COUNT ZERO

“Well?” he asked

“Interesting,” she said, but that was all she’d say.

“I want some new clothes,” Bobby said when they’d climbed the immobile escalator to the second floor.

“You got any money?” she asked.

“Shit,” he said, his hands in the pockets of the baggy, pleated jeans. “I don’t have any fucking money, but I want some clothes. You and Lucas and Beauvoir are keeping my ass on ice for something, aren’t you? Well, I’m tired of this God-awful shirt Rhea palmed off on me, and these pants always feel like they’re about to fall off my ass. And I’m here because Two-a-Day, who’s a lowlife fuck, wanted to risk my butt so Lucas and Beauvoir could test their fucking software. So you can fucking well buy me some clothes, okay?”

“Okay,” she said, after a pause. “I’ll tell you what.” She pointed to where a Chinese girl in faded denim was furling the sheets of plastic that had fenced a dozen steel-pipe garment racks hung with clothing. “You see Lin, there? She’s a friend of mine. You pick out what you want, I’ll straighten it out between Lucas and her.”

Half an hour later, he emerged from a blanket-draped fitting room and put on a pair of Indo-Javanese mirrored aviator glasses. He gri

“Oh, yeah.” She did a thing with her hand, a fa

He looked down at the black T-shirt he’d chosen, at the square holodecal of cyberspace on his chest. It was done so you seemed to be punching fast-forward through the matrix, grid lines blurring at the edges of the decal. “Yeah. It was too tacky.”

“Right,” Jackie said, taking in the tight black jeans, the heavy leather boots with spacesuit-style accordion folds at the ankles, the black leather garrison belt trimmed with twin lines of pyramidal chrome studs. “Well, I guess you look more like the Count. Com on, Count, I got a couch for you to sleep on, up in Jammer’s place.”

He leered at her, thumbs hooked in the front pockets of the black Levis.

“Alone,” she added, “no fear.”

20 ORLY FLIGHT

PACO SLUNG THE Citroen-Dornier down the Champs, along the north bank of the Seine, then up through Les Halles. Marly sank back into the astonishingly soft leather seat, more beautifully stitched than her Brussels jacket. And willed her mind to blankness, lack of affect. Be eyes, she told herself. Only eyes, your body a weight pressed evenly back by the speed of this obscenely expensive car. Humming past the Square des I

“Why did you say, ‘Don’t do this to me’?” He took his hand from the steering console and tapped his ear-bead into position.

“Why were you listening?”

“Because that is my job. I sent a woman up, up into the tower opposite his, to the twenty-second floor, with a parabolic microphone. The phone in the apartment was dead; otherwise, we could have used that. She went up, broke into a vacant unit on the west face of the tower, and aimed her microphone in time to hear you say, ‘Don’t do this to me.’ And you were alone?”

“Yes.”

“He was dead?”

“Yes.”

“Why did you say it, then?”

“I don’t know.”

“Who did you feel was doing something to you?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps Alan.”

“Doing what?”

“Being dead? Complicating matters? You tell me.”

“You are a difficult woman.”

“Let me out.”

“I will take you to your friend’s apartment...”

“Stop the car.”

“I will take you to – “

“I’ll walk.”

The low silver car slid up to the curb.

“I will call you, in the – “

“Good night.”

“You’re certain you wouldn’t prefer one of the spas?” asked Mr. Paleologos, thin and elegant as a mantis in his white hopsack jacket. His hair was white as well, brushed back from his forehead with extreme care. “It would be less expensive, and a great deal more fun. You’re a very pretty girl.

“Pardon?” Jerking her attention back from the street beyond the rain-streaked window. “A what?” His French was clumsy, enthusiastic, strangely inflected.

“A very pretty girl.” He smiled primly. “You wouldn’t prefer a holiday in a Med cluster? People your own age? Are you Jewish?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Jewish. Are you?”

“No.”

“Too bad,” he said. “You have the cheekbones of a certain sort of elegant young Jewess... I’ve a lovely discount on fifteen days to Jerusalem Prime, a marvelous environment for the price. Includes suit rental, three meals per diem, and direct shuttle from the JAL torus.”

“Suit rental?”

“They haven’t entirely established atmosphere, in Jerusalem Prime,” Mr. Paleologos said, shuffling a stack of pink flimsies from one side of his desk to the other. His office was a tiny cubicle walled with hologram views of Poros and Macau. She’d chosen his agency for its evident obscurity, and because it had been possible to slip in without leaving the little commercial complex in the metro station nearest Andrea’s.

“No” she said, “I’m not interested in spas I want to go here.” She tapped the writing on the wrinkled blue wrapper from a pack of Gauloise

“Well,” he said, “it’s possible, of course, but I have no listing of accommodations. Will you be visiting friends?”

“A business trip,” she said impatiently. “I must leave immediately.”

“Very well, very well,” Mr. Paleologos said, taking a cheap-looking lap terminal from a shelf behind his desk. “Can you give me your credit code, please?”

She reached into her black leather bag and took out the thick bundle of New Yen she’d removed from Paco’s bag while he’d been busy examining the apartment where Alain had died. The money was fastened with a red band of translucent elastic “I wish to pay cash.”

“Oh, dear,” Mr. Paleologos said, extending a pink finger-tip to touch the top bill, as though he expected the lot of it to vanish. “I see. Well, you understand, I wouldn’t ordinarily do business this way... But, I suppose, something can be arranged. .

“Quickly,” she said, “very quickly...”

He looked at her. “I understand. Can you tell me, please,” – his fingers began to move over the keys of the lap terminal – “the name under which you wish to travel?”

21 HIGHWAY TIME

TURNER WOKE TO the silent house, the sound of birds in the apple trees in the overgrown orchard. He’d slept on the broken couch Rudy kept in the kitchen. He drew water for coffee, the plastic pipes from the roof tank chugging as he filled the pot, put the pot on the propane burner, and walked out to the porch.

Rudy’s eight vehicles were filmed with dew, arranged in a neat row on the gravel One of the augmented hounds trotted through the open gate as Turner came down the steps, its black hood clicking softly in the morning quiet. It paused, drooling, swayed its distorted head from side to side, then scrambled across the gravel and out of sight, around the corner of the porch.

Turner paused by the hood of a dull brown Suzuki Jeep, a hydrogen-cell conversion Rudy would have done the work himself, Four-wheel drive, big tires with off-road lugs crusted in pale dry river mud. Small, slow, reliable, not much use on the road.

He passed two rust-flecked Honda sedans, identical, same year and model. Rudy would be ripping one for parts from the other; neither would be ru