William Gibson - Virtual Light

The whole bar was looking at Orlovsky.

Orlovsky looked around the room, over the tops of his glasses, taking his time, giving them all a good dose of Cop Eye. The music, some weird hollow techie stuff that sounded like bombs going off in echo-chambers, started to make a different kind of sense.

Rydell saw Josie the wheelchair woman looking at the Russian with an expression Rydell couldn’t process.

Spotting Chevette Washington in her corner, Orlovsky walked over to her table, still taking his time, making the rest of the room take that same time. His hand still on that gun.

It seemed to Rydell like the Russian just might be about to haul out and shoot her. Sure looked like it, but what kind of cop would do that?

Now Orlovsky stopped in front of their table, just the right distance, too far for them to reach him and far enough to allow room to pull that big gun if he was going to.

The Boyfriend, Rydell was somehow pleased to see, looked fit to shit himself. Baldhead looked like he’d been cast in plastic, just frozen there, hands on the table. Between his hands, Rydell saw a pocket phone.

Orlovsky locked the girl with his full current of Eye-thing, his face lined, gray in this light, unsmiling. He jerked the brim of the plastic fedora, just this precise little fraction, and said “Get up.”

Rydell looked at her and saw her trembling. There was never any question the Russian meant her and not her friends—Boyfriend looking like he might faint any second and Baldhead playing statue.

Chevette Washington stood up, shaky, the rickety little wooden chair going over behind her.

“Out.” The hat-brim indicated the stairs. The hairy back of Orlovsky’s hand covered the butt of the H & K.

Rydell heard his own knees creak with tension. He was leaning forward, gripping the edges of the table. He could feel old dried pads of gum under there.

The lights went out.

Much later, trying to explain to Sublett what it had been like when Josie whipped her hologram on Orlovsky, Rydell said it looked sort of like the special effect at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark, that part where those angels or whatever they were came swirling out of that box and got all over those Nazis.

But it had all been happening at once, for Rydell. When the lights went, they all went, all those signs on the wall, everything, and Rydell just tossed that table sideways, without even thinking about it, and Went For where she’d been standing. And this ball of light had shot down, expanding, from a point on the wall that must’ve marked the upper edge of that NEC sign. It was the color of the hologram’s skin, kind of honey and ivory, all marbled through with the dark of her hair and eyes, like a fast-forward of a satellite storm-system. All around that Russian, a three-foot sphere around his head and shoulders, and as it spun, her eyes and mouth, open in some silent scream, blinked by, all magnified. Each eye, for a fraction of a second, the size of the ball itself, and the white teeth big, too, each one long as a man’s hand.

Orlovsky swatted at it, and that kept him, for some very little while, from getting his gun out.

But it also gave off enough light to let Rydell see he was grabbing the girl and not Boyfriend. Just sort of picking her up, forgetting everything he’d ever been taught about comealongs and restraints, and running, best he could, for the stairs.

Orlovsky yelled something, but it must’ve been in Russian.

His uncle, the one who’d gone off to Africa in the Army, used to say, if he liked how a woman’s ass moved when she walked, that it looked like two baby bobcats in a croker sack. And that was the expression that popped into Rydell’s mind as he ran up those stairs with Chevette Washington held out in front of him like a big bunch of groceries. But it didn’t have anything to do with sexy.

He was just lucky she didn’t get an eye or break any of his ribs.

Whoever had grabbed her, she just kept kicking and punching, right up the stairs, backward. But he had her held out so far in front of him that he almost fell on top of her.

Then she was out on the deck, in what light there was, and looking at some kind of plastic machine gun, the color of a kid’s army toy, in the hands of another one of these big ugly raincoat guys, this one with no hat and his wet hair slicked back from a face with the skin on too tight.

“You drop her now, fuckhead” this one with the gun said. Had an accent out of an old monster movie. She barely kept to her feet when the one who was holding her let go.

“Fuckhead” the gun-guy said, like Pock Ed, “you try to make move or what?”

“War” the one who’d grabbed her said, then doubled over, coughing. “Baby” he said, straightening, then winced, hugging his ribs, looking at her. “Jesus fuck, you got a kick on you.” Sounded American, but not West Coast. In a cheap nylon jacket with one sleeve half ripped off at the shoulder, white fuzzy stuff hanging out.

“You try to make a move…” And the plastic gun was pointing right at the guy’s face.

“War-baby, war-baby” the guy said, or anyway it sounded like that, “war-baby sent me to get her. He’s parked back out there past those tank-trap things, waiting for me to bring her out.”

“Arkady…” It was the ofle in the plastic hat, coming up the stairs behind the guy who’d grabbed her. He had a pair of night-vision glasses on, that funny-looking center-tube poking out from beneath the brim of his hat. He was holding up something that looked like a miniature aerosol can. He said something in this language. Russian? He gestured with the little can, back down the stairs.

“You use capsicum in an enclosed space like that” said the one who’d grabbed her, “people’ll get hurt. Get you some permanent sinus problems.”

The tight-faced man looked at him like he was something crawled out from under a rock. “You drive, yes?” he said, gesturing for the hat-man to put the thing away, whatever it was.

“We had a coffee. Well, you had tea. Svobodov, right?”

Chevette caught the tight-faced man’s glance at her, like he hadn’t liked her hearing his name. She wanted to tell him she’d heard it Rub-a-Dub, how this other guy talked, so that couldn’t really be it, could it?

“Why you grab her?” asked the tight-faced man, Rub-a-Dub.

“She coulda got away in the dark, couldn’t she? Didn’t know your partner here had night vision. Besides, he sent me to get her. Didn’t mention you. In fact, they said you didn’t come out here.”

The one with the hat was behind her now, jerking her arm up in a hold. “Lemme go—”

“Hey” the one who’d grabbed her said, like it made things okay, “these men are police officers. SFPD Homicide, right?”

Rub-a-Dub whistled softly. “Fuckhead.”

“Cops?” she asked.

“Sure are.”

Which produced a little snort of exasperation from Rub-aDub.

“Arkady, now we go. These dirthags try to spy us from below…” The hat-man pulling off his night-glasses and dancing like he had to pee.

“Hey” she said, “somebody’s killed Sammy. If you’re cops, listen, he killed Sammy Sal!”

“Who’s Sammy?” the one in the torn jacket said.

“I work with him! At Allied. Sammy DuPree. Sammy. He got shot.”

“Who shot him?”

“Ry-dell. Shut fuck up.” Shot, Pock, Op.

“She’s tellin’ us she’s got-information-regarding a possible homicide, and you’re telling me to shut up?”

“Yes, I tell you shut fuck up. War-baby. He will explain.”

And her arm twisted up so she’d go with them.

Svobodov had insisted on cuffing him to Chevette Washington. They were Beretta cuffs, just like he’d carried on patrol in Knoxville. Svobodov said he and Orlovsky needed their hands free in case any of these bridge people caught on they were taking the girl off.