idoru Read online

  “Why?” Chia asked, although it didn't strike her as a bad idea at all.

  “Nothing you want to know anything about.” There was a crash, somewhere behind him. He winced. “It's okay. She's just throwing things. They haven't gotten serious yet. Come on,” and he grabbed her bag by the shoulder strap and lifted it up. He was moving fast now, and she had to hustle to keep up with him. Out past the closed door of Eddie's office, past the bank of screens (where she thought she saw people line-dancing in cowboy hats, but she was never sure).

  Calvin slapped his hand on the sensor-plate on the elevator door. “Take you to the garage,” he said, as the sound of breaking glass came from Eddie's office. “Hang a left, about twenty feet, there's another elevator. Skip the lobby; we got cameras there. Bottom button gets you the subway. Get on a train.” He passed her her bag.

  “Which one?” Chia asked.

  Maryalice screamed. Like something really, really hurt.

  “Doesn't matter,” Calvin said, and quickly said something in Japanese to the elevator. The elevator answered, but he was already gone, the door closing, and then she was descending, her bag seeming to lighten slightly in her arms.

  Eddie's Graceland was still there when the door slid open, a hulking wedge beside those other black cars. She found the second elevator Calvin had told her to take, its door scratched and dented. It had regular buttons, and it didtn't talk, and it took her down to malls bright as day, crowds moving through them, to escalators and platforms and mag-levs and the eternal logos tethered overhead.

  She was in Tokyo at last.

  11. Collapse of New Buildings

  Laney's room was high up in a narrow tower faced with white ceramic tile. It was trapezoidal in cross section and dated from the eighties boomtown, the years of the Bubble. That it had survived the great earthquake was testimony to the skill of its engineers; that it had survived the subsequent reconstruction testified to an arcane tangle of ownership and an ongoing struggle between two of the city's oldest criminal organizations. Yamazaki had explained this in the cab, returning from New Golden Street.

  “We were uncertain how you might feel about new buildings,” he'd said.

  “You mean the nanotech buildings?” Laney had been struggling to keep his eyes open. The driver wore spotless white gloves.

  “Yes. Some people find them disturbing.”

  “I don't know. I'd have to see one.”

  “You can see them from your hotel, I think.”

  And he could. He knew their sheer brutality of scale from constructs, but virtuality had failed to convey the peculiarity of their apparent texture, a streamlined organicism. “They are like Giger's paintings of New York,” Yamazaki had said, but the reference had been lost on Laney.

  Now he sat on the edge of his bed, staring blankly out at these miracles of the new technology, as banal and as sinister as such miracles usually were, and they were only annoying: the world's largest inhabited structures. (The Chernobyl containment structure was larger, but nothing human would ever live there.)

  The umbrella Yamazaki had given him was collapsing into itself, shrinking. Going away.

  The phone began to ring. He couldn't find it.

  “Telephone,” he said. “Where is it?”

  A nub of ruby light, timed to the rings, began to pulse from a flat rectangle of white cedar arranged on a square black tray on a bedside ledge. He picked it up. Thumbed a tiny square of mother-of-pearl.

  “Hey,” someone said. “That Laney?”

  “Who's calling?”

  “Rydell. From the Chateau. Hans let me use the phone.” Hans was the night manager. “I get the time right? You having breakfast?”

  Laney rubbed his eyes, looked out again at the new buildings. “Sure.”

  “I called Yamazaki,” Rydell said. “Got your number.”

  “Thanks,” Laney said, yawning, “but I—”

  “Yamazaki said you got the gig.”

  “I think so,” Laney said. “Thanks. Guess I owe—”

  “Slitscan,” Rydell said. “All over the Chateau.”

  “No,” Laney said, “that's over.”

  “You know any Katherine Torrance, Laney? Sherman Oaks address? She's up in the suite you had, with about two vans worth of sensing gear. Hans figures they're trying to get a read on what you were doing up there, any dope or anything.”

  Laney stared out at the towers. Part of a facade seemed to move, but it had to be his eyes.

  “But Hans says there's no way they can sort the residual molecules out in those rooms anyway. Place has too much of a history.”

  “Kathy Torrance? From Slitscan?”

  “Not like they said they were, but they've got all these techs, and techs always talk too much, and Ghengis down in the garage saw the decals on some of the cases, when they were unloading. There's about twenty of 'em, if you don't count the gophers. Got two suites and four singles. Don't tip.”

  “But what are they doing?”

  “That sensor stuff. Trying to figure out what you got up to in the suite. And one of the bellmen saw them setting up a camera.”

  The entire facade of one of the new buildings seemed to ripple, to crawl slightly. Laney closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose, discovering a faint trace of pain residing there from the break. He opened his eyes. “But I never got up to anything.”

  “Whatever.” Rydell sounded slightly hurt. “I just thought you ought to know, is all.”

  Something was definitely happening to that facade. “I know. Thanks. Sorry.”

  “I'll let you know if I hear anything,” Rydell said. “What's it like over there, anyway?”

  Laney was watching a point of reflected light slide across the distant structure, a movement like osmosis or the sequential contraction of some sea creature's palps. “It's strange.”

  “Bet it's interesting,” Rydell said. “Enjoy your breakfast, okay? I'll keep in touch.”

  “Thanks,” Laney said, and Rydell hung up.

  Laney put the phone back on the lacquer tray and stretched out on the bed, fully clothed. He closed his eyes, not wanting to see the new buildings. But they were still there, in the darkness and the light behind his lids. And as he watched, they slid apart, deliquesced, and trickled away, down into the mazes of an older city.

  He slid down with them.

  12. Mitsuko

  Chia used a public dataport in the deepest level of the station. The Sandbenders sent the number they'd given her for Mitsuko Mimura, the Tokyo chapter's “social secretary” (everyone in Tokyo chapter seemed to have a formal title). A girl's sleepy voice in Japanese from the Sandbenders' speakers. The translation followed instantly: “Hello? Yes? May I help you?”

  “It's Chia McKenzie, from Seattle.”

  “You are still in Seattle?”

  “I'm here. In Tokyo.” She upped the scale on the Sandbenders' map. “In a subway station called Shinjuku.”

  “Yes. Very good. Are you coming here now?”

  “I'd sure like to. I'm really tired.”

  The voice began to explain the route.

  “It's okay,” Chia said, “my computer can do it. Just tell me the station I have to get to.” She found it on the map, set a marker. “How long will it take to get there?”

  “Twenty to thirty minutes, depending on how crowded the trains are. I will meet you there.”

  “You don't have to do that,” Chia said. “Just give me your address.”

  “Japanese addresses are difficult.”

  “It's okay,” Chia said, “I've got global positioning.” The Sand-enders, working the Tokyo telco, was already showing her Mitsuko Mimura's latitude and longitude. In Seattle, that only worked for business numbers.

  “No,” Mitsuko said, “I must greet you. I am the social secretary.”

  “Thanks,” Chia said. “I'm on my way.”

  With her bag over her shoulder, left partly unzipped so she could follow the Sandbenders' verbal prompts, Chia rode an escal
ator up, two levels, bought a ticket with her cashcard, and found her platform. It was really crowded, as crowded as the airport, but when the train came she let the crowd pick her up and squash her into the nearest car; it would've been harder not to get on.

  As they pulled out, she heard the Sandbenders announce that they were leaving Shinjuku station.

  The sky was like mother-of-pearl when Chia emerged from the station. Gray buildings, pastel neon, a streetscape dotted with vaguely unfamiliar shapes. Dozens of bicycles were parked everywhere, the fragile-looking kind with paper-tube frames spun with carbon fiber. Chia took a step back as an enormous turquoise garbage truck rumbled past, its driver's white-gloved hands visible on the high wheel. As it cleared her field of vision, she saw a Japanese girl wearing a short plaid skirt and black biker jacket. The girl smiled. Chia waved.

  Mitsuko's second-floor room was above the rear of her father's restaurant. Chia could hear a steady thumping sound from below, and Mitsuko explained that that was a food-prep robot that chopped and sliced things.

  The room was smaller than Chia's bedroom in Seattle, but much cleaner, very neat and organized. So was Mitsuko, who had a razor-edged coppery diagonal bleached into her black bangs, and wore sneakers with double soles. She was thirteen, a year younger than Chia.

  Mitsuko had introduced Chia to her father, who wore a white, short-sleeved shirt, a tie, and was supervising three white-gloved men in blue coveralls, who were cleaning his restaurant with great energy and determination. Mitsuko's father had nodded, smiled, said something in Japanese, and gone back to what he was doing. On their way upstairs, Mitsuko, who didn't speak much English, told Chia that she'd told her father that Chia was part of some cultural-exchange program, short-term homestay, something to do with her school.

  Mitsuko had the same poster on her wall, the original cover shot from the Dog Soup album.

  Mitsuko went downstairs, returning with a pot of tea and a covered, segmented box that contained a California roll and an assortment of less familiar things. Grateful for the familiarity of the California roll, Chia ate everything except the one with the orange sea-urchin goo on top. Mitsuko complimented her on her skill with chopsticks. Chia said she was from Seattle and people there used chopsticks a lot.

  Now they were both wearing wireless ear-clip headsets. The translation was generally glitch-free, except when Mitsuko used Japanese slang that was too new, or when she inserted English words that she knew but couldn't pronounce.

  Chia wanted to ask her about Rez and the idoru, but they kept getting onto other things. Then Chia fell asleep, sitting up cross-legged on the floor, and Mitsuko must have managed to roll her onto a hard little futon-thing that she'd unfolded from somewhere, because that was where Chia woke up, three hours later.

  A rainy silver light was at the room's narrow window.

  Mitsuko appeared with another pot of tea, and said something in Japanese. Chia found her ear-clip and put it on.

  “You must have been exhausted,” the ear-clip translated. Then Mitsuko said she was taking the day off from school, to be with Chia.

  They drank the nearly colorless tea from little nubbly ceramic cups. Mitsuko explained that she lived here with her father, her mother, and a brother, Masahiko. Her mother was away, visiting a relative in Kyoto. Mitsuko said that Kyoto was very beautiful, and that Chia should go there.

  “I'm here for my chapter,” Chia said. “I can't do tourist things. I have things to find out.”

  “I understand,” Mitsuko said.

  “So is it true? Does Rez really want to marry a software agent?”

  Mitsuko looked uncomfortable. “I am the social secretary,” she said. “You must first discuss this with Hiromi Ogawa.”

  “Who's she?”

  “Hiromi is the president of our chapter.”

  “Fine,” Chia said. “When do I talk to her?”

  “We are erecting a site for the discussion. It will be ready soon.” Mitsuko still looked uncomfortable.

  Chia decided to change the subject. “What's your brother like? How old is he?”

  “Masahiko is seventeen,” Mitsuko said. “He is a pathological-techno-fetishist-with-social-deficit,’” this last all strung together like one word, indicating a concept that taxed the lexicon of the ear-clips. Chia wondered briefly if it would be worth running it through her Sandbenders, whose translation functions updated automatically whenever she ported.

  “A what?”

  “Otaku,” Mitsuko said carefully in Japanese. The translation burped its clumsy word string again.

  “Oh,” Chia said, “we have those. We even use the same word.”

  “I think that in America they are not the same,” Mitsuko said.

  “Well,” Chia said, “it's a boy thing, right? The otaku guys at my last school were into, like, plastic anime babes, military simulations, and trivia. Bigtime into trivia.” She watched Mitsuko listen to the translation.

  “Yes,” Mitsuko said, “but you say they go to school. Ours do not go to school. They complete their studies on-line, and that is bad, because they cheat easily. Then they are tested, later, and are caught, and fail, but they do not care. It is a social problem.”

  “Your brother's one?”

  “Yes,” Mitsuko said. “He lives in Walled City.”

  “In where?”

  “A multi-user domain. It is his obsession. Like a drug. He has a room here. He seldom leaves it. All his waking hours he is in Walled City. His dreams, too, I think.”

  Chia tried to get more of a sense of Hiromi Ogawa, before the noon meeting, but with mixed results. She was older, seventeen (as old as Zona Rosa) and had been in the club for at least five years. She was possibly overweight (though this had had to be conveyed in intercultural girl-code, nothing overt) and favored elaborate iconics. But overall Chia kept running up against Mitsuko's sense of her duty to her chapter, and of her own position, and of Hiromi's position.

  Chia hated club politics, and she was beginning to suspect they might pose a real problem here.

  Mitsuko was getting her computer out. It was one of those soft, transparent Korean units, the kind that looked like a flat bag of clear white jelly with a bunch of colored jujubes inside. Chia unzipped her bag and pulled her Sandbenders out.

  “What is that?” Mitsuko asked.

  “My computer.”

  Mitsuko was clearly impressed. “It is by Harley-Davidson?”

  “It was made by the Sandbenders,” Chia said, finding her goggles and gloves. “They're a commune, down on the Oregon coast. They do these and they do software.”

  “It is American?”

  “Sure.”

  “I had not known Americans made computers,” Mitsuko said.

  Chia worked each silver thimble over the tips of her fingers and thumbs, fastened the wrist straps.

  “I'm ready for the meeting,” she said.

  Mitsuko giggled nervously.

  13. Character Recognition

  Yamazaki phoned just before noon. The day was dim and overcast. Laney had closed the curtains in order to avoid seeing the nanotech buildings in that light.

  He was watching an NHK show about champion top-spinners. The star, he gathered, was a little girl with pigtails and a blue dress with an old-fashioned sailor's collar. She was slightly cross-eyed, perhaps from concentration. The tops were made of wood. Some of them were big, and looked heavy.

  “Hello, Mr. Laney,” Yamazaki said. “You are feeling better now?”

  Laney watched a purple-and-yellow top blur into action as the girl gave the carefully wound cord an expert pull. The commentator held a hand mike near the top to pick up the hum it was producing, then said something in Japanese.

  “Better than last night,” Laney said.

  “It is being arranged for you to access the data that surrounds… our friend. It is a complicated process, as this data has been protected in many different ways. There was no single strategy. The ways in which his privacy has been protected are com
plexly incremental.”

  “Does ‘our friend’ know about this?”

  There was a pause. Laney watched the spinning top. He imagined Yamazaki blinking. “No, he does not.”

  “I still don't know who I'll really be working for. For him? For Blackwell?”

  “Your employer is Paragon-Asia Dataflow, Melbourne. They are employing me as well.”

  “What about Blackwell?”

  “Blackwell is employed by a privately held corporation, through which portions of our friend's income pass. In the course of our friend's career, a structure has been erected to optimize that flow, to minimize losses. That structure now constitutes a corporate entity in its own right.”

  “Management,” Laney said. “His management's scared because it looks like he might do something crazy. Is that it?”

  The purple-and-yellow top was starting to exhibit the first of the oscillations that would eventually bring it to a halt. “I am still a stranger to this business-culture, Mr. Laney. I find it difficult to assess these things.”

  “What did Blackwell mean, last night, about Rez wanting to marry a Japanese girl who isn't real?”

  “Idoru,” Yamazaki said.

  “What?”

  “‘Idol-singer.’ She is Rei Toei. She is a personality-construct, a congeries of software agents, the creation of information-designers. She is akin to what I believe they call a ‘synthespian,’ in Hollywood.”

  Laney closed his eyes, opened them. “Then how can he marry her?”

  “I don't know,” Yamazaki said. “But he has very forcefully declared this to be his intention.”

  “Can you tell me what it is they've hired you to do?”

  “Initially, I think, they hoped I would be able to explain the idoru to them: her appeal to her audience, therefore perhaps her appeal to him. Also, I think that, like Blackwell, they remain unconvinced that this is not the result of a conspiracy of some kind. Now they want me to acquaint you with the cultural background of the situation.”

  “Who are they?”