Pattern Recognition

by William Gibson

  REALLY, dear, I’m sure it’s illegal to do that. It says so right on the side of the FedEx box, that you mustn’t enclose cash. But it did come through, thank you very much. And very timely, too, as the lawyers say that we can now prove Win’s presence there at the time of the attack, and the declaration of legal death will be automatic, which means no more problems over the insurance or the pension. But it may take a month, so I’m very glad to have this in the meantime. They said that every last thing you told them proved absolutely correct, and they were very curious about how you’d found all that out, after the police and the detective agency hadn’t been able to. I explained our work here at Rose of the World to them. Obviously you must have had help from your father, in order to obtain such a detailed account of his final hour, but I will honor your need, whatever it may be, to not share that with me, though I would hope that you will, eventually. Your loving mother, Cynthia

  Hello, Cayce Pollard! Sorry we never had a chance to meet when you were here, but I’m writing to thank you for bringing Judy Tsuzuki to our attention. She met with us today, at HB’s suggestion after hearing from you, and of course we’ll be able to find something for her. Her enthusiasm for the city (and her boyfriend!) is completely engaging, and I’m sure she’ll bring a real freshness to whatever it is she’ll be doing for us. Regards, Jennifer Brossard, Blue Ant Tokyo (cc to HB)

  I remember him: You used to say how funny he was, on that website. And he’s not gay? A music producer from Chicago? And not, I take it, a Lombard? (If he’s not a Lombard, just to be nosy, how can you be affording Paris?) Have to tell you I saw the Lombard of Lombards himself on CNN yesterday. He was between some Russian zillionaire and your Secretary of the Interior, and looked as though he’d just devoured the entrails of something clean-limbed and innocent: entirely pleased with himself. When are you coming home, anyway? Never mind! Enjoy yourself! Margot

  Dear Cayce, There definitely are, in the literature, instances of panic disorders being relieved through the incidence of critical event stress, although the mechanism is far from understood. As for “Soviet psychiatric drugs,” I have no idea. I did ask a friend in Germany who volunteered to work with Chernobyl radiation victims; he said that any substances thus described were probably best regarded as instruments of torture, and usually consisted of combinations of industrial chemicals that otherwise would never have been considered fit for use on human beings. Rather grim. Whatever it was, I hope you didn’t have very much. As to the cessation of panic-reactions, my advice would simply be to see where it goes. If you should feel further need to talk about it, I have a few appointment times coming open in the fall. Sincerely, Katherine McNally

  All done here, packing to go. It was brilliant to see you, and I really liked Peter, and you were both good to put up with Marina, whose pain-in-arse factor has never quite made it back down to baseline. You especially were good, as you knew I’d told her to piss off after the Stuka but you never rubbed my nose in it. As was probably more obvious once you were on site, there simply wouldn’t have been any way I could have continued shooting, sans blat. I’m fairly certain we’d never have gotten the tape out of the country, had I stuck to my guns. I do feel a bit more of a sleaze than usual but on the other hand I know I owe something to history, as revealed here for us to record. I’ll sort it out back in London, I imagine, when I get to work toward a first cut. You are coming back here, after Paris, aren’t you? Your Pole is having an opening at a gallery owned by Billy Whatsit from BSE and he and his sister are mad to have you there. Have you met her, his sister? Henna and pop-out tops, good fun, sort of early post-Wall Berlin thing. I could fancy her, I think! XXX Damien

  Hello! When are you coming to see us again? The segment you saw here will be soon complete. It goes to academy and returns many times. Nora never will say but I feel it will go out soon. We hope you will like it! Stella

  SHE still has the iBook but never uses it for mail. She keeps it under the hotel bed, along with the Louis Vuitton attaché, which, though she’d never buy or carry one, now causes her no discomfort at all. Nor had a section full of Tommy in Galleries Lafayette the week before, and even the Michelin Man now registers as neutral. She wonders whether this change, whatever it is, will affect her ability to know whether or not a given trademark will work, but there’s no way to test that, short of going back to work, which she’s in no hurry to do.

  Peter says they’re on vacation, and he himself hasn’t had one, he says, for years. Various recording labels and groups have tried to reach him here, but he simply ignores them. He loves Paris, and says he hasn’t been here since he was someone else, and very stupid.

  She doubts that he was ever very stupid.

  She goes alone to an Internet café every other day and checks the new hotmail account she’s acquired with her new e-mail address, a .uk one that Voytek arranged.

  She wonders about Bigend, and Volkov, and whether Bigend could somehow have known from the start that the maker, makers really, were Volkov’s nieces, but she always comes back to Win’s dictum of there needing always to be room left for coincidence.

  She’d gone with Peter to visit Stella and Nora in the squat in Moscow, and then on to the dig, where Damien’s shoot had been winding down, and where she’d found herself, out of some need she hadn’t understood, down in one of the trenches, furiously shoveling gray muck and bones, her face streaked with tears. Neither Peter nor Damien had asked her why, but she thinks now that if they had she might have told them she was weeping for her century, though whether the one past or the one present she doesn’t know.

  And now it’s late, close to the wolfing hour of soul-lack. But she knows, lying curled here, behind him, in the darkness of this small room, with the somehow liquid background sounds of Paris, that hers has returned, at least for the meantime, reeled entirely in on its silver thread and warmly socketed.

  She kisses his sleeping back and falls asleep.

  MY THANKS to the many friends who encouraged and supported me during the more than usually eventful course of the manuscript. Jack Womack, its dedicatee, rescued it countless times, and with the utmost patience, from its author’s habitual lack of faith. Susan Allison and Tony Lacey, Penguin Putnam and Penguin UK respectively, were once again marvelous throughout, as was Martha Millard, my literary agent. Thanks to Douglas Coupland for the coffee so high above Shinjuku, and for fresh insights into Tokyo generally, to Eileen Gunn for sharing in fractal detail her memories of Moscow, to James Dowling for introducing me to the Curta calculator, to OCD for the tale of a duck in the face, to Alan Nazerian for Baranov’s caravan, and to John and Judith Clute, whose hospitality over many years has been by far my best key to London.

  And to Deborah and Graeme and Claire, who continue to put up with the process, love always.

  —Vancouver, August 17, 2002