Mona Lisa Overdrive

17 - Jump City

She woke with Sally's cool palm pressed to her mouth, the other hand gesturing for silence.

The little lamps were on, the ones set into the panels of gold-flecked mirror. One of her bags was open, on the giant bed, a neat little stack of clothing beside it.

Sally tapped her index finger against closed lips, then gestured toward the case and the clothing.

Kumiko slid from beneath the duvet and tugged on a sweater against the cold. She looked at Sally again and considered speaking; whatever this was, she thought, a word might bring Petal. She was dressed as Kumiko had last seen her, in the shearling jacket, her tartan scarf knotted beneath her chin. She repeated the gesture: pack.

Kumiko dressed quickly, then began to put the clothing into the case. Sally moved restlessly, silently around the room, opening drawers, closing them. She found Kumiko's passport, a black plastic slab embossed with a gold chrysanthemum, and hung it around Kumiko's neck on its black nylon cord. She vanished into the veneered cubicle and emerged with the suede bag that held Kumiko's toilet things.

As Kumiko was sealing the case, the gilt-and-ivory telephone began to chime.

Sally ignored it, took the suitcase from the bed, opened the door, took Kumiko's hand, and pulled her out into the darkened hallway. Releasing her hand, Sally closed the door behind them, muffling the phone and leaving them in total darkness. Kumiko let herself be guided into the lift -- she knew it by its smell of oil and furniture polish, the rattle of the metal gate.

Then they were descending.

Petal was waiting for them in the bright white foyer, wrapped in an enormous faded flannel robe. He wore his decrepit slippers; his legs, below the robe's hem, were very white. He held a gun in his hands, a squat, thick thing, dull black. "Fucking hell," he said softly, as he saw them there, "and what's this then?"

"She's going with me," Sally said.

"That," said Petal, slowly, "is entirely impossible."

"Kumi," Sally said, her hand on Kumiko's back, guiding her out of the lift, "there's a car waiting."

"You can't do this," Petal said, but Kumiko sensed his confusion, his uncertainty.

"So fucking shoot me, Petal."

Petal lowered the gun. "It's Swain who'll fucking shoot me, if you have your way."

"If he were here, he'd be in the same bind, wouldn't he?"

"Please," Petal said, "don't."

"She'll be fine. Not to worry. Open the door."

"Sally," Kumiko said, "where are we going?"

"The Sprawl."

And woke again, huddled under Sally's shearling jacket, to the mild vibration of supersonic flight. She remembered the huge, low car waiting in the crescent; floodlights leaping out from the facades of Swain's houses as she and Sally reached the pavement; Tick's sweaty face glimpsed through one of the car's windows; Sally heaving open a door and bundling her in; Tick cursing softly and steadily as the car accelerated; the complaint of the tires as he swung them too sharply into Kensington Park Road; Sally telling him to slow down, to let the car drive.

And there, in the car, she'd remembered returning the Maas-Neotek unit to its hiding place behind the marble bust -- Colin left behind with all his fox-print poise, the elbows of his jacket worn like Petal's slippers -- no more than what he was, a ghost.

"Forty minutes," Sally said now, from the seat beside her. "Good you got some sleep. They'll bring us breakfast soon. Remember the name on your passport? Good. Now don't ask me any questions until I've had some coffee, okay?"

Kumiko knew the Sprawl from a thousand stims; a fascination with the vast conurbation was a common feature of Japanese popular culture.

She'd had few preconceptions of England when she arrived there: vague images of several famous structures, unfocused impressions of a society her own seemed to regard as quaint and stagnant. (In her mother's stories, the princess-ballerina discovered that the English, however admiring, couldn't afford to pay her to dance.) London, so far, had run counter to her expectations, with its energy, its evident affluence, the Ginza bustle of its great shopping streets.

She had many preconceptions of the Sprawl, most of which were shattered within a few hours of arrival.

But as she waited beside Sally in a line of other travelers, in a vast, hollow customs hall whose ceiling struts rose away into darkness, a darkness broken at intervals by pale globes -- globes circled, though it was winter, by clouds of insects, as though the building possessed its own discrete climate -- it was the stim-Sprawl she imagined, the sensual electric backdrop for the fast-forward lives of Angela Mitchell and Robin Lanier.

Through customs -- which consisted, in spite of the endless wait in line, of sliding her passport along a greasy-looking metal slot -- and out into a frantic concrete bay where driverless baggage carts plowed slowly through a crowd that milled and struggled for ground transportation.

Someone took her bag. Reached down and took it from her with an ease, a confidence, that suggested he was meant to take it, that he was a functionary performing an accustomed task, like the young women bowing welcome at the doors of Tokyo department stores. And Sally kicked him. Kicked him in the back of the knee, pivoting smoothly, like the Thai boxing girls in Swain's billiard room, snatching the bag before the back of his skull and the stained concrete met with an audible crack.

Then Sally was pulling her, the crowd had closed over the prone figure, and the sudden, casual violence might have been a dream, except that Sally was smiling for the first time since they'd left London.

Feeling entirely dislocated now, Kumiko watched as Sally made a survey of available vehicles, quickly bribed a uniformed dispatcher, intimidated three other prospective fares, and chivied Kumiko into a pock-marked, slabsided hovercraft, painted in diagonal bands of yellow and black. The passenger compartment was barren and remarkably uncomfortable-looking. The driver, if there was one, was invisible beyond a scrawled bulkhead of plastic armor. The nub of a video camera protruded where the bulkhead met the roof, and someone had drawn a crude figure there, a male torso, the camera its phallus. As Sally climbed in, slamming the door behind her, a speaker grated something in what Kumiko assumed was a dialect of English.

"Manhattan," Sally said. She took a sheaf of paper currency from her jacket pocket and fanned it below the camera.

The speaker made interrogatory noises.

"Midtown. Tell you where when we get there."

The cab's apron bag inflated, the light in the passenger compartment was extinguished, and they were on their way.