Stop it, he said.
The projection unit shut itself down at his command; the dreamgirls vanished. The thing had originally belonged to Ling Warrens older brother; the girls hair and clothes were dated and vaguely ridiculous. You could talk with them and get them to do things with themselves and each other. Bobby remembered being thirteen and in love with Brandi, the one with the blue rubber pants. Now he valued the projections mainly for the illusion of space they could provide in the makeshift bedroom.
Something fucking happened, he said, pulling on black jeans and an almost-clean shirt. He shook his head. What? Fucking what? Some kind of power surge on the line? Some flukey action down at the Fission Authority? Maybe the base hed tried to invade had suffered some strange breakdown, or been attacked from another quarter... But he was left with the sense of having met someone, someone who... Hed unconsciously extended his right hand, fingers spread, beseechingly. Fuck, he said. The fingers balled into a fist. Then it came back: first, the sense of the big thing, the really big thing, reaching for him across cyberspace, and then the girl-impression. Someone brown, slender, crouching somewhere in a strange bright dark full of stars and wind. But it slid away as his mind went for it.
Hungry, he got into sandals and headed back toward the kitchen, rubbing at his hair with a damp towel. On his way through the living room, he noticed the ON telltale of the Ono-Sendai glaring at him from the carpet. 0 shit. He stood there and sucked at his teeth. It was still jacked in. Was it possible that it was still linked with the base hed tried to run? Could they tell he wasnt dead? He had no idea. One thing he did know, though, was that theyd have his number and good. He hadnt bothered with the cutouts and frills that wouldve kept them from running a backtrack.
They had his address.
Hunger forgotten, he spun into the bathroom and rooted through the soggy clothing until he found his credit chip.
He had two hundred and ten New Yen stashed in the hollow plastic handle of a multibit screwdriver. Screwdriver and credit chip secure in his jeans, he pulled on his oldest, heaviest pair of boots, then clawed unwashed clothing from beneath the bed. He came up with a black canvas jacket with at least a dozen pockets, one of them a single huge pouch across the small of the back, a kind of integral rucksack. There was a Japanese gravity knife with orange handles beneath his pillow; that went into a narrow pocket on the jackets left sleeve, near the cuff.
The dreamgirls clicked in as he was leaving: Bobby, Bobb-y, come back and play...
In his living room, he yanked the Ono-Sendais jack from the face of the Hitachi, coiling the fiber-optic lead and tucking it into a pocket. He did the same with the trode set, then slid the Ono-Sendai into the jackets pack-pocket.
The curtains were still drawn. He felt a surge of some new exhilaration. He was leaving. He had to leave. Already hed forgotten the pathetic fondness that his brush with death had generated. He parted the curtains carefully, a thumb-wide gap, and peered out.
It was late afternoon. In a few hours, the first lights would start blinking on in the dark bulks of the Projects. Big Playground swept away like a concrete sea; the Projects rose beyond the opposite shore, vast rectilinear structures softened by a random overlay of retrofitted greenhouse balconies, catfish tanks, solar heating systems, and the ubiquitous chicken-wire dishes.
Two-a-Day would be up there now, sleeping, in a world Bobby had never seen, the world of a mincome arcology. Two-a-Day came down to do business, mostly with the hotdoggers in Barrytown, and then he climbed back up. It had always looked good to Bobby, up there, so much happening on the balconies at night, amid red smudges of charcoal, little kids in their underwear swarming like monkeys, so small you could barely see them. Sometimes the wind would shift, and the smell of cooking would settle over Big Playground, and sometimes youd see an ultralight glide out from some secret country of rooftop so high up there. And always the mingled beat from a million speakers,
waves of music that pulsed and faded in and out of the wind.
Two-a-Day never talked about his life, where he lived. Two-a-Day talked biz, or, to be more social, women. What Two-a-Day said about women made Bobby want to get out of Barrytown worse than ever, and Bobby knew that biz would be his only ticket out. But now he needed the dealer in a different way, because now he was entirely out of his depth.
Maybe Two-a-Day could tell him what was happening. There wasnt supposed to be any lethal stuff around that base Two-a-Day had picked it out for him, then rented him the software hed need to get in. And Two-a-Day was ready to fence anything he couldve gotten out with. So Two-a-Day had to know. Know something, anyway.
I dont even have your number, man, he said to the Projects, letting the curtains fall shut. Should he leave some-thing for his mother? A note? My ass, he said to the room behind him, out of here, and then he was out the door and down the hall, headed for the stairs. Forever, he added, kicking open an exit door.