Everything about it was different. She looked all around, but there was no one there who looked remotely like Shandy, or even what Shandy might look like after the passage of a few years.
She retraced her steps, remembering the day she had walked along this street, or one like it, feeling the sexy tightness of Shandy's thighconstricting miniskirt, talking about Arizona and Finland. They had left Willem waiting in the pub, and for a while walked to and fro along Coventry Street. Teresa walked as far as the statue of Eros, then went down the steps of one of the station entrances and found that where the virtual London had ended in a brick wall was now the bustling concourse of a busy Underground station.
She returned to street level, then went back to Rupert Street. Suppressing the temptation to look inside the Plume of Feathers once again, Teresa walked up to the intersection with Shaftesbury Avenue and crossed over, following Rupert Street into Soho.
The streets here were much narrower. After a few hundred yards she noticed a doorway ornamented on each side by tall illuminated pink plastic panels, obviously portable, into each of which was set a large photograph of several naked and near-naked women. A man, whose face was masked by a clumsy virtualreality headset, was drawn groping lasciviously towards them. A handlettered sign said: Extreme Thrills Imported Downstairs NOW ADULTS ONLY!
A doorman stood just inside the entrance: he was a youth with short spiky hair and tattooed tears angling down from the corner of one eye, and was incongruously wearing a dark suit With collar and tie.
Teresa, realizing that this place was selling a version of ExEx, was brought up short by a shocking thought. She knew what was available in ExEx, so it was likely that at least a few of Shandy's scenarios would be available somewhere in this dive ... maybe they even had the cowgirl scenario where Teresa had first found her.
Teresa's thoughts instantly raced off towards the edge of reality: she imagined herself venturing into the cellar below this unprepossessing doorway, paying over a sum of money to the youth, entering the scenario in which Shandy played a cowgirl who was enthusiastically screwing a Dutchaccented cowboy, then afterwards leaving again with Shandy, occupying her body and mind, feeling the sexy constraints of her don'tcare clothes, heading out of the studio into these streets around Piccadilly and Leicester Square, then walking north across Shaftesbury Avenue to this spot, to the entrance to this ExEx club, where she and Shandy would venture inside, enter the extremes of unreality ...
'What you want, lady? You want inside?'
'No,' said Teresa, startled by his sudden voice.
'Good prices for ladies. Big discount. Come, I show you.'
'No ... I don't want in. Did you ever hear of a girl called Shandy?'
For a moment the youth looked disconcerted, a look that was exaggerated by the needledrawn tears, but then he reached into the back pocket of his pants and produced a small wad of business cards.
' Yeah, Shandy. She here. You want Shandy, you have her OK. We got plenty Shandy. What you want, you like
girlgirl with Shandy, or you wanna watch?'
'Do you know who 1 mean?' Teresa said. 'Her real name's Jennifer. She works around here, in joints like this.'
'Yeah, yeah.' He held the business cards in surprisingly long and delicate fingers, and with a clean fingernail peeled back the top one. Teresa thought he was about to pass the card to her, with no doubt detailed but unwanted information inscribed, but he gripped it lightly between his thumb and forefinger and scraped at the gap between two of his yellowed front teeth.
'Shandy. She give big discount for girlgirl. We have plenty Shandy.'
'OK, 1 get the picture.'
Teresa turned away, irritated with herself for letting the boy drag her into the exchange, and still preoccupied by what she had been thinking about when he spoke to her.
What would happen? Inside a scenario, suppose she found a GunHo facility or a dive bar or somewhere else with ExEx equipment, then used it to enter a second scenario?
What then of virtuality? Would the realities be no longer contiguous, but intersecting?
'Hey, lady!'
She continued walking away from him.
'Lady!' The young man had left his pitch in the doorway, and he laid a hand on her arm.
She snatched it away from him.
'Quit that!' she said loudly. 'I'm not interested!'
'You lady, you one of us? You Shandy?'
His tone was no longer flat and automated, the voice of the shill. An earnestness gripped him.
He was pointing at her neck. Teresa saw how young he was, hardly more than in his middle teens. He turned his head away, and laid a finger against the base of his own neck.
There was a nanochip valve embedded there. it was obvious what it was, but it was unlike any other Teresa had
seen. it was larger than hers, and was made of bright purple plastic: lt was set in a mount made of some silvery material, probably plastic again but glossed up brilliantly. The valve looked like a cheap stone in a gaudy setting.
Teresa had always been selfconscious about her ernbedded valve, thinking that to anyone who didn't know what it was it must look like something left over from an operation. She usually wore a high collar or scarf in an attempt to conceal it. By contrast, the youth's nanochip valve was almost flagrantly exposed, a startling flash of colour on the back of his neck, like bodypiercing, a fashion statement, a tribal declaration.
'You know ExEx, lady? You real thing! Big, big discount for real ExEx! We find you Shandy, you bet!'
'No,' she said yet again, but less assertively than before. 'Look, 1 know what ExEx is. 1 was just surprised to find it. Open to the public.'
'Members only. You join! You no come in? Special deal before evenings.'
Realizing she was wasting her time, and had been doing so from the first exchange of words, Teresa backed away. The youth tried again to lure her inside, but she turned her back on him and strode off in what she hoped looked like a determined way. She soon reached the junction with Shaftesbury Avenue, and had to wait for a break in the traffic before she could cross. She glanced back: there was no sign of the young man.
She walked to Charing Cross Road, and spent nearly an hour trying to distract herself in one of the big bookstores; after this she returned to the Leicester Square area and went i see a movie. She caught the last train back to Bulverton with minutes to spare; she had not looked at the timetable In advance, and discovered she was lucky to have caught it.
An hour later, as the train left Tunbdidge Wells and moved into the almost unbroken darkness of the Sussex countryside, Teresa, alone in the carriage, closed her eyes and tried to doze. She was bodytired from all the walking she had done in London, but stimulated and alive mentally.
She had barely been able to keep her mind on the film, in spite of the intrusively loud music and explosive special effects. Something had unexpectedly become clear to her. At the beginning of the show, as she sat in the auditorium waiting for the lights to go down, she had remembered the conversation in the hotel corridor with Ken Mitchell, and the seemingly impenetrable objections he had raised to her presence in the hotel.