William Gibson - Virtual Light

Silence. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Then you just listen, Lowell. Listen up. You don’t listen, I’ll tell Orlovsky you saw him. I’ll give him this number. I’ll give him your description, and that skinhead’s, too. Tell him you been talking about him. And you know what he’ll do, Lowell? He’ll come out there and shoot your ass dead, that’s what he’ll do. And nobody to stop him. Homicide, Lowell. Then he can investigate it himself, he wants to. Man’s heavy, Lowell, I gotta tell ya.”

Lowell coughed, a couple of times. Cleared his throat. “This is a joke, right?”

“I don’t hear you laughing.”

“Okay” Lowell said, “say it’s for real. Then what? What’re you after?”

“I hear you know people can get things done. With computers and things.” He could hear Lowell lighting a fresh cigarette.

“Well” Lowell said, “sort of.”

“Republic of Desire” Rydell said. “I need you to get them to do me a favor.”

“No names” Lowell said, fast. “There’s scans set to pick things out of traffic—”

“Them.”

“ ‘Them’ okay? Need you to get them to do something for me.”

“It’ll cost you” Lowell said, “and it won’t be cheap.”

“No” Rydell said, “it’ll cost you.”

He pressed the button that broke the connection. Give old Lowell a little time to think about it; maybe look Orlovsky up on the Civil List, see he was there and he was Homicide. He flipped the little phone shut and went back into the trailer. Sublett’s mother kept the air-conditioning up about two clicks too high.

Sublett was sitting on the loveseat. His white clothes made him look sort of like a painter, a plasterer or something, except he was too clean. “You know, Berry, I’m thinking maybe I better get back to Los Angeles.”

“What about your mother?”

“Well, Mrs. Baker’s here now, from Galveston? They been neighbors for years. Mrs. Baker can watch out for her.”

“That apostate crap getting to you?”

“Sure is” Sublett said, turning to look at the hologram of Fallon. “I still believe in the Lord, Berry, and I know I’ve seen His face in the media, just like Reverend Fallon teaches. I have. But the rest of it, I swear, it might as well be just a flatout hustle.” Sublett almost looked like he might be about to cry. The silver eyes swung around, met Rydell’s. “And I been thinking about IntenSecure, Berry. What you told me last night. I don’t see how I can go back there and work, knowing the kinds of things they’ll condone. I thought I was at least helping to protect people from a few of the evils in this world, Berry, but now I know I’d just be working for a company with no morals at all.”

Rydell walked over and had a closer look at the prayer-hankies. He wondered which one of them was supposed to keep the AIDS off. “No” he said, finally, “you go back to work. You are protecting people. That part’s real. You got to make a living, Sublett.”

“What about you?”

“Well, what about me?”

“They’ll just find you and kill you, Berry. You and her.”

“You, too, probably, if they knew what I’d told you. I shouldn’t ought’ve done that, Sublett. That’s one reason Chevette and I have to get out of here. So there won’t be any hassle for you and your mom.”

“Well” Sublett said, “I’m not working for them anymore, Berry. But I’m leaving here, too. I just have to.”

Rydell looked at Sublett, seeing him, somehow, in his full IntenSecure outfit, Glock and all, and suddenly that big crazy idea-thing sort of up and shook itself, and rolled over, revealing all these new angles. But you can’t get him involved, Rydell told himself, it just wouldn’t be fair.

“Sublett” Rydell heard himself saying, about a minute later, “I bet I got a career-option here you haven’t ever even considered.”

“What’s that?” Sublett said.

“Getting in trouble” Rydell said.

rice

scouring pads broom

detergent liquid sleeping bag

stove fuel oil/gasket

He sleeps now. Rice with the curry from the Thai wagon. Asks where the girl has gone. Tell him Fontaine has heard from her but does not know where she is or why. The pistol on the shelf. Reluctant to touch it (cold, heavy, smelling of oil, the dark blue finish worn to silver-gray down the sides of its muzzle, around the fluted segments of the cylinder. (‘SMITH & WESSON.’ Thomasson.) Tonight he spoke again of Shapely.

How they did him like that, Scooter, that’s just some sorry shit. Same shit all over. Always some of ’em, anyway, makes you wonder how these damn religions last so long or what started it in the first place. Could be he’ll be that himself one day, crazy fuckers out killing people for him, or they’ll say it’s for him. Used to be these Crucified Jesus people, they wouldn’t talk at all except on Mondays, and that was the day they’d go and dig a spadeful of dirt out of their grave, Scooter. Every little while they’d get one of them thought he’d got the spirit in him and they’d just do it, do it with these special chrome nails they all carried, leather neck-pouch, see, it had to be unborn lambskin. Hell, you’d have to say they were crazier than the ones got him, Scooter. Put ’em all away, finally. Weren’t any left at all, after about 1998.

“Inner Tube, honey” Mrs. Sublett said, “Talitha Morrow, Todd Probert, Gary Underwood. 1996.” She was leaning back in the recliner with a damp washcloth folded across her forehead. It was the same color blue as her slippers, and they were terrycloth, too.

“I never saw that” Chevette said, flipping through the pages of a magazine all about Reverend Fallon. There was this has-been actress, Gudrun Weaver, and she was up there hugging Fallon on a stage somewhere. If he’d turned around, Chevette thought, his nose would’ve barely come up to her breastbone. Looked like he’d had some kind of pink wax injected, all under his skin; had the creepiest-looking hair she’d ever seen, like a really short wig but it sort of looked like it might get up and walk off by itself.

“All about television” Mrs. Sublett said, “so naturally it’s of special significance to the Church.”

“What’s it about?”

“Talitha Morrow is this newswoman, and Todd Probert is a bank robber. But he’s a good bank robber, because he only needs the money to pay for a heart-transplant for his wife. Carrie Lee. Remember her? In a mature role, honey. More like a cameo. Well, Gary Underwood is Talitha’s ex, but he’s still got it for her, bad. In fact he’s got—whatcha callit?—erotomania, like it’s all he ever thinks about and, honey, it’s turned pure evil. First he’s sending her these chopped up Barbie dolls; sends her a dead white rabbit, then all this fancy underwear with blood on it…”

Chevette let the old lady talk. She could just sort of tune her out, the way she used to do with her own mother, sometimes. She wondered what it was Rydell and Sublett were so worked up about. Up to something; whispering in the kitchen.

She watched a fly buzz around the stuff on Mrs. Sublett’s shelves. It looked slow, like maybe the air-conditioning was too much for it.

She wondered if maybe she wasn’t starting to fall for Rydell. Maybe it was just that he’d showered and shaved and put on clean clothes from his stupid-looking suitcase. The clothes were exactly the same as the ones he’d been wearing before. Maybe he never wore anything else. But she had to admit he had a cute butt in those jeans. Sublett’s mother said he looked like a young Tommy Lee Jones. Who was Tommy Lee Jones? Or maybe it was because she had the idea somehow he was going to do something mean to Lowell. She’d thought she was still in love with Lowell, or something anyway, but now she didn’t think so, not at all. If Lowell just hadn’t started doing dancer. She’d thought about how that Loveless had got when she’d dumped all that dancer in his Coke. She’d asked Rydell if that was enough to have killed him, and Rydell had said no. Said it was enough to keep him stone crazy for a while, and when he got back together, he was going to be hurting. Then she’d asked Rydell why Loveless had done that, banging his gun into his crotch that way. Rydell had sort of scratched his head and said he wasn’t sure, but he thought it had something to do with what it did to your nervous system. Said he’d heard it induced priapism, for one thing. She’d asked him what that was. Well, he’d said, it’s when the man is, like, overstimulated. She didn’t know about that, but it had given Lowell these total brickbat boners that just didn’t want to go away. And that would’ve been just fine, or anyway okay, except he got all mean with it, too, so she’d wind up all sore and then he’d be badmouthing her in front of these people he hung out with, like Codes. Anyway, she wasn’t going to waste any time worrying about what Rydell might have in mind for Lowell, no way. What she did worry about was Skinner, whether he was okay, whether he was being taken care of. She was kind of scared to try phoning Fontaine now; every time Rydell made a call out, she worried it might get traced back or something. And it made her sad to think about her bike. She was sure somebody would’ve gotten it by now. She kind of hated to admit it, but that was starting to make her nearly as sad as Sammy getting killed that way. And Rydell had said he thought maybe Nigel had gotten shot, too.