William Gibson - Pattern Recognition

“Yes. I have seen it, perhaps. I have software. I watch Nora's art move, through the Sigil numbers. It is very good, this software. Sergei found it for us.”

“Who is Sergei?”

“He is employed to facilitate. A star at the Polytechnic. I worry that he will miss his career, because my uncle pays him too well. But also he loves what Nora does. Like you.”

“Is the footage… Is Nora's art computer-generated, Stella? Are there live actors?” In fear that this is too direct, too blunt.

“At the film school, in Paris, she made three short films. The longest, sixteen minutes. This was shown at Cannes to good acclaim. You have been? The Croisette?”

Cayce bookmarking like the shutter of a camera. “Only once.”

“After the bomb we were taken to Switzerland. Nora required operations. The blood here is not good. We were fortunate, there has been nothing from the first transfusions, done in Russia. I stayed with her, of course. She could not talk, at first. She did not recognize me. When she did talk, it was only to me, and in a language that had been ours in childhood.”

“'Twin talk'?”

“The language of Stella and Nora. Then other language returns. The doctors had asked me her interests and of course there was only film. Shortly, we were shown an editing suite which our uncle had caused to have assembled there, in the clinic. We showed Nora the film she had been working on, in Paris, before. Nothing. As if she could not see it. Then she was shown her film from Cannes. That she saw, but it seemed to cause her great pain. Soon she began to use the equipment. To edit. Recut.”

Cayce, hypnotized, is nearing the bottom of her cup. The waiter arrives, to silently refill it.

“Three months, she recut. Five operations in that time, and still she worked. I watched it grow shorter, her film. In the end, she had reduced it to a single frame.”

In chilling apparent synchronicity, Caffeine falls momentarily silent. Cayce shivers. “What was the image?”

“A bird. In flight. Not even in focus. Its wings, against gray cloud.” She covers her own empty cup, when the waiter moves to refill it. “She went inside, after that.”

“Inside?”

“She ceased to speak, then to react. To eat. Again they fed her with tubes. I was crazy. There was talk of taking her to America, but American doctors came. In the end they said they could do nothing. It could not be removed.”

“What could not be removed?”

“The last fragment. It rests between the lobes, in some terrible way. It cannot be moved. Risk is too great.” The dark eyes bottomless now, filling Cayce's field of vision. “But then she notices the screen.”

“The screen?”

“Monitor. Above, in hallway. Closed circuit, showing only the reception at the front of that private ward. The Swiss nurse sitting, reading. Someone passing. They saw her watching that. The most clever of the doctors, he was from Stuttgart. He had them put a line from that camera into her editing suite. When she looked at those images, she focused. When the images were taken away, she began to die again. He taped two hours of this, and ran it on the editing deck. She began to cut it. To manipulate. Soon she had isolated a single figure. A man, one of the staff. They brought him to her, but she had no reaction. She ignored him. Continued to work. One day I found her working on his face, in Photoshop. That was the beginning.”

Cayce presses her head against the high back of the chair. Forces herself to close her eyes. When she opens them, she will see her old Rickson's, draped across the shoulders of Damien's robot girl. Or the open bedding closet in the apartment in Hongo, stuffed with a stranger's clothing.

“You are tired? Unwell?”

She opens her eyes. Stella is still there. “No. Only listening to your story. Thank you for telling it to me.”

“You are welcome.”

“Stella?”

“Yes?

“Why did you tell it to me? Everything you and your sister do seems to be surrounded by so much secrecy. And yet, when I find your address, finally, which was very hard to do, and e-mail you, you reply immediately. I come here, you meet me. I don't understand.”

“You are the first. My sister, she has no interest in an audience. I do not think she understands what I do with her work, that I make it possible for the world to see. But I suppose I had been waiting, and when you wrote to me, I decided you were real.”

“Real?”

“My uncle is a most important man, a very big businessman, bigger now even than when our parents died. We do not see him often, but his apparat protects us. They are afraid of him, you see, and so they are very careful. It is a sad way to live, I think, but that is what it is like to be very rich in this country. I wished the world to see my sister's work, but they insisted it be anonymous.” The sad gentle smile surfacing, through the stillness of the long white face. “When you told me your father was lost, I did not think you would hurt us.” A troubled look. “She was very upset, my sister. She hurt herself.”

“Because I came?”

“Of course not. She doesn't know. When we saw the attack, in New York.” But she is looking not at Cayce but toward the entrance now, where Cayce sees two young men waiting, in dark slacks and black leather coats. “I must go now. Those are my drivers. There is a car, to return you to your hotel.” Stella stands. “It is not good, a woman at night to walk alone.”

So Cayce stands, seeing that Stella is several inches taller than she is. “Will I see you again?”

“Of course.”

“Will I be able to meet your sister?”

“Yes, of course.”

“When?”

“Tomorrow. I will contact you. I will send a car. Come.” And leads the way, without asking for the bill, or paying, but the beautiful waiter bows low as they pass, as does an older man in a white apron. Ignoring the two in their leather coats, Stella steers her out into the street. “Here is your car.” A black Mercedes. She takes Cayce's hand, squeezes it. “A great pleasure.”

“Yes,” Cayce says, “thank you.”

“Good night.”

One of the young men opens the passenger door for her. She gets in. He closes it. Walks around the back, opens the driver-side, and gets in.

They pull away, and Cayce looks back, to see Stella wave goodbye.

When the black Mercedes reaches the big stone bridge, the driver touches something on the dashboard and the blue light goes on, flashing. He accelerates, working smoothly through the gears, up the great stone hump of it and down, into Zamoskvareche.

She opens her eyes to a wedge of light, dividing the darkened ceiling like the cross-section of a blade whose edge rests between the shadows of the ocher curtains.

She remembers watching the Maurice and Filmy edit on the iBook, after she'd returned from meeting Stella, and experiencing it in some entirely new way that she's still completely unable to describe or characterize.

She struggles out of the heavy sheets and drags one of the curtains aside. Light assails her, and the enormous, atrocious statue, on its island in the river.

In the bathroom, amid too many browns, she adjusts the taps in the shower. Knockoffs of Kohler, she notes automatically, minus the trademark. Unwraps a bar of soap and steps in.

Twenty minutes later, dressed, hair blown dry, she's downstairs, uneasily eyeing the breakfast buffet. Heaping platters of smoked meats, pyramids of preserved fish, silver bowls of red caviar, tureens of sour cream. Blinis. Things that aren't blinis but are filled with sweet cheese. Finally, at the far end, just as she's despairing, she finds granola and cornflakes and fresh fruit. Big pitchers of juice. Coffee in huge old pump-top nickel-plate thermos jugs.