"What's this apartment Dresden was talking about?"
"We maintain a number of anonymous apartments throughout the city for the use of our people when they need to blend in with the native population. You're going to stay in one of them until your situation has been rationalized."
"Rationalized?"
"You'll be briefed when the time comes."
"And who'll do the briefing?"
Klein almost smiled.
"Superior Dresden."
Gibson's face fell.
"Oh, shit."
"Maybe that'll teach you to put a curb on your mouth."
They turned right at a point where a formidable chain-link and razor-wire fence cut off access to the rest of the area. Gibson couldn't read the red-and-white signs that were posted at regular intervals along the fence, as the text seemed to be in the same alien script that he had seen on the keyboard of the Cadillac's computer, but the red lightning bolts on each sign made the message pretty clear-the fence was electrified. Through it he could see figures, both tan and dark blue, moving around among rows of bulky, tarpaulin-shrouded shapes. For what was supposed to be a covert organization, the streamheat were amassing themselves quite a mess of materiel here in Luxor.
Gibson and Klein entered a tunnel or corridor, Gibson wasn't sure which; ever since he'd woken up from the transition, he'd had the feeling that he was underground, although he wasn't absolutely certain why. They seemed to be passing through the administrative hub of the base; the rooms and cubicles that opened onto the tunnel/corridor were filled with men and women in blue jumpsuits who were either shuffling papers or bent over computer monitors. In one large room, a line of operators stared at a hundred or more purple-and-white, postcard-size monitor screens that had to be a part of some Big Brother surveillance system. Gibson made a mental note of that-you never knew when the streamheat might be watching. It was also along this tunnel/corridor that Gibson caught sight of himself in a mirror. What he saw was enough of a shock to stop him dead in his tracks. His features and figure were much as he had last seen them, but practically everything else had changed. He was pale blue, a very pale blue. Even accepting the fact that he was temporarily seeing a world of people with blue faces, he had become extraordinarily pallid, not a healthy robust blue like Klein and Dresden and all of the others he'd seen since his arrival in Luxor, but a faded-unto-death, corpselike pastel. If anything shocked him more than the color of his skin, it was the way that his hair had changed: it had bleached out like his suit, white as the driven snow. It was also considerably shorter and brushed back into the pompadour of a fifties greaser.
"I'm fucking Eddie Cochran in negative!"
Klein looked a little guilty. "I was intending to tell you about that later when we got to the apartment."
"Tell me what exactly."
"You're extremely pale. You seem to have lost a lot of pigment in the transition."
"This isn't an illusion like the blue faces?"
"I'm afraid not."
Gibson's expression turned from shocked to suspicious. "What's that supposed to mean?"
Klein took a deep breath, as though steeling himself before delivering the bad news.
"You're pretty much an albino."
"An albino? I don't want to be an albino."
"There really isn't too much we can do about it."
"So much for blending in with the native population. I'm going to stand out like a sore thumb."
"In actual fact, you may not."
"The place is loaded with albinos?"
"Luxor has more than its fair share of strange people. Their development of nuclear energy was extremely sloppy and, on top of that, they've had three limited nuclear wars, so there are a lot of quite weird-looking folk walking around."
"So you think I won't be that noticeable."
"I'm hoping not."
"This is getting ridiculous."
The two of them waited at the door of an elevator. When they stepped inside and Klein pushed the buttons, they started going up.
"Where are we headed for?"
Klein glanced up at the ceiling. "Ground level."
Gibson nodded. He was pleased that his sense of being underground had been correct. It was good to know that one's instincts were functioning properly.
The entrance to the streamheat's underground base was concealed in a derelict warehouse in the middle of what seemed to be an abandoned industrial park. The sky was a metallic gray, and the smell of coming rain was carried by a brisk wind.
As they emerged into the daylight, Gibson looked around in disbelief. "This is another dimension? Shit, we could be back in Newark."
Klein smiled knowingly. "You'll find a lot of similarities."
A street ran past the front of the warehouse that looked as though it hadn't been used in years. The surface was cracked and littered with garbage that was breaking down into a uniform organic mulch that fertilized the rank grass growing up through the cracks.
Gibson looked up and down the street for some form of transportation but could see nothing. "So how do we get to civilization? I hope you don't think I'm going to walk."
Klein shook his head. "You won't have to walk. We're going to take a taxi,"
Gibson looked surprised. After all they they'd been through, the idea of a cab ride seemed a little prosaic. "A taxi?"
"Sure, a taxi. Did it ever occur to you that cabs are an ideal means of transport?"
Gibson shrugged. "I'd never really thought about it. They certainly come in handy when you're drunk."
"We own one of the local cab companies. As well as giving us a line into some of the Luxor crime families, the cabs provide an inconspicuous way of moving around the city. Nobody ever looks twice at a cab."
Gibson scanned the street again. "So where is this cab?"
"One will be along in a moment to pick us up."
In confirmation of his words, a red-and-green vehicle appeared at the far end of the street, carefully steering around the heaps of debris and rusted-out shells of abandoned cars. Except for some minor details, it looked for all the world like a '52 Chevy. When Gibson got into it he found that the interior of the cab was the interior of a cab. He could have been back on Earth. The-armored steel and Plexiglas between the driver and the passengers may have been a little more intense than the anti-theft screens in New York cabs, but not by much, and he wouldn't have thought too much of it if he 'd climbed into the same vehicle on Fifty-seventh Street. If the protection that cabbies thought they needed was any indication, Luxor had a major problem with street crime. Gibson also discovered something that didn't make him happy at all. The back of the cab was plastered with the usual warning stickers and advertising signs, and these brought Gibson face-to-face with what seemed to be another and very serious failure of the transition.
"I can't read this stuff."
Klein's eyebrows shot up. "What?"
Gibson pointed to the various signs inside the cab. "It all looks like it's written in Martian. I can't read a word of it."
"That is a major problem."
"You're not kidding. I don't really relish the idea of being an illiterate. How can I even tell which is the men's room?"