“But this is my favorite,” Laney heard the idoru say, and then he was watching Rez mount a low stage in a crowded club of some kind, everything psychedelic Korean pinks, hypersaturated tints like cartoon versions of the flesh of tropical melons. “It is what we feel.” Rez raised a microphone and began to speak of new modes of being, of something he called “the alchemical marriage.”
And somewhere Arleigh's hand was on his arm, her voice tense. “Laney? Sorry. We need you back here now. Mr. Kuwayama is here.”
34. Casino
Chia looked out between the dusty slats, to the street where it was raining. The idoru had done that. Chia had never made it rain, in Venice, but she didn't mind the way it looked. It seemed to fit. It was like Seattle.
The idoru said this apartment was called a casino. Chia had seen casinos on television and they hadn't looked anything like this. This was a few small rooms with flaking plaster walls, and big old-fashioned furniture with gold lion-feet. Everything worked up with fractals so you could almost smell it. It would've smelled dusty, she thought, and also like perfume. Chia hadn't been to many of these modules, the insides of her Venice, because they were all sort of creepy. They didn't give her the feeling she got in the streets.
Zona's head, on the lion-footed table, made that bug-zap sound. She'd reduced herself to that, Zona: this little blue neon miniature of her Aztec skull, about the size of a small apple. Because Chia had told her to shut up and put the switchblade away. And that had pissed her off, and maybe hurt her feelings, but Chia hadn't known what else to do. Chia had wanted to hear what the idoru had had to say, and Zona's I'm-dangerous act totally got in the way. And that was all it was, just acting out, because people couldn't really hurt each other when they were ported. Not physically, anyway. And that had always been a problem, with Zona. That whole swelling-up thunderhead macho thing. Kelsey and the others would make fun of it, but Zona was fierce enough, verbally, that they'd only do it behind her back. Chia had never known what to make of it; it was like Zona's personality wasn't together, around acting like that.
Now Zona wasn't talking, just making the bug-zap sound every so often, to remind Chia she was still there and still pissed off.
The idoru was talking, though, telling Chia the old Venetian meaning of the word
casino
, not some giant sort of mall place where people went to gamble and watch shows, but something that sounded more like what Masahiko had said about love hotels. Like people had houses where they lived, but these casinos, these secret little apartments, hidden around town, were where they went to be with other people. But they hadn't been too comfortable there, not to judge by this one, even though the idoru kept adding more and more candles. The idoru said she loved candles.
The idoru had the Music Master's haircut now; it made her look like a girl pretending to be a boy. She seemed to like his greatcoat, too, because she kept turning on her heel—his heel—to twirl the hem out. “I've seen so many new places,” she said, smiling at Chia, “so many different people and things.”
—So have I, but…
“He told me it would be this way, but I had no idea, really.” Twirl. “Having seen all this, I'm so much
more
… Does it feel like that for you, when you travel?”
The death's-head emitted a burst of blue light and a sound like a short, sharp fart. “Zona!” Chia hissed. Then all in a rush, to the idoru, “I haven't traveled much and so far I don't think I like it, but we just came here to see what you were, because we didn't know, because you're in my software, and maybe in Zona's site, too, and that bothers her because it's supposed to be private.”
“The country with the beautiful sky?”
“Yeah,” Chia said. “You aren't really supposed to be able to go there unless she asks you.”
“I didn't know. I'm sorry.” The idoru looked sad. “I thought I could go anywhere—except where you come from.”
“Seattle?”
“The hive of dreams,” said the idoru, “windows heaped against the sky. I can see the pictures, but there is no path. I know you've come from there, but it's
there
… isn't there!”
“The Walled City?” It had to be, because that was where she and Zona were coming from now. “We're only ported through. Zona's in Mexico City and I'm in this hotel, okay? And we really better go back now, 'cause I don't know what's happening—”
The blue skull expanded and went Zonaform, grim and sullen. “Finally you say something worthwhile. Why do you speak with this thing? She is nothing, only a more expensive version of this toy of yours she's stolen and taken over. Now that I have seen her, I can only think that Rez is crazy, pathetically deluded…”
“But he isn't crazy," the idoru said. “It is what we
feel
together. He has told me that we will not be understood, not at first, and there will be resistance, hostility. But we mean no harm, and he believes that in the end only good can come from our union.”
“You synthetic bitch,” Zona said. “You think we don't see what you're doing? You aren't real! You aren't as real as this imitation of a drowned city! You're a made-up thing, and you want to suck what's real out of him!” Chia saw the thunderhead, the aura, starting to build. “This girl crossed the ocean to find you out, and now her life is in danger, and she is too stupid to see that you are the cause!”
The idoru looked at Chia. “Your life?”
Chia had to swallow. “Maybe,” she said. “I don't know. I'm scared.”
And the idoru was gone, draining from Chia's Music Master like a color that had no name. He stood there in the light of twenty candles, his expression unreadable. “I'm sorry,” he said, “but what exactly was it we were discussing?”
“We weren't,” said Chia, then her goggles were lifted away, taking the Music Master and the room in Venice and Zona with them, and two of the fingers of the hand that held the goggles was ringed with gold, each ring linked to a gold watch's massive bracelet with its own fine length of chain. Pale eyes looked into hers.
Eddie smiled.
Chia drew her breath in to scream, and another hand, not Eddie's, but large and white, smelling of metallic perfume, covered her mouth and nose. And a hand on her shoulder, pressing down, as Eddie stepped back, letting the goggles fall to the white carpet.
Holding her gaze, Eddie raised one finger to his lips, smiled, and said “Shhhh.” Then stepped aside, turning away, so that Chia saw Masahiko sitting there on the floor, the black cups over his eyes, his fingers moving in their tip-sets.
Eddie took something black from his pocket and reached Masahiko in two silent, exaggerated steps. He did something to the black thing and bent down with it. She saw it touch Masahiko's neck.
Masahiko's muscles all seemed to jerk at once, his legs straightening, throwing him sideways, where he lay on the white carpet, twitching, his mouth open. One of the black cups had come off. The other still covered his right eye.
Eddie turned back, looking at her.
“Where is it?” he said.
35. The Testbed of Futurity
Shannon offered Laney a tall foam cup with half an inch of very hot, very black coffee in it. Beyond him, past the orange barricades, was a long white Land-Rover with integral crash-bars and green-tinted windows. Kuwayama waited there, in a dark gray suit, his rimless glasses glinting in the greenish light from the cable overhead. A black-suited driver stood beside him.
“What's he want?” Laney asked Arleigh, tasting Shannon's espresso. It left grit on his tongue.
“We don't know,” said Arleigh. “But apparently Rez told him where to find us.”
“Rez?”
“That's what he said.”
Yamazaki appeared at Laney's elbow. His glasses had either been repaired or replaced, but two of the pins holding the sleeve of his green jacket had come undone. “Mr. Kuwayama is Rei Toei's creator, in a sense. He is the founder and chief executive officer of Famous Aspect, her corporate entity. He was the initiator of her project. He asks to speak with you.”
“I thought it was so urgent that I access the combined data for you.”
“It is, yes,” said Yamazaki, “but I think you should speak with Kuwayama now, please.”
Laney followed him through the black modules and past the barricades, and watched as the two exchanged bows. “This is Mr. Colin Laney,” Yamazaki said, “our special researcher.” Then, to Laney: “Mi-chio Kuwayama, Chief Executive Officer of Famous Aspect.”
No one would have guessed that Kuwayama had so recently been up there in the dark at the Western World, the crowd heaving and screaming around him. How had he gotten out, Laney wondered, and wouldn't the idoru have been lit up like a Christmas tree? Blood had seeped down into Laney's shoe; it was sticky between his toes. How much had the combined weight of all the human nervous tissue on the planet increased since he and Arleigh had left the bubble-gum bar with Blackwell? He felt like he'd acquired more himself, all of it uncomfortable. “I'm sorry,” he said. “I don't have a card.”
“It doesn't matter,” Kuwayama said, in his precise, oddly accented English. He shook Laney's hand. “I know that you are very busy. We appreciate your taking the time to meet with us.” The plural caused Laney to glance at the driver, who wore the kind of shoes that Rydell had worn at the Chateau, flexible-looking black lace-ups with cleated, rubbery soles, but it didn't seem as though the driver was the other half of that “we.” “Now,” Kuwayama said to Yamazaki, “if you will excuse us…” Yamazaki bowed quickly and walked back toward the van, where Arleigh, pretending to be doing something to the espresso machine, was watching out of the corner of her eye. The driver opened the Land-Rover's rear door for Laney, who got in. Kuwayama got in from the other side. When the door closed behind him, they were alone.
Something that looked like a large silver thermos bottle was mounted between the two seats, in a rack with padded clamps.
“Yamazaki tells us that you had band-width difficulties during the dinner,” Kuwayama said.
“That's true,” Laney said.
“We have adjusted the band-width…” And the idoru appeared between them, smiling. Laney saw that the illusion even provided a seat for her, melding the two buckets in which he and Kuwayama sat into a third.
“Did you find what you were looking for, when you left me in Stockholm, Mr. Laney?”
He looked into her eyes. What sort of computing power did it take to create something like this, something that looked back at you? He remembered phrases from Kuwayama's conversation with Rez: desiring machines, aggregates of subjective desire, an architecture of articulated longing…. “I started to,” he said.
“And what was it that you saw, that made you unable to look at me, during our dinner?”
“Snow,” Laney said, and was startled to feel himself begin to blush. “Mountains…. But I think it was only a video you've made.”
“We don't ‘make’ Rei's videos,” Kuwayama said, “not in the usual sense. They emerge directly from her ongoing experience of the world. They are her dreams, if you will.”
“You dream as well, don't you, Mr. Laney?” the idoru said. “That is your talent. Yamazaki says it is like seeing faces in the clouds, except that the faces are really there. I cannot see the faces in clouds, but Kuwayama-san tells me that one day I will. It is a matter of plectics.”
Yamazaki says? “I don't understand it,” Laney said. “It's just something I can do.”
“An extraordinary talent,” Kuwayama said. “We are most fortunate. And we are fortunate as well in Mr. Yamazaki, who, though hired by Mr. Blackwell, has an open mind.”
“Mr. Blackwell is not too pleased about Rez and…” Nodding toward her. “Mr. Blackwell might be unhappy that I'm talking with you.”
“Blackwell loves Rez in his own way,” she said. “It is concern that he feels. But he does not understand that our union has already taken place. Our ‘marriage’ will be gradual, ongoing. We wish simply to grow together. When Blackwell and the others can see that our union is best for both of us, all will be well. And you can do that for us, Mr. Laney.”
“I can?”
“Yamazaki has explained what you are attempting with the data from the Lo/Rez fan archives,” Kuwayama said. “But that data says nothing, or very little, about Rei. We propose the addition of a third level of information: we will add Rei to the mix, and the pattern that emerges will be a portrait of their union.”
But you're just information yourself, Laney thought, looking at her. Lots of it, running through God knows how many machines. But the dark eyes looked back at him, filled with something for all the world like hope. “Will you do it, Mr. Laney? Will you help us?”
“Look,” Laney said, “I only work here. I'll do it if Yamazaki tells me to. If he takes the responsibility. But I want you to tell me some-thing, okay?”
“What is it that you wish to know?” asked Kuwayama.
“What is all this
about?
” The question surprised Laney, who hadn't quite known what it was he was about to ask.
Kuwayama's mild eyes regarded him through the rimless lenses. “It is about futurity, Mr. Laney.”
“Futurity?”
“Do you know that our word for ‘nature’ is of quite recent coinage? It is scarcely a hundred years old. We have never developed a sinister view of technology, Mr. Laney. It is an aspect of the natural, of oneness. Through our efforts, oneness perfects itself.” Kuwayama smiled. “And popular culture,” he said, “is the testbed of our futurity.”
Arleigh made a better espresso than Shannon. Laney, squatting in the back of the green van, on popping shreds of bubble-pack, watched Yamazaki over the rim of a foam cup with a fresh double shot. “What do you think you're doing, Yamazaki? You want us both to wind up wearing smaller shoes, or what? Blackwell likes to nail people's hands to tables, and you're making deals with the idoru and her boss?” Laney had insisted that they climb in back here for privacy. Yamazaki squatted opposite him, blinking.
“I am not the one making deals,” Yamazaki said. “Rez and Rei Toei are in almost constant contact now, and recent improvements allow her new degrees of freedom. Rez let her into the data, all that you first tried to access. He did this without informing Blackwell.” He shrugged. “Now she accesses the fan data as well. And what they propose may well allow us to bring this to a conclusion. Blackwell is more than ever convinced there is some conspiracy. The attack in the nightclub…”