"So if anyone were looking at the transaction data, there'd be no way to connect it directly to him, would there?"

"No."

"Because you're doing your job, right?"

"Yes."

"Then he's invisible. To me. I can't see him. He isn't there. I can't do what you want to pay me to do. It's impossible."

118 William Gihsoo "But what about all the rest of it?"

Laney put the eyephones down on the keyboard "That isn't a person. That's a corporation."

"But you've got it all! His b.l.o.o.d.y houses! His fiats! Where the gardeners put the b.l.o.o.d.y flowers in the rock wall! All of it!"

"But I don't know who he is. I can't make him out against the rest of it, He's not leaving the traces that make the patterns I need."

Blackwell sucked in his upper lip and kept it there. Laney heard the dislodged prosthesis click against his teeth.

"I have to get some idea of who he really is," Laney said.

The lip re-emerged, damp and gleaming. "Christ," Blackwell said, "that~r a poser."

"I have to meet him."

Blackwell wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "His music, then?" He raised his eyebrows hopefully. "Or there's video-"

"I've got video, thanks. It really might help if I could meet him."

Blackwell touched his ear-stump. "You meet him, you think you'll be able to get his nodes, nodal, do that thing Yama's on about?"

"I don't know," Laney said. "I can try."

"b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l," Blackwell said. He plowed through the Styrofoam, swept the tarp aside with his arm, barked for the waiting technicians, then turned back to Laney. "Sometimes I'd as soon be back with my mates in Jika Jika. Get things sorted, in there, they'd b.l.o.o.d.y stay that way." The woman with the brown bangs thrust her head in, past the edge of the tarp. "Collect this business in the van," Blackwell told her. "Have it ready to use when we need it."

"We don't have a van, Keithy," the woman said.

"Buy one," Blackwell said.

18.The Otaku Something rectangular, yielding to the hrst touch but hard inside, as she tugged it free. Wrapped in a blue and yellow plastic bag from the SeaTac duty-free, crookedly sealed with wrinkled lengths of slick brown tape. Heavy. Compact.

"h.e.l.lo."

Chia very nearly falling backward, where she crouched above her open bag, at the voice and the sight of this boy, who in that first instant she takes to be an older girl, side-parted hair falling past her shoulders.

"I am Masahiko." No translator. He wore a dark, oversized tunic, vaguely military, b.u.t.toned to its high, banded collar, loose around his neck. Old gray sweatpants bagging at the knees. Grubby-looking white paper slippers.

"Mitsuko made tea," indicating the tray, the stoneware pot, two

cups. "But you were pcrted."

"Is she here?" Chia pushed the thing back down into her bag.

"She went out," Masahiko said. "May I look at your computer?"

"Computer?" Chia stood, confused.

"It is Sandbenders, yes?"

She poured some of the tea, which was still steaming. "Sure. You want tea?"

"No," Masahiko said. "I drink coffee only." He squatted on the

tatami, beside the low table, and ran an admiring fingertip along the

edge of the Sandbenders' cast aluminum. "Beautiful. I have seen a small disk player by the same maker. It is a cult, yes?"

"A commune. Tribal people. In Oregon."

The boy's black hair was long and glossy and smoothly brushed, but Chia saw there was a bit of noodle caught in it, the thin, kinky kind that came in instant ramen bowls.

"I'm sorry I was ported when Mitsuko came back. She'll think I was rude."

"You are from Seattle." Not a question.

'You're her brother?'

"Yes. Why are you here?" His eyes large and dark, his face long and pale.

"Your sister and I are both into Lo/Rez."

"You have come because he wants to marry Rei Toei?"

Hot tea dribbled down Chia's chin. "She told you that?"

"Yes," Masahiko said. "In Walled City, some people worked on her design." He was lost in his study of her Sandbenders, turning it over in his hands. His fingers were long and pale, the nails badly chewed.

"Where's that?"

"Netside,' he said, flipping the weight of his hair back, over one shoulder.

'What do they say about her?~'

"Original concept. Almost radical.' He stroked the keys. "This is very beautiful

"You learned English here?"

"In Walled City."

Chia tried another sip of tea, then put the cup down. "You have any coffee?"