Count Zero
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Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 Next page polished brass buckles hung against the reds and blacks of old rugs. There was a morning rattle to the place, a coughing and a clearing of throats. A blue Toshiba custodial unit whirred out of a corridor, dragging a battered plastic cart stacked with green plastic bales of garbage. Someone had glued a big plastic doll head to the Toshiba's upper body segment, above the clustered camera eyes and sensors, a grinning blue-eyed thing once intended to approximate the features of a leading stimstar without violating Sense/Net copyrights. The pink head, its platinum hair bound up in a length of pale blue plastic pearls, bobbed absurdly as the robot rolled past. Bobby laughed. "This place is okay," he said, and gestured to the girl to refill his cup. "Wait a sec, asshole," the countergirl said, amiably enough. She was measuring ground coffee into a dented steel hopper on one end of an antique balance. "You get any sleep last night, Jackie, after the show?" "Sure," Jackie said, and sipped at her coffee "I danced their second set, then I slept at Jammer's. Hit the couch, you know?" "Wish I'd got some. Every time Henry sees you dance, he won't let me alone ..." She laughed, and refilled Bobby's cup from a black plastic thermos. "Well," Bobby said, when the girl was busy again with the espresso machine, "what fl~~t~" "Busy man, huh?" Jackie regarded him coolly from be- neath the gold-pinned hat brim. "Got places you need to go, people to see?" "Well, no. Shit. I just mean, well, is this it?" "Is what it?" "This place. We're staying here?" "Top floor. Friend of mine named Jammer runs a club up there. Very unlikely anyone could find you there, and even if they do, it's a hard place to sneak up on. Fourteen floors of mostly stalls, and a whole lot of these people sell stuff they don't have out in plain view, right? So they're all very sensitive to strangers turning up, anyone asking questions. And most of them are friends of ours, one way or another Anyway, you'll like it here. Good place for you. Lots to learn, if you remember to keep your mouth shut." "How am I gonna learn if I don't ask questions?" "Well, I mean keep your ears open, more like it. And be polite. Some tough people in here, but you mind your biz, they'll mind theirs. Beauvoir's probably coming by here late this afternoon. Lucas has gone out to the Projects to tell him whatever you learned from the Finn. What did you learn from the Finn, hon?" "That he's got these three dead guys stretched out on his floor. Says they're ninjas." Bobby looked at her. "He's pretty weird . . "Dead guys aren't part of his usual line of goods. But, yeah, he's weird all right. Why don't you tell me about it? Calmly. and in low, measured tones. Think you can do that?" Bobby told her what he could remember of his visit to the Finn. Several times she stopped him, asked questions he usually wasn't able to answer. She nodded when he first mentioned Wigan Ludgate. "Yeah," she said, "Jammer talks about him, when he gets going on the old days. Have to ask him .." At the end of his recitation, she was lounging back against one of the green pillars, the hat very low over her dark eyes. "Well?" he asked "Interesting," she said, but that was all she'd say. "Right," Jackie said, taking in the tight black jeans, the heavy leather boots with spacesuit-style accordion folds at the ankles, the black leather garrison belt trimmed with twin lines of pyrarnidal chrome studs. "Well, I guess you look more like the Count Come on, Count, I got a couch for you to sleep on, up in Jammer's place." He leered at her, thumbs hooked in the front pockets of the black Levis. "Alone," she added, "no fear." "I want some new clothes," Bobby said when they'd climbed the immobile escalator to the second floor. "You got any money?" she asked. "Shit," he said, his hands in the pockets of the baggy, pleated jeans. "I don't have any fucking money, but I want some clothes. You and Lucas and Beauvoir are keeping my ass on ice for something, aren't you? Well, I'm tired of this God-awful shirt Rhea palmed off on me, and these pants always feel like they're about to fall off my ass. And I'm here because Two-a-Day, who's a lowlife fuck, wanted to risk my butt so Lucas and Beauvoir could test their fucking software. So you can fucking well buy me some clothes, okay?" "Okay," she said, after a pause. "I'll tell you what." She pointed to where a Chinese girl in faded denim was furling the sheets of plastic that had fenced a dozen steel-pipe gar- ment racks hung with clothing. "You see Lin, there? She's a friend of mine. You pick out what you want, I'll straighten it out between Lucas and her." Half an hour later, he emerged from a blanket-draped fitting room and put on a pair of Indo-Javanese mirrored aviator glasses. He grinned at Jackie. "Real sharp," he said. "Oh, yeah." She did a thing with her hand, a fanning movement, as though something nearby were too hot to touch. "You didn't like that shirt Rhea loaned you?" He looked down at the black T-shirt he'd chosen, at the square holodecal of cyberspace on his chest. It was done so you seemed to be punching fast-forward through the matrix, grid lines blurring at the edges of the decal. "Yeah. It was too tacky . PACO SLUNG THE Citroen-Dornier down the Champs, along the north bank of the Seine, then up through Les Halles. Marly sank back into the astonishingly soft leather seat, more beau- tifully stitched than her Brussels jacket. and willed her mind to blankness, lack of affect. Be eyes, she told herself. Only eyes, your body a weight pressed evenly back by the speed of this obscenely expensive car. Humming past the Square des Innocents, where whores dickered with the drivers of cargo hovers in bleu de travail, Paco steering effortlessly through the narrow streets. "Why did you say, `Don't do this to me'?" He took his hand from the steering console and tapped his ear-bead into position. "Why were you listening?" "Because that is my job. I sent a woman up, up into the tower opposite his, to the twenty-second floor, with a para- bolic microphone. The phone in the apartment was dead; otherwise, we could have used that. She went up, broke into a vacant unit on the west face of the tower, and aimed her microphone in time to hear you say, `Don't do this to me.' And you were alone?" "Yes." "He was dead?" "Yes." "Why did you say it, then?" "I don't know." "Who did you feel was doing something to you?" "I don't know. Perhaps Alan." "Doing what?" "Being dead? Complicating matters? You tell me." "You are a difficult woman." "Let me out." "I will take you to your friend's apartment . . "Stop the car." "I will take you to" "I'll walk." The low silver car slid up to the curb. "I will call you, in the" "Good night." "You're certain you wouldn't prefer one of the spas?" asked Mr. Paleologos, thin and elegant as a mantis in his white hopsack jacket. His hair was white as well, brushed back from his forehead with extreme care. "It would be less expensive, and a great deal more fun. You're a very pretty girl~ . "Pardon?" Jerking her attention back from the street beyond the rain-streaked window. "A what?" His French was clumsy, enthusiastic, strangely inflected. "A very pretty girl." He smiled primly. "You wouldn't prefer a holiday in a Med cluster? People your own age? Are you Jewish?" "I beg your pardon?" "Jewish. Are you?" "No." "Too bad," he said. "You have the cheekbones of a certain sort of elegant young Jewess ....I' ye a lovely dis- count on fifteen days to Jerusalem Prime, a marvelous envi- ronment for the price. Includes suit rental, three meals per diem, and direct shuttle from the JAL torus." "Suit rental?" "They haven't entirely established atmosphere, in Jerusa- lem Prime," Mr. Paleologos said, shuffling a stack of pink flimsies from one side of his desk to the other. His office was a tiny cubicle walled with hologram views of Poros and Macau. She'd chosen his agency for its evident obscurity, and because it had been possible to slip in without leaving the little commercial complex in the metro station nearest Andrea's. "No" she said, "I'm not interested in spas I want to go here." She tapped the writing on the wrinkled blue wrapper from a pack of Gauloise "Well," he said, "it's possible, of course, but I have no listing of accommodations. Will you be visiting friends?" "A business trip," she said impatiently. "I must leave immediately." "Very well, very well," Mr. Paleologos said, taking a cheap-looking lap terminal from a shelf behind his desk. "Can you give me your credit code, please?" She reached into her black leather bag and took out the thick bundle of New Yen she'd removed from Paco's bag while he'd been busy examining the apartment where Alain had died. The money was fastened with a red band of translu- cent elastic "I wish to pay cash." "Oh, dear," Mr. Paleologos said, extending a pink finger- tip to touch the top bill, as though he expected the lot of it to vanish. "I see. Well, you understand, I wouldn't ordinarily do business this way. . . . But, I suppose, something can be arranged. . "Quickly," she said, "very quickly . . He looked at her. "I understand. Can you tell me, please" his fingers began to move over the keys of the lap terminal "the name under which you wish to travel?" Tuat'iER WOKE TO the silent hous~, the sound of birds in the apple trees in the overgrown orchard. He'd slept on the |
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