Idoru

27. That Physical Thing

Laney was at a black rubber urinal in the Men’s when he noticed the Russian combing his hair in the mirror.

Or least it looked like black rubber, with sort of floppy edges. They obviously had the plumbing working, but he wondered what they’d say if you asked to make your own contribution to the Grotto? On his way here he’d noticed that one of the bars was topped with a slab of something murky green and translucent, lit from below, and he’d hoped they hadn’t made that from what they’d sawn out of the stairwell.

Di

Arleigh had talked with Lo through most of it, mainly about real estate. Different properties he owned around the world. Laney had listened to more of Yamazaki’s ideas about accessing this teenage fan-club stuff and there might actually be something to that, but they’d have to try it to find it. Blackwell hadn’t said two words to anybody, drinking lager instead of sake and packing his food away as though he were trying to plug something, some gap in security that could be taken care of if you stuffed it methodically with enough sashimi. The Australian was an ace with chopsticks; he could probably stick one in your eye at fifty paces. But the main show had been Rez and the idoru, and to a lesser extent Kuwayama, who’d carried on long conversations with them both. The other one, Ozaki, seemed to be the guy they brought along in case someone had to change the batteries in the silver thermos. And Willy Jude was amiable enough, but in about as content-free a way as possible.

Techs were supposed to be an easy source of whatever passed for gossip in a given company, so Laney had tried a few openings in that direction, but Ozaki hadn’t said any more than he’d had to. And since Laney couldn’t get Rei Toei within his field of vision without starting to slide over into nodal mode, he’d had to conduct his evening’s eavesdropping with whatever pick-up visuals were available. Arleigh wasn’t too bad for that. There was something about the line of her jaw that he particularly liked, and kept coming back to.

Laney zipped up and went to wash his hands, the basin made of that same floppy-looking black stuff, and noticed that the Russian was still combing his hair. Laney had no way of knowing if the man was literally Russian or not, but he thought of him that way because of the black patent paratrooper boots with contrasting white stitching, the pants with the black silk ribbon down the side, and the white leather evening jacket. Either Russian or one of those related jobs, but very definitely Kombinat-inflected, that mutant commie-mafioso thing.

The Russian was combing his hair with a total concentration that made Laney think of a fly grooming itself with its front feet, He was very large, and had a large head, though it was mainly in the vertical, quite tall from the eyebrows up, seeming to taper very slightly toward the crown. For all the attention being given to the combing, the man didn’t actually have much hair, not on top anyway, and Laney had thought these guys all went in for implants. Rydell had told him Kombinat types were all over Tokyo. Rydell had seen a documentary about it, how they were so singularly and surrealistically brutal that nobody wanted to mess with them. Then Rydell had started to tell him about two Russians, San Francisco cops of some kind, who he’d had some sort of run-in with, but Laney had to take a meeting with Rice Daniels and a make-up artist, and never heard the end of it.

Laney checked to see that he didn’t have anything stuck in his teeth from di

As he went out, the Russian was still combing.

He saw Yamazaki, blinking and looking lost. “It’s back there,” he said.

“What is?”

“The can.”

“Can?”

“Men’s. The toilet.”

“But I was looking for you.”

“You found me.”

“I observed, as we ate, that you avoided looking directly at the idoru.”

“Right.”

“I surmise that density of information is sufficient to allow nodal apprehension…”

“You got it.”

Yamazaki nodded. “Ah. But this would not be the case with one of her videos, or even with a ‘live’ performance.”

“Why not?” Laney had started back in the direction of their table.

“Bandwidth,” Yamazaki said, “The version here tonight is high-bandwidth prototype.”

“Are we compensated for beta-testing?”

“Can you describe the nature of nodal apprehension, please?”

“Like memories,” Laney said, “or clips from a movie. But something the drummer said made me think I was just seeing her latest video.”

Someone shoved Laney out of the way, from behind, and he fell across the nearest table, breaking a glass. He felt the glass shatter under him and found himself staring straight down, for a second, into the taut gray latex lap of a woman who screamed explosively just before the table gave way. Something, probably her knee, clipped him hard in the side of the head.

He managed to get to his knees, holding his head, and found himself recalling an experiment they’d done in Science, back in Gainesville. Surface tension. You sprinkled pepper over the water in a glass. Brought the tip of a needle close to the film of pepper. Watched it spring back from the needle like a live thing. And he saw that happening here, his head ringing, but instead of pepper it was the crowd in the Western World, and he knew that the needle must be pointed at Rez’s table.

The back of a white leather evening jacket… But then he saw the Sherman tank come unmoored on the shoulders of the recoiling crowd, spi

The crowd had been screaming anyway, but the dark twisted the communal pitch up into something that had Laney covering his ears. Or trying to, because someone stumbled into him and he went over, backward, instinctively curling into a tight fetal knot and clamping his hands across the back of his neck.

“Hey,” said a voice, very close to his ear, “get on up. You go

Laney let the drummer pull him to his feet. “What is it? What’s happening?”

“Du

Suddenly they were in a cove or pocket of relative quiet. “Where are we?” Laney asked.

“This way…” Something clipped Laney across the shins. “Stool,” Willy Jude said. “Sorry.” Glass snapped beneath Laney’s shoes.

A curve of greenish light, broken cursive hanging in the dark. Another few steps and he saw the Grotto. Willy Jude let go of his belt. “You can see here, right? That bioluminescent stuff?”

“Yeah,” Laney said. “Thanks,”

“It doesn’t register on my glasses. I get infrared off warm bodies, but I can’t make out the steps. Walk me down.” He took Laney’s hand. They started down the stairs together. A black-clad trio of Japanese shot past them, leaving a high-heeled pump on the encrusted stairs, and vanished around the landing. Laney kicked the shoe out of Willy Jude’s way and kept going.

When they rounded the corner at the landing, Arleigh was there, a green champagne bottle cocked over her shoulder. There was a smear of blood at the corner of her mouth, darker than her lipstick. When she saw Laney, she lowered the bottle. “Where were you?” she said.