COUNT ZERO

“You should know, I think, that my search for our boxmaker involves more than art, Marly.” He removed his glasses and polished them in a fold of his white shirt; she found something obscene in the calculated urbanity of the gesture. “I have reason to believe that the maker of these artifacts is in some position to offer me freedom. Marly. I am not a well man.” He replaced the glasses, settling the fine gold ear-pieces carefully. “When I last requested a remote visual of the vat I inhabit in Stockholm, I was shown a thing like three truck trailers, lashed in a dripping net of support lines... If I were able to leave that, Marly, or rather, to leave the riot of cells it contains... Well’ – he smiled his famous smile again – ‘what wouldn’t I pay?”

And Tally-Marly’s eyes swung to take in the expanse of dark lichen and the distant towers of the misplaced cathedral...”

“You lost consciousness,” the steward was saying, his fingers moving across her neck. “It isn’t uncommon, and our onboard medical computers tell us you’re in excellent health. However, we’ve applied a dermadisk to counteract the adaptation syndrome you might experience prior to docking.” His hand left her neck.

“Europe After the Rains.” she said. “Max Ernst. The lichen...”

The man stared down at her, his face alert now and express-ing professional concern. “Excuse me? Could you repeat that?”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “A dream... Are we there yet, at the terminal?”

“Another hour,” he said.

* * *

Japan Air’s orbital terminus was a white toroid studded with domes and ringed with the dark-rimmed oval openings of docking bays. The terminal above Marly’s g-web – though above had temporarily lost its usual meaning – displayed an exquisitely drafted animation of the torus in rotation, while a series of voices – in seven languages – a

JAL offered apologies for the delay, which was due to routine repairs underway in seven of the twelve bays.

Marly cringed in her g-web, seeing the invisible hand of Virek in everything now. No. She thought, there must be a way. I want out of it, she told herself, I want a few hours as a free agent, and then I’ll be done with him... Good-bye, Herr Virek, I return to the land of the living, as poor Alain never will, Alain who died because I took your job. She blinked her eyes when the first tear came, then stared wide-eyed as a child at the minute floating spherelet the tear had become.

And Maas, she wondered, who were they? Virek claimed that they had murdered Alain, that Alain had been working for them. She had vague recollections of stories in the media, something to do with the newest generation of computers, some ominous-sounding process in which immortal hybrid cancers spewed out tailored molecules that became units of circuitry. She remembered, now, that Paco had said that the screen of his modular telephone was a Maas product.

The interior of the JAL toroid was so bland, so unremarkable, so utterly like any crowded airport, that she felt like laughing. There was the same scent of perfume, human tension, and heavily conditioned air, and the same background hum of conversation. The point-eight gravity would have made it easier to carry a suitcase, but she only had her black purse Now she took her tickets from one of its zippered i

Two hours to departure. Whatever Virek might say, she was sure that his machine was already busy, infiltrating the shuttle’s crew or roster of passengers, the substitutions lubricated by a film of money... There would be last-minute illnesses, changes in plans, accidents.

Slinging the purse over her shoulder, she marched off across the concave floor of white ceramic as though she actually knew where she was going, or had some sort of plan, but knowing, with each step she took, that she didn’t.

Those soft blue eyes haunted her “Damn you.” she said, and a jowly Russian businessman in a dark Ginza suit sniffed and raised his newsfax, blocking her out of his world.

“So I told the bitch, see, you gotta get those optoisolators and the breakout boxes out to Sweet Jane or I’ll glue your ass to the bulkhead with gasket paste...” Raucous female laughter and Marly glanced up from her sushi tray. The three women sat two empty tables away, their own table thick with beer cans and stacks of styrofoam trays smeared with brown soy sauce. One of them belched loudly and took a long pull at her beer. “So how’d she take it, Rez?” This was somehow the cue for another, longer burst of laughter, and the woman who’d first attracted Marly’s attention put her head down in her arms and laughed until her shoulders shook. Marly stared dully at the trio, wondering what they were. Now the laughter had subsided and the first woman sat up, wiping tears from her eyes. They were all quite drunk, Marly decided, young and loud and rough-looking. The first woman was slight and sharp-faced, with wide gray eyes above a thin straight nose. Her hair was some impossible shade of silver, clipped short like a schoolboy’s, and she wore an oversized canvas vest or sleeveless jacket covered entirely in bulging pockets, studs, and rectangular strips of Velcro. The garment hung open, revealing, from Marly’s angle, a small round breast sheathed in what seemed to be a bra of fine pink and black mesh. The other two were older and heavier, the muscles of their bare arms defined sharply in the seemingly sourceless light of the terminal cafeteria.

The first woman shrugged, her shoulders moving inside the big vest. “Not that she’ll do it.” she said.

The second woman laughed again, but not as heartily, and consulted a chronometer riveted on a wide leather wristband. “Me for off.” she said. “Gotta Zion run, then eight pods of algae for the Swedes.” Then shoved her chair back from the table, stood up, and Marly read the embroidered patch centered across the shoulders of her black leather vest.

O’GRADY – WMIMA

THE EDITH S.

INTERORBITAL HAULING

Now the woman beside her stood, hitching up the waist-band of her baggy jeans. “I tell you, Rez, you let that cunt short you on those breakouts, it’ll be bad for your name.”

“Excuse me,” Marly said, fighting the quaver in her voice.

The woman in the black vest turned and stared at her.

“Yeah?” The woman looked her up and down, unsmiling.

“I saw your vest, the name Edith S., that’s a ship, a spaceship?”

“A spaceship?” The woman beside her raised thick eye-brows. “Oh, yeah, honey, a whole mighty spaceship!”

“She’s a tug,” the woman in the black vest said, and turned to go.

“I want to hire you,” Marly said.

“Hire me?” Now they were all staring at her, faces blank and unsmiling. “What’s that mean?”

Marly fumbled deep in the black Brussels purse and came up with the half sheaf of New Yen that Paleologos the travel agent had returned, after taking his fee. “I’ll give you this...”

The girl with the short silver hair whistled softly. The women glanced at one another. The one in the black vest shrugged. “Jesus,” she said. “Where you wa

Marly dug into her purse again and produced the folded blue paper from a pack of Gauloise. She handed it to the woman in the black vest, who unfolded it and read the orbital coordinates that Alain had written there in green feltpen.

“Well,” the woman said, “it’s a quick enough hop. For that kind of money, but O’Grady and I, we’re due in Zion 2300GMT. Contract job. What about you, Rez?”

She handed the paper to the seated girl, who read it, looked up at Marly, and asked, “When?”