Machine dreams hold a special vertigo. Turner lay down on a virgin slab of green temperfoam in the makeshift dorm and jacked Mitchell’s dossier. It came on slow; he had time to close his eyes. Ten seconds later, his eyes were open. He clutched the green foam and fought his nausea. Again, he closed his eyes. . . . It came on, again, gradually, a flickering, nonlin- ear flood of fact and sensory data, a kind of narrative con- veyed in surreal jump cuts and juxtapositions. It was vaguely like riding a roller coaster that phased in and out of existence at random, impossibly rapid intervals, changing altitude, at- tack, and direction with each pulse of nothingness, except that the shifts had nothing to do with any physical orientation, but rather with lightning alternations in paradigm and symbol system. The data had never been intended for human input. Eyes open, he pulled the thing from his socket and held it, his palm slick with sweat. It was like waking from a night- mare. Not a screamer, where impacted fears took on simple, terrible shapes, but the sort of dream, infinitely more disturb- ing, where everything is perfectly and horribly normal, and where everything is utterly wrong The intimacy of the thing was hideous He fought down waves of raw transference, bringing all his will to bear on crushing a feeling that was akin to love, the obsessive tender- ness a watcher comes to feel for the subject of prolonged surveillance. Days or hours later, he knew, the most minute details of Mitchell’s academic record might bob to the surface of his mind, or the name of a mistress, the scent of her heavy red hair in the sunlight through He sat up quickly, the plastic soles of his shoes smacking the rusted deck. He still wore the parka, and the Smith & Wesson, in a side pocket, swung painfully against his hip. It would pass. Mitchell’s psychic odor would fade, as surely as the Spanish grammar in the lexicon evaporated after each use. What he had experienced was a Maas security dossier compiled by a sentient computer, nothing more He replaced the biosoft in Conroy’s little black wallet, smoothed the Velcro seal with his thumb, and put the cord around his neck. He became aware of the sound of waves lapping the flanks of the rig. “Hey, boss,” someone said, from beyond the brown mili- tary blanket that screened the entrance to the dorm area, “Conroy says it’s time for you to inspect the troops, then you and him depart for other parts.” Oakey’s bearded face slid from behind the blanket “Otherwise, I wouldn’t wake you up, right?” “I wasn’t sleeping,” Turner said, and stood, fingers reflex- ively kneading the skin around the implanted socket. “Too bad,” Oakey said. “I got derms’ll put you under all the way, one hour on the button, then kick in some kind of righteous upper, get you up and on the case, no lie Turner shook his head. “Take me to Conroy” S TII[
MAIU..Y CHECKED iwro a small hotel with green plants in heavy brass pots, the corridors tiled like worn marble chessboards. The elevator was a scrolled gilt cage with rosewood panels smelling of lemon oil and small cigars. Her room was on the fifth floor. A single tall window overlooked the avenue, the kind of window you could actu- ally open. When the smiling bellman had gone, she collapsed into an armchair whose plush fabric contrasted comfortably with the muted Belgian carpet. She undid the zips on her old Paris boots for the last time, kicked them off, and stared at the dozen glossy carrier bags the bellman had arranged on the bed. Tomorrow, she thought, she’d buy luggage. And a toothbrush. “I’m in shock,” she said to the bags on the bed. “I must take care. Nothing seems real now.” She looked down and saw that her hose were both out at the toe. She shook her head. Her new purse lay on the white marble table beside the bed; it was black, cut from cowhide tanned thick and soft as Flemish butter. It had cost more than she would have owed Andrea for her share of a month’s rent, but that was also true of a single night’s stay in this hotel. The purse contained her passport and the credit chip she’d been issued in the Galerie Duperey, drawn on an account held in her name by an orbital branch of the Nederlands Algemeen Bank. She went into the bathroom and worked the smooth brass levers of the big white tub. Hot, aerated water hissed out through a Japanese filtration device. The hotel provided pack- ets of bath salts, tubes of creams and scented oils. She emptied a tube of oil into the filling tub and began to remove her clothes, feeling a pang of loss when she tossed the Sally Stanley behind her. Until an hour before, the year-old jacket had been her favorite garment and perhaps the single most expensive thing she’d ever owned. Now it was something for the cleaners to take away; perhaps it would find its way to one of the city’s flea markets, the sort of place where she’d hunted bargains as an art-school girl. The mirrors misted and ran, as the room filled with scented steam, blurring the reflection of her nakedness. Was it really this easy? Had Virek’s slim gold credit chip checked her out of her misery and into this hotel, where the towels were white and thick and scratchy? She was aware of a certain spiritual vertigo, as though she trembled at the edge of some precipice. She wondered how powerful money could actually be, if one had enough of it, really enough. She supposed that only the Vireks of the world could really know, and very likely they were functionally incapable of knowing; asking Virek would be like interrogating a fish in order to learn more about water. Yes, my dear, it’s wet; yes, my child, it’s certainly warm, scented, scratchy-toweled. She stepped into the tub and lay down. Tomorrow she would have her hair cut. In Paris.