William Gibson - Virtual Light

She was facing the city when he did it. Financial district, the Pyramid with its brace on from the Little Grande, the hills behind that. “Fuck a duck” she said, these towers blooming there, buildings bigger than anything, a stone regular grid of them, marching in from the hills. Each one maybe four blocks at the base, rising straight and featureless to spreading screens like the colander she used to steam vegetables. Then Chinese writing filled the sky. “Sammy…”

She felt him grab her as she lost her balance.

The Chinese writing twisted into English.

SUNFLOWER CORPORATION

“Sammy…”

“Huh?”

“What the fuck is this?” Anything she focused on, another label lit the sky, dense patches of technical words she didn’t understand.

“How should I know” he said. “Let me see.” Reaching for the glasses.

“Hey” she heard Skinner say, his voice carrying up through the hatch, “it’s Scooter. What you doin’ back here?”

Sammy Sal pulled the glasses off and she was kneeling, looking down through the hatch at that Japanese nerd who came around to see Skinner, the college boy or social worker or whatever he was. But he looked even more lost than usual. He looked scared. And there was somebody with him.

“Hey, Scooter” Skinner said, “how you doing?”

“This Mr. Loveless” Yamazaki said. “He ask to meet you.”

Gold flashed up at Chevette from the stranger’s grin. “Hi there” he said, taking his hand out of the side pocket of his long black raincoat. The gun wasn’t very big, but there was something too easy in the way he held it, like a carpenter with a hammer. He was wearing surgical gloves. “Why don’t you come on down here?”

“How this works” Freddie said, handing Rydell a debit-card, “you pay five hundred to get in, then you’re credited for five hundred dollars’ worth of merchandise.”

Rydell looked at the card. Some Dutch bank. If this was how they were going to pay him, up here, maybe it was time he asked them what he’d actually be getting. But maybe he should wait until Freddie was in a better mood.

Freddie said this Container City place was a good quick bet for clothes. Regular clothes, Rydell hoped. They’d left Warbaby drinking herbal tea in some kind of weird coffee joint because he said he needed to think. Rydell had gone out to the Patriot while Warbaby and Freddie held a quick huddle, there.

“What if he wants us, wants the car?”

“He’ll beep us” Freddie said. He showed Rydell how to put the debit-card into a machine that gave him a five-hundred-dollar Container City magstrip and validated the parking on the Patriot. “This way.” Freddie pointed at a row of turnstiles.

“Aren’t you gonna buy one?” Rydell asked.

“Shit, no” Freddie said. “I don’t get my clothes off boats.” He took a card out of his wallet and showed Rydell the IntenSecure logo.

“I thought you guys were strictly freelance.”

“Strictly but frequently” Freddie said, feeding the card to a turnstile. It clicked him through. Rydell fed it the magstrip and followed him.

Costs people five hundred bucks just to get in here?”

“Why people call it the Trap. But that’s just how they make sure the overhead’s covered. You don’t come in here unless you know you’re gonna drop that much. Gives ’em a guaranteed per-cap.”

Container City turned out to be the biggest semi-roofed mall Rydell had ever seen, if you could call something a mall that had ships parked in it, big ones. And the five-hundred-dollar guaranteed purchase didn’t seem to have put anybody off; there were more people in here than out on the street, it looked like. “Hong Kong money” Freddie said. “Bought ’em a hunk of the Embarcadero.”

“Hey” Rydell said, pointing at a dim, irregular outline that rose beyond gantries and towers of floodlights, “that’s that bridge, the one people live on.”

“Yeah” Freddie said, giving him a funny look, “crazy-ass people.” Steering Rydell onto an escalator that ran up the white-painted flank of a container ship.

Rydell looked around at Container City as they rose. “Crazier than anything in L.A.” he said, admiringly.

“No way” Freddie said, “I’m from L.A. This just a mall, man.”

Rydell bought a burgundy nylon bomber, two pairs of black jeans, socks, underwear, and three black t-shirts. That came out to just over five hundred. He used the debit-card to make up the difference.

“Hey” he told Freddie, his purchases in a big yellow Container City bag, “that’s a pretty good deal. Thanks.”

Freddie shrugged. “Where they say those jeans made?” Rydell checked the tag. “African Union.”

“Slave labor” Freddie said, “you shouldn’t buy that shit.”

“I didn’t think about it. They got any food in here?”

“Food Fair, yeah…”

“You ever try this Korean pickled shit? It’s hot, man…”

“I got an ulcer.” Freddie was methodically spooning plain white frozen yogurt into his mouth with a marked lack of enthusiasm.

“Stress. That’s stress-related, Freddie.”

Freddie looked at Rydell over the rim of the pink plastic yogurt cup. “You trying to be funny?”

“No” Rydell said. “I just know about ulcers because they thought my daddy had them.”

“Well, didn’t he? Your ‘daddy’? Did he have ’em or not?”

“No” Rydell said. “He had stomach cancer.”

Freddie winced, put his yogurt down, rattled the ice in his paper cup of Evian and drank some. “Hernandez” he said, “he told us you were trainin’ to be a cop, some redneck place…”

“Knoxville” Rydell said. “I was a cop. Just not for very long.”

“I hear you, I hear you” Freddie said, like he wanted Rydell to relax, maybe even to like him. “You got trained and all? Cop stuff?”

“Well, they try to give you a little bit of everything” Rydell said. “Crime scene investigation… Like up in that room today. I could tell they hadn’t done the Super Glue thing.”

“No?”

“No. There’s this chemical in Super Glue sticks to the water in a print, see, and about ninety-eight percent of a print is water. So you’ve got this little heater, for the glue? Screws into a regular light socket? So you tape up the doors and windows with garbage bags and stuff and you leave that little heater turned on. Leave it twenty-four hours, then you come back and purge the room.”

“How you do that?”

“Open up the doors, windows. Then you dust. But they hadn’t done that, over at the hotel. It leaves this film all over. And a smell…”

Freddie raised his eyebrows. “Shit. You almost kinda technical, aren’t you, Rydell?”

“Mostly it’s just common sense” he said. “Like not going to the bathroom.”

“Not going?”

“At a crime scene. Don’t ever use the toilet. Don’t flush it. You drop something in a toilet, the way the water goes. You ever notice how it goes up, underneath there?” Freddie nodded.

“Well, maybe your perp flushed it after he dropped something in there. But it doesn’t always work like it’s meant to, and it might be just floating back there… You come in and flush it again, then it’s gone for sure.”

“Damn” Freddie said, “I never knew that.”

“Common sense” Rydell said, wiping his lips with a paper napkin.

“I think Mr. Warbaby’s right about you, Rydell.”

“How’s that?”

“He says we’re wasting you, just letting you drive that four-by-four. Bein’ straight with you, man, I wasn’t sure, myself.” Freddie waited, like he figured Rydell might take offense.

“Well?”