“Then I’d better go. Get me paid off, I’m out of here today.”
Blackwell looked at him with new interest. “That fast, eh? What’s your hurry? Don’t find us agreeable?’
“No,” Laney said. “It’s just that that way’s better all round.
“Not what Yama’s saying. Rez either. Not to mention her other- 274 William Gibson ness, who no doubt will voice an opinion in that regard. I’d say you were set to become the court prognosticator, Laney. Unless, of course, that whole business with the Kombinat turns out to be absolute bollocks, and it’s discovered that you simply make that nodal nonsense up-which I for one would actually find quite amusing. But no, your services are very much desired now, you might even say required, and none of us would currently be happy to see you go.”
“I have to,” Laney said. “I’m being blackmailed.”
This brought Blackwell’s lids to half-mast. He leaned slightly forward. The pink worm of scar tissue squirmed in his eyebrow. “Are you?” he said softly, as though Laney had just ventured to confess some unusual sexual complication. “And may I ask who by?”
“Slitscan. Kathy Torrance. It’s sort of personal, for her.”
“Tell me about it. Tell me all about it. Do.”
And Laney did, including the 5-SB trials and their record for eventually turning the participants into homicidal stalkers of celebrities. “I didn’t want to bring that up, before,” Laney said, “because I was afraid you might think I was at risk. That I might go that way.”
“Not that I haven’t had experience with the type,” Blackwell said. “We have a young man in Tokyo right now who is the author of all of the songs Lo and Rez have ever written, not to mention Blue Ahmed’s complete output for Chrome Koran. And he’s an explosives expert. Watch him closely. But we have that capacity, you see. So the safest place for you, Laney, in the event you go werewolf on us, would be right here, at the watchful heart of our security apparatus.”
Laney thought about it. It almost made sense. “But you won’t want me around if Slitscan runs that footage. I won’t want myself around. I don’t have any family, nobody else for it to damage, but I’m still going to have to live with it.”
“And how do you propose to do that?”
“I’ll go somewhere where people don’t watch that shit.”
“Well,” said I4lackwell, “when you find that fair land, I will go
there with you myself. We’ll live Ofl fruit and nuts, commune with o
275 all that’s left of bloody nature. But ’til then, Laney, I’m going to have a conversation with your Kathy Torrance. I will explain certain things to her. Nothing complicated. Simple, simple protocols of cause and effect. And she will never allow Slitscan to run that footage of your doppelganger.”
“Blackwell,” Laney said, “she dislikes me, she has her motive for revenge, but she wants, she needs, to destroy Rez. She’s a very powerful woman in a very powerful, fully global organization. Some simple threat of violence on your part isn’t going to stop her. It’ll only up the ante; she’ll go to her security people-”
“No,” said Blackwell, “she won’t, because that would be a violation of the very personal terms I will have established in our conversation. That’s the key word here, Laney, ‘personal.’ ‘Up close, and.’ We will not meet, we will not carve out this deep and meaningful and bloody unforgettable episode of mutual face-time as representatives of our respective faceless corporations. Not at all. It’s one-on-one time for your Kathy and I, and it may well prove to be as intimate, and I may hope enlightening, as any she ever had. Because I will bring a new certainty into her life, and we all need certainties. They help build character. And I will leave your Kathy with the deepest possible conviction that if she crosses me, she will die-but only after she’s been made to desire that, absolutely.” And Black-well’s smile, then, giving Laney the full benefit of his dental prosthesis, was hideous. “Now how was it exactly you were supposed to contact her, to give her your decision?”