Read Online Spook Country by William Gibson - Free Book Online Page B

helmet from them both. “Bobby,” he said, “you’ve really got to calm down. This is important. She’s writing an article about locative art. For Node.”
    “Node?”
    “Node.”
    “The fuck is Node?”
    “Magazine. Like Wired. Except it’s English.”
    “Or Belgian,” she offered. “Or something.”
    Bobby looked at them as though they, not he, were crazy.
    Alberto tapped the control-surface she’d touched accidentally. She saw an LED go out. He carried the unit to the nearer of the two tables and set it down.
    “The squid’s wonderful, Bobby,” she told him. “I’m glad I saw it. I’ll go now. Sorry to have disturbed you.”
    “Fuck it,” Bobby said, heaving a sigh of resignation. He crossed to the other table, rummaged through a scattering of small loose objects, and came up with a pack of Marlboro and a pale-blue Bic. They watched as he lit up, then closed his eyes and inhaled deeply. Opening his eyes, he threw his head back and exhaled, the blue smoke rising toward the faceted fixtures. After another hit on the cigarette, he looked at them over it, frowning. “Fucks with me,” he said. “I cannot believe how seriously it fucks with me. That was nine hours. Nine. Fucking. Hours.”
    “You should try the patch,” Alberto suggested. He turned to Hollis. “You used to smoke,” he said to her, “when you were in the Curfew.”
    “I quit,” she said.
    “Did you use the patch?” Bobby drew on his Marlboro again.
    “Sort of.”
    “Sort of how?”
    “Inchmale read the original accounts of the English discovering tobacco in Virginia. The tribes they ran into weren’t smoking it, not the way we do.”
    “What were they doing?” Bobby’s eyes looked considerably less crazy now, from beneath the thatch.
    “Part of it was what we’d call passive smoking, but deliberate. They’d go into a tent and burn a lot of tobacco leaves. But the other thing they were doing was poultices.”
    “Polt—?” He lowered what was left of the Marlboro.
    “Nicotine’s absorbed very quickly through the skin. Inchmale would stick a bunch of damp, pulverized tobacco leaf on you, under duct tape—”
    “And you quit, that way?” Alberto’s eyes were wide.
    “Not exactly. It’s dangerous. We found out later that you could just drop dead, doing that. Like if you could absorb all the nicotine from a single cigarette, that would be more than a lethal dose. But it was so unpleasant, after a time or two it seemed to work like some kind of aversion therapy.” She smiled at Bobby.
    “Maybe I’ll try that,” he said, and flicked ash on the floor. “Where is he?”
    “Argentina,” she said.
    “Is he playing?”
    “Gigging a little.”
    “Recording?”
    “Not that I know of.”
    “And you’re doing journalism now?”
    “I’ve always written a little,” she said. “Where’s your toilet?”
    “Far corner.” Bobby pointed, away from where she’d seen Archie and the other thing.
    As she crossed the floor in the direction indicated, she eyed the grid drawn in what looked like flour. The lines weren’t perfectly straight, but close enough. She was careful not to step on or scuff any.
    The toilet was a three-staller with a stainless-steel urinal, newer than the building. She locked the door, hung her bag from the hook inside the first stall, and hauled out her PowerBook. While it booted up, she got settled. There was, as she’d been fairly certain there would be, wifi. Would she like to join the wireless network 72fofH00av? She would, and did, wondering why an agoraphobic isolationist techie like Bobby wouldn’t bother to WEP his wifi, but then she was always surprised at how many people left them open.
    She had mail, from Inchmale. She opened it.
    Angelina reiterates her concern about your being, however indirectly or only potentially, employed by le Bigend, which she points out is more correctly pronounced “bay-jend,” sort of, but seldom is, she says, even by him. More urgently, perhaps, she