Read Online Mona Lisa Overdrive by William Gibson - Free Book Online

Continuity was
always
writing it. She asked why. But Robin had already lost interest: because Continuity
     was an AI, and AIs did things like that.
    Her call to Continuity cost her a call from Swift.
    “Angie, about that physical …”
    “Haven’t you scheduled it yet? I want to get back to work. I called Continuity this
     morning. I’m thinking about an orbital sequence. I’m going over some things Tally
     did; I may get some ideas.”
    There was a silence. She wanted to laugh. It was difficult to get a silence out of
     Swift. “You’re sure, Angie? That’s wonderful, but is it really what you want to do?”
    “I’m all better, Hilton. I’m just fine. I want to work. Vacation’s over. Have Porphyre
     come out here and do my hair before I have to see anyone.”
    “You know, Angie,” he said, “this makes all of us very happy.”
    “Call Porphyre. Set up the physical.”
Coup-poudre. Who, Hilton? Maybe you?
    He had the resources, she thought, half an hour later, as she paced the fogbound deck.
     Her addiction hadn’t threatened the Net, hadn’t affected her output. There were no
     physical side effects. If there had been, Sense/Net would never have allowed her to
     begin. The drug’s designer, she thought. The designer would know. And never tell her,
     even if she could reach him, which she doubted she could. Suppose, she thought, her
     hands on the rust of the railing, that he hadn’t been the designer? That the molecule
     had been designed by someone else, to his own ends?
    “Your hairdresser,” the house said.
    She went inside.
    Porphyre was waiting, swathed in muted jersey, something from the Paris season. His
     face, as smooth in repose as polished ebony, split into a delighted smirk when he
     saw her. “Missy,” he scolded, “you look like homemade shit.”
    She laughed. Porphyre clucked and tutted, came forward to flick his long fingers at
     Angie’s bangs with mock revulsion. “Missy was a bad girl. Porphyre
told
you those drugs were nasty!”
    She looked up at him. He was very tall, and, she knew, enormously strong. Like a greyhound
     on steroids, someone had once said. His depilated skull displayed a symmetry unknown
     to nature.
    “You okay?” he asked, in his other voice, the manic brio shut off as if someone had
     thrown a switch.
    “I’m fine.”
    “Did it hurt?”
    “Yeah. It hurt.”
    “You know,” he said, touching her chin lightly with a fingertip, “nobody could ever
     see what you got out of that shit. It didn’t seem to get you high.…”
    “It wasn’t supposed to. It was just like being here, being there, only you didn’t
     have to—”
    “Feel it as much?”
    “Yes.”
    He nodded, slowly. “Then that was some bad shit.”
    “Fuck it,” she said. “I’m back.”
    His smirk returned. “Let’s wash your hair.”
    “I washed it yesterday!”
    “What in? No! Don’t tell me!” He shooed her toward the stairwell.
    In the white-tiled bathroom, he massaged something into her scalp.
    “Have you seen Robin lately?”
    He sluiced cool water through her hair. “
Mistah
Lanier is in London, missy.
Mistah
Lanier and I aren’t currently on speaking terms. Sit up now.” He raised the back
     of the chair and draped a towel around her neck.
    “Why not?” She felt herself warming to the Net gossip that was Porphyre’s other specialty.
    “Because,” the hairdresser said, his tone carefully even as he ran a comb back through
     her hair, “he hadsome bad things to say about Angela Mitchell while she was off in Jamaica getting
     her little head straight.”
    It wasn’t what she’d expected. “He did?”
    “Didn’t he just, missy.” He began to cut her hair, using the scissors that were one
     of his professional trademarks; he refused to use a laser pencil, claimed never to
     have touched one.
    “Are you joking, Porphyre?”
    “No. He wouldn’t say those things to
me
, but Porphyre
hears
, Porphyre always hears. He left for London the morning after you