Virtual light b-1

by William Gibson

  James Delmore Shapely had come to the attention of the AIDS industry in the early months of the new century. He was thirty-one years old, a prostitute, and had been HIVpositive for twelve years. At the time of his 'discovery,' by Dr. Kim Kutnik of Atlanta, Georgia, Shapely was serving a two hundred and fifty day prison term for soliciting. (His status as HIV-positive, which would automatically have warranted more serious charges, had apparently been 'glitched.') Kutnik, a researcher with the Sharman Group, an American subsidiary of Shibata Pl~armaceuticals, was sifting prison medical data in search of individuals who had been HIV-positive for a decade or more, were asymptomatic, and had entirely normal (or, as in Shapely's case, above the norm) T-cell counts.

  One of the Sharmar Group's research initiatives centered around the possibility of isolating mutant strains of HIV. Arguing that viruses obey the laws of natural selection, several Sharman biologists had proposed that the HIV virus, in its then-current genetic format, was excessively lethal. Allowed to range unchecked, argued the Sharman team, a virus demonstrating ioo percent lethality must eventually bring about the extinction oF the host organism. (Other Sharman researchers countered Fy citing the long incubation period as contributing to the suivival of the host population.) As the BBC writers were careful to make clear, the idea of locating nonpathogenic strains )f HIV, with a view of overpowering and neutralizing lethal strains, had been put forward almost a decade earlier, though the 'ethical' implications of experimentation with human subjects had impeded research. The core observation cf the Sharman researchers dated from this earlier work: The %irus wishes to survive, and cannot if it kills its host. The Shariian team, of which Dr. Kutnik was a part, intended to inject HIV-positive patients with blood extracted from individials they believed to be infected with nonpathogenic strains of the virus. It was possible, they believed, that the nonathogenic strain would overpower the lethal strain. Kim KutrLik was one of seven researchers given the task of locating HIV-positive individuals who might be harboring a nonpathogenic strain. She elected to begin her search through a sectorof data concerned with current inmates of state prisons who were (a) in apparent good health, and (b) had tested HIV-positive at least a decade before. Her initial search turned up sixty-six possibles-among them, J. D. Shapely.

  Yamazaki watched as Kutnik, played by a young British actress, recalled, from a patio in Rio, her first meeting with Shapely. 'I'd been struck by the fact that his T-cell count that day was over i,zoo, and that his responses to the questionnaire seemed to indicated that 'safe sex,' as we thought of it then, was, well, not exactly a priority. He was a very open, very outgoing, really a very innocent character, and when I asked him, there in the prison visiting room, about oral sex, he actually blushed. Then he laughed, and said, well, he said he 'sucked cock like it was going out of style' . . .' The actressKutnik looked as though she were about to blush herself. 'Of course,' she said, 'in those days we didn't really understand the disease's exact vectors of infection, because, grotesque as it now seems, there had been no real research into the precise modes of transmission. . .'

  Yamazaki cut the set off. Dr. Kutnik would arrange Shapely's release from prison as an AIDS research volunteer under Federal law. The Sharman Group's project would be hindered by fundamentalist Christians objecting to the injection of 'HIV-tainted' blood into the systems of terminally ill AIDS patients. As the project foundered, Kutnik would uncover clinical data suggesting that unprotected sex with Shapely had apparently reversed the symptoms of several of her patients. There would be Kutnik's impassioned resignation, the flight to Brazil with the baffled Shapely, lavish funding against a backdrop of impending civil war, and what could only be described as an extremely pragmatic climate for research.

  But it was such a sad story.

  Better to sit here by candlelight, elbows on the edge of Skinner's table, listening for the song of the central pier.

  He kept saying he was from Tennessee and he didn't need this shit. She kept thinking she was going to die, the way he was driving, or anyway those cops would be after them, or the one who shot Sammy. She still didn't know what had happened, and wasn't that Nigel who'd plowed into that tight-faced one?

  But he'd hung this right off Bryant, so she told him left on Folsom, because if the assholes were coming, she figured she wanted the Haight, best place she knew to get lost, and that was definitely what she intended to do, earliest opportunity. And this Ford was just like the one Mr. Matthews drove, ran the holding facility up in Beaverton. And she'd tried to stab somebody with a screwdriver. She'd never done anything like that in her life before. And she'd wrecked that black guy's computer, the one with the haircut. And this bracelet on her left wrist, the other half flipping around, open, on three links of chain— He reached over and grabbed the loose cuff. Did something to it without taking his eyes off the street. He let go. Now it was locked shut.

  'Why'd you do that?'

  'So you don't snag it on something, wind up cuffed to the door-handle or a street sign-'

  'Take it off.'

  'No key.'

  She rattled it at him. 'Take it off.'

  'Stick it up the sleeve of your jacket. Those are Beretta

  25 Without a paddle

  cuffs. Real good cuffs.' He sounded like he was sort of happy to have something to talk about, and his driving had evened out. Brown eyes. Not old; twenties, maybe. Cheap clothes like K-Mart stuff, all wet. Light brown hair cut too short but not short enough. She watched a muscle in his jaw work, like he was chewing gum, but he wasn't.

  'Where we going?' she asked him.

  'Fuck if I know,' he said, gunning the engine a little. 'You the one said "left" . .

  'Who are you?'

  He glanced over at her. 'Rydell. Berry Rydell.'

  'Barry?'

  'Berry. Like straw. Like dingle. Hey, this a big fucking Street, lights and everything-'

  'Right.'

  'So where should I'

  'Right!'

  'Okay,' he said, and hung it. 'Why?'

  'The Haight. Lots of people up late, cops don't like to go there. ..'

  'Ditch this car there?'

  'Turn your back on it two seconds, it's history.'

  'They got ATM's there?'

  'Uh-uh.'

  'Well, here's one …' Up over a curb, hunks of crazed safety-glass falling out of the frame where the back window had been. She hadn't even noticed that.

  He dug a soggy-looking wallet out of his back pocket and started pulling cards out of it. Three of them. 'I have to try to get some cash,' he said. He looked at her. 'You wanna jump out of this car and run,' he shrugged, 'then you just go for it.'

  Then he reached in his jacket pocket and pulled out the glasses and Codes's phone that she'd scooped when the lights went out in I)issidents. Because she knew from Lowell that people in trouble need a phone, most times worse than anything. He dropped them in her lap, the a;shole's glasses and the phone. 'Yours.'

  Then he got out, walked over to the AT~v1, and started feeding it cards. She sat there, watching it e~nerge from its armor, the way they do, shy and cautious, its ameras coming out, too, to monitor the transaction. He stood tkre, drumming his fingers on the side, his mouth like he was whistling but he wasn't making any noise. She looked down at the case and the phone and wondered why she didn't just jun~p out and run, like he said.

  Finally he came back, thumb-counting a fold of bills, stuck it down in his front jeans pocket, and got in He sailed the first of his cards out the open window at th~ ATM, which was pulling back into its shell like a crab. 'Don't know how they cancelled that one so quick, after you put that thing through Freddie's laptop.' Flicked another. Then the last one. They lay in front of the ATM as its lex2n shield came trundling down, their little holograms win~ing up in the machine's halogen floods.

  'Somebody'll get those,' she said.

  'Hope so,' he said, 'hope they get 'em and go tcMars.' Then he did something in reverse with all four wheels and the Ford sort of jumped up and bac
kward, into the street, some other car swerving past them all brakes and horn and the driver's mouth a black 0, and the part of her that was still a messenger sort of liked it. All the times they'd cut her off. 'Shit,' he sa:d, jamming the gear-thing around until he got what he needed and they took off.

  The handcuff was rubbing on the rash where the red worm had been. 'You a cop?'

  'No.'

  'Security? Like from the hotel?'

  'Uh-uh.'

  'Well,' she said, 'what are you?'

  Streetlight sliding across his face. Seemed like he was thinking about it. 'Up shit creek. Without a paddle.'

  The first thing Rydell saw when he got out of the Patriot, in the alley off Haight Street, was a one-armed, one-legged man on a skateboard. This man lay on his stomach, on the board, and propelled himself along with a curious hitching motion that reminded Rydell of the limbs of a gigged frog. He had his right arm and his left leg, which at least allowed for some kind of symmetry, but there was no foot on the leg. His face, as if by some weird osmosis, was the color of dirty concrete, and

  Rydell couldn't have said what race he was. His hair, if he had any, was covered by a black knit cap, and the rest of him was sheathed in a black, one-piece garment apparently stitched from sections of heavy-duty rubber inner-tube. He looked up, as he hitched past Rydell, through puddles left by the storm, headed for the mouth of the alley, and said, or Rydell thought he said: 'You wanna talk to me? You wanna talk to me, you better shut your fuckin' mouth…'

  Rydell stood there, Samsonite dangling, and watched him go.

  Then something rattled beside him. The hardware on Chevette Washington's leather jacket. 'Come on,' she said, 'don't wanna hang around back in here.' 'You see that?' Rydell asked, gesturing with his suitcase.

  'You hang around back in here, you'll see worse than that,' she said.

  Rydell looked back at the Patriot. He'd locked it and left the key under the driver's scat, because he hadn't wanted to

  26 Colored people

  make it look too easy, but he'd forgotten about that back window. He'd never been in the position before of actively wanting a car to be stolen.

  'You sure somebody'll take that?' he asked her.

  'We don't get out of here, they'll take us with it.' She started walking. Rydell followed. There was stuff painted on the brick walls as high as anyone could reach, but it didn't look like any language he'd ever seen, except maybe the way they wrote cuss-words in a printed cartoon.

  They'd just rounded the corner, onto the sidewalk, when Rydell heard the Patriot's engine start to rev. It gave him goosebumps, like something in a ghost story, because there hadn't been anybody back in there at all, and now he couldn't see the skateboard man anywhere.

  'Look at the ground,' Chevette Washington said. 'Don't look up when they go by or they'll kill us…'

  Rydell concentrated on the toes of his black SWATs. 'You hang out with car-thieves much?'

  'Just walk. Don't talk. Don't look.'

  He heard the Patriot wheel out of the alley and draw up beside them, pacing them. His toes were making little squelching noises, each time he took a step, and what if the last thing you knew before you died was just some pathetic discomfort like that, like your shoes were soaked and your socks were wet, and you weren't ever going to get to change them?

  Rydell heard the Patriot take off, the driver fighting the unfamiliar American shift-pattern. He started to look up.

  'Don't,' she said.

  'Those friends of yours or what?'

  'Alley pirates, Lowell calls 'em.'

  'Who's Lowell?'

  'You saw him in l)issidents.'

  'That bar?'

  'Not a bar. A chill.'

  'Serves alcohol,' Rydell said.

  'A chill. Where you hang.' 'You' who? This Lowell, he hang there?' Yeah.'

  'You too?'

  'No,' she said, angry.

  'He your friend, Lowell? Your boyfriend?'

  'You said you weren't a cop. You talk like one.'

  'I'm not,' he said. 'You can ask 'em.'

  'He's just somebody I used to know,' she said. 'Fine.'

  She looked at the Samsonite. 'You got a gun or something, in there?'

  'Dry socks. Underwear.'

  She looked up at him. 'I don't get you.'

  'Don't have to,' he said. 'We just walking, or you maybe know somewhere to go? Like off this street?'

  'We want to look at some flash,' she said to the fat man. He had a couple of things through each nipple, looked like Yale locks. Kind of pulled him down, there, and Rydell just couldn't look at them. Had on some kind of baggy white pants with the crotch down about where the knees should've been, and this little blue velvet vest all embroidered with gold. He was big and soft and fat and covered with tattoos.

  Rydell's uncle, the one who'd gone to Africa with the army and hadn't come back, had had a couple of tattoos. The best one went right across his back, this big swirly dragon with horns and sort of a goofy grin. He'd gotten that one in Korea, eight colors and it had all been done by a computer. He'd told Rydell how the computer had mapped his back and showed him exactly what it was going to look like when it was done. Then he had to lie down on this table while this robot put the tattoo on.

  Rydell had imagined a robot kind of like a vacuumcleaner, but with twisty chrome arms had needles on the end. But his uncle said it was more like being fed through a dotmatrix printer, and he'd had to go back eight times, one time for each color. It was a great dragon, though, and lots brighter than the tattoos on his uncle's arms, which were American eagles and a Harley trademark. When his uncle worked out in the backyard with Rydell's set of Sears weights, Rydell would watch the dragon ripple.

  This fat bald guy with the weights through his nipples had tattoos everywhere except his hands and his head. Looked like he was wearing a suit of them. They were all different, no American eagles or Harley trademarks either, and they sort of ran together. They made Rydell feel kind of dizzy, so he looked up at the walls, which were covered with more tattoos, like samples for you to pick from.

  'You've been here before,' the man said.

  'Yeah,' Chevette Washington said, 'with Lowell. You remember Lowell?'

  The fat man shrugged.

  'My friend and I,' she said, 'we wanna pick something out…'

  'I haven't seen your friend before,' the fat man said, perfectly nice about it but Rydell could hear the question in his voice. He was looking at Rydell's suitcase.

  'It's okay,' she said. 'He knows Lowell. He's a 'Land boy, too.'

  'You bridge people,' the fat man said, like he liked bridge people. 'That storm was just terrible, wasn't it? I hope it didn't do you people too much damage … We had a client last month brought in a wide-angle Cibachrome he wanted done as a back-piece. Your whole suspension span and everything on it. Beautiful shot but he wanted it inked just that size, and he just wasn't broad enough…' He looked up at Rydell. 'Would've fit, on your friend here…'

  'Couldn't he get it?' she asked, and Rydell caught that instinct to keep people talking, keep them involved.

  'We're a full-service shop here at Colored People,' the fat man said. 'Lloyd put it on a graphics engine, rotated it thirty degrees, heightened the perspective, and it's gorgeous

  Now, were you interested in seeing some flash for yourself, or for your big friend here?'

  'Uh, actually,' Chevette said, 'we're looking for something for both of us. Like, uh, matching, you know?'

  The fat man smiled. 'That's romantic. . .'

  Rydell looked at her.

  'Just come this way.' The fat man sort of jingled when he walked, and it made Rydell wince. 'May I bring you some complimentary tea?'

  'Coffee?' Rydell asked hopefully.

  'I'm sorry,' the fat man said, 'but Butch left at twelve and I don't know how to operate the machine. But I can bring you some nice tea.'

  'Yeah,' Chevette said, urging Rydell along with little elbow-jabs, 'tea.'

  The
fat man took them down a hallway and into a little room with a couple of wallscreens and a leather sofa. 'I'll just get your tea,' he said, and shuffled out, jingling.

  'Why'd you say that, about matching tattoos?' Rydell was looking around the room. Clean. Blank walls. Soft light but no shadows.

  'Because he'll leave us alone while we're trying to pick one, and 'cause it'll take us so long to make up our minds.'

  Rydell put his Samsonite down and sat on the couch. 'So we can stay here?'

  'Yeah, as long as we keep calling up flash.'

  'What's that?'

  She picked up a little remote and turned one of the waliscreens on. Started blipping through menus. Hi-rez close-ups of tattooed skin. The fat man came back with a couple of big rough mugs of steaming tea Ofl a little tray. 'Yours is green,' he said to Chevette Washington, 'and yours is Mormon,' he said to Rydell, 'because you did ask for coffee. . .'

  'Urn, thanks,' Rydell said, taking the mug he was offered.

  'Now you two take plenty of time,' the fat man said, 'and you want anything, just call.' He went out, tray tucked under his arm, and closed the door behind him.

  'Mormon?' Rydell sniffed at the tea. It didn't smell much of anything.

  'Aren't supposed to drink coffee. That kind of tea's got ephedrine in it.'

  'Got drugs in it?'

  'It's made from a plant with something that'll keep you awake. Like coffee.'

  Rydell decided it was too hot to drink now anyway. Put it down on the floor beside the couch. The girl on the wallscreen had a dragon sort of like his uncle's, but on her left hip. Little tiny silver ring through the top edge of her belly button.

  Chevette Washington flipped it to a big sweaty biker-arm with President Milibank's face looking out from it in shades of gray.