COUNT ZERO by William Gibson

He looked back at the line of white hotels, his hands inert on one of Tsushima’s teak railings Behind the hotels, the little town’s three holograms glowed: Banamex, Aeronaves, and the cathedral’s six-meter Virgin. Conroy stood beside him. “Crash job,” Conroy said. “You know how it is.” Conroy’s voice was flat and uninflected, as though he’d modeled it after a cheap voice chip. His face was broad and white, dead white. His eyes were dark-ringed and hooded, beneath a peroxide thatch combed back from a wide forehead. He wore a black polo shirt and black slacks. “In- side,” he said, turning. Turner followed, ducking to enter the cabin door. White screens, pale flawless pineTokyo’s aus- tere corporate chic. Conroy settled himself on a low, rectangular cushion of slate-gray ultrasuede. Turner stood, his hands slack at his sides. Conroy took a knurled silver inhaler from the low enamel table between them. “Choline enhancer?” “No.” Conroy jammed the inhaler into one nostril and snorted. “You want some sushi?” He put the inhaler back on the table. “We caught a couple of red snapper about an hour ago” Turner stood where he was, staring at Conroy. “Christopher Mitchell,” Conroy said. “Maas Biolabs. Their head hybridoma man. He’s coming over to Hosaka.” “Never heard of him.” “Bullshit. How about a drink?”

Turner shook his head. Silicon’s on the way out, Turner. Mitchell’s the man who made biochips work, and Maas is sitting on the major patents. You know that. He’s the man for monoclonals. He wants out YOU and me, Turner, we’re going to shift him.” “I think I’m retired, Conroy. I was having a good time, back there.” “That’s what the psych team in Tokyo say. I mean, it’s not exactly your first time out of the box, is it? She’s a field psychologist, on retainer to Hosaka.” A muscle in Turner’s thigh began to jump. “They say you’re ready, Turner. They were a little wor- ried, after New Delhi. so they wanted to check it out. Little therapy on the side. Never hurts, does it?” 2 MARY

SHE’D WORN HER BEST for the interview, but it was raining in Brussels and she had no money for a cab. She walked from the Eurotrans station. Her hand, in the pocket of her good jacketa Sally Stanley but almost a year oldwas a white knot around the crumpled telefax. She no longer needed it, having memorized the ad- dress, but it seemed she could no more release it than break the trance that held her here now, staring into the window of an expensive shop that sold menswear, her focus phasing between sedate flannel dress shirts and the reflection of her own dark eyes. Surely the eyes alone would be enough to cost her the job. No need for the wet hair she now wished she’d let Andrea cut. The eyes displayed a pain and an inertia that anyone could read, and most certainly these things would soon be revealed to Herr Josef Virek, least likely of potential employers. When the telefax had been delivered, she’d insisted on regarding it as some cruel prank, another nuisance call. She’d had enough of those, thanks to the media, so many that Andrea had ordered a special program for the apartment’s phone, one that filtered out incoming calls from any number that wasn’t listed in her permanent directory. But that, An- drea had insisted, must have been the reason for the telefax. How else could anyone reach her? But Marly had shaken her head and huddled deeper into Andrea’s old terry robe. Why would Virek, enormously weal- thy, collector and patron, wish to hire the disgraced former operator of a tiny Paris gallery? Then it had been Andrea’s time for head-shaking, in her impatience with the new, the disgraced Marly Krushkhova, who spent entire days in the apartment now, who sometimes didn’t bother to dress. The attempted sale, in Paris, of a single forgery, was hardly the novelty Marly imagined it to have been, she said. If the press hadn’t been quite so anxious to show up the disgusting Gnass for the fool he most as- suredly was, she continued, the business would hardly have been news. Gnass was wealthy enough, gross enough, to make for a weekend’s scandal. Andrea smiled. “If you had been less attractive, you would have gotten far less attention.” Marly shook her head. “And the forgery was Alain’s. You were innocent. Have you forgotten that?” Marly went into the bathroom, still huddled in the thread- bare robe, without answering. Beneath her friend’s wish to comfort, to help, Marly could already sense the impatience of someone forced to share a very small space with an unhappy, nonpaying guest. And Andrea had had to loan her the fare for the Eurotrans. With a conscious, painful effort of will, she broke from the circle of her thoughts and merged with the dense but sedate flow of serious Belgian shoppers. A girl in bright tights and a boyfriend’s oversized loden jacket brushed past, scrubbed and smiling. At the next inter- section, Marly noticed an outlet for a fashion line she’d favored in her own student days. The clothes looked impossi- bly young. In her white and secret fist, the telefax. Galerie Duperey, 14 Rue au Beurre, Bruxelles Josef Virek.

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76

Leave a Reply 0

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *