Idoru. Part 24

"In my room," he said.

Masahiko's room, at the bottom of a short flight of concrete stairs, to the rear of the restaurant's kitchen, had probably been a storage 122 closet. It was a boy-nightmare, the sort of environment Chia knew from the brothers of friends, its floor and ledgelike bed long vanished beneath unwashed clothes, ramen-wrappers, j.a.panese magazines with wrinkled covers. A tower of empty foam ramen bowls in one corner, their hologram labels winking from beyond a single cone of halogen. A desk or table forming a second, higher ledge, cut from some recycled material that looked as though it had been laminated from shredded juice cartons. His computer there, a featureless black cube. A shallower shelf of the juice-carton board supported a pale blue microwave, unopened ramen bowls, and half a dozen tiny steel cans of coffee.

One of these, freshly microwaved, was hot in Chia's hand. The coffee was strong, sugary, thickly creamed. She sat beside him on the lumpy bed ledge, a padded jacket wadded up behind her for a cus.h.i.+on.

It smelled faintly of boy, of ramen, and of coffee. Though he seemed very clean, now that she was this close, and she had a vague idea that j.a.panese people generally were. Didn't they love to bathe? The thought made her want a shower.

"1 like this very much." Reaching to touch the Sandbenders again, which he'd brought from upstairs and placed on the work surface, in front of his black cube, sweeping aside a litter of plastic spoons, pens, nameless bits of metal and plastic.

"I-low do you see to work yours?" Gesturing toward his computer with the miniature can of coffee.

He said something in j.a.panese. Worms and dots of pastel neon lit the faces of the cube, crawling and pulsing, then died.

The walls, from floor to ceiling, were thickly covered with successive layers of posters, handbills, graphics files. The wall directly in front of her, above and behind the black computer, was hung with a large scarf, a square of some silky material screened with a map or diagram in red and black and yellow. Hundreds of irregular blocks or rooms, units of some kind, pressing in around a central vacancy, an uneven vertical rectangle, black.

2.

123.

"Walled City," he said, following her eye. He leaned forward, fingertip finding a particular spot. 'This is mine. Eighth level.'

Chia pointed to the center of the diagram. "What's this?"

"Black hole. In the original, something like an airshaft." He looked at her. "Tokyo has a black hole, too. You have seen this?"

'No," she said.

"The Palace. No lights. From a tall building, at night, the Imperial Palace is a black hole. Watching, once, I saw a torch flare."

"What happened to it in the earthquake?"

He raised his eyebrows. "This of course would not be shown. All now is as before. We are a.s.sured of this." He smiled, but only with the corners of his mouth.

"Where did Mitsuko go?" He shrugged.

"Did she say when she'd be back?" "No."

Chia thought of Hiromi Ogawa, and then of someone phoning for Kelsey's father. Hiromi? But then there was whatever it was, upstairs in her bag in Mitsuko's room. She remembered Maryalice yelling from behind the door to Eddie's office. Zona had to be right.

"You know a club called Whiskey Clone?"

"No." He stroked the buffed aluminum edges of her Sand-benders.

"How about Monkey Boxing?" He looked at her, shook his head.

"You probably don't get out much, do you?" He held her gaze. "In Walled City."

"I want to go to this club, Monkey Boxing. Except maybe it isn't called that anymore. It's in a place called s.h.i.+njuku. I was in the station there, before."

"Clubs are not open, now."

"That's okay. I just want you to show me where it is. Then I'll be able to find my own way back."

"No. I must return to Walled City. I have responsibilities. Find 124 the address of this place and I will explain to your computer where to go."

The Sandbenders could find its own way there, but Chia had decided she didn't want to go alone. Better to go with a boy than Mitsuko, and Mitsuko's allegiance to her chapter could be a problem anyway. Mainly, though, she just wanted to get out of here. Zona's news had spooked her. Somebody knew she was here. And what to do about the thing in her bag?

"You like this, right?" Pointing at her Sandbenders.

"Yes," hesaid.

"The software's even better. I've got an emulator in there that'll install a virtual Sandbenders in your computer. Take me to Monkey Boxing and it's yours."

"Have you always lived here?" Chia asked, as they walked to the station. "In this neighborhood, I mean?"

Masahiko shrugged. Chia thought the street made him uncomfortable. Maybe just being outside. He'd traded his gray sweats for equally baggy black cotton pants, cinched at the ankle with elastic-sided black nylon gaiters above black leather workshoes. He still wore his black tunic, but with the addition of a short-billed black leather cap that she thought might have once been part of a school uniform. If the tunic was too big for him, the cap was too small. He wore it perched forward at an angle, the bill riding low. "I live in Walled City," he said.

"Mitsuko told me. That's like a multi-user domain,"

"Walled City is unlike anything."

"Give me the address when I give you the emulator. I'll check it out." The sidewalk arched over a concrete channel running with grayish water. It reminded her of her Venice. She wondered if there had been a stream there once.

"It has no address," he said.

"That's impossible," Chia said, He said nothing.

She thought about what she'd found when she'd opened the SeaTac duty-free bag. Something flat and rectangular, dark gray. Maybe made from one of those weird plastics that had metal in them. One end had rows of little holes, the other had complicated shapes, metal, and a different kind of plastic. There didn't seem to be any way to open it, no visible seams. No markings. Didn't rattle when she shook it. Maybe What Things Are, the icon dictionary, would recognize it, but she hadn't had time. Masahiko had been downstairs changing when she'd slit the blue and yellow plastic with Mitsuko's serially numbered, commemorative Lo/Rez Swiss Army knife. She'd glanced around the room for a hiding place. Everything too neat and tidy.

Finally she'd put it back in her bag, hearing him coming up the stairs from the kitchen. Which was where it was now, along with her Sandbenders, under her arm, as they entered the station. Which was probably not smart but she just didn't know.

She used Kelsey's cashcard to buy them both tickets.

126 There was a fax ftom Rydell waiting for Laney when Blackwell dropped him at the hotel. It had been printed on expensive-looking gray letterhead that contrasted drastically with the body of the fax itself, which had been sent from a Lucky Dragon twenty-four-hour convenience store on Sunset. The smiling Lucky Dragon, blowing smoke from its nostrils, was centered just below the hotel's silver-embossed logo, something Laney thought of as the Droopy Evil Elf Hat. Whatever it was supposed to be, the hotel's decorators were very fond of it. It formed a repeating motif in the lobby, and Laney was glad that it didn't seem to have reached the guest rooms yet.

Rydell had hand-printed his fax with a medium-width fiber-pen in scrupulously neat block capitals. Laney read it in the elevator.

It was addressed to C. LANEY, GUESt

I THINK THEY KNOW WHERE YOU ARE. SHE AND THE.

DAY MANAGER HAD COFFEE IN THE LOBBY AND HE.

KEPT LOOKING AT ME. HE COULD'VE CHECKED THE.

PHONE LOG EASY. WISH I HADN'T CALLED YOU THERE.