Mona Lisa Overdrive

"Don't worry about it," Slick said. "I think his mind's on something else."

"Tha's good ... " He staggered in the direction of Factory, nearly fell, caught himself, continued.

"He's higher'n a kite," Cherry said.

"Hey, Bird," Slick called, "what happened to that bag of shit I gave you to give Marvie?"

Bird swayed, turned. "Lost it ... " Then he was gone, around a corner of corrugated steel.

"Maybe he's making that up," Cherry said. "About those guys. Or seeing things."

"I doubt it," Slick said, pulling her into deeper shadow as an unlit black Honda swung down toward Factory out of winter twilight.

He heard the Honda making its fifth pass over Factory as he pounded up the quaking stairs, the iron roof rattling with the copter's passage. Well, he thought, that should anyway bring it to Gentry's attention that they had visitors. He took the fragile catwalk in ten long, slow steps; he was begi

He went into the bright loft without knocking. Gentry was sitting at a workbench, his head cocked to one side, staring up at the plastic skylights. The bench was littered with bits of hardware and small tools.

"Helicopter," Slick said, panting from the climb.

"Helicopter," Gentry agreed, nodding thoughtfully, his disheveled roostertail bobbing. "They seem to be looking for something."

"I think they just found it."

"Could be the Fission Authority."

"Bird saw people at Marvie's. Saw that copter there too. You weren't paying much attention when I tried to tell you what he said."

"Bird?" Gentry looked down at the small bright things on the workbench. Picked up two fittings and twisted them together.

"The Count! He told me -- "

"Bobby Newmark," Gentry said, "yes. I know a lot more about Bobby Newmark, now."

Cherry came in behind Slick. "You gotta do something about that bridge," she said, going immediately to the stretcher, "it shakes too much." She bent to check the Count's readouts.

"Come here, Slick," Gentry said, standing. He walked to the holo table. Slick followed, looked at the image that glowed there. It reminded him of the rugs he'd seen in the gray house, patterns like that, only these were woven of hairfine neon, and twisted into some kind of infinite knot; the knot's core hurt his head to look at it. He looked away.

"That's it?" he asked Gentry. "What you've always been looking for?"

"No. I told you. This is just a node, a macroform. A model ... "

"He's got this house in there, like a castle, and grass and trees and sky ... "

"He's got a lot more than that. He's got a universe more than that. That was just a construct worked up from a commercial stim. What he's got is an abstract of the sum total of data constituting cyberspace. Still, it's closer than I've gotten before ... He didn't tell you why he was in there?"

"Didn't ask him."

"Then you'll have to go back."

"Hey. Gentry. Listen up. That copter, it'll be back. It'll be back with two hovers fulla guys Bird said looked like soldiers. They aren't after us, man. They're after him."

"Maybe they're his. Maybe they are after us."

"No. He told me, man. He said, anybody comes looking for him, we're in deep shit and we gotta jack him into the matrix."

Gentry looked down at the little coupling he still held. "We'll talk with him, Slick. You'll go back; this time I'll go with you."

29 - Winter Journey

Petal had agreed, finally, but only after she'd suggested phoning her father for permission. That had sent him shuffling unhappily off in search of Swain, and when he'd returned, looking no happier, the answer had been yes. Bundled in several layers of her warmest clothing, she stood in the white-painted foyer, studying the hunting prints while Petal lectured the red-faced man, whose name was Dick, behind closed doors. She couldn't distinguish individual words, only a low torrent of admonition. The Maas-Neotek unit was in her pocket, but she avoided touching it. Twice already Colin had tried to dissuade her.

Now Dick emerged from Petal's lecture with his hard little mouth set in a smile. Under his tight black suit he wore a pink cashmere turtleneck and a thin gray lambswool cardigan. His black hair was plastered tightly back against his skull; his pale cheeks were shadowed by a few hours' growth of beard. She palmed the unit in her pocket. " 'Lo," Dick said, looking her up and down. "Where shall we go for our walk?"

"Portobello Road," Colin said, slouched against the wall beside the crowded coatrack. Dick took a dark overcoat from the rack, reaching through Colin to do it, put it on, and buttoned it. He pulled on a bulky pair of black leather gloves.

"Portobello Road," Kumiko said, releasing the unit.

"How long have you worked for Mr. Swain?" she asked, as they made their way along the icy pavement of the crescent.

"Long enough," he replied. "Mind you don't slip. Wicked heels on those boots ... "

Kumiko tottered along beside him on black French patent spikes. As she'd predicted, it was virtually impossible to navigate the glass-hard rippled patches of ice in these boots. She took his hand for support; doing this, she felt solid metal across his palm. The gloves were weighted, the fingers reinforced with carbon mesh.

He was silent, as they turned the sidestreet at the end of the crescent, but when they reached Portobello Road, he paused. "Excuse me, miss," he said, a note of hesitation in his voice, "but is it true, what the boys say?"

"Boys? Excuse me?"

"Swain's boys, his regulars. That you're the big fellow's daughter -- the big fellow back in Tokyo?"

"I'm sorry," she said, "I don't understand."

"Yanaka. Your name's Yanaka?"

"Kumiko Yanaka, yes ... "

He peered at her with intense curiosity. Then worry crossed his face and he glanced carefully around. "Lord," he said, "must be true ... " His squat, tightly buttoned body was taut and alert. "Guvnor said you wanted to shop?"

"Yes, thank you."

"Where shall I take you?"

"Here," she said, and led him into a narrow arcade lined solidly with British gomi.

Her Shinjuku shopping expeditions served her well with Dick. The techniques she'd devised for torturing her father's secretaries proved just as effective now, as she forced the man to participate in dozens of pointless choices between one Edwardian medallion and another, this or that fragment of stained glass, though she was careful only to choose items, finally, that were fragile or very heavy, awkward to carry, and extremely expensive. A cheerful bilingual shop assistant accessed an eighty-thousand-pound charge against Kumiko's MitsuBank chip. Kumiko slipped her hand into the pocket that held the Mass-Neotek unit. "Exquisite," the English girl said in Japanese, as she wrapped Kumiko's purchase, an ormolu vase encrusted with griffins.

"Hideous," Colin commented, in Japanese. "An imitation as well." He reclined on a Victorian horsehair sofa, his boots up on an art deco cocktail stand supported by airstream aluminum angels.

The shop assistant added the wrapped vase to Dick's burden. This was Dick's eleventh antique shop and Kumiko's eighth purchase.

"I think you'd better make your move," Colin advised. "Any moment now, our Dick will buzz Swain's for a car to take that lot home."

"Think this is it, then?" Dick asked hopefully, over Kumiko's purchases.

"One more shop, please." Kumiko smiled.

"Right," he said grimly. As he was following her out the door, she drove the heel of her left boot into a gap in the pavement she'd noticed on her way in. "You all right?" he asked, seeing her stumble.