William Gibson - All Tomorrow's Parties

'And you have a tendency to pat yourselves on the back, Laney says. 'We know that Harwood's had 5-SB, but we don't know why, or what he's doing with nodal apprehension. You seem to be convinced it's something to do with Lucky Dragon and this half-baked Nanofax launch.

'Aren't you? asks Klaus. 'Nanofax units are going into every Lucky Dragon in the world. Right now. Literally. Most of them are fully installed, ready to go operational.

'With the faxing of the first Taiwanese teddy bear from Des Moines to Seattle? What's he hope to gain? Laney concentrates on his favorite girl, imagining her thumb on the plunger of a hypodermic-style manual release.

'Think network, the Rooster puts in. 'Function, even ostensible function, is not the way to look at this. All function, in these terms, is ostensible. Temporary. What he wants is a network in place. Then he can figure out what to do with it.

'But why does he need to have something to do with it in the first place? Laney demands.

'Because he's between a rock and a hard place, responds Klaus. 'He's the richest man in the world, possibly, and he's ahead of the curve. He's an agent of change, and massively invested in the status quo. He embodies paradoxical propositions. Too hip to live, too rich to die. Get it?

'No, Laney says.

'We think he's like us, basically, Klaus says. 'He's trying to hack reality but he's going strictly big casino, and he'll take the rest of the species with him, however and whatever.

'You have to admire that, don't you? says the Rooster, out of the depths of his silent faux-Bacon scream.

Laney isn't sure that you do.

He wonders if the Rooster's reiteration of The Reason of Life incorporates the tiny, six-seater bar downstairs, the darker one where you can sit beneath very large prints of the pictures the girls themselves were taking: huge abstract triangles of luminous gelatin-printed white panty.

'Can you get me that kind of look-in on Harwood's stuff anytime?

'Until he notices you, we can.

CHEVETTE had had a boyfriend named Lowell, when she'd first lived on the bridge, who did dancer.

Lowell had had a friend called Codes, called that because he tumbled the codes on hot phones and notebooks, and this Saint Vitus reminded her of Codes. Codes hadn't liked her either.

Chevette hated dancer. She hated being around people when they were on it, because it made them selfish, too pleased with themselves, and nervous; suspicious, too prone to make things up in their heads, imagining everyone out to get them, everyone lying, everyone talking behind their back. And she particularly hated watching anyone actually do the stuff, rub it into their gums the way they did, all horrible, because it was just so gross. Made their lips numb, at first, so they'd drool a little, and how they always thought that was funny. But what she hated about it most was that she'd ever done it herself, and that, even though she had all these reasons to hate it, she still found herself, watching Saint Vitus vigorously massaging a good solid hit into his gums, feeling the urge to ask him for some.

She guessed that was what they meant by it being addictive. That she'd gotten just that little edge of it off the country singer sticking his tongue in her mouth (and if that was the only way to get it, she thought, she'd pass) and now the actual molecules of diz were twanging at receptor sites in her brain, saying gimme, gimme. And she'd never even been properly strung out on the stuff, not how they meant it when they said that on the street.

Carson had coordinated on a Real One sequence about the history of stimulants, so Chevette knew that dancer was somewhere out there past crack cocaine in terms of sheer gotcha. The addiction schedule was a little less merciless, in terms of frequency, but she figured she'd still just barely missed it, chipping with Lowell. Lowell who'd explain in detail and at great length how the schedule he'd worked out for using it was going to optimize his functionality in the world, but never result in one of those ugly habit deals. You just had to know how to do it, and when to do it, and most important of all, why to do it. Powerful substance like this, Lowell would explain, it wasn't there just for any casual jack-off recreational urge. It was there to allow you to do things. To empower you, he said, so that you could do things and, best of all, finish them.

Except that what Lowell had mainly wanted to do, dizzed, was have sex, and the diz made it impossible for him to finish. Which had been okay by Chevette, because otherwise he tended to finish a little on the quick side. The Real One sequence had said that dancer made it possible for men to experience something much more like the female orgasm, a sort of ongoing climax, less localized and, well, messy.

Dancer was pretty deadly stuff, in terms of getting people into bed in the first place. Strangers doing dancer together, if there was any basis for attraction at all, were inclined to decide that that was basically a fine idea, and one to be acted on right away, but only provided the other party seemed agreeable to doing it until both were pretty well dead.

And people did wind up dead around the stuff; hearts stopped, lungs forgot to breathe, crucial tiny territories of brain blew out. People murdered one another when they were crazy on the stuff, and then in cold blood just to get some more.

It was one ugly substance and no doubt about it.

'You got any more of that? she asked Saint Vitus, who was dabbing at the spit-slick corners of his mouth with a wadded-up tissue, dots of blood dried brown on it.

Saint Vitus fixed her with his slitty glasses. 'You've got to be kidding, he said.

'Yeah, said Chevette, pushing off the stool, 'I am. Must've been the time of night. How could she even have thought that? She could smell his metallic breath in the sound box.

'Got it, said Tessa, pulling off the glasses. 'Crowd's thinning. Chevette, I'll need you to help me get the camera platforms together.

Saint Vitus smirked. At the thought, Chevette guessed, of somebody else having to do something like work.

'You haven't seen Carson, have you? Chevette asked, stepping to the window. The dwindling crowd, seen from above, was moving in one of those ways that there was probably a logarithm for: milling and dispersing.

'Carson?

She spotted Buell Creedmore, just in front of the stage, talking with a big guy in a black jacket, his back to the sound booth. Then the big guitar player, the one with the squashed cowboy hat, jumped down from the stage and seemed to be giving Creedmore a hard time. Creedmore tried to say something, got shut up, then managed to say something short, and by the look on his face, not too sweet, and the guitar player turned and walked away. Chevette saw Creedmore say something to the other guy, gesturing back in her direction, and this one turned and headed that way, his face concealed, from just this angle, by a dusty swoop of black-painted cable.

'He was here before, Chevette said. 'That's why I frenched the meshback and ran out the door. Didn't you wonder?

Tessa looked at her. 'I did, actually. But I thought maybe I was just getting to know you better. She laughed. 'Are you sure it was him?

'It was him, Tessa.

'How would he know we're up here?

'Somebody told him at the house? You talked enough, before, about your docu.

'Maybe, Tessa said, interest waning. 'Help me get the platforms tethered, okay? She handed Chevette four black nylon tethers, each one tipped with a mini-bungee and a metal clip.

'Listen, Chevette said, 'I'm not up for a night at Cognitive Dissidents, okay? I don't think you are either. I just watched your friend here gum enough dancer to wire a mule.