If this was part of Bobbys big gray house in the country, Slick decided, opening his eyes on the cramped curve of the narrow corridor, then it was a stranger place than it had seemed the first time. The air was thick and dead and the light from the greenish glass-tile ceiling-strip made him feel like he was under water. The tunnel was made of some kind of glazed concrete. It felt like jail.
"Maybe we came out in the basement or something," he said, noticing the faint ping of echo off the concrete when he spoke.
"No reason wed cut into the construct you saw before," Gentry said.
"So what is it?" Slick touched the concrete wall; it was warm.
"Doesnt matter," Gentry said.
Gentry started walking in the direction they were both facing. Past the curve, the floor became an uneven mosaic of shattered china, fragments pressed into something like epoxy, slippery under their boots.
"Look at this stuff . . ." Thousands of different patterns and colors in the broken bits, but no overall design in how it had been put down, just random.
"Art." Gentry shrugged. "Somebodys hobby. You should appreciate that, Slick Henry."
Whoever it was, they hadnt bothered with the walls. Slick knelt to run his fingers over it, feeling raw edges of broken ceramic, glassy hardened plastic in between. "Whats that supposed to mean, hobby?"
"Its like those things you build, Slick. Your junk toys . . ." Gentry grinned his tense crazy grin.
"You dont know," Slick said. "Spend your whole fucking life trying to figure what cyberspace is shaped like, man, and it probably isnt even shaped like anything, and anyway who gives a shit?" There wasnt anything random about the Judge and the others. The process was random, but the results had to conform to something inside, something he couldnt touch directly.
"Come on," Gentry said.
Slick stayed where he was, looking up at Gentrys pale eyes, gray in this light, his taut face. Why did he put up with Gentry anyway?
Because you needed somebody, in the Solitude. Not just for electricity; that whole landlord routine was really just a shuck. He guessed because you needed somebody around. Bird wasnt any good to talk to because there wasnt much he was interested in, and all he talked was stringtown stupid. And even if Gentry never admitted it, Slick felt like Gentry understood about some things.
"Yeah," Slick said, getting up, "lets go."
The tunnel wound in on itself like a gut. The section with the mosaic floor was back there now, around however many curves and up and down short, curving stairwells. Slick kept trying to imagine a building that would have insides like this, but he couldnt. Gentry was walking fast, eyes narrowed, chewing on his lip. Slick thought the air was getting worse.
Up another stairwell, they hit a straight stretch that narrowed to nothing in the distance, either way you looked. It was broader than the curved parts and the floor was soft and humpy with little rugs, it looked like hundreds of them, rolled out layers deep over the concrete. Each rug had its own pattern and colors, lots of reds and blues, but all the patterns were the same zaggy diamonds and triangles. The dusty smell was thicker here and Slick figured it had to be the rugs, they looked so old. The ones on top, nearest the center, were worn down to the weave, in patches. A trail, like somebodyd been walking up and down there for years. Sections of the overhead light-strip were dark, and others pulsed weakly.
"Which way?" he asked Gentry.
Gentry was looking down, working his thick lower lip between finger and thumb. "This way."
"How come?"
"Because it doesnt matter."
It made Slicks legs tired, walking over those rugs. Had to watch not to snag his toes in the ones with holes worn through. Once he stepped over a glass tile that had fallen from the light-strip. At regular intervals now they were passing sections of wall that looked as though portals had been sealed over with more concrete. There wasnt anything there, just the same arched shape in slightly paler concrete with a slightly different texture.
"Gentry, this has gotta be underground, right? Like a basement under something . . ."
But Gentry just brought his arm up, so that Slick bumped into it, and they both were standing there staring at the girl at the end of the corridor, not a dozen meters across the waves of carpet.
She said something in a language Slick guessed was French. The voice was light and musical, the tone matter-of-fact. She smiled. Pale under a twist of dark hair, a fine, high-boned face, strong thin nose, and wide mouth.
Slick felt Gentrys arm trembling against his chest. "Its okay," he said, taking Gentrys arm and lowering it. "Were just looking for Bobby . . ."
"Everyones looking for Bobby," she said, English with an accent he didnt know. "Im looking for him myself. For his body. Have you seen his body?" She took a step back, away from them, like she was about to run.
"We wont hurt you," Slick said, suddenly aware of his own smell, of the grease worked into his jeans and brown jacket, and Gentry didnt really look all that much more reassuring.
"I shouldnt think so," she said, and her white teeth flashed again in the stale undersea light. "But then I dont think I fancy either of you."
Slick wanted Gentry to say something, but Gentry didnt. "You know him Bobby?" Slick ventured.
"Hes really a very clever man. Extraordinarily clever. Although I dont think I fancy him, really." She wore something loose and black that hung to her knees. Her feet were bare. "Nonetheless, I want . . . his body." She laughed.
Everything
changed.
"Juice?" Bobby the Count asked, holding out a tall glass of something yellow. The water in the turquoise pool reflected shifting blobs of sunlight on the palm fronds above his head. He was naked, aside from a pair of very dark glasses. "Whats the matter with your friend?"
"Nothing," Slick heard Gentry say. "He did time on induced Korsakovs. Transition like that scares the shit out of him."
Slick lay very still on the white iron lounge chair with the blue cushions, feeling the sun bake through his greasy jeans.
"Youre the one he mentioned, right?" Bobby asked. "Names Gentle? Own a factory?"
"Gentry."
"Youre a cowboy." Bobby smiled. "Console jockey. Cyberspace man."
"No."
Bobby rubbed his chin. "You know I have to shave in here? Cut myself, theres a scar . . ." He drank half the glass of juice and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "Youre not a jockey? How else you get in here?"
Gentry unzipped his beaded jacket, exposing his bone-white, hairless chest. "Do something about the sun," he said.
Twilight. Like that. Not even a click. Slick heard himself groan. Insects began to creak in the palms beyond the whitewashed wall. Sweat cooled on his ribs.
"Sorry, man," Bobby said to Slick. "That Korsakovs, that must be some sad shit. But this place is beautiful. Vallarta. Belonged to Tally Isham." He turned his attention to Gentry again. "If youre not a cowboy, fella, what are you?"
"Im like you," Gentry said.
"Im a cowboy." A lizard scooted diagonally up the wall behind Bobbys head.
"No. You arent here to steal anything, Newmark."
"How do you know?"
"Youre here to learn something."
"Same thing."
"No. You were a cowboy once, but now youre something else. Youre looking for something, but theres nobody to steal it from. Im looking for it too."
And Gentry began to explain about the Shape, as the palm shadows gathered and thickened into Mexican night, and Bobby the Count sat and listened.
When Gentry was done, Bobby sat there for a long time without saying anything. Then he said, "Yeah. Youre right. How I think of it, Im trying to find out what brought the Change."
"Before that," Gentry said, "it didnt have a Shape."
"Hey," Slick said, "before we were here, we were somewhere else. Where was that?"
"Straylight," Bobby said. "Up the well. In orbit."
"Whos that girl?"
"Girl?"
"Dark hair. Skinny."
"Oh," Bobby said, in the dark, "that was 3Jane. You saw her?"
"Weird girl," Slick said.
"Dead girl," Bobby said. "You saw her construct. Blew her family fortune to build this thing."
"You, uh, hang out with her? In here?"
"She hates my guts. See, I stole it, stole her soul-catcher. She had her construct in place in here when I took off for Mexico, so shes always been around. Thing was, she died. Outside, I mean. Meantime, all her shit outside, all her scams and schemes, thats being run by lawyers, programs, more flunkies . . ." He grinned. "It really pisses her off. The people whore trying to get into your place to get the aleph back, they work for somebody else who works for some people she hired out on the Coast. But, yeah, Ive done the odd deal with her, traded things. Shes crazy, but she plays a tight game . . ."
Not even a click.
At first he thought he was back in the gray house, where hed seen Bobby the first time, but this room was smaller and the carpets and furniture were different, he couldnt say how. Rich but not as glittery. Quiet. A lamp with a green glass shade glowed on a long wooden table.
Tall windows with frames painted white, dividing the white beyond that into rectangles, each pane, and that must be snow . . . He stood with his cheek touching soft drapes, looking out into a walled space of snow.
"London," Bobby said. "She had to trade me this to get the serious voodoo shit. Thought they wouldnt have anything to do with her. Fuck of a lot of good it did her. Theyve been fading, sort of blurring. You can still raise em, sometimes, but their personalities run together . . ."
"That fits," Gentry said. "They came out of the first cause, When It Changed. You already figured that. But you dont know what happened yet, do you?"
"No. I just know where. Straylight. Shes told me all that part, I think all she knows. Doesnt really care about it. Her mother put together a couple of AIs, very early on, real heavy stuff. Then her mother died and the AIs sort of stewed in the corporate cores, up there. One of them started doing deals on its own. It wanted to get together with the other one . . ."
"It did. Theres your first cause. Everything changed."
"Simple as that? How do you know?"
"Because," Gentry said, "Ive been at it from another angle. Youve been playing cause and effect, but Ive been looking for outlines, shapes in time. Youve been looking all over the matrix, but Ive been looking at the matrix, the whole thing. I know things you dont."
Bobby didnt answer. Slick turned from the window and saw the girl, the same one, standing across the room. Just standing there.
"It wasnt just the Tessier-Ashpool AIs," Gentry said. "People came up the well to crack the T-A cores. They brought a Chinese military icebreaker."
"Case," Bobby said, "Guy named Case. I know that part. Some kind of synergistic effect . . ."
Slick watched the girl.
"And the sum was greater than the parts?" Gentry really seemed to be enjoying this. "Cybernetic godhead? Light on the waters?"
"Yeah," Bobby said, "thats about it."
"Its a little more complicated than that," Gentry said, and laughed.
And the girl was gone. No click.
Slick shivered.