Mona Lisa Overdrive (proofread) by William Gibson

Author:William Gibson [Gibson, William]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, SciFi, CyberPunk
ISBN: 9780006480440
Publisher: Harper-Collins

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. 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.

Bobby had taken an instant dislike to him, bristling with a Barrytowner’s 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 Bobby’s departure with obvious relief.

“Hilton,” she said, as she poured him a cup of the herbal tea he preferred to coffee, “what is it that’s keeping Robin in London?”

He looked up from the steaming cup. “Something personal, I think. Perhaps he’s found a new friend.” Bobby had always been Angie’s friend, to Hilton. Robin’s 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 they’d spent together, in a windblown house in southern Madagascar, his passivity and his patience. They’d never tried again, and she’d 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 he’s been telling people I’m crazy.”

He’d rolled up his striped shirtsleeves and loosened his tie. “I can’t imagine Robin thinking that, let alone saying it. I know what he thinks of you. You know what gossip is, in the Net…”

“Hilton, where’s Bobby?”

His brown eyes, very still. “Isn’t that over, Angie?”

“Hilton, you know. You must know. You know where he is. Tell me.”

“We lost him.”

“Lost him?”

“Security lost him. You’re 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?”

“I’ve never asked what brought you together,” he said. “Security investigated both of you, of course. He was a petty criminal.”

She laughed. “He wasn’t 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.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.