Mona Lisa Overdrive

"I do hear voices, Porphyre."

"Don't we all, missy?"

"No," she said, "not like mine. Do you know anything about African religions, Porphyre?"

He smirked. "I'm not African."

"But when you were a child ... "

"When I was a child," Porphyre said, "I was white."

"Oh ... "

He laughed. "Religions, missy?"

"Before I came to the Net, I had friends. In New Jersey. They were black and ... religious."

He smirked again and rolled his eyes. "Hoodoo sign, missy? Chickenbone and pe

"You know it isn't like that."

"And if I do?"

"Don't tease me, Porphyre. I need you."

"Missy has me. And yes, I know what you mean. And those are your voices?"

"They were. After I began to use the dust, they went away ... "

"And now?"

"They're gone." But the impulse was past now, and she cringed from trying to tell him about Grande Brigitte and the drug in the jacket.

"Good," he said. "That's good, missy."

The Lear began its descent over Ohio. Porphyre was staring at the bulkhead, still as a statue. Angie looked out at the cloud-country below as it rose toward them, remembering the game she'd played on airplanes as a child, sending an imaginary Angie out to romp through cloud-canyons and over fluffy peaks grown magically solid. Those planes had belonged to Maas-Neotek, she supposed. From the Maas corporate jets she'd gone on to Net Lears. She knew commercial airliners only as locations for her stims: New York to Paris on the maiden flight of JAL's restored Concorde, with Robin and a hand-picked party of Net people.

Descending. Were they over New Jersey yet? Did the children swarming the rooftop playgrounds of Beauvoir's arcology hear the Lear's engine? Did the sound of her passage sweep faintly over the condos of Bobby's childhood? How unthinkably intricate the world was, in sheer detail of mechanism, when Sense/Net's corporate will shook tiny bones in the ears of unknown, unknowing children ...

"Porphyre knows certain things," he said, very softly. "But Porphyre needs time to think, missy ... "

They were banking for the final approach.

26 - Kuromaku

And Sally was silent, on the street and in the cab, all the long cold way back to their hotel.

Sally and Swain were being blackmailed by Sally's enemy "up the well." Sally was being forced to kidnap Angie Mitchell. The thought of someone's abducting the Sense/Net star struck Kumiko as singularly unreal, as if someone were plotting to assassinate a figure out of myth.

The Fi

And what of the enemy, the blackmailer? She was mad, Fi

And had Sally learned what she'd wanted to learn, in visiting the Fi

In the hotel lobby, Petal was waiting in a blue velour armchair. Dressed for travel, his bulk encased in three-piece gray wool, he rose from the chair like some strange balloon as they entered, eyes mild as ever behind steel-rimmed glasses.

"Hello," he said, and coughed. "Swain's sent me after you. Only to mind the girl, you see."

"Take her back," Sally said. "Now. Tonight."

"Sally! No!" But Sally's hand was already locked firmly around Kumiko's upper arm, pulling her toward the entrance to the darkened lounge off the lobby.

"Wait there," Sally snapped at Petal. "Listen to me," she said, tugging Kumiko around a corner, into shadow. "You're going back. I can't keep you here now."

"But I don't like it there. I don't like Swain, or his house ... I ... "

"Petal's okay," Sally said, leaning close and speaking quickly. "In a pinch, I'd say trust him. Swain, well, you know what Swain is, but he's your father's. Whatever comes down, I think they'll keep you out of the way. But if it gets bad, really bad, go to the pub where we met Tick. The Rose and Crown. Remember?"

Kumiko nodded, her eyes filling with tears.

"If Tick's not there, find a barman named Bevan and mention my name."

"Sally, I ... "

"You're okay," Sally said, and kissed her abruptly, one of her lenses brushing for an instant against Kumiko's cheekbone, startlingly cold and unyielding. "Me, baby, I'm gone."

And she was, into the muted tinkle of the lounge, and Petal cleared his throat in the entranceway.

The flight back to London was like a very long subway ride. Petal passed the time inscribing words, a letter at a time, in some idiotic puzzle in an English fax, grunting softly to himself. Eventually she slept, and dreamed of her mother ...

"Heater's working," Petal said, driving back to Swain's from Heathrow. It was uncomfortably warm in the Jaguar, a dry heat that smelled of leather and made her sinuses ache. She ignored him, staring out at the wan morning light, at roofs shining black through melting snow, rows of chimneypots ...

"He's not angry with you, you know," Petal said. "He feels a special responsibility ... "

"Giri."

"Er ... yes. Responsible, you see. Sally's never been what you'd call predictable, really, but we didn't expect -- "

"I don't wish to talk, thank you."

His small worried eyes in the mirror.

The crescent was lined with parked cars, long silver-gray cars with tinted windows.

"Seeing a lot of visitors this week," Petal said, parking opposite number 17. He got out, opened the door for her. She followed him numbly across the street and up the gray steps, where the black door was opened by a squat, red-faced man in a tight dark suit, Petal brushing past him as though he weren't there.

"Hold on," red-face said. "Swain'll see her now ... "

The man's words brought Petal up short; with a grunt, he spun around with disconcerting speed and caught the man by his lapel.

"In future show some fucking respect," Petal said, and though he hadn't raised his voice, somehow all of its weary gentleness was gone. Kumiko heard stitches pop.

"Sorry, guv." The red face was carefully blank. "He told me to tell you."

"Come along then," Petal said to her, releasing his grip on the dark worsted lapel. "He'll just want to say hello."

They found Swain seated at a three-meter oak refectory table in the room where she'd first seen him, the dragons of rank buttoned away behind white broadcloth and a striped silk tie. His eyes met hers as she entered, his long-boned face shadowed by a green-shaded brass reading lamp that stood beside a small console and a thick sheaf of fax on the table. "Good," he said, "and how was the Sprawl?"

"I'm very tired, Mr. Swain. I wish to go to my room."

"We're glad to have you back, Kumiko. The Sprawl's a dangerous place. Sally's friends there probably aren't the sort of people your father would want you to associate with."

"May I go to my room now?"

"Did you meet any of Sally's friends, Kumiko?"

"No."

"Really? What did you do?"