main road. The driver turned them onto this new road, and the hologram hillside reappeared behind them. A large cat, a cougar or jaguar (Sentry robot, Conover said.) paced the car as they passed a thick stand of madrone and scrubby manzanita. There were men up there, too.
Jonny caught a glint of rifles slung over camouflaged shoulders.
'Our security is quite tight up here,' said Conover. 'The whole hill is wired. We have motion detectors, infra- red and image intensifiers in the trees. Neurotoxin microcapsule mines buried on the blind side of the hill. Those men you saw? They're carrying rail guns. Models that small are very new. Very expensive. They can push a one hundred gram polycarbonate projectile at a thousand kilometers an hour. It's like having a small mountain dropped on you.' He lit another cigarette and from his inside jacket pocket, took a black silicon card. There were gold filaments on the card's face, forming a bar code on its face. 'You need this, too. We run a magnetic scan on every vehicle that comes through here. If the system doesn't read the right code, it sets off every alarm in the place.'
'You expecting the Army?' asked Jonny.
'I expect nothing,' replied Conover. 'But I anticipate everything.'
Around an out-of-place bamboo grove, they came up on Conover's mansion, stars hazy through the hologram dome. Jonny's first thought was that the main building of the estate was surrounded by smaller bungalows. When they get closer, however, he realized that what he was looking at was a single massive, confusion of a building, erupting over the top of the hill like a geometric melanoma. What appeared to be the oldest wing of the mansion was built in a straight Victorian style, while others were pseudo-Hacienda; the most recent additions appeared to have been built along traditional Japanese lines. Gracefully curled pagoda roofs abutted at odd angles with Spanish arches, high-windowed garrets overlooking gilt temple dogs.
'I've heard of this place. It's the old Stone mansion, isn't it?' Jonny asked.
Conover nodded. The Cadillac stopped by a pond full of fat, spotted carp, and he stepped out. Jonny followed him; a grinding pain was building up in his shoulder beneath the anesthetics. 'Yes, this is the Stone place. I'm surprised anyone still remembers it. Old Mister Stone made a fortune selling tainted baby formula in Africa and the Asian sub-continent (encouraging the mothers to stop breast-feeding and use his poison). After he died, Mrs. Stone got it into her head that the ghosts of all those little dead children were coming to get her. She kept building onto the place, sleeping in a different room every night for thirty years. The architects were given a free hand to build in whatever style was popular at the moment. This, he gestured toward the mansion, is the result. What do you think? Is this a vision of insanity, made whole and visible, or just the maunderings of a bored old bitty with too much money? Doesn't really matter. The place is very comfortable. The old lunatic only used the best materials.'
'It's a great set-up,' said Jonny. 'You must suck an awful lot of power up here. Aren't you afraid someone's going to trace it back to you?'
'We're set up for solar and there are darius windmills on the surrounding hills,' said Conover. He gave Jonny a small smile. 'The rest of what we need I've had Watt Snatchers route through the Police power grid.'
Jonny laughed, slapped the hood of the car. 'I love it!' He felt weak and hot. He wanted to sit down.
From the madrones came a series of long hysterical cries, rising in pitch until they peaked, fell and started again. Answering calls came from deeper in the trees.
'What the hell was that?' asked Jonny.
Conover gestured toward the hills. 'Samangs,' he explained. 'Apes. We're right below Griffith Park. When the zoo was destroyed during the Protein Rebellion, some of the animals escaped and bred. It's not advisable to walk through these hills alone at night. The apes won't bother you, but there are tigers.'
Jonny nodded, watching the madrone branches move in the light breeze. 'Kind of chilly out here, isn't it?'
'Perhaps you'd like to see the inside of the house? I've picked up one or two baubles from some local museums that you might find interesting.'
'Art is my life,' said Jonny, following the smuggler lord inside.
The Japanese wing of the mansion was almost empty; Jonny was not sure if this was through style or neglect, but it smelled pleasantly of varnished wood, incense and tatami mats. Many of the rooms they passed were closed off by rice paper doors painted with pale watercolors of cranes and royal pagodas. Conover took him deep into the cluttered Victorian wing where artificial daylight shone through stained-glass windows full of saints and inscriptions in Latin.
Carpeted staircases appeared suddenly around corners, behind urns of blond irises and fat pussy willows, leading to corridors that seemed to turn in on themselves in impossible ways. Jonny's room was papered in a floral design, thousands of tiny purple nosegays, and furnished with delicate French antiques: a walnut boudoir, small idealized portraits painted on glass, white hand-carved chairs with tapestry cushions and a canopied bed, all lace and gold leaf. He smiled at Conover, but was inwardly revolted by the place. It was like living in the underwear drawer of a very expensive prostitute.
When Conover left him, Jonny sat on the edge of the bed and closed his eyes. He felt drained, both mentally and physically, but could not relax. The long walk to his room, Conover's fairy tale about his security and the wild animals in the hills had been obvious warnings. Jonny was not to leave the grounds. That thought made him uneasy. He was afraid to touch the antique furniture and had not seen any signs of video or hologram viewers. Just these damned paintings everywhere, he thought. They lined virtually all the walls of the Victorian wing, set in carved wooden frames and lit by small halide spotlights recessed into the ceiling. He's an art freak, too, thought Jonny. Like Groucho. But the anarchist's art had effected him differently. It had shown the process of the artist's mind and made full use of his or her obsessions, revealing a wealth of personal symbols that were the landscapes of dreams. Conover's paintings reminded Jonny of grim family snapshots. Groucho's art (the art he and the other Croakers had not created themselves) had also been copies, cheap reproductions clipped from books.
Jonny looked above the desk at the portrait of a sorrowful-eyed man whose body was riddled with arrows. A small plaque below the painting read: El Greco. It meant nothing to him. He went out into the hall, touching each painting he came to, running his hands across the still eyes, the centuries old canvas. They were all alike. One- percenters commissioned by noble men to paint their faces, he thought. Old masters, he had heard them called. Most of Conover's paintings appeared to be portraits, although there were a few landscapes, also meaningless to him. Pictures of men on horseback wearing red jackets and chasing what reminded Jonny of big rats. Names: Goya. Rembrandt. The faces in all the portraits had the same leathery texture of old oil paint.
'I'll take Aoki Vega or Mikey Gagarin videos any day,' he said to a Renaissance Madonna with child.
On the wall above a heavy dark wood Gothic table, was a painting Jonny recognized. 'Blue Boy' by Thomas Gainsborough. He remembered seeing a post card of the painting as a teenager, glued by sweat to the bare buttocks of the young woman he was with in the ruins of the Huntington Art Gallery. Jonny ran his fingers along the boy's plumed hat.
Finely ridged plastic.
Jonny touched the painting again. When he leaned close to Blue Boy's face he saw that the texture of the paint was an illusion. A hologram, he said, very surprised.
So Conover does go for fakes, he thought. For some reason, that made him feel better. Jonny touched the plastic face one more time to reassure himself, then went back to his room. Inside, he undressed and ran water for a shower. Before he got in, he took two Dilaudid analogs that Conover had given him for the pain in his shoulder. He stepped into the stall and stood for a long time under a spigot that was a golden wrought-metal fish, turning the water on hard so that it hit his back in a stream of warm stinging needles.
Back in his room, he found a maroon silk robe had been laid out for him, and a silver tray with ice, gin and a bottle of tonic. The analog was just coming on. Standing by the desk, surrounded by antiques and the smell of clean sheets, he had a sudden vision of the world as an orderly place. His teeth melted gently into his skull. He poured himself a shot of gin and drank it down straight.
His shoulder hurt as he lay down on the bed, but the pain came from somewhere deep underground, lost among dark roots and grubs. He fell asleep and dreamed of Ice and Sumi. He found them at the top of an ornate spiral staircase, but when he touched them, they were plastic holograms.
Jonny woke in a sweat, hours later. Someone had turned off the lights. He stumbled around the dark room until he found the gin. He brought the bottle with him, setting it on the floor next to the bed.
He lost track of the days.
He slept a great deal. Conover had a private medical staff, mostly Japanese and painfully polite. With many
