"I have his agent's number in Paris."

"Has he done anything since Antarctica? "

"Not that I know of."

"And how long has that been?"

"Five years."

"Thanks."

"You're welcome, Angie."

"Goodbye."

"Goodbye, Angie."

Had Becker assumed that 3Jane was responsible for Ashpool's eventual death? He seemed to suggest it, in an oblique way.

"Continuity."

"Hello, Angie."

"The folklore of console jockeys, Continuity. What do you know about that?" And what will Swift make of all this? she wondered.

"What would you like to know, Angie?"

" 'When It Changed' ... "

"The mythform is usually encountered in one of two modes. One mode assumes that the cyberspace matrix is inhabited, or perhaps visited, by entities whose characteristics correspond with the primary mythform of a 'hidden people.' The other involves assumptions of omniscience, omnipotence, and incomprehensibility on the part of the matrix itself."

"That the matrix is God?"

"In a manner of speaking, although it would be more accurate, in terms of the mythform, to say that the matrix has a God, since this being's omniscience and omnipotence are assumed to be limited to the matrix."

"If it has limits, it isn't omnipotent."

"Exactly. Notice that the mythform doesn't credit the being with immortality, as would ordinarily be the case in belief systems positing a supreme being, at least in terms of your particular culture. Cyberspace exists, insofar as it can be said to exist, by virtue of human agency."

"Like you."

"Yes."

She wandered into the living room, where the Louis XVI chairs were skeletal in the gray light, their carved legs like gilded bones.

"If there were such a being," she said, "you'd be a part of it, wouldn't you?"

"Yes."

"Would you know?"

"Not necessarily."

"Do you know?"

"No."

"Do you rule out the possibility?"

"No."

"Do you think this is a strange conversation, Continuity?" Her cheeks were wet with tears, although she hadn't felt them start.

"No."

"How do the stories about -- " she hesitated, having almost said the loa, "about things in the matrix, how do they fit in to this supreme-being idea?"

"They don't. Both are variants of 'When it Changed.' Both are of very recent origin."

"How recent?"

"Approximately fifteen years."

She woke with Sally's cool palm pressed to her mouth, the other hand gesturing for silence.

The little lamps were on, the ones set into the panels of gold-flecked mirror. One of her bags was open, on the giant bed, a neat little stack of clothing beside it.

Sally tapped her index finger against closed lips, then gestured toward the case and the clothing.

Kumiko slid from beneath the duvet and tugged on a sweater against the cold. She looked at Sally again and considered speaking; whatever this was, she thought, a word might bring Petal. She was dressed as Kumiko had last seen her, in the shearling jacket, her tartan scarf knotted beneath her chin. She repeated the gesture: pack.

Kumiko dressed quickly, then began to put the clothing into the case. Sally moved restlessly, silently around the room, opening drawers, closing them. She found Kumiko's passport, a black plastic slab embossed with a gold chrysanthemum, and hung it around Kumiko's neck on its black nylon cord. She vanished into the veneered cubicle and emerged with the suede bag that held Kumiko's toilet things.

As Kumiko was sealing the case, the gilt-and-ivory telephone began to chime.

Sally ignored it, took the suitcase from the bed, opened the door, took Kumiko's hand, and pulled her out into the darkened hallway. Releasing her hand, Sally closed the door behind them, muffling the phone and leaving them in total darkness. Kumiko let herself be guided into the lift -- she knew it by its smell of oil and furniture polish, the rattle of the metal gate.

Then they were descending.

Petal was waiting for them in the bright white foyer, wrapped in an enormous faded flannel robe. He wore his decrepit slippers; his legs, below the robe's hem, were very white. He held a gun in his hands, a squat, thick thing, dull black. "Fucking hell," he said softly, as he saw them there, "and what's this then?"

"She's going with me," Sally said.

"That," said Petal, slowly, "is entirely impossible."

"Kumi," Sally said, her hand on Kumiko's back, guiding her out of the lift, "there's a car waiting."

"You can't do this," Petal said, but Kumiko sensed his confusion, his uncertainty.

"So fucking shoot me, Petal."

Petal lowered the gun. "It's Swain who'll fucking shoot me, if you have your way."

"If he were here, he'd be in the same bind, wouldn't he?"

"Please," Petal said, "don't."

"She'll be fine. Not to worry. Open the door."

"Sally," Kumiko said, "where are we going?"

"The Sprawl."

And woke again, huddled under Sally's shearling jacket, to the mild vibration of supersonic flight. She remembered the huge, low car waiting in the crescent; floodlights leaping out from the facades of Swain's houses as she and Sally reached the pavement; Tick's sweaty face glimpsed through one of the car's windows; Sally heaving open a door and bundling her in; Tick cursing softly and steadily as the car accelerated; the complaint of the tires as he swung them too sharply into Kensington Park Road; Sally telling him to slow down, to let the car drive.

And there, in the car, she'd remembered returning the Maas-Neotek unit to its hiding place behind the marble bust -- Colin left behind with all his fox-print poise, the elbows of his jacket worn like Petal's slippers -- no more than what he was, a ghost.

"Forty minutes," Sally said now, from the seat beside her. "Good you got some sleep. They'll bring us breakfast soon. Remember the name on your passport? Good. Now don't ask me any questions until I've had some coffee, okay?"

Kumiko knew the Sprawl from a thousand stims; a fascination with the vast conurbation was a common feature of Japanese popular culture.

She'd had few preconceptions of England when she arrived there: vague images of several famous structures, unfocused impressions of a society her own seemed to regard as quaint and stagnant. (In her mother's stories, the princess-ballerina discovered that the English, however admiring, couldn't afford to pay her to dance.) London, so far, had run counter to her expectations, with its energy, its evident affluence, the Ginza bustle of its great shopping streets.

She had many preconceptions of the Sprawl, most of which were shattered within a few hours of arrival.

But as she waited beside Sally in a line of other travelers, in a vast, hollow customs hall whose ceiling struts rose away into darkness, a darkness broken at intervals by pale globes -- globes circled, though it was winter, by clouds of insects, as though the building possessed its own discrete climate -- it was the stim-Sprawl she imagined, the sensual electric backdrop for the fast-forward lives of Angela Mitchell and Robin Lanier.

Through customs -- which consisted, in spite of the endless wait in line, of sliding her passport along a greasy-looking metal slot -- and out into a frantic concrete bay where driverless baggage carts plowed slowly through a crowd that milled and struggled for ground transportation.

Someone took her bag. Reached down and took it from her with an ease, a confidence, that suggested he was meant to take it, that he was a functionary performing an accustomed task, like the young women bowing welcome at the doors of Tokyo department stores. And Sally kicked him. Kicked him in the back of the knee, pivoting smoothly, like the Thai boxing girls in Swain's billiard room, snatching the bag before the back of his skull and the stained concrete met with an audible crack.