Now, in Death Cube K, he imagined that shed told him that hed never work in that town again, and indeed it seemed he might not. Disloyalty to ones employers being a particularly difficult notch on anyones ticket, and perhaps particularly so, in that town, when the act itself had sprung from what Laney recalled had once been called scruples.
The word itself striking him now as singularly ridiculous.
You smiled. Blackwell staring at him from across the tiny table.
Seratonin depletion.
Food, said Blackwell.
Im not really hungry.
Need to carbo-load, Blackwell said, standing. He took up a remarkable amount of space.
Laney and Yamazaki got to their feet and followed Blackwell down out of Death Cube K, to descend the O My Golly Building itself. Out of roach-light, into the chrome and neon gulch of Roppongi Dori. A reek of putrid fish and fruit even in this chill damp night, though muted somewhat by the baking-sugar sweetness of Chinese gasohol from the vehicles whirring past on the expressway. But there was comfort in the steady voice of traffic, and Laney found it better to be upright, moving.
If he kept moving, perhaps he could puzzle out the meaning of Keith Alan Blackwell and Shinya Yamazaki.
Blackwell leading the way across a pedestrian overpass. Laneys hand brushed an irregularity on the alloy rail. He saw that it was an accidental fold or pucker in a bright little sticker; a bare-breasted girl smiling up at him from a palm-sized silvery hologram. As his angle of vision changed, she seemed to gesture at the telephone number above her head. The railing, end to end, was dressed with these small ads, though there were precise gaps where a few had been peeled away for later perusal.
Blackwells bulk parted the sidewalk crowd on the far side like a freighter through a bobbing stream of pleasure craft. Carbohydrates, he said, over a mountainous shoulder. He steered them down an alley, a narrow maw of colored light, past an all-night veterinary clinic in whose window a pair of white-gowned surgeons were performing an operation on what Laney hoped was a cat. A relaxed little tableau of pedestrians paused here, observing from the pavement.
Blackwell eased himself edgewise into a bright cave, where steam rose from cookers behind a counter of reconstituted granite.
Laney and Yamazaki followed him in, the counterman already ladling out fragrant messes of broth-slick beige to the Australians order.
Laney watched Blackwell raise the bowl to his mouth and apparently inhale the bulk of his noodles, severing them from the remainder with a neat snap of his bright plastic teeth. Muscles in the mans thick neck worked mightily as he swallowed.
Laney stared.
Blackwell wiped his mouth with the back of one vast and pinkly jigsawed hand. He belched. Give us one of those baby tubes of Dry He downed the entire beer in a single swallow, absently crushing the sturdy steel can as though it were a paper cup. Similar,
he said, rattling his bowl for the counterman.
Laney, suddenly ravenous in spite or because of this gluttonous display, gave his attention to his own bowl, where dyed pink slices of mystery meat, thin as paper, basked atop a sargasso of noodles.
Laney ate in silence, as did Yamazaki, Blackwell downing another three beers to no apparent effect. As Laney drank off the remaining broth, and put his bowl down on the counter, he noticed an ad behind the counter for something called Apple Shires Authentic Fine Fruit Beverage. Misreading it initially as Alison Shires, once the object of his scruples.
Taste the wet warm life in Apple Shires, the ad advised.
Alison Shires, glimpsed first as animated headshots, five months into his time at Slitscan, had been a rather ordinarily attractive girl murmuring her stats to imagined casting directors, agents, someone, anyone.
Kathy Torrance had watched his face, as he watched the screen. Babed out yet, Laney? Allergic reaction to cute ? First symptoms are a sort of underlying irritation, a resentment, a vague but persistent feeling that youre being gotten at, taken advantage of
She isnt even as cute as the last two.
Exactly. Shes almost normal-looking. Almost a civilian. Tag her.
Laney looked up. What for?
Tag her. He could get off pretending shes a waitress or something.
You think shes the one?
Youve got another three hundred in there easy, Laney. Picking probables is a start.
At random?
We call it instinct. Tag her.
Laney cursor-clicked, the pale blue arrow resting by chance in the shadowed orbit of the girls lowered eye. Marking her for closer examination as the possible sometime partner of a very publicly married actor, famous in a way that Kathy Torrance understood and approved of. One who must obey the dictates of the food chain. Not too big for Slitscan to swallow. But he or his handlers had so far been very cautious. Or very lucky.
But no more. A rumor had reached Kathy, via one of those back channels she depended on, and now the food chain must have its way.