She straightened, turned, and smiled into the tanned, smiling face of Josef Virek
Marly tore the set from her forehead, and the white plastic of the JAL shuttle seemed to slam into place all around her Warning signs were blinking on the console overhead, and she could feel a vibration that seemed to gradually rise in pitch.
Virek? She looked at the trode set. Well, she said, I suppose you are a top person.
I beg your pardon? The Japanese student beside her bobbed in his harness in a strange little approximation of a bow. You are in some difficulty with your stim?
No, no, she said. Excuse me. She slid the set on again and the interior of the shuttle dissolved in a buzz of sensory static, a jarring mlange of sensations that abruptly gave way to the calm grace of Tally Isham, who had taken Vireks cool, firm hand and was smiling into his soft blue eyes. Virek smiled back, his teeth very white Delighted to be here, Tally. he said, and Marly let herself sink into the reality of the tape, accepting Tallys recorded sensory input as her own. Stim was a medium she ordinarily avoided, something in her personality conflicting with the required degree of passivity.
Virek wore a soft white shirt, cotton duck trousers rolled to just below the knee, and very plain brown leather sandals.
His hand still in hers, Tally returned to the balustrade Im sure, she said, that there are many things our audience
The sea was gone. An irregular plain covered in a green-black growth like lichen spread out to the horizon, broken by the silhouettes of the neo-Gothic spires of Gaudis church of the Sagrada Familia. The edge of the world was lost in a low bright mist, and a sound like drowned bells tolled in across the plain.
You have an audience of one, today, Virek said, and looked at Tally Isham through his round, rimless glasses. Hello, Marly.
Marly struggled to reach the trodes, but her arms were made of stone. G-force, the shuttle lifting off from its concrete pad... Hed trapped her here.
I understand, said Tally, smiling, leaning back against the balustrade, her elbows on warm rough stone. What a lovely idea. Your Marly, Herr Virek, must be a lucky girl indeed... And it came to her, to Marly, that this wasnt Sense/Nets Tally Isham, but a part of Vireks construct, a programmed point of view worked up from years of Top People, and that now there was no choice, no way out, except to accept it, to listen, to give Virek her attention. The fact of his having caught her here, pinned her here this way, told her that her intuition had been correct: The machine, the structure, was there, was real. Vireks money was a sort of universal solvent, dissolving barriers to his will...
Im sorry, he said, to learn that you are upset Paco tells me that you are fleeing from us, but I prefer to see it as the drive of an artist toward her goal. You have sensed, I think, something of the nature of my gestalt, and it has frightened you As well it should. This cassette was prepared an hour before your shuttle was scheduled to lift off from Orly. We know your destination, of course, but I have no intention of following you. You are doing your job. Marly. I only regret that we were unable to prevent the death of your friend Alain, but we now know the identity of his killers and their employers...
Tally Ishams eyes were Marlys eyes now, and they were locked with Vireks, a blue energy burning there.
Alain was murdered by the hired agents of Maas Biolabs, he continued, and it was Maas who provided him with the coordinates of your current destination, Maas who gave him the hologram you saw. My relationship with Maas Biolabs has been ambivalent, to say the least. Two years ago a subsidiary of mine attempted to buy them out. The sum involved would have affected the entire global economy.
They refused. Paco has determined that Alain died because they discovered that he was attempting to market the information they had provided, market it to third parties. He frowned. Exceedingly foolish, because he was utterly ignorant of the nature of the product he was offering.
How like Alain, she thought, and felt a wave of pity. Seeing him curled there on the hideous carpet, his spine outlined beneath the green fabric of his jacket.
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 wouldnt I pay?
And Tally-Marlys 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 isnt uncommon, and our onboard medical computers tell us youre in excellent health. However, weve 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?
Im sorry, she said. A dream... Are we there yet, at the terminal?
Another hour, he said.
* * *
Japan Airs orbital terminus was a white toroid studded with domes and ringed with the dark-rimmed oval openings of docking bays. The terminal above Marlys 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 announced that the passengers on board JALs Shuttle 580, Orly Terminus I, would be taxied to the terminal at the earliest opportunity.
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 Ill 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 inner pockets and checked the number of her connecting shuttle against the columns of numbers arrayed on the nearest wall screen.
Two hours to departure. Whatever Virek might say, she was sure that his machine was already busy, infiltrating the shuttles crew or roster of passengers, the substitutions lubricated by a film of money... There would be last-minute illnesses, changes in plans, accidents.