The Bridge Trilogy Part 44

"We could begin with a music called enka," he said, "although I doubt you'd like it." Software agents did that, learned what you liked. "The roots of contemporary j.a.panese pop came later, with

the wholesale creation of something called 'group sounds.' That was a copy-cat phenomenon, flagrantly commercial. Extremely watereddown Western pop influences. Very bland and monotonous."

"But do they really have singers who don't exist?"

"The idol-singers," he said, starting up the hump-backed incline of the bridge. "The idoru. Some

of them are enormously popular."

"Do people kill themselves over them?"

"I don't know. They could do, I suppose."

44 W~Uiam Gib~3on "l)o people marry them?"

"Not that I know of."

"How about Rei loei? Wondering if that was how you proflounced it.

"I'm afraid I don't know her," he said, with the slight wince that came when you asked him about music that had come out since his own release. This always made Chia feel sorry for him, which she knew was ridiculous.

"Never mind," she said, and closed her eyes.

She removed her gla.s.ses.

After Venice, the plane felt even more low-ceilinged and narrow, a claustrophobic tube packed with

seats and people.

The blond was awake, watching her, looking a lot less like Ash-leigh Modine Carter now that she'd removed most of her makeup. Her face only inches away.

Then she smiled. It was a slow smile, modular, as though there were stages to it, each one

governed by a separate shyness or hesitation.

"I like your computer," she said. "It looks like it was made by Indians or something."

Chia looked down at her Sandbenders. Turned off the red switch. "Coral," she said. "These are

turquoise. The ones that look like ivory are the inside of a kind of nut. Renewable."

"The rest is silver?"

"Aluminum," Chia said. "They melt old cans they dig up on the beach, cast it in sand molds. These

panels are micarta. That's linen with this resin in it."

"I didn't know Indians could make computers," the woman said, reaching out to touch the curved edge of the Sandbenders. Her voice was hesitant, light, like a child's. The nail on the finger that rested on her Sandbenders was bright red, the lacquer chipped through and ragged. A tremble, then the hand withdrew.

"I drank too much. And with tequila in them, too. 'Vitamin T,'

Eddie calls it. I wasn't bad, was I?"

45.

Chia shook her head.

"1 can't always remember, if In bad."

"Do you know how much long it is to Tokyo?" Chia asked, all she could think of to say.

"Nine hours easy," the blond sid, and sighed. "Subsonics just suck, don't they? Eddie had me bo~ed on a super, in full business, but then he said something went wong with the ticket. Eddie gets all the tickets from this place in Os~a. We went on Air France once, first cla.s.s, and your seat turns into abed and they tuck you in with a little quilt. And they have an open hr right there and they just leave the bottles out, and champagne and ust the best food." The memory didn't seem to cheer her up. "Aid they give you perfume and makeup in its own case, from Herm~. Real leather, too. Why are you going to Tokyo?"

"Oh," Chia said. "Oh. Well. Myfriend. To see my friend."

"It's so strange. You know2 Sinc the quake."

"But they've built it all back nov. Haven't they?"

"Sure, but they did it all so fast,~nost1y with that nanotech, that just grows? Eddie got in there befor the dust had settled. Told me you could see those towers growingat night. Rooms up top like a honeycomb, and walls just sealing thmselves over, one after another. Said it was like watching a candle rielt, but in reverse. That's too scary. Doesn't make a sound. Machins too small to see.

They can get into your body, you know?"

Chia sensed an underlying edg of panic there. "Eddie?" she asked, hoping to change the subject.

"Eddie's like a businessman, Hewent to j.a.pan to make money after the earthquake. He says the iifa, infa, the structure was wide open, then. He says it took the spin4 out of it, sort of, so you could come in and root around, quick, befre it healed over and hardened up again. And it healed over arounaEddie, like he's an implant or something, so now he's part of the ma, the infa-"

"Infrastructure."

"The structure. Yeah. So now hes plugged in, to all that juice.

46 William Gibson He's a landlord, and he OWfl5 these clubs, and has deals in music and vids and things."

Chia leaned over, dragging her bag from beneath the seat in front, putting away the Sandbenders.

"Do you live there, in Tokyo?"

"Part of the time."

"Do you like it?"

"It's . . . I . . . well . . . Weird, right? It's not like anyplace. This huge thing happened there, then they fixed it with what was maybe even a huger thing, a bigger change, and everybody goes around pretending it never happened, that nothing happened. But you know what?"

"What?"

"Look at a map. A map from before? A lot of it's not even where it used to be. Nowhere near. Well,

a few things are, the Palace, that expressway, and that big city hall thing in Shinjuku, but a lot of the rest of it's like they just made it up. They pushed all the quake-junk into the water, like landfill, and now they're building that up, too. New islands."

"You know," Chia said, "I'm really sleepy. I think I'll try to go to sleep now."

"My name's Maryalice. Like it's one word."

"Mine's Chia."

Chia closed her eyes and tried to put her seat back a little more, but that was as far as it could

go.

"Pretty name," Maryalice said.

Chia thought she could hear the Music Master's DESH behind the sound of the engines, not so much a

sound now as a part of her. That whiter shade of something, but she could never quite make it out.

7. The Wet, Warm Life in Alison Shires ~Sh.e.l.l try to kill herself," Laney said.

"Why?" Kathy Torrance sipped espresso. A Monday afternoon in