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chrome-plated Nepalese padlock on either side, and he'd found the keys,
earlier, hanging on a nail. It was one of those deeply pointless arrangements,
in file:///F|/rah/New%20Folder/All%20Tomorrows%20Parties.txt (84 of 151)
[1/14/03 11:18:51 PM]
file:///F|/rah/New%20Folder/All%20Tomorrows%20Parties.txt terms of security,
because anyone who wanted in could boltcut the padlocks, pry their hasps out
of the wood, or just yank the chicken wire until the staples pulled out. On
the other hand, if you went out, left it unlocked, and somebody took your
stuff with no effort at all, he guessed you'd feel even stupider.
When he got it open, he settled down on the foot of the bed with his beef bowl
and the plastic spoon they'd given him. He was just inhaling the steam when it
came to him he should check on the thermos-thing. The projector, Laney had
called it. He sighed, put his beef bowl down, and got up
(well, he had to crouch).
The GlobEx box was in the cabinet there, beside his bag, and the spun-metal
cylinder was in the
GlobEx box.
He sat back down, with the GlobEx box next to him on the bed, and got to work
on his beef bowl, which was worth waiting for. It was strange how this kind of
shaved, basically overcooked mystery meat, which he guessed really was,
probably, beef, could be tastier, under the right circumstances, than a really
good steak. He ate the whole thing, every last grain of rice and drop of broth
and figured the tourist-trap map had put their three stars and a half in the
right place.
ALL TOMORROW~S PARTIES
151
Then he opened the GlobEx box and got the thermos-thing out. He looked at the
FAMOUS ASPECT
sticker again, and it didn't tell him any more than it had before. He stood
the thing up on its base, on the green-and-orange carpet, and crawled back up
the bed to get the switchblade. He used that to slice open the plastic
envelopes containing the two cables and sat there looking at them.
The one that was standard power just looked like what you used to run a
notebook off the wall, he thought, although the end that went into the thermos
looked a little more complicated than usual.
The other one though, the jacks on either end looked serious. He found the
socket that one end of this obviously went into, but what was the other end
supposed to fit? If the sumo kid was telling the truth, this was a custom
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cable, required to jack this thing into something that it might not usually be
required to jack to. This one was optical, it looked like.
The power cable, that was easy. What took a while was finding a socket up
here, but it turned out there was one (well, actually the end of an
industrial-grade yellow extension cord) in the storage cabinet.
No control on the thing, that he could see, no switches. He plugged the power
cable into the wall socket, then sat on the bed, the other end in his hand,
looking at the silvery cylinder.
"Hell," he said and plugged the cable into the cylinder. Just as he did, he
had the clearest possible vision of the thing being, absolutely and no doubt,
brimful of plastic explosive and a detonator, just waiting for this juice-
But, no, if it had been, he'd be dead. He wasn't. But the cylinder wasn't
doing anything either. He thought he could hear a faint hum from it, and
that was it. "I don't get it," Rydell said.
Something flickered. Neon butterfly. Torn wings.
And then this girl was there, kneeling, right up close, and he felt his heart
roll over, catch itself.
The how of her not being there, then being there. Something hurt in his chest,
until he reminded himself to breathe.
If Rydell had had to describe her, he would've said beautiful, and been
utterly frustrated in the attempt to convey how. He thought she
152
had to be one of Durius' examples of hybrid vigor, but saying which races had
been mixed was beyond him.
"Where are we?" she asked.
He blinked, uncertain as to whether she saw and addressed him, or someone
else, in some other file:///F|/rah/New%20Folder/All%20Tomorrows%20Parties.txt
(85 of 151) [1/14/03 11:18:51 PM]
file:///F|/rah/New%20Folder/All%20Tomorrows%20Parties.txt reality.
"Bed-and-breakfast," he said, by way of experiment. "San Francisco-Oakland
Bay."
"You are Laney's friend?"
"I-Well. Yeah."
She was looking around now, with evident interest, and Rydell felt the hairs
stand up along his arms, seeing that she wore an outfit that exactly mirrored
his own, though everything she wore fit her perfectly, and of course looked
very different on her. Loose khakis, blue workshirt, black nylon jacket with a
Velcro rectangle over the heart, where you stuck the logo of your company.
Right down to black socks (with holes? he wondered) and miniature versions of
the black Work-'N'-
Walks he'd bought for Lucky Dragon. But the hair on his arms was up because he
knew, he had seen, he had, that in the first instant of her being there, she'd
crouched before him naked.
"I am Rei Toei," she said. Her hair was coarse and glossy and roughly but
perfectly cut, her mouth wide and generous and not quite smiling, and Rydell
put out his hand and watched it pass right through her shoulder, through the
pattern of coherent light he knew she must be. "This is a hologram," she said,
"but I am real."
"Where are you?" Rydell asked, withdrawing his hand. "I'm here," she said.
"But where are you really?"
"Here. This is not a broadcast hologram. It is generated by the Famous Aspect
unit. I am here, with you. Your room is very small. Are you poor?" She crawled
past Rydell (he supposed she could've crawled through him, if he hadn't moved
aside) to the head of his bed, examining the salt-
caked hemisphere of plastic. Rydell could see now that she literally was a
source of illumination, though somehow it reminded him of moonlight.
"It's a rented room," Rydell said. "And I'm not rich." She looked back at
this. "I meant no offense."
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153
"That's okay," Rydell said, looking from her to the projector and back. "I
mean, a lot of people, they'd think I'm poor."
"But more would think you rich."
"I don't know about that-"
"I do," she said. "There are, literally, more humans alive at this moment who
have measurably less than you do. You have this sleeping place, you have
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