Virtual light b-1

by William Gibson

  'If we knew what you already know, Warbaby, maybe that makes everything more simple.' Svobodov looked around the little diner, took a pack of Marlboros out of his raincoat.

  'Illegal in this state, buddy,' the waitress said, pleased at any opportunity to threaten somebody with the law. She had that big kind of hair. This was one of those places you ate at if you worked graveyard at some truly shit-ass industrial job. If your luck held, Rydell figured, you'd get this particular waitress into the bargain.

  Svobodov fixed her with a couple of thousand negative volts of Cop Eye, tugged a black plastic badge-holder out of his flak vest, flipped it open in her direction, and let it fall back on its nylon thong, against his chest. Rydell noticed the click when it hit; some kind of back-up armor under the white shirt.

  'Those two Mormon boys from Highway Patrol come in here, you show that to them,' she said.

  Svobodov put the cigarette between his lips.

  Warbaby's fist came up, clutching a lump of gold the size of a hand grenade.

  He lit the Russian's cigarette with it.

  'Why you have this, Warbaby?' Svobodov said, eyeing the lighter. 'You smoking something?'

  'Anything but those Chinese Marlboros, Arkady.' Mournful as ever. 'They're fulla fiberglass.'

  'American brand,' Svobodov insisted, 'licensed by maker.'

  'Hasn't been a legal cigarette manufactured in this country in six years,' Warbaby said, sounding as sad about that as anything else.

  'Marl-bor-ro,' Svobodov said, taking the cigarette out of his mouth and pointing to the lettering in front of the filter. 'When we were kids, Warbaby, Marlboro, she was money.'

  'Arkady,' Warbaby said, as though with enormous patience, 'when we were kids, man, money was money.'

  Orlovsky laughed. Svobodov shrugged. 'What you know, Warbaby?' Svobodov said, back to business.

  'Mr. Blix has been found dead, at the Morrisey. Murdered.'

  'Pro job,' Orlovsky said, making it one word, projob. 'They want we assume some bullshit ethnic angle, see?'

  Svobodov squinted at Warbaby. 'We don't know that,' he said.

  'The tongue,' Orlovsky said, determined. 'That's color. To throw us off. They think we think Latin Kings.'

  Svobodov sucked on his cigarette, blew smoke in the general direction of the waitress. 'What you know, Warbaby?'

  'Hans Rutger Blix, forty-three, naturalized Costa Rican.' Warbaby might have been making the opening remarks at a funeral.

  'My hairy ass,' Svobodov said, around the Marlboro.

  'Warbaby,' Orlovsky said, 'we know you were working on this before this asshole got his throat cut.'

  'Asshole,' Warbaby said, like maybe the dead guy had been a close personal friend, a lodge-brother or something. 'Man's dead, is all. That make him an asshole?'

  Svobodov sat there, puffing on his Marlboro. Stubbed it out on the plate in front of him, beside his untouched tuna melt. 'Asshole. Believe it.'

  Warbaby sighed. 'Man had a jacket, Arkady?'

  'You want his jacket,' Svobodov said, 'you tell us what you were supposed to be doing for him. We know he talked to you.'

  'We never spoke.'

  'Okay,' Svobodov said. 'IntenSecure he talked to. You freelance.'

  'Strictly,' Warbaby said. 'Why did he talk to IntenSecure?' 'Man lost something.' 'What?'

  'Something of a personal nature.' Svobodov sighed. 'Lucius. Please.' 'A pair of sunglasses.'

  Svobodov and Orlovsky looked at each other, then back to Warbaby. 'IntenSecure brings in Lucius Warbaby because this guy loses his sunglasses?'

  'Maybe they were expensive,' Freddie offered, softly. He was studying his reflection in the mirror behind the counter.

  Orlovsky put his hairy fingers together and cracked his knuckles.

  'He thought he might have lost them at a party,' Warbaby offered, 'someone might even have taken them.'

  'What party?' Svobodov shifted on his stool and Rydell heard the hidden armor creak.

  'Party at the Morrisey.'

  'Whose party?' Orlovsky, over those glasses.

  'Mr. Cody Harwood's party,' Warbaby said.

  'Harwood,' Svobodov said, 'Harwood…'

  'Name "Pavlov" ring a bell?' Freddie said, to no one in particular.

  Svobodov grunted. 'Money.'

  'None of it in Marlboros, either,' Warbaby said. 'Mr. Blix went down to Mr. Harwood's party, had a few drinks-'

  'Had a BA level like they won't need to embalm,' Orlovsky said.

  'Had a few drinks. Had this property in the pocket of his jacket. Next morning, it was gone. Called security at the Morrisey. They called IntenSecure. IntenSecure called me…'

  'His phone is gone,' Svobodov said. 'They took it. Nothing to tie him to anyone. No agenda, notebook, nothing.'

  'Pro job,' Orlovsky intoned.

  'The glasses,' Svobodov said. 'What kind of glasses?'

  'Sunglasses,' Freddie said.

  'We found these.' Svobodov took something from the side pocket of his London Fog. A Ziploc evidence bag. He held it up. Rydell saw shards of black plastic. 'Cheap VR. Ground into the carpet.'

  'Do you know what he ran on them?' Warbaby asked.

  Now it was Orlovsky's turn for show-and-tell. He produced a second evidence bag, this one from inside his black vest. 'Looked for software, couldn't find it. Then we x-ray him. Somebody shoved this down his throat.' A black rectangle. The stick-on label worn and stained. 'But before they cut him.'

  'What is it?' Warbaby asked.

  'McDonna,' Svobodov said.

  'Huh?' Freddie was leaning across Warbaby to peer at the thing. 'Mc-what?'

  'Fuck chip.' It sounded to Rydell like fock cheap, but then he got it. 'McDonna.'

  'Wonder if they read it all the way down? ' Freddie said, from the rear of the Patriot. He had his feet up on the back of the front passenger seat and the little red lights around the edges of his sneakers were spelling out the lyrics to some song.

  'Read what?' Rydell was watching Warbaby and the Russians, who were standing beside one of the least subtle unmarked cars Rydell had ever seen: a primer-gray whale with a cage of graphite expansion-grating protecting the headlights and radiator. Fine rain was beading up on the Patriot's windshield.

  'That porn they found down the guy's esophagus.' If Warbaby always sounded sad, Freddie always sounded relaxed. But Warbaby sounded like he really was sad, and Freddie's kind of relaxed sounded like he was just the opposite.

  'Lotta code in a program like that. Hide all sorta good:es in the wallpaper, y'know? Running fractal to get the skin te:ture, say, you could mix in a lot of text…'

  'You into computer stuff, Freddie?'

  'I'm Mr. Warbaby's technical consultant.'

  'What do you think they're talking about?'

  Freddie reached up and touched one of his sneakers. The red words vanished. 'They're having the real conversation now.'

  'What's that?'

  'The deal conversation. We want what they got on Blix, the dead guy.'

  'Yeah? So what we got?'

  'We'?' Freddie whistled. 'You just drivin'.' He pulled his feet back and sat up. 'But it ain't exactly classified: IntenSecure and DatAmerica more or less the same thing.'

  'No shit.' Svobodov seemed to be doing most o~ the talking. 'What's that mean?'

  'Means we tight with a bigger data-base than the pDlice. Next time ol' Rubadub needs him a look-see, he'll be glad he did us a favor. But tonight, man, tonight it just burrs his Russian ass.'

  Rydell remembered the time he'd gone over to 'Big George' Kechakmadze's house for a barbecue and the man had tried to sign him up for the National Rifle Association. 'You get a lot of Russians on the force, up here?'

  'Up here? All over.'

  'Kinda funny how many of those guys go into police work.'

  'Think about it, man. Had 'em a whole police state, over there. Maybe they just got a feel for it.'

  Svobodov and Orlovsky climbed into the gray whale. Warbahy walked to the Patriot, u
sing his alloy cane. The police car rcse up about six inches on hydraulics and began to moan and s~iiver, rain dancing on its long hood as Orlovsky revved the engine.

  'Jesus,' Rydell said, 'they don't care who sees 'em comin', do they?'

  'They want you see 'em coming,' Freddie said, obscurely, as Warbaby opened the right rear passenger door and began the process of edging his stiff-legged bulk into the back seat.

  'Take off,' Warbaby said, slamming the door. 'Protocol. We leave first.'

  'Not that way,' Freddie said. 'That'll get us Candlestick Park. That way.'

  'Yes,' said Warbaby, 'we have business downtown.' Sad about it.

  Downtown San Francisco was really something. With everything hemmed in by hills, built up and down other hills, it gave Rydell a sense of, well, he wasn't sure. Being somewhere. Somewhere in particular. Not that he was sure he liked being there.

  Maybe it just felt so much the opposite of L.A. and that feeling like you were cut loose in a grid of light that just spilled out to the edge of everything. Up here he felt like he'd come in from somewhere, these old buildings all around and close together, nothing more modern than that one big spikey one with the truss-thing on it (and he knew that one was old, too). Co~ damp air, steam billowing from grates in the pavement. Peopfe on the streets, too, and not just the usual kind; people with jobs and clothes. Kind of like Knoxville, he tried to tell himself, but it wouldn't stick. Another strange place.

  'No, man, a left, a left' Freddie thumping on the back of his seat. And another city-grid to learn. He checked the cursor on the Patriot's dash-map, looking for a left that would get them to this hotel, the Morrisey.

  'Don't bang on Mr. Rydell's seat,' Warbaby said, a sixfoot scroll of fax bunched in his hands, 'he's driving.' It had come in on their way here. Rydell figured it was the jacket on Blix, the guy who'd gotten his throat cut.

  'Fassbinder,' Freddie said. 'You ever hear of this Rainer Fassbinder?'

  'I'm not in a joking mood, Freddie,' Warbaby said. 'No joke. I ran Separated at Birth on this Blix, man, scanned this stiff-shot the Russian sent you before? Says he looks like Rainer Fassbinder. And that's when he's dead, with his throat cut. This Fassbinder, he musta been pretty rough-looking, huh?'

  Warbaby sighed. 'Freddie…'

  'Well, German, anyway. Clicked with the nationality-'

  'Mr. Blix was not German, Freddie. Says here Mr. Blix wasn't even Mr. Blix. Now let me read. Rydell needs quiet, in order to adjust to driving in the city.'

  Freddie grunted, then Rydell heard his fingers clicking over the little computer he carried everywhere.

  Rydell took the left he thought he was looking for. Combat zone. Ruins. Fires in steel cans. Hunched dark figures, faces vampire white.

  'Don't brake,' Warbaby said. 'Or accelerate.'

  Something came spinning, end over end, out of the crow-shouldered coven, splat against the windshield; clung, then fell away, leaving a smudge of filthy yellow. Hadn't it been gray and bloody, like a loop of intestine?

  Red at the intersection.

  'Run the light,' Warbaby instructed. Rydell did, amid horns of protest. The yellow stuff still there.

  'Pull over. No. Right up on the sidewalk. Yes.' The Patriot's Goodyear Streetsweepers bouncing up and over the jagged curb. 'In the glove compartment.'

  A light came on as Rydell opened it. Windex, a roll of gray paper towels, and a box of throwaway surgical gloves.

  'Go on,' Warbaby said. 'Nobody bother us.'

  Rydell pulled a glove on, took the Windex and the towels, got out. 'I)on't get any on you,' he said, thinking of Sublett. He gave the yellow smear a good shot of Windex, wadded tip three of the towels in his gloved hand, wiped until the glass was clean. He skinned the glove down around the wet wad, the way they'd shown him in the Academy, but then he didn't know what to do with it.

  'Just toss it,' Warbaby said from inside. Rydell did. Then he walked back from the car, five paces, and threw up. Wiped his mouth with a clean towel. He got back in, shut the door, locked it, put the Windex and the towels in the glove compartment.

  'You gonna gargle with that, Rydell?'

  'Shut up, Freddie,' Warbaby said. The Patriot's suspension creaked as Warbaby leaned forward. 'Leavings from a slaughterhouse, most likely.' he said. 'But it's good you know to take precautions.' He settled back. 'Had us a group here once called Sword of the Pig. You ever hear of that?'

  'No,' Rydell said, 'I never did.'

  'They'd steal fire-extinguishers out of buildings. Re-charge them with blood. Blood from a slaughterhouse. But they let it out, you understand, that this blood, well, it was human. Then they'd go after the Jesus people, when they marched, with those same extinguishers. .

  'Jesus,' Rydell said.

  'Exactly,' Warbaby said.

  'You see that door, there?' Freddie said.

  'What door?' The lobby of the Morrisey made Rydell want to whisper, like being in church or a funeral home. The carpet was so soft, it made him want to lie down and go to sleep.

  'That black one,' Freddie said.

  Rydell saw a black-lacquered rectangle, perfectly plain, not even a knob. Now that he thought about it, it didn't match anything else in sight. The rest of the place was polished wood, frosted bronze, panels of carved glass. If Freddie hadn't told him it was a door, exactly, he would have taken it for art or something, some kind of painting. 'Yeah? What about it?'

  'That's a restaurant,' Freddie said, 'and it's so expensive, you can't even go in there.'

  'Well,' Rydell said, 'there's lots of those.'

  'No, man,' Freddie insisted, 'I mean even if you were rich, had money out your ass, you could not go in there. Like it's private. Japanese thing.'

  They were standing around by the security desk while Warbaby talked to somebody on a house phone. The three guys on duty at the desk wore IntenSecure uniforms, but really fancy ones, with bronze logo-buttons on their peaked caps.

  Rydell had parked the Patriot in an underground garage, floors down in the roots of the place. He hadn't seen anything like that before: teams of people in chef's whites putting together a hundred plates of some skinny kind of salad, little Sanyo vacuum-cleaners bleeping along in pastel herds, all this back-stage stuff you'd never guess was there if you were just standing here in the lobby.

  The Executive Suites, where he'd stayed in Knoxville with Karen Mendelsohn, had had these Korean robot bugs that cleaned up when you weren't looking. They'd even had a special one that ate dust off the wallscreen, but Karen hadn't been impressed. It just meant the)' couldn't afford people, she said.

  Rydell watched as Warbaby turned, handing the phone to one of the guys in the peaked caps. Warbaby gestured for Freddie and Rydell. Leaned on his cane as they walked toward him.

  'They'll take us up now,' he said. The cap Warbaby had handed the phone to came out from behind the counter. He saw Rydell was wearing an IntenSecure shirt with the patches ripped off, but he didn't say anything. Rydell wondered when he was going to have a chance to buy some clothes, and where he should go to do it. He looked at Freddie's shirt, thinking Freddie probably wasn't the guy to ask.

  'This way, sir,' the cap said to Warbaby. Freddie and Rydell followed Warbaby across the lobby. Rydell saw how he jabbed his cane, hard, into the carpeting, the brace on his leg ticking like a slow clock.

  Sometimes, when she rode hard, when she could really proj, Chevette got free of everything: the city, her body, even time. That was the messenger's high, she knew, and though it felt like freedom, it was really the melding-with, the clicking-in, that did it. The bike between her legs was like some hyperevolved alien tail she'd somehow extruded, as though over patient centuries; a sweet and intricate bone-machine, grown Lexan-armored tires, near-frictionless bearings, and gas-filled shocks. She was entirely part of the city then, one wild-ass little dot of energy and matter, and she made her thousand choices, instant to instant, according to how the traffic flowed, how rain glinted on the streetcar tracks, how a secretary's mahogany h
air fell like grace itself, exhausted, to the shoulders of her loden coat.

  And she was starting to get that now, in spite of everything; if she just let go, quit thinking, let her mind sink down into the machinery of bone and gear-ring and carbon-wound Japanese paper…

  But Sammy Sal swerved in beside her, bass pumping from his bike's bone-conduction beatbox. She had to bunny the curb to keep from going over on a BART grate. Her tires left black streaks as the particle-brakes caught, Sammy Sal braking in tandem, his

  Fluoro-Rimz strohing, fading.

  'Something eating you, little honey?' His hand on her arm, rough and angry. 'Like maybe some wonder product makes you smarter, faster? Huh?'

  13 Tweaking

  'Let me go.'

  'No way. I got you this job. You're gonna blow it, I'm gonna know why.' He slammed his other palm on the black foam around his bars, killing the music.

  'Please, Sammy, I gotta get up to Skinner's-'

  He let go of her arm. 'Why?'

  She started to cough, caught it, took three deep breaths. 'You ever steal anything, Sammy Sal? I mean, when you were working?'

  Sammy Sal looked at her. 'No,' he said, finally, 'but I been known to fuck the clients.'

  Chevette shivered. 'Not me.'

  'No,' Sammy Sal said, 'but you don't pull tags all the places I do. 'Sides, you a girl.'

  'But I stole something last night. From this guy's pocket, up at this party at the Hotel Morrisey.'

  Sammy Sal licked his lips. 'How come you had your hand in his pocket? He somebody you know?'

  'He was some asshole,' Chevette said.

  'Oh. Him. Think I met him.'

  'Gave me a hard time. It was sticking out of his pocket.' 'You sure it was his pocket this hard time sticking out of?' 'Sammy Sal,' she said, 'this is serious. I'm scared shitless.' He was looking at her, close. 'That it? You scared? Stole some shit, you scared?'

  'Bunny says some security guys called up Allied, even called up Wilson and everything. Looking for me.'

  'Shit,' Sammy Sal said, still studying her, 'I thought you high, on dancer. Thought Bunny found out. Come after you, gonna chew your little bitch ear off. You just scared?'