“Not the centipede,” Chia said. “Forget it.”
“No,” he said, “not the Etruscan. Come.”
And they were out of his room, fast-forward through the maze of Hak Nam, up twisted stairwells and through corridors, the strange, compacted world flickering past What is this place? A communal site, right? But what are you so worried about? Why’s it all a secret?”
“Walled City is of the net, but not on it. There are no laws here, only agreements.”
“You can’t be on the net and not be on the net,” Chia said, as they shot up a final flight of stairs.
“Distributed processing,” he said. “Interstitial, It began with a shared killfile-”
“Zona!” There across this uneven roofscape, overgrown with strangeness.
“Touch nothing. Some are traps. I come to you.” Zona, presenting in that quick, fragmentary way, moved forward.
To Chia’s right, a kind of ancient car lay tilted in a drift of tan- 3
209 dom textures, something like a Christmas tree growing from its unbroken windshield. Beyond that.
She guessed that the rooftops of the Walled City were its dumping ground, but the things abandoned there were like objects out of a dream, bit-mapped fantasies discarded by their creators, their jumbled shapes and textures baffling the eye, the attempt to sort and decipher them inducing a kind of vertigo. Some were moving.
Then a movement high in the gasoline sky caught her eye. Zona’s bird-things?
“I went to your site,” Chia said. “You weren’t there, something-”
“I know. Did you see it?” As Zona passed the Christmas tree, its round, silver ornaments displayed black eye-holes, each pair turning to follow her.
“No. I thought I heard it.”
“I do not know what it is.” Zona’s presentation was even quicker and more Jumpy than usual. “I came here for advice. They told me that you had been to my site, and that now you were here .
“You know this place?”
“Someone here helped me establish my site. It is impossible to come here without an invitation, you understand? My name is on a list. Although I cannot go below, into the city itself, unaccompanied.”
“Zona, I’m in so much trouble now! We’re hiding in this horrible hotel, and Maryalice is there-”
“This bitch who made you her mule, yes? She is where?”
“In the room at this hotel. She said she broke up with her boyfriend, and it’s his, the nano-thing-”
“The what?”
“She says it’s some kind of nano-assembler thing.”
Zona Rosa’s features snapped into focus as her heavy eyebrows shot up. “Nanotechnology?”
“This is in your bag?” Masahiko asked.
“Wrapped in plastic.”
210 William Gibson ‘One moment.” He vanished.
“Who is that?” Zona asked.
“Masahiko. Mitsuko’s brother. He lives here.”
“Where did he go?”
“Back to the hotel we’re porting from,”
“This shit you are in, it is crazy,” Zona said.
“Please, Zona, help me! I don’t think I’ll ever get home!”
Masahiko reappeared, the thing in his hand minus the duty-free bag. “I scanned it,” he said. “Immediate identification as Rodel-van Erp primary biomolecular programming module C-slash-7A. This is a lab prototype. We are unable to determine its exact legal status, but the production model, C-slash-9E, is Class 1 nanotechnology, proscribed under international law. Japanese law, conviction of illegal possession of Class 1 device carries automatic life sentence.”
“Life?” Chia said.
“Same for thermonuclear device,” he said, apologetically, “poison gas, biological weapon” He held up the scanned object for Zona’s inspection.
Zona looked at it. “Fuck your mother,” she said, her tone one of somber respect.
211 31. The Way Things Work
“See how things work, Laney? ‘What goes around, comes around 7 You can run, but you can’t hide’? Know those expressions, Laney? How some things get to be c1ich~s because they touch on certain truths, Laney? Talk to me, Laney.”
Laney lowered himself into one of the miniature armchairs, hugging his ribs.
“You look like shit, Laney. Where have yOU been?”
“The Western World,” he said. He didn’t like watching himself do those things on the screen, but he found he couldn’t look away. He knew that wasn’t him, there. They’d mapped his face onto someone else. But it was his face. He remembered hearing something someone had said about mirrors, a long time ago, that they were somehow unnatural and dangerous.