As soon as they were gone, he went back down the hall to Mark's pit. Gina was still standing over him, head bowed, hugging herself. Gabe felt a sudden flash of anger at Mark and then at her without really knowing why. He brushed it aside. "I heard all that," he said.
The fierce expression she turned up to him faded quickly. He took that as a good sign and went down to her.
"I didn't hear it all," he added, "but most of it. And I saw when he woke up and talked. He didn't sound right. But you didn't sound right to me, either, when you did it."
She shrugged. "Nobody cares but me, and he doesn't want me to care." She nudged Mark's back with the toe of her boot. "I oughta just say fuck it, if this is what he wants, it's what he wants."
Impulsively Gabe took her by the arm and led her to the lift, surprised when she didn't pull away from him. "Maybe we ought to get an outside doctor," he said as they went up to the catwalk together.
"I tried that," she said wearily. "Rivera'll block it. I figured I'd just try to get somebody's attention here."
"Well, there's something else," he said. "That guy in the cape that changes all the time-"
"Valjean," she said irritably, striding out into the hall ahead of him.
"Him. I saw him just a few minutes ago, here. He was on the elevator, and he told me to tell you, or them, or somebody something about the mainline and the hardline."
Gina stopped to frown at him. "What?"
"I know, that's something like what Mark said-"
"What the fuck was it?" she asked impatiently.
"He said he'd taken the video mainline, and the hardline was something about a stranger on a stony shore."
"That again." She shrugged. "Mark did Canadaytime's last video,"
"I thought you did their last video," Gabe said. "You jumped off the terrace for it."
"Mark's done another since we got drilled. The boy's a regular video-production factory now, ain't you heard?"
The elevator doors opened suddenly, and two security guards came barreling out, stopping short when they saw Gina. "That guy Mark in his pit?" one of them asked.
"More or less," Gina said. "Why, you think I stole him?"
Gabe couldn't remember if either of them had been on the terrace when Gina had jumped; at Diversifications security guards tended to run together, the same clean-cut, private gestapo squad looks in identical brown uniforms.
"Is he available or not?" asked the other guard.
Gina made a disgusted noise. "Ask me an easy one."
The guards turned to Gabe. He shrugged. "I'd say no, he's not available."
"You know, he was up there the day she pulled her little stunt," the first guard said to the other one. "Who was?" Gina asked.
"It's probably how he got the idea," said the second guard. They started to walk away.
"What idea?" Gina caught his sleeve.
The first guard looked at her. "Forget about it. You'd hurt more than help."
"I'll hurt you right now if you don't tell me what the fuck's going on," Gina said darkly.
Both guards hesitated. Gabe herded them toward the elevator without saying a word, as if he had all the authority in the world, and the guards took them up to the terrace on the twentieth floor.
There should have been wind. Twenty stories up, wind should have been a given, but the air seemed to have lay down and died. That made it worse, Gina thought. If there had been wind, the cape would have been blowing back so she wouldn't have had to look at the shadows throbbing over it.
She tried to keep her eyes focused on Valjean's face and the woman-Dinshaw whoever. The same one who'd threatened to have her arrested that day in the common room. Gina had to hand it to her. She didn't look completely nuked, and she hadn't wet her pants yet, but she was getting there. Valjean had one haunch up on the railing, his left arm wrapped around her while he held the knife near her throat, ready either to slice her or go over the rail with her anytime he pleased.
"Hey!" he yelled to Gina, looking grotesquely cheerful. "You're here!" He gestured briefly at the security guards standing in a tense semicircle at a useless distance. "You can all go now." He blinked at her, his face twisting abruptly into a pained expression. "When's Mark coming?"
She took a few careful steps forward, watching for any sign of panic. "Mark's still on-line. I think he's waiting for you to show your face. Or your ass, whichever applies."
Valjean shook his head vigorously. The Dinshaw woman held onto the arm gripping her with both hands. "No, no, you got it wrong. He's in context. You understand? He's in context, and we're all out of context, because he's the stranger on the stony shore. It was always him. But we're all out of context, and everybody knows that when you take something out of context, it can't make no fuckin' sense."
Gina nodded. "Which context are we talking here? And where the fuck does she fit in?"
"It's gonna be my context, so I get whoever I want for it." Valjean rested his chin on top of the woman's head. She clenched her eyes shut, and Gina saw Valjean's hand start to move.
"Hey, asshole, knock off that dirty stuff!" she yelled. "You ain't in the context of your bedroom here, fucking security guards're watching, chrissakes!"
"I didn't do nothing!" Valjean looked hurt but no less wild-eyed.
Gina took another step toward him. "Okay, okay, I just know you guys, you know? I been on a tour bus once or twice."
"I've never been on a tour bus," Valjean said, proudly. "All video. All the time."
"Yah, sure, that was before your time. I'm speaking symbolic. Like the context of a tour bus, get it?"
"Get it." Valjean stared at some point over her head. Now the knife hand was moving slightly in a twisting motion. "Get it? Get it." He pulled the knife away from the woman and scratched the side of his face with the hilt. "Someday everybody's gonna get it."
"Never mind, I said that out of context. Listen, Val, I know about the context, and I know about the stranger on the stony shore, but I don't see where the knife comes in." Gina nodded at it. "What about that? You want to let me see it?"
He looked down at it as if he'd never seen it before. "I was thinking… something. I was thinking when you fall…when you cut through the air…"
The woman sagged in Valjean's grip, looking past Gina with pure hopelessness in her face. "Oh, shit," she groaned.
Gina turned around. Clooney had just stepped out onto the terrace, smoothing his clothes and puffing himself up. "All right, Mr. Valjean or Canadaytime or whatever you call yourself," he said loudly, stumping toward him gracelessly, "you put that knife down and let go of that woman or you're in big, big trouble."
Just as he was about to pass her, Gina grabbed him by the back of his shirt collar and pulled him back. "Yah? What the fuck are you gonna do, tell Rivera on him?"
Clooney blinked at her uncomprehendingly.
"He doesn't work here, asshole, so you can't have him fired."
Clooney jerked away from her. "We'll cancel your video contract!" he yelled at Valjean. "You'll never work in this business again!"
"I am this business!" Valjean announced with a mad joyousness in his voice.
"Val, listen, let's trade!" Gina said quickly, grabbing Clooney's arm. "This guy for the woman you got! Go for that?"
Valjean looked from her to Clooney and back again before he took a firmer grip on the woman. "Get real. You'd rush me."
Clooney was glaring at her with self-righteous fury. She ignored him. "Val. Keep looking at me." She moved as close to him as she dared, within arm's reach of a security guard on her left. The guard caught her eye and discreetly patted the holster of his stun pistol. She gave one small emphatic shake of her head no and raised both hands to keep Valjean's attention. Context. The fall. Signature image. The stranger on the stony shore. Somehow one of those was the royal road into him. "This context thing. Are we talking music or video or what?"