He arrived unannounced, as he always did, and alone, the Net helicopter settling like a solitary wasp, stirring strands of seaweed across the damp sand.
She watched from the rust-eaten railing as he jumped down, something boyish, almost bumbling, in his apparent eagerness. He wore a long topcoat of brown tweed; unbuttoned, it showed the immaculate front of one of his candystriped shirts, the propwash stirring his brown-blond hair and fluttering his Sense/Net tie. Robin was right, she decided: he did look as though his mother dressed him.
Perhaps it was deliberate, she thought, as he came striding up the beach, a feigned navet. She remembered Porphyre once maintaining that major corporations were entirely independent of the human beings who composed the body corporate. This had seemed patently obvious to Angie, but the hairdresser had insisted that shed failed to grasp his basic premise. Swift was Sense/Nets most important human decision-maker.
The thought of Porphyre made her smile; Swift, taking it as a greeting, beamed back at her.
He offered her lunch in San Francisco; the helicopter was extremely fast. She countered by insisting on preparing him a bowl of dehydrated Swiss soup and microwaving a frozen brick of sourdough rye.
She wondered, watching him eat, about his sexuality. In his late thirties, he somehow conveyed the sense of an extraordinarily bright teenager in whom the onset of puberty had been subtly delayed. Rumor, at one time or another, had supplied him with every known sexual preference, and with several that she assumed were entirely imaginary. None of them seemed at all likely to Angie. Shed known him since shed come to Sense/Net; hed been well established in the upper echelons of production when shed arrived, one of the top people in Tally Ishams team, and hed taken an immediate professional interest in her. Looking back, she assumed that Legba had steered her into his path: hed been so obviously on his way up, though she might not have seen it herself, then, dazzled by the glitter and constant movement of the scene.
Bobby had taken an instant dislike to him, bristling with a Barrytowners inbred hostility to authority, but had generally managed to conceal it for the sake of her career. The dislike had been mutual, Swift greeting their split and Bobbys departure with obvious relief.
"Hilton," she said, as she poured him a cup of the herbal tea he preferred to coffee, "what is it thats keeping Robin in London?"
He looked up from the steaming cup. "Something personal, I think. Perhaps hes found a new friend." Bobby had always been Angies friend, to Hilton. Robins friends tended to be young, male, and athletic; the muted erotic sequences in her stims with Robin were assembled from stock footage provided by Continuity and heavily treated by Raebel and his effects team. She remembered the one night theyd spent together, in a windblown house in southern Madagascar, his passivity and his patience. Theyd never tried again, and shed suspected that he feared that intimacy would undermine the illusion their stims projected so perfectly.
"What did he think of me going into the clinic, Hilton? Did he tell you?"
"I think he admired you for it."
"Someone told me recently that hes been telling people Im crazy."
Hed rolled up his striped shirtsleeves and loosened his tie. "I cant imagine Robin thinking that, let alone saying it. I know what he thinks of you. You know what gossip is, in the Net . . ."
"Hilton, wheres Bobby?"
His brown eyes, very still. "Isnt that over, Angie?"
"Hilton, you know. You must know. You know where he is. Tell me."
"We lost him."
"Lost him?"
"Security lost him. Youre right, of course; we kept the closest possible track of him after he left you. He reverted to type." There was an edge of satisfaction in his voice.
"And what type was that?"
"Ive never asked what brought you together," he said. "Security investigated both of you, of course. He was a petty criminal."
She laughed. "He wasnt even that . . ."
"You were unusually well represented, Angie, for an unknown. You know that your agents made it a key condition of your contract that we take Bobby Newmark on as well."
"Contracts have had stranger conditions, Hilton."
"And he went on salary as your . . . companion."
"My friend. "
Was Swift actually blushing? He broke eye contact, looked down at his hands. "When he left you, he went to Mexico, Mexico City. Security was tracing him, of course; we dont like to lose track of anyone who knows that much about the personal life of one of our stars. Mexico City is a very . . . complicated place . . . We do know that he seemed to be trying to continue his previous . . . career."
"He was hustling cyberspace?"
He met her eyes again. "He was seeing people in the business, known criminals."
"And? Go on."
"He . . . faded out. Vanished. Do you have any idea what Mexico City is like, if you slip below the poverty line?"
"And he was poor?"
"Hed become an addict. According to our best sources."
"An addict? Addicted to what?"
"I dont know."
"Continuity!"
He almost spilled his tea.
"Hello, Angie."
"Bobby, Continuity. Bobby Newmark, my friend," glaring at Swift. "He went to Mexico City. Hilton says he became addicted to something. A drug, Continuity?"
"Im sorry, Angie. Thats classified data."
"Hilton . . ."
"Continuity," he began, and coughed.
"Hello, Hilton."
"Executive override, Continuity. Do we have that information?"
"Securitys sources described Newmarks addiction as neuro-electronic."
"I dont understand."
"Some sort of, um, wirehead business," Swift offered.
She felt an impulse to tell him how shed found the drug, the charger.
Hush, child. Her head was full of the sound of bees, a building pressure.
"Angie? What is it?" He was half up from his chair, reaching for her.
"Nothing. Im . . . upset. Im sorry. Nerves. It isnt your fault. I was going to tell you about finding Bobbys cyberspace deck. But you already know about that, dont you?"
"Can I get you anything? Water?"
"No, thanks, but Ill lie down for a while, if you dont mind. But stay, please. I have some ideas for orbital sequences that Id like your advice on . . ."
"Of course. Have a nap, Ill have a walk on the beach, and then well talk."
She watched him from the bedroom window, watched his brown figure recede in the direction of the Colony, followed by the patient little Dornier.
He looked like a child on the empty beach; he looked as lost as she felt.