Idoru

“Walled City is of the net, but not on it. There are no laws here, only agreements.”

“You can’t be on the net and notbe on the net,” Chia said, as they shot up a final flight of stairs.

“Distributed processing,” he said. “Interstitial. It began with a shared killfile—”

“Zona!” There across this uneven roofscape, overgrown with strangeness.

“Touch nothing. Some are traps. I come to you.” Zona, presenting in that quick, fragmentary way, moved forward.

To Chia’s right, a kind of ancient car lay tilted in a drift of random textures, something like a Christmas tree growing from its unbroken windshield. Beyond that…

She guessed that the rooftops of the Walled City were its dumping ground, but the things abandoned there were like objects out of a dream, bit-mapped fantasies discarded by their creators, their jumbled shapes and textures baffling the eye, the attempt to sort and decipher them inducing a kind of vertigo. Some were moving.

Then a movement high in the gasoline sky caught her eye. Zona’s bird-things?

“I went to your site,” Chia said. “You weren’t there, something—”

“I know. Did you see it?” As Zona passed the Christmas tree, its round, silver ornaments displayed black eye-holes, each pair turning to follow her.

“No. I thought I heard it.”

“I do not know what it is.” Zona’s presentation was even quicker and more jumpy than usual. “I came here for advice. They told me that you had been to my site, and that now you were here .

“You know this place?”

“Someone here helped me establish my site. It is impossible to come here without an invitation, you understand? My name is on a list. Although I ca

“Zona, I’m in so much trouble now! We’re hiding in this horrible hotel, and Maryalice is there—”

“This bitch who made you her mule, yes? She is where?”

“In the room at this hotel. She said she broke up with her boyfriend, and it’s his, the nano-thing—”

“The what?”

“She says it’s some kind of nano-assembler thing.”

Zona Rosa’s features snapped into focus as her heavy eyebrows shot up. “Nanotechnology?”

“This is in your bag?” Masahiko asked.

“Wrapped in plastic.”

“One moment.” He vanished.

“Who is that?” Zona asked.

“Masahiko. Mitsuko’s brother. He lives here.”

“Where did he go?”

“Back to the hotel we’re porting from,”

“This shit you are in, it is crazy,” Zona said.

“Please, Zona, help me! I don’t think I’ll ever get home!”

Masahiko reappeared, the thing in his hand minus the duty-free bag. “I sca

“Life?” Chia said.

“Same for thermonuclear device,” he said, apologetically, “poison gas, biological weapon” He held up the sca

Zona looked at it. “Fuck your mother,” she said, her tone one of somber respect.

31. The Way Things Work

See how things work, Laney? ‘What goes around, comes around’? ‘You can run, but you can’t hide’? Know those expressions, Laney? How some things get to be clichés because they touch on certain truths, Laney? Talk to me, Laney.”

Laney lowered himself into one of the miniature armchairs, hugging his ribs.

“You look like shit, Laney. Where have you been?”

“The Western World,” he said. He didn’t like watching himself do those things on the screen, but he found he couldn’t look away. He knew that wasn’t him, there. They’d mapped his face onto someone else. But it was his face. He remembered hearing something someone had said about mirrors, a long time ago, that they were somehow u

“So you’re trying your hand at the Orient now?”

She hadn’t understood, he thought, which meant she didn’t know where he’d been, earlier. Which meant they hadn’t been watching him here. “That’s that guy,” he said, “that Hillman. From the day I met you. My job interview. He was a porno extra.”

“Don’t you think he’s being awfully rough with her?”

“Who is she, Kathy?”

“Think back. If you can remember Clinton Hillman, Laney…”

Laney shook his head.

“Think actor, Laney. Think Alison Shires…”

“His daughter,” Laney said, no doubt at all.

“I definitely think that’s too rough. That borders on rape, Laney. Assault. I think we could make a case for assault.”

“Why would she do that? How could you get her to do that?” Turning from the screen to Kathy. “I mean, unless it really is rape.”

“Let’s hear the soundtrack, Laney. See what you’re saying, there. Cast some light on motive.”

“Don’t,” he said. “I don’t want to hear it.”

“You’re talking about her father the whole time, Laney. I mean, obsession is one thing, but just droning on about him that way, right through a white-knuckle skull-fuck—”

He almost fell, coming up out of the chair. He couldn’t find the manual controls. Wires back there. He pulled out the first three he found. Third did it.

“Put it on the Lo/Rez tab, Laney? Rock and roll lifestyle? Aren’t you supposed to throw them out the window, though?”

“What’s it about, Kathy? You want to just tell me now?”

She smiled at him. Exactly the smile he remembered from his job interview. “May I call you Colin?”

“Kathy: fuck you.”

She laughed. “We may have come full circle, Laney.”

“How’s that?”

“Think of this as a job interview.”

“I’ve got a job.”

“We’re offering you another, Laney. You can moonlight.”

Laney made it back to the chair. Lowered himself in as slowly as possible. The pain made him gasp.

“What’s wrong?”

“Ribs. Hurt.” He found a way to settle back that seemed to help.

“Were you in a fight? Is that blood?”

“I went to a club.”

“This is Tokyo, Laney. They don’t have fights in clubs.”

“That was really her, the daughter?”

“It certainly is. And she’ll be more than happy to talk about it on Slitscan, Laney. Seduced into sadistic sex games by a stalker obsessed with her famous, her loving dad. Who has come around, by the way. Who is one of ours now.”

“Why? Why would she do that? Because he told her to?”

“Because,” Kathy said, looking at him as though she were concerned that he might have sustained brain damage as well, “she’s an aspiring actress in her own right, Laney.” She looked at him hopefully, as though he might suddenly start to process. “The big break.”

“Thatis going to be her big break?”

“A break,” Kathy Torrance said, “is a break. And you know something? I’m trying, I’m trying really hard, to give youone instead. Right now. And it wouldn’t be the first, would it?”

The phone began to ring. “You’d better take this,” she said, passing him the white slab of cedar.

“Yes?”

“The fan-activity data-base.” It was Yamazaki. “You must access it now.”

“Where are you?”

“In hotel garage. With van.”

“Look, I’m in kind of rough shape, here. Can it wait?”

“Wait?” Yamazaki sounded horrified.

Laney looked at Kathy Torrance. She was wearing something black and not quite short enough to show her tattoo. Her hair was shorter now. “I’ll be down when I can. Keep it open for me.” He hung up before Yamazaki could reply.

“What was that about?”

“Shiatsu.”

“You’re lying.”

“What do you want, Kathy? What’s the deal?”

“Him, I want him. I want a way in. I want to know what he’s doing. I want to know what he thinks he’s doing, trying to screw a piece of Japanese software.”