“Now, that was easy,” said Maryalice, behind her. Chia turned in time to see her take a long deep breath, hold it, and let it out. Maryalice’s eyes looked pinched, like she was having a headache.
“Do you know which way I should go to get the train?” Chia asked. She had maps in her Sandbenders, but she didn’t want to have to get it out now.
“This way,’ Maryalice said.
Maryalice worked her way between people, Chia following with her bag under her arm. Emerging in front of a carousel where bags were sliding down a ramp, bumping, swinging past and away.
“Here’s one,” Maryalice said, snagging a black one and sounding so forcefully cheerful that it made Chia look at her. “And … two.” Another one like it, except this one had a sticker on the side from Nissan County, the third largest gated attraction in the Californias. “Would you mind carrying this for me, honey? My back goes our on long plane rides.” Passing Chia the bag with the sticker. It wasn’t too heavy, like maybe it was only half-full of clothes. But it was too large for her; she had to lean over in the opposite direction to keep it off the ground.
“Thanks,” Maryalice said. “Here,” and she handed Chia a crumpled square of sticky-backed paper with a bar code on it. “That’s the check. Now we just want to go this way.
It was even harder getting through the crowd, lugging Mary-alice’s bag. Chia had to concentrate on not stepping on people’s feet, and not bumping them too hard with the bag, and the next thing she 60 William Gibson knew, shed lost Maryalice. She looked around, expecting to see hair- extensions bobbing above the crowd, who were mostly shorter than Maryalice, but Maryalice was nowhere in sight.
ALL ARRIVING PASSENGERS MUST EXIT THROUGH CUSTOMS.
Chia watched the sign twist itself up into Japanese letters, then pop back out as English.
Well, that was the way to go. She got in line behind a man in a red leather jacket that said Concept Collision” across the back in gray chenille letters. Chia stared at that, imagining concepts colliding, which she guessed was a concept in itself, but then she thought it was probably just the name of a company that fixed cars, or one of those slogans the Japanese made up in English, the ones that almost seemed to mean something but didn’t. This trans-Pacific jet lag thing was serious.
‘Next.’
They were feeding Concept Collision’s suitcase through a machine the size of a double bed, but taller. There was an official of some kind in a video-helmet, evidently reading feed off the scanners, and another policeman, to take your passport, slot it in the machine, then put your bags through. Chia let him take Maryalice’s suitcase and flip it up, onto the conveyor. Chia handed him her carry-on. “There’s a computer in there. This scan okay for that?” He didn’t seem to hear her. She watched her carry-on follow Maryalice’s bag into the machine.
The man in the helmet, eyes hidden, was bobbing his head from side to side as he accessed gaze-activated menus.
“Baggage check,” the policeman said, and Chia remembered she had it in her hand. It struck her as strange, handing it over, that Maryalice had thought to give her that. The policeman ran a hand-scanner over it.
“You packed these bags yourself?” asked the man in the helmet.
He couldn’t see her directly, but she assumed he could see the clips stored in her passport, and he could probably see her on live feed as 3 well. Airports were full of cameras. o 2 01 “Yes,” Chia said, deciding it was easier than trying to explain that it was Maryalice’s bag, not hers. She tried to read the expression on the helmeted man’s lips, but it was hard to say if he even had one.
“You packed this?”
“Yes Chia said, not sounding nearly as certain this time.
The helmet bobbed.
“Next,” he said.
Chia went to the other end of the machine and collected her bag and the black suitcase,
Through another sliding wall of frosted glass: she was in a larger hall, beneath a higher ceiling, bigger ads overhead but no thinning of the crowd, Maybe this wasn’t so much a matter of crowds as it was of Tokyo, maybe of Japan in general: more people, closer together.