“I understand,” she said, sometime later, knowing that she spoke now for the comfort of hearing her own voice. She spoke quietly, unwilling to wake that bounce and ripple of sound. “You are someone else’s collage. Your maker is the true artist. Was it the mad daughter? It doesn’t matter. Some- one brought the machine here, welded it to the dome, and wired it to the traces of memory. And spilled, somehow, all the worn sad evidence of a family’s humanity, and left it all to be stirred, to be sorted by a poet. To be sealed away in boxes. I know of no more extraordinary work than this. No more complex gesture A silver-fitted tortoise comb with broken teeth drifted past. She caught it like a fish and dragged the teeth through her hair. Across the dome, the screen lit, pulsed, and filled with Paco’s face. “The old man refuses to admit us, Marly,” the Spaniard said. “The other, the vagabond, has hidden him. Seijor is most anxious that we enter the cores and secure his property. If you can’t convince Ludgate and the other to open their lock, we will be forced to open it ourselves, depressurizing the entire struc- hire.” He glanced away from the camera, as though consulting an instrument or a member of his crew. “You have one hour.”
Bonny FOLLOWED JACKIE and the brown-haired girl out of the office. It felt like he’d been in Jammer’s for a month and he’d never get the taste of the place out of his mouth. The stupid little recessed spots staring down from the black ceiling, the fat ultrasuede seats, the round black tables, the carved wooden screens . . Beauvoir was sitting on the bar with the detona- tor beside him and the South African gun across his gray sharkskin lap. “How come you let `em in?” Bobby asked when Jackie had led the girl to a table. “Jackie.” Beauvoir said, “she tranced while you were iced. Legba. Told us the Virgin was on her way up with this guy.” “Who is he?” Beauvoir shrugged. “A merc, he looks like. Soldier for the zaibatsus. Jumped-up street samurai. What happened to you when you were iced?” He told him about Jaylene Slide. “L.A ,” Beauvoir said. “She’ll drill through diamond to get the man who fried her daddy, but a brother needs help, forget it.” “I’m not a brother.” “I think you got something there.” “So I don’t get to try to get to the Yakuza?” “What’s Jammer say?” “Dick He’s in there now, watchin’ your merc take a call.” “A call? Who?” “Some white guy with a bleach job. Mean-looking.” Beauvoir looked at Bobby, looked at the door, looked back. “Legba says sit tight and watch. This is getting random enough already, the Sons of the Neon Chrysanthemum aside.” “Beauvoir,” Bobby said, keeping his voice down, “that girl, she’s the one, the one in the matrix, when I tried to run that” He nodded, his plastic frames sliding down his nose. “The Virgin.” “But what’s happening? I mean” “Bobby, my advice to you is just take it like it comes. She’s one thing to me, maybe something different to Jackie. To you, she’s just a scared kid. Go easy. Don’t upset her. She’s a long way from home, and we’re still a long way from getting out of here” “Okay Bobby looked at ifie floor. “I’m sorry about Lucas, man. He washe was a dude.” “Go talk to Jackie and the girl.” Beauvoir said “I’m watching the door.” “Okay.” He crossed the nightclub carpet to where Jackie sat with the girl. She didn’t look like much, and there was only a small part of him that said she was the one. She didn’t look up, and he could see that she’d been crying. “I got grabbed,” he said to Jackie “You were flat gone.” “So were you,” the dancer said. “Then Legba came to me…” “Newmark,” the man called Turner said, from the door to Jammer’s office, “we want to talk to you.” “Gotta go,” he said, wishing the girl would look up, see the big dude asking for him. “They want me.” Jackie squeezed his wrist.