Wonderful. Jammer said, running the shaver along his upper lip. You want a drink? he asked Bobby.
Well, Bobby said, its kind of early...
For you. maybe. He put the razor back in his pocket.
The door closed behind Jackie. Jammer leaned forward slightly.
What did they look like, kid? You get a make?
Just kind of grayish. Fuzzy...
Jammer looked disappointed. He slouched back in his chair again. I dont think you can get a good look at em unless youre part of it. He drummed his fingers on the chair arm. You think theyre for real?
Well, I wouldnt wanna try messing one around...
Jammer looked at him. No? Well, maybe youre smarter than you look, there. I wouldnt wanna try messing one around myself. I got out of the game before they started turning up.
So what do you think they are?
Ah, still getting smarter... Well, I dont know Like I said, I dont think I can swallow them being a bunch of Haitian voodoo gods, but who knows? He narrowed his eyes. Could be, theyre virus programs that have gotten loose in the matrix and replicated, and gotten really smart Thats scary enough; maybe the Turing people want it kept quiet. Or maybe the Als have found a way to split parts of themselves off into the matrix, which would drive the Turings crazy. I knew this Tibetan guy did hardware mod for jockeys, he said they were tulpas...
Bobby blinked.
A tulpas a thought form, kind of. Superstition. Really heavy people can split off a kind of ghost, made of negative energy. He shrugged More horseshit Like Jackies voodoo guys.
Well, it looks to me like Lucas and Beauvoir and the others, they sure as hell play it like it was all real, and not just like it was an act.
Jammer nodded. You got it And they been doing damn well for themselves by it, too, so theres something there He shrugged and yawned I gotta sleep, too. You can do whatever you want, as long as you keep your hands off my deck. And dont try to go outside, or ten kinds of alarms will start screaming. Theres juice and cheese and shit in the fridge behind the bar.
Bobby decided that the place was still scary, now that he had it to himself, but that it was interesting enough to make the scariness worthwhile. He wandered up and down behind the bar, touching the handles of the beer taps and the chrome drink nozzles. There was a machine that made ice, and another one that dispensed boiling water. He made himself a cup of Japanese instant coffee and sorted through Jammers file of audio cassettes. Hed never heard of any of the bands or artists. He wondered whether that meant that Jammer, who was old, liked old stuff, or if this was all really new stuff that wouldnt filter out to Barrytown, probably by way of Leons, for another two weeks... He found a gun under the black and silver universal credit console at the end of the bar, a kind of fat little machine gun with a magazine that stuck straight down out of the handle. It was stuck under the bar with a strip of lime-green Velcro, and he didnt think it was a good idea to touch it. After a while, he didnt feel frightened anymore, just kind of bored and edgy. He took his cooling coffee and walked out into the middle of the seating area. He sat at one of the tables and pretended he was Count Zero, top console artist in the Sprawl, waiting for some dudes to show and talk about a deal, some run they needed done and nobody but the Count was even remotely up for it. Sure, he said, to the empty nightclub, his eyes hooded, Ill cut it for you... If you got the money... They paled when he named his price.
The place was soundproofed; you couldnt hear the bustle of the fourteenth floors stalls at all, only the hum of some kind of air conditioner and the occasional gurgles of the hot-water machine. Tired of the Counts power plays, Bobby left the coffee cup on the table and crossed to the entrance-way, running his hand along an old stuffed velvet rope that was slung between polished brass poles. Careful not to touch the glass doors themselves, he settled himself on a cheap steel stool with a tape-patched leatherette top, beside the coat-check window A dim bulb burned in the coatroom; you could see a couple of dozen old wooden hangers dangling from steel rods, each one hung with a round yellow hand-numbered tag. He guessed Jammer sat here sometimes to check out the clientele. He didnt really see why anybody whod been a shithot cowboy for eight years would want to run a nightclub, but maybe it was sort of a hobby. He guessed you could get a lot of girls, running a nightclub, but hed assumed you could get a lot anyway if you were rich. And if Jammer had been a top jock for eight years, Bobby figured he had to be rich...
He thought about the scene in the matrix, the gray patches and the voices. He shivered. He still didnt see why it meant Lucas was dead. How could Lucas be dead? Then he remembered that his mother was dead, and somehow that didnt seem too real either. Jesus. It all got on his nerves. He wished he were outside, on the other side of the doors, checking out the stalls and the shoppers and the people who worked there. He reached out and drew the velour curtain aside, just wide enough to peer out through the thick old glass, taking in the rainbow jumble of stalls and the characteristic grazing gait of the shoppers. And framed for him, square in the middle of it all, beside a table jammed with surplus analog VOMs, logic probes, and power conditioners, was the raceless, bone-heavy face of Leon, and the deepset, hideous eyes seemed to look into Bobbys with an audible click of recognition. And then Leon did something Bobby couldnt remember ever having seen him do. He smiled.
23 CLOSER
THE JAL STEWARD offered her a choice of simstim cassettes: a tour of the Foxton retrospective at the Tate the previous August, a period adventure taped in Ghana (Ashanu!), high-lights from Bizets Carmen as viewed from a private box at the Tokyo Opera, or thirty minutes of Tally Ishams syndicated talk show Top People.
Your first shuttle flight, Ms. Ovski?
Marly nodded. Shed given Paleologos her mothers maiden name, which had probably been stupid.
The steward smiled understandingly A cassette can definitely ease the lift-off. The Carmens very popular this week. Gorgeous costumes, I understand.
She shook her head, in no mood for opera She loathed Foxton, and would have preferred to feel the full force of acceleration rather than live through Ashanti! She took the Isham tape by default, as the least of four evils. The steward checked her seat harness, handed her the cassette and a little throwaway tiara in gray plastic, then moved on. She put the plastic trode set on, jacked it into the seat arm, sighed, and slotted the cassette in the opening beside the jack. The interior of the JAL shuttle vanished in a burst of Aegean blue, and she watched the words TALLY ISHAMS TOP PEOPLE expand across the cloudless sky in elegant sans-serif capitals.
Tally Isham had been a constant in the stim industry for as long as Marly remembered, an ageless Golden Girl whod come in on the first wave of the new medium. Now Marly found herself locked into Tallys tanned, lithe, tremendously comfortable sensorium. Tally Isham glowed, breathed deeply and easily, her elegant bones riding in the embrace of a musculature that seemed never to have known tension. Accessing her stim recordings was like falling into a bath of perfect health, feeling the spring in the stars high arches and the jut of her breasts against the silky white Egyptian cotton of her simple blouse. She was leaning against a pocked white balustrade above the tiny harbor of a Greek island town, a cascade of flowering trees falling away below her down a hillside built from whitewashed stone and narrow, twisting stairs A boat sounded in the harbor.
The tourists are hurrying back to their cruise ship now, Tally said, and smiled; when she smiled, Marly could feel the smoothness of the stars white teeth, taste the freshness of her mouth, and the stone of the balustrade was pleasantly rough against her bare forearms. But one visitor to our island will be staying with us this afternoon, someone Ive longed to meet, and Im sure that youll be delighted and surprised. As hes someone who ordinarily shuns major media coverage.