The Russian coughed. “An exchange. This gentleman on floor.”
Rez saw Eddie and Maryalice. “Are they dead?”
“Volted, yes? Being most-time nonlethal. Your girl on bed.”
Rez looked at Chia. “Who are you?”
“Chia Pet McKenzie,” she said automatically. “I’m from Seattle. I’m. . . I’m in your fan club.” She felt her face burning.
The brow above the green eye went up. He seemed to be listening to something. “Oh,” he said, and paused. “She did? Really? That’s wonderful.” He smiled at Chia. “Rei says you’ve been totally central to everything, and that we have a great deal to thank you for.”
Chia swallowed. “She does?”
But Rez had turned to the Russian. “We have to have this.” He raised the nanotech unit. “We’ll negotiate now. Name your price.”
“Rozzer,” the man at the door said, “you can’t do that. This bastard’s Kombinat.”
Chia saw the green eye close, as if Rez were making a conscious effort to calm himself. When it opened, he said: “But they’re the government, aren’t they, Blackwell? We’ve negotiated with governments before.”
“It’s for the legals,” the scarred man said, but now there was an edge of worry in his voice.
The Russian seemed to hear it too. He slowly lowered his hands. “What were you planning to do with this?” Rez asked him. The Russian looked down at the thing in Rez’s hands, as if considering, then raised his eyes. A muscle was jumping, in his cheek. He seemed to come to a decision. “We are developing ambitious public works project,” he said.
“0 jesus,” Maryalice said from the carpet, so hoarsely that at first Chia couldn’t identify the source. “They must’ve put something in that. They did. I swear to God they did. And then she threw up. 258 Wiiliani Gibson Yamazaki lost his balance as the van shot up the narrow ramp, out of the hotel. Laney, holding Arleigh’s phone to the dashboard map, toning the number of the Hotel Di, heard him crash down on the shredded bubble-pack. The display bleeped as Laney completed the number; grid-segments clicked across the screen. “You okay, Yamazaki?”
“Thank you,” Yamazaki said. “Yes.” Getting to his knees again, he craned around the headrest of Laney’s seat. “You have located the hotel?”
“Expressway,” Arleigh said, glancing at the display, as they swung right, up an entrance ramp. “Hit speed-dial three. Thanks. Gimme.” She took the phone. “McCrae. Yeah. Priority? Fuck you, Alex. Ring me through to him.” She listened. “Di? Like D, I? Shit. Thanks.” She clicked off.
“What is it?” Laney asked, as they swung onto the expressway, the giant bland brow of an enormous articulated freight-hauler pulling up behind and then past them, quilted stainless steel flashing in Laney’s peripheral vision. The van rocked with the big truck’s passage.
“I tried to get Rez. Alex says he left the hotel, with Blackwell. Headed the same place we are.”
“When?”
“Just about the time you were having your S( reaming fit, when
0
9 259 39. Trans you had the ‘phones on,” Arleigh said. She looked grim. “Sorry,” she said.
Laney had had to argue with her for fifteen minutes, back there, before she’d agreed to this. She’d kept saying she wanted him to see a doctor. She’d said that she was a technician, not a researcher, not security, and that her first responsibility was to stay with the data, the modules, because anyone who got those got almost the entire Lo/Rez Partnership business plan, plus the books, plus whatever Kuwayama had entrusted them with in the gray module. She’d only given in after Yamazaki had sworn to take Full responsibility for everything, and after Shannon and the man with the ponytail had promised not to leave the modules. Not even, Arleigh said, to piss. “Go against the wall, God damn it,” she’d said, ‘and get half a dozen of Blackwell’s boys down here to keep you :ompany.”
“He knows,” Laney said. “She told him it’s there.”
“What is there, Laney-san?” asked Yamazaki, around the headrest.
“I don’t know. Whatever it is, they think it’ll facilitate their marriage.”
“Do you think so?” Arleigh asked, passing a string of bright little cars.
“I guess it must be capable of it,” Laney said, as something under her seat began to clang, loudly and insistently. “But I don’t think that means it’ll necessarily happen. What the hell is that?”