“Shit,” she heard the woman in front of her say, a big-haired blond with obvious extensions woven in. Big red lips, multilevel o 2 mascara, padded shoulders out to here, tiny little skirt, white cowboy boots. Like that country singer her mother liked, Ashleigh Modine Carter. Kind of a meshback thing, but with money.
Chia stepped off the end of the rubber sidewalk and took her place in line behind the woman who looked like Ashleigh Modine Carter.
The soldiers were taking hair samples and slotting people’s passports. Chia assumed that was to prove you really were who you said you were, because your DNA was there in your passport, converted into a kind of bar code.
The sampler was a little silver wand that vacuumed the tips of a couple of strands in and clipped them off. They’d wind up with the world’s biggest collection of split ends, Chia thought. Now it was the blond’s turn. There were two boy-soldiers there, one to work the sampler and one to rattle off the line about how you’d already agreed to this by coming this far, and please produce your passport.
Chia watched as the woman handed over her passport, becoming somehow instantly and up-front sexy, like a lightbulb coming on, with a big smile for the soldier that made him blink and swallow and nearly drop the passport. Grinning, he stuck the passport into a little console attached to the barricade. The other soldier raised his wand. Chia saw the woman reach up and choose one of her hair-extensions, offering the end of this for sampling. The whole thing taking maybe eight seconds, including the return of her passport, and the first soldier was still smiling now that it was Chia’s turn.
The woman moved on, having just committed what Chia felt fairly certain would be a federal offense. Should she tell the soldier?
But she didn’t, and then they were handing back her passport and Chia was on her way to Gate 53. Where she looked for the woman but didn’t see her.
She watched the ads cycle by on the walls, until they were called to board by rows. . . . Seat 23E remained empty as Chia waited for takeoff, sucking on a peppermint the flight attendant had given her. The only empty seat on the plane, she figured. If nobody arrived to take it, she thought, she’d be able to fold the armrest away and curl up there. She tried putting out a negative mental field, a vibe that would keep anyone from getting on at the last minute and sitting there. Zona Rosa was into that, part of her whole girl-gang martial arts thing. Chia didn’t see how you could seriously believe it would work.
And it didn’t, because here came that blond down the aisle, and wasn’t that an eye-click of recognition Chia saw there? 3. Almost a Civilian It had been a weeknight, a Wednesday, when Laney had last seen Kathy Torrance, and her tattoo had not been visible. She’d stood there in the Cage, screaming as he cleaned out his locker. She was wearing an Armani blazer cut from gun-metal fustian, its matching skirt concealing the sign from outer space. A single strand of pearls was visible at the open throat of her white, man-tailored blouse. Her dress uniform. Called on the carpet for her subordinate’s defection.
He knew that she was screaming because her mouth was open, but the syllables of her rage couldn’t penetrate the seamless hissing surf of the white-noise generator provided by his lawyers. He’d been advised to wear the generator at all times, during this last visit to the Slitscan offices. He’d been instructed to make no statements. Certainly he would hear none.
And later he would sometimes wonder exactly how she might have framed her fury. Some restatement of her theory of celebrity and the nature of its price, of Slitscan’s place in that, of Laney’s inability to function there? Or would she have focused on his treason? But he hadn’t heard; he’d only put these things he didn’t really want into a corrugated plastic carton that still smelled faintly of Mexican oranges. The notebook, screen cracked now, useless, that he’d carried through college. Insulated mug with the Nissan County logo peeling away. Notes he’d made on paper, counter to office policy. A coffeestained fax from a woman he’d slept with in Ixtapa, someone whose