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Chia nodded. Her stomach did that cold flip-thing again. She thought she might
throw up.
Gomi Boy leaned sideways with his cigarette, which was short now, and mashed
the lit end into a little chrome bowl that was fastened to the side of a game
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console. Chia wondered what this was actually used for, and why he did that,
but she supposed he had to put it somewhere or it would burn his fingers. "The
Graceland parked near the restaurant. Two men got out .
"What did they look like?'
"Gumi representatives."
"Japanese?"
"Yes. They went into the restaurant. The Graceland waited. After fifteen
minutes, they returned, got into the Graceland, and left. Masahiko's father
appeared. He looked in all directions, studying the street. He took his phone
from his pocket and spoke with someone.
168 William Gibson
He went back into the restaurant." Gomi Boy looked at the carry-bag. "I did
not want to remain in the recreation area with Masahiko's computer. I told the
leader of the Overbombers I would give him a better telephone, later, if he
would remain there and phone me if more activity occurred.
The Overbombers do nothing anyway, so he agreed. I left. He phoned twenty
minutes later to report a gray Honda van. The driver is Japanese, but the
other three are foreigners. He thinks they are
Russian."
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"Why?"
"Because they are very large, and dress in a style he associates with the
Combine. They are still there."
"How do you know?"
"If they leave, he must call me. He wants his new phone."
"Can I port from here? I have to talk to Air Magellan right away about
changing my reservations. I
want to go home," And leave Maryalice's package in that trash cannister she
could see behind Gomi
Boy.
"You must not port," Masahiko said. "You must not use the cash-card. If you
do, they will find you."
"But what else am I supposed to do?" she said, startled by her own voice,
which sounded like someone else's. "I just want to go home!"
"Let me see the card," Gomi Boy said. It was in her parka, with her passport
and her ticket home.
She took it out and handed it to him. He opened a pocket on his fatigue pants
and took out a small rectangular device that seemed to be held together with
multiple layers of fraying silver tape. He swiped Chia's card along a slot and
peered into a peephole reader like the one on a fax-beeper.
"This is nontransferable and cannot be used to obtain cash. It is also very
easy to trace."
"My friend's pretty sure they've got the number anyway," Chia said, thinking
of Zona.
Gomi Boy began to tap the edge of the cashcard on the rim of his can of Pocari
Swear. 'There is a place where you can use this and not be traced," he said,
Tap tap. "Where Masahiko could access Walled City." Tap tap. "Where you could
phone home."
"Where's that?"
"A love hotel." Tap. "Do you know what that is?"
"No," Chia said. Tap.
160 William Gibson
Emerging from Le Chicle's pink mosaic gullet into the start of rain, Laney saw
that the stilt-
walking New Logic disciple was still at his post, his animated sandwich-board
illuminated against the evening. As Blackwell held the door of a mini-limo for
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Arleigh, Laney looked back at the scrolling numerals and wondered how much the
planet's combined weight of human nervous tissue had increased while they'd
been in the bar.
Laney got in after her, noticing those Catalan suns again, the three of them,
decreasing in size down her inner calf. Blackwell thunked the door behind him,
then opened the front, should've-beeri driver's side door and seemed to pour
himself into the car, a movement that simultaneously suggested the sliding of
a ball of mercury and the settling of hundreds of pounds of liquid concrete.
The car waddled and swayed as its shocks adjusted to accommodate his weight.
Laney saw how the brim of Blackwell's black-waxed hat drooped low in back, but
not far enough to conceal a crisscrossing of fine red welts decorating the
back of his neck, Their driver, to judge by the back of his head, might have
been the same one who'd driven them to
Akihabara. He pulled out into the mirror-image traffic. The rain was running
and pooling, tugging reflected neon out of the perpendicular and spreading it
in wriggly lines across sidewalk and pavement.
Arleigh McCrae was wearing perfume, and it made Laney wish
2
161
23. Here at the Western World that Blackwell wasn't there, and that they
were on their way somewhere other than wherever it was
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going now, and in another city, and that quite a lot of the last seven months
of Laney's life hadn't happened at all, or had happened differently, or maybe
even as far back as DatAmerica and the Frenchmen, but as it became more
complicated, it became depressing.
"I'm not sure you're going to enjoy this place," she said.
"How's that?"
"You don't seem like the type."
"Why not?"
"I could be wrong. Lots of people do enjoy it. I suppose if you take it as a
very elaborate joke
"What is it?"
"A club. Restaurant. An environment. If we turned up there without Blackwell,
I doubt they'd let us in. Or even admit it's there."
Laney was remembering the Japanese restaurant in Brentwood, the one Kathy
Torrance had taken him to. Not Japanese Japanese. Owned and operated. Its
theme an imaginary Eastern European country.
Decorated with folk art from that country, and everyone who worked there wore
native garb from that country, or else a sort of metallic-gray prison outfit
and these big black shoes. The men who worked there all had these haircuts,
shaved high on the sides, and the women had big double braids, rolled up like
wheels of cheese. Laney's entrée had had all kinds of different little
sausages in it, the smallest he'd ever seen, and some kind of pickled cabbage
on the side, and it hadn't tasted like it had come from anywhere in
particular, but maybe that was the point. And then they'd gone back to her
apartment, decorated like a sort of deluxe version of the Cage at
Slitscan. And that hadn't worked out either, and sometimes he wondered whether
that had made her even angrier, when he'd gone over to Out of Control.
"Laney?"
"Sorry This place-Rez likes it?"
162 William Gibson
Past ambient forests of black umbrellas, waiting to cross at an intersection.
"I think he just likes to brood there," she said.
The Western World occupied the top two floors of an office building that
hadn't quite survived the quake. Yamazaki might have said that it represented
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