You packed this?
Yes, Chia said, not sounding nearly as certain this time.
The helmet bobbed.
Next, he said.
Chia went to the other end of the machine and collected her bag and the black suitcase,
Through another sliding wall of frosted glass: she was in a larger hall, beneath a higher ceiling, bigger ads overhead but no thinning of the crowd, Maybe this wasnt so much a matter of crowds as it was of Tokyo, maybe of Japan in generaclass="underline" more people, closer together.
More of those robot baggage carts. She wondered what it cost to rent one. You could lie down on top of your luggage, maybe, tell it where you wanted to go, and then just go to sleep. Except she wasnt sure she felt sleepy, exactly. She transferred Maryalices bag from her left to her right hand, wondering what to do with it if she didnt find Maryalice inside the next, say, five minutes. Shed had enough of airports and the space between them, and she wasnt even sure where she was supposed to sleep tonight. Or if it was night, even.
She was looking up, hoping to find some kind of time display, when a hand closed around her right wrist. She looked down at the hand, saw gold rings and a watch to match, fat links of a gold bracelet, the rings connected to the watch with little gold chains.
Thats my suitcase.
Chias eyes followed the hands wrist to a length of bright white cuff, then up the arm of a black jacket. To pale eyes in a long face, each cheek seamed vertically, as if with a modelling instrument. For a second she took him for her Music Master, loose somehow in this airport. But her Music Master would never wear a watch like that, and this ones hair, a darker blond, was swept back, long and wetlooking, from his high forehead. He didnt look happy.
Maryalices suitcase, Chia said.
She gave it to you? In Seattle?
She asked me to carry it.
From Seattle?
No, Chia said. Back there. She sat beside me on the plane.
Where is she?
I dont know, Chia said.
He wore a black, long-coated suit, buttoned high. Like something from an old movie, but new and expensive-looking. He seemed to notice that he was still holding her wrist; now he let it go.
Ill carry it for you, he said. Well find her.
Chia didnt know what to do. Maryalice wanted me to carry it.
You did. Now Ill carry it. He took it from her.
Are you Maryalices boyfriend? Eddie? The corner of his mouth twitched.
You could say that, he said.
Eddies car was a Daihatsu Graceland with the steering wheel on the wrong side. Chia knew that because Rez had ridden in the back of one in a video, except that that one had had a bath in it, black marble, big gold faucets shaped like tropical fish. People had posted that that was an ironic take on money, on the really ugly things you could do with it if you had too much. Chia had told her mother about that. Her mother said there wasnt much point in worrying what you might do if you had too much, because most people never even had enough. She said it was better to try to figure out what enough actually meant.
But Eddie had one, a Graceland, all black and chrome. From the outside it looked sort of like a cross between an RV and one of those long, wedge-shaped Hummer limousines. Chia couldnt imagine thered be much of a Japanese market; the cars here all looked like little candy-colored lozenges. The Graceland was meshback pure and simple, designed to sell to the kind of American who made a point of trying not to buy imports. Which, when it came to cars, def initely narrowed your options. (Hester Chens mother had one of those really ugly Canadian trucks that cost a fortune but were guaranteed to last for eighty-five years; that was supposed to be better for the ecology.)
Inside, the Graceland was all burgundy velour, puffed up in diamonds, with little chrome nubs where the points of the diamonds met. It was about the tackiest thing Chia had ever seen, and she guessed Maryalice thought so too, because Maryalice, seated next to her, was explaining that it was an image thing, that Eddie had this very hot, very popular country-music club called Whiskey Clone, so hed gotten the Graceland to go with that, and hed also started dressing the way they did in Nashville. Maryalice thought that look suited him, she said.
Chia nodded. Eddie was driving, talking in Japanese on a speakerphone. Theyd found Maryalice at a tiny little bar, just off the arrivals area. It was the third one theyd looked in, Chia got the feeling that Eddie wasnt very happy to see Maryalice, but Maryalice hadnt seemed to care.
It was Maryalices idea that they give Chia a ride into Tokyo. She said the train was too crowded and it cost a lot anyway. She said she wanted to do Chia a favor, because Chia had carried her bag for her. (Chia had noticed that Eddie had put one bag in the Gracelands trunk, but kept the one with the Nissan County sticker up front, next to him, beside the drivers seat.)
Chia wasnt really listening to Maryalice now; it was some time at night and the jet lag was too weird and they were on this big bridge that seemed to be made out of neon, with however many lanes of traffic around them, the little cars like strings of bright beads, all of them shiny and new. There were screens that kept blurring past, tall and narrow, with Japanese writing jumping around on some of them, and people on others, faces, smiling as they sold something.
And then a womans face: Rei Toei, the idoru Rez wanted to marry. And gone.
9. Out of Control
Rice Daniels, Mr. Laney. Out of control. Pressing a card of some kind to the opposite side of the scratched plastic that walled the room called Visitors away from those who gave it its name. Laney had tried to read it, but the attempt at focusing had driven an atrocious spike of pain between his eyes. Hed looked at Rice Daniels instead, through tears of pain: close-cropped dark hair, close-fitting sunglasses with small oval lenses, the black frames gripping the mans head like some kind of surgical clamp.
Nothing at all about Rice Daniels appeared to be out of control.
The series, he said. Out of Control. As in: arent the media? Out of Controclass="underline" the cutting edge of counter-investigative journalism.
Laney had gingerly tried touching the tape across the bridge of his nose: a mistake. Counter-investigative?
Youre a quant, Mr. Laney. A quantitative analyst. He wasnt, really, but that was technically his job description, For Slitscan.
Laney didnt respond.
The girl was the focus of intensive surveillance. Slitscan was all over her. You know why. We believe a case can be made here for Slitscans culpability in the death of Alison Shires.
Laney looked down at his running shoes, their laces removed by the Deputies. She killed herself, he said.
But we know why.
No, Laney said, meeting the black ovals again, I dont, Not exactly. The nodal point. Protocols of some other realm entirely.
Youre going to need help, Laney. You might be looking at a manslaughter charge. Abetting a suicide. Theyll want to know why you were up there.
Ill tell them why.
Our producers managed to get me in here first, Laney. It wasnt easy. Theres a spin-control team from Slitscan out there now, waiting to talk with you. If you let them, theyll turn it all around. Theyll get you off, because they have to, in order to cover the show. They can do it, with enough money and the right lawyers. But ask yourself this: do you want to let them do it?
Daniels still had his business card thumbed up against the plastic. Trying to focus on it again, Laney saw that someone had scratched something in from the other side, in small, uneven mirror-letters, so that he could read it left to right:
I NO U DIDIT
Ive never heard of Out of Control.
Our hour-long pilot is in production as we speak, Mr. Laney. A measured pause. Were all very excited.