Mona Lisa Overdrive

Mona'd seen Molly's hand, then, on the wheel, how the dark nails had little yellowish flecks, like you got when you snapped off a set of artificials. She oughta get some solvent for that, Mona thought.

Somewhere over a river they'd left the highway. Trees and fields and two-lane blacktop, sometimes a lonely red light high up on some kind of tower. And that was when the other voices had come. And then it was back and forth, back and forth, the voices and then Molly and then the voices, and what it reminded her of was Eddy trying to do a deal, except Molly was a lot better at it than Eddy; even if she couldn't understand it, she could tell Molly was getting close to what she wanted. But she couldn't stand it when the voices came; it made her want to press herself back as far from Angie as she could get. The worst one was called Sam-Eddy, something like that. What they all wanted was for Molly to take Angie somewhere for what they called a marriage, and Mona wondered if maybe Robin Lanier was in it somewhere, like what if Angie and Robin were go

Then this flatland in their headlights, blown with snow, low ridges the color of rust, where the wind had torn away the white.

The hover had one of those map screens you saw in cabs, or if a truck driver picked you up, but Molly never turned it on except that first time, to look for the numbers the voice had given her. After a while, Mona understood that Angie was telling her which way to go, or anyway those voices were telling her. Mona'd been wishing for morning for a long time, but it was still night when Molly killed the lights and sped on through the dark ...

"Lights!" Angie cried.

"Relax," Molly said, and Mona remembered how she'd moved in the dark in Gerald's. But the hover slowed slightly, swung into a long curve, shuddering over the rough ground. The dash lights blinked off, all the instrumentation. "Not a sound now, okay?"

The hover accelerated through the dark.

Shifting white glare, high up. Through the window, Mona glimpsed a drifting, twirling point; above it, something else, bulbous and gray -

"Down! Get her down!"

Mona yanked at the catch on Angie's seatbelt as something whanged against the side of the hover. Got her down on the floor and hugged her furs around her as Molly slewed left, sideswiping something Mona never saw. Mona looked up: split-second flash of a big raggedy black building, a single white bulb lit above open warehouse doors, and then they were through, the turbine screaming full reverse.

Crash.

I just don't know, the voice said, and Mona thought: Well, I know how that is.

Then the voice started to laugh, and didn't stop, and the laugh became an on-off, on-off sound that wasn't laughter anymore, and Mona opened her eyes.

Girl there with a little tiny flashlight, the kind Lanette kept on her big bunch of keys; Mona saw her in the weak back-glare, the cone of light on Angie's slack face. Then she saw Mona looking and the sound stopped.

"Who the fuck are you?" The light in Mona's eyes. Cleveland voice, tough little foxface under raggy bleachblond hair.

"Mona. Who're you?" But then she saw the hammer.

"Cherry ... "

"What's that hammer?"

This Cherry looked at the hammer. "Somebody's after me 'n'Slick." She looked at Mona again. "You them?"

"I don't think so."

"You look like her." The light jabbing at Angie.

"Not my hands. Anyway, I didn't used to."

"You both look like Angie Mitchell."

"Yeah. She is."

Cherry gave a little shiver. She was wearing three or four leather jackets she'd gotten off different boyfriends; that was a Cleveland thing.

"Unto this high castle," came the voice from Angie's mouth, thick as mud, and Cherry banged her head against the roof of the cab, dropping her hammer, "my horse is come." In the wavering beam of Cherry's keyring flashlight, they saw the muscles of Angie's face crawling beneath the skin. "Why do you linger here, little sisters, now that her marriage is arranged?"

Angie's face relaxed, became her own, as a thin bright trickle of blood descended from her left nostril. She opened her eyes, wincing in the light. "Where is she?" she asked Mona.

"Gone," Mona said. "Told me to stay here with you ... "

"Who?" Cherry asked.

"Molly," Mona asked. "She was driving ... "

Cherry wanted to find somebody called Slick. Mona wanted Molly to come back and tell her what to do, but Cherry was antsy about staying down here on the ground floor, she said, because there were these people outside with guns. Mona remembered that sound, something hitting the hover; she got Cherry's light and went back there. There was a hole she could just stick her finger into, halfway up the right side, and a bigger one -- two fingers -- on the left side.

Cherry said they'd better get upstairs, where Slick probably was, before those people decided to come in here. Mona wasn't sure.

"Come on," Cherry said. "Slick's probably back up there with Gentry and the Count ... "

"What did you just say?" And it was Angie Mitchell's voice, just like in the stims.

Whatever this was, it was cold as hell when they got out of the hover -- Mona's legs were bare -- but dawn was coming, finally: she could make out faint rectangles that were probably windows, just a gray glow. The girl called Cherry was leading them somewhere, she said upstairs, navigating with little blinks of the keyring light, Angie close behind her and Mona bringing up the rear.

Mona caught the toe of her shoe in something that rustled. Bending to free herself, she found what felt like a plastic bag. Sticky. Small hard things inside. Took a deep breath and straightened up, shoving the bag into the side pocket of Michael's jacket.

Then they were climbing these narrow stairs, steep, almost a ladder, Angie's fur brushing Mona's hand on the rough cold railings. Then a landing, then a turn, another set of stairs, another landing. A draft blew from somewhere.

"It's kind of a bridge," Cherry said. "Just walk across it quick, okay, 'cause it kind of moves ... "

And not expecting this, any of it, not the high white room, the sagging shelves stuffed with ragged, faded books -- she thought of the old man -- the clutter of console things with cables twisting everywhere; not this ski

Mona'd seen dead people before, enough to know it when she saw it. The color of it. Sometimes in Florida somebody'd lie down on a cardboard pallet on the sidewalk outside the squat. Just not get up. Clothes and skin gone the color of sidewalk anyway, but still different when they'd kicked, another color under that. White truck came then. Eddy said because if you didn't, they'd swell up. Like Mona'd seen a cat once, blown up like a basketball, turned on its back, legs and tail sticking out stiff as boards, and that made Eddy laugh.

And this wiz artist laughing now -- Mona knew those kind of eyes -- and Cherry making this kind of groaning sound, and Angie just standing there.

"Okay, everybody," she heard someone say -- Molly -- and turned to find her there, in the open door, with a little gun in her hand and this big dirty-haired guy beside her looking stupid as a box of rocks, "just stand there till I sort you out."