Mona Lisa Overdrive by William Gibson Read Free Book Online Page A

something-narrow, pointed, but not a biro.”
    “A what?”
    “A pen. Ink and dust. Gum up the works. A toothpick’s ideal. That’ll set it for voice-activated
     recording.”
    “And then?”
    “Hide it downstairs. We’ll play it back tomorrow.…”

6
MORNING LIGHT
    Slick spent the night on a piece of gnawed gray foam under a workbench on Factory’s
     ground floor, wrapped in a noisy sheet of bubble packing that stank of free monomers.
     He dreamed about Kid Afrika, about the Kid’s car, and in his dreams the two blurred
     together and Kid’s teeth were little chrome skulls.
    He woke to a stiff wind spitting the winter’s first snow through Factory’s empty windows.
    He lay there and thought about the problem of the Judge’s buzzsaw, how the wrist tended
     to cripple up whenever he went to slash through something heavier than a sheet of
     chipboard. His original plan for the hand had called for articulated fingers, each
     one tipped with a miniature electric chainsaw, but the concept had lost favor for
     a number of reasons. Electricity, somehow, just wasn’t satisfying; it wasn’t
physical
enough. Air was the way to go, big tanks of compressed air, or internal combustion
     if you could find the parts. And you could find the parts to almost anything, on Dog
     Solitude, if you dug long enough; failing that, there were half-a-dozen townsin rustbelt Jersey with acres of dead machines to pick over.
    He crawled out from under the bench, trailing the transparent blanket of miniature
     plastic pillows like a cape. He thought about the man on the stretcher, up in his
     room, and about Cherry, who’d slept in his bed. No stiff neck for her. He stretched
     and winced.
    Gentry was due back. He’d have to explain it to Gentry, who didn’t like having people
     around at all.
    Little Bird had made coffee in the room that served as Factory’s kitchen. The floor
     was made of curling plastic tiles and there were dull steel sinks along one wall.
     The windows were covered with translucent tarps that sucked in and out with the wind
     and admitted a milky glow that made the room seem even colder than it was.
    “How we doing for water?” Slick asked as he entered the room. One of Little Bird’s
     jobs was checking the tanks on the roof every morning, fishing out windblown leaves
     or the odd dead crow. Then he’d check the seals on the filters, maybe let ten fresh
     gallons in if it looked like they were running low. It took the better part of a day
     for ten gallons to filter down through the system to the collection tank. The fact
     that Little Bird dutifully took care of this was the main reason Gentry would tolerate
     him, but the boy’s shyness probably helped as well. Little Bird managed to be pretty
     well invisible, as far as Gentry was concerned.
    “Got lots,” Little Bird said.
    “Is there any way to take a shower?” Cherry asked, from her seat on an old plastic
     crate. She had shadows under her eyes, like she hadn’t slept, but she’d covered the
     sore with makeup.
    “No,” Slick said, “there isn’t, not this time of year.”
    “I didn’t think so,” Cherry said glumly, hunched in her collection of leather jackets.
    Slick helped himself to the last of the coffee and stood in front of her while he
     drank it.
    “You gotta problem?” she asked.
    “Yeah. You and the guy upstairs. How come you’re down here? You off duty or something?”
    She produced a black beeper from the pocket of her outermost jacket. “Any change,
     this’ll go off.”
    “Sleep okay?”
    “Sure. Well enough.”
    “I didn’t. How long you work for Kid Afrika, Cherry?”
    “ ’Bout a week.”
    “You really a med-tech?”
    She shrugged inside her jackets. “Close enough to take care of the Count.”
    “The Count?”
    “Count, yeah. Kid called him that, once.”
    Little Bird shivered. He hadn’t gotten to work with his styling tools yet, so his
     hair stuck out in all directions. “What if,” Little Bird