The Bridge Trilogy Part 79

"No."

"It is an old expression. A way to avoid incoming messages. With the killfile in place, it was like those messages never existed.

220 VViPIian. Gibson They never reached you. This was when the net was new, understand?"

Chia knew that when her mother was born, there had been no net at all, or almost none, but as her teachers in school were fond of pointing out, that was hard to imagine. "How could that become a city? And whys it all squashed in like that?"

'Someone had the idea to turn the killfile inside out. This is not really how it happened, you understand, but this is how the story is told: that the people who founded Hak Nam were angry, because the net had been very free, you could do what you wanted, but then the governments and the companies, they had different ideas of what you could, what you couldn't do. So these people, they found a way to unravel something. A little place, a piece, like cloth. They made something like a killfile of everything, everything they didn't like, and they turned that inside out." Zona's hands moved like a conjurer's. 'And they pushed it through, to the other side

'The other side of what?"

"This is not how they did it," Zona said impatiently, "this is the story. How they did it, I don't know. But that is the story, how they tell it. They went there to get away from the laws- To have no laws, like when the net was new."

'But why'd they make it look like that?"

"That I know," Zona said. "The woman who came to help me build my country, she told me. There was a place near an airport, Kowloon, when Hong Kong wasn't China, but there had been a mistake, a long time ago, and that place, very small, many people, it still belonged to China. So there was no law there. An outlaw place. And more and more people crowded in; they built it up, higher. No rules, just building, just people living. Police wouldn't go there. Drugs and wh.o.r.es and gambling.

But people living, too. Factories, restaurants. A city. No laws."

"Is it still there?"

"No," Zona said, "they tore it down before it all became China

C.

221.

again. They made a park with concrete. But these people, the ones they say made a hole in the net, they found the data. The history of it. Maps. Pictures. They built it again."

"Why?"

"Don't ask me. Ask them. They are all crazy." Zona was scanning the Piazza. "This place makes me cold ..."Chia considered bringing the sun up, but then Zona pointed. "Who is that?"

Chia watched her Music Master, or something that looked like him, stroll toward them from the shadows of the stone arches where the cafes were, a dark greatcoat flapping to reveal a lining the color of polished lead.

"I've got a software agent that looks like that," Chia said, "but he isn't supposed to be there unless I cross a bridge. And I couldn't find him, when I was here before."

"This is not the one you saw?"

"No," Chia said.

An aura bristled around Zona, who grew taller as the spikey cloud of light increased in resolution. Shifting, overlapping planes like ghosts of broken gla.s.s. Iridescent insects whirling there.

As the figure in the greatcoat drew toward them across the Piazza's patchworked stone, snow resolved behind it; it left footprints.

Zona's aura bristled with gathering menace, a thunderhead of flickering darkness forming above the shattered sheets of light. There was a sound that reminded Chia of one of those blue-light bug- zappers popping a particularly juicy one, and then vast wings cut the air, so close: Zona's Colombian condors, things from the data-havens. And gone. Zona spat a stream of Spanish that overwhelmed translation, a long and liquid curse.

Behind the advancing figure of her Music Master, Chia saw the facades of the great square vanish entirely behind curtains of snow.

Zona's switchblade seemed the size of a chainsaw now, its toothed spine rippling, alive. The golden dragons from the plastic handles chased their fire-maned double tails around her brown fist, 222 William Gibson through miniature clouds of Chinese embroidery. dijill take you out,"

Zona said, as if savoring each word.

Chia saw the world of snow that had swallowed her Venice abruptly contract, shrinking, following the line of footprints, and the features of the Music Master became those of Rei Toei, the idoru.

"You already have," said the idoru.

223.

33. Topology Arleigh was waiting for him by the elevator, on the fifth and lowest of the hotel's parking levels. She'd changed back into the work clothes he'd first seen her in. Despite the patch of micropore on her swollen lip, the jeans and nylon bomber jacket made her look wide-awake and competent, two things Laney felt he might never be again.

"You look terrible," she said.

The ceiling here was very low, and flocked with something drab and wooly, to reduce noise. Lines of bioluminescent cable were bracketed to it, and the unmoving air was heavy with the sugary smell of exhausted gasohol. Spotless ranks of small j.a.panese cars glittered like bright wet candy.

"Yamazaki seemed to feel it was urgent," Laney said.

"If you don't do it now," she said, "we don't know how long it'll

take to get it all up and running again."

"So we'll do it."

"You don't look like you should even be walking."

He started walking, unsteadily, as if by way of demonstration. "Where's Rez~"

"Blackwell's taken him back to his hotel. The sweep team didn't find anything. This way." She led him along a line of surgically clean grills and b.u.mpers. He saw the green van parked with its front to the wall, its hatch and doors open. It was fenced behind orange plastic

barricades, and surrounded by the black modules. Shannon, the red- 225.

haired tech, was doing something to a red and black cube centered on a folding plastic table.

"What's that?" Laney asked.

"Espresso," he said, his hand inside the housing, "but I think the gasket's warped."

"Sit here, Laney," Arleigh said, indicating the van's front pa.s.senger seat. "It reclines."

Laney climbed up into the seat. "Don't try it," he said. "You might not be able to wake me up."

Yamazaki appeared, over Arleigh's shoulder, blinking. "You will access the Lo/Rez data as before, Laney-san, but you will simultaneously access the fan-activity base. Depth of field.

Dimensionabty. The fan-activity data providing the degree of personalization you requite.

Parallax, yes?"

Arleigh handed Laney the eyephones. "Have a look," she said. "If it doesn't work, to h.e.l.l with it." Yamazaki flinched. "Either way, we'll go and find you the hotel doctor, after.'

Laney settled his neck against the seat's headrest and put the 'phones on.

Nothing. He closed his eyes. Heard the 'phones power up. Opened his eyes to those same faces of data he'd seen earlier, in Akihabara. Characterless. Inst.i.tutional in their regularity.

"Here comes the fan club," he heard Arleigh say, and the barren faces were suddenly translucent, networked depths of postings and commentary revealed there in baffling organic complexity.

"Something's-" he started to say, but then he was back in the apartment in Stockholm, with the huge ceramic stoves. But it was a place this time, not just a million tidily filed factoids.

Shadows of flames danced behind the narrow mica panes of the stove's ornate iron door.