Mona Lisa Overdrive (35 page)

“Sixteen …”

“You need a haircut,” he said, and there was something so serious about how he said
it.

“Angie’s up there,” she said, pointing, when she found her voice again. “She’s—”

“Hush.”

She heard metal noises far away in the big old building, and then a motor starting
up. The hover, she thought, the one Molly’d driven here.

The black man raised his eyebrows, except he didn’t have any eyebrows. “Friends?”
He lowered his hand.

She nodded.

“Good enough,” he said, and took her hand to help her down the stairs. At the bottom,
still holding her hand, he led her around the wreck of the catwalk thing. Somebody
was dead there, camo material and one of those big-voice things like cops have.

“Swift,” the black man called, out across that whole tall hollow space, between the
black grids of windows without any glass, black lines against a white sky, winter
morning, “get your ass over here. I found her.”

“But I’m not her.…”

And over there where the big doors stood open, against the sky and snow and rust,
she saw this suit come walking, with his coat open and his tie flapping in the wind,
and Molly’s hover swung past him, out those same doors, and he wasn’t even looking,
because he was looking at Mona.

“I’m not Angie,” she said, and wondered if she ought to tell him what she’d seen,
Angie and the young guy together on that little screen, just before it faded.

“I know,” the black man said, “but it grows on you.”

Rapture. Rapture’s coming
.

The woman led them to a hovercraft parked inside Factory, if you could call it parking
when the front end was mashed up around a concrete tool mount. It was a white cargo
job with
CATHODE CATHAY
lettered across the rear doors, and Slick wondered when she’d managed to get it in
there without him hearing it. Maybe while Bobby the Count was pulling his diversion
with the blimp.

The aleph was heavy, like trying to carry a small engine block.

He didn’t want to look at the Witch, because there was blood on her blades and he
hadn’t made her for that. There were a couple of bodies around, or parts of them;
he didn’t look at that either.

He looked down at the block of biosoft and its battery pack and wondered if all that
was still in there, the gray house and Mexico and 3Jane’s eyes.

“Wait,” the woman said. They were passing the ramp to the room where he kept his machines;
the Judge was still there, the Corpsegrinder …

She still had her gun in her hand. Slick put his hand on Cherry’s shoulder. “She said
wait.”

“That thing I saw, last night,” the woman said. “One-armed robot. That work?”

“Yeah …”

“Strong? Carry a load? Over rough ground?”

“Yeah.”

“Get it.”

“Huh?”

“Get it into the back of the hover. Now. Move.”

Cherry clung to him, weak-kneed from whatever it was that girl had given her.

“You,” Molly gestured toward her with the gun, “into the hover.”

“Go on,” Slick said.

He set the aleph down and walked up the ramp and into the room where the Judge was
waiting in the shadows, the arm beside it on the tarp, where Slick had left it. Now
he wouldn’t ever get it right, how the saw was supposed to work. There was a control
unit there, on a row of dusty metal shelves. He picked it up and let the Judge power
up, the brown carapace trembling slightly.

He moved the Judge forward, down the ramp, the broad feet coming down one-two, one-two,
the gyros compensating, perfecting for the missing arm. The woman had the rear doors
of the hover open, ready, and Slick marched the Judge straight over to her. She fell
back slightly as the Judge towered over her, her silver glasses reflecting polished
rust. Slick came up behind the Judge and started figuring the angles, how to get him
in there. It didn’t make sense, but at least she seemed to have some idea of what
they were doing, and anything was better than hanging around Factory now, with dead
people all over. He thought about Gentry, up there with his books and those bodies.
There’d been two girls up there, and they’d both looked like Angie Mitchell. Now one
of them was dead, he
didn’t know how or why, and the woman with the gun had told the other one to wait.…

“Come on, come on, get the fucking thing in, we gotta go.…”

When he’d managed to work the Judge into the back of the hover, legs bent, on its
side, he slammed the doors, ran around, and climbed in on the passenger side. The
aleph was between the front seats. Cherry was curled in the backseat, under a big
orange parka with the Sense/Net logo on the sleeve, shivering.

The woman fired up the turbine and inflated the bag. Slick thought they might be hung
on the tool mount, but when she reversed, it tore away a strip of chrome and they
were free. She swung the hover around and headed for the gates.

On the way out they passed a guy in a suit and tie and a tweed overcoat, who didn’t
seem to see them. “Who’s that?”

She shrugged.

“You want this hover?” she asked. They were maybe ten kilos from Factory now and he
hadn’t looked back.

“You steal it?”

“Sure.”

“I’ll pass.”

“Yeah?”

“I did time, car theft.”

“So how’s your girlfriend?”

“Asleep. She’s not my girlfriend.”

“No?”

“I get to ask who you are?”

“A businesswoman.”

“What business?”

“Hard to say.”

The sky above the Solitude was bright and white.

“You come for this?” He tapped the aleph.

“Sort of.”

“What now?”

“I made a deal. I got Mitchell together with the box.”

“That was her, the one who fell over?”

“Yeah, that was her.”

“But she died.…”

“There’s dying, then there’s dying.”

“Like 3Jane?”

Her head moved, like she’d glanced at him. “What do you know about that?”

“I saw her, once. In there.”

“Well, she’s still in there, but so’s Angie.”

“And Bobby.”

“Newmark? Yeah.”

“So what’ll you do with it?”

“You built those things, right? One in the back, the others?”

Slick glanced back over his shoulder to where the Judge was folded in the hover’s
cargo space, like a big rusty headless doll. “Yeah.”

“So you’re good with tools.”

“Guess so.”

“Okay. I got a job for you.” She slowed the hover beside a ragged crest of snow-covered
scrap and coasted to a halt. “There’ll be an emergency kit in here, somewhere. Get
it, get up on the roof, get me the solar cells and some wire. I want you to rig the
cells so they’ll recharge this thing’s battery. Can you do that?”

“Probably. Why?”

She sank back in the seat and Slick saw that she was older than he’d thought, and
tired. “Mitchell’s in there now. They want her to have some time, is all.…”

“They?”

“I dunno. Something. Whatever I cut my deal with. How long you figure the battery’ll
hold out, if the cells work?”

“Couple months. Year, maybe.”

“Okay. I’ll hide it somewhere, where the cells can get the sun.”

“What happens if you just cut the power?”

She reached down and ran the tip of her index finger along the thin cable that connected
the aleph to the battery. Slick saw her fingernails in the morning light; they looked
artificial. “Hey, 3Jane,” she said, her finger poised above the cable, “I gotcha.”
Then her hand was a fist, which opened, as though she were letting something go.

Cherry wanted to tell Slick everything they were going to do when they got to Cleveland.
He was lashing two of the flat cells to the Judge’s broad chest with silver tape.
The gray aleph was already fastened to the machine’s back with a harness of tape.
Cherry said she knew where she could get him a job fixing rides in an arcade. He wasn’t
really listening.

When he’d gotten it all together, he handed the control unit to the woman.

“Guess we wait for you now.”

“No,” she said. “You go to Cleveland. Cherry just told you.”

“What about you?”

“I’m going for a walk.”

“You wanna freeze? Maybe wanna starve?”

“Wanna be by my fucking self for a change.” She tried the controls and the Judge trembled,
took a step forward, another. “Good luck in Cleveland.” They watched her walk out
across the Solitude, the Judge clumping along behind her. Then she turned and yelled
back, “Hey, Cherry! Get that guy to take a bath!”

Cherry waved, the zippers of her leather jackets jingling.

Petal said that her bags were waiting in the Jaguar. “You won’t want to be coming
back to Notting Hill,” he said, “so we’ve arranged something for you in Camden Town.”

“Petal,” she said, “I have to know what has happened to Sally.”

He started the engine.

“Swain was blackmailing her. Forcing her to kidnap—”

“Ah. Well then,” he interrupted, “I see. Shouldn’t worry, if I were you.”

“I am worried.”

“Sally, I would say, has managed to extricate herself from that little matter. She’s
also, according to certain official friends of ours, managed to cause all record of
herself to evaporate, apparently, except for a controlling interest in a German casino.
And if anything’s happened to Angela Mitchell, Sense/Net hasn’t gone public with it.
All of that is done with, now.”

“Will I see her again?”

“Not on
my
parish. Please.”

They pulled away from the curb.

“Petal,” she said, as they drove through London, “my father told me that Swain—”

“Fool. Bloody fool. Rather not talk about it now.”

“I’m sorry.”

The heater was working. It was warm in the Jaguar, and Kumiko was very tired now.
She settled back against red leather and closed her eyes. Somehow, she thought, her
meeting with 3Jane had freed her of her shame, and her father’s answer of her anger.
3Jane had been very cruel. Now she saw her mother’s cruelty as well. But all must
be forgiven, one day, she thought, and fell asleep on the way to a place called Camden
Town.

They have come to live in this house: walls of gray stone, roof of slate, in a season
of early summer. The grounds are bright and wild, though the long grass does not grow
and the wildflowers do not fade.

Behind the house are outbuildings, unopened, unexplored, and a field where tethered
gliders strain against the wind.

Once, walking alone among the oaks at the edge of that field, she saw three strangers,
astride something approximately resembling a horse. Horses are extinct, their line
terminated years before Angie’s birth. A slim, tweed-coated figure was in the saddle,
a boy like a groom from some old painting. In front of him, a young girl, Japanese,
straddled the horse thing, while behind him sat a pale, greasy-looking little man
in a gray suit, pink socks and white ankles showing above his brown shoes. Had the
girl seen her, returned her gaze?

She has forgotten to mention this to Bobby.

Their most frequent visitors arrive in dawn dreams, though once a grinning little
kobold of a man announced
himself by thumping repeatedly on the heavy oak door, demanding, when she ran to open
it, “that little shit Newmark.” Bobby introduced this creature as the Finn, and seemed
delighted to see him. The Finn’s decrepit jacket exuded a complex odor of stale smoke,
ancient solder, and pickled herring. Bobby explained that the Finn was always welcome.
“Might as well be. No way to keep him out, once he wants in.”

3Jane comes as well, one of the dawn visitors, her presence sad and tentative. Bobby
seems scarcely aware of her, but Angie, the repository of so many of her memories,
resonates to that particular mingling of longing, jealousy, frustration, and rage.
Angie has come to understand 3Jane’s motives, and to forgive her—though what, exactly,
wandering amid these oaks in sunlight, is there to forgive?

But dreams of 3Jane sometimes weary Angie; she prefers other dreams, particularly
those of her young protégé. These often come as the lace curtains billow, as a first
bird calls. She rolls closer to Bobby, closes her eyes, forms the name
Continuity
in her mind, and waits for the small bright images.

She sees that they have taken the girl to a clinic in Jamaica, to treat her addiction
to crude stimulants. Her metabolism fine-tuned by a patient army of Net medics, she
emerges at last, radiant with health. With her sensorium expertly modulated by Piper
Hill, her first stims are greeted with unprecedented enthusiasm. Her global audience
is entranced by her freshness, her vigor, the delightfully ingenuous way in which
she seems to discover her glamorous life as if for the first time.

A shadow sometimes crosses the distant screen, but only for an instant: Robin Lanier
has been found strangled, frozen, on the mountainscaped facade of the New Suzuki Envoy;
both Angie and Continuity know whose long strong hands throttled the star and threw
him there.

But a certain thing eludes her, one special fragment of the puzzle that is history.

At the edge of oak shadow, beneath a steel and salmon sunset, in this France that
isn’t France, she asks Bobby for the answer to her final question.

They waited in the drive at midnight, because Bobby had promised her an answer.

As the clocks in the house struck twelve, she heard the hiss of tires over gravel.
The car was long, low and gray.

Its driver was the Finn.

Bobby opened the door and helped her in.

In the backseat sat the young man she recalled from her glimpse of the impossible
horse and its three mismatched riders. He smiled at her, but said nothing.

“This is Colin,” Bobby said, climbing in beside her. “And you know the Finn.”

“She never guessed, huh?” the Finn asked, putting the car in gear.

“No,” Bobby said, “I don’t think so.”

The young man named Colin was smiling at her. “The aleph is an approximation of the
matrix,” he said, “a sort of model of cyberspace.…”