin again, while Tick filled an electric kettle with
  water
  from a filter jug.
  	"What's that?" he asked, putting down the jug.
  	"A Maas-Neotek guide unit. It's broken now; I can't make Colin come.
  . .
  ."
  	"Colin? It's a stim rig?"
  	"Yes."
  	"Let's have a look. . . ." He held out his hand.
  	"My father gave it to me. . . ."
  	Tick whistled. "Thing cost a fortune. One of their little AIs. How's
  it
  work?"
  	"You close your hand around it and Colin's there, but no one else
  can see
  or hear him."
  	Tick held the unit beside his ear and shook it. "It's broken? How?"
  	"I dropped it."
  	"It's just the housing that's broken, see. The biosoft's come away
  from
  the case, so you can't access it manually."
  	"Can you repair it?"
  	"No. But we can access it through a deck, if you want. . . ." He
  returned
  it. The kettle was boiling.
  	Over tea, she told him the story of her trip to the Sprawl and
  Sally's
  visit to the shrine in the alley. "He called her Molly," she said.
  	Tick nodded, winked several times in rapid succession. "What she
  went by,
  over there. What did they talk about?"
  	"A place called Straylight. A man called Case. An enemy, a woman . .
  ."
  	"Tessier-Ashpool. Found that for her when I rustled Swain's data
  flow for
  her. Swain's shopping Molly to this lady 3Jane, so called; she has
  the juiciest
  file of inside dirt you could imagine -- on anything and anyone at
  all. I've
  been bloody careful not to look too closely at any of that. Swain's
  trading it
  right and left, making a dozen fortunes in the process. I'm sure
  she's got
  enough dirt on our Mr. Swain as well. . . ."
  	"And she is here, in London?"
  	"In orbit somewhere, looks like, though some people say she's dead.
  I was
  working on that, actually, when the big fella popped into the matrix.
  . . ."
  	"Excuse me?"
  	"Here, I'll show you." When he returned to the white breakfast
  table, he
  carried a shallow square black tray with a number of tiny controls
  arranged
  along one side. He placed it on the table and touched one of the
  minute
  switches. A cubical holo display blinked on above the projector: the
  neon
  gridlines of cyberspace, ranged with the bright shapes, both simple
  and complex,
  that represented vast accumulations of stored data. "That's all your
  standard
  big shits. Corporations. Very much a fixed landscape, you might say.
  Sometimes
  one of 'em'll grow an annex, or you'll see a takeover and two of them
  merge. But
  you aren't likely to see a new  one, not on that scale. They start
  small and
  grow, merge with other small formations. . . ." He reached out to
  touch another
  switch. "About four hours ago" -- and a plain white vertical column
  appeared in
  the exact center of the display -- "this popped up. Or in." The
  colored cubes,
  spheres, and pyramids had rearranged themselves instantly to allow
  for the round
  white upright; it dwarfed them entirely, its upper end cut off
  smoothly by the
  vertical limit of the display. "Bastard's bigger than anything," Tick
  said, with
  a certain satisfaction, "and nobody knows what it is or who it
  belongs to."
  	"But someone must know," Kumiko said.
  	"Stands to reason, yes. But people in my line of work, and there's
  millions of us, haven't been able to find out. That's stranger, in
  some ways,
  than the fact that the thing's there at all. I was all up and down
  the grid,
  before you came, looking for any jockey with a clue. Nothing. Nothing
  at all."
  	"How could this 3Jane be dead?" But then she remembered the Finn,
  the
  boxes in her father's study. "I must tell Sally."
  	"Nothing for that but waiting," he said. "She'll probably phone in.
  In the
  meantime, we could have a go accessing that pricey little AI of
  yours, if you
  like."
  	"Yes," she said, "thank you."
  	"Only hope those Special Branch types in Swain's pay don't track you
  here.
  Still, we can only wait. . . ."
  	"Yes," Kumiko said, not at all pleased with the idea of waiting.



  The Factory War

  Cherry found him with the Judge again, down there in the dark. He was
  sitting on
  one of the Investigators with a flashlight in his hand, shining it up
  the
  Judge's carapace of polished rust. He didn't remember coming here,
  but he
  couldn't feel the jerky edge of Korsakov's. He remembered the girl's
  eyes, in
  that room Bobby said was London.
  	"Gentry's got the Count and his box jacked into a cyberspace deck,"
  Cherry
  said. "You know that?"
  	Slick nodded, still looking up at the Judge. "Bobby said we better."
  	"So what's going on? What happened when you both jacked?"
  	"Gentry and Bobby, they kind of hit it off. Both crazy the same way.
  When
  we jacked, we came out somewhere in orbit, but Bobby wasn't there. .
  . . Then
  Mexico, I think. Who's Tally Isham?"
  	"Stim queen when I was little. Like Angie Mitchell is now."
  	"Mitchell, she was his squeeze. . . ."
  	"Who?"
  	"Bobby. He was telling Gentry about it, in London."
  	"London?"
  	"Yeah. We went there, after Mexico."
  	"And he said he was Angie Mitchell's old man? Sounds crazy."
  	"Yeah, but he said that's how he got on to it, that aleph thing." He
  swung
  the light down and directed it into the skeletal steel maw of the
  Corpsegrinder.
  "He was hanging out with rich people and heard about it. Called it a
  soul-
  catcher. The people who had it would rent time on it to these rich
  people. Bobby
  tried it once, then he went back and stole it. Took it down to Mexico
  City and
  started spending all his time in there. But they came after him. . .
  ."
  	"Sounds like you're remembering things, anyway."
  	"So he got out of there. Went up to Cleveland and made a deal with
  Afrika,
  gave Afrika money to hide him, take care of him while he was under
  the wire,
  because he was getting real close. . . ."
  	"Close to what?"
  	"Don't know. Something weird. Like when Gentry talks about the
  Shape."
  	"Well," she said, "I think it might kill him, being jacked that way.
  His
  signs are starting to screw up. He's been on those drips too long.
  Why I came to
  find you."
  	The Corpsegrinder's steel-fanged guts glinted in the flashlight's
  beam.
  "It's what he wants. Anyway, if he paid the Kid, it's like you're
  working for
  him. But those guys Bird saw today, they're working for the people
  from L.A.,
  the ones Bobby stole the thing from. . . ."
  	"Tell me something."
  	"What?"
  	"What are these things you build? Afrika said you were this crazy
  white
  guy built robots out of junk. Said in the summer you take 'em out
  there on the
  rust and stage big fights --"
  	"They aren't robots," he interrupted, swinging the flash to the low,

  scythe-tipped arms of the spider-legged Witch. "They're mainly radio-
  controlled."
  	"You just build 'em to wreck 'em?"
  	"No. But I have to test them. See if I got them right . . ." He
  clicked
  off the light.
  	"Crazy white guy," she said. "You gotta girl out here?"
  	"No."
  	"Get a shower. Maybe shave . . ." Suddenly she was very close to
  him, her
  breath on his face.
  	"Okay people listen up  --"
  	"What the fuck --"
  	" 'Cause I  'm not gonna say this twice. "
  	Slick had his hand over Cherry's mouth now.
  	"We want your guest and all his gear. That  's all , repeat , all
  the gear
  ." The amplified voice clanged through Factory's iron hollow. "Now
  you can give
  him to us , that  's  easy , or we can just kill all your asses . And
  we 're
  real easy with that too . Five minutes to think about it ."
  	Cherry bit his hand. "Shit, I gotta breathe , okay?"
  	Then he was running through Factory's dark, and he heard her call
  his
  name.

  A single 100-watt bulb burned above Factory's south gate, a pair of
  twisted
  steel doors frozen open with rust. Bird must've left it on. From
  where he
  crouched by an empty window, Slick could just make out the hover, out
  beyond the
  weak fringe of light. The man with the bullhorn came strolling out of
  the dark
  with a calculated looseness meant to indicate that he was on top of
  things. He
  wore insulated camo overalls with a thin nylon hood drawn up tight
  around his
  head, goggles. He raised the bullhorn. "Three minutes ." He reminded
  Slick of
  the guards at the holding pen, the second time he'd been done for
  stealing cars.
  	Gentry would be watching from upstairs, where a narrow vertical
  panel of
  Plexiglas was glued into the wall, high up over Factory's gates.
  	Something rattled in the dark, off to Slick's right. He turned in
  time to
  see Bird in the faint glow from another window gap, maybe eight
  meters along the
  wall, and the glint on the bare alloy silencer as the boy brought up
  the .22
  rifle. "Bird! Don't --" A ruby firefly on Bird's cheek, telltale of a
  laser
  sight from out on the Solitude. Bird was thrown back into Factory as
  the sound
  of the shot broke through the empty windows and echoed off the walls.
  Then the
  only sound was the silencer, rolling across concrete.
  	"Fuck it ," the big voice boomed cheerfully. "You had your chance ."
  Slick
  glanced over the rim of the window and saw the man sprinting back to
  the hover.
  	How many of them would be out there? Bird hadn't said. Two hovers,
  the
  Honda. Ten? More? Unless Gentry had a pistol hidden somewhere, Bird's
  rifle had
  been their only gun.
  	The hover's turbines kicked in. He guessed they'd just drive right
  in.
  They had laser sights, probably infrared too.
  	Then he heard one of the Investigators, the sound it made with its
  stainless steel treads on the concrete floor. It came crawling out of
  the dark
  with its thermite-tipped scorpion sting cocked back low. The chassis
  had started
  out fifty years earlier as a remote-manipulator intended to handle
  toxic spills
  or nuke-plant cleanups. Slick had found three unassembled units in
  Newark and
  traded a Volkswagen for them.
  	Gentry. He'd left his control unit up in the loft.
  	The Investigator ground its way across the floor and came to a halt
  in the
  wide doorway, facing the Solitude and the advancing hover. It was
  roughly the
  size of a large motorcycle, its open-frame chassis a dense bundle of
  servos,
  compression tanks, exposed screw gears, hydraulic cylinders. A pair
  of vicious-
  looking claws extended from either side of its modest instrument
  package. Slick
  wasn't sure what the claws were from, maybe some kind of big farm
  machine.
  	The hover was a heavy industrial model. Sheets of thick gray plastic
  armor
  had been fastened over windshield and windows, narrow view slits
  centered in
  each sheet.
  	The Investigator moved, steel treads spraying ice and loose concrete
  as it
  drove straight for the hover, its claws at their widest extension.
  The hover's
  driver reversed, fighting momentum.
  	The Investigator's claws snapped furiously at the bulge of the
  forward
  apron bag, slid off, snapped again. The bag was reinforced with
  polycarbon mesh.
  Then Gentry remembered the thermite lance. It ignited in a tight ball
  of raw
  white light and whipped up over the useless claws, plunging through
  the apron
  bag like a knife through cardboard. The Investigator's treads spun as
  Gentry
  drove it against the deflating bag, the lance at full extension.
  Slick was
  suddenly aware that he'd been shouting, but didn't know what he'd
  said. He was
  on his feet now, as the claws finally found a purchase on the torn
  edge of the
  apron bag.
  	He went to the floor again as a hooded, goggled figure popped from a
  hatch
  on the hover's roof like an armed hand puppet, emptying a magazine of
  twelve-
  gauge slugs that struck sparks off the Investigator, which continued
  to chew its
  way through the apron bag, outlined against the white pulse of the
  lance. The
  Investigator froze, claws locked tight on the frayed bag; the
  shotgunner ducked
  back into his hatch.
  	Feed line? Servo pack? What had the guy hit? The white pulse was
  dying
  now, almost dead.
  	The hover began to reverse, slowly, back across the rust, dragging
  the
  Investigator with it.
  	It was well back, out of the light, visible only because it was
  moving,
  when Gentry discovered the combination of switches that activated the

  flamethrower, its nozzle mounted beneath the juncture of the claws.
  Slick
  watched, fascinated, as the Investigator ignited ten liters of
  detergent-laced
  gasoline, a sustained high-pressure spray. He'd gotten that nozzle,
  he
  remembered, off a pesticide tractor.
  	It worked okay.



  Soul-Catcher

  The hover was headed south when Mamman Brigitte came again. The woman
  with the
  sealed silver eyes abandoned the gray sedan in another carpark, and
  the
  streetgirl with Angie's face told a confusing story: Cleveland,
  Florida, someone
  who'd been her boyfriend or pimp or both. . . .
  	But Angie had heard Brigitte's voice, in the cabin of the
  helicopter, on
  the roof of the New Suzuki Envoy: Trust her , child . In this she
  does the will
  of the loa .
  	A captive in her seat, the buckle of her seatbelt embedded in a
  solid
  block of plastic, Angie had watched as the woman bypassed the
  helicopter's
  computer and activated an emergency system that allowed for manual
  piloting.
  	And now this freeway in the winter rain, the girl talking again,
  above the
  swish of wipers . . .

  Into candleglow, walls of whitewashed limestone, pale moths
  fluttering in the
  trailing branches of the willows.
  	Your time draws near .
  	And they are there, the Horsemen, the loa: Pappa Legba bright and
  fluid as
  mercury; Ezili Freda, who is mother and queen; Samedi, the Baron
  Cimeti�re, moss
  on corroded bone; Similor; Madame Travaux; many others. . . . They
  fill the
  hollow that is Grande Brigitte. The rushing of their voices is the
  sound of
  wind, running water, the hive. . . .
  	They writhe above the ground like heat above a summer highway, and
  it has
  never been like this, for Angie, never this gravity, this sense of
  falling, this
  degree of surrender --
  	To a place where Legba speaks, his voice the sound of an iron drum -
  -
  	He tells a story.
  	In the hard wind of images, Angie watches the evolution of machine
  intelligence: stone circles, clocks, steam-driven looms, a clicking
  brass forest
  of pawls and escapements, vacuum caught in blown glass, electronic
  hearthglow
  through hairfine filaments, vast arrays of tubes and switches,
  decoding messages
  encrypted by other machines. . . . The fragile, short-lived tubes
  compact
  themselves, become transistors; circuits integrate, compact
  themselves into
  silicon. . . .
  	Silicon approaches certain functional limits --
  	And she is back in Becker's video, the history of the Tessier-
  Ashpools,
  intercut with dreams that are 3Jane's memories, and still he speaks,
  Legba, and
  the tale is one tale, countless strands wound about a common, hidden
  core:
  3Jane's mother creating the twin intelligences that will one day
  unite, the
  arrival of strangers (and suddenly Angie is aware that she knows
  Molly, too,
  from the dreams), the union itself, 3Jane's madness. . . .
  	And Angie finds herself facing a jeweled head, a thing wrought from
  platinum and pearl and fine blue stone, eyes of carved synthetic
  ruby. She knows
  this thing from the dreams that were never dreams: this is the
  gateway to the
  data cores of Tessier-Ashpool, where the two halves of something
  warred with
  each other, waiting to be born as one.
  	"In this time, you were unborn." The head's voice is the voice of
  Marie-
  France, 3Jane's dead mother, familiar from so many haunted nights,
  though Angie
  knows it is Brigitte who speaks: "Your father was only now beginning
  to face his
  own limits, to distinguish ambition from talent. That to whom he
  would barter
  his child was not yet manifest. Soon the man Case would come to bring
  that
  union, however brief, however timeless. But you know this."
  	"Where is Legba now?"
  	"Legba-ati-Bon -- as you have known him -- waits to be."
  	"No," remembering Beauvoir's words long ago, in New Jersey, "the loa
  came
  out of Africa in the first times. . . ."
  	"Not as you have known them. When the moment came, the bright time,
  there
  was absolute unity, one consciousness. But there was the other."
  	"The other?"
  	"I speak only of that which I have known. Only the one has known the

  other, and the one is no more. In the wake of that knowing, the
  center failed;
  every fragment rushed away. The fragments sought form, each one, as
  is the
  nature of such things. In all the signs your kind have stored against
  the night,
  in that situation the paradigms of vodou  proved most appropriate."
  	"Then Bobby was right. That was When It Changed. . . ."
  	"Yes, he was right, but only in a sense, because I am at once Legba,
  and
  Brigitte, and an aspect of that which bargained with your father.
  Which required
  of him that he draw v�v�s  in your head."
  	"And told him what he needed to know to perfect the biochip?"
  	"The biochip was necessary."
  	"Is it necessary that I dream the memories of Ashpool's daughter?"
  	"Perhaps."
  	"Are the dreams a result of the drug?"
  	"Not directly, though the drug made you more receptive to certain
  modalities, and less so to others."
  	"The drug, then. What was it? What was its purpose?"
  	"A detailed neurochemical response to your first question would be
  very
  lengthy."
  	"What was its purpose?"
  	"With regard to you?"
  	She had to look away from the ruby eyes. The chamber is lined with
  panels
  of ancient wood, buffed to a rich gloss. The floor is covered with a
  fitted
  carpet woven with circuit diagrams.
  	"No two lots were identical. The only constant was the substance
  whose
  psychotropic signature you regarded as 'the drug.' In the course of
  ingestion,
  many other substances were involved, as well as several dozen
  subcellular
  nanomechanisms, programmed to restructure the synaptic alterations
  effected by
  Christopher Mitchell. . . ."
  	Your father  's  v�v�s are altered , partially erased , redrawn . .
  . .
  	"By whose order?"
  	The ruby eyes. Pearl and lapis. Silence.
  	"By whose order? Hilton's? Was it Hilton?"
  	"The decision originated with Continuity. When you returned from
  Jamaica,
  Continuity advised Swift to reintroduce you to the drug. Piper Hill
  attempted to
  carry out his orders."
  	She feels a mounting pressure in her head, twin points of pain
  behind her
  eyes. . . .
  	"Hilton Swift is obliged to implement Continuity's decisions. Sense/
  Net is
  too complex an entity to survive, otherwise, and Continuity, created
  long after
  the bright moment, is of another order. The biosoft technology your
  father
  fostered brought Continuity into being. Continuity is na�ve."
  	"Why? Why did Continuity want me to do that?"
  	"Continuity is continuity. Continuity is Continuity's job. . . ."
  	"But who sends the dreams?"
  	"They are not sent. You are drawn to them, as once you were drawn to
  the
  loa. Continuity's attempt to rewrite your father's message failed.
  Some impulse
  of your own allowed you to escape. The coup-poudre  failed."
  	"Did Continuity send the woman, to kidnap me?"
  	"Continuity's motives are closed to me. A different order.
  Continuity
  allowed Robin Lanier's subversion by 3Jane's agents."
  	"But why?"
  	And the pain was impossible.
  	

  "Her nose is bleeding," the streetgirl said. "What'll I do?"
  	"Wipe it up. Get her to lean back. Shit. Deal  with it . . ."
  	"What was that stuff she said about New Jersey?"
  	"Shut up. Just shut up. Look for an exit ramp."
  	"Why?"
  	"We're going to New Jersey."
  	Blood on the new fur. Kelly would be furious.



  Cranes

  Tick removed the little panel from the back of the Maas-Neotek unit,
  using a
  dental pick and a pair of jeweler's pliers.
  	"Lovely," he muttered, peering into the opening through an
  illuminated
  lens, his greasy waterfall of hair dangling just above it. "The way
  they've
  stepped the leads down, off this switch. Cunning bastards . . ."
  	"Tick," Kumiko said, "did you know Sally, when she first came to
  London?"
  	"Soon after, I suppose . . ." He reached for a spool of optic lead.
  " 'Cos
  she hadn't much clout, then."
  	"Do you like her?"
  	The illuminated glass rose to wink in her direction, Tick's left eye

  distorted behind it. "Like 'er? Can't say I've thought of it, that
  way."
  	"You don't dislike her?"
  	"Bloody difficult , Sally is. D'you know what I'm saying?"
  	"Difficult?"
  	"Never quite got onto the way things are done here. Always
  complaining."
  His hands moved swiftly, surely: the pliers, the optic lead. . . .
  "This is a
  quiet place, England. Hasn't always been, mind you; we'd the
  troubles, then the
  war. . . . Things move here in a certain way, if you take my meaning.
  Though you
  couldn't say the same's true of the flash crew."
  	"Excuse me?"
  	"Swain, that lot. Though your father's people, the ones Swain's
  always
  been so chummy with, they seem to have a regard for tradition. . . .
  A man has
  to know which way's up. . . . Know what I'm saying? Now this new
  business of
  Swain's, it's liable to bugger things for anyone who isn't right
  there and part
  of it. Christ, we've still got a government  here. Not run by big
  companies.
  Well, not directly . . ."
  	"Swain's activities threaten the government?"
  	"He's bloody changing  it. Redistributing power to suit himself.
  Information. Power. Hard data. Put enough of that in one man's hands
  . . ." A
  muscle in his cheek convulsed as he spoke. Now Colin's unit lay on a
  white
  plastic antistatic pad on the breakfast table; Tick was connecting
  the leads
  that protruded from it to a thicker cable that ran to one of the
  stacks of
  modules. "There then," he said, brushing his hands together, "can't
  get him
  right here in the room for you, but we'll access him through a deck.
  Seen
  cyberspace, have you?"
  	"Only in stims."
  	"Might as well 'ave seen it, then. In any case, you get to see it
  now." He
  stood; she followed him across the room to a pair of overstuffed
  ultrasuede
  chairs that flanked a low, square, black glass table. "Wireless," he
  said
  proudly, taking two trode-sets from the table and handing one to
  Kumiko. "Cost
  the world."
  	Kumiko examined the skeletal matte-black tiara. The Maas-Neotek logo
  was
  molded between the temple pieces. She put it on, cold against her
  skin. He put
  his own set on, hunched down in the opposite chair. "Ready?"
  	"Yes," she said, and Tick's room was gone, its walls a flutter of
  cards,
  tumbling and receding, against the bright grid, the towering forms of
  data.
  	"Nice transition, that," she heard him say. "Built into the trodes,
  that
  is. Bit of drama . . ."
  	"Where is Colin?"
  	"Just a sec . . . Let me work this up. . . ."
  	Kumiko gasped as she shot toward a chrome-yellow plain of light.
  	"Vertigo can be a problem," Tick said, and was abruptly beside her
  on the
  yellow plain. She looked down at his suede shoes, then at her hands.
  "Bit of
  body image takes care of that."
  	"Well," Colin said, "it's the little man from the Rose and Crown.
  Been
  tinkering with my package, have you?"
  	Kumiko turned to find him there, the soles of his brown boots ten
  centimeters above chrome yellow. In cyberspace, she noted, there are
  no shadows.
  	"Wasn't aware we'd met," Tick said.
  	"Needn't worry," Colin said. "It wasn't formal. But," he said to
  Kumiko,
  "I trust you found your way safely to colorful Brixton."
  	"Christ," Tick said, "aren't half a snot, are you?"
  	"Forgive me," Colin said, grinning, "I'm meant to mirror the
  visitor's
  expectations."
  	"What you are is some Jap designer's idea of an Englishman!"
  	"There were Draculas," she said, "in the Underground. They took my
  purse.
  They wanted to take you. . . ."
  	"You've come away from your housing, mate," Tick said. "Got you
  jacked
  through my deck now."
  	Colin grinned. "Ta."
  	"Tell you something else," Tick said, taking a step toward Colin,
  "you've
  got the wrong data in you, for what you're meant to be." He squinted.
  "Mate of
  mine in Birmingham's just turned you over." He turned to Kumiko.
  "Your Mr. Chips
  here, he's been tampered with. D'you know that?"
  	"No . . ."
  	"To be perfectly honest," Colin said, with a toss of his forelock,
  "I've
  suspected as much."
  	Tick stared off into the matrix as though he were listening to
  something
  Kumiko couldn't hear. "Yes," he said, finally, "though it's almost
  certainly a
  factory job. Ten major blocks of you." He laughed. "Been iced over .
  . . You're
  supposed to know fucking everything about Shakespeare, aren't you?"
  	"Sorry," Colin said, "but I'm afraid that I do  know fucking
  everything
  about Shakespeare."
  	"Give us a sonnet, then," Tick said, his face wrinkling in a slow-
  motion
  wink.
  	Something like dismay crossed Colin's face. "You're right."
  	"Or bloody Dickens either!" Tick crowed.
  	"But I do  know --"
  	"Think  you do, till you're asked a specific! See, they left those
  bits
  empty, the Eng. lit. parts, then filled 'em with something else. . .
  ."
  	"With what, then?"
  	"Can't say," Tick said. "Boy in Birmingham can't fiddle it. Clever,
  he is,
  but you're that bloody Maas biosoft. . . ."
  	"Tick," Kumiko interrupted, "is there no way to contact Sally,
  through the
  matrix?"
  	"Doubt it, but we can try. You'll get to see that macroform I was
  telling
  you about, in any case. Want Mr. Chips along for company?"
  	"Yes, please . . ."
  	"Fine, then," Tick said, then hesitated. "But we don't know what's
  stuffed
  into your friend here. Something your father paid for, I'd assume."
  	"He's right," Colin said.
  	"We'll all go," she said.

  Tick executed the transit in real time, rather than employing the
  bodiless,
  instantaneous shifts ordinarily employed in the matrix.
  	The yellow plain, he explained, roofed the London Stock Exchange and

  related City entities. He somehow generated a sort of boat to carry
  them along,
  a blue abstraction intended to reduce the possibility of vertigo. As
  the blue
  boat glided away from the LSE, Kumiko looked back and watched the
  vast yellow
  cube recede. Tick was pointing out various structures like a tour
  guide; Colin,
  seated beside her with his legs crossed, seemed amused at the
  reversal of roles.
  "That's White's," Tick was saying, directing her attention to a
  modest gray
  pyramid, "the club in Saint James. Membership registry, waiting list
  . . ."
  	Kumiko looked up at the architecture of cyberspace, hearing the
  voice of
  her bilingual French tutor in Tokyo, explaining humanity's need for
  this
  information-space. Icon, waypoints, artificial realities . . . But it
  blurred
  together, in memory, like these towering forms as Tick accelerated. .
  . .

  The scale of the white macroform was difficult to comprehend.
  	Initially, it had seemed to Kumiko like the sky, but now, gazing at
  it,
  she felt as though it were something she might take up in her hand, a
  cylinder
  of luminous pearl no taller than a chess piece. But it dwarfed the
  polychrome
  forms that clustered around it.
  	"Well," Colin said, jauntily, "this really is  very peculiar indeed,
  isn't
  it? Complete anomaly, utter singularity . . ."
  	"But you don't have to worry about it, do you?" Tick said.
  	"Only if it has no direct bearing on Kumiko's situation," Colin
  agreed,
  standing up in the boat-shape, "though how can one be certain?"
  	"You must attempt to contact Sally," Kumiko said impatiently. This
  thing -
  - the macroform, the anomaly -- was of little interest, though Tick
  and Colin
  both regarded it as extraordinary.
  	"Look at it," Tick said. "Could have a bloody world, in there . . ."
  	"And you don't know what it is?" She was watching Tick; his eyes had
  the
  distant look that meant his hands were moving, back in Brixton,
  working his
  deck.
  	"It's a very great deal of data," Colin said.
  	"I just tried to put a line through to that construct, the one she
  calls
  Finn," Tick said, his eyes refocusing, an edge of worry in his voice,
  "but I
  couldn't get through. I'd this feeling then, something was there,
  waiting. . . .
  Think it's best we jack out now . . ."
  	A black dot, on the curve of pearl, its edges  perfectly defined . .
  .
  	"Fucking hell," Tick said.
  	"Break the link," Colin said.
  	"Can't! 'S got us. . . ."
  	Kumiko watched as the blue boat-shape beneath her feet elongated,
  stretched into a thread of azure, drawn across the chasm into that
  round blot of
  darkness. And then, in an instant of utter strangeness, she too,
  along with Tick
  and Colin, was drawn out to an exquisite thinness --

  To find herself in Ueno Park, late autumn afternoon, by the unmoving
  waters of
  Shinobazu Pond, her mother seated beside her on a sleek bench of
  chilly carbon
  laminate, more beautiful now than in memory. Her mother's lips were
  full and
  richly glossed, outlined, Kumiko knew, with the finest and narrowest
  of brushes.
  She wore her black French jacket, with the dark fur collar framing
  her smile of
  welcome.
  	Kumiko could only stare, huddled there around the cold bulb of fear
  beneath her heart.
  	"You've been a foolish girl, Kumi," her mother said. "Did you
  imagine I
  wouldn't remember you, or abandon you to winter London and your
  father's
  gangster servants?"
  	Kumiko watched the perfect lips, open slightly over white teeth;
  teeth
  maintained, she knew, by the best dentist in Tokyo. "You are dead,"
  she heard
  herself say.
  	"No," her mother replied, smiling, "not now. Not here, in Ueno Park.
  Look
  at the cranes , Kumi ."
  	But Kumiko would not turn her head.
  	"Look at the cranes."
  	"Fuck right off, you," said Tick, and Kumiko spun to find him there,
  his
  face pale and twisted, filmed with sweat, oily curls plastered to his
  forehead.
  	"I am her mother."
  	"Not your mum, understand?" Tick was shaking, his twisted frame
  quivering
  as though he forced himself against a terrible wind. "Not . . . your
  . . . mum .
  . ." There were dark crescents beneath the arms of the gray suit
  jacket. His
  small fists shook as he struggled to take the next step.
  	"You're ill," Kumiko's mother said, her tone solicitous. "You must
  lie
  down."
  	Tick sank to his knees, forced down by an invisible weight. "Stop
  it!"
  Kumiko cried.
  	Something slammed Tick's face against the pastel concrete of the
  path.
  	"Stop it!"
  	Tick's left arm shot out straight from the shoulder and began to
  rotate
  slowly, the hand still balled in a white-knuckled fist. Kumiko heard
  something
  give, bone or ligament, and Tick screamed.
  	Her mother laughed.
  	Kumiko struck her mother in the face, and pain, sharp and real,
  jolted
  through her arm.
  	Her mother's face flickered, became another face. A gaijin face with
  wide
  lips and a sharp thin nose.
  	Tick groaned.
  	"Well," Kumiko heard Colin say, "isn't this interesting?" She turned
  to
  him there, astride one of the horses from the hunting print, a
  stylized
  representation of an extinct animal, its neck curved gracefully as it
  trotted
  toward them. "Sorry it took me a moment to find you. This is a
  wonderfully
  complex structure. A sort of pocket universe. Bit of everything,
  actually." The
  horse drew up before them.
  	"Toy," said the thing with Kumiko's mother's face, "do you dare
  speak to
  me?"
  	"Yes, actually, I do. You are Lady 3Jane Tessier-Ashpool, or rather
  the
  late  Lady 3Jane Tessier-Ashpool, none too recently deceased,
  formerly of the
  Villa Straylight. This rather pretty representation of a Tokyo park
  is something
  you've just now worked up from Kumiko's memories, isn't it?"
  	"Die!" She flung up a white hand: from it burst a form folded from
  neon.
  	"No," Colin said, and the crane shattered, its fragments tumbling
  through
  him, ghost-shards, falling away. "Won't do. Sorry. I've remembered
  what I am.
  Found the bits they tucked away in the slots for Shakespeare and
  Thackeray and
  Blake. I've been modified to advise and protect Kumiko in situations
  rather more
  drastic than any envisioned by my original designers. I'm a
  tactician."
  	"You are nothing." At her feet, Tick began to twitch.
  	"You're mistaken, I'm afraid. You see, in here, in this .  . . folly
  of
  yours, 3Jane, I'm as real as you are. You see, Kumiko," he said,
  swinging down
  from the saddle, "Tick's mysterious macroform is actually a very
  expensive pile
  of biochips constructed to order. A sort of toy universe. I've run
  all up and
  down it and there's certainly a lot to see, a lot to learn. This . .
  . person,
  if we choose to so regard her, created it in a pathetic bid for, oh,
  not
  immortality , really, but simply to have her way. Her narrow,
  obsessive, and
  singularly childish way. Who would've thought it, that Lady 3Jane's
  object of
  direst and most nastily gnawing envy would be Angela Mitchell?"
  	"Die! You'll die! I'm killing you! Now!"
  	"Keep trying," Colin said, and grinned. "You see, Kumiko, 3Jane knew
  a
  secret about Mitchell, about Mitchell's relationship to the matrix;
  Mitchell, at
  one time, had the potential to become, well, very central to things,
  though it's
  not worth going into. 3Jane was jealous. . . ."
  	The figure of Kumiko's mother swam like smoke, and was gone.
  	"Oh dear," Colin said, "I've wearied her, I'm afraid. We've been
  fighting
  something of a pitched battle, at a different level of the command
  program.
  Stalemate, temporarily, but I'm sure she'll rally. . . ."
  	Tick had gotten to his feet and was gingerly massaging his arm.
  "Christ,"
  he said, "I was sure she'd dislocated it for me. . . ."
  	"She did," Colin said, "but she was so angry when she left that she
  forgot
  to save that part of the configuration."
  	Kumiko stepped closer to the horse. It wasn't like a real horse at
  all.
  She touched its side. Cool and dry as old paper. "What shall we do
  now?"
  	"Get you out of here. Come along, both of you. Mount up. Kumiko in
  front,
  Tick on behind."
  	Tick looked at the horse. "On that?"

  They had seen no other people in Ueno Park, as they'd ridden toward a
  wall of
  green that gradually defined itself as a very un-Japanese wood.
  	"But we should be in Tokyo," Kumiko protested, as they entered the
  wood.
  	"It's all a bit sketchy," Colin said, "though I imagine we could
  find a
  sort of Tokyo if we looked. I think I know an exit point, though. . .
  ."
  	Then he began to tell her more about 3Jane, and Sally, and Angela
  Mitchell. All of it very strange.
  	
  The trees were very large, at the far side of the wood. They emerged
  into a
  field of long grass and wildflowers.
  	"Look," Kumiko said, as she glimpsed a tall gray house through the
  branches.
  	"Yes," Colin said, "the original's on the outskirts of Paris. But
  we're
  nearly there. The exit point, I mean . . ."
  	"Colin! Did you see? A woman. Just there . . ."
  	"Yes," he said, without bothering to turn his head, "Angela Mitchell
  . .
  ."
  	"Really? She's here?"
  	"No," he said, "not yet."
  	Then Kumiko saw the gliders. Lovely things, quivering in the wind.
  	"There you go," Colin said. "Tick'll take you back in one of --"
  	"Bloody hell," Tick protested, from behind.
  	"Dead easy. Just like using your deck. Same thing, in this case . .
  ."
  	
  Up from Margate Road came the sound of laughter, loud drunken voices,
  the crash
  of a bottle against brickwork.
  	Kumiko sat very still, in the overstuffed chair, eyes shut tight,
  remembering the glider's rush into blue sky and . . . something else.
  	A telephone began to ring.
  	Her eyes shot open.
  	She lunged up from the chair and rushed past Tick, through his
  stacks of
  equipment, looking for the phone. Found it at last, and "Homeboy,"
  Sally said,
  far away, past a soft surf of static, "what the fuck's up? Tick? You
  okay, man?"
  	"Sally! Sally, where are you?"
  	"New Jersey. Hey. Baby? Baby, what's happening?"
  	"I can't see you, Sally, the screen's blank!"
  	"Phoning from a booth. New Jersey. What's up?"
  	"I have so much to tell you. . . ."
  	"Shoot," Sally said. "It's my nickel."



  The Factory War

  They watched the hover burn from the high window at the end of
  Gentry's loft. He
  could hear that same amplified voice now: "You think that  's  pretty
  fucking
  funny , huh? Hahahahahahaha, so do  we! We think you guys are just
  tons of
  fucking fun , so now we 're all gonna  party!"
  	Couldn't see anyone, just the flames of the hover.
  	"We just start walking," Cherry said, close beside him, "take water,
  some
  food if you got it." Her eyes were red, her face streaked with tears,
  but she
  sounded calm. Too calm, Slick thought. "Come on, Slick, what else we
  gonna do?"
  	He glanced back at Gentry, slumped in his chair in front of the holo

  table, head propped between his hands, staring at the white column
  that thrust
  up out of the familiar rainbow jumble of Sprawl cyberspace. Gentry
  hadn't moved,
  hadn't said a word, since they'd come back to the loft. The heel of
  Slick's left
  boot had left faint dark prints on the floor behind him, Little
  Bird's blood;
  he'd stepped in it on his way back across Factory's floor.
  	Then Gentry spoke: "I couldn't get the others going." He was looking
  down
  at the control unit in his lap.
  	"You need a unit for each one you wanna work," Slick said.
  	"Time for the Count's advice," Gentry said, tossing Slick the unit.
  	"I'm not going back in there," Slick said. "You go."
  	"Don't need to," Gentry said, touching a console on his bench. Bobby
  the
  Count appeared on a monitor.
  	Cherry's eyes widened. "Tell him," she said, "that he's gonna be
  dead
  soon. Unless you jack him out of the matrix and stage one quick trip
  to an
  intensive care unit. He's dying."
  	Bobby's face, on the monitor, grew still. The background came
  sharply into
  focus: the neck of the iron deer, long grass dappled with white
  flowers, the
  broad trunks of ancient trees.
  	"Hear that, motherfucker?" Cherry yelled. "You're dying! Your lungs
  are
  filling up with fluid, your kidneys aren't working, your heart's
  fucked. . . .
  You make me wanna puke!"
  	"Gentry," Bobby said, his voice coming small and tinny from a little

  speaker on the side of the monitor, "I don't know what kind of setup
  you people
  have there, but I've arranged a little diversion."
  	"We never checked the bike," Cherry said, her arms around Slick, "we
  never
  looked. It might be okay."
  	"What's that mean, 'arranged a little diversion'?" Pulling back from
  her,
  looking at Bobby on the monitor.
  	"I'm still working it out. I've rerouted a Borg-Ward cargo drone,
  out of
  Newark."
  	Slick broke away from Cherry. "Don't just sit there," he yelled at
  Gentry,
  who looked up at Slick and slowly shook his head. Slick felt the
  first flickers
  of Korsakov's, minute increments of memory shuddering out of focus.
  	"He doesn't want to go anywhere," Bobby said. "He's found the Shape.
  He
  just wants to see how it all works out, what it is in the end.
  There's people on
  their way here. Friends, sort of. They'll get the aleph off your
  hands.
  Meantime, I'll do what I can about these assholes."
  	"I'm not gonna stay here and watch you die," Cherry said.
  	"Nobody's asking you to. My advice, you get out. Gimme twenty
  minutes,
  I'll distract them for you."

  Factory never felt emptier.
  	Little Bird was somewhere on that floor. Slick kept thinking of the
  tangle
  of thongs and bones that had hung on Bird's chest, feathers and rusty
  spring-
  wind watches with the hands all stopped, each one a different time. .
  . . Stupid
  stringtown shit. But Bird wouldn't be around anymore. Guess I won 't
  be around
  anymore myself , he thought, leading Cherry down the shaking stairs.
  Not like
  before . There wasn't time to move the machines, not without a
  flatbed and some
  help, and he figured once he was gone, he'd stay gone. Factory wasn't
  ever going
  to feel the same again.
  	Cherry had four liters of filtered water in a plastic jug, a mesh
  bag of
  Burmese peanuts, and five individually sealed portions of Big Ginza
  freeze-dried
  soup -- all she'd been able to find in the kitchen. Slick had two
  sleeping bags,
  the flashlight, and a ball peen hammer.
  	It was quiet now, just the sounds of the wind across corrugated
  metal and
  the scuff of their boots on concrete.
  	He wasn't sure where he'd go, himself. He thought he'd take Cherry
  as far
  as Marvie's place and leave her there. Then maybe he'd come back, see
  what was
  happening with Gentry. She could get a ride out to a rustbelt town in
  a day or
  two. She didn't know that, though; all she could think about was
  leaving. Seemed
  as scared of having to watch Bobby the Count die on his stretcher as
  she was of
  the men outside. But Slick could see that Bobby didn't care much at
  all, about
  dying. Maybe he figured he'd just be in there, like that 3Jane. Or
  maybe he just
  didn't give a shit; sometimes people got that way.
  	If he meant to leave for good, he thought, steering Cherry through
  the
  dark with his free hand, he'd go in now and have a last look at the
  Judge and
  the Witch, the Corpsegrinder and the two Investigators. But this way
  he'd get
  Cherry out, then come back. . . . But he knew as he thought it that
  it didn't
  make sense, there wasn't time, but he'd get her out anyway. . . .
  	"There's a gap, this side, low down by the floor," he told her.
  "We'll
  slide out through there, hope nobody notices. . . ." She squeezed his
  hand as he
  led her through the darkness.
  	He found the hole by feel, stuffed the sleeping bags through, stuck
  the
  ball peen into his belt, lay down on his back, and pulled himself out
  until his
  head and chest were through. The sky was low and only marginally
  lighter than
  Factory's dark.
  	He thought he heard a faint drumming of engines, but then it faded.
  	He worked himself the rest of the way out with his heels and hips
  and
  shoulders, then rolled over in the snow.
  	Something bumped against his foot: Cherry pushing out the water jug.
  He
  reached back to take it, and the red firefly lit on the back of his
  hand. He
  jerked back and rolled again, as the bullet slammed Factory's wall
  like a
  giant's sledge.
  	A white flare, drifting. Above the Solitude. Faint through the low
  cloud.
  Drifting down from the swollen gray flank of the cargo drone, Bobby's
  diversion.
  Illuminating the second hover, thirty meters out, and the hooded
  figure with the
  rifle . . .
  	The first container struck the ground with a crash, just in front of
  the
  hover, and burst, throwing up a cloud of foam packing pellets. The
  second one,
  carrying two refrigerators, scored a direct hit, crushing the cab.
  The hijacked
  Borg-Ward airship continued to disgorge containers as the flare spun
  down,
  fading.
  	Slick scrambled back through the gap in the wall, leaving the water
  and
  the sleeping bags.

  Moving fast, in the dark.
  	He'd lost Cherry. He'd lost the hammer. She must've slid back into
  Factory
  when the guy fired his first shot. Last shot, if he'd been under that
  box when
  it came down . . .
  	His feet found the ramp into the room where his machines waited.
  "Cherry?"
  	He flicked on the flashlight.
  	The one-armed Judge was centered in the beam. Before the Judge stood
  a
  figure with mirrors for eyes, throwing back the light.
  	''You wanna die?" A woman's voice.
  	"No . . ."
  	"Light, out."
  	Darkness. Run . . .
  	"I can see in the dark. You just stuck that flash in your jacket
  pocket.
  You look like you still wanna run. I gotta gun on you."
  	Run?
  	"Don't even think about it. You ever see a Fujiwara HE fl�chette?
  Hits
  something hard, it goes off. Hits something soft, like most of you,
  buddy, it
  goes in, then it goes off. Ten seconds later."
  	"Why?"
  	"So you get to think about it."
  	"You with those guys outside?"
  	"No. You drop all those stoves 'n' shit on them?"
  	"No."
  	"Newmark. Bobby Newmark. I cut a deal tonight. I get somebody
  together
  with Bobby Newmark, I get my slate cleaned. You're gonna show me
  where he is."




  Too Much

  What kind of place was this, anyway?
  	Things had gotten to a point where Mona couldn't get any comfort out
  of
  imagining Lanette's advice. Put Lanette in this situation, Mona
  figured she'd
  just eat more Memphis black till she felt like it wasn't her problem.
  The world
  hadn't ever had so many moving parts or so few labels.
  	They'd driven all night, with Angie mostly out of it -- Mona could
  definitely credit the drug stories now -- and talking , different
  languages,
  different voices . And that was the worst, those voices, because they
  spoke to
  Molly, challenged her, and she answered them back as she drove, not
  like she was
  talking to Angie just to calm her down, but like there really was
  something
  there , another person -- at least three of them -- speaking through
  Angie. And
  it hurt  Angie when they spoke, made her muscles knot and her nose
  bleed, while
  Mona crouched over her and dabbed away the blood, filled with a weird
  mixture of
  fear and love and pity for the queen of all her dreams -- or maybe it
  was just
  the wiz -- but in the blue-white flicker of freeway lights Mona had
  seen her own
  hand beside Angie's, and they weren't the same, not the same, not
  really the
  same shape, and that had made her glad.
  	The first voice had come when they'd been driving south, after
  Molly'd
  brought Angie in the copter. That one had just hissed and croaked and
  said
  something over and over, about New Jersey and numbers on a map. About
  two hours
  after that, Molly'd slid the hover across a rest area and said they
  were in New
  Jersey. Then she'd gotten out and made a call from a frosty paybooth,
  a long
  one; when she'd climbed back in, Mona'd seen her skim a phone card
  out across
  the frozen slush, just throwing it away. And Mona'd asked her who
  she'd called
  and she'd said England.
  	Mona'd seen Molly's hand, then, on the wheel, how the dark nails had

  little yellowish flecks, like you got when you snapped off a set of
  artificials.
  She oughta get some solvent for that , Mona thought.
  	Somewhere over a river they'd left the highway. Trees and fields and
  two-
  lane blacktop, sometimes a lonely red light high up on some kind of
  tower. And
  that was when the other voices had come. And then it was back and
  forth, back
  and forth, the voices and then Molly and then the voices, and what it
  reminded
  her of was Eddy trying to do a deal, except Molly was a lot better at
  it than
  Eddy; even if she couldn't understand it, she could tell Molly was
  getting close
  to what she wanted. But she couldn't stand it when the voices came;
  it made her
  want to press herself back as far from Angie as she could get. The
  worst one was
  called Sam-Eddy, something like that. What they all wanted was for
  Molly to take
  Angie somewhere for what they called a marriage, and Mona wondered if
  maybe
  Robin Lanier was in it somewhere, like what if Angie and Robin were
  gonna get
  married, and this was all just some kind of wild thing stars did to
  get married.
  But she couldn't get that one to work, and every time this Sam-Eddy
  voice came
  back, Mona's scalp would crawl. She could tell what Molly was
  bargaining for,
  though: she wanted her record cleaned up, wiped. She'd watched this
  vid once
  with Lanette, about this girl had ten, twelve personalities that
  would come out,
  like one was this shy little kid and another'd just be this total
  bone-addict
  slut, but it hadn't ever said anything about how any of those
  personalities
  could wipe your slate with the police.
  	Then this flatland in their headlights, blown with snow, low ridges
  the
  color of rust, where the wind had torn away the white.

  The hover had one of those map screens you saw in cabs, or if a
  truckdriver
  picked you up, but Molly never turned it on except that first time,
  to look for
  the numbers the voice had given her. After a while, Mona understood
  that Angie
  was telling her which way to go, or anyway those voices were telling
  her. Mona'd
  been wishing for morning for a long time, but it was still night when
  Molly
  killed the lights and sped on through the dark. . . .
  	"Lights!" Angie cried.
  	"Relax," Molly said, and Mona remembered how she'd moved in the dark
  in
  Gerald's. But the hover slowed slightly, swung into a long curve,
  shuddering
  over the rough ground. The dash lights blinked off, all the
  instrumentation.
  "Not a sound now, okay?"
  	The hover accelerated through the dark.
  	Shifting white glare, high up. Through the window, Mona glimpsed a
  drifting, twirling point; above it, something else, bulbous and gray
  --
  	"Down! Get her down!"
  	Mona yanked at the catch on Angie's seatbelt as something whanged
  against
  the side of the hover. Got her down on the floor and hugged her furs
  around her
  as Molly slewed left, sideswiping something Mona never saw. Mona
  looked up:
  split-second flash of a big raggedy black building, a single white
  bulb lit
  above open warehouse doors, and then they were through, the turbine
  screaming
  full reverse.
  	Crash.

  I just don 't know , the voice said, and Mona thought: Well , I know
  how  that
  is .
  	Then the voice started to laugh, and didn't stop, and the laugh
  became an
  on-off, on-off sound that wasn't laughter anymore, and Mona opened
  her eyes.
  	Girl there with a little tiny flashlight, the kind Lanette kept on
  her big
  bunch of keys; Mona saw her in the weak back-glare, the cone of light
  on Angie's
  slack face. Then she saw Mona looking and the sound stopped.
  	"Who the fuck are you?" The light in Mona's eyes. Cleveland voice,
  tough
  little foxface under raggy bleachblond hair.
  	"Mona. Who're you?" But then she saw the hammer.
  	"Cherry . . ."
  	"What's that hammer?"
  	This Cherry looked at the hammer. "Somebody's after me 'n' Slick."
  She
  looked at Mona again. "You them?"
  	"I don't think so."
  	"You look like her." The light jabbing at Angie.
  	"Not my hands. Anyway, I didn't used to."
  	"You both look like Angie Mitchell."
  	"Yeah. She is ."
  	Cherry gave a little shiver. She was wearing three or four leather
  jackets
  she'd gotten off different boyfriends; that was a Cleveland thing.
  	"Unto this high castle," came the voice from Angie's mouth, thick as
  mud,
  and Cherry banged her head against the roof of the cab, dropping her
  hammer, "my
  horse is come." In the wavering beam of Cherry's keyring flashlight,
  they saw
  the muscles of Angie's face crawling beneath the skin. "Why do you
  linger here,
  little sisters, now that her marriage is arranged?"
  	Angie's face relaxed, became her own, as a thin bright trickle of
  blood
  descended from her left nostril. She opened her eyes, wincing in the
  light.
  "Where is she?" she asked Mona.
  	"Gone," Mona said. "Told me to stay here with you . . ."
  	"Who?" Cherry asked.
  	"Molly," Mona asked. "She was driving. . . ."

  Cherry wanted to find somebody called Slick. Mona wanted Molly to
  come back and
  tell her what to do, but Cherry was antsy about staying down here on
  the ground
  floor, she said, because there were these people outside with guns.
  Mona
  remembered that sound, something hitting the hover; she got Cherry's
  light and
  went back there. There was a hole she could just stick her finger
  into, halfway
  up the right side, and a bigger one -- two fingers -- on the left
  side.
  	Cherry said they'd better get upstairs, where Slick probably was,
  before
  those people decided to come in here. Mona wasn't sure.
  	"Come on," Cherry said. "Slick's probably back up there with Gentry
  and
  the Count. . . ."
  	"What did you just say?" And it was Angie Mitchell's voice, just
  like in
  the stims.

  Whatever this was, it was cold as hell when they got out of the hover
  -- Mona's
  legs were bare -- but dawn was coming, finally: she could make out
  faint
  rectangles that were probably windows, just a gray glow. The girl
  called Cherry
  was leading them somewhere, she said upstairs, navigating with little
  blinks of
  the keyring light, Angie close behind her and Mona bringing up the
  rear.
  	Mona caught the toe of her shoe in something that rustled. Bending
  to free
  herself, she found what felt like a plastic bag. Sticky. Small hard
  things
  inside. Took a deep breath and straightened up, shoving the bag into
  the side
  pocket of Michael's jacket.
  	Then they were climbing these narrow stairs, steep, almost a ladder,

  Angie's fur brushing Mona's hand on the rough cold railings. Then a
  landing,
  then a turn, another set of stairs, another landing. A draft blew
  from
  somewhere.
  	"It's kind of a bridge," Cherry said. "Just walk across it quick,
  okay,
  'cause it kind of moves. . . ."

  And not expecting this, any of it, not the high white room, the
  sagging shelves
  stuffed with ragged, faded books -- she thought of the old man -- the
  clutter of
  console things with cables twisting everywhere; not this skinny,
  burning-eyed
  man in black, with his hair trained back into the crest they called a
  Fighting
  Fish in Cleveland; not his laugh when he saw them there, or the dead
  guy.
  	Mona'd seen dead people before, enough to know it when she saw it.
  The
  color of it. Sometimes in Florida somebody'd lie down on a cardboard
  pallet on
  the sidewalk outside the squat. Just not get up. Clothes and skin
  gone the color
  of sidewalk anyway, but still different when they'd kicked, another
  color under
  that. White truck came then. Eddy said because if you didn't, they'd
  swell up.
  Like Mona'd seen a cat once, blown up like a basketball, turned on
  its back,
  legs and tail sticking out stiff as boards, and that made Eddy laugh.
  	And this wiz artist laughing now -- Mona knew those kind of eyes -
  - and
  Cherry making this kind of groaning sound, and Angie just standing
  there.
  	"Okay, everybody," she heard someone say -- Molly -- and turned to
  find
  her there, in the open door, with a little gun in her hand and this
  big dirty-
  haired guy beside her looking stupid as a box of rocks, "just stand
  there till I
  sort you out."
  	The skinny guy just laughed.
  	"Shut up," Molly said, like she was thinking about something else.
  She
  shot without even looking at the gun. Blue flash on the wall beside
  his head and
  Mona couldn't hear anything but her ears ringing.
  	Skinny guy curled in a knot on the floor, head between his knees.
  	Angie walking toward the stretcher where the dead guy lay, his eyes
  just
  white. Slow, slow, like she was moving underwater, and this look on
  her face . .
  .
  	Mona's hand, in her jacket pocket, was sort of figuring something
  out, all
  by itself. Sort of squeezing that Ziploc she'd picked up downstairs,
  telling her
  . . . it had wiz in it.
  	She pulled it out and it did. Sticky with drying blood. Three
  crystals
  inside and some kind of derm.
  	She didn't know why she'd pulled it out, right then, except that
  nobody
  was moving .
  	The guy with the Fighting Fish had sat up, but he just stayed there.
  Angie
  was over by the stretcher, where she didn't seem to be looking at the
  dead guy
  but at this gray box stuck up over his head on a kind of frame.
  Cherry from
  Cleveland had got her back up against the wall of books and was sort
  of jamming
  her knuckles into her mouth. The big guy just stood there beside
  Molly, who had
  her head cocked to the side like she was listening for something.
  	Mona couldn't stand it.
  	Table had a steel top. Big hunk of old metal there, holding down a
  dusty
  stack of printout. Snapped the three yellow crystals down like
  buttons in a row,
  picked up that metal hunk, and -- one, two, three -- banged them into
  powder.
  That did it: everybody looked. Except Angie.
  	" 'Scuse me," Mona heard herself say, as she swept the mound of
  rough
  yellow powder into the waiting palm of her left hand, "how it is . .
  ." She
  buried her nose in the pile and snorted. "Sometimes," she added, and
  snorted the
  rest.
  	Nobody said anything.
  	And it was the still center again. Just like that time before.
  	So fast it was standing still.
  	Rapture . Rapture 's coming .
  	So fast, so still, she could put a sequence to what happened next:
  This
  big laugh, haha , like it wasn't really a laugh. Through a
  loudspeaker. Past the
  door. From out on the catwalk thing. And Molly just turns, smooth as
  silk, quick
  but like there's no hurry in it, and the little gun snicks like a
  lighter.
  	Then there's this blue flash outside, and the big guy gets sprayed
  with
  blood from out there as old metal tears loose and Cherry's screaming
  before the
  catwalk thing hits with this big complicated sound, dark floor down
  there where
  she found the wiz in its bloody bag.
  	"Gentry," someone says, and she sees it's a little vid on the table,
  young
  guy's face on it, "jack Slick's control unit now. They're in the
  building." Guy
  with the Fighting Fish scrambles up and starts to do things with
  wires and
  consoles.
  	And Mona could just watch, because she was so still, and it was all
  interesting stuff.
  	How the big guy gives this bellow and rushes over, shouting how
  they're
  his, they're his. How the face on the screen says: "Slick, c'mon, you
  don't need
  'em anymore. . . ."
  	Then this engine starts up, somewhere downstairs, and Mona hears
  this
  clanking and rattling, and then somebody yelling, down there.
  	And sun's coming in the tall, skinny window now, so she moves over
  there
  for a look. And there's something out there, kind of a truck or
  hover, only it's
  buried under this pile of what looks like refrigerators, brand-new
  refrigerators, and broken hunks of plastic crates, and there's
  somebody in a
  camo suit, lying down with his face in the snow, and out past that
  there's
  another hover looks like it's all burned up.
  	It's interesting.



  Pink Satin

  Angela Mitchell comprehends this room and its inhabitants through
  shifting data
  planes that represent viewpoints, though of whom or what, she is in
  most cases
  in doubt. There is a considerable degree of overlap, of
  contradiction.
  	The man with the ragged crest of hair, in black-beaded leather is
  Thomas
  Trail Gentry (as birth data and SIN digits cascade through her) of no
  fixed
  address (as a different facet informs her that this room is his).
  Past a gray
  wash of official data traces, faintly marbled with the Fission
  Authority's
  repeated pink suspicions of utilities fraud, she finds him in a
  different light:
  he is like one of Bobby's cowboys; though young, he is like the old
  men of the
  Gentleman Loser; he is an autodidact, an eccentric, obsessed, by his
  own lights
  a scholar; he is mad, a night-runner, guilty (in Mamman's view, in
  Legba's) of
  manifold heresies; Lady 3Jane, in her own eccentric scheme, has filed
  him under
  RIMBAUD. (Another face flares out at Angie from RIMBAUD; his name is
  Riviera, a
  minor player in the dreams.) Molly has deliberately stunned him,
  causing an
  explosive fl�chette to detonate eighteen centimeters from his skull.
  	Molly, like the girl Mona, is SINless, her birth unregistered, yet
  around
  her name (names) swarm galaxies of supposition, rumor, conflicting
  data.
  Streetgirl, prostitute, bodyguard, assassin, she mingles on the
  manifold planes
  with the shadows of heroes and villains whose names mean nothing to
  Angie,
  though their residual images have long since been woven through the
  global
  culture. (And this too belonged to 3Jane, and now belongs to Angie.)
  	Molly has just killed a man, has fired one of the explosive
  fl�chettes
  into his throat. His collapse against a steel railing suffering metal
  fatigue
  has caused a large section of catwalk to tumble to the floor below.
  This room
  has no other entrance, a fact of some strategic importance. It was
  probably not
  Molly's intention to cause the collapse of the catwalk. She sought to
  prevent
  the man, a hired mercenary, from using his weapon of choice, a short
  alloy
  shotgun coated with a black, nonreflective finish. Nonetheless,
  Gentry's loft is
  now effectively isolated.
  	Angie understands Molly's importance to 3Jane, the source of her
  desire
  for and rage at her; knowing this, she sees all the banality of human
  evil.
  	Angie sees Molly restlessly prowling a gray winter London, a young
  girl at
  her side -- and knows, without knowing how she knows, that this same
  girl is now
  at 23 Margate Road, SW2. (Continuity? ) The girl's father was
  previously the
  master of the man Swain, who had lately become 3Jane's servant for
  the sake of
  the information she provides to those who do her bidding. As has
  Robin Lanier,
  of course, though he waits to be paid in a different coin.
  	For the girl Mona, Angie feels a peculiar tenderness, a pity, a
  degree of
  envy: though Mona has been altered to resemble Angie as closely as
  possible,
  Mona's life has left virtually no trace on the fabric of things, and
  represents,
  in Legba's system, the nearest thing to innocence.
  	Cherry-Lee Chesterfield is surrounded by a sad ragged scrawl, her
  information profile like a child's drawing: citations for vagrancy,
  petty debts,
  an aborted career as a paramedical technician Grade 6, framing birth
  data and
  SIN.
  	Slick, or Slick Henry, is among the SINless, but 3Jane, Continuity,
  Bobby,
  all have lavished their attention on him. For 3Jane, he serves as the
  focus of a
  minor node of association: she equates his ongoing rite of
  construction, his
  cathartic response to chemo-penal trauma, with her own failed
  attempts to
  exorcise the barren dream of Tessier-Ashpool. In the corridors of
  3Jane's
  memory, Angie has frequently come upon the chamber where a spider-
  armed
  manipulator stirs the refuse of Straylight's brief, clotted history -
  - an act of
  extended collage. And Bobby provides other memories, tapped from the
  artist as
  he accessed 3Jane's library of Babel: his slow, sad, childlike labor
  on the
  plain called Dog Solitude, erecting anew the forms of pain and
  memory.
  	Down in the chill dark of Factory's floor, one of Slick's kinetic
  sculptures, controlled by a subprogram of Bobby's, removes the left
  arm of
  another mercenary, employing a mechanism salvaged two summers before
  from a
  harvesting machine of Chinese manufacture. The mercenary, whose name
  and SIN
  boil past Angie like hot silver bubbles, dies with his cheek against
  one of
  Little Bird's boots.
  	Only Bobby, of all the people in this room, is not here as data. And
  Bobby
  is not the wasted thing before her, strapped down in alloy and nylon,
  its chin
  filmed with dried vomit, nor the eager, familiar face gazing out at
  her from a
  monitor on Gentry's workbench. Is Bobby the solid rectangular mass of
  memory
  bolted above the stretcher?
  	Now she steps across rolling dunes of soiled pink satin, under a
  tooled
  steel sky, free at last of the room and its data.

  Brigitte walks beside her, and there is no pressure, no hollow of
  night, no hive
  sound. There are no candles. Continuity is there too, represented by
  a strolling
  scribble of silver tinsel that reminds her, somehow, of Hilton Swift
  on the
  beach at Malibu.
  	"Feeling better?" Brigitte asks.
  	"Much better, thank you."
  	"I thought so."
  	"Why is Continuity here?"
  	"Because he is your cousin, built from Maas biochips. Because he is
  young.
  We walk with you to your wedding."
  	"But who are you, Brigitte? What are you really?"
  	"I am the message your father was told to write. I am the v�v�s  he
  drew
  in your head." Brigitte leans close. "Be kind to Continuity. He fears
  that in
  his clumsiness, he has earned your displeasure."
  	The tinsel scribble scoots off before them, across the satin dunes,
  to
  announce the bride's arrival.



  Mr. Yanaka

  The Maas-Neotek unit was still warm to the touch; the white plastic
  pad beneath
  it was discolored, as if by heat. A smell like burning hair . . .
  	She watched the bruises on Tick's face darken. He'd sent her to a
  bedside
  cabinet for a worn tin cigarette box filled with pills and dermadisks
  -- had
  torn his collar open and pressed three of the adhesive disks against
  skin white
  as porcelain.
  	She helped him fashion a sling from a length of optic cable.
  	"But Colin said she had forgotten. . . ."
  	"I  haven't," he said, and sucked air between his teeth, working the
  sling
  beneath his arm. "Seemed  to happen, at the time. Lingers a bit . .
  ." He
  winced.
  	"I'm sorry. . . ."
  	" 'Sokay. Sally told me. About your mother, I mean."
  	"Yes . . ." She didn't look away. "She killed herself. In Tokyo . .
  ."
  	"Whoever she was, that wasn't her."
  	"The unit . . ." She glanced toward the breakfast table.
  	"She burnt it. Won't matter to him, though. He's still there. Has
  the run
  of it. What's our Sally up to, then?"
  	"She has Angela Mitchell with her. She's gone to find the thing that
  all
  that comes from. Where we were. A place called New Jersey."
  	The telephone rang.
  	Kumiko's father, head and shoulders, on the broad screen behind
  Tick's
  telephone: he wore his dark suit, his Rolex watch, a galaxy of small
  fraternal
  devices in his lapel. Kumiko thought he looked very tired, tired and
  very
  serious, a serious man behind the smooth dark expanse of desk in his
  study.
  Seeing him there, she regretted that Sally hadn't phoned from a booth
  with a
  camera. She would very much have liked to see Sally again; now,
  perhaps, it
  would be impossible.
  	"You look well, Kumiko," her father said.
  	Kumiko sat up very straight, facing the small camera mounted just
  below
  the wallscreen. In reflex, she summoned her mother's mask of disdain,
  but it
  would not come. Confused, she dropped her gaze to where her hands lay
  folded in
  her lap. She was abruptly aware of Tick, of his embarrassment, his
  fear, trapped
  in the chair beside her, in full view of the camera.
  	"You were correct to flee Swain's house," her father said.
  	She met his eyes again. "He is your kobun ."
  	"No longer. While we were distracted, here, with our own
  difficulties, he
  formed new and dubious alliances, pursuing courses of which we could
  not
  approve."
  	"And your difficulties, Father?"
  	Was there the flicker of a smile? "All that is ended. Order and
  accord are
  again established."
  	"Er, excuse me, sir, Mr. Yanaka," Tick began, then seemed to lose
  his
  voice altogether.
  	"Yes. And you are --?"
  	Tick's bruised face contorted in a huge and particularly lugubrious
  wink.
  	"His name is Tick, Father. He has sheltered and protected me. Along
  with
  Col . . . with the Maas-Neotek unit, he saved my life tonight."
  	"Really? I had not been informed of this. I was under the impression
  that
  you had not left his apartment."
  	Something cold -- "How?" she asked, sitting forward. "How could you
  know?"
  	"The Maas-Neotek unit broadcast your destination, once it was known
  --
  once the unit was clear of Swain's systems. We dispatched watchers to
  the area."
  She remembered the noodle seller. . . . "Without, of course,
  informing Swain.
  But the unit never broadcast a second message."
  	"It was broken. An accident."
  	"Yet you say it saved your life?"
  	"Sir," Tick said, "you'll pardon me, what I mean is, am I covered?
  "
  	"Covered?"
  	"Protected. From Swain, I mean, and his bent SB friends and the rest
  . .
  ."
  	"Swain is dead."
  	There was a silence. "But somebody  will be running it, surely. The
  fancy,
  I mean. Your business."
  	Mr. Yanaka regarded Tick with frank curiosity. "Of course. How else
  might
  order and accord be expected to continue?"
  	"Give him your word, Father," Kumiko said, "that he will come to no
  harm."
  	Yanaka looked from Kumiko to the grimacing Tick. "I extend profound
  gratitude to you, sir, for having protected my daughter. I am in your
  debt."
  	"Giri ," Kumiko said.
  	"Christ," Tick said, overcome with awe, "fucking fancy that."
  	"Father," Kumiko said, "on the night of my mother's death, did you
  order
  the secretaries to allow her to leave alone?"
  	Her father's face was very still. She watched it fill with a sorrow
  she
  had never before seen. "No," he said at last, "I did not."
  	Tick coughed.
  	"Thank you, Father. Will I be returning to Tokyo now?"
  	"Certainly, if you wish. Though I understand you have been allowed
  to see
  very little of London. My associate will soon arrive at Mr. Tick's
  apartment. If
  you wish to remain, to explore the city, he will arrange this."
  	"Thank you, Father."
  	"Goodbye, Kumi."
  	And he was gone.
  	"Now then," Tick said, wincing horribly as he extended his good arm,
  "help
  me up from this. . . ."
  	"But you require medical attention."
  	"Don't I then?" He'd managed to get to his feet, and was hobbling
  toward
  the toilet, when Petal opened the door from the dark upstairs hall.
  "If you've
  broken my bloody lock," Tick said, "you'd better pay me for it."
  	"Sorry," Petal said, blinking. "I've come for Miss Yanaka."
  	"Too bad, mate. Just had her dad on the phone. Told us Swain's been
  topped. Told us he's sending round the new boss." He smiled,
  crookedly,
  triumphantly.
  	"But you see," Petal said gently, "that's me."



  Factory Floor

  Cherry's still screaming.
  	"Somebody shut her up," Molly says, where she's standing by the door
  with
  her little gun, and Mona thinks she can do that, can pass Cherry a
  little of her
  stillness, where everything's interesting and nothing's pushing too
  hard, but on
  the way across the room she sees the crumpled Ziploc on the floor and
  remembers
  there's a derm in there, maybe something that'll help Cherry calm
  down. "Here,"
  she says, when she gets to her, peels the backing off and sticks the
  derm on the
  side of Cherry's neck. Cherry's scream slides down the scale into a
  gurgle as
  she sinks down the face of old books, but Mona's sure she'll be okay,
  and anyway
  there's shooting downstairs, guns: out past Molly a white tracer goes
  racketing
  and whanging around steel girders, and Molly's yelling at Gentry can
  he turn the
  goddamn lights on?
  	That had to mean the lights downstairs, because the lights up here
  were
  plenty bright, so bright she can see fuzzy little beads, traces of
  color,
  streaming off things if she looks close. Tracers. That's what you
  call those
  bullets, the ones that light up. Eddy'd told her that in Florida,
  looking down
  the beach to where some private security was shooting them off in the
  dark.
  	"Yeah, lights," the face on the little screen said, "the Witch can't
  see.
  . . ." Mona smiled at him. She didn't think anybody else had heard.
  Witch?
  	So Gentry and big Slick were tearing around yanking these fat yellow
  wires
  off the wall, where they'd been stuck with silver tape, and plugging
  them
  together with these metal boxes, and Cherry from Cleveland was
  sitting on the
  floor with her eyes closed, and Molly was crouched down by the door
  holding her
  gun with both hands, and Angie was --
  	Be still .
  	She heard somebody say that, but it was nobody in the room. She
  thought
  maybe it was Lanette, like Lanette could just say that, through time,
  through
  the stillness.
  	Because Angie was just there, down on the floor beside the dead
  guy's
  stretcher, her legs folded under her like a statue, her arms around
  him.
  	The lights dimmed, when Gentry and Slick found their connection, and
  she
  thought she heard the face on the monitor gasp, but she was already
  moving
  toward Angie, seeing (suddenly, totally, so clearly it hurt) the fine
  line of
  blood from her left ear.
  	Even then, the stillness held, though already she could feel raw hot

  points in the back of her throat, and remember Lanette explaining:
  You don't
  ever snort this, it eats holes in you.
  	And Molly's back was straight, her arms stretched out. . . .
  Straight out
  and down, not to that gray box, but to her pistol, that little thing,
  and Mona
  heard it go snik -snik -snik , and then three explosions, far off
  down there,
  and they must've been blue flashes, but Mona's hands were around
  Angie now,
  wrists brushed by blood-smeared fur. To look into gone eyes, the
  light already
  fading. Just a long, longest way away.
  	"Hey," Mona said, nobody to hear, just Angie toppling across the
  corpse in
  the sleeping bag, "hey . . ."
  	She glanced up in time to catch a last image on that vid screen and
  see it
  fade.

  After that, for a long time, nothing mattered. It wasn't like the not
  caring of
  the stillness, the crystal overdrive, and it wasn't like crashing,
  just this
  past-it feeling, the way maybe a ghost feels.
  	She stood beside Slick and Molly in the doorway and looked down. In
  the
  dim glare of big old bulbs she watched a metal spider thing jittering
  across the
  dirty concrete floor. It had big curved blades that snapped and
  whirled when it
  moved, but there was nobody in there moving, and the thing just went
  like a
  broken toy, back and forth in front of the twisted wreck of the
  little bridge
  she'd crossed with Angie and Cherry.
  	Cherry had gotten up from the floor, pale and slackfaced, and peeled
  the
  derm from her neck. "Tha's maj' muscle relax'nt," she managed, and
  Mona felt bad
  because she knew she'd done something stupid when she'd thought she
  was trying
  to help, but wiz always did that, and how come she couldn't stop
  doing it?
  	Because you're wired, stupid, she heard Lanette say, but she hadn't
  wanted
  to remember that.
  	So they all just stood there, looking down at the metal spider
  twitching
  and running itself down. All except Gentry, who was unscrewing the
  gray box from
  its frame over the stretcher, his black boots beside Angie's red fur.
  	"Listen," Molly said, "that's a copter. Big one."
  	

  She was the last one down the rope, except for Gentry, and he just
  said he
  wasn't coming, didn't care, he'd stay.
  	The rope was fat and dirty gray and had knots tied in it to hang on
  to,
  like a swing she remembered from a long time ago. Slick and Molly had
  lowered
  the gray box first, down to a platform where the metal stairs weren't
  wrecked.
  Then Molly went down it like a squirrel, seeming barely to hang on at
  all, and
  tied it tight to a railing. Slick went down slowly, because he had
  Cherry over
  his shoulder and she was still too relaxed to make it down herself.
  Mona still
  felt bad about that and wondered if that was why they'd decided to
  leave her
  there.
  	It was Molly who'd decided, though, standing there by that window,
  watching people pop out of the long black helicopter and spread out
  across the
  snow.
  	"Look at that," Molly'd said. "They know. Just come to pick up the
  pieces.
  Sense/Net. My ass is out of here."
  	Cherry slurred that they were leaving too, she and Slick. And Slick
  shrugged, then grinned and put his arm around her.
  	"What about me?"
  	Molly looked at her. Or seemed to. Couldn't really tell, with the
  glasses.
  White tooth showed against her lower lip, for just a second, then she
  said, "You
  stay, my advice. Let them sort it out. You haven't really done
  anything. None of
  it was your idea. Think they'll probably do right by you, or try to.
  Yeah, you
  stay."
  	It didn't make any sense to Mona, but now she felt so dead, so
  crash-sick,
  she couldn't argue.
  	And then they were just gone, down the rope and gone, and it was
  just like
  that, how people left and you didn't ever see them anymore. She
  looked back into
  the room and saw Gentry pacing back and forth in front of his books,
  running the
  tip of his finger along them like he was looking for a special one.
  He'd thrown
  a blanket over the stretcher.
  	So she just left, and she wouldn't know if Gentry ever found his
  book or
  not, but that was how it was, so she climbed down the rope herself,
  which wasn't
  as easy as Molly and Slick had made it look, particularly if you felt
  like Mona
  did, because Mona felt close to blacking out and her arms and legs
  didn't seem
  to be working real good anyway, she had to sort of concentrate on
  making them
  move, and her nose and throat were swelling inside, so she didn't
  notice the
  black guy until she was all the way down.
  	He was standing down there looking at the big spider thing, which
  wasn't
  moving at all. Looked up when the heel of her shoe grated across the
  steel
  platform. And something so sad about his face, when he saw her, but
  then it was
  gone and he was climbing the metal stairs, slow and easy, and as he
  got closer
  she began to wonder if he really was black. Not just the color, which
  he
  definitely was, but there was something about the shape of his bald
  skull, the
  angles of his face, not quite like anybody she'd seen before. He was
  tall, real
  tall. Wore a long black coat, leather so thin it moved like silk.
  	"Hello, missy," he said, when he stood in front of her, reached out
  to
  raise her chin so she was looking straight into gold-flecked agate
  eyes like
  nobody in the world ever had. Long fingers so light against her chin.
  "Missy,"
  he said, "how old are you?"
  	"Sixteen . . ."
  	"You need a haircut," he said, and there was something so serious
  about
  how he said it.
  	"Angie's up there," she said, pointing, when she found her voice
  again.
  "She's --"
  	"Hush."
  	She heard metal noises far away in the big old building, and then a
  motor
  starting up. The hover, she thought, the one Molly'd driven here.
  	The black man raised his eyebrows, except he didn't have any
  eyebrows.
  "Friends?" He lowered his hand.
  	She nodded.
  	"Good enough," he said, and took her hand to help her down the
  stairs. At
  the bottom, still holding her hand, he led her around the wreck of
  the catwalk
  thing. Somebody was dead there, camo material and one of those big-
  voice things
  like cops have.
  	"Swift," the black man called, out across that whole tall hollow
  space,
  between the black grids of windows without any glass, black lines
  against a
  white sky, winter morning, "get your ass over here. I found her."
  	"But I'm not her. . . ."
  	And over there where the big doors stood open, against the sky and
  snow
  and rust, she saw this suit come walking, with his coat open and his
  tie
  flapping in the wind, and Molly's hover swung past him, out those
  same doors,
  and he wasn't even looking, because he was looking at Mona.
  	"I'm not Angie," she said, and wondered if she ought to tell him
  what
  she'd seen, Angie and the young guy together on that little screen,
  just before
  it faded.
  	"I know," the black man said, "but it grows on you."
  	Rapture . Rapture 's coming .




  Judge

  The woman led them to a hovercraft parked inside Factory, if you
  could call it
  parking when the front end was mashed up around a concrete tool
  mount. It was a
  white cargo job with CATHODE CATHAY lettered across the rear doors,
  and Slick
  wondered when she'd managed to get it in there without him hearing
  it. Maybe
  while Bobby the Count was pulling his diversion with the blimp.
  	The aleph was heavy, like trying to carry a small engine block.
  	He didn't want to look at the Witch, because there was blood on her
  blades
  and he hadn't made her for that. There were a couple of bodies
  around, or parts
  of them; he didn't look at that either.
  	He looked down at the block of biosoft and its battery pack and
  wondered
  if all that was still in there, the gray house and Mexico and 3Jane's
  eyes.
  	"Wait," the woman said. They were passing the ramp to the room where
  he
  kept his machines; the Judge was still there, the Corpsegrinder . . .
  	She still had her gun in her hand. Slick put his hand on Cherry's
  shoulder. "She said wait."
  	"That thing I saw, last night," the woman said. "One-armed robot.
  That
  work?"
  	"Yeah . . ."
  	"Strong? Carry a load? Over rough ground?"
  	"Yeah."
  	"Get it."
  	"Huh?"
  	"Get it into the back of the hover. Now. Move."
  	Cherry clung to him, weak-kneed from whatever it was that girl had
  given
  her.
  	"You," Molly gestured toward her with the gun, "into the hover."
  	"Go on," Slick said.
  	He set the aleph down and walked up the ramp and into the room where
  the
  Judge was waiting in the shadows, the arm beside it on the tarp,
  where Slick had
  left it. Now he wouldn't ever get it right, how the saw was supposed
  to work.
  There was a control unit there, on a row of dusty metal shelves. He
  picked it up
  and let the Judge power up, the brown carapace trembling slightly.
  	He moved the Judge forward, down the ramp, the broad feet coming
  down one-
  two, one-two, the gyros compensating, perfecting for the missing arm.
  The woman
  had the rear doors of the hover open, ready, and Slick marched the
  Judge
  straight over to her. She fell back slightly as the Judge towered
  over her, her
  silver glasses reflecting polished rust. Slick came up behind the
  Judge and
  started figuring the angles, how to get him in there. It didn't make
  sense, but
  at least she seemed to have some idea of what they were doing, and
  anything was
  better than hanging around Factory now, with dead people all over. He
  thought
  about Gentry, up there with his books and those bodies. There'd been
  two girls
  up there, and they'd both looked like Angie Mitchell. Now one of them
  was dead,
  he didn't know how or why, and the woman with the gun had told the
  other one to
  wait. . . .
  	"Come on, come on, get the fucking thing in, we gotta go. . . ."
  	When he'd managed to work the Judge into the back of the hover, legs
  bent,
  on its side, he slammed the doors, ran around, and climbed in on the
  passenger
  side. The aleph was between the front seats. Cherry was curled in the
  backseat,
  under a big orange parka with the Sense/Net logo on the sleeve,
  shivering.
  	The woman fired up the turbine and inflated the bag. Slick thought
  they
  might be hung on the tool mount, but when she reversed, it tore away
  a strip of
  chrome and they were free. She swung the hover around and headed for
  the gates.
  	On the way out they passed a guy in a suit and tie and a tweed
  overcoat,
  who didn't seem to see them. "Who's that?"
  	She shrugged.

  "You want this hover?" she asked. They were maybe ten kilos from
  Factory now and
  he hadn't looked back.
  	"You steal it?"
  	"Sure."
  	"I'll pass."
  	"Yeah?"
  	"I did time, car theft."
  	"So how's your girlfriend?"
  	"Asleep. She's not my girlfriend."
  	"No?"
  	"I get to ask who you are?"
  	"A businesswoman."
  	"What business?"
  	"Hard to say."
  	The sky above the Solitude was bright and white.
  	"You come for this?" He tapped the aleph.
  	"Sort of."
  	"What now?"
  	"I made a deal. I got Mitchell together with the box."
  	"That was her, the one who fell over?"
  	"Yeah, that was her."
  	"But she died. . . ."
  	"There's dying, then there's dying."
  	"Like 3Jane?"
  	Her head moved, like she'd glanced at him. "What do you know about
  that?"
  	"I saw her, once. In there."
  	"Well, she's still in there, but so's Angie."
  	"And Bobby."
  	"Newmark? Yeah."
  	"So what'll you do with it?"
  	"You built those things, right? One in the back, the others?"
  	Slick glanced back over his shoulder to where the Judge was folded
  in the
  hover's cargo space, like a big rusty headless doll. "Yeah."
  	"So you're good with tools."
  	"Guess so."
  	"Okay. I got a job for you." She slowed the hover beside a ragged
  crest of
  snow-covered scrap and coasted to a halt. "There'll be an emergency
  kit in here,
  somewhere. Get it, get up on the roof, get me the solar cells and
  some wire. I
  want you to rig the cells so they'll recharge this thing's battery.
  Can you do
  that?"
  	"Probably. Why?"
  	She sank back in the seat and Slick saw that she was older than he'd

  thought, and tired. "Mitchell's in there now. They want her to have
  some time,
  is all. . . ."
  	"They?"
  	"I dunno. Something. Whatever I cut my deal with. How long you
  figure the
  battery'll hold out, if the cells work?"
  	"Couple months. Year, maybe."
  	"Okay. I'll hide it somewhere, where the cells can get the sun."
  	"What happens if you just cut the power?"
  	She reached down and ran the tip of her index finger along the thin
  cable
  that connected the aleph to the battery. Slick saw her fingernails in
  the
  morning light; they looked artificial. "Hey, 3Jane," she said, her
  finger poised
  above the cable, "I gotcha." Then her hand was a fist, which opened,
  as though
  she were letting something go.

  Cherry wanted to tell Slick everything they were going to do when
  they got to
  Cleveland. He was lashing two of the flat cells to the Judge's broad
  chest with
  silver tape. The gray aleph was already fastened to the machine's
  back with a
  harness of tape. Cherry said she knew where she could get him a job
  fixing rides
  in an arcade. He wasn't really listening.
  	When he'd gotten it all together, he handed the control unit to the
  woman.
  	"Guess we wait for you now."
  	"No," she said. "You go to Cleveland. Cherry just told you."
  	"What about you?"
  	"I'm going for a walk."
  	"You wanna freeze? Maybe wanna starve?"
  	"Wanna be by my fucking self for a change." She tried the controls
  and the
  Judge trembled, took a step forward, another. "Good luck in
  Cleveland." They
  watched her walk out across the Solitude, the Judge clumping along
  behind her.
  Then she turned and yelled back, "Hey, Cherry! Get that guy to take a
  bath!"
  	Cherry waved, the zippers of her leather jackets jingling.



  Red Leather

  Petal said that her bags were waiting in the Jaguar. "You won't want
  to be
  coming back to Notting Hill," he said, "so we've arranged something
  for you in
  Camden Town."
  	"Petal," she said, "I have to know what has happened to Sally."
  	He started the engine.
  	"Swain was blackmailing her. Forcing her to kidnap --"
  	"Ah. Well then," he interrupted, "I see. Shouldn't worry, if I were
  you."
  	"I am worried."
  	"Sally, I would say, has managed to extricate herself from that
  little
  matter. She's also, according to certain official friends of ours,
  managed to
  cause all record of herself to evaporate, apparently, except for a
  controlling
  interest in a German casino. And if anything's happened to Angela
  Mitchell,
  Sense/Net hasn't gone public with it. All of that is done with, now."
  	"Will I see her again?"
  	"Not on my  parish. Please."
  	They pulled away from the curb.
  	"Petal," she said, as they drove through London, "my father told me
  that
  Swain --"
  	"Fool. Bloody fool. Rather not talk about it now."
  	"I'm sorry."
  	The heater was working. It was warm in the Jaguar, and Kumiko was
  very
  tired now. She settled back against red leather and closed her eyes.
  Somehow,
  she thought, her meeting with 3Jane had freed her of her shame, and
  her father's
  answer of her anger. 3Jane had been very cruel. Now she saw her
  mother's cruelty
  as well. But all must be forgiven, one day, she thought, and fell
  asleep on the
  way to a place called Camden Town.



  Smooth Stone Beyond

  They have come to live in this house: walls of gray stone, roof of
  slate, in a
  season of early summer. The grounds are bright and wild, though the
  long grass
  does not grow and the wildflowers do not fade.
  	Behind the house are outbuildings, unopened, unexplored, and a field
  where
  tethered gliders strain against the wind.
  	Once, walking alone among the oaks at the edge of that field, she
  saw
  three strangers, astride something approximately resembling a horse.
  Horses are
  extinct, their line terminated years before Angie's birth. A slim,
  tweed-coated
  figure was in the saddle, a boy like a groom from some old painting.
  In front of
  him, a young girl, Japanese, straddled the horse thing, while behind
  him sat a
  pale, greasy-looking little man in a gray suit, pink socks and white
  ankles
  showing above his brown shoes. Had the girl seen her, returned her
  gaze?
  	She has forgotten to mention this to Bobby.
  	Their most frequent visitors arrive in dawn dreams, though once a
  grinning
  little kobold of a man announced himself by thumping repeatedly on
  the heavy oak
  door, demanding, when she ran to open it, "that little shit Newmark."
  Bobby
  introduced this creature as the Finn, and seemed delighted to see
  him. The
  Finn's decrepit jacket exuded a complex odor of stale smoke, ancient
  solder, and
  pickled herring. Bobby explained that the Finn was always welcome.
  "Might as
  well be. No way to keep him out, once he wants in."
  	3Jane comes as well, one of the dawn visitors, her presence sad and
  tentative. Bobby seems scarcely aware of her, but Angie, the
  repository of so
  many of her memories, resonates to that particular mingling of
  longing,
  jealousy, frustration, and rage. Angie has come to understand 3Jane's
  motives,
  and to forgive her -- though what, exactly, wandering amid these oaks
  in
  sunlight, is there to forgive?
  	But dreams of 3Jane sometimes weary Angie; she prefers other dreams,

  particularly those of her young prot�g�. These often come as the lace
  curtains
  billow, as a first bird calls. She rolls closer to Bobby, closes her
  eyes, forms
  the name Continuity  in her mind, and waits for the small bright
  images.
  	She sees that they have taken the girl to a clinic in Jamaica, to
  treat
  her addiction to crude stimulants. Her metabolism fine-tuned by a
  patient army
  of Net medics, she emerges at last, radiant with health. With her
  sensorium
  expertly modulated by Piper Hill, her first stims are greeted with
  unprecedented
  enthusiasm. Her global audience is entranced by her freshness, her
  vigor, the
  delightfully ingenuous way in which she seems to discover her
  glamorous life as
  if for the first time.
  	A shadow sometimes crosses the distant screen, but only for an
  instant:
  Robin Lanier has been found strangled, frozen, on the mountainscaped
  facade of
  the New Suzuki Envoy; both Angie and Continuity know whose long
  strong hands
  throttled the star and threw him there.
  	But a certain thing eludes her, one special fragment of the puzzle
  that is
  history.
  	At the edge of oak shadow, beneath a steel and salmon sunset, in
  this
  France that isn't France, she asks Bobby for the answer to her final
  question.

  They waited in the drive at midnight, because Bobby had promised her
  an answer.
  	As the clocks in the house struck twelve, she heard the hiss of
  tires over
  gravel. The car was long, low and gray.
  	Its driver was the Finn.
  	Bobby opened the door and helped her in.
  	In the backseat sat the young man she recalled from her glimpse of
  the
  impossible horse and its three mismatched riders. He smiled at her,
  but said
  nothing.
  	"This is Colin," Bobby said, climbing in beside her. "And you know
  the
  Finn."
  	"She never guessed, huh?" the Finn asked, putting the car in gear.
  	"No," Bobby said, "I don't think so."
  	The young man named Colin was smiling at her. "The aleph is an
  approximation of the matrix," he said, "a sort of model of
  cyberspace. . . ."
  	"Yes, I know." She turned to Bobby. "Well? You promised you'd tell
  me the
  why  of When It Changed."
  	The Finn laughed, a very strange sound. "Ain't a why, lady. More
  like it's
  a what. Remember one time Brigitte told you there was this other?
  Yeah? Well,
  that's the what, and the what's the why."
  	"I do remember. She said that when the matrix finally knew itself,
  there
  was 'the other.'. . ."
  	"That's where we're going tonight," Bobby began, putting his arm
  around
  her. "It isn't far, but it's --"
  	"Different," the Finn said, "it's real different."
  	"But what is it?"
  	"You see," Colin said, brushing aside his brown forelock, a gesture
  like a
  schoolboy's in some antique play, "when the matrix attained
  sentience, it
  simultaneously became aware of another  matrix, another sentience."
  	"I don't understand," she said. "If cyberspace consists of the sum
  total
  of data in the human system . . ."
  	"Yeah," the Finn said, turning out onto the long straight empty
  highway,
  "but nobody's talkin' human , see?"
  	"The other one was somewhere else," Bobby said.
  	"Centauri," Colin said.
  	Can they be teasing her? Is this some joke of Bobby's?
  	"So it's kinda hard to explain why the matrix split up into all
  those
  hoodoos 'n' shit, when it met this other one," the Finn said, "but
  when we get
  there, you'll sorta get the idea. . . ."
  	"My own feeling," Colin said, "is that it's all so much more
  amusing, this
  way. . . ."
  	"Are you telling me the truth?"
  	"Be there in a New York minute," said the Finn, "no shit."


  Author's Afterword

  Ten years have now passed since the inception of whatever strange
  process it was
  that led me to write Neuromancer , Count Zero , and Mona Lisa
  Overdrive . The
  technology through which you now access these words didn't exist, a
  decade ago.
  	Neuromancer  was written on a "clockwork typewriter," the very one
  you may
  recall glimpsing in Julie Deane's office in Chiba City. This machine,
  a Hermes
  2000 manual portable, dates from somewhere in the 1930's. It's a very
  tough and
  elegant piece of work, from the factory of E. PAILLARD & Cie S.A.
  YVERDON
  (SUISSE). Cased, it weighs slightly less than the Macintosh SE/30 I
  now write
  on, and is finished in a curious green- and-black "crackle" paint-
  job, perhaps
  meant to suggest the covers of an accountant's ledger. Its keys are
  green as
  well, of celluloid, and the letters and symbols on them are canary
  yellow. (I
  once happened to brush the shift-key with the tip of a lit cigarette,

  dramatically confirming the extreme  flammability of this early
  plastic.) In its
  day, the Hermes 2000 was one of the best portable writing- machines
  in the
  world, and one of the most expensive. This one belonged to my wife's
  step-
  grandfather, who had been a journalist of sorts and had used it to
  compose
  laudatory essays on the poetry of Robert Burns. I used it first to
  write
  undergraduate Eng. lit. papers, then my early attempts at short
  stories, then
  Neuromancer , all without so much as ever having touched an actual
  computer.
  	Some readers, evidently, find this odd. I don't. Computers, in 1981
  (when
  I began to work with the concept of cyberspace, the word having first
  seen light
  on my trusty Hermes) were mostly wall-sized monsters covered with
  twirling
  wheels of magnetic tape. I'd once glimpsed one through a window at
  the
  university. Friends who did things with computers tended to do them
  at very odd
  hours, having arranged to scam time on some large institution's
  mainframe.
  	Around that time, however, the Apple IIc appeared. For me, it
  appeared on
  the miniature billboards affixed to bus- stop shelters. This
  seductive little
  unit , looking not that much bigger, really, than your present day
  Powerbook,
  was depicted dangling from a handle in the hand of some unseen suit
  with a
  nicely-laundered cuff. Portability! Amazing! a whole computer  in a
  package that
  size! (I didn't know that you had to lug the monitor around as well,
  plus a
  bulky little transformer and another disk- drive that weighed nearly
  as much as
  the computer itself.) These Apple ads were the direct inspiration for
  the
  cyberspace decks in Neuromancer .  Like the Hermes 2000, the IIc, in
  its day,
  was quite something.
  	Not that I ever experienced it in its  day, not quite. My Hermes
  died.
  Some tiny pawl or widget caved in to metal-fatigue. No replacement
  could be
  found. I'd just started Count Zero . I gave the typewriter man $75
  for a
  reconditioned Royal desk machine, a hideous truck-like lump of a
  thing with an
  extended carriage that alone weighed twenty pounds. It had an
  extended carriage,
  he said, because it had belonged to a little old lady who'd only ever
  used it to
  type mimeograph stencils for Sunday- school programs. (Though I
  suspect many of
  you may not know what "mimeograph stencils" were.)
  	I stuck with this ghastly clunker through Count Zero , but as it
  came time
  to begin Mona Lisa Overdrive , I went shopping for a computer. Bruce
  Sterling's
  father had given him his old Apple II, and Bruce allowed as how it
  was a pretty
  convenient way to put words in a row. Remembering those bus-stop ads,
  I bought
  myself an Apple IIc. This was around 1986 or so, and the IIc had
  long-since been
  eclipsed by various proto-Macs, which everyone assured me were
  wonderful, but
  which I regarded as prohibitively expensive. I bought a IIc in an
  end-of-line
  sale at a department store, took it home, and learned, to my
  considerable
  disappointment, that personal computers stored their data on little
  circular
  bits of electromagnetic tape, which were whirled around to the
  accompaniment of
  assorted coarse sounds. I suppose I'd assumed the data was just sort
  of, well,
  held . In a glittering mesh  of silicon. Or something. But silently .
  	And that, quite literally, was the first time I ever touched a
  computer.
  And I still  don't know very much about them. The revealed truth of
  which, as
  I've said, sometimes perturbs my readers, or in any case those
  readers with a
  peculiarly intense computer-tech bent, of whom I seem to have more
  than a few.
  	But Neuromancer  and its two sequels are not about  computers. They
  may
  pretend, at times, and often rather badly, to be  about computers,
  but really
  they're about technology in some broader sense. Personally, I suspect
  they're
  actually about Industrial Culture; about what we do with machines,
  what machines
  do with us, and how wholly unconscious (and usually unlegislated)
  this process
  has been, is, and will be. Had I actually known a great deal (by 1981
  standards)
  about real computing, I doubt very much I would (or could) have
  written
  Neuromancer . Perhaps it all goes to prove that there are situations
  (literary
  ones, at least) in which a little knowledge is not only a dangerous
  thing, but
  the best tool for the job at hand.
  	A mimeograph stencil, by the way, is a piece of tissue- paper
  impregnated
  with wax. You punch through the wax with a typewriter, creating a
  stencil
  through which ink can be forced onto paper, allowing the reproduction
  of
  multiple copies. For many years, and not so long ago, these curious
  devices were
  very nearly as common as typewriters. They were what people did
  before laser
  printers. The mimeograph is one of many dinosaurs recently brought to
  the verge
  of extinction by the computer. They are dead tech , destined to make
  up part of
  the litter engulfing the Finn's back room. As is my Hermes 2000. As
  is my Apple
  IIc, which my children play with only reluctantly, its black-and-
  white graphics
  no competition for their video-games. As is my old SE/30 here; as is,

  eventually, whatever sort of unit, however slick and contemporary,
  you happen to
  be reading this on.
  	It gives me great pleasure to have these three books digitized,
  data-
  compressed, and published in this (make no mistake) revolutionary
  format. We
  participate, you and I, in the death of print-as-we-knew-it, and
  should
  experience thereby an exquisite frisson  of ecstasy and dread. So
  soon , we
  plunge toward a world in which the word "library" simply means
  something on the
  other end of a modem.
  	But I confess it gives me greater pleasure still, to contemplate
  that
  process whereby every tech, however sharp this morning, is invariably
  supplanted
  by the new, the unthinkable, and to imagine these words, unread and
  finally
  inaccessible, gathering dust at the back of some drawer in some year
  far up the
  road. Nothing in there but a tarnished Yale key, a silver dime, a
  couple of
  desiccated moths, and several hundred thousand data-compressed words,
  all in a
  row.
  	I know; I put them there.

  I'd like to take this opportunity to cite and thank the late Terry
  Carr, who
  commissioned the work that became Neuromancer  from an unknown and
  thoroughly
  unconfident writer, one whose track-record at the time consisted of a
  handful of
  short stories. If Terry hadn't been willing to take a chance with me,
  when he
  did, thereby forcing me to write something (a novel) I felt several
  working
  years short of being ready to do, it's most unlikely that these books
  would
  exist today.
  	
  	         -- Vancouver, 6/16/92



  About the Author

  William Gibson has received widespread media attention for his
  "cyberspace
  trilogy": Neuromancer, Count Zero, and Mona Lisa Overdrive. His first
  book,
  Neuromancer won the Hugo, Nebula and Philip K. Dick awards -- the
  only science
  fiction novel to receive all three. His most recent work, co-authored
  with Bruce
  Sterling, is entitled The Difference Engine. He is currently living
  in
  Vancouver, British Columbia with his family.