Mona Lisa Overdrive (Sprawl, #3)

by William Gibson

She walked on, comforted by the surf, by the one perpetual moment of beach-time, the now-and-always of it.

They were well matched, Angie and Bobby, born out of vacuums, Angie from the clean blank kingdom of Maas Biolabs and Bobby from the boredom of Barrytown.…

The talent wore a bottle-green velvet suit and immaculate suede wingtips, and Sally found him in another pub, this one called the Rose and Crown. She introduced him as Tick. He was scarcely taller than Kumiko, and something was skewed in his back or hip, so that he walked with a pronounced limp that heightened an overall impression of asymmetry. His black hair was shaved close at the back and sides, but piled into an oily loaf of curls above his forehead.

Slick Henry hated the Judge. That was what the art people never understood. That didn’t mean it didn’t give him pleasure to have built the thing, to have gotten the Judge out, out where he could see him and keep track of him and finally, sort of, be free of the idea of him, but that sure wasn’t the same as liking him.

Hotel again, sinking into the deathmarch of wiz-crash, Prior leading her into the lobby, Japanese tourists already up and clustering around bored-looking guides. And one foot, one foot, one foot after the other, her head so heavy now, like somebody punched a hole in the top, poured in a quarter-kilo of dull lead, and her teeth felt like they belonged to somebody else, too big; she slumped against the side of the elevator when its extra gravity pressed down.

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. She’d known him since she’d come to Sense/Net; he’d been well established in the upper echelons of production when she’d arrived, one of the top people in Tally Isham’s team, and he’d taken an immediate professional interest in her. Looking back, she assumed that Legba had steered her into his path: he’d 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.

But did it wake, Kumiko wondered, when the alley was empty? Did its laser vision scan the silent fall of midnight snow?

It gave her a funny feeling, like who she’d been had wandered away down the street for a minute and never come back. But then she closed her eyes and knew she was Mona, always had been, and that nothing much had changed, anyway not behind her eyelids.

The world hadn’t ever had so many moving parts or so few labels.

“Sorry,” Petal said, blinking. “I’ve come for Miss Yanaka.” “Too bad, mate. Just had her dad on the phone. Told us Swain’s been topped. Told us he’s sending round the new boss.” He smiled, crookedly, triumphantly. “But you see,” Petal said gently, “that’s me.”