Part 85 (1/2)

When the stungun quit making that zapping sound, Chia dropped it. The doork.n.o.b wasn't turning. No sound from the bathroom but the faint recorded cries of tropical birds. She whipped around.

Masahiko was trying to get his computer into the plaid carrier-bag. She dived for her Sandbenders, grabbed it up, still trailing her goggles, and turned to the pink bed. Her bag was beside it on the floor, with the blue and yellow SeaTac plastic showing. She pulled that out, the thing still in it, and tossed it on the bed. She bent to shove her Sandbenders into her bag, but glanced back at the bathroom door when she thought she heard something.

The k.n.o.b was turning again.

The Russian opened the door. When he let go of the k.n.o.b, she saw that his hand was inside something that looked like a Day-Gb pink hand-puppet. One of the s.e.x toys from the black cabinet.

He was using it as insulation. He peeled it off his fingers and tossed it back over his shoulder.

The bird sounds faded as he stepped out.

Masahiko, who'd been trying to get one of his feet into one of his

black shoes, was looking at the Russian too. He still had a paper slipper on the other foot.

”You are going?” the Russian said.

”It's on the bed,” Chia said. ”We didn't have anything to do

with it.”

The Russian noticed the stungun on the carpet, beside the

pointed toe of his boot. He raised the boot and brought his heel

255.

down. Chia heard the plastic case crack. ”Artemi, my friend of Novokuznetskaya, is doing himself great indignity with this.” He prodded the fragments of the stungun with his toe. ”Is wearing very tight jeans, Artemi, leather, is fas.h.i.+on. Putting in front pocket, trigger is pressing accident.

Artemi is shocking his manhood.” The Russian showed Chia his large, uneven teeth. ”Still we are laughing, yes?”

”Please,” Chia said. ”We just want to go.”

The Russian stepped past Eddie and Maryalice, who lay tangled on the carpet. ”You are accident like Artemi to his manhood, yes? You are only happening to this owner of fine nightclub.” He indicated the unconscious Eddie. ”Who is smuggler and other things, very complicated, but you, you are only accident?”

”That's right,” Chia said.

”You are of LoIRez.” It sounded like Lor-ess. He stepped closer to Chia and looked down into the bag. ”You are knowing what this is.”

”No,” Chia lied. ”I'm not.”

The Russian looked at her. ”We are not liking accident, ever. Not allowing accident.” His hands

came up, then, and she saw that the back of the third joint of each of his fingers was pink with those dots, each one the size of the end of a pencil eraser. She'd seen those at her last school and knew they meant a laser had recently been used to remove a tattoo.

She looked up at his face. He looked like someone who was about to do something that he might not want to do, but that he knew he had to.

But then she saw his eyes slide past her, narrowing, and she turned in time to see the door to the corridor swing inward. A man wider than the doorway seemed to flow into the room. There was a big X of flesh-colored tape across one side of his f~tce, and he was wearing a coat the color of dull metal. Chia saw one huge, scarred hand slip into his coat; the other held something black that ended in a mag-strip tab.

”Yob tvoyu mat,” said the RUSSIan, soft syllables of surprise.

The stranger's hand emerged, holding something that looked to Chia like a very large pair of chrome-plated scissors, but then Un- 256 William Gibson folded, with a series of small sharp clicks, and apparently of its own accord, into a kind of glittering, skeletal axe, its leading edge hawk-like and lethal, the head behind it tapering like an icepick.

”My mother?” said the stranger, who sounded somehow delighted. ”Did you say my mother?” His face was s.h.i.+ny with scar tissue. More scars crisscrossed his shaven, stubbled skull.