Beyond the rooms single window, the sky was stippled with a few wisps of cirrus. Too grim for me, too serious. Like the things you showed at your gallery. But that can only mean that Herr Virek has chosen well; you will solve his mystery for him. If I were you, considering the wage, I might take my own good time about it. Andrea wore Marlys gift, an expensive, beautifully detailed mans dress shirt, in gray Flemish flannel. It was the sort of thing she liked most, and her delight in it was obvious. It set off her pale hair, and was very nearly the color of her eyes.
Hes quite horrible, Virek, I think... Marly hesitated.
Quite likely, Andrea said, taking another sip of coffee. Do you expect anyone that wealthy to be a nice, normal sort?
I felt, at one point, that he wasnt quite human. Felt that very strongly.
But he isnt, Marly. You were talking with a projection, a special effect...
Still... She made a gesture of helplessness, which immediately made her feel annoyed with herself.
Still, he is very, very wealthy, and hes paying you a great deal to do something that you may be uniquely suited to do. Andrea smiled and readjusted a finely turned charcoal cuff. You dont have a great deal of choice, do you?
I know. I suppose thats whats making me uneasy.
Well, Andrea said, I thought I might put off telling you a bit longer, but I have something else that may make you feel uneasy. If uneasy is the word.
Yes?
I considered not telling you at all, but Im sure hell get to you eventually. He smells money, I suppose.
Marly put her empty cup down carefully on the cluttered little rattan table.
Hes quite acute that way, Andrea said.
When?
Yesterday. It began, I think, about an hour after you would have had your interview with Virek. He called me at work. He left a message here, with the concierge. If I were to remove the screen program she gestured toward the phone I think hed ring within thirty minutes.
Remembering the concierges eyes, the ticking of the bicycle chain.
He wants to talk, he said, Andrea said. Only to talk. Do you want to talk with him, Marly?
No, she said, and her voice was a little girls voice, high and ridiculous. Then, Did he leave a number? Andrea sighed, slowly shook her head, and then said, Yes, of course he did.
9 THE PROJECTS
soft,
What a mess, one of the angels said, her voice far off but low and rich and very clear.
We shouldve clipped him out of Leons, the other angel said. They arent gonna like this upstairs.
Mustve had something in this big pocket here, see? They slashed it for him, getting it out.
Not all they slashed, sister. Jesus. Here.
The patterns swung and swam as something moved his head. Cool palm against his cheek.
Dont get any on your shirt, the first angel said.
Two-a-Day aint gonna like this. Why you figure he freaked like that and ran?
It pissed him off, because he wanted to sleep. He was asleep, for sure, but somehow Marshas jack-dreams were bleeding into his head so that he tumbled through broken sequences of People of Importance. The soap had been running continuously since before he was born, the plot a multiheaded narrative tapeworm that coiled back in to devour itself every few months, then sprouted new heads hungry for tension and thrust. He could see it writhing in its totality, the way Marsha could never see it, an elongated spiral of Sense/Net DNA, cheap brittle ectoplasm spun out to uncounted hungry dreamers. Marsha, now, she had it from the POV of Michele Morgan Magnum, the female lead, hereditary corporate head of Magnum AG. But todays episode kept veering weirdly away from Micheles frantically complex romantic entanglements, which Bobby had anyway never bothered to keep track of, and jerking itself into detailed socioarchitectural descriptions of Soleri-style mincome arcologies. Some of the detail, even to Bobby, seemed suspect; he doubted, for in-stance, that there really were entire levels devoted to the sale of ice-blue shaved-velour lounge suites with diamond-buckled knees, or that there were other levels, perpetually dark, inhabited exclusively by starving babies. This last, he seemed to recall, had been an article of faith to Marsha, who regarded the Projects with superstitious horror, as though they were some looming vertical hell to which she might one day be forced to ascend. Other segments of the jack-dream reminded him of the Knowledge channel Sense/Net piped in free with every stim subscription; there were elaborate animated diagrams of the Projects interior structure, and droning lectures in voice-over on the life-styles of various types of residents. These, when he was able to focus on them, seemed even less convincing than the flashes of ice-blue velour and feral babies creeping silently through the dark. He watched a cheerful young mother slice pizza with a huge industrial waterknife in the kitchen corner of a spotless one-room An entire wall opened onto a shallow balcony and a rectangle of cartoon-blue sky. The woman was black without being black, it seemed to Bobby, like a very, very dark and youthfully maternal version of one of the porno dolls on the unit in his bedroom. And had, it looked like, the identical small but cartoon-perfect breasts. (At this point, to add to his dull confusion, an astonishingly loud and very unNet voice said, Now I call that a definite sign of life, Jackie. If the prognosis aint lookin up yet, at least somethin is.) And then went spinning back into the all-glitz universe of Michele Morgan Magnum, who was desperately struggling to prevent Magnum AGs takeover by the sinister Shikoku-based Nakamura industrial clan, represented in this case by (plot complication) Micheles main squeeze for the season, wealthy (but somehow grindingly in need of additional billions) New Soviet boy-politician Vasily Suslov, who looked and dressed remarkably like the Gothicks in Leons.