Rez rode up front, beside the driver, the ponytailed Japanese Californian from Akihabara. Laney squatted on a console, between Ar-leigh and Yamazaki, with Willy Jude and the red-haired tech behind them. Laney’s ribs hurt, where he’d come down on the table, and that seemed to be getting worse. He’d discovered that the top of his left sock was sticky with blood, but he wasn’t sure where it had come from or even if it was his own.
Arleigh had her phone pressed to her ear. ‘Option eight,” she said, evidently to the driver, who touched the pad beside the dashboard map. Laney glimpsed Tokyo grid-segments whipping past on the screen. “We’re taking Rez back with us.”
“Take me to the Imperial,” Rez said.
“Blackwell’s orders,” Arleigh said.
“Let me talk to him.” Reaching back for the phone.
They swung left, into a wider street, their lights picking out a small crowd speedwalking away from the Western World, all of them trying to look as though they just happened to be there, out for a brisk stroll. The neighborhood was nondescript and generically urban and, aside from the guilty-looking speedwalkers, quite deserted. “Keithy,” Rez said, “I want to go back to the hotel.” The terrible 201 white daystar of a police helicopter swept over them, carbon-black shadows speeding away actoss concrete. Rez was listening to the phone. They passed an all-night noodle wagon, its interior ghostly behind curtains of yellowed plastic. Images flicking past on a small screen behind the counter. Arleigh nudged Laney’s knee, pointed past Rez’s shoulder. A trio of white armored cars shot through the approaching intersection, blue lights flashing on their rectangular turrets, and vanished without a sound. Rez turned, handing the phone back to her. “Keithy’s being his para self. He wants me to go to your hotel and wait for him.”
Arleigh took the phone. “Does he know what it was about?
“Autograph-hunters?” Rez started to turn back around in his seat.
“What happened to the idoru?” Laney asked.
Rez peered at him. “If you kidnapped that new platform-and I thought it was wonderful-what exactly would you have?”
“I don’t know.”
“Rei’s only reality is the realm of ongoing serial creation,” Rez said. “Entirely process; infinitely more than the combined sum of her various selves. The platforms sink beneath her, one after another, as she grows denser and more complex The long green eyes seemed to grow dreamy, in the light of passing storefronts, and then the singer turned away.
Laney watched Arleigh dab at the cut corner of her mouth with a tissue.
“Laney-san Yamazaki, a whisper. Putting something into his hand. A cabled set of eyephones. “We have global fin-activity database
His ribs hurt. Was his leg bleeding? “Later, okay?”
Arleigh’s suite was at least twice as large as Laney’s room. It had its own miniature sitting room, separated from the bedroom and bath 202 William Gihson with gilded French doors. The four chairs in the sitting room had very tall, very narrow backs, each one tapering to a rendition of the elf hat, done in sandblasted steel. These chairs were quite amazingly uncomfortable, and Laney was hunched forward on one now, in considerable pain, hugging his bruised ribs. The blood in his sock had turned out to be his own, from a skinned patch on his left shin. He’d plastered it over with rnicropore from the professional-looking first-aid kit in Arleigh’s bathroom. He doubted there was anything there for his ribs, but he was wondering if some kind of elastic bandage might help.
Yamazaki was on the chair to his right, reattaching the sleeve of his plaid jacket with bright gold safety pins from an Evil Elf Hat emergency sewing kit. Laney had never actually seen anyone use a hotel room’s emergency sewing kit for anything. Yamazaki had removed his damaged glasses and was working with the jacket held close to his face. This made him look older, and somehow calmer. To Yamazaki’s right, the red-haired technician, who was called Shannon, was sitting up very straight and reading a complimentary style magazine.
Rez was sprawled on the bed, propped up on the maximum available number of pillows, and Willy Jude sat at its foot, channel-surfing with his video units. The panic at the Western World apparently hadn’t made the news yet, although the drummer said he’d caught an oblique reference on one of the clubbing channels.