The crowd had been screaming anyway, but the dark twisted the communal pitch up into something that had Laney covering his ears. Or trying to, because someone stumbled into him and he went over, backward, instinctively curling into a tight fetal knot and clamping his hands across the back of his neck.
“Hey,” said a voice, very close to his ear, “get on up. You gonna get stepped on.” It was Willy Jude, “I can see.” A hand around his wrist. “Got infrared.”
Laney let the drummer pull him to his feet. “What is it? What’s happening?”
“Dunno, but come on. Gonna get worse-” As if on cue, a terrible squeal of raw animal pain cut through the frenzied crowd-noise. “Blackwell got one,” Willy Jude said, and Laney felt the drummer’s hand grip his belt. He stumbled as he was pulled along. Someone ran into him, shouted in Japanese. After that he kept his hands up, trying to protect his face, and went where the drummer pulled him,
Suddenly they were in a cove or pocket of relative quiet. “Where are we?” Laney asked.
“This way Something clipped Laney across the shins. 192 WiIIi~in. Gibson “Stool,” Willy Jude said. “Sorry.” Glass snapped beneath Laney’s shoes.
A curve of greenish light, broken cursive hanging in the dark. Another few steps and he saw the Grotto. Willy Jude let go of his belt. “You can see here, right? That bioluminescent stuff?”
“Yeah,” Laney said. “Thanks,”
“It doesn’t register on my glasses. I get infrared off warm bodies, but I can’t make out the steps. Walk me down.” He took Laney’s hand. They started down the stairs together. A black-clad trio of Japanese shot past them, leaving a high-heeled pump on the encrusted stairs, and vanished around the landing. Laney kicked the shoe out of Willy Jude’s way and kept going.
When they rounded the corner at the landing, Arleigh was there, a green champagne bottle cocked over her shoulder. There was a smear of blood at the corner of her mouth, darker than her lipstick. When she saw Laney, she lowered the bottle. “Where were you?” she said.
“The Men’s,” Laney said.
“You missed the show.”
“What happened?”
“Damn it,” she said, “my coat’s up there.”
“Keep moving, keep moving,” Willy Jude said, More stairs, more landings, the rippling walls of the Grotto giving way to concrete. People kept rushing down, past them, knots and singles, taking the stairs too fast. Laney rubbed his ribs where he’d come down on the glass. It hurt, but somehow he hadn’t been cut.
“They looked like Kombinat,” Arleigh said. “Big ugly guys, bad outfits. I couldn’t tell if they were after Rez or the idoru. Like they just thought they could walk in and do it.”
“Do what?”
“Don’t know,” she said. “Kuwayama had at least a dozen of his own security people at the two closest tables. And Blackwell probably prays for a scene like that every night before he goes to bed. He reached into hi~ jacket, then the lights went out.” 0 2 193 “He put ’em out,” Willy Jude said. “Some kinda remote. He can see better in the dark than I can with these infrareds. Dunno how that is, but he can.”
“How’d you get out?” Laney asked Arleigh.
“Flashlight. In my purse.”
“Laney-san
Looking back to see Yamazaki, one sleeve of his green plaid coat pulled free at the shoulder, his glasses missing a lens. Arleigh had taken a phone from her purse and was cursing softly as she tried to get it to work.
Yamazaki caught up with them at the next landing. The four of them continued down togerher, Laney still holding the blind drummer’s hand.
When they reached the street, the Western World’s sullen crew of doorpeople were nowhere in sight. A single policeman with a plastic rain-cover on his cap was muttering frantically into a microphone clipped to the front of his rain-cape. He was walking in tight circles as he did this, gesturing dramatically with a white baton at nothing in particular. Several kinds of alien siren were converging on the Western World, and Laney thought he could hear a helicopter.
Willy Jude dropped Laney’s hand and adjusted his video-goggles to the street’s light-level. “Where’s my car?”