All Tomorrow's Parties

11. OTHER GUY

CHEVETTE had never driven a standard, so it fell to Tessa to drive them up to San Francisco. Tessa didn't seem to mind. She had her head full of the docu they were going to make, and she could work it out as she drove, telling Chevette about the different communities she wanted to cover and how she was going to cut it all together. All Chevette had to do was listen, or look like she was listening, and finally just fall asleep. She fell asleep as Tessa was telling her about a place called the Walled City, how there'd actually been this place, by Hong Kong, but it had been torn down before Hong Kong went back to being part of China. And then these crazy net people had built their own version of it, like a big communal website, and they'd turned it inside out, vanished in there. It wasn't making much sense when Chevette nodded out, but it left pictures in her head. Dreams.

'What about the other guy? Tessa was asking, when Chevette woke from those dreams.

Chevette blinked out at the Five, the white line that seemed to reel up beneath the van. 'What other guy?

'The cop. The one you went to Los Angeles with.

'Rydell, Chevette said.

'So why didn't that work? Tessa asked.

Chevette didn't really have an answer. 'It just didn't.

'So you had to hook up with Carson?

'No, Chevette said, 'I didn't have to. What were those white things, so many of them, off in a field there? Wind things: they made electricity. 'It just seemed like the thing to do.

'I've done a few of those myself, Tessa said.