William Gibson - Mona Lisa Overdrive

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Mona Lisa Overdrive

by William Gibson

VERSION 1.1 (Feb 23 00). If you find and correct errors in

the text, please update the version number by 0.1 and

redistribute.

The Smoke

The ghost was her father's parting gift, presented by a black-clad secretary in a departure lounge

at Narita.

For the first two hours of the flight to London it lay forgotten in her purse, a smooth

dark oblong, one side impressed with the ubiquitous Maas-Neotek logo, the other gently curved to

fit the user's palm.

She sat up very straight in her seat in the first-class cabin, her features composed in a

small cold mask modeled after her dead mother's most characteristic expression. The surrounding

seats were empty; her father had purchased the space. She refused the meal the nervous steward

offered. The vacant seats frightened him, evidence of her father's wealth and power. The man

hesitated, then bowed and withdrew. Very briefly, she allowed the mask her mother's smile.

Ghosts, she thought later, somewhere over Germany, staring at the upholstery of the seat

beside her. How well her father treated his ghosts.

There were ghosts beyond the window, too, ghosts in the stratosphere of Europe's winter,

partial images that began to form if she let her eyes drift out of focus. Her mother in Ueno Park,

face fragile in September sunlight. »The cranes, Kumi! Look at the cranes!« And Kumiko looked

across Shinobazu Pond and saw nothing, no cranes at all, only a few hopping black dots that surely

were crows. The water was smooth as silk, the color of lead, and pale holograms flickered

indistinctly above a distant line of archery stalls. But Kumiko would see the cranes later, many

times, in dreams; they were origami, angular things folded from sheets of neon, bright stiff birds

sailing the moonscape of her mother's madness. . . .

Remembering her father, the black robe open across a tattooed storm of dragons, slumped

behind the vast ebony field of his desk, his eyes flat and bright, like the eyes of a painted

doll. »Your mother is dead. Do you understand?« And all around her the planes of shadow in his

study, the angular darkness. His hand coming forward, into the lamp's circle of light, unsteadily,

to point at her, the robe's cuff sliding back to reveal a golden Rolex and more dragons, their

manes swirling into waves, pricked out strong and dark around his wrist, pointing. Pointing at

her. »Do you understand?« She hadn't answered, but had run instead, down to a secret place she

knew, the warren of the smallest of the cleaning machines. They ticked around her all night,

scanning her every few minutes with pink bursts of laser light, until her father came to find her,

and, smelling of whiskey and Dunhill cigarettes, carried her to her room on the apartment's third

floor.

Remembering the weeks that followed, numb days spent most often in the black-suited

company of one secretary or another, cautious men with automatic smiles and tightly furled

umbrellas. One of these, the youngest and least cautious, had treated her, on a crowded Ginza

sidewalk, in the shadow of the Hattori clock, to an impromptu kendo demonstration, weaving

expertly between startled shop girls and wide-eyed tourists, the black umbrella blurring

harmlessly through the art's formal, ancient arcs. And Kumiko had smiled then, her own smile,

breaking the funeral mask, and for this her guilt was driven instantly, more deeply and still more

sharply, into that place in her heart where she knew her shame and her unworthiness. But most

often the secretaries took her shopping, through one vast Ginza department store after another,

and in and out of dozens of Shinjuku boutiques recommended by a blue plastic Michelin guide that

spoke a stuffy tourist's Japanese. She purchased only very ugly things, ugly and very expensive

things, and the secretaries marched stolidly beside her, the glossy bags in their hard hands. Each

afternoon, returning to her father's apartment, the bags were deposited neatly in her bedroom,

where they remained, unopened and untouched, until the maids removed them.

And in the seventh week, on the eve of her thirteenth birthday, it was arranged that

Kumiko would go to London.

»You will be a guest in the house of my kobun ,« her father said.

»But I do not wish to go,« she said, and showed him her mother's smile.

»You must,« he said, and turned away. »There are difficulties,« he said to the shadowed

study. »You will be in no danger, in London.«

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»And when shall I return?«

But her father didn't answer. She bowed and left his study, still wearing her mother's

smile.

The ghost woke to Kumiko's touch as they began their descent into Heathrow. The fifty-first

generation of Maas-Neotek biochips conjured up an indistinct figure on the seat beside her, a boy

out of some faded hunting print, legs crossed casually in tan breeches and riding boots. »Hullo,«

the ghost said.

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

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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 mahogany-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

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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

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.

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»Go on around,« the girl said.

Slick walked around the hover, past the chrome skulls, hearing Kid Afrika's window come

down with that same demonstrative little sound.

»Slick Henry,« the Kid said, his breath puffing white as it hit the air of the Solitude,

»hello.«

Slick looked down at the long brown face. Kid Afrika had big hazel eyes, slitted like a

cat's, a pencil-thin mustache, and skin with the sheen of buffed leather.

»Hey, Kid.« Slick smelled some kind of incense from inside the hover. »How y ' doin'?«

»Well,« the Kid said, narrowing his eyes, »recall you sayin' once, if I ever needed a

favor . . .«

»Right,« Slick said, feeling a first twinge of apprehension. Kid Afrika had saved his ass

once, in Atlantic City; talked some irate brothers out of dropping him off this balcony on the

forty-third floor of a burned- out highstack. »Somebody wanna throw you off a tall building?«

»Slick,« the Kid said, »I wanna introduce you to somebody.«

»Then we'll be even?«

»Slick Henry, this fine-looking girl here, this is Miss Cherry Chesterfield of Cleveland,

Ohio.« Slick bent down and looked at the driver. Blond shockhead, paintstick around her eyes.

»Cherry, this is my close personal friend Mr. Slick Henry. When he was young and bad he rode with

the Deacon Blues. Now he's old and bad, he holes up out here and pursues his art , understand. A

talented man, understand.«

»He's the one builds the robots,« the girl said, around a wad of gum, »you said.«

»The very one,« the Kid said, opening his door. »You wait for us here, Cherry honey.« The

Kid, draped in a mink coat that brushed the immaculate tips of his yellow ostrich boots, stepped

out onto the Solitude, and Slick caught a glimpse of something in the back of the hover, eyeblink

ambulance flash of bandages and surgical tubing. . . .

»Hey, Kid,« he said, »what you got back there?« The Kid's jeweled hand came up, gesturing

Slick back as the hover's door clanked shut and Cherry Chesterfield hit the window buttons.

»We have to talk about that, Slick.«

»I don't think it's much to ask,« Kid Afrika said, leaning back against a bare metal workbench,

wrapped in his mink. »Cherry has a med-tech's ticket and she knows she'll get paid. Nice girl,

Slick.« He winked.

»Kid . . .«

Kid Afrika had this guy in the back of the hover who was like dead, coma or something, had

him hooked up to pumps and bags and tubes and some kind of simstim rig, all of it bolted to an old

alloy ambulance stretcher, batteries and everything.

»What's this?« Cherry, who'd followed them in after the Kid had taken Slick back out to

show him the guy in the back of the hover, was peering dubiously up at the towering Judge, most of

him anyway; the arm with the buzzsaw was where they'd left it, on the floor on the greasy tarp. If

she has a med tech 's ticket , Slick thought, the med-tech probably hasn 't noticed it 's

missing yet . She was wearing at least four leather jackets, all of them several sizes too big.

»Slick's art, like I told you.«

»That guy's dying. He smells like piss.«

»Catheter came loose,« Cherry said. »What's this thing supposed to do , anyway?«

»We can't keep him here, Kid, he'll stiff. You wanna kill him, go stuff him down a hole on

the Solitude.«

»The man's not dying,« Kid Afrika said. »He's not hurt, he's not sick. . . .«

»Then what the fuck's wrong with him?«

»He's under , baby. He's on a long trip . He needs peace and quiet .«

Slick looked from the Kid to the Judge, then back to the Kid. He wanted to be working on

that arm. Kid said he wanted Slick to keep the guy for two weeks, maybe three; he'd leave Cherry

there to take care of him.

»I can't figure it. This guy, he's a friend of yours?«

Kid Afrika shrugged inside his mink.

»So why don't you keep him at your place?«

»Not so quiet. Not peaceful enough.«

»Kid,« Slick said, »I owe you one, but nothing this weird. Anyway, I gotta work, and

anyway, it's too weird. And there's Gentry, too. He's gone to Boston now; be back tomorrow night

and he wouldn't like it. You know how he's funny about people. . . . It's mostly his place , too,

how it is. . . .«

»They had you over the railing, man,« Kid Afrika said sadly. »You remember?«

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»Hey, I remember, I . . .«

»You don't remember too good,« the Kid said. »Okay, Cherry. Let's go. Don't wanna cross

Dog Solitude at night.« He pushed off from the steel bench.

»Kid, look . . .«

»Forget it. I didn't know your fucking name, that time in Atlantic City, just figured I

didn't wanna see the white boy all over the street, y'know? So I didn't know your name then, I

guess I don't know it now.«

»Kid . . .«

»Yeah?«

»Okay. He stays. Two weeks max. You gimme your word, you'll come back and get him? And you

gotta help me square it with Gentry.«

»What's he need?«

»Drugs.«

Little Bird reappeared as the Kid's Dodge wallowed away across the Solitude. He came

edging out from behind an outcropping of compacted cars, rusty pallets of crumpled steel that

still showed patches of bright enamel.

Slick watched him from a window high up in Factory. The squares of the steel frame had

been fitted with sections of scavenged plastic, each one a different shade and thickness, so that

when Slick tilted his head to one side, he saw Little Bird through a pane of hot-pink Lucite.

»Who lives here?« Cherry asked, from the room behind him.

»Me,« Slick said, »Little Bird, Gentry . . .«

»In this room, I mean.«

He turned and saw her there beside the stretcher and its attendant machines. »You do,« he

said.

»It's your place?« She was staring at the drawings taped to the walls, his original

conceptions of the Judge and his Investigators, the Corpsegrinder and the Witch.

»Don't worry about it.«

»Better you don't get any ideas,« she said.

He looked at her. She had a large red sore at the corner of her mouth. Her bleached hair

stood out like a static display. »Like I said, don't worry about it.«

»Kid said you got electricity.«

»Yeah.«

»Better get him hooked up,« she said, turning to the stretcher. »He doesn't draw much, but

the batteries'll be getting low.«

He crossed the room to look down at the wasted face. »You better tell me something,« he

said. He didn't like the tubes. One of them went into a nostril and the idea made him want to gag.

»Who is this guy and what exactly the fuck is Kid Afrika doing to him?«

»He's not,« she said, tapping a readout into view on a biomonitor panel lashed to the foot

of the stretcher with silver tape. »REM's still up, like he dreams all the time . . .« The man on

the stretcher was strapped down in a brand-new blue sleeping bag. »What it is, he -- whoever --

he's paying Kid for this.«

There was a trode-net plastered across the guy's forehead; a single black cable was lashed

along the edge of the stretcher. Slick followed it up to the fat gray package that seemed to

dominate the gear mounted on the superstructure. Simstim? Didn't look like it. Some kind of

cyberspace rig? Gentry knew a lot about cyberspace, or anyway he talked about it, but Slick

couldn't remember anything about getting unconscious and just staying jacked in. . . . People

jacked in so they could hustle. Put the trodes on and they were out there, all the data in the

world stacked up like one big neon city, so you could cruise around and have a kind of grip on it,

visually anyway, because if you didn't, it was too complicated, trying to find your way to a

particular piece of data you needed. Iconics, Gentry called that.

»He paying the Kid?«

»Yeah,« she said.

»What for?«

»Keep him that way. Hide him out, too.«

»Who from?«

»Don't know. Didn't say.«

In the silence that followed, he could hear the steady rasp of the man's breath.

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Malibu

There was a smell in the house; it had always been there.

It belonged to time and the salt air and the entropic nature of expensive houses built too

close to the sea. Perhaps it was also peculiar to places briefly but frequently uninhabited,

houses opened and closed as their restless residents arrived and departed. She imagined the rooms

empty, flecks of corrosion blossoming silently on chrome, pale molds taking hold in obscure

corners. The architects, as if in recognition of eternal processes, had encouraged a degree of

rust; massive steel railings along the deck had been eaten wrist-thin by years of spray.

The house crouched, like its neighbors, on fragments of ruined foundations, and her walks

along the beach sometimes involved attempts at archaeological fantasy. She tried to imagine a past

for the place, other houses, other voices. She was accompanied, on these walks, by an armed

remote, a tiny Dornier helicopter that rose from its unseen rooftop nest when she stepped down

from the deck. It could hover almost silently, and was programmed to avoid her line of sight.

There was something wistful about the way it followed her, as though it were an expensive but

unappreciated Christmas gift.

She knew that Hilton Swift was watching through the Dornier's cameras. Little that

occurred in the beach house escaped Sense/Net; her solitude, the week alone she'd demanded, was

under constant surveillance.

Her years in the profession had conveyed a singular immunity to observation.

At night she sometimes lit the floods mounted beneath the deck, illuminating the hieroglyphic

antics of huge gray sandfleas. The deck itself she left in darkness, and the sunken living room

behind her. She sat on a chair of plain white plastic, watching the Brownian dance of the fleas.

In the glare of the floods, they cast minute, barely visible shadows, fleeting cusps against the

sand.

The sound of the sea wrapped her in its movement. Late at night, as she slept in the

smaller of the two guest bedrooms, it worked its way into her dreams. But never into the stranger

's invading memories.

The choice of bedrooms was instinctive. The master bedroom was mined with the triggers of

old pain.

The doctors at the clinic had used chemical pliers to pry the addiction away from receptor

sites in her brain.

She cooked for herself in the white kitchen, thawing bread in the microwave, dumping packets of

dehydrated Swiss soup into spotless steel pans, edging dully into the nameless but increasingly

familiar space from which she'd been so subtly insulated by the designer 's dust.

»It's called life,« she said to the white counter. And what would Sense/Net's in-house

psychs make of that, she wondered, if some hidden microphone caught it and carried it to them? She

stirred the soup with a slender stainless whisk, watching steam rise. It helped to do things, she

thought, just to do things yourself; at the clinic, they'd insisted she make her own bed. Now she

spooned out her own bowl of soup, frowning, remembering the clinic.

She'd checked herself out a week into the treatment. The medics protested. The detoxification had

gone beautifully, they said, but the therapy hadn't begun. They pointed out the rate of relapse

among clients who failed to complete the program. They explained that her insurance was invalid if

she terminated her treatment. Sense/Net would pay, she told them, unless they preferred she pay

them herself. She produced her platinum MitsuBank chip.

Her Lear arrived an hour later; she told it to take her to LAX, ordered a car to meet her

there, and canceled all incoming calls.

»I'm sorry, Angela,« the jet said, banking over Montego Bay seconds after they'd taken

off, »but I have Hilton Swift on executive override.«

»Angie,« Swift said, »you know I'm behind you all the way. You know that, Angie.«

She turned to stare at the black oval of the speaker. It was centered in smooth gray

plastic, and she imagined him crouching back there, his long runner's legs folded painfully,

grotesquely, behind the Lear's bulkhead.

»I know that, Hilton,« she said. »It's nice of you to phone.«

»You're going to L.A., Angie.«

»Yes. That's what I told the plane.«

»To Malibu.«

»That's right.«

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»Piper Hill is on her way to the airport.«

»Thank you, Hilton, but I don't want Piper there. I don't want anybody. I want a car.«

»There's no one at the house, Angie.«

»Good. That's what I want, Hilton. No one at the house. The house, empty.«

»Are you certain that's a good idea?«

»It's the best idea I've had in a long time, Hilton.«

There was a pause. »They said it went really well, Angie, the treatment. But they wanted

you to stay.«

»I need a week,« she said. »One week. Seven days. Alone.«

After her third night in the house, she woke at dawn, made coffee, dressed. Condensation stippled

the broad window facing the deck. Sleep had been simply that; if dreams had come, she couldn't

recall them. But there was something -- a quickening, almost a giddiness. She stood in the

kitchen, feeling the cold of the ceramic floor through thick white sweatsocks, both hands around

the warm cup.

Something there. She extended her arms, raising the coffee like a chalice, the gesture at

once instinctive and ironic.

It had been three years since the loa had ridden her, three years since they had touched

her at all. But now?

Legba? One of the others?

The sense of a presence receded abruptly. She put the cup down on the counter too quickly,

coffee slopping over her hand, and ran to find shoes and a coat. Green rubber boots from the beach

closet, and a heavy blue mountain jacket she didn't remember, too large to have been Bobby's. She

hurried out of the house, down the stairs, ignoring the hum of the toy Dornier's prop as it lifted

off behind her like a patient dragonfly. She glanced north, along the jumble of beach houses, the

confusion of rooflines reminding her of a Rio barrio, then turned south, toward the Colony.

The one who came was named Mamman Brigitte, or Grande Brigitte, and while some think her the wife

of Baron Samedi, others name her »most ancient of the dead.«

The dream architecture of the Colony rose to Angie's left, a riot of form and ego. Frail-

looking neon-embedded replicas of the Watts Towers lifted beside neo-Brutalist bunkers faced with

bronze bas-reliefs.

Walls of mirror, as she passed, reflected morning banks of Pacific cloud.

There had been times, during the past three years, when she had felt as though she were

about to cross, or recross, a line, a subtle border of faith, to find that her time with the loa

had been a dream, or, at most, that they were contagious knots of cultural resonance remaining

from the weeks she'd spent in Beauvoir 's New Jersey oumphor. To see with other eyes: no gods, no

Horsemen.

She walked on, comforted by the surf, by the one perpetual moment of beach-time, the now-

and-always of it.

Her father was dead, seven years dead, and the record he'd kept of his life had told her

little enough. That he'd served someone or something, that his reward had been knowledge, and that

she had been his sacrifice.

Sometimes she felt as though she'd had three lives, each walled away from the others by

something she couldn't name, and no hope of wholeness, ever.

There were the child's memories of the Maas arcology, carved into the summit of an Arizona

mesa, where she'd hugged a sandstone balustrade, face into the wind, and felt as though the whole

hollowed tableland was her ship, that she could steer out into those sunset colors beyond the

mountains. Later, she'd flown away from there, her fear a hard thing in her throat. She could no

longer recall her last glimpse of her father's face. Though it must have been on the microlight

deck, the other planes tethered against the wind, a row of rainbow moths. The first life ended,

that night; her father's life had ended too.

Her second life had been a short one, fast and very strange. A man called Turner had taken

her away, out of Arizona, and had left her with Bobby and Beauvoir and the others. She remembered

little about Turner, only that he was tall, with hard muscles and a hunted look. He'd taken her to

New York. Then Beauvoir had taken her, along with Bobby, to New Jersey. There, on the fifty-third

level of a mincome structure, Beauvoir had taught her about her dreams. The dreams are real, he'd

said, his brown face shining with sweat. He taught her the names of the ones she'd seen in dreams.

He taught her that all dreams reach down to a common sea, and he showed her the way in which hers

were different and the same. You alone sail the old sea and the new , he said.

She was ridden by gods, in New Jersey.

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She learned to abandon herself to the Horsemen. She saw the loa Linglessou enter Beauvoir

in the oumphor, saw his feet scatter the diagrams outlined in white flour. She knew the gods, in

New Jersey, and love.

The loa had guided her, when she'd set out with Bobby to build her third, her current

life. They were well matched, Angie and Bobby, born out of vacuums, Angie from the clean blank

kingdom of Maas Biolabs and Bobby from the boredom of Barrytown. . . .

Grande Brigitte touched her, without warning; she stumbled, almost fell to her knees in the surf,

as the sound of the sea was sucked away into the twilit landscape that opened in front of her. The

whitewashed cemetery walls, the gravestones, the willows. The candles.

Beneath the oldest willow, a multitude of candles, the twisted roots pale with wax.

Child , know me .

And Angie felt her there, all at once, and knew her for what she was, Mamman Brigitte,

Mademoiselle Brigitte, eldest of the dead.

I have no cult , child , no special altar .

She found herself walking forward, into candleglow, a buzzing in her ears, as though the

willow hid a vast hive of bees.

My blood is vengeance .

Angie remembered Bermuda, night, a hurricane; she and Bobby had ventured out into the eye.

Grande Brigitte was like that. The silence, the sense of pressure, of unthinkable forces held

momentarily in check. There was nothing to be seen, beneath the willow. Only the candles.

»The loa . . . I can't call them. I felt something . . . I came looking. . . .«

You are summoned to my reposoir. Hear me . Your father drew vŽvŽs in your head: he drew

them in a flesh that was not flesh . You were consecrated to Ezili Freda. Legba led you into the

world to serve his own ends. But you were sent poison , child , a coup-poudre . . .

Her nose began to bleed. »Poison?«

Your father 's vŽvŽs are altered , partially erased , redrawn. Though you have ceased

to poison yourself , still the Horsemen cannot reach you . I am of a different order.

There was a terrible pain in her head, blood pounding in her temples. . . . »Please . . .«

Hear me . You have enemies . They plot against you . Much is at stake , in this. Fear

poison , child!

She looked down at her hands. The blood was bright and real. The buzzing sound grew

louder. Perhaps it was in her head. »Please! Help me! Explain . . .«

You cannot remain here . It is death .

And Angie fell to her knees in the sand, the sound of the surf crashing around her,

dazzled by the sun. The Dornier was hovering nervously in front of her, two meters away. The pain

receded instantly. She wiped her bloodied hands on the sleeves of the blue jacket. The remote's

cluster of cameras whirred and rotated.

»It's all right,« she managed. »A nosebleed. It's only a nosebleed. . . .« The Dornier

darted forward, then back. »I'm going back to the house now. I'm fine.« It rose smoothly out of

sight.

Angie hugged herself, shaking. No , don 't let them see . They 'll know something

happened , but not what . She forced herself to her feet, turned, began to trudge back up the

beach, the way she'd come. As she walked, she searched the mountain jacket's pockets for a tissue,

anything, something to wipe the blood from her face.

When her fingers found the corners of the flat little packet, she knew instantly what it

was. She halted, shivering. The drug. It wasn't possible. Yes, it was. But who? She turned and

stared at the Dornier until it slid away.

The packet. Enough for a month.

Coup-poudre .

Fear poison, child.

Squat

Mona dreamed she was dancing the cage back in some Cleveland juke, naked in a column of hot blue

light, where the faces thrusting up for her through the veil of smoke had blue light snagged in

the whites of their eyes. They wore the expression men always wore when they watched you dance,

staring real hard but locked up inside themselves at the same time, so their eyes told you nothing

at all and their faces, in spite of the sweat, might have been carved from something that only

looked like flesh.

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Not that she cared how they looked, when she was in the cage, high and hot and on the

beat, three songs into the set and the wiz just starting to peak, new strength in her legs sending

her up on the balls of her feet . . .

One of them grabbed her ankle.

She tried to scream, only it wouldn't come, not at first, and when it did it was like

something ripped down inside her, hurt her, and the blue light shredded, but the hand, the hand

was still there, around her ankle. She came up off the bed like a pop-up toy, fighting the dark,

clawing hair away from her eyes.

»Whatsa matter, babe?«

He put his other hand against her forehead and shoved her back, down into the pillow's hot

depression.

»Dream . . .« The hand was still there and it made her want to scream. »You got a

cigarette, Eddy?« The hand went away, click and flare of the lighter, the planes of his face

jumping out at her as he lit one, handed it to her. She sat up quickly, drew her knees up under

her chin with the army blanket over them like a tent, because she didn't feel like anybody

touching her then at all.

The scavenged plastic chair's broken leg made a warning sound as he leaned back and lit

his own cigarette. Break , she thought, pitch him on his ass so he gets to hit me a few times . At

least it was dark, so she didn't have to look at the squat. Worst thing was waking up with a bad

head, too sick to move, when she'd come in crashing and forgotten to retape the black plastic,

hard sun to show her all the little details and heat the air so the flies could get going.

Nobody ever grabbed her, back in Cleveland; anybody numb enough to reach through that

field was already too drunk to move, maybe to breathe. The tricks never grabbed her either, not

unless they'd squared it with Eddy, paid extra, and that was just pretend.

Whichever way they wanted it, it got to be a kind of ritual, so it seemed to happen in a

place outside your life. And she'd gotten into watching them, when they lost it. That was the

interesting part, because they really did lose it, they were totally helpless, maybe just for a

split second, but it was like they weren't even there.

»Eddy, I'm gonna go crazy, I gotta sleep here anymore.«

He'd hit her before, for less, so she put her face down, against her knees and the

blanket, and waited.

»Sure,« he said, »you wanna go back to the catfish farm? Wanna go back to Cleveland?«

»I just can't make this anymore. . . .«

»Tomorrow.«

»Tomorrow what?«

»That soon enough for you? Tomorrow night, private fucking jet? Straight up to New York?

Then you gonna quit giving me this shit?«

»Please, baby,« and she reached out for him, »we can take the train. . . .«

He slapped her hand away. »You got shit for brains.«

If she complained any more, anything about the squat, anything that implied he wasn't

making it, that all his big deals added up to nothing, he'd start, she knew he'd start. Like the

time she'd screamed about the bugs, the roaches they called palmetto bugs, but it was because the

goddamn things were mutants, half of them; someone had tried to wipe them out with something that

fucked with their DNA, so you'd see these screwed-up roaches dying with too many legs or heads, or

not enough, and once she'd seen one that looked like it had swallowed a crucifix or something, its

back or shell or whatever it was distorted in a way that made her want to puke.

»Baby,« she said, trying to soften her voice, »I can't help it, this place is just getting

to me. . . .«

»Hooky Green's,« he said, like he hadn't heard her, »I was up in Hooky Green's and I met a

mover . He picked me out , you know? Man's got an eye for talent.« She could almost feel his grin

through the dark. »Outa London, England. Talent scout. Come into Hooky's and it was just 'You, my

man!' «

»A trick?« Hooky Green's was where Eddy had most recently decided the action was, thirty-

third floor of a glass highstack with most of the inside walls knocked down, had about a block of

dancefloor, but he'd gone off the place when nobody there was willing to pay him much attention.

Mona hadn't ever seen Hooky himself, »lean mean Hooky Green,« the retired ballplayer who owned the

place, but it was great for dancing.

»Will you fucking listen? Trick? Shit . He's the man , he's a connection, he's on the

ladder and he's gonna pull me up. And you know what? I'm gonna take you with me.«

»But what's he want?«

»An actress. Sort of an actress. And a smart boy to get her in place and keep her there.«

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William Gibson - Mona Lisa Overdrive

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