“I have completed responsibility to Walled City,” Masahiko said, turning from the control-face.
“What were those things?” Chia asked him.
“What things?”
“Like a business card, Crawled under the door. Then another thing, like a gray cut-out crab, that ate it.”
“An advertisement,” he decided, “and a sub-program that of fered criticism.” 3 “It didn’t offer criticism; it ate it.” o 2 183
1. “Perhaps the person who wrote the sub-program dislikes advertising. Many do. Or dislikes the advertiser. Political, aesthetic, personal reasons, all are possible.”
Chia looked around at the reproduction of his tiny room. “Why don’t you have a bigger site?” Instantly worried that it was because he was Japanese, and maybe they were just used to that. But still it was about the smallest virtual space she could remember having been in, and it wasn’t like a bigger one cost more, not unless you were like Zona and wanted yourself a whole country.
“The Walled City is a concept of scale. Very important. Scale is place, yes? Thirty-three thousand people inhabited original. Two-point-seven hectares. As many as fourteen stories,”
None of which made any sense to Chia. “I have to port, okay?”
“Of course,” he said, and gestured toward her Sandbenders.
She was braced for that two-directions-at-once thing, but it didn’t happen. The bit-mapped fish were swimming around in the glass coffee table. She looked out the window at the crayon trees and wondered where the Mumphalumpagus was. She hadn’t seen it for a while. It was something her father had made for her when she was a baby, a big pink dinosaur with goof~y eyelashes.
She checked the table for mail, but there was nothing new.
She could phone from here. Call her mother. Sure.
-Hi, I’m in Tokyo. In a “love hotel.” People are after me because somebody put something in my bag. So, uh, what do you think I should I do?
She tried porting to Kelsey’s address instead, but all she got was that annoying marble anteroom and the voice, not Kelsey’s, that said that Kelsey Van Troyer wasn’t in at the moment. Chia exited without leaving a message. The next address she tried was Zona’s, but Zona’s provider was down. That happened a lot, in Mexico, and particularly in Mexico City, where Zona lived. She decided to try Zona’s secret place, because it was on a mainframe in Arizona and it was never down. She knew Zona didn’t like people just showing up there, because Zona didn’t want the company that had built the original 184 William Gibson website, and then forgotten about it, to discover that Zona had gotten in and set up her own country.
She asked the Sandbenders where she was porting from now and it said Helsinki, Finland. So that re-porting capability at the hotel was working, at least.
Just before twilight at Zona’s, like always. Chia scanned rhe floor of a dry swimming pool, looking for Zona’s lizards, but she didn’t see them. Usually they were right there, waiting for you, bur not this rime. “Zona?”
Chia looked up, wondering if she’d see those spooky condor-things that Zona kept. The sky was beautiful but empty. Originally that sky had been the most important part of this place, and no expense had been spared. Serious sky: deep and clean and a crazy Mexican shade like pale turquoise. They’d brought people here to sell them airplanes, corporate jets, when the jets were still in the design phase. There’d been a white concrete landing strip, but Zona had folded it up into a canyon and mapped over it. All the local color was Zona’s stuff: the cooking fires and the dead poois and the broken walls. She’d imported landscape files, maybe even real stuff she knew from somewhere in Mexico. “Zona?”
Something rattled, up the nearest ridge, like pebbles on a sheet of metal.
-It’s okay. One of the lizards. She’s just not here now. A twig snapped. Closer.
-Don’t hick around, Zona.
But she exited.
The bit-mapped fish swam back and forth.
That had been very creepy. She wasn’t sure why, exactly, but it had been. Still was, kind of. She looked at the door to her bedroom and found herself wondering what she’d find there if she gestured for it. The bed, her Lo Rez Skyline poster, the agent of Lo greeting her in his mindless friendly way. But what if she found something else?