Virtual light b-1

by William Gibson

  Rydell looked around at Container City as they rose. 'Crazier than anything in L.A.,' he said, admiringly.

  'No way,' Freddie said, 'I'm from L.A. This just a mall, man.'

  Rydell bought a burgundy nylon bomber, two pairs of black jeans, socks, underwear, and three black t-shirts. That came out to just over five hundred. He used the debit-card to make up the difference.

  'Hey,' he told Freddie, his purchases in a big yellow Container City bag, 'that's a pretty good deal. Thanks.'

  Freddie shrugged. 'Where they say those jeans made?' Rydell checked the tag. 'African Union.'

  'Slave labor,' Freddie said, 'you shouldn't buy that shit.'

  'I didn't think about it. They got any food in here?'

  'Food Fair, yeah…'

  'You ever try this Korean pickled shit? It's hot, man. . .'

  'I got an ulcer.' Freddie was methodically spooning plain white frozen yogurt into his mouth with a marked lack of enthusiasm.

  'Stress. That's stress-related, Freddie.'

  Freddie looked at Rydell over the rim of the pink plastic yogurt cup. 'You trying to be funny?'

  'No,' Rydell said. 'I just know about ulcers because they thought my daddy had them.'

  'Well, didn't he? Your "daddy"? Did he have 'em or not?'

  'No,' Rydell said. 'He had stomach cancer.'

  Freddie winced, put his yogurt down, rattled the ice in his paper cup of Evian and drank some. 'Hernandez,' he said, 'he told us you were trainin' to be a cop, some redneck place. . .'

  'Knoxville,' Rydell said. 'I was a cop. Just not for very long.'

  'I hear you, I hear you,' Freddie said, like he wanted Rydell to relax, maybe even to like him. 'You got trained and all? Cop stuff?'

  'Well, they try to give you a little bit of everything,' Rydell said. 'Crime scene investigation … Like up in that room today. I could tell they hadn't done the Super Glue thing.'

  'No?'

  'No. There's this chemical in Super Glue sticks to the water in a print, see, and about ninety-eight percent of a print is water. So you've got this little heater, for the glue? Screws into a regular light socket? So you tape up the doors and windows with garbage bags and stuff and you leave that little heater turned on. Leave it twenty-four hours, then you come back and purge the room.'

  'How you do that?'

  'Open up the doors, windows. Then you dust. But they hadn't done that, over at the hotel. It leaves this film all over. And a smell…' Freddie raised his eyebrows. 'Shit. You almost kinda technical, aren't you, Rydell?'

  'Mostly it's just common sense,' he said. 'Like not going to the bathroom.'

  'Not going?'

  'At a crime scene. Don't ever use the toilet. Don't flush it. You drop something in a toilet, the way the water goes. You ever notice how it goes up, underneath there?' Freddie nodded.

  'Well, maybe your perp flushed it after he dropped something in there. But it doesn't always work like it's meant to, and it might be just floating back there … You come in and flush it again, then it's gone for sure.'

  'Damn,' Freddie said, 'I never knew that.'

  'Common sense,' Rydell said, wiping his lips with a paper napkin.

  'I think Mr. Warbaby's right about you, Rydell.'

  'How's that?'

  'He says we're wasting you, just letting you drive that four-by-four. Bein' straight with you, man, I wasn't sure, myself.' Freddie waited, like he figured Rydell might take offense.

  'Well?'

  'You know that brace on Mr. Warbaby's leg?'

  'Yeah.'

  'You know that bridge, the one you noticed when we were coming up here?'

  'Yeah.'

  'And Warbaby, he showed you that picture of that tough-ass messenger kid?'

  'Yeah.'

  'Well,' Freddy said, 'She's the one Mr. Warbaby figures took that man's property. And she lives out on that bridge, Rydell. And that bridge, man, that's one evil motherfucking place. Those people anarchists, antichrists, cannibal motherfuckers out

  there, man . . .'

  'I heard it was just a bunch of homeless people,' Rydeli said, vaguely recollecting some documentary he'd seen in Knoxville, 'just sort of making do.'

  'No, man,' Freddie said, 'homeless fuckers, they're on the street. Those bridge motherfuckers, they're like king-hell satanists and shit. You think you can just move on out there yourself? No fucking way. They'll just let their own kind, see? Like a cult. With 'nitiations and shit.'

  'Nitiations?'

  'Black 'nitiates,' Freddie said, leaving Rydell to decide that he probably didn't mean it racially.

  'Okay,' Rydell said, 'but what's it got to do with that brace on Warbaby's knee?'

  'That's where he got that knee hassled,' Freddie said. 'He went out there, knowing he was takin' his life in his hands, to try and recover this little baby. Baby girl,' Freddie added, like he liked the ring of that. "Cause these bridge motherfuckers, they'll do that.'

  'Do what?' Rydell asked, flashing back to the Pooky Bear killings.

  'They steal children,' Freddie said. 'And Mr. Warbaby and me, we can't either of us go out there anymore, Rydell, because those motherfuckers are on to us, you followin' me?'

  'So you want me to?' Rydell asked, stuffing his folded napkin into the oily white paper box that had held his two Kim Chee WaWa's.

  'I'll let Mr. Warbaby explain it to you,' Freddie said.

  They found Warbaby where they'd left him, in this dark, high-ceilinged coffee place in what Freddie said was North Beach. He was wearing those glasses again and Rydell wondered what he might be seeing.

  Rydell had brought his blue Samsonite in from the Patriot, his bag from Container City. He went into the bathroom to change his clothes. There was just the one, unisex, and it really was a bathroom because it had a bathtub in it. Not like anybody used it, because there was this mermaid painted full-size on the inside, with a brown cigarette butted out on her stomach, just above where the scales started.

  Rydell discovered that Kevin's khakis were split up the ass. He wondered how long he'd been walking around like that. But he hadn't noticed it back at Container City, so he hoped it had happened in the car. He took the IntenSecure shirt off, stuffed it into the wastebasket, put on one of the black t-shirts. Then he unlaced his trainers and tried to figure out a way to change pants, socks, and underwear without having to put his feet on the floor, which was wet. He thought about doing it in the tub, but that looked sort of scummy, too. Decided you could manage it, sort of, by standing with your feet on the top of your sneakers, and then sort of half-sitting on the toilet. He put everything he took off into the basket. Wondering how much the debit-card Freddie had given him was still good for, he transferred his wallet to the right back pocket of his new jeans. Put on his new jacket. Washed his hands and face in a gritty trickle of water. Combed his hair. Packed the rest of his new clothes into the Samsonite, saving the Container City bag to keep dirty laundry in.

  He wanted a shower, but he didn't know when he'd get one. Clean clothes were the next best thing.

  Warbaby looked up when Rydell got back to his table. 'Freddie's told you a little about the bridge, has he, Rydell?'

  'Says it's all baby-eatin' satanists.'

  Warbaby glowered at Freddie. 'Too colorfully put, perhaps, but all too painfully close to the truth, Mr. Rydell. Not at all a wholesome place. And effectively outside the reach of the law. You won't find our friends Svobodov or Orlovsky out there, for instance. Not in any official capacity.'

  Rydell caught Freddie start to grin at that, but saw how it was pinched off by Warha by's glare.

  'Freddie gave me the idea you want me to go out there, Mr. Warhahy. Go out there and find that girl.~

  'Yes,' Warbaby said, gravely, 'we do. I wish that I could tell you it won't be dangerous, but that is not the case.'

  'Well.. . How dangerous is it, Mr. Warbaby?'

  'Very,' Warbaby said.

  'And that girl, she's dangerous, too?'

  'Extremely,'
Warbaby said, 'and all the more because she doesn't always look it. You saw what was done to that man's throat, after all . . .'

  'Jesus,' Rydell said, 'you think that little girl did thai?'

  Warbaby nodded, sadly. 'Terrible,' he said, 'these people will do terrible things . . .'

  When they got out to the car, he saw that he'd parked it right in front of this mural of J. D. Shapely wearing a black leather biker jacket and no shirt, being carried up to heaven by half a dozen extremely fruity-looking angels with long blond rocker hair. There were these blue, glowing coils of DNA or something spiraling out of Shapely's stomach and attacking what Rydell assumed was supposed to be an AIDS virus, except it looked more like some kind of rusty armored space station with mean robot arms.

  It made him think what a weird-ass thing it must've been to be that guy. About as weird as it had ever been to be anybody, ever, he figured. But it would be even weirder to be Shapely, and dead like that, and then have to look at that mural.

  YET HE LIVES IN US NOW, it said under the painting, in foot-high white letters, AND THROUGH HIM DO WE LIVE.

  Which was, strictly speaking, true, and Rydell had had a vaccination to prove it.

  18 Capacitor

  Chevette's mother had had this boyfriend once named Oakley, who drank part-time and drove logging trucks the rest, or anyway he said he did. He was a long-legged man with his blue eyes set a little too far apart, in a face with those deep seams down each cheek. Which made him look, Chevette's mother said, like a real cowboy. Chevette just thought it made him look kind of dangerous. Which he wasn't, usually, unless he got himself around a bottle or two of whiskey and forgot where he was or who he was with; like particularly if he mistook Chevette for her mother, which he'd done a couple of times, but she'd always gotten away from him and he'd always been sorry about it afterward, bought her Ring-Dings and stuff from the Seven-Eleven. But what

  Oakley did that she remembered now, looking down through the hatch at this guy with his gun, was take her out in the woods one time and let her shoot a pistol.

  And this one had a face kind of like Oakley's, too, those eyes and those grooves in his cheeks. Like you got from smiling a lot, the way he was now. But it sure wasn't a smile that would ever make anybody feel good. Gold at the corners of it.

  'Now come on down here,' he said, stressing each word just the same.

  'Who the fuck are you?' Skinner, sounding more interested than pissed-off.

  The gun went off. Not very loud, but sharp, with this blue flash. She saw the Japanese guy sit down on the foor, like his legs had gone out from under him, and she thoight the guy had shot him.

  'Shut up.' Then up at Chevette, 'I told you :0 get down here.'

  Then Sammy Sal touched her on the back of ier neck, his fingertips urging her toward the hatch before theywithdrew.

  The guy might not even know Sammy Sal w~s up here at all. Sammy Sal had the glasses. And one thing Chevette was sure of now, this guy was no cop.

  'Sorry,' the Japanese guy said, 'sorry I. . .'

  'I'm going to shoot you in the right eye witi a subsonic titanium bullet.' Still smiling, the way he might ~ay I'm going to buy you a sandwich.

  'I'm coming,' Chevette said. And he didn't shot, not her, not the Japanese guy.

  She thought she heard Sammy Sal step back acoss the roof, away from her, but she didn't look back. She wasn't sure whether she should try to close the hatch behini her or not. She decided not to because the guy had only tolc her to come down. She'd have to reach past the edge of th~ hole to get hold of the hatch and it might look to him like ~.ie was going for a gun or something. Like in a show.

  She dropped down from the bottom rung, tiying to keep her hands where he could see them.

  'What were you doing up there?' Still smilng. His gun wasn't anything like Oakley's big old Braziliai revolver; it was a little stubby square thing made out of dill metal, the color of Skinner's old tools. A thin ring of ixighter metal around the narrow hole in the end. Like the pupilof an eye.

  'Looking at the city,' she said, not fe~ling scared, particularly. Not really feeling anything, except her legs were trembling.

  He glanced up, the gun staying right when it was. She didn't want him to ask her if was she alone up here, because the answer might hang in the air and tell him it was a lie. 'You know what I'm here for.'

  Skinner was sitting up on his bed, back against the wall, looking as wide awake as she'd ever seen him. The Japanese guy, who didn't look like he'd been shot after all, was sitting on the floor, his skinny legs spread out in front of him in a V.

  'Well,' Skinner said, 'I'd guess money or drugs, but it happens you're shit out of luck. Give you fifty-six dollars and a stale joint of Humbolt, you want it.'

  'Shut up.' When the automatic smile went away, it was like he didn't have any lips. 'I'm talking to her.'

  Skinner looked like he was about to say something, or maybe laugh, but he didn't.

  'The glasses.' Now the smile was back. He raised the gun, so that she was looking right into the little hole. If he shoots me, she thought, he'll still have to hunt for them.

  'Hepburn,' Skinner said, with a crazy little grin, and just then Chevette noticed that the poster of Roy Orbison had a hole in the middle of its gray forehead. 'Down there,' she said, pointing to the hatch in the floor.

  'Where?'

  'My bike,' hoping Sammy Sal didn't bump into that old rusty wagon in the dark up there, make a noise.

  He looked up at the roof-hatch, like he could hear what she was thinking.

  'Lean up against the wall there, palms flat.' He moved in closer. 'Get your feet apart …' The gun touched her neck. His other hand slid under Skinner's jacket, feeling for a weapon. 'Stay that way.' He'd missed Skinner's knife, the one with the fractal blade. She turned her head a little and saw him wrapping something red and rubbery around one of the Japanese guy's wrists, doing it one-handed. She thought of those gummy-worm candies you bought out of a big plastic jar. He yanked the

  Japanese guy by the red thing, dragging him across the floor to the shelf-table where she'd eaten breakfast. He stuck one end of the red thing behind the angle-brace that held the table up, then twisted it around the guy's other wrist. He took another one out of his pocket arid shook it out, like a toy snake. Reached behind Skinner with it and did something with his hand. 'You stay on that bed, old man,' touching the gun to Skinner's temple. Skinner just looking at him.

  He came back to Chevette. 'You're climbing down a ladder. Need yours in front.'

  The thing was cool and slick and fused into itself as soon as he had it around her wrists. Flowed together. Moved y itself. Plastic ruby bracelets, like a kid's toy. One of tho;e tricks with molecules.

  'I'm going to watch you,' he said, with another glance up at the open roof-hatch, 'so you just go down nice arid slow. And if you jump, or run when you get to the bottom, I'll kill you.'

  And she didn't doubt he would, if he could, but she was remembering something Oakley had told her that d2y in the woods, how it was hard to hit something if you had to shoot almost straight down at it, even harder straight up. SD maybe the thing to do was just proj when she hit the bottom. she'd only have to clear about six feet from the ladder to be where he couldn't see her. But she looked at the gun's black and silver eye and it just didn't seem like a good idea.

  So she went to the hole in the floor and got dowi on her knees. It wasn't easy, with her hands tied that way. Fe had to steady her, grabbing a handful of Skinner's jacket, but she got her feet down on the third rung and her fingers around the top one, and worked her way down that way. She had to get her feet on a rung, let go of the one she was holding, snatch the next one down before she lost her balance, do it again.

  But she got to think while she was doing it, and that helped her decide to go ahead and try to do what she had in mind. It was weird to he thinking that way, how quiet she felt, but it wasn't the first time. She'd felt that way in Beaverton, the night she'd gone over the wire, an
d that without any more planning. And one time these truckers had tried to drag her into the sleeper in the back; she'd made like she didn't mind, then threw a thermos of hot coffee in one's face, kicked the other in the head, and gotten out of there. They'd looked for her for an hour, with flashlights, while she squatted down in river-mud and let mosquitos eat her alive. Lights searching for her through that brush.

  She got to the bottom and backed off a step, holding her bound wrists out where he could see them if he wanted to. He came down fast, no wasted movement, not a sound. His long coat was made of something black, some cloth that didn't throw back the light, and she saw he was wearing black cowboy boots. She knew he could run just fine in those, if he had to; people didn't always think so, but you could.

  'Where is it?' Gold flashing at the corners of his smile. His hair, brushed straight back, was somewhere between brown and blond. He moved his hand, keeping her aware of the gun. She saw his hand was starting to sweat, spots of wetness darkening there, inside the white rubber glove.

  'We gotta take the-' She stopped. The yellow lift was where she and Sammy Sal had left it, so how had he gotten up?

  Extra bits of gold. 'We took the stairs.'

  They'd come up the painter's ladder, bare steel rungs, soirne of them rusted through. So she wouldn't hear the lift. No wonder the Japanese guy had looked scared. 'Well,' she said, 'you coming?'

  He followed her over to the lift. She kept her eyes on the deck, so she wouldn't forget and look up to try and find Sammy, who had to be there, somewhere. He wouldn't have had time to get down, or else they would have heard him.

  He held her shoulder again while she swung her leg over and climbed in, then got in after her, watching her the whole time.

  'This one's down,' she said, pointing at one of the levers.

  'Do it.'

  She moved it a notch, another, and the engine whined beneath their feet, gearing them down the incline. There was a patch of light at the bottom, under a bulb caged in corroded aluminum, and she wondered what he'd do if somebody happened to step into it just then, say Fontaine or one of the other people who came to check the electrical stuff. Anybody. He'd shoot them, she decided. Just pop them and roll them over into the dark. You could see it in his face. It was right there.