Beside the water bag lay her schoolwork, represented by a three-ring binder suffering the indignities of artificial bit-rot, its wire-frame cover festered with digital mung. Shed have to reformat that before she started her new school, she reminded herself. Too juvenile.
Her Lo/Rez collection, albums, compilations and bootlegs, were displayed as the original cased disks. These were stacked up, as casually as possible, beside the archival material shed managed to assemble since being accepted into the Seattle chapter. This looked, thanks to a fortuitous file-swap with a member in Sweden,
like a lithographed tin lunch box, Rez and Lo peering stunned and fuzzy-eyed from its flat, rectangular lid. The Swedish fan had scanned the artwork from the five printed surfaces of the original, then mapped it over wireframe. The original was probably Nepalese, definitely unlicensed, and Chia appreciated the reverse cachet. Zona Rosa coveted a copy, but so far all shed offered were a set of cheesy tv spots for the fifth Mexico Dome concert. They werent nearly cheesy enough , and Chia wasnt prepared to swap. There was a shadowy Brazilian tour documentary supposed to have been made by a public-access subsidiary of Globo. Chia wanted that , and Mexico was the same direction as Brazil.
She ran a finger down the stacked disks, her hand wireframed, the finger tipped with quivering mercury, and thought about the Rumor. There had been rumors before, there were rumors now, there would always be rumors. There had been the rumor about Lo and that Danish model, that they were going to get married, and that had probably been true, even though they never did. And there were always rumors about Rez and different people. But that was people. The Danish model was people, as much as Chia thought she was a snotbag. The Rumor was something else.
What, exactly, she was on her way to Tokyo to find out.
She selected Lo Rez Skyline .
The virtual Venice her father had sent for her thirteenth birthday looked like an old dusty book with leather covers, the smooth brown leather scuffed in places into a fine suede, the digital equivalent of washing denim in a machine full of golf balls. It lay beside the featureless, textureless gray file that was her copy of the divorce decree and the custody agreement.
She pulled the Venice toward her, opened it. The fish flickered out of phase, her system launching a subroutine.
Venice decompressed.
The Piazza in midwinter monochrome, its facades texturemapped in marble, porphyry, polished granite, jasper, alabaster (the rich mineral names scrolling at will in the menu of peripheral vision). This city of winged lions and golden horses. This default hour of gray and perpetual dawn.
She could be alone here, or visit with the Music Master.
Her father, phoning from Singapore to wish her a happy birthday, had told her that Hitler, during his first and only visit, had slipped away to range the streets alone, in these same small hours, mad perhaps, and trotting like a dog.
Chia, who had only a vague idea who Hitler might have been, and that mainly from references in songs, understood the urge. The stones of the Piazza flowed beneath her like silk, as she raised a silvered finger and sped into the maze of bridges, water, arches, walls.
She had no idea what this place was meant to mean, the how or why of it, but it fit so perfectly into itself and the space it occupied, water and stone slotting faultlessly into the mysterious whole.
The gnarliest piece of software ever, and here came the opening chords of Positron Premonition.
5. Nodal Points
Kathy Torrance looked as though she might be prepared to be pleased. And the fetal tissue, Laney?
Well, Laney said, putting the phones down beside the computer, I think that might be the good part.
Why?
It has to be Iraqi. They make a point of insisting on that. They wont shoot up any other kind.
Youre hired.
I am?
You must have correlated the calls to Ventura with the parking charges from the garage in the Beverly Center. Although that running gag about Gulf War babies wouldve been hard to miss.
Wait a minute, Laney said. You knew.
Its the top segment on Wednesdays show. She closed the computer without bothering to turn off Clint Hillmans detweaked chin. But now Ive had a chance to watch you work, Laney. Youre a natural. I could almost believe there might actually be something to that nodal point bullshit. Some of your moves made no logical sense whatever, but Ive just watched you hone in, cold, on something it took three experienced
researchers a month to excavate. You did it in just under half an hour.
Some of that was illegal, Laney said. Youre tied into parts of DatAmerican that you arent supposed to be.
Do you know what a nondisclosure agreement is, Laney?
Yamazaki looked up from his notebook. Very good, he said, probably to Blackwell. This is very good.
Blackwell shifted his weight, the chairs polycarbon frame creaking faintly in protest. But he didnt last there, did he?