Gerald had to get down on his hands and knees to pull her out from under the bed. He had cool, very gentle hands. She couldn’t remember how she’d gotten under there, but now everything was quiet. Gerald had on a gray topcoat and dark glasses. »You’re going with Molly now, Mona,« he said. She started to shake. »I think I’d better give you something for your nerves.« She jerked back, out of his grip. »No! Don’t fucking touch me!« »Leave it, Gerald,« the woman said from the door. »It’s time you go now.« »I don’t think you know what you’re doing,« he said, »but good luck.« »Thanks. Think you’ll miss the place?« »No. I was going to retire soon anyway.« »So was I,« the woman said, and then Gerald left, without even a nod for Mona. »Got any clothes?« the woman asked Mona. »Get ’em on. We’re leaving too.« Dressing, Mona found she couldn’t button her dress over her new breasts, so she left it open, putting Michael’s jacket on and sipping it up to her chin.
Company
Sometimes he just needed to stand there and look up at the Judge, or squat on the concrete beside the Witch. It held back the memory-stutter, to do that. Not the fugues, the real flashbacks, but this jerky unfocused feeling he got, like the memory tape kept slipping in his head, losing minute increments of experience . . . So he was doing that now, and it was working, and finally he noticed Cherry was there beside him. Gentry was up in the loft with the shape he’d captured, what he called a macroform node, and he’d hardly listened to what Slick had tried to tell him about the house and that whole place and Bobby the Count. So Slick had come down here to crouch next to an Investigator in the cold and dark, retracing all the things he’d done with so many different tools, and where he’d scrounged each part, and then Cherry reached out and touched his cheek with her cold hand. »You okay?« she asked. »I thought maybe it was happening to you again. . . .« »No. It’s just I gotta come down here, sometimes.« »He plugged you into the Count’s box, didn’t he?« »Bobby,« Slick said, »that’s his name. I saw him.« »Where?« »In there. It’s a whole world. There’s this house, like a castle or something, and he’s there.« »By himself?« »He said Angie Mitchell’s in there too. . . .« »Maybe he’s crazy. Is she?« »I didn’t see her. Saw a car he said was hers.« »She’s in some celebrity detox place in Jamaica, last I heard.« He shrugged. »I dunno.« »What’s he like?« »He looked younger. Anybody’d look bad with all those tubes ‘n’ shit in ’em. He figured Kid Afrika dumped him here because he got scared. He said if anybody comes looking for him, we jack him into the matrix.« »Why?« »Dunno.« »You shoulda asked him.« He shrugged again. »Seen Bird anywhere?« »No.« »Shoulda been back already . . .« He stood up.
Little Bird came back at dusk, on Gentry’s bike, the dark wings of his hair damp with snow and flapping behind him as he roared in across the Solitude. Slick winced; Little Bird was in the wrong gear. Little Bird jolted up an incline of compacted oildrums and hit the brakes when he should’ve gunned it. Cherry gasped as Bird and the bike separated in midair; the bike seemed to hang there for a second before it somersaulted into the rusted sheet-metal tangle that had been one of Factory’s outbuildings, and Little Bird was rolling over and over on the ground. Somehow Slick never heard the crash. He was standing beside Cherry in the shelter of a doorless loading bay — then he was sprinting across snow-flecked rust to the fallen rider, no transition. Little Bird lay on his back with blood on his lips, his mouth partially hidden by the jumble of thongs and amulets he wore around his neck. »Don’t touch him,« Cherry said. »Ribs may be broken, or he’s mashed up inside. . . .« Little Bird’s eyes opened at the sound of her voice. He pursed his lips and spat blood and part of a tooth. »Don’t move,« Cherry said, kneeling beside him and switching to the crisp diction she’d learned in med-tech school. »You may have been injured. . . .« »F-fuck it, lady,« he managed, and struggled stiffly up, with Slick’s help. »All right, asshole,« she said, »hemorrhage. See if I give a shit.« »Didn’t get it,« Little Bird said, smearing blood across his face with the back of his hand, »the truck.« »I can see that,« Slick said. »Marvie ‘n’ them, they got company. Like flies on shit. Couple of hovers ‘n’ a copter ‘n’ shit. All these guys.« »What kind of guys?« »Like soldiers, but they’re not. Soldier’ll goof around, bullshit, crack jokes when nobody important’s looking. But not them.« »Cops?« Marvie and his two brothers grew mutant ruderalis in a dozen half-buried railway tankcars; sometimes they tried to cook primitive amine compounds, but their lab kept blowing up. They were the nearest thing Factory had to permanent neighbors. Six kilometers. »Cops?« Little Bird spat another tooth chip and gingerly probed his mouth with a bloody finger. »They aren’t doin’ anything against the law. Anyway, cops can’t afford shit like that, new hovers, new Honda. . . .« He grinned through a film of blood and spittle. »I hung off in the Solitude ‘n’ scoped ’em good. Nobody I’d wanna talk to, or you either. Guess I really fucked Gentry’s bike, huh?« »Don’t worry about it,« Slick said. »I think his mind’s on something else.« »Tha’s good. . . .« He staggered in the direction of Factory, nearly fell, caught himself, continued. »He’s higher’n a kite,« Cherry said. »Hey, Bird,« Slick called, »what happened to that bag of shit I gave you to give Marvie?« Bird swayed, turned. »Lost it . . .« Then he was gone, around a corner of corrugated steel. »Maybe he’s making that up,« Cherry said. »About those guys. Or seeing things.« »I doubt it,« Slick said, pulling her into deeper shadow as an unlit black Honda swung down toward Factory out of winter twilight.