Idoru

by William Gibson

  On their way back to Mitsuko's father's restaurant, and then she didn't know what. She'd done the thing that Hiromi hadn't wanted her to do. And gotten nothing for it but a vaguely unpleasant idea of Rez as someone capable of being boring. And where did it leave her? She'd gone ahead and used Kelsey's cashcard, to pay for the train, and now another train back. And Zona had said somebody was looking for her; they could track her when she used the cashcard. Maybe there was a way to cash it in, but she doubted it.

  None of this had gone the way she'd tried to imagine it, back in Seattle, but then you couldn't be expected to imagine anyone like Maryalice, could you? Or Eddie, or even Hiromi.

  Masahiko frowned at the control-face. Chia saw the dots and squiggles changing.

  That thing Maryalice had stuck in her bag. Right here under her arm. She should've left it at Mitsuko's. Or thrown it away, but then what would she say if Eddie or Maryalice showed up? What if it was full of drugs?

  In Singapore they hung people, right in the mall, for that. Her father didn't like it and he said that was one of the reasons he never invited her there. They put it on television, too, so that it was really hard to avoid seeing it, and he didn't want her to see it. Now she wondered how far Singapore was from Tokyo? She wished she could go there and keep her eyes closed until she was in her father's apartment, and never turn the tv on, just be there with him and smell his shaving smell and put her face against his scratchy wool shirt, except she guessed you didn't wear those in Singapore because it was hot there. She'd keep her eyes closed anyway, and listen to him talk about his work, about the arbitrage engines shuttling back and forth through the world's markets like invisible dragons, fast as light, shaving fragments of advantage for traders like her father…

  Masahiko turned, accidentally knocking her bag aside, as the train stopped at a station—not theirs. A woman with a yellow shopping bag said something in Japanese. Masahiko took Chia's wrist and pulled her toward the open door.

  “This isn't where we get off—”

  “Come! Come!” Out onto the platform. A different smell here; something chemical and sharp. The walls not so clean, somehow. A broken tile in the ceramic ceiling.

  “What's the matter? Why are we getting off?”

  He pulled her into the corner formed by the tiled wall and a huge vending machine. “Someone is at the restaurant, waiting for you.” He looked down at her wrist, as if amazed to find that he was holding it, and instantly released her.

  “How do you know?”

  “Walled City. There have been inquiries, in the last hour.”

  “Who?”

  “Russians.”

  “Russians?”

  “There are many from the Kombinat here, since the earthquake. They forge relationships with the gumi.”

  “What's gumi?”

  “Mafia, you call it. Yakuza. My father has arrangement with local gumi. Necessary, in order to operate restaurant. Gumi representatives spoke about you to my father.”

  “Your neighborhood mafia is Russian?” Behind his head, on the side of the machine, the animated logo of something called Apple Shires.

  “No. Yamaguchi-gumi franchise. My father knows these men. They tell my father Russians ask about you, and this is not good. They cannot guarantee usual safety. Russians not reliable.”

  “I don't know any Russians,” Chia said.

  “We go now.”

  “Where?”

  He led her along the crowded platform, its pavement wet from hundreds of furled umbrellas. It must be raining now, she thought. Toward an escalator.

  “When Walled City saw attention was being paid to our addresses, my sister's and mine, a friend was sent to remove my computer…”

  “Why?”

  “Because I have responsibility. For Walled City. Distributed processing.”

  “You've got a MUD in your computer?”

  “Walled City is not anywhere,” he said, as they stepped onto the escalator. “My friend has my computer. And he knows about men who are waiting for you.”

  Masahiko said his friend was called Gomi Boy.

  He was very small, and wore an enormous, balloon-bottomed pair of padded fatigue pants covered with at least a dozen pockets. These were held up with three-inch-wide Day-Glo orange suspenders, over a ratty cotton sweater with the cuffs rolled back. His shoes were pink, and looked like the shoes babies wore, but bigger. He was perched on an angular aluminum chair now and the baby shoes didn't quite touch the floor. His hair looked as though it had been sculpted with a spatula, gleaming swirls and dips, like your hand might stick there if you touched it. It was the way they painted J. D. Shapely's hair on those murals in Pioneer Square, and Chia knew from school that that had something to do with that whole Elvis thing, though she couldn't remember exactly what.

  He was talking with Masahiko in Japanese, over the crashing sound-surf of this gaming arcade. Chia wished she was wearing a translator, but she'd have to open her bag, find one, turn the Sand-benders on. And Gomi Boy looked like he'd be just as happy knowing she couldn't understand him.

  He was drinking a can of something called Pocari Sweat, and smoking a cigarette. Chia watched the blue smoke settling out in layers in the air, lit by the glare of the games. There was cancer in that, and they'd arrest you in Seattle if you did it. Gomi Boy's cigarette looked like it had been made in a factory: a perfect white tube with a brown tip he put to his lips. Chia had seen those in old movies, sometimes, the ones they hadn't gone through yet to digitally erase them, but the only other cigarettes she'd seen were the twisted-up paper ones they sold on the street in Seattle, or you could buy a little baggie of the tobacco stuff and the white squares of paper to roll it up in. Meshbacks in school did it.

  The rain was still coming down. Through the arcade's streaming window she could make out another arcade, across the street, one of the ones with the machines the silver balls poured through. The neon and the rain and the silver balls ran all together, and she wondered what Masahiko and Gomi Boy were talking about.

  Gomi Boy had Masahiko's computer in a plaid plastic carry-bag with quilted pink International Biohazard symbols on the sides. It was sitting on the little table beside the can of Pocari Sweat. What was a Pocari? She imagined a kind of wild pig, with bristles, turned-up tusks, like she'd seen on the Nature Channel.

  Gomi Boy sucked on his cigarette, making the end glow. He squinted through the smoke at Masahiko and said something. Masahiko shrugged. There was a fresh mini-can of microwaved espresso in front of him, and Chia had another Coke Lite. In Tokyo there was nowhere to sit down unless you bought something, and it was quicker to buy a drink than something to eat. And it cost less. Except she wasn't paying for these. Gomi Boy was, because he and Masahiko didn't want her to use Kelsey's cashcard.

  Gomi Boy spoke again. “He wishes to talk with you,” Masahiko said.

  Chia bent over, unzipped her bag, found the ear-clips. She only had the two, so she handed one to Gomi Boy, put the other on herself, and hit power. He put his on. “I am from Walled City,” he said. “You understand?”

  “A MUD, right? Multi user domain.”

  “Not in the sense you mean, but approximately, yes. Why are you in Tokyo?”

  “To gather information about Rez's plan to marry the idoru, Rei Toei.”

  Gomi Boy nodded. Being an otaku was about caring a lot about information; he understood being a fan. “Do you have dealings with the Combine?” Chia knew he had said Kombinat, and the translator had covered it. He meant that mafia government in Russia.

  “No,” Chia said.

  “And you came to be at Masahiko's because…?”

  “Mitsuko's the social secretary of the Tokyo chapter of the Lo/Rez group I belong to in Seattle.”

  “How many times did you port, from the restaurant?”

  “Three times.” The Silke-Marie Kolb outfit. The meeting. Zona Rosa. “I paid for presentation software, Mitsuko and I did the meeting, I linked home.”

  “You paid for
the software with your cashcard?”

  “Yes.” She looked from Gomi Boy to Masahiko. Between and behind them, the rain. The endless racketing cascade of the little silver balls, through the glass across the street. Players hunched there on integral stools, manipulating the flood of metal. Masahiko's expression told her nothing at all.

  “Masahiko's computer maintains certain aspects of Walled City,” Gomi Boy said. “Contingency plans were in place for its removal to safety. When it became obvious that both Masahiko's and his sister's user addresses were attracting unusual attention, I was sent to secure his machine. We frequently exchange hardware. I am a dealer in second-hand equipment. That is why I am called Gomi Boy. I have my own keys to Masahiko's room. His father knows I am allowed to enter. His father does not care. I came and took the computer. Nearby is a small civic recreation area. The restaurant is visible from it. Seeing Oakland Overbombers, I crossed the street and spoke with them.”

  “Seeing what?”

  “A skateboard group. They are named for the California soccer club. I asked them if there had been unusual activity. They told me they had seen a very large vehicle, an hour before…”

  —A Graceland.

  “A Daihatsu Graceland. There are fewer here than in America, I think.”

  Chia nodded. Her stomach did that cold flip-thing again. She thought she might throw up.

  Gomi Boy leaned sideways with his cigarette, which was short now, and mashed the lit end into a little chrome bowl that was fastened to the side of a game console. Chia wondered what this was actually used for, and why he did that, but she supposed he had to put it somewhere or it would burn his fingers. “The Graceland parked near the restaurant. Two men got out…”

  “What did they look like?”

  “Gumi representatives.”

  “Japanese?”

  “Yes. They went into the restaurant. The Graceland waited. After fifteen minutes, they returned, got into the Graceland, and left. Masahiko's father appeared. He looked in all directions, studying the street. He took his phone from his pocket and spoke with someone. He went back into the restaurant.” Gomi Boy looked at the carry-bag. “I did not want to remain in the recreation area with Masahiko's computer. I told the leader of the Overbombers I would give him a better telephone, later, if he would remain there and phone me if more activity occurred. The Overbombers do nothing anyway, so he agreed. I left. He phoned twenty minutes later to report a gray Honda van. The driver is Japanese, but the other three are foreigners. He thinks they are Russian.”

  “Why?”

  “Because they are very large, and dress in a style he associates with the Combine. They are still there.”

  “How do you know?”

  “If they leave, he must call me. He wants his new phone.”

  “Can I port from here? I have to talk to Air Magellan right away about changing my reservations. I want to go home.” And leave Maryalice's package in that trash cannister she could see behind Gomi Boy.

  “You must not port,” Masahiko said. “You must not use the cash-card. If you do, they will find you.”

  “But what else am I supposed to do?” she said, startled by her own voice, which sounded like someone else's. “I just want to go home!”

  “Let me see the card,” Gomi Boy said. It was in her parka, with her passport and her ticket home. She took it out and handed it to him. He opened a pocket on his fatigue pants and took out a small rectangular device that seemed to be held together with multiple layers of fraying silver tape. He swiped Chia's card along a slot and peered into a peephole reader like the one on a fax-beeper. “This is nontransferable and cannot be used to obtain cash. It is also very easy to trace.”

  “My friend's pretty sure they've got the number anyway,” Chia said, thinking of Zona.

  Gomi Boy began to tap the edge of the cashcard on the rim of his can of Pocari Sweat. “There is a place where you can use this and not be traced,” he said. Tap tap. “Where Masahiko could access Walled City.” Tap tap. “Where you could phone home.”

  “Where's that?”

  “A love hotel.” Tap. “Do you know what that is?”

  “No,” Chia said.

  Tap.

  23. Here at the Western World

  Emerging from Le Chicle's pink mosaic gullet into the start of rain, Laney saw that the stilt-walking New Logic disciple was still at his post, his animated sandwich-board illuminated against the evening. As Blackwell held the door of a mini-limo for Arleigh, Laney looked back at the scrolling numerals and wondered how much the planet's combined weight of human nervous tissue had increased while they'd been in the bar.

  Laney got in after her, noticing those Catalan suns again, the three of them, decreasing in size down her inner calf. Blackwell thunked the door behind him, then opened the front, should've-been driver's side door and seemed to pour himself into the car, a movement that simultaneously suggested the sliding of a ball of mercury and the settling of hundreds of pounds of liquid concrete. The car waddled and swayed as its shocks adjusted to accommodate his weight.

  Laney saw how the brim of Blackwell's black-waxed hat drooped low in back, but not far enough to conceal a crisscrossing of fine red welts decorating the back of his neck.

  Their driver, to judge by the back of his head, might have been the same one who'd driven them to Akihabara. He pulled out into the mirror-image traffic. The rain was running and pooling, tugging reflected neon out of the perpendicular and spreading it in wriggly lines across sidewalk and pavement.

  Arleigh McCrae was wearing perfume, and it made Laney wish that Blackwell wasn't there, and that they were on their way somewhere other than wherever it was they were going now, and in another city, and that quite a lot of the last seven months of Laney's life hadn't happened at all, or had happened differently, or maybe even as far back as DatAmerica and the Frenchmen, but as it became more complicated, it became depressing.

  “I'm not sure you're going to enjoy this place,” she said.

  “How's that?”

  “You don't seem like the type.”

  “Why not?”

  “I could be wrong. Lots of people do enjoy it. I suppose if you take it as a very elaborate joke…”

  “What is it?”

  “A club. Restaurant. An environment. If we turned up there without Blackwell, I doubt they'd let us in. Or even admit it's there.”

  Laney was remembering the Japanese restaurant in Brentwood, the one Kathy Torrance had taken him to. Not Japanese Japanese. Owned and operated. Its theme an imaginary Eastern European country. Decorated with folk art from that country, and everyone who worked there wore native garb from that country, or else a sort of metallic-gray prison outfit and these big black shoes. The men who worked there all had these haircuts, shaved high on the sides, and the women had big double braids, rolled up like wheels of cheese. Laney's entrée had had all kinds of different little sausages in it, the smallest he'd ever seen, and some kind of pickled cabbage on the side, and it hadn't tasted like it had come from anywhere in particular, but maybe that was the point. And then they'd gone back to her apartment, decorated like a sort of deluxe version of the Cage at Slitscan. And that hadn't worked out either, and sometimes he wondered whether that had made her even angrier, when he'd gone over to Out of Control.

  “Laney?”

  “Sorry…. This place—Rez likes it?”

  Past ambient forests of black umbrellas, waiting to cross at an intersection.

  “I think he just likes to brood there,” she said.

  The Western World occupied the top two floors of an office building that hadn't quite survived the quake. Yamazaki might have said that it represented a response to trauma and subsequent reconstruction. In the days (some said hours) immediately following the disaster, an impromptu bar and disco had come into being in the former offices of a firm that had brokered shares in golf-club memberships. The building, declared structurally unsound, had been sealed by emergency workers at the ground floor, bu
t it was still possible to enter through the ruined sublevels. Anyone willing to climb eleven flights of mildly fissured concrete stairs found the Western World, a bizarrely atypical (but some said mysteriously crucial) response to the upheaval that had, then, so recently killed eighty-six thousand of the region's thirty-six million inhabitants. A Belgian journalist, struggling to describe the scene, had said that it resembled a cross between a permanent mass wake, an ongoing grad night for at least a dozen subcultures unheard of before the disaster, the black market cafes of occupied Paris, and Goya's idea of a dance party (assuming Goya had been Japanese and smoked freebase methamphetamine, which along with endless quantities of alcohol was the early Western World's substance of choice). It was, the Belgian said, as though the city, in its convulsion and grief, had spontaneously and necessarily generated this hidden pocket universe of the soul, its few unbroken windows painted over with black rubber aquarium paint. There would be no view of the ruptured city. As the reconstruction began around it, it had already become a benchmark in Tokyo's psychic history, an open secret, an urban legend.

  But now, Arleigh was explaining, as they climbed the first of those eleven flights of stairs, it was very definitely a commercial operation, the damaged building owing its continued survival to the unlicensed penthouse club that was its sole occupant. If in fact it continued to be unlicensed, and she had her doubts about that. “There isn't a lot of slack here,” she said, climbing, “not for things like that. Everybody knows the Western World's here. I think there's a very quiet agreement, somewhere, to allow them to operate the place as though it were still unlicensed. Because that's what people want to pay for.”

  “Who owns the building?” Laney asked, watching Blackwell float up the stairs in front of them, his arms, in the matte black sleeves of the drover's coat, like sides of beef dressed for a funeral. The stairwell was lit with irregular loops of faintly bioluminescent cable.