Pattern Recognition by William Gibson Read Free Book Online Page B

come in to put the place back together. And she remembers this woman on the phone with her in New York, concerned because the keys she’d just sent off were the only set she had, and apologizing that Damien currently had no housecleaner.
    She goes into the bedroom and examines her things. Nothing seems to have been disturbed. She remembers an eerily young Sean Connery, in that first James Bond film, using fine clear Scottish spit to paste one of his gorgeous black hairs across the gap between the jamb and the door of his hotel room. Off to the casino, he will know, upon returning, whether or not his space has been violated.
    Too late for that.
    She goes into the other room and looks at the Cube, which has gone back to sleep, and at the roll of tape on the carpet. The room is clean and simple, semiotically neutral, Damien having charged his decorators, on threat of dismissal, with the absolute avoidance of shelter magazine chic of any kind.
    What else is there, here, that might retain information?
    The telephone.
    On the table beside the computer.
    It is an unusually simple mirror-world telephone, none of the usual bells or whistles. It doesn’t even have call-display, Damien viewing such things as time-sinks and needless recomplications.
    It does, however, have a redial button.
    She picks up the handset and looks at it, as though expecting it to speak.
    She presses the redial button. Listens to a sequence of mirror-world rings. She is waiting for the voice mail at Blue Ant to pick up, or perhaps a weekend receptionist, because she hasn’t used this phone since calling them, Friday morning, to confirm that her car was on the way.
    “ Lasciate un messaggio, risponderò appena possibile. ”
    A woman’s voice, brisk and impatient.
    Tone.
    She almost screams. Hangs frantically up.
    Leave a message. I will reply as soon as I can.
    Dorotea.

6.

THE MATCH FACTORY
    “First priority,” Cayce tells Damien’s flat, hearing her father’s voice, “secure the perimeter.”
    Win Pollard, twenty-five years an evaluator and improver of physical security for American embassies worldwide, had retired to develop and patent humane crowd-control barriers for rock concerts. His idea of a bedtime story had been the quiet, systematic, and intricately detailed recitation of how he’d finally secured the sewer connections at the Moscow embassy.
    She looks at the white-painted door and guesses it to be made of oak. Like so many things Victorian, far more solidly built than it ever needed to be. Hinges are on the inside, as they should be, and this means that it swings inward, toward a blank section of wall. She judges the distance between door and wall, then looks at the table.
    She gets the yellow tape she’d noticed earlier from beneath the sink, using it to measure the length of the table, then the distance between the closed and chained door and the wall. Eight centimeters to spare, and with the table in position, lengthwise, between door and wall, it will require either a fire ax or explosives to get into the flat.
    She transfers the telephone, cable modem, keyboard, speakers and Studio Display monitor to the carpet, without disconnecting them or shutting the Cube down. The screen wakes when she does this and she sees Asian Sluts still there, same position. When she moves the Cube itself, her hand accidentally covers its static switch. It powers off. She touches the spot to reboot and turns to the table, the top of which lifts easily off the two trestles. It’s heavy and solid, but Cayce is one of thoseslight-looking women who combine considerable wiry strength with low body weight. This had made her, in college, a much better rock climber than her psychologist boyfriend, to his ongoing and increasing annoyance. She would invariably reach the top first, never intentionally, and always by a more challenging route.
    She props the tabletop against the wall, beside the door, and goes back for the trestles. Returning with them, one in