“Die!” She flung up a white hand: from it burst a form folded from neon.
“No,” Colin said, and the crane shattered, its fragments tumbling through him, ghost-shards, falling away. “Won’t do. Sorry. I’ve remembered what I am. Found the bits they tucked away in the slots for Shakespeare and Thackeray and Blake. I’ve been modified to advise and protect Kumiko in situations rather more drastic than any envisioned by my original designers. I’m a tactician.”
“You are nothing.” At her feet, Tick began to twitch.
“You’re mistaken, I’m afraid. You see, in here, in this … folly of yours, 3Jane, I’m as real as you are. You see, Kumiko,” he said, swinging down from the saddle, “Tick’s mysterious macroform is actually a very expensive pile of biochips constructed to order. A sort of toy universe. I’ve run all up and down it and there’s certainly a lot to see, a lot to learn. This … person, if we choose to so regard her, created it in a pathetic bid for, oh, not immortality, really, but simply to have her way. Her narrow, obsessive, and singularly childish way. Who would’ve thought it, that Lady 3Jane’s object of direst and most nastily gnawing envy would be Angela Mitchell?”
“Die! You’ll die! I’m killing you! Now!”
“Keep trying,” Colin said, and grinned. “You see, Kumiko, 3Jane knew a secret about Mitchell, about Mitchell’s relationship to the matrix; Mitchell, at one time, had the potential to become, well, very central to things, though it’s not worth going into. 3Jane was jealous.…”
The figure of Kumiko’s mother swam like smoke, and was gone.
“Oh dear,” Colin said, “I’ve wearied her, I’m afraid. We’ve been fighting something of a pitched battle, at a different level of the command program. Stalemate, temporarily, but I’m sure she’ll rally.…”
Tick had gotten to his feet and was gingerly massaging his arm. “Christ,” he said, “I was sure she’d dislocated it for me.…”
“She did,” Colin said, “but she was so angry when she left that she forgot to save that part of the configuration.”
Kumiko stepped closer to the horse. It wasn’t like a real horse at all. She touched its side. Cool and dry as old paper. “What shall we do now?”
“Get you out of here. Come along, both of you. Mount up. Kumiko in front, Tick on behind.”
Tick looked at the horse. “On that?”
They had seen no other people in Ueno Park, as they’d ridden toward a wall of green that gradually defined itself as a very un-Japanese wood.
“But we should be in Tokyo,” Kumiko protested, as they entered the wood.
“It’s all a bit sketchy,” Colin said, “though I imagine we could find a sort of Tokyo if we looked. I think I know an exit point, though.…”
Then he began to tell her more about 3Jane, and Sally, and Angela Mitchell. All of it very strange.
The trees were very large, at the far side of the wood. They emerged into a field of long grass and wildflowers.
“Look,” Kumiko said, as she glimpsed a tall gray house through the branches.
“Yes,” Colin said, “the original’s on the outskirts of Paris. But we’re nearly there. The exit point, I mean …”
“Colin! Did you see? A woman. Just there …”
“Yes,” he said, without bothering to turn his head, “Angela Mitchell …”
“Really? She’s here?”
“No,” he said, “not yet.”
Then Kumiko saw the gliders. Lovely things, quivering in the wind.
“There you go,” Colin said. “Tick’ll take you back in one of—”
“Bloody hell,” Tick protested, from behind.
“Dead easy. Just like using your deck. Same thing, in this case …”
Up from Margate Road came the sound of laughter, loud drunken voices, the crash of a bottle against brickwork.
Kumiko sat very still, in the overstuffed chair, eyes shut tight, remembering the glider’s rush into blue sky and … something else.
A telephone began to ring.
Her eyes shot open.
She lunged up from the chair and rushed past Tick, through his stacks of equipment, looking for the phone. Found it at last, and “Homeboy,” Sally said, far away, past a soft surf of static, “what the fuck’s up? Tick? You okay, man?”
“Sally! Sally, where are you?”
“New Jersey. Hey. Baby? Baby, what’s happening?”
“I can’t see you, Sally, the screen’s blank!”
“Phoning from a booth. New Jersey. What’s up?”
“I have so much to tell you.…”
“Shoot,” Sally said. “It’s my nickel.”
38
THE FACTORY WAR
They watched the hover burn from the high window at the end of Gentry’s loft. He could hear that same amplified voice now: “You think that’s pretty fucking funny, huh? Hahahahahahaha, so do we! We think you guys are just tons of fucking fun, so now we’re all gonna party!”
Couldn’t see anyone, just the flames of the hover.
“We just start walking,” Cherry said, close beside him, “take water, some food if you got it.” Her eyes were red, her face streaked with tears, but she sounded calm. Too calm, Slick thought. “Come on, Slick, what else we gonna do?”
He glanced back at Gentry, slumped in his chair in front of the holo table, head propped between his hands, staring at the white column that thrust up out of the familiar rainbow jumble of Sprawl cyberspace. Gentry hadn’t moved, hadn’t said a word, since they’d come back to the loft. The heel of Slick’s left boot had left faint dark prints on the floor behind him, Little Bird’s blood; he’d stepped in it on his way back across Factory’s floor.
Then Gentry spoke: “I couldn’t get the others going.” He was looking down at the control unit in his lap.
“You need a unit for each one you wanna work,” Slick said.
“Time for the Count’s advice,” Gentry said, tossing Slick the unit.
“I’m not going back in there,” Slick said. “You go.”
“Don’t need to,” Gentry said, touching a console on his bench. Bobby the Count appeared on a monitor.
Cherry’s eyes widened. “Tell him,” she said, “that he’s gonna be dead soon. Unless you jack him out of the matrix and stage one quick trip to an intensive care unit. He’s dying.”
Bobby’s face, on the monitor, grew still. The background came sharply into focus: the neck of the iron deer, long grass dappled with white flowers, the broad trunks of ancient trees.
“Hear that, motherfucker?” Cherry yelled. “You’re dying! Your lungs are filling up with fluid, your kidneys aren’t working, your heart’s fucked.… You make me wanna puke!”
“Gentry,” Bobby said, his voice coming small and tinny from a little speaker on the side of the monitor, “I don’t know what kind of setup you people have there, but I’ve arranged a little diversion.”
“We never checked the bike,” Cherry said, her arms around Slick, “we never looked. It might be okay.”
“What’s that mean, ‘arranged a little diversion’?” Pulling back from her, looking at Bobby on the monitor.
“I’m still working it out. I’ve rerouted a Borg-Ward cargo drone, out of Newark.”
Slick broke away from Cherry. “Don’t just sit there,” he yelled at Gentry, who looked up at Slick and slowly shook his head. Slick felt the first flickers of Korsakov’s, minute increments of memory shuddering out of focus.
“He doesn’t want to go anywhere,” Bobby said. “He’s found the Shape. He just wants to see how it all works out, what it is in the end. There’s people on their way here. Friends, sort of. They’ll get the aleph off your hands. Meantime, I’ll do what I can about these assholes.”
“I’m not gonna stay here and watch you die,” Cherry said.
“Nobody’s asking you to. My advice, you get out. Gimme twenty minutes, I’ll distract them for you.”
Factory never felt emptier.
Little Bird was somewhere
on that floor. Slick kept thinking of the tangle of thongs and bones that had hung on Bird’s chest, feathers and rusty spring-wind watches with the hands all stopped, each one a different time … Stupid stringtown shit. But Bird wouldn’t be around anymore. Guess I won’t be around anymore myself, he thought, leading Cherry down the shaking stairs. Not like before. There wasn’t time to move the machines, not without a flatbed and some help, and he figured once he was gone, he’d stay gone. Factory wasn’t ever going to feel the same again.
Cherry had four liters of filtered water in a plastic jug, a mesh bag of Burmese peanuts, and five individually sealed portions of Big Ginza freeze-dried soup—all she’d been able to find in the kitchen. Slick had two sleeping bags, the flashlight, and a ball peen hammer.
It was quiet now, just the sounds of the wind across corrugated metal and the scuff of their boots on concrete.
He wasn’t sure where he’d go, himself. He thought he’d take Cherry as far as Marvie’s place and leave her there. Then maybe he’d come back, see what was happening with Gentry. She could get a ride out to a rustbelt town in a day or two. She didn’t know that, though; all she could think about was leaving. Seemed as scared of having to watch Bobby the Count die on his stretcher as she was of the men outside. But Slick could see that Bobby didn’t care much at all, about dying. Maybe he figured he’d just be in there, like that 3Jane. Or maybe he just didn’t give a shit; sometimes people got that way.
If he meant to leave for good, he thought, steering Cherry through the dark with his free hand, he’d go in now and have a last look at the Judge and the Witch, the Corpsegrinder and the two Investigators. But this way he’d get Cherry out, then come back.… But he knew as he thought it that it didn’t make sense, there wasn’t time, but he’d get her out anyway.…
“There’s a gap, this side, low down by the floor,” he told her. “Well slide out through there, hope nobody notices.…” She squeezed his hand as he led her through the darkness.
He found the hole by feel, stuffed the sleeping bags through, stuck the ball peen into his belt, lay down on his back, and pulled himself out until his head and chest were through. The sky was low and only marginally lighter than Factory’s dark.
He thought he heard a faint drumming of engines, but then it faded.
He worked himself the rest of the way out with his heels and hips and shoulders, then rolled over in the snow.
Something bumped against his foot: Cherry pushing out the water jug. He reached back to take it, and the red firefly lit on the back of his hand. He jerked back and rolled again, as the bullet slammed Factory’s wall like a giant’s sledge.
A white flare, drifting. Above the Solitude. Faint through the low cloud. Drifting down from the swollen gray flank of the cargo drone, Bobby’s diversion. Illuminating the second hover, thirty meters out, and the hooded figure with the rifle …
The first container struck the ground with a crash, just in front of the hover, and burst, throwing up a cloud of foam packing pellets. The second one, carrying two refrigerators, scored a direct hit, crushing the cab. The hijacked Borg-Ward airship continued to disgorge containers as the flare spun down, fading.
Slick scrambled back through the gap in the wall, leaving the water and the sleeping bags.
Moving fast, in the dark.
He’d lost Cherry. He’d lost the hammer. She must’ve slid back into Factory when the guy fired his first shot. Last shot, if he’d been under that box when it came down …
His feet found the ramp into the room where his machines waited. “Cherry?”
He flicked on the flashlight.
The one-armed Judge was centered in the beam. Before the Judge stood a figure with mirrors for eyes, throwing back the light.
“You wanna die?” A woman’s voice.
“No …”
“Light, out.”
Darkness. Run …
“I can see in the dark. You just stuck that flash in your jacket pocket. You look like you still wanna run. I gotta gun on you.”
Run?
“Don’t even think about it. You ever see a Fujiwara HE fléchette? Hits something hard, it goes off. Hits something soft, like most of you, buddy, it goes in, then it goes off. Ten seconds later.”
“Why?”
“So you get to think about it.”
“You with those guys outside?”
“No. You drop all those stoves ’n’ shit on them?”
“No.”
“Newmark. Bobby Newmark. I cut a deal tonight. I get somebody together with Bobby Newmark, I get my slate cleaned. You’re gonna show me where he is.”
39
TOO MUCH
What kind of place was this, anyway?
Things had gotten to a point where Mona couldn’t get any comfort out of imagining Lanette’s advice. Put Lanette in this situation, Mona figured she’d just eat more Memphis black till she felt like it wasn’t her problem. The world hadn’t ever had so many moving parts or so few labels.
They’d driven all night, with Angie mostly out of it—Mona could definitely credit the drug stories now—and talking, different languages, different voices. And that was the worst, those voices, because they spoke to Molly, challenged her, and she answered them back as she drove, not like she was talking to Angie just to calm her down, but like there really was something there, another person—at least three of them—speaking through Angie. And it hurt Angie when they spoke, made her muscles knot and her nose bleed, while Mona crouched over her and dabbed away the blood, filled with a weird mixture of fear and love and pity for the queen of all her dreams—or maybe it was just the wiz—but in the blue-white flicker of freeway lights Mona had seen her own hand beside Angie’s, and they weren’t the same, not the same, not really the same shape, and that had made her glad.
The first voice had come when they’d been driving south, after Molly’d brought Angie in the copter. That one had just hissed and croaked and said something over and over, about New Jersey and numbers on a map. About two hours after that, Molly’d slid the hover across a rest area and said they were in New Jersey. Then she’d gotten out and made a call from a frosty paybooth, a long one; when she’d climbed back in, Mona’d seen her skim a phone card out across the frozen slush, just throwing it away. And Mona’d asked her who she’d called and she’d said England.
Mona’d seen Molly’s hand, then, on the wheel, how the dark nails had little yellowish flecks, like you got when you snapped off a set of artificials. She oughta get some solvent for that, Mona thought.
Somewhere over a river they’d left the highway. Trees and fields and two-lane blacktop, sometimes a lonely red light high up on some kind of tower. And that was when the other voices had come. And then it was back and forth, back and forth, the voices and then Molly and then the voices, and what it reminded her of was Eddy trying to do a deal, except Molly was a lot better at it than Eddy; even if she couldn’t understand it, she could tell Molly was getting close to what she wanted. But she couldn’t stand it when the voices came; it made her want to press herself back as far from Angie as she could get. The worst one was called Sam-Eddy, something like that. What they all wanted was for Molly to take Angie somewhere for what they called a marriage, and Mona wondered if maybe Robin Lanier was in it somewhere, like what if Angie and Robin were gonna get married, and this was all just some kind of wild thing stars did to get married. But she couldn’t get that one to work, and every time this Sam-Eddy voice came back, Mona’s scalp would crawl. She could tell what Molly was bargaining for, though: she wanted her record cleaned up, wiped. She’d watched this vid once with Lanette, about this girl had ten, twelve personalities that would come out, like one was this shy little kid and another’d just be this total bone-addict slut, but it hadn’t ever said anything about how any of those personalities could wipe your slate with the police.
Then this flatland in their headlights, blown with snow, low ridges the color of rust, where the wind had torn away the white.
/> The hover had one of those map screens you saw in cabs, or if a truckdriver picked you up, but Molly never turned it on except that first time, to look for the numbers the voice had given her. After a while, Mona understood that Angie was telling her which way to go, or anyway those voices were telling her. Mona’d been wishing for morning for a long time, but it was still night when Molly killed the lights and sped on through the dark.…
“Lights!” Angie cried.
“Relax,” Molly said, and Mona remembered how she’d moved in the dark in Gerald’s. But the hover slowed slightly, swung into a long curve, shuddering over the rough ground. The dash lights blinked off, all the instrumentation. “Not a sound now, okay?”
The hover accelerated through the dark.
Shifting white glare, high up. Through the window, Mona glimpsed a drifting, twirling point; above it, something else, bulbous and gray—
“Down! Get her down!”
Mona yanked at the catch on Angie’s seatbelt as something whanged against the side of the hover. Got her down on the floor and hugged her furs around her as Molly slewed left, sideswiping something Mona never saw. Mona looked up: split-second flash of a big raggedy black building, a single white bulb lit above open warehouse doors, and then they were through, the turbine screaming full reverse.
Crash.
I just don’t know, the voice said, and Mona thought: Well, I know how that is.
Then the voice started to laugh, and didn’t stop, and the laugh became an on-off, on-off sound that wasn’t laughter anymore, and Mona opened her eyes.
Girl there with a little tiny flashlight, the kind Lanette kept on her big bunch of keys; Mona saw her in the weak back-glare, the cone of light on Angie’s slack face. Then she saw Mona looking and the sound stopped.
“Who the fuck are you?” The light in Mona’s eyes. Cleveland voice, tough little foxface under raggy bleachblond hair.
“Mona. Who’re you?” But then she saw the hammer.