William Gibson - Virtual Light

“Sorry” the Japanese guy said, “sorry I…”

“I’m going to shoot you in the right eye with a subsonic titanium bullet.” Still smiling, the way he might say I’m going to buy you a sandwich.

“I’m coming” Chevette said. And he didn’t shot, not her, not the Japanese guy.

She thought she heard Sammy Sal step back acoss the roof, away from her, but she didn’t look back. She wasn’t sure whether she should try to close the hatch behind her or not. She decided not to because the guy had only told her to come down. She’d have to reach past the edge of the hole to get hold of the hatch and it might look to him like he was going for a gun or something. Like in a show.

She dropped down from the bottom rung, trying to keep her hands where he could see them.

“What were you doing up there?” Still smiling. His gun wasn’t anything like Oakley’s big old Brazilian revolver; it was a little stubby square thing made out of dull metal, the color of Skinner’s old tools. A thin ring of lighter metal around the narrow hole in the end. Like the pupil of an eye.

“Looking at the city” she said, not feeling scared, particularly. Not really feeling anything, except her legs were trembling.

He glanced up, the gun staying right when it was. She didn’t want him to ask her if was she alone up here, because the answer might hang in the air and tell him it was a lie. “You know what I’m here for.”

Skinner was sitting up on his bed, back against the wall, looking as wide awake as she’d ever seen him. The Japanese guy, who didn’t look like he’d been shot after all, was sitting on the floor, his skinny legs spread out in front of him in a V.

“Well” Skinner said, “I’d guess money or drugs, but it happens you’re shit out of luck. Give you fifty-six dollars and a stale joint of Humbolt, you want it.”

“Shut up.” When the automatic smile went away, it was like he didn’t have any lips. “I’m talking to her.”

Skinner looked like he was about to say something, or maybe laugh, but he didn’t.

“The glasses.” Now the smile was back. He raised the gun, so that she was looking right into the little hole. If he shoots me, she thought, he’ll still have to hunt for them.

“Hepburn” Skinner said, with a crazy little grin, and just then Chevette noticed that the poster of Roy Orbison had a hole in the middle of its gray forehead. “Down there” she said, pointing to the hatch in the floor.

“Where?”

“My bike” hoping Sammy Sal didn’t bump into that old rusty wagon in the dark up there, make a noise.

He looked up at the roof-hatch, like he could hear what she was thinking.

“Lean up against the wall there, palms flat.” He moved in closer. “Get your feet apart…” The gun touched her neck. His other hand slid under Skinner’s jacket, feeling for a weapon. “Stay that way.” He’d missed Skinner’s knife, the one with the fractal blade. She turned her head a little and saw him wrapping something red and rubbery around one of the Japanese guy’s wrists, doing it one-handed. She thought of those gummy-worm candies you bought out of a big plastic jar. He yanked the Japanese guy by the red thing, dragging him across the floor to the shelf-table where she’d eaten breakfast. He stuck one end of the red thing behind the angle-brace that held the table up, then twisted it around the guy’s other wrist. He took another one out of his pocket and shook it out, like a toy snake. Reached behind Skinner with it and did something with his hand. “You stay on that bed, old man” touching the gun to Skinner’s temple. Skinner just looking at him.

He came back to Chevette. “You’re climbing down a ladder. Need yours in front.”

The thing was cool and slick and fused into itself as soon as he had it around her wrists. Flowed together. Moved by itself. Plastic ruby bracelets, like a kid’s toy. One of those tricks with molecules.

“I’m going to watch you” he said, with another glance up at the open roof-hatch, “so you just go down nice and slow. And if you jump, or run when you get to the bottom, I’ll kill you.”

And she didn’t doubt he would, if he could, but she was remembering something Oakley had told her that day in the woods, how it was hard to hit something if you had to shoot almost straight down at it, even harder straight up. So maybe the thing to do was just proj when she hit the bottom. she’d only have to clear about six feet from the ladder to be where he couldn’t see her. But she looked at the gun’s black and silver eye and it just didn’t seem like a good idea.

So she went to the hole in the floor and got down on her knees. It wasn’t easy, with her hands tied that way. He had to steady her, grabbing a handful of Skinner’s jacket, but she got her feet down on the third rung and her fingers around the top one, and worked her way down that way. She had to get her feet on a rung, let go of the one she was holding, snatch the next one down before she lost her balance, do it again.

But she got to think while she was doing it, and that helped her decide to go ahead and try to do what she had in mind. It was weird to be thinking that way, how quiet she felt, but it wasn’t the first time. She’d felt that way in Beaverton, the night she’d gone over the wire, and that without any more planning. And one time these truckers had tried to drag her into the sleeper in the back; she’d made like she didn’t mind, then threw a thermos of hot coffee in one’s face, kicked the other in the head, and gotten out of there. They’d looked for her for an hour, with flashlights, while she squatted down in river-mud and let mosquitos eat her alive. Lights searching for her through that brush.

She got to the bottom and backed off a step, holding her bound wrists out where he could see them if he wanted to. He came down fast, no wasted movement, not a sound. His long coat was made of something black, some cloth that didn’t throw back the light, and she saw he was wearing black cowboy boots. She knew he could run just fine in those, if he had to; people didn’t always think so, but you could.

“Where is it?” Gold flashing at the corners of his smile. His hair, brushed straight back, was somewhere between brown and blond. He moved his hand, keeping her aware of the gun. She saw his hand was starting to sweat, spots of wetness darkening there, inside the white rubber glove.

“We gotta take the—” She stopped. The yellow lift was where she and Sammy Sal had left it, so how had he gotten up?

Extra bits of gold. “We took the stairs.”

They’d come up the painter’s ladder, bare steel rungs, some of them rusted through. So she wouldn’t hear the lift. No wonder the Japanese guy had looked scared. “Well” she said, “you coming?”

He followed her over to the lift. She kept her eyes on the deck, so she wouldn’t forget and look up to try and find Sammy, who had to be there, somewhere. He wouldn’t have had time to get down, or else they would have heard him.

He held her shoulder again while she swung her leg over and climbed in, then got in after her, watching her the whole time.

“This one’s down” she said, pointing at one of the levers.

“Do it.”

She moved it a notch, another, and the engine whined beneath their feet, gearing them down the incline. There was a patch of light at the bottom, under a bulb caged in corroded aluminum, and she wondered what he’d do if somebody happened to step into it just then, say Fontaine or one of the other people who came to check the electrical stuff. Anybody. He’d shoot them, she decided. Just pop them and roll them over into the dark. You could see it in his face. It was right there.

He got out first, helped her over. A wind was rising and you could feel the harmonics coming up through your soles, the bridge starting to hum like a muffled harp. She could hear people laughing, somewhere.