“I must leave you now,” he said, as they burst from the maze into that vacancy. “They wish privacy.” 0 283 He was gone, and at first Chia thought there was nothing there at all, only the faint grayish light filtering down from somewhere high above. When she looked up at this, it resolved into a vast, distant skylight, very far above her, but littered with a compost of strange and discarded shapes. She remembered the city’s rooftops, and the things abandoned there.
“It is strange, isn’t it?” The idoru stood before her in embroidered robes, the tiny bright patterns lit from within, moving. “Ho!low and somber. But he insisted we meet you here.”
“Who insisted? Do you know where Zona is?”
And there was a small table or four-legged stand in front of the idoru, very old, its dragon-carved legs thick with flaking, pale green paint. A single dusty glass stood centered there, something coiled inside it. Someone coughed.
“This is the heart of Hak Nam,” the Etruscan said, that same creaking voice assembled from a million samples of dry old sounds. “Traditionally a place of serious conversation.”
“Your friend is gone,” the idoru said. “I wished to tell you myself. This one,” indicating the glass, “volunteers details I do not understand.”
“But they’ve only shut down her website,” Chia said. “She’s in Mexico City, with her gang.”
“She is nowhere,” the Etruscan said.
“When you were taken from her,” the idoru said, “taken from the room in Venice, your friend went to your system software and activated the video units in your goggles. What she saw there indicated to her that you were in grave danger. As I believe you were. She must then have decided on a plan. Returning to her secret country, she linked her site with that of the Tokyo chapter of the Lo/Rez group. She ordered Ogawa, the president of the group, to post the message announcing Rez’s death at Hotel Di. She threatened her with a weapon that would shatter the Tokyo chapter’s site. .
“The knife,” Cliia said. “It was real?”
“And extremely illegal,” the Etruscan said. 284 William Gibson “When Ogawa refused,” the idoru said, “your friend used her weapon.
“A serious crime,” the Etruscan said, “under the laws of every country involved.”
“She then posted her message through what remained of Ogawa’s website,” the idoru said. “It seemed official, and it had the effect of quickly surrounding Hotel Di with a sea of potential witnesses.”
“Whatever the next stage of her plan,” the Etruscan said, “she had exposed her presence in her website. The original owners became aware of her. She abandoned her site. They pursued her. She was forced to discard her persona.”
“What ‘persona’?” Chia felt a sinking feeling.
“Zona Rosa,” said the Etruscan, “was the persona of Mercedes Purissima Vargas-Gutierrez. She is twenty-six years old and the victim of an environmental syndrome occurring most frequently in the Federal District of Mexico.” His voice was like rain on a thin metal roof now. “Her father is an extremely successful criminal lawyer.”
“Then I can find her,” Chia said.
“But she would not wish this,” the idoru said. “Mercedes Punssima is severely deformed by the syndrome, and has lived for the past five years in almost complete denial of her physical self.”
Chia was sitting there crying. Masahiko removed the black cups from his eyes and came over to the bed.
“Zona’s gone,” she said.
“I know,” he said. He sat down beside her. “You never finished telling me the story of the Sandbenders,” he said. “It was very interesting story.”
So she began to tell it to him.
285
45. Lucky “Laney,” he heard her say, her voice blurred with sleep. “What are you doing?”
The illuminated face of the cedar telephone. “I’m calling the
Lucky Dragon, on Sunset.”
“The what?”
“Convenience store. Twenty-four hours.”
“Laney, it’s three in the morning .
“Have to thank Rydell, tell him the job worked out. She groaned and rolled over, pulling the pillow over her head. Through the window he could see the translucent amber, the serned cliffs of the new buildings, reflecting the lights of the city. 0
2 287 46. Fables of the Reconstruction