Boss looks happy, the man said, sounding no more Japanese than Maryalice. He took a sip from his thermos cup.
Yeah, Maryalice said, Hes so glad to see me, hes beside himself.
This too will pass. Another sip. Looking at Chia from beneath the bill of the meshback. The letters in Whiskey Clone were the kind theyd use in a mall when they wanted you to think a place was traditional.
This is Chia, Maryalice said. Met her in SeaTac, and Chia noticed that she hadnt said shed met her on the plane. Which made her remember that business with the DNA sampling and the hair-extensions.
Glad to hear its still there, the man said. Means theres some way back out of this batshit.
Now, Calvin, Maryalice said, you know you love Tokyo.
Sure. Had a place in Redmond had a bathroom the size of the whole apartment I got here, and it wasnt even a big bathroom. I mean, it had a shower. No tub or anything.
Chia looked at the screens behind him. Lots of people there, but she couldnt tell what they were doing.
Looks like a good night, Maryalice said, surveying the screens.
Just fair, he said. Fair to middling.
Quit talking like that, Maryalice said. Youll have me doing it.
Calvin grinned. But youre a good old girl, arent you, Mary-alice?
Please, Chia said, may I use a dataport?
Theres one in Eddies office, Maryalice said. But hes probably on the phone now. Why dont you go in the washroom there, indicating another door, closed, and have a wash. Youre looking a little blurry. Then Eddiell be done and you can call your friend.
The washroom had an old steel sink and a very new, very complicated-looking toilet with at least a dozen buttons on top of the tank. These were labeled in Japanese. The polymer seat squirmed slightly, taking her weight, and she almost jumped up again. Its okay, she reassured herself, just foreign technology. When she was done, she chose one of the controls at random, producing a superfine spray of warm, perfumed water that made her gasp and jump back.
She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, then stood well to the side and tried another button. This one seemed to do the trick: the toilet flushed with a jetstream sound that reminded him of being on the plane.
As she washed her hands, and then her face, at the reassuringly ordinary sink, using pale blue liquid soap from a pump-top dispenser shaped like a one-eyed dinosaur, she heard the flushing stop and another sound begin. She looked back and saw a ring of purplish light oscillating, somewhere below the toilet seat. UV, she supposed, sterilizing it.
There was a poster of the Dukes of Nuke Em taped on the wall, this hideous roidhead metal band. They were sweaty and blank-eyed, grinning, and the drummer was missing his front teeth. The lettering was in Japanese. She wondered why anyone in Japan would be into that, because groups like the Dukes were all about hating anything that wasnt their idea of American. But Kelsey, whod been to Japan lots, with her father, had said that you couldnt tell what the Japanese would make of anything.
There wasnt anything here to dry your hands on. She got a t-shirt out of her bag and used that, although it didnt work very well. As she was kneeling to stuff the shirt back in, she noticed a corner of something she didnt recognize, but then Calvin cracked the door behind her.
Excuse me, he said.
Its okay, Chia said, zipping the bag shut.
Its not, he said, looking back over his shoulder, then back at her. You really meet Maryalice at SeaTac?
On the plane, Chia said.
Youre not part of it?
Chia stood up, which made her feel kind of dizzy. Part of what?
He looked at her from beneath the brim of the black cap. Then you really ought to get out of here. I mean right now.
Why? Chia asked, although it didnt strike her as a bad idea at all.
Nothing you want to know anything about. There was a crash, somewhere behind him. He winced. Its okay. Shes just throwing things.They havent gotten serious yet. Come on,and he grabbed her bag by the shoulder strap and lifted it up. He was moving fast now, and she had to hustle to keep up with him. Out past the closed door of Eddies office, past the bank of screens (where she thought she saw people line-dancing in cowboy hats, but she was never sure).
Calvin slapped his hand on the sensor-plate on the elevator door. Take you to the garage, he said, as the sound of breaking glass came from Eddies office. Hang a left, about twenty feet, theres another elevator. Skip the lobby; we got cameras there. Bottom button gets you the subway. Get on a train. He passed her her bag.
Which one? Chia asked.
Maryalice screamed. Like something really, really hurt.
Doesnt matter, Calvin said, and quickly said something in Japanese to the elevator. The elevator answered, but he was already gone, the door closing, and then she was descending, her bag seeming to lighten slightly in her arms.
Eddies Graceland was still there when the door slid open, a hulking wedge beside those other black can. She found the second elevator Calvin had told her to take, its door scratched and dented. It had regular buttons, and it didnt talk, and it took her down to malls bright as day, crowds moving through them, to escalators and platforms and mag-levs and the eternal logos tethered overhead.
She was in Tokyo at last,
11. Collapse of New Buildings
Laneys room was high up in a narrow tower faced with white ceramic tile. It was trapezoidal in cross section and dated from the eighties boomtown, the years of the Bubble. That it had survived the great earthquake was testimony to the skill of its engineers; that it had survived the subsequent reconstruction testified to an arcane tangle of ownership and an ongoing struggle between two of the citys oldest criminal organizations. Yamazaki had explained this in the cab, returning from New Golden Street.
We were uncertain how you might feel about new buildings, hed said.
You mean the nanotech buildings? Laney had been struggling to keep his eyes open. The driver wore spotless white gloves.
Yes. Some people find them disturbing.
I dont know. Id have to see one.
You can see them from your hotel, I think.
And he could. He knew their sheer brutality of scale from constructs, but virtuality had failed to convey the peculiarity of their apparent texture, a streamlined organicism. They are like Gigers paintings of New York, Yamazaki had said, but the reference had been lost on Laney.
Now he sat on the edge of his bed, staring blankly out at these miracles of the new technology, as banal and as sinister as such miracles usually were, and they were only annoying: the worlds largest inhabited structures. (The Chernobyl containment structure was larger, but nothing human would ever live there.)
The umbrella Yamazaki had given him was collapsing into itself, shrinking. Going away.
The phone began to ring. He couldnt find it.
Telephone, he said. Where is it?
A nub of ruby light, timed to the rings, began to pulse from a flat rectangle of white cedar arranged on a square black tray on a bedside ledge. He picked it up. Thumbed a tiny square of mother-of-pearl.
Hey, someone said. That Laney?
Whos calling?
Rydell. From the Chateau. Hans let me use the phone. Hans was the night manager. I get the time right? You having breakfast?
Laney rubbed his eyes, looked out again at the new buildings. Sure.
I called Yamazaki, Rydell said. Got your number.
Thanks, Laney said, yawning, but I
Yamazaki said you got the gig.
I think so, Laney said. Thanks. Guess I owe
Slitscan, Rydell said. All over the Chateau,
No, Laney said, thats over.
You know any Katherine Torrance, Laney? Sherman Oaks address? Shes up in the suite you had, with about two vans worth of sensing gear. Hans figures theyre trying to get a read on what you were doing up there, any dope or anything.