Pattern Recognition by William Gibson Read Free Book Online Page A

basic computational module instantly had completed the simplest of equations: if boyfriend sleeps with gun, Cayce does not share bed, or bod, with (now abruptly former) boyfriend.
    And so she’d lain there, her fingertip against what she assumed was the checkered hardwood of the gun’s grip, and watched Donny take his last ride on that particular pony.
    But here, in Camden Town, in Damien’s flat, up a narrow flight of stairs, there is a room. It is the room where she’s slept on previous visits, and she knows that Damien has now converted it to a home studio, where he indulges his passion for mixing.
    Up there, she wonders, now, mightn’t there be someone?
    The someone who somehow got in here in her absence and idly tooka look at those Asian sluts? It seems bizarre, and impossible, and yet horribly, if barely, possible. Or is it all too very possible?
    She makes herself look around the room again, and notices the roll of black tape on the carpet. It is upright, as though it had rolled there. And remembers, very clearly, placing it, when she’d finished with it, on its side, so that it wouldn’t roll off, on the edge of the trestle table.
    Something takes her into the kitchen, then, and she finds herself looking into a drawer containing Damien’s kitchen knives. Which are new, and not much used, and probably quite sharp. And, while she is not uncertain that she could defend herself with one of these if required, the idea of introducing sharp edges into the equation seems not entirely a good one. She tries another drawer and finds a square cardboard box of machine parts, heavy-looking and precise and slightly oily, which she assumes are leftovers from the robot girls. One of these, thick and cylindrical, fits neatly and solidly into her hand, squared-off edges just showing at either end of her closed fist. What you can do with a roll of quarters, she remembers, Donny coming in handy after all.
    She takes this with her as she mounts the stairs to Damien’s home recording studio. Which proves to be just that, and unoccupied, with no hiding places whatever. A futon, narrow and new, that would be her bed if Damien were here.
    Back down the stairs.
    She goes through the space carefully, holding her breath as she opens both of the two closets. Where there is very little at all, Damien being not a clothes person.
    She looks into each of the lower cabinets in the renovated kitchen, and in the space beneath the sink. Where no prowler crouches, but the reno crew have left a big yellow metric measuring tape.
    She puts the chain on the locked door to the hallway. It is not much of a chain, by New York standards, and she’s lived in New York long enough to put very little trust in chains, regardless. But still.
    She examines the windows, all of which are closed, and all but one of which are so thoroughly painted shut that she estimates it would take a carpenter three very expensive hours and a fair number of tools to open one. The one that has been opened, no doubt by that same expensive carpenter, is presently secured by a pair of mirror-world sash bolts, their hidden tongues to be extended and retracted by a sort of key-like wrench or driver, with an oddly shaped head. She has seen these used in London before, and has no idea where Damien keeps his. Since this can only be done from within, and the glass is intact, she rules out the windows as points of entry.
    She looks back at the door.
    Someone has a key. Two keys, she remembers, for this door, and possibly a third for the street door.
    Damien must have a new girlfriend, someone he hasn’t mentioned. Or else an old one, someone who’s retained the keys. Or a cleaner perhaps, someone who forgot something and returned for it while Cayce was out.
    Then she remembers that the keys are new, the locks having been changed after completion of the renovation, causing hers to have had to be FedExed to New York on the eve of her departure. This by Damien’s assistant, the one who’d