The Etruscan and the others spy on the Project all the time. That’s what they call it. Through them, Chia knows that the idoru’s island isn’t finished yet. It’s there but it isn’t stable; something they have to do to it before they build, even with nanotech, in case another earthquake comes. She wonders what the Russians will do with theirs, and sometimes she wonders about Maryalice, and Eddie, and Calvin, the guy at Whiskey Clone who got her out of there, for no reason other than he thought he should. But it seems like a long time ago, between the Walled City and school.
She figures her mother knows by now that she wasn’t with Hester, but her mother’s never said anything about it, except to talk to her twice about contraceptives and safe sex. And, really, she wasn’t there much more than forty-eight hours, if you didn’t count the travel-time, because Rez hadn’t been able to make it over to thank her, and Arleigh had said that, all in all, it was better if she got home before anybody started asking any questions, but they’d send her first class on Japan Air Lines. So Arleigh had driven her back out to Narita that night, but not in her green van because she said it was a writeoff. And she’d still felt so bad about Zona, and it made her feel so stupid, because she felt like her friend was dead, but her friend hadn’t even really existed, and there was this other girl in Mexico City, with terrible problems, and so she wound up telling all that to Arleigh and just crying.
And Arleigh said she should just wait. Because that girl in Mexico City, more than anything else, needed to be somebody else. And it didn’t matter that she hadn’t beenZona, because she’d made Zona up, and that was just as real. Just wait, Arleigh said, because somebody else would turn up, somebody new, and it would be like they already knew you. And Chia had sat and thought about that, beside Arleigh in her fast little car.
–But I couldn’t ever tell her I knew?
–That would spoil it.
When they’d gotten to the airport, Arleigh checked her in at JAL, found somebody to take her to the lounge (which was sort of like a cross between a bar and really fancy business office), and gave her a bag with a roadie-grade Lo/Rez tour jacket in it. The sleeves were made of transparent rayon, and the lining that showed through that looked like liquid mercury. Arleigh said it was really tacky, but maybe she had a friend who’d like it. It was from their Kombinat tour, and it had all the tour dates embroidered on the back in three different languages.
She hadn’t ever worn it, and she’d never really shown it to anybody either. It was hanging in her closet, under a piece of drycleaner’s plastic. She hadn’t really been that active in the chapter lately. (Kelsey had dropped right out.) Chia didn’t really feel that anybody in the chapter would get it, if she tried to tell them what had happened, plus there were all the bits she couldn’t tell them anyway.
But mainly it was the City taking up her time, because Rez and Rei were there, shadows among the other shadows but still you could tell. Working on their Project.
Plenty there who didn’t like the idea, but plenty who did. The Etruscan did. He said it was the craziest thing since they’d turned that first killfile inside out.
Sometimes Chia wondered if they all weren’t just joking, because it just seemed impossible that anyone could ever do that. Build that, on an island in Tokyo Bay.
But the idoru said that that was where they wanted to live, now that they were married. So they were going to do it.
And if they do, Chia thought, hearing the hiss of the Espressomatic, I’ll go there.
FB2 document info
Document ID: 67045f4a-0873-4dc3-9310-a92c528b457d
Document version: 1
Document creation date: 2004-06-11
Created using: FB Tools software
Document authors :
Boris Celarent (Celarent)
Document history:
IDORU
A Berkeley Book published by arrangement with the author
Printing History
G. P. Putnam’s Sons —
Publishers Since 1838
200 Madison Avenue New York, NY 10016
Copyright © 1996 by William Gibson
All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
Published simultaneously in Canada
Cover Illustration by Honi Warner (with details from a photograph by Ralph Mercer/Gamma Liason)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Gibson, William, date.
Idoru / by William Gibson.
p. cm.
ISBN 0-399-14130-8
1. Rock musicians—Psychology—Fiction. 2. Virtual reality-Fiction. 3. Friendship—Fiction.
I. Title.
PS3557.I2264I36 1996 96-18363 CIP
813'.54—dc20
A digital back-up edition 2.5. Scan notes and proofing history
[scanned anonymously]
v1.0 Initial release v2.0 ???
v2.1 Fixed broken paragraphs, more OCR cleanup; changed incorrect apostrophes to quotes, fixed more spelling errors, separated joined paragraphs
***
[December 28, 2003—v2.5 html conversion with Softsnow RTF-HTML converter—re-proofed from print (amazing how many errors remained, including many broken paragraphs and other oddities – be warned – without reference to a printed book you are GUESSING) and formatted]
***
July 11, 2004 – FB2 conversion by Celarent
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