William Gibson - Idoru

Chia saw that Maryalice didn’t have her hair-extensions in anymore. “When they were taking DNA samples, in SeaTac,” Chia said, “you stuck the end of your extension in there.

Maryalice cracked the seal on the little bottle, opened it, drained it in a single gulp, and shivered. “Those extensions are all my own hair,” she said. “Grew ’em out when I was on sort of a health diet, understand? They catch people doing recreationals, when they take those hair samples. Some recreationals, they stay in your hair a long time.” Maryalice put the empty bottle down beside the blue dish. “What’s he doing?” Pointing at Masahiko.

“Porting,” Chia said, unable to think of a quick way to explain the Walled City.

“I can see that. You came here ’cause these places’ll re-post, right?”

“But you found us anyway.”

“I got connections with a cab company. I figured it was worth a try. But the Russians’ll think of it, too, if they haven’t already.”

“But how’d you get in? It was all locked.”

“I know my way around these places, honey. I know my way entirely too well.”

Masahiko removed the black cups that covered his eyes, saw Maryalice, looked down at the cups, then back up at Chia.

“Maryalice,” Chia said.

Gomi Boy presented like a life-size anime of himself, huge eyes and even taller hair. “Who drank the vodka?” he asked.

“Maryalice,” Chia said.

“Who’s Maryalice?”

“She’s in the room at the hotel,” Chia said.

“That was the equivalent of twenty minutes porting,” Gomi Boy said. “How can there be someone in your room at the Hotel Di?”

“It’s complicated,” Chia said. They were back in Masahiko’s room in the Walled City. They’d just clicked back, none of that maze-running like the first time. Past an icon reminding her she’d left her Venice open, but too late for that. Maybe once you were in here, you got back fast. But Masahiko’d said they had to, quick, there was trouble. Maryalice had said she didn’t mind, but Chia didn’t like it at all that Maryalice was in the room with them while they were porting.

“Your cash card is good for twenty-six more minutes of room-time,” Gomi Boy said. “Unless your friend hits the mini-bar again. Do you have an account in Seattle?”

“No,” Chia said, “just my mother…”

“We’ve already looked at that,” Masahiko said. “Your mother’s credit would not sustain rental of the room plus porting charges. Your father—”

“My father ?”

“Has an expense account with his employer in Singapore, a merchant bank—”

“How do you know that?”

Gomi Boy shrugged. “Walled City. We find things out. There are people here who know things.”

“You can’t tap into my father’s account,” Chia said. “It’s for his job.”

“Twenty-five minutes remaining,” Masahiko said.

Chia pulled her goggles off. Maryalice was taking another miniature bottle from the little fridge. “Don’t open that!”

Maryalice gave a guilty little shriek and dropped the bottle. “Just maybe some rice crackers,” she said.

“Nothing,” Chia said. “It’s too expensive! We’re running out of money!”

“Oh,” Maryalice said, blinking. “Right. I don’t have any, though. Eddie’s cut my cards off, for sure, and the first time I plug one, he’ll know exactly where I am.”

Masahiko spoke to Chia without removing the eyecups. “We have your father’s expense account on line…”

Maryalice smiled. “What we like to hear, right?”

Chia was pulling off her tip-sets. “You’ll have to take it to them,” she said to Maryalice, “the nano-thing. I’ll give it to you now, you take it to them, give it to them, tell them it was all a mistake.” She scooted on her hands and knees over to where her bag sat open on the floor. She dug for the thing, found it, held it out to Maryalice in what was left of the blue and yellow bag from the SeaTac duty-free. The dark gray plastic and the rows of little holes made it look like some kind of deformed designer pepper grinder. “Take it. Explain to them. Tell them it was just a mistake.”

Maryalice cringed. “Put it back, okay?” She swallowed. “See, the problem isn’t whether or not there’s been a mistake. The problem’s they’ll kill us now anyway, because we know about it. And Eddie, he’ll let ’em. ’Cause he has to. And ’cause he’s just sort of generally fed up with me, the ungrateful little greasy shithead motherfucker…” Maryalice shook her head sadly. “It’s about the end of our relationship, you ask me.”

“Account accessed,” Masahiko said. “Join us here now, please. You have another visitor.”

Arleigh’s van smelled of long-chain monomers and warm electronics. The rear seats had been removed to make room for the collection of black consoles, cabled together and wedged into place with creaking wads of bubble-pack.

Rez rode up front, beside the driver, the ponytailed Japanese Californian from Akihabara. Laney squatted on a console, between Arleigh and Yamazaki, with Willy Jude and the red-haired tech behind them. Laney’s ribs hurt, where he’d come down on the table, and that seemed to be getting worse. He’d discovered that the top of his left sock was sticky with blood, but he wasn’t sure where it had come from or even if it was his own.

Arleigh had her phone pressed to her ear. “Option eight,” she said, evidently to the driver, who touched the pad beside the dashboard map. Laney glimpsed Tokyo grid-segments whipping past on the screen. “We’re taking Rez back with us.”

“Take me to the Imperial,” Rez said.

“Blackwell’s orders,” Arleigh said.

“Let me talk to him.” Reaching back for the phone.

They swung left, into a wider street, their lights picking out a small crowd speedwalking away from the Western World, all of them trying to look as though they just happened to be there, out for a brisk stroll. The neighborhood was nondescript and generically urban and, aside from the guilty-looking speedwalkers, quite deserted.

“Keithy,” Rez said, “I want to go back to the hotel.” The terrible white daystar of a police helicopter swept over them, carbon-black shadows speeding away across concrete. Rez was listening to the phone. They passed an all-night noodle wagon, its interior ghostly behind curtains of yellowed plastic. Images flicking past on a small screen behind the counter. Arleigh nudged Laney’s knee, pointed past Rez’s shoulder. A trio of white armored cars shot through the approaching intersection, blue lights flashing on their rectangular turrets, and vanished without a sound. Rez turned, handing the phone back to her. “Keithy’s being his para self. He wants me to go to your hotel and wait for him.”

Arleigh took the phone. “Does he know what it was about?

“Autograph-hunters?” Rez started to turn back around in his seat.

“What happened to the idoru?” Laney asked.

Rez peered at him. “If you kidnapped that new platform—and I thought it was wonderful—what exactly would you have?”

“I don’t know.”

“Rei’s only reality is the realm of ongoing serial creation,” Rez said. “Entirely process ; infinitely more than the combined sum of her various selves. The platforms sink beneath her, one after another, as she grows denser and more complex…” The long green eyes seemed to grow dreamy, in the light of passing storefronts, and then the singer turned away.

Laney watched Arleigh dab at the cut corner of her mouth with a tissue.

“Laney-san…” Yamazaki, a whisper. Putting something into his hand. A cabled set of eyephones. “We have global fan-activity database…”