He spent the bulk of his Swiss account on a new pancreas and liver, the rest on a new Ono-Sendai and a ticket back to the Sprawl. He found work. He found a girl who called herself Michael. And one October night, punching himself past the scarlet tiers of the Eastern Seaboard Fission Authority, he saw three figures, tiny, impossible, who stood at the very edge of one out the vast steps of data. Small as they were, he could make out the boy’s grin, his pink gums, the glitter of the long gray eyes that had been Riviera’s. Linda still wore his jacket; she waved, as he passed. But the third figure, close behind her, arm across her shoulders, was himself. Somewhere, very close, the laugh that wasn’t laughter. He never saw Molly again.
Vancouver July 1983
MY THANKS
to Bruce Sterling, to Lewis Shiner, to John Shirley,
Helden. And to Tom Maddox, the inventor of ICE.
And to the others, who know why.