Mona Lisa Overdrive (2 page)

Kumiko blinked, opened her hand. The boy flickered
and was gone. She looked down at the smooth little unit in her palm and slowly closed
her fingers.

“ ’Lo again,” he said. “Name’s Colin. Yours?”

She stared. His eyes were bright green smoke, his high forehead pale and smooth under
an unruly dark forelock. She could see the seats across the aisle through the glint
of his teeth. “If it’s a bit too spectral for you,” he said, with a grin, “we can
up the rez.…” And he was there for an instant, uncomfortably sharp and real, the nap
on the lapels of his dark coat vibrating with hallucinatory clarity. “Runs the battery
down, though,” he said, and faded to his prior state. “Didn’t get your name.” The
grin again.

“You aren’t real,” she said sternly.

He shrugged. “Needn’t speak out loud, miss. Fellow passengers might think you a bit
odd, if you take my meaning Subvocal’s the way. I pick it all up through the skin.…”
He uncrossed his legs and stretched, hands clasped behind his head. “Seatbelt, miss.
I needn’t buckle up myself, of course, being, as you’ve pointed out, unreal.”

Kumiko frowned and tossed the unit into the ghost’s lap. He vanished. She fastened
her seatbelt, glanced at the thing, hesitated, then picked it up again.

“First time in London, then?” he asked, swirling in from the periphery of her vision.
She nodded in spite of herself. “You don’t mind flying? Doesn’t frighten you?”

She shook her head, feeling ridiculous.

“Never mind,” the ghost said. “I’ll look out for you. Heathrow in three minutes. Someone
meeting you off the plane?”

“My father’s business associate,” she said in Japanese.

The ghost grinned. “Then you’ll be in good hands, I’m sure.” He winked. “Wouldn’t
think I’m a linguist to look at me, would you?”

Kumiko closed her eyes and the ghost began to whisper to her, something about the
archaeology of Heathrow, about the Neolithic and the Iron ages, pottery and tools.…

“Miss Yanaka? Kumiko Yanaka?” The Englishman towered above her, his gaijin bulk draped
in elephantine folds of dark wool. Small dark eyes regarded her blandly through steel-rimmed
glasses. His nose seemed to have been crushed nearly flat and never reset. His hair,
what there was of it, had been shaved back to a gray stubble, and his black knit gloves
were frayed and fingerless.

“My name, you see,” he said, as though this would immediately reassure her, “is Petal.”

Petal called the city Smoke.

Kumiko shivered on chill red leather; through the ancient Jaguar’s window she watched
the snow spinning down to melt on the road Petal called M4. The late afternoon sky
was colorless. He drove silently, efficiently, his lips pursed as though he were about
to whistle. The traffic, to Tokyo eyes, was absurdly light. They accelerated past
an unmanned Eurotrans freight vehicle, its blunt prow studded with sensors and banks
of headlights. In spite of the Jaguar’s speed, Kumiko felt as if somehow she were
standing still; London’s particles began to accrete around her. Walls of wet brick,
arches of concrete, black-painted ironwork standing up in spears.

As she watched, the city began to define itself. Off the M4, while the Jaguar waited
at intersections, she could glimpse faces through the snow, flushed gaijin faces above
dark clothing, chins tucked down into scarves, women’s bootheels ticking through silver
puddles. The rows of shops and houses reminded her of the gorgeously detailed accessories
she’d seen displayed around a toy locomotive in the Osaka gallery of a dealer in European
antiques.

This was nothing like Tokyo, where the past, all that remained of it, was nurtured
with a nervous care. History there had become a quantity, a rare thing, parceled out
by government and preserved by law and corporate funding. Here it seemed the very
fabric of things, as if the city
were a single growth of stone and brick, uncounted strata of message and meaning,
age upon age, generated over the centuries to the dictates of some now-all-but-unreadable
DNA of commerce and empire.

“Regret Swain couldn’t come out to meet you himself,” the man called Petal said. Kumiko
had less trouble with his accent than with his manner of structuring sentences; she
initially mistook the apology for a command. She considered accessing the ghost, then
rejected the idea.

“Swain,” she ventured. “Mr. Swain is my host?”

Petal’s eyes found her in the mirror. “Roger Swain. Your father didn’t tell you?”

“No.”

“Ah.” He nodded. “Mr. Kanaka’s conscious of security in these matters, it stands to
reason.… Man of his stature, et cetera …” He sighed loudly. “Sorry about the heater.
Garage was supposed to have that taken care of.…”

“Are you one of Mr. Swain’s secretaries?” Addressing the stubbled rolls of flesh above
the collar of the thick dark coat.

“His secretary?” He seemed to consider the matter. “No,” he ventured finally, “I’m
not that.” He swung them through a roundabout, past gleaming metallic awnings and
the evening surge of pedestrians. “Have you eaten, then? Did they feed you on the
flight?”

“I wasn’t hungry.” Conscious of her mother’s mask.

“Well, Swain’ll have something for you. Eats a lot of Jap food, Swain.” He made a
strange little ticking sound with his tongue. He glanced back at her.

She looked past him, seeing the kiss of snowflakes, the obliterating sweep of the
wipers.

Swain’s Notting Hill residence consisted of three interconnected Victorian townhouses
situated somewhere in a snowy profusion of squares, crescents, and mews. Petal,
with two of Kumiko’s suitcases in either hand, explained to her that number 17 was
the front entrance for numbers 16 and 18 as well. “No use knocking there,” he said,
gesturing clumsily with the heavy cases in his hand, indicating the glossy red paint
and polished brass fittings of 16’s door. “Nothing behind it but twenty inches of
ferroconcrete.”

She looked down the crescent, nearly identical facades receding along its shallow
curve. The snow fell more thickly now, and the featureless sky was lit with a salmon
glow of sodium lamps. The street was deserted, the snow fresh and unmarked. There
was an alien edge to the cold air, a faint, pervasive hint of burning, of archaic
fuels. Petal’s shoes left large, neatly defined prints. They were black suede oxfords
with narrow toes and extremely thick corrugated soles of scarlet plastic. She followed
in his tracks, beginning to shiver, up the gray steps to number 17.

“It’s me then,” he said to the black-painted door, “innit.” Then he sighed, set all
four suitcases down in the snow, removed the fingerless glove from his right hand,
and pressed his palm against a circle of bright steel set flush with one of the door
panels. Kumiko thought she heard a faint whine, a gnat sound that rose in pitch until
it vanished, and then the door vibrated with the muffled impact of magnetic bolts
as they withdrew.

“You called it Smoke,” she said, as he reached for the brass knob, “the city.…”

He paused. “The Smoke,” he said, “yes,” and opened the door into warmth and light,
“that’s an old expression, sort of nickname.” He picked up her bags and padded into
a blue-carpeted foyer paneled in white-painted wood. She followed him, the door closing
itself behind her, its bolts thumping back into place. A mahogony-framed print hung
above the white wainscoting, horses in a field, crisp little figures in red coats.
Colin the chip-ghost should live there
, she thought. Petal had put her bags down again. Flakes of
compacted snow lay on the blue carpet. Now he opened another door, exposing a gilt
steel cage. He drew the bars aside with a clank. She stared into the cage, baffled.
“The lift,” he said. “No space for your things. I’ll make a second trip.”

For all its apparent age, it rose smoothly enough when Petal touched a white porcelain
button with a blunt forefinger. Kumiko was forced to stand very close to him then;
he smelled of damp wool and some floral shaving preparation.

“We’ve put you up top,” he said, leading her along a narrow corridor, “because we
thought you might appreciate the quiet.” He opened a door and gestured her in. “Hope
it’ll do.…” He removed his glasses and polished them energetically with a crumpled
tissue. “I’ll get your bags.”

When he had gone, Kumiko walked slowly around the massive black marble tub that dominated
the center of the low, crowded room. The walls, angled sharply toward the ceiling,
were faced with mottled gold mirror. A pair of small dormer windows flanked the largest
bed she’d ever seen. Above the bed, the mirror was inset with small adjustable lights,
like the reading lamps in an airliner. She stood beside the tub to touch the arched
neck of a gold-plated swan that served as a spout. Its spread wings were tap handles.
The air in the room was warm and still, and for an instant the presence of her mother
seemed to fill it, an aching fog.

Petal cleared his throat in the doorway. “Well then,” he said, bustling in with her
luggage, “everything in order? Feeling hungry yet? No? Leave you to settle in …” He
arranged her bags beside the bed. “If you should feel like eating, just ring.” He
indicated an ornate antique telephone with scrolled brass mouth- and earpieces and
a turned ivory handle. “Just pick it up, you needn’t dial. Breakfast’s when you want
it. Ask someone, they’ll show you where. You can meet Swain then.…”

The sense of her mother had vanished with his return. She tried to feel it again,
when he said goodnight and closed the door, but it was gone.

She remained a long time beside the tub, stroking the smooth metal of the swan’s cool
neck.

Kid Afrika came cruising into Dog Solitude on the last day in November, his vintage
Dodge chauffeured by a white girl named Cherry Chesterfield.

Slick Henry and Little Bird were breaking down the buzzsaw that formed the Judge’s
left hand when Kid’s Dodge came into view, its patched apron bag throwing up brown
fantails of the rusty water that pooled on the Solitude’s uneven plain of compacted
steel.

Little Bird saw it first. He had sharp eyes, Little Bird, and a 10X monocular that
dangled on his chest amid the bones of assorted animals and antique bottleneck cartridge
brass. Slick looked up from the hydraulic wrist to see Little Bird straighten up to
his full two meters and aim the monocular out through the grid of unglazed steel that
formed most of Factory’s south wall. Little Bird was very thin, almost skeletal, and
the lacquered wings of brown hair that had earned him the name stood out sharp against
the pale sky. He kept the back and sides shaved high, well above his ears; with the
wings and the aerodynamic ducktail, he looked as though he were wearing a headless
brown gull.

“Whoa,” said Little Bird, “motherfuck.”

“What?” It was hard to get Little Bird to concentrate, and the job needed a second
set of hands.

“It’s that nigger.”

Slick stood up and wiped his hands down the thighs of his jeans while Little Bird
fumbled the green Mech-5 microsoft from the socket behind his ear—instantly forgetting
the eight-point servo-calibration procedure needed to unfuck the Judge’s buzzsaw.
“Who’s driving?” Afrika never drove himself if he could help it.

“Can’t make out.” Little Bird let the monocular clatter back into the curtain of bones
and brass.

Slick joined him at the window to watch the Dodge’s progress. Kid Afrika periodically
touched up the hover’s matte-black paint-job with judicious applications from an aerosol
can, the somber effect offset by the row of chrome-plated skulls welded to the massive
front bumper. At one time the hollow steel skulls had boasted red Christmas bulbs
for eyes; maybe the Kid was losing his concern with image.

As the hover slewed up to Factory, Slick heard Little Bird shuffle back into the shadows,
his heavy boots scraping through dust and fine bright spirals of metal shavings.

Slick watched past a last dusty dagger of window glass as the hover settled into its
apron bags in front of Factory, groaning and venting steam.

Something rattled in the dark behind him and he knew that Little Bird was behind the
old parts rack, fiddling the homemade silencer onto the Chinese rimfire they used
for rabbits.

“Bird,” Slick said, tossing his wrench down on the tarp, “I know you’re an ignorant
little redneck Jersey asshole, but do you have to keep goddamn
reminding
me of it?”

“Don’t like that nigger,” Little Bird said, from behind the rack.

“Yeah, and if that nigger’d bother noticing, he wouldn’t
like you either. Knew you were back here with that gun, he’d shove it down your throat
sideways.”

No response from Little Bird. He’d grown up in white Jersey stringtowns where nobody
knew shit about anything and hated anybody who did.

“And I’d help him, too.” Slick yanked up the zip on his old brown jacket and went
out to Kid Afrika’s hover.

The dusty window on the driver’s side hissed down, revealing a pale face dominated
by an enormous pair of amber-tinted goggles. Slick’s boots crunched on ancient cans
rusted thin as old leaves. The driver tugged the goggles down and squinted at him;
female, but now the amber goggles hung around her neck, concealing her mouth and chin.
The Kid would be on the far side, a good thing in the unlikely event Little Bird started
shooting.